Once upon a time...

... I started a blog. I had great hopes for my blog... an outlet for my creativity, a chance to connect with my own writing voice, and maybe, just maybe, reignite my passion for the written word.

And then I got busy. So busy that writing for The Daily Boop kept slipping further and further down the list of things I had to write.

Then I forgot I had a blog.

And then I remembered again.

The end.

Or is it a new beginning.

x

For you and my dad... and everything after

It's been such an interesting start to 2009 and while I began with the best intentions of making The Daily Boop a 'daily' thing, I think you and I both know by now that that just ain't gonna happen.

So I thought I'd post a little catch-up on the year so far, as seen from the desk at The Daily Boop's head office (read: my lounge room).

It began in Tasmania with a long-planned holiday to catch up with my sister Sasha and my best friend Mrs Bearly. We took at least one photo for every kilometre travelled and had quite a good trip. Then we spent a few days hanging out at home before heading back to the nine-to-five and I'm ever so glad we did: this global economic crisis thing had everyone on their toes with last-minute plans to shore up the business and the businesses of those who depend on us. Being the girl with the words meant the following months became one very long and hastily-written sentence.

In between times, my father-in-law (Gra-Gra) gave us all the fright of our lives when he was diagnosed with the big C. For a while, he was the thing behind every thought we had; and while I'm not one for prayers, I think ours were answered as he seems to be making a full recovery. My Mum and I also reestablished contact and with everything going on with Gra-Gra, I was reminded again of how life is just too bloody short.

Coming up to Easter, the George and I were stuffed. Writing anything felt like giving birth to a block of flats and I was finding myself getting really cross with everything which is most unlike me. So we took the week after Easter off just to hang out. He spent most of it in his studio and I spent it cross stitching. We went to the gorgeous Blue Mountain to see the autumn leaves before they dropped and took some beautiful photos (I'll post some shortly). That was the day we actually started to wind down, and when I landed back at the nine to five this week I found the words were flowing freely once again.

So now back to The Daily Boop. I love his little blog of mine... it's never become the thing I planned it to be and that's the way most things go with me: I start with an idea and as life is breathed into it, it kind of takes over and leads me where it wants to go.

Tomorrow is the seventh anniversary of my dad's passing. A year or two before he died he rang me at work (which he rarely ever did) to tell me that he'd just seen an old friend of mine from school and he had told her about my plans to write a book. He finished off by saying, "I really hope you do, kiddo".

Well Dad, just so you know, the book still bubbles away in the back of my mind and when it's ready to be written, I promise you I'll write it.

In loving memory of my Dad, Ian Linnell. 27 June 1950 - 26 April 2002

For you and your genius

I've been saving up posts for about two months now, not having had the chance to finesse things the way I like to before I hit the scary orange 'publish post' button. But right now I'm going to do something I've never done: publish a post without reading, re-reading and editing the edits 37 times.

But you have to trust me.

This is a talk (a TED Talk to be exact) given by an author I don't know (Elizabeth Gilbert), who wrote a book I've never heard of (Eat, Pray Love). It takes 19 minutes but it'll be 19 minutes well spent. I promise.

The Best... and the not so Best

It's 21 minutes until the Bakers Oven pops out a lovely loaf of wholemeal (with 10% selenium apparenty) so I thought I'd take a minute (or 21) to record the Top Five Best and Worst of my first week back at in the real world.

So starting at the top... the winners for Best of the Week are:

1 Pay day
2 Discovering I'd managed to LOSE 1.5 kilos over Christmas (making it 7 since September)
3 Getting a pay rise
4 Finding out my favourite person at the nine to five had been promoted (Yay for you, SJW)
5 Getting a long-overdue hair tint (goodbye greys!)

But every rose has it thorns... the Worst of the Week is as follows:

1 Pay day (Note to self, next time you decide to take leave without pay, DON'T)
2 Waiting for a long-overdue hair tint (and finding at least one new grey everyday)
3 Getting sick with a cough that made me sound (and possibly feel) like I'd taken up smoking
4 'My Penis and Everyone Elses' on SBS last Friday night (Listen you stupid galoot, nobody cares about your three and a half inch todger... frankly, I'm surprised you can see it past your colossal girth and dolly-esque breasts! Now go away and get a life.)
5 Boy George going to jail

My plan for week two in the real world is to spend less, watch less, cough less and continue to eat less; sleep more, write more, laugh more and remind myself more often of the things that really matter. I'll let you know how I go.

Redottification

When I was just thinking about starting a blog, my friend Miss Marzie - herself a longtime blogger - said that you meet some lovely people in blog world. Now it's not that I disbelieved her, it's just that meeting lovely people was not high on my list of motivations for starting the Daily Boop... and then I met Whimsy Cate.

Y'see the luscious, lolly-like dots you see here before you (as opposed to gloomy green and yucky yellow) are thanks to Cate and her man Tim, who wrote a comprehensive step-by-step guide through image editing and HTML that was so easy to get, I had new dots up by lunchtime.

So when Miss Marzie said I'd meet some lovely people online she was so right! Thank you Cate and Tim... you have made me a very happy Boop!

PS Whimsy Cate writes a lovely blog, as does the gorgeous Miss Marzie. So if you haven't ventured out into blog world yet, I highly recommend doing so. You'll be amazed at what - and who - is out there.

Beginnings

When I was just two years and nine days old, my little sister came into the world. I don't know why my dad thought I needed a present to mark the occasion but I doubt very much that he was aware of the impact the three little books he gave me would have on my life.

They were by the creator of Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne: When We Were Very Young, Now We Are Six, and The House at Pooh Corner. I adored these books - especially the first two - and even now I love to pull them off the bookcase and read them loud and animated like a primary school librarian.

I don't know why I love these poems so much and I don't want to think about it too deeply in case it tarnishes the beautiful innocence of it all. But I do know there's something uplifting and inspiring and beautiful about the way stories like these can shape a child's imagination; and I'd like to think they had a similar influence on mine.

My favourites have changed over the years. When I was really little I loved one called 'Happiness' which was about John and his great big waterproof boots. As I got older I laughed out loud to 'Bad Sir Brian Botany' (an eccentric old soldier whose long-suffering neighbours took their revenge in a duck pond), and wondered at how that precocious little upstart, James James Morrison Morison Weatherby George Dupree, persuaded the King to help him look for his mother in 'Disobedience'.

But this is my all time favourite AA Milne poem. It's called 'The Four Friends' and it's from When We Were Very Young.

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,
Leonard was a lion with a six foot tail,
George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,
And James was a very small snail.

Leonard had a stall, and a great big strong one,
Earnest had a manger, and its walls were thick,
George found a pen, but I think it was the wrong one,
And James sat down on a brick.

Earnest started trumpeting, and cracked his manger,
Leonard started roaring, and shivered his stall,
James gave a huffle of a snail in danger
And nobody heard him at all.

Earnest started trumpeting and raised such a rumpus,
Leonard started roaring and trying to kick,
James went on a journey with the goats new compass
And he reached the end of his brick.

Ernest was an elephant and very well intentioned,
Leonard was a lion with a brave new tail,
George was a goat, as I think I have mentioned,
but James was only a snail.

I survived self promotion (and other stupid stories from the bad old days)

You may find this hard to believe but I turn into a wobbling blob of insecurity if ever I'm faced with the need to self-promote. Happily, at the grand old age of 39 I have found myself in the fortunate position of not having do it anymore... I have a job I like and, all going well, I won't need to hit the streets, trumpet in hand with which to impress a doubtful employer.

I have a husband I plan to keep, so as long as he's happy to keep me too, I won't be out trolling the clubs promoting myself as an ideal incubator for a 40-something nobody who's already been rejected by the majority of my peers.

No, it seems I've managed to all but wipe out the need to tell people what a great girl I am. But a girl will do almost anything when she's hungry... she'll even stoop to self promotion.

So I'm guessing it would have been early April in 1997. My job, along with those of a handful of my colleagues, had been made redundant in the previous January when the ad agency I worked for lost a major account. All I can remember doing with my redundancy package was buying a bikini, a bottle of Baileys and paying for fornightly visits to a tarot card reader called Annie at Orange Lane Markets. By April the money was gone.

I'd visited the two creative directors who didn't scare me to the point of peeing my pants and started to pick up a bit of freelance work but not enough to survive on. So to avoid any face-to-face time with Adelaide's creative directors, I wrote a headline, added a heart-wrenching story, a pic I'd hijacked from the newspaper and made it look like the lead the article on the front page of The Advertiser (Adelaide's daily rag). I then mailed it to every creative director I knew of and waited for the work to come flooding in.

Of course, it didn't and looking at it now, I realise it was really dumb to use than name of a real Advertiser journalist. Super dumb. Unbelievably dumb.

Anyway, last week I was preparing the spare room for a visit from my mother in law* and I came across my old portfolio; and in a tatty, yellowing envelope, I found my pitiful poverty ad.

Poverty stricken writer forced to eat her own words
By Scott McKenzie (aka the alias that probably did me out of a week's work) in Adelaide

A spokesperson from the Royal Adelaide Hospital has this morning told of the amazing survival of Tracey Linnell, a copywriter driven to survive on words alone after a prolonged dry spell in the advertising industry.

Tipped off by concerned neighbours, police entered Miss Linnell's home on Sunday; and while initially driven back by the stench of foul language, they found the woman in a room at the rear of the house, huddled unconscious over her thesaurus.

"When police found Miss Linnell, she was in a very bad way. Her condition suggested she had been eating words for at least a month, and tests showed no vowel movement for quite some time," the spokesperson said.

Asked of her current condition, he replied "Miss Linnell has responded well to treatment. Fortunately she chose her words carefully and the damage to her vocabulary was kept to a minimum."

It's expected Miss Linnell will be released later today and be fit to make an immediate return to work.

*Now that I know my mother in law's a reader of The Daily Boop, I'll refer to her by her first name (which is Lyn), refrain from swearing and blasphemy and not blame her for Georgie's wind trouble.

Heavens Above

When we’re in Hobart, we stay in a lovely old mansion called Ednam House. It’s filled with antiques, heavy drapes and something that I’ve never seen but my pounding heart tells me is there. To avoid looking into nothing and seeing something, I lose myself in the intricate details of the fittings… like this chandelier in the Augusta suite.


Red Bubble

Words

It's been a really busy time at the nine to five and I feel like I'm running out of words. Today however, there was a small reprieve... a 700 to 800 word article has morphed into a table with just a headline and an intro, saving me anything up to 600 words.

It was tempting, I must admit, to blow it all in a phone call to Bear (my best friend who uses at least three times as many words as me); or waste it on random lyric generation as Georgie and I made dinner. But I think I'll get better mileage out of writing rather than speaking. At least here I can monitor the number of words I use (120 to here) and maybe save just enough so I don't go to bed speechless.

When I first started out as a copywriter, I found myself at odds with the writer's need to have thing 'just so'. If I wasn't working with a black Artline 210 on an A3 pad of bond paper, all I could think about was not having a black Artline and a pad of the starchy bond. If it was too noisy I grumbled, if it was too quiet I turned my music up. The writer in me was a wanker and I have very, very little time for wankers.

But then one day I read about a legendary copywriter named David Abbott. He was the man behind the award-winning print campaign for The Economist (which I think inspired the brilliant bush-shelter campaign for the Financial Review) and he said that to write these ads he needed to draw up a page of perfectly ruled 10 x 3 boxes with (if I recall correctly) a particular red pen before he could begin. (293 words)

Now when it comes to copywriting, I am not a hair on David Abbott's little finger; but he changed the relationship between me and the writer forever. In just a few words he made it OK for me to have a ritual around my work, and that needing one didn't make me a precious little tosser.

I don't need bond paper anymore and I could write in a thunderstorm (like the one happening outside right now), but still I can't think straight without an Artline in my hand. (381 words)

Now if I finish now, I'll have just enough words for two minutes of pointless chatter with George before turning out the light. Nigh night. (413)

For God sake, Mr Sandman... bring me a bloody dream

So what does a girl do when she can't sleep? She takes a picture of herself not sleeping and posts it on her blog of course. I mean, where else am I going to be at 4.28 in the morning?

It's been a really busy week and my nine to five has become my eight to eight; although come to think of it, it's never really was a nine to five.

For a while now it's been my 9.30 to 6.30 but that doesn't sound as compact as 'nine to five'. Before that it was eight to five but that's much too early to be poetic and frankly the traffic is just awful at that hour. Before that I had a different job and I I caught the bus to work... that was hell on earth regardless of the time. I didn't like my job much either so if I could have billed them for the time I spent traveling to and from their hall of shame in a dirty yellow rust bucket, I would've.

Anyway, it's 15 minutes until my alarm goes off... maybe I should turn it off so it doesn't wake the sleeping George. Or maybe I could be devious and let it go because then he'll make me a lovely coffee. Hmmm... I now have 13 minutes to weigh up the pros and cons...

So back to my busy week... I'm on holidays soon and while I'm away I'm going to phase out the use of the word 'yes' and replace it with something like 'Sure I can do that! It will take [insert time] to write and I can do it on [insert day]'. It's longer, I know (and probably won't fit on a sticky note) but I'm done with long days and sleepless nights... and I look terrible at this hour!

Postscript: I didn't realise my alarm clock is four minutes fast so when I heard my alarm bleating at 5.11 I bolted into the bedroom to turn it off before it woke George. I needn't have worried though... he could sleep through anything. Even my sleepless night.

For the last few days I’ve been struggling to think of something to write for the Daily Boop and today I’m beginning to understand why.

Y’see, there’s a certain dishonesty that goes with the job of a copywriter and I’m not talking about hyperbole; I’m talking about the need to write ‘Truman’ copy… copy that paints the picture of a perfect world, where the brand never reflects on past mistakes and immediately, wordlessly disassociates itself with something (or someone) that just doesn’t work.

Now I’m not about to launch into a what’s-wrong-with-advertising monologue because a) it’s Sunday, b) I don’t really care that much, and c) the Daily Boop is about me me me! But I do think that I’ve lost a little of myself in the shiny, happy copy I write in my nine-to-five, and looking back over my posts at the Daily Boop, I can see ‘shiny, happy’ emerging here, too.

So it’s time for some honesty and this means balancing the funny with the profound… starting now.

As I sift through the things I've written over the years, I'm occasionally taken aback by the palpable emotion in some of my earlier work, like in this piece I wrote for my mum for Mothers Day back in 1996. What makes it even more profound is that 12 years later we are all but strangers.

I had been living in Adelaide for about ten months, having left Hobart to pursue my writing career. It was coming up to Mothers Day and I recall being desperately lonely - missing my family and friends, but mostly my Mum. I was also flat broke, so with emotions running high and probably just enough money to buy a postage stamp, I wrote this and sent it to her.

It’s eleven minutes past three on Tuesday the Seventh of May 1996 – nine thousand six hundred and forty-eight days, ten hours and fifty-nine minutes since you gave birth to me.
It’s almost Mothers Days... your twenty seventh Mothers Day, my twenty-seventh Mothers Day… our first apart.
I want to tell you so much and there is so much to tell.
I want to tell you about my first memories of you.
About how I dreaded going a day without hearing your gentle, tender voice and wrapping me in your warm hugs.
I still do.
I remember you sitting on my bed to say goodnight, and how I wouldn't let you go until I’d fallen asleep.
And you stayed.
I remember how special the days were when you’d collect me from school. It was like coming from the mouth of a dragon into the arms of an angel.
I remember the arms I wouldn’t leave after getting a beating from the neighbourhood bully. And I remember the arms that wouldn’t let me go.
I remember waiting for you to collect me from Auntie Colleen’s… just watching the window, waiting for my mum.
Then you’d come and everything would be ok.
I remember the little treasures you’d hide down my bed. Do you remember the book 'You’re a Special Kind of Friend'? Well, you’re my special friend.
I remember how you’d bring me home copies of 'Tracy' and 'Dolly'. And how you’d pull out the bits you thought I shouldn’t read.
And I remember how you’d bring us home Cadbury Snack bars to eat while we watched movies like 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' on Friday nights.
And I remember how jealous I was when you used to tie the girl next door’s hair up because her mum had hurt her hand. You tied mine up too, but you were my Mum.
I remember how you, me and Sasha argued on the way to Lewisham one day. You stopped the car and told us to get out. We wouldn’t. When we did, you drove off, turned around and came straight back. You told us to get in the car. We wouldn’t.
I remember crying because we’d hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.
I remember the worried Mum that took me off to see Mr Seymour at school. And how she told him that I just wasn’t myself and she just didn’t know what to do.
And the same woman who, not very many years later, dragged me off to the doctor, knowing that something was seriously wrong.
I remember you standing over my hospital bed – neither of us knowing what the hell was happening – and saying, “Do you know that I love you very, very much?”
Well, I love you too. More than you’ll ever know.
When you’re sad I want to cry. When you’re hurt I feel it too. When you’re happy, I’m the happiest girl in the world.
You’re the most precious thing… I could never imagine life without you. And I’d lay down mine right now for you.
And even though we’re so far apart, we’re so close.
If I can be half as loving and nurturing and supporting with my children as you are with me, then they will be the luckiest children alive.
And right now, I’m the luckiest girl.

Up yours, Mr Kearney!

(Please note, the following material contains language some people may find offensive.)

When I was in grade eight, Mr Kearney, my devilishly handsome English teacher, asked if he could read the poems I had been writing and had collected in a notebook.

All the cool girls at school thought Mr Kearney was the bee’s knees (and I think he did too) but he was much too smooth and pretty for my liking. That was until he asked to read my poems. Suddenly I was completely captivated and infatuated. I tidied up my notebook and presented it to him after class one day.

It was months before he returned my little book and by then I was in loathing with him again. And when I opened it up, I discovered he had gone through with a red pen like he would my school work, ‘correcting’ the poems I had written from my dark but girlish heart. I was crushed.

It’s been years since I thought of that cad Kearney, but he came to mind tonight as I was writing this blog. Y’see, I thought I’d post a poem I wrote for my 21st birthday and as I was keying it in, I found myself tidying things up, replacing words here and there and restructuring an entire verse. And then I thought of him.

If I had have known on the 8th of November 1990, that eighteen years later I would be ‘correcting’ this poem, I think I would have shut my notebook then and there and never written another word.

So here it is… my poem, ‘Revealed’ as written by me on the 8th of November 1990.

All kids ask their parents about stuff they want to know
but I’ll never forget when I asked my mum a couple of years ago
about her and Dad in their courting days, the mood changed in a helluva hurry
there was something she was gonna tell me and I began to worry

She looked at me with this deathly look upon her face
and I’ll never forget the day my mother fell from grace
“What’s up mum? Did I say something that might be wrong?”
She sighed, “Ya father’s not your daddy love, ya daddy was a bong

“It goes back many years when he’d deliver the milk
I’d wait in the moonlit night in my negligee made of silk
Yes, those were the days when I was young and wild and free
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this it was just too dark to see"

Well the years went by, I was out one day and well, you’d never guess
I found him in the handouts queue at the local CES
I rubbed my eyes and looked again, gosh he looked a wreck
With gum leaves over his private parts and bottle tops 'round his neck

I never will forget that day for as long as I shall live
And my poor long suffering mother I was quick to forgive
But forget I won’t; in no hurry will this one be forgot
But I asked, "When’d you two get married mum?" She said, "We did not!”

“Well what about the wedding photos with you in all your glory?”
She looked at me, winked and smiled, “Well, that’s another story”.

Blogging not jogging

I should be on my way home now for a brisk walk but I'm having too much fun... sort of. This is my first blog and I can't help but wonder if I have what it takes to be a consistent poster. Only one way to find out...

My name's Tracey but almost everyone who matters calls me Boop. Not boo, not boob, Boop. I write for a living and while I used to regularly write for my own pleasure, I haven't done it for years. And that's what the Daily Boop's about... me getting back into the swing of writing about the things that make me happy. If what I write makes you happy too, then I'll be doubly thrilled I started the Daily Boop.

Yay!