All weeks are not created equal

Playlist for the week just been...

Nothing Ever Happens - Del Amitri
Nothing To Say - The Kinks
Nothing - Nada Surf (bonus points)
Nothing From Nothing - Billy Preston
William, It Was Really Nothing - The Smiths
Nothing Ever Happens Down Here - Gerry Rafferty
Nothing Ever Happens - Manfred Mann
Nothin' - Townes Van Zandt
Nothing Ever Happened - Deerhoof

And the song that was actually stuck in my head today but turns out doesn't have 'nothing' in the title:

Not all weeks are as interesting as the one described in my previous post. Take last week for example. No wildlife encounters or research expeditions outside the confines of my home office. No public appearances. No home videos worthy of posting on YouTube.

About all I can share is this link, which'll let you watch my panel discussion with Richard Glover, Brendan Cowell and Mark Dapin on ‘bromance’ from the Sydney Writers’ Festival back in May. (I actually knew about this prior to my last post and could have included it in my interesting week rather than my uneventful week, but I forgot). Thanks to the ABC (Australia) for making this and a number of other interesting sessions from SWF2011 available online.

What else? Um, I went to an engagement party on Saturday and didn’t know many people there. Word filtered back to me that someone was like, ‘Where do I know the guy over there standing next to the girl in the red top from?’ And one of the engagee was like, ‘That’s Craig Cliff, he’s—', and the guy was like, ‘The dude from the paper.’ He was then too shy to turn around for the rest of the night. I guess that means I’m famous, right?

Of course, the great thing about boring, uneventful weeks is that there’s plenty of time for writing. After a brief interlude in the present, I’m back in 1903. I should be finished with 1903 by the end of this week, then it’s back-back to 1869, the year the Suez Canal opened and the tea clipper trade collapsed, before whizzing through to 1921 (or possibly 1919…).

Things will heat up again the end of August when I'm off to Going West Festival in Titirangi, then Melbourne Writers' Festival the next weekend.  Not sure what I'm doing at Going West, but last I heard I was doing a reading with a bunch of other newer writers in Melbourne, then being on a panel called "New NZ Fiction" with Eleanor Catton. The festival programme may or may not read: "How do two of NZ's rising stars see the state of fiction in their country? Hear from award-winning writers Eleanor Catton and Craig Cliff as they discuss their books, and their relationship with fiction." Hmm, I think that calls for a reshuffle of the pile of books on my bedside cabinet.

The good news (in it's own strange way) is that I will still have the anticipation before reading Timequake for a couple more months...

Tim Doyle, Got to Be Kind