The best of James Herriot

Lots of gentle reminiscing about the days of old, farming in Yorkshire. It’s about a vet in the 1940s (there was a TV series, All Creatures Great and Small.) When big draught horses were used before tractors, and it was pre-antibiotics. Also, his time spent serving inthe RAF during WWII. Many colour photos and line drawings. Amazing.

UPDATE: Gillard might be able to rule in a hung parliament. A nail-biting week ahead…

And I’ll just add a link to a lovely piece about the importance of democracy. I enjoy a laugh but also feel the dignity of the position of MPs and the Prime Minister should be upheld, and also the democratic importance of the role of journalists should be respected and their questions answered.

Summary:
+Be graciousness.
+Be assertive, set boundaries.
+Pay it forward. Teach by example.
+When making your way through a crowded niteclub, touch someone on the back respectfully – don’t elbow people out of the way.
+Ageism – take it into consideration when interacting. Don’t be patronising.

COSTS (four dresses)
Dressmaker: $360 ($90 each outfit).
Material $157.53 (this would have cost half as much, but I later found a glossier batch of satin. Allow for mistakes!)
Dress pattern $17.25
Studs (pearl) $44.84
Paints $46.70
Louise’s paints $40
Curved ruler $12.95
Padded white tablecloth $5

(Lost receipts for these)
Pencils, 2B, 6B
Thick, heavy tracing paper (about $10 for several sheets)
Paint brushes sizes 12, and 2 (about $5 each)

OTHER STUFF
Dishwashing detergent
Water
Plastic containers for paints
Nail file
Hair dryer
Thick paper towels
Plastic place mat to separate sides of dress

COLOURS
Setacolour Opaque Buttercup 45mL
Setacolour Shimmer Purple
Setacolour Shimmer Electric Blue
Setacolour Opaque Oriental Blue
Seta Finishing 110mL silver glitter
Setacolour Shimmer 45mL Light Copper
Also, brown, white, black, red

STEP 1
Buy everything. This will take several trips and many months to finally track down all the items. Well, it did for me and Louise! Sandra is about to start work on painting another dress.

STEP 2
Visit various dressmakers and BEG them to make the outfits. Most will refuse, as the white satin is easily marked by sewing machine oil or anything. One said to make it pristine with no marks would cost $500 for each tunic! The same one did it for $90 each, but no guarantees of being pristine. They turned out fine, though she refused to bang in the studs, and departed from my request and made the belts with pointy ends because “I think they look better that way.” I would have preferred if she’d followed my instructions rather than her whims. The satin has a few little “catches” (like small pantyhose ladders) in the making process, but it was inevitable, as it’s very easy to ladder, and she’s warned me about it beforehand. Overall, very happy with her dresses, she’s an excellent practitioner.
If you’re not an experienced dressmaker, don’t make it yourself, as there are areas that need interfacing and reinforcing (the neck area and where the studs go in) that are tricky.

STEP 3
Bang in the studs. I practised with a plain stud first. Then I cracked a few pearls on the first couple of studs, but the others were OK. Neighbours complained. I only banged in studs for two dresses. About 50 hammering bangs for each dress (six studs with two pieces each).
Have a nail file nearby at all times, as any mildly chipped nail will pull and ladder the material.

STEP 4
Put dress on dressmaker mannequin (about $350). Or a coathanger ($1).

STEP 5
I used the pics on the Australian ABBA Bubblegum cards for inspiration for drawing the names on the backs.
On the back on the dress, used a curved ruler and measure the size you need to draw the ABBA names.
Using the curved ruler, measure the curve and the halfway mark. Then draw this on paper.
Gather pictures of the ABBA names and draw them up.
Do a rough outline first, keep improving it.
Once you’re happy with the ABBA names spelt in a straight line, cut out each of the letters and stick them on the curved line.
Now, copy the name onto the heavy tracing paper with a 2B pencil and write “Right side” on it.
Then go over the back of the name with a 6B pencil.

STEP 6
Put your white plastic padded tablecloth on a big bench (keep the bench pristine clean) and place the satin dress on it. I was using my main kitchen bench and had all my paint pots in the sink and couldn’t risk cooking any foods that would stain the white satin, so I lived on microwaved porridge for a week! But it was worth it.
Place a plastic placemat and a thick paper towel between the two layers of the satin dress.
Pin the tracing paper onto the dress and press down over the pattern with a sharp 2B pencil. Pins won’t ladder the satin.

STEP 7
Use the lighter colour first, paint the name in. Then darker colour. Blow dry for five minutes, then retouch about five times til it looks decent. Blow dry frequently or hang it near a fan heater.
If you have any accidents, use dishwashing detergent immediately, it’ll get it all off.

STEP 8
Gather all your ABBA cat costume pictures and draw an outline.
I started off doing this, and asking my arty friends for help.
Finally, I found a fan who had a T-shirt with the designs, though it’s slightly squashed/out of proportion. After traveling over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to have a pleasant lunch date with him, he allowed me to take some photos and a photocopy.

STEP 9
Place cat picture against dress. Measure it up. I used a Proportion Wheel, from my old layout subbing days. Or use this online one.

STEP 10
Go to a printing shop and get cat picture blown up from A4. This’ll be on a big sheet of paper, bigger than A3. About $1.20 a copy, and get several sizes, from 110 to 130 per cent.

STEP 11
Place photocopy against dress, pick which size fits best.

STEP 12
Get your heavy tracing paper and 2B pencil and trace over the cat picture. Write “Right side” on the proper side. (I didn’t do this, and ended up putting the cat picture on the dress, facing the wrong way! I had to go back and correct it.)

STEP 13
On the reverse side of the tracing paper, use your 6B pencil and go over the cat picture again.

STEP 14
Pin the tracing paper down on the dress and press down with a sharp 2B pencil but just fill in the outline of the cat drawing, and any light-coloured features (eg. white spots). Don’t outline the darker features (no point, as you’ll probably paint over them).
Colours will be applied in this order: light to dark. Eg. white, silver, yellow…   black is last.

STEP 15
Blow dry between colours. I found this difficult as I do night shift and was painting til 5am some nites, so I placed it near a fan heater.

STEP 16
When you’ve dried the light colours, get the tracing pattern out again and go over the inside features of the cat with the 2B pencil. Then press down and transfer these onto the painted dress. Then paint the inner details in dark colours.

COMMENTS
Allow about a week to paint it – about three to four hours a night.
If you’re more experienced, it would probably only take a couple of days.
There’s a lot of fiddling around and it’s all primary-school level ability – you just have to be patient and put aside plenty of time.
I found keeping a steady hand while painting was the hardest bit. I ended up with it over my faux furry jacket (don’t wear faux fur, it’ll end up catching the paint in the cuffs). Also, my woollen cap — it was winter here — was covered in splotches. Use dishwashing detergent to remove.

When I saw the original at ABBAWorld, mine looked better and brighter. Also, the original is on cotton material, which is much easier to wash. I was surprised, as it looked like satin in the photos.
If I made these again, I’d prefer to do them on cotton, as they’d be easier to paint and wash. The satin paints have already slightly cracked and they were impossible to set with a hot iron (as per instructions on the paint bottles) because the five layers of paint I applied kept getting sticky when I put the iron on it. The costume is like a delicate artwork, lying flat/unbended at all times and not easily washable. I definitely won’t be adding any beads to it, as it’s too delicate now, and would just crack.
Bought a pair of long white boots on eBay for $30.
I’ll probably wear it to niteclubs once/twice a year at most. I love it and am very happy with it. It’s a dream come true to finally have an ABBA cat costume.
Hit the retro discos!  “You can dance, you can jive …”

Mark Dapin, Malcolm Knox, Caroline Overington

Panel: WHAT CAN JOURNALISM AND FICTION LEARN FROM EACH OTHER?

MALCOLM KNOX (SMH, author): Writing fiction helped me to write fast. I’d written 7-8 complete novels before I’d walked into a newsroom, none of them published. Writing a million words without being published is a form of madness.

I like chronology. How people got into a fix and how they get out of it.

Fiction writers often draw from real life.

CAROLINE OVERINGTON (The Australian, author): Said she wrote fiction to explore issues she wasn’t legally able to discuss in print, such as child murder. Once the parents have been named, the child can’t be mentioned again, as it identifies other children in the family. Overington rails against this, as there are many other victims in the family, or connected to the case, who need help (eg. an adult child, whose murdering parents were about to be released from prison, wanted to make a media case to keep the parents in prison. But couldn’t, as the media has to refrain from identifying the case.)

MARK DAPIN: (writes column for Good Weekend, features, author) I write my column to please the editor, and books to please myself.

For 3000-word features, I stick to a beginning, middle and end.

I tried scriptwriting and can do dialogue but I’m not interested in the technical aspects of writing: “he walked across the room”.

Often people think that my journalism is all made up and my fiction is based on fact. Not so.

David Marr, Paul Barry, Anna Broinowski, David Leser

Panel: Paul Barry (4 Corners, Media Watch), David Marr (SMH writer, 4 Corners, Media Watch), David Leser (Good Weekend profile writer, author). Topic: Truth is stranger than fiction.

DAVID MARR: “I love people who invent their live stories, they fascinate me. But if they put the same amount of energy into their real lives, instead of being constricted in a web of lies, they could really get somewhere.”

“Journalists hear a lot of fiction – the stories police tell. ‘I slipped on a banana skin and shot him twice, dead. It was a comic accident.’

“The most outrageous story I’ve heard was the AWB – and Australian company working with the Department of Foreign Affairs to defraud the UN of $3million. You couldn’t invent it.’’

“At the Liberal Party campaign launch, [the SMH] sent three writers to Brisbane – one to analyse their policies, another to examine the impact of the launch on the party’s fortunes, and me to roll about in the aisle laughing at all the dead people walking again with fresh blood pumping through their veins.”

“The best female journalist in Australia is Marian Wilkinson. [They wrote a book together, about Tampa/ children overboard]. There was great tension between us. She’s very alert to telling a story by analysis. I want to tell things through a story. Luckily, we were in different countries, so our tensions were resolved over email.”

“I don’t like having a narrative imposed. You have to be careful not to pluck a story shape off the shelf. It could distort things.”

When asked about whether his comedy stylings are fiction, Marr said: “There’s an element of truth.”

“I’ve been asked, ‘Why don’t you write a novel?” Because I’m got an explainer’s mind. I love explaining complex issues that are misunderstood and cause a public panic.

“I don’t conceive characters.

On the topic of courage, DM said: “I’m not brave – I live in a very safe, muffled world.”

PAUL BARRY: I spend two years writing a book. I have sleepless nights – I wonder, Is this person as awful as I think? I had a dream about Kerry Packer, where he behaved like the nicest person I’ve ever met and I woke up in a cold sweat.

DAVID MARR: “I worry, what if I’ve got it completely wrong? What if this is a major delusion of mine and I’ve just found the facts to match what I believe? This usually happens when I’ve had to step aside from the topic for a while, do more research, then I come back to it, and think; Can this possibly be true? There’s a possibility that you create a Frankenstein and it takes on a life of its own.

Eg. Rudd. I’d heard a lot about the utter confusion and chaos of Rudd’s office. I was kind of convinced, yet completely sceptical. Could this be true?

Then I met another witness and asked him and he said, “Believe every word of it.”

PAUL BARRY: You have to make judgments on who to believe.

What is truth? It’s what you can defend in court.

DAVID MARR: “You can be convinced you got the story right and then incontrovertible evidence or a witness comes along and you have to change all of it. It often happens! But the new story is always better.”

The writers said they often ran details past their main subjects, but might refrain if it would trigger an injunction.

PAUL BARRY: I can send someone material saying they’re a fraud, shonky and a paedophile and they’ll often agree, correct some facts and add a bit more.

DAVID MARR: There are never disadvantages to checking stuff.

I don’t like the manipulation of facts – I like to say: ‘I don’t know about this bit.’

PAUL BARRY: It would have been suicidal to make stuff up about Packer and Bond. There are some rich and powerful people I won’t write about because they’re so dangerous. I would fear ending up dead. Jim Byrnes, a developer – not worth it.

If I had of written about Kerry Packer’s black mistress, who ran brothels for him in Palm Beach (and committed suicide when he cut her off financially), when he was alive, that would have buried me.

DAVID LESER: profiled Gina Rinehart and Rose Porteous. “Gina spoke in a strange whisper, I could hardly hear her. Rose was the Philippino house maid who married Lang Hancock. Gina hired SAS men to accompany her kids to school. She drove a bulletproof Jaguar. Her lawyer on $1million a year was Michael Kroger (Liberal Party power broker). I couldn’t make these characters up.”

“There’s a difference between holding a spirited position and taking liberties. You have to be fair.

“But ultimately, the truth about someone [when doing profiles] is unknowable and forever mysterious. You can’t even know the truth about yourself, it changes very day.”

“I’m surprised at how often people’s friends will tell a lot of stuff that’s negative.”

Laurie Oakes, John Nichols, Malcolm Turnbull, Annabel Crabb, Quentin Dempster

MALCOLM TURNBULL: “Politics has always been vicious and nasty. From the latest tweet on Twitter to graffiti on a wall in Pompeii. You can’t complain. It goes with the territory.”

“The public are very discerning and don’t believe every caricature.

“Q and A is enormously important. There’s a decent chunk of time to be yourself, though it’s under adversarial conditions.”

Turnbull cited his legal experience as making him an expert on interrogation.

“They’re both friends of mine, but Laurie Oakes is a much better interrogator than Kerry O’Brien. Why? Laurie is much more forensic. He asks a question that demands a response, like a barrister.

“Kerry O’Brien reads a lot of opinions out, a statement for you to react to, then says: ‘What do you think?” I’ve usually looked at my watch and opened my iPad before he gets to the end of his long diatribe. He’s not actually asking anything, he just wants a reaction.”

There were several comments about Turnbull and Utegate and ‘checking sources”.

“When the Sunday Telegraph did a dirt file about my ‘colourful’ business career, they drew a graphic of a manila folder and called it a ‘Labor Party dirt file’. That’s where they got it from. They didn’t pretend it was part of their own Walkley-Award winning investigation.”

“There are more journalists than skeletons in my cupboard, and a few skeletons of journalists in there too.”

QUENTIN DEMPSTER: Raised the issues of the John Brogden drama (suicide attempt), outing of David Campbell, Paul Keating’s privacy requests for his adult children. He suggested a debate on privacy laws should be restarted.

ANNABEL CRABB: On hearsay: “People can have ancient baggage and the animosity colours what they hear.”

On the topic of 24/7 media cycle: “Politicians are more accessible and they’re expected to expand what they say to fill the gaps, like extended Pollyfilla. There’s no time to reflect and think about what they’re going to say next. Except for Malcolm [Turnbull], because he still catches public transport.”

LAURIE OAKES: “Viciousness is as old as politics. They said Abe Lincoln looked bad.

“Gough Whitlam kept saying about Bill McMahon that he took “a long time to discover women”, until Gough was told to stop.

“It has always been nasty.

“Most journalists get their information/leaks form other politicians. They blame the press for it, but they’re doing it to themselves.”

“Paul Keating has a point – his kids shouldn’t be pursued by the media. They’re innocent parties and should be protected.”

“There is now much more space to fill and politicians have less to say, because they’re always quoting focus groups.

“Tony Abbott said he wasn’t looking at any policies that went further than his lifetime – that’s not very statesmanlike.”

Turnbull quipped: “But he’s very fit.”

Peter FitzSimons, Alice Pung, Fenella Souter

If they get dull, PF pulls out the six-shooters and fires at their feet. (says something to stir them up).

“If they’re still dull, I’ll dance.”

METHODOLOGY

He has a team of researchers and pays them $50 an hour.

“I assemble about 50,000 pieces of research. It’s like a 1000-piece jigsaw. I pick up and piece and I know it goes somewhere over there.”

He does several interviews with his subjects. The first one from 9am to 5pm where he tapes the person’s life story.

Then he gets it transcribed and highlights the good bits and asks questions (often about 150 questions crop up).

Another five-hour session answering the questions, and transcribing and more questions pop up.

Interview other friends, and more questions come up.

Another three-hour session and another 40 questions come up.

“Then pull the guts out of the stuff. How do I choose? What will sell.”

When writing for the SMH, he says he has lots of ‘different oyster beds”. “After 10 articles on one topic, I’m exhausted. I write about travel, rugby, politics … by the time I’ve exhausted one area, ideas have grown in another and I’m ready to write about that topic again.”

“I love writing. I’m up at 4am. I love long plane trips – they’re great for writing.”

Chris Masters at Walkley conference.

Chris Masters – investigative journalist, Four Corners, ABC, author of Jonestown (about Alan Jones), Gold Walkley winner.

One of his most “perfect” stories, where everything worked pretty smoothly, was about the Rainbow Warrior bombing (which killed a man), and turned into a worldwide scoop on the French Government’s “state-sponsored terrorism”.

He had to fly to various countries and at one stage the French spies were so desperate to evade him that they sank their getaway yacht and got picked up by a submarine.

“For that story, one in 100, I was always in the right place at the right time.”

But for the other 99 stories, it’s “usually painful, every step of the way”.

“You’re extracting secrets – information that people are extremely resistant to give.

“[When you ring] they never say, ‘You beaut, I’ll put the kettle on.’ ”

“A lot of the battle is winning their trust. And you do that by being trustworthy. Eventually you’ll find some people who are eager to cooperate.”

THE IDEA, NOT THE ANGLE

“I hate editors asking, ‘What’s your angle?’ I don’t want to give an oblique account of a story. Balance is seen as a dirty word.

“The idea is what’s important. I like the ‘idea’ because it doesn’t exclude anything. And that leads to good narrative and will make you a good reporter. I love narrative, it’s more honest.

“If you have a command of narrative, you will love balance. Every story has lots of dead ends and twists and turns. Life is full of the challenges of integrating opposites – you love your kids, despite the fact they tell you lies. The world is full of that.”

An example of an idea that embraces contradictions, was “A Careful War” http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20100705/afghanistan/ for his two-part Four Corners programs on Afghanistan. “It’s an intellectually engaging and confronting idea because all wars are chaotic. Our soldiers were having to learn how to pat kids on the head while scoping out the bloke in the field with a hoe, which could be a machinegun.”

“I get my high out of that moment – ‘Here, I have a great story to tell you.’ When you’ve done the hard work and can’t wait to tell it. It keeps me going.”

“I hate the type of journalism that’s: “I know who Mr Big is.” That’s only good for gossip at the pub.

Journalism is about judgment. You have a bullshit detector. Constantly cultivate a talent for the truth. It’s not a mystical or magical. There are a number of top reporters who got it right. Edward Murrow (US reporter, 1908-1965) – he applied good judgment and good narrative.”

METHODOLOGY

“You need a methodology so you have control over the evidence. You assemble the evidence and form the narrative.

“My system looks like a mess but there’s method in the madness.

“I make my notes, then type them up, which focuses my mind on what is useful.

“Ninety per cent of the material gathered is wasted, so working in a team is best. Everyone attends meetings, types up the notes, shares them with the team and then pick out the best quotes.

PLANNING AN AFGHANISTAN STORY

“Turning up in Afghanistan is very ropey. It’s a complex story to tell for various reasons. There’s the prospect of being executed or taken as a hostage and the [Australian] government being held to ransom. You can’t turn up in a village and ask what they think, you won’t get the truth.”

To get a couple of viewpoints, Masters embedded a team with the ADF and had a second team roaming around outside.

“We’re in a democracy, so we’re all responsible in a way for being in the war. We should do our best to understand what our government’s doing.”

DON’T GO FOR THE GLAMOROUS TOPICS

“Good journalists put their hands up for everything. You have to challenge yourself, test yourself, back yourself. To make something interesting important is easy, it’s done all the time.

The craft is to make what is important interesting. What’s important is often not interesting. It’s about public education. ‘Command of the narrative’ is what you use to make it interesting.”

He gave an example of his story, Gambling the Farm, transcript here.

“I had to find a microcosm, a community on a climate fault line, easily affected by drought.”

When he finally found a suitable area,he turned up with a crew and it rained for the first time in a decade! “What did we do? We didn’t pack up and go. You can’t just leave because the facts don’t fit in with your preconceptions of who is the villain and who is the hero. I adjusted the story to ‘survival in this critical area’.

WHAT COMES FIRST – WORDS OR PICTURES?

“I’m often asked, particularly in this era of multimedia, what comes first? The words? Or the pictures? Do you grab people with the power of an image of sheep with a beautiful sunset?

“Neither. It’s the idea that comes first.

“Look for something within the maze of information that shows the bigger picture.’’

MORALITY
“There’s no job that doesn’t have moral pain. Don’t think you’ll escape it by going into PR — think of James Hardie. Every job has moral pain.”

DEATH KNOCKS

He said that while it’s easy to “feel like a vulture” doing death knocks, “as often as not, people are welcoming”. “Some don’t want a death to be ignored and mean nothing.”

DECENCY – TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS

When Masters was doing the Afghanistan story, two of the soldiers in the team he was with were killed. “We put our cameras down. We didn’t want to exploit it. We didn’t overplay it. We weren’t being clever or cunning or smart. It was just the right thing to do. The story isn’t always the most important thing.”

DANGER

“I don’t think of myself as a brave person. I accept there are risks, but it’s a vocation for me, not just a job.

“I don’t want to overstate the danger. The truth is a battleground, but I take calculated risks. I don’t do demonstrations of courage.

“There have been lots of times I’ve been in fear for my personal safety and lots of nasty things have happened to me, but nothing compared to mates in Indonesia and Columbia.

“Most threats are bluffs. The only Australian journalist to be murdered was Juanita Nielsen (a publisher, opposed a development in Kings Cross, went missing 1975).

“The worst thing is legal action. “The courts are demoralising and draining – years of expensive litigation are a pain. It’s death by a thousand courts.”

New-look SMH Rambette: audio armbands, breastplate cameras, sword of truth and you're hot to trot. Horse supplied by Rural Press.

From SMH editor Peter Fray’s address to the Walkley’s conference:

Both Rambette and Rambo are clearly multi-platform types able to use a variety of tools to maximum effect. But there is also something else that appeals: they know how to catch and kill their own. They can go out in the forest or desert and come back a bit soiled but successful, having done all the work themselves. They can in other words go out, take risks and tell their own stories – in their own unique ways.

In question time, Fray said the Rambettes will know how to “fillet” and “trim the fat” off their own kill.