The Big Issue Australia #657 – Vendor Week

Ed.

657 18 MAR 2022

OMAR SAKR

xx.

EVIE MACDONALD and WILL’S APPLE PIE

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Contents

EDITION

657 20 Around the World in 100 Mags Street paper vendors from all around the world reveal what their publications mean to them: community and friendship, inspiration and income. For some, it’s a lifeline.

28 SMALL SCREENS

Growing Up in Public “WE ALL NEED TO BE SEEN AND HEARD. EVERYBODY HAS A STORY BEHIND THEM,” SAYS MARIAN FROM MELBOURNE

12.

Letters to Our Younger Selves

Trailblazing teen Evie Macdonald broke ground as the first trans actor to play a lead role on Australian TV – now she has her sights set on Hollywood.

by Assunta, Jack, Marian and David

In our annual Vendor Week special edition, Big Issue vendors from around the country offer words of wisdom, compassion and hope to their younger selves, looking back on their lives with kindness and affection to reflect on what matters most. contents photo by James Braund cover photo by Kylie Kluger @klugerhausphotography

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 26 Ricky

27 Fiona 43 Puzzles 34 Film Reviews 45 Crossword 35 Small Screens Reviews 46 Click 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews 39 Public Service Announcement

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

Apple Pie Will sells The Big Issue in Wangaratta. He’s also published his own cookbook – and this delicious dessert is one of his family faves. Enjoy!

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

A Cause for Celebration

T

he Big Issue has changed my life,” says our cover star Adnan. “Before the magazine, I was alone.

Very, very alone. Slowly, slowly, I made friends. And slowly, slowly, it made my life better.”

Adnan is talking to us from his place in Brisbane, generously taking time out in the days after severe floods devastated much of the city. Adnan is safe, his home is dry – but he is unwell, and unable to work for a few days. It’s when his Big Issue community comes into its own.

“Two customers called to check on me.

I like it! I don’t have my family here – all my family is in Turkey – so it feels good for me socially.”

It’s these acts of humanity, of kindness, that sustain street paper communities like ours all over the world – and the people at their very heart: vendors.

This edition, our annual Vendor Week special, is a celebration of the

people who sell this magazine, and also recognises the thousands more who sell street papers like this one you’re holding in 35 countries globally. There are 110 publications that belong to the International Network of Street Papers, all helping to combat homelessness and disadvantage.

In these pages, we feature a moving series of letters penned by vendors – Assunta in Perth, Jack in Sydney, Marian in Melbourne, and David in Adelaide – who offer words of encouragement, compassion and hope to their teenage selves, and remind us all what matters most. Plus, Will from Wangaratta shares his scrumptious apple pie recipe, which is featured in his new cookbook. And we hear from vendors around the world, who share just what their magazine means to them. As Joe from Toledo Streets in Ohio says: “A street paper is a godsend. It’s a chance to get out and meet new people, a chance to make an income. It’s a lifeline…”

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

Your Say LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

A friend of mine in Slovenia shared with me a copy of Kralji Ulice, their version of The Big Issue, via email. She was surprised when she recognised a story about a vendor from Slovenia in the Aussie Big Issue – she said it was an interesting parallel that we can be on opposite sides of the world.

SONJA GRDOSIC HENLEY BEACH I SA

Ed – There are more than 100 street papers like The Big Issue around the world. We featured a Vendor Tour Guide of Ljubljana back in Ed#589 – wonderful it’s made its way to Slovenia.

We have bought The Big Issue for many years and always enjoyed Fiona Scott-Norman’s columns. When we moved out of the city, we could no longer buy issues from vendors in the CBD and have continued by subscribing. Because we are of an older generation – I am 90 and my sister in 86 – we don’t always understand or agree with Fiona’s comments, but we DO agree with her on the subject of chooks. Keep on keeping on – stay well and stay safe.

AUDREY DOYLE & YVONNE FORSYTH BERWICK I VIC

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work.

• The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country.

• The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales.

• The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation.

CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Sonja wins a copy of Omar Sakr’s debut novel Son of Sin. You can check out our interview with him on p32. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

interview by Andrew Joske photo by Ross Swanborough

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

18 MAR 2022

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT DOME CAFE, BROOKFIELD PLACE, PERTH

05

Owen

I have always had a lifelong love of learning. Even from a young age I loved solving puzzles and was interested in mysteries.

I was passionate about forensics and wanted to do police work when I was older, but my passion was put on hold because I had epilepsy growing up.

I am the eldest of four siblings, and all but one of us still live in Perth, along with my mum and dad. I had a pretty regular upbringing, apart from the epilepsy. The strong drugs I had to take affected my ability to learn and take in information.

I remember sitting around the family table and the conversation having moved on by the time I had processed what was being said. While I was advanced at primary school, I needed extra help at high school from my grandmother, who was a retired teacher.

After school, the epilepsy really impacted my employment.

Back in the 80s, if you had a medical condition you were put in a box and put to one side as if something was wrong with you. During this time, I was packing fruit and veg and doing home maintenance, before we started a family business making household and industrial paint, which I stuck at until 1999.

When I was 29, I had a life-changing operation that cured me of my epilepsy. I was only the second person in WA to have the operation and it was 100 per cent successful. I went from taking a huge amount of medication to absolutely nothing. I felt huge relief in not feeling like a walking zombie anymore. I was no longer a step behind the rest of the world.

This opened the door for me to study and seek out new opportunities, and in 2002 I did a Cert II in Business and then I did a Cert IV in Security and worked in that field for a time. In 2010, I started an associate degree in Criminology and Justice at Edith Cowan University.

Now I am studying to finish that and am also doing a bachelor’s degree in Biomed Science with a major in Forensic Science. I love studying. You really don’t realise how much you must go through to put the pieces together to solve a crime. I hope to be all finished within the next couple of years and find work in my chosen field.

I found my way to The Big Issue through my friend Ron, who has been a vendor for years. I have known Ron since he used to sell the Saturday paper at Carousel cinema many years back. I find selling the mag good. You have to get used to the fluctuations of bad days and good days, but the best approach is to be friendly. The extra money helps me with buying food and other bits and pieces I need, and the flexibility of The Big Issue is helpful as I can work it around the days I am studying at university.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

To a Tea! I don’t have milk or sugar DAVID SURVEYS THE FLOOD DAMAGE TO HIS HOME IN BRISBANE

Caught in the Flood

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

T

he flood happened so quick there wasn’t much time to think or feel or anything. The drainpipes on the road were overflowing, and it was raining very hard at the same time, and water was rushing from one way and also from the other, and crashing in the yard and making waves.

I live in Stafford Heights in Brisbane. It’s an old post-war house, one of the oldest houses around here in the area. It’s a two-storey house, and the flooding was mostly underneath it. The water was about half a metre or a metre high.

We had to get everything up off the ground. We put the mower on top of the barbecue, and we lifted up the chairs. We put one lounge on top of the other lounge – and then that fell into the water, so that got drenched. But lucky I got onto it in time.

The esky was floating down the driveway! The basketballs, the football, anything with air in it was floating down the driveway.

The floor was wet, the walls were damp, my clothes still won’t dry. All my shoes got wet – I didn’t have any dry shoes – and the next day I had to get around barefoot.

My only dry clothes are on the shower curtain rod in the bathroom, and because of the damp they don’t dry and they get a bit of a musty smell about them. We had a big blackout too, for a few hours after that. I had to keep the fridge door shut so all the food didn’t spoil.

I hosed all the mud out and everything, so it’s pretty much back to normal. There’s not too much damage – I didn’t lose too much because we were there at the time – and a lot of people are worse off than me. I’m just gonna try to move on. Nothing in the house got affected: no photos of my daughter or report cards I’ve got of hers, it was only the simple stuff under the house.

06

DAVID K 1 WILLIAM ST I BRISBANE

Tea, I drink it black I also like it hot and strong I’m used to it like that I won’t have any arguments But I WILL have more tea Very hot and strong My secret recipe STEPHEN M VARIOUS LOCATIONS I BRISBANE

Ridgey Pidge I noticed a pigeon in my pot plant on the balcony. A day later it was still there. I thought maybe it was dead and I would have to pick it up and throw it out – then I saw it move. What a weird pigeon. My next thought was maybe the pigeon had laid eggs and was sitting on them. I went out to the balcony and the pigeon flew away. There were two white eggs in my pot plant. I took my laundry inside so I wouldn’t disturb her. She eventually flew back and sat on the pot plant. After a week and two days there were two faun-coloured chicks on my pot plant. I have been amazed at how fast the chicks have grown. After six weeks and two days the pigeons flew away. Some may

say I shouldn’t be encouraging the breeding of pigeons, but that was a pretty amazing event.

Back in the Groove

I started selling at Preston South Woolies a few weeks ago. It’s really good there. It’s not far from my new place, and the manager is a real good guy. I’ve never sold so many magazines. A lot of the sales are via Tap and Go: people live off the card now. The Tap and Go is good, I reckon I can’t do without it. They’re all good customers; they’ve been asking when the next magazine is out. It’s a good magazine. They tell me it’s a good read.

Coming back as a vendor post COVID lockdowns has been a really positive experience as I’ve been able to get back into my routine.

I’ve been back at my pitch at H&M on Bourke Street Mall and have been able to re‑establish friendships with the local buskers and cafe owners who work alongside me. It’s gratifying to know that customers have been coming back out to see me and it makes me feel really good when they call me by my name as they learn it from our badges. It’s been great to get back out on the street working after long stints at home through lockdowns.

LIONEL PRESTON SOUTH WOOLIES I MELBOURNE

DAVID H&M, BOURKE ST MALL I MELBOURNE

DARRELL ASHFIELD I SYDNEY

A New Pitch

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

PAT L HIS MAJESTY’S I PERTH

SPONSORED BY LORD MAYOR’S CHARITABLE FOUNDATION. COMMUNITY PHILANTHROPY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN GREATER MELBOURNE AND BEYOND.

18 MAR 2022

PAT WITH SOME PALS SHE MADE ON HER TRIP TO TASSIE

In November 2021, I was one of the lucky winners for a Tassie holiday voucher from Tourism Tasmania. It was extremely joyful.

It was my first visit to Tasmania. My pick was Rathmore, doing a homestay on the Gregorian heritage site for three days and two nights, where the old house was built by convicts in 1824 – and its shearer cottage. I acknowledged history, saw things around, and tried to spy the wild local residents who puzzle scientists with “the bill of a duck, the body of an otter, the tail of a beaver”. Yes, there were platypuses on site – those wonderful egg-laying mammals.

That was memorable fun and worth the visit. I exchanged thoughts and ideas with Cally Lyons, the property owner who found out that WA doesn’t have snow.

Unfortunately, upon my return to WA via a connecting flight from Adelaide Airport, the airport was announced as an exposure site, so everyone on my flight had to quarantine for 14 days.

Thankfully, SecondBite delivered food to the shelter while I was in home quarantine. However, my heartfelt sympathy with people who have to go to hotel quarantine at their own expense.

07

PHOTO OF DAVID BY BARRY STREET

Spirit of Tasmania

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

I love Keith Urban. I’ve always thought that he was one of the most talented and cutest guys in the world – I’m not trying to hit on him, cos he’s got Nicole [Kidman] and who could beat that, she’s Jolene.

like, ‘Okaaaay’. You’d just think to yourself, Oh, really? How are you going to pull that off? You’re going to call a rich Hollywood producer and they’re going to put you in a movie?

You’re going to get discovered? Like, get real.”

Jennifer Lopez on how she’s had to fight every step of the way, from the Bronx to the Hollywood A-list.

ROLLING STONE I US

“Garage doors are a nightmare.

Garage doors are the worst right now.”

Rick Palacios Jnr, from John Burns Real Estate Consulting, on the great supply-chain shortage that’s holding up home building in the US. THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

Country superstar Dolly Parton on why she’d like to bake a cake (no, not a euphemism) for Keith Urban.

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

GOOD MORNING AMERICA I US

“As I’ve said to a lot of the guys I’ve been talking to over the last couple of days, just how much I love him. I didn’t say that, but I wish I did.”

Former Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting on what he would say to his good mate and champion spin bowler legend Shane Warne, who died this month, aged 52.

“The Baby Boomers were the first parents who wanted to be cool, and who wanted their children to be cool as well.”

Pamela Redmon, author of Beyond Jennifer & Jason, on the global surge of uncommon baby names, even in more traditional societies, as parents are increasingly determined to make their kids’ names “unique”.

FOX SPORTS I AU

BBC I UK

“It’s getting dark. You’re getting desperate, there’s nowhere to go.

We hear a motor coming up the road. There’s two blokes in this little tinnie. They went from house to house. They were picking up and taking people to safety.”

Murwillumbah man Brett Bugg relied on the bravery of strangers to save his family when their home was flooded: “We were all waiting for choppers.

Where was the army?”

“I’ve only just started having flat whites; I usually have a cappuccino, but I feel like a flat white has that extra kick up the bum. It makes you feel like a grown-up.”

Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer espressos herself.

ABC I AU

PORTER I US

“Listen, if we were growing up in the Bronx right now, and one of my kids came to me and said, ‘This is what I want to do’, I’d be

“Sinking into this nice, warm bath, versus being lit in flames, is easier to wrap your head around.”

Caitlyn Hauke, president of the Green Burial Council International, on the new eco-friendly funeral trend of aquamation, or alkaline hydrolysis, in which a body is soaked in a solution that dissolves practically everything but the bones.

TIME I US

“My sister was much better than me. I was not very good growing up. And so, everyone was focused on Venus… That was devastating for me...but helpful. Because if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had the career that I have because I felt like I just had to prove and just had to win.”

Tennis ace Serena Williams on channelling sibling rivalry into 23 grand slam wins.

CNN I US

“Cultivating mindfulness can distract people from their own transgressions and interpersonal obligations, occasionally relaxing one’s moral compass.”

Andrew Hafenbrack, from the

20 Questions

by Rachael Wallace

01 Who was the first Australian to

appear on the cover of Time?

02 In which Scottish city did the Tay

Bridge collapse in 1879?

03 Which flowering plant is the

plumeria better known as?

04 Rod Marsh and Dennis Lillee share

what unusual cricketing statistic?

05 What is the prize for winning

the annual Wife-Carrying World Championships in Finland: a) €100,000, b) A new car, c) The wife’s weight in beer or d) A trophy?

06 True or false? Adult cats only meow

at humans and not other cats.

07 In 2017, who did Jodie Whittaker

replace to become the first female Doctor Who? 08 On which day did entertainers

“It’s very hard to have your husband stay home. You have to choose. Save the kids or stay with him.”

Ukrainian Nelya Tkachenko, who fled to Poland with her children while her husband remains in Kyiv. “Half my heart I left behind, half I brought with me.”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC I US

“In the 1970s, what used to be a once-in-a-100-year event happened once in 100 years, but what we are seeing when climate hazards are amplified...is that a one-in-a-100year event might be happening once in 10 years going forward.”

CNN I US

“From the first time Nirvana came down, since then it’s always been this magical refuge, a place we’ve always looked forward to coming. We’ve never had a bad tour – we haven’t really had bad tours anywhere.”

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl on never putting a foo wrong on tour in Australia, or elsewhere.

THE AGE I AU

“Overall, dogs were reported to play and eat less, sleep more and seek more for owners’ attention.”

Dr Federica Pirrone of the University of Milan, on findings that dogs experience a form of mourning when another household pet dies.

Some other animals that experience grief include great apes, dolphins, elephants and birds.

Eartha Kitt, George Michael and Dean Martin all die?

09 What was the Macquarie Dictionary

Word of the Year for 2021?

10 In 1961, the Museum of Modern Art

in New York hung which artwork by whom upside down for 47 days before anyone noticed?

11 How many one-eyed Jacks are there

in a deck of cards?

12 What does LPG stand for?

13 Two married couples have been

nominated for acting Academy Awards this year. Who are they?

14 How many segments does an orange

usually have?

15 Mary Phelps Jacobs is famous for

inventing what garment?

16 What was the name of Andy

Warhol’s New York studio?

17 In rhyming slang, if you “had a

David Gower”, what were you doing?

18 “It was a bright cold day in April,

and the clocks were striking thirteen” is the opening line from which famous novel?

19 Where is the easternmost point of

mainland Australia?

20 Who was the original narrator in

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends?

THE GUARDIAN I AU

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

18 MAR 2022

BBC I UK

Nicholas Simpson, of the African Climate and Development Initiative, on the surge of extreme weather events due to climate change.

09

University of Washington, on “Time to get findings that off the hamster while living in the wheel of life.” moment might Overheard by Loz at a yoga be good for stress studio in Heidelberg, Vic. levels, it can also increase people’s selfish tendencies, proving it’s a downward dog eat dog kinda world.

EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Katerina Bryant @katerina_bry

Chess Mate Katerina Bryant finds that the 64 squares on the chessboard can make the world a much bigger place.

Katerina Bryant is a writer and PhD student based on Kaurna land/Adelaide. Her first book, Hysteria: A Memoir of Illness, Strength and Women’s Stories Throughout History, was published in 2020.

18 MAR 2022

become Twitch streamers. A week after The Queen’s Gambit is released on Netflix to millions of viewers, my partner visits the local chess club and for the first time it’s packed.

Throughout the pandemic, I’ve realised that to me, chess is about connection. The game may seem snobby, some thinking that your ability to play is linked to traditional ideas of intelligence. (I disagree. I think it’s practice, focus and a love of the game.) Or perhaps it looks competitive – pitting one person against another over the board. But I feel the connection in chess.

Not just to the people you meet through play but also through being a part of the community. There’s a comfort to understanding the language of chess. It’s not a mistake, but a blunder. You don’t spread out your pieces, you develop. These terms come into focus little by little as I play. I love that people are on their own journeys of learning and that often, they are eager to share their knowledge. Go over your games with you.

Laugh or share the pain of a silly blunder.

Over a year ago, I helped a friend set up a chess table in the park for the public to play. I sanitised pieces and set up boards. I spent the afternoon playing whomever asked and watching people glance over curiously as they walked through the park into town. I played a child not yet in Year 2, showing him how to keep his king safe and develop his pieces. His mum sat beside him, telling me how he’d won a tournament at school. Next, I played a man in his seventies and won easily; he asked for a rematch. I overheard a teenager telling her friend that her grandfather had taught her to play when she was little. That day, I absorbed the many ways the game connected with so many people’s lives. Now, playing online, I wonder how my opponents began to play. What their lives look like and how chess fits into it. Again, I feel the world – and my network of people in it – expand.

11

W

hen I think of my childhood, I hear plastic chess pieces tumbling onto the floor. The bang of small hands against clocks, rushing to get moves in. I used to play for hours. Plot out variations, go through games I’d clumsily written on a score sheet.

In the 20 years since, I haven’t had the desire to lose myself in chess again. Until now, this past summer and a self‑imposed lockdown have drawn me back into this world with a grip I haven’t felt in years.

Each morning, clutching a mug of coffee to my chest, I check my correspondence games. I am in tournaments against players from Denmark, Ukraine, Nigeria. I play against fellow South Australians, none of us meeting face to face. I don’t know their names but get a sense of who they are through their playing style. I take my time, savour the games. Feel what it is to be passionate about something I thought existed only in my past.

At night, I watch the Chess Championship with my partner. The five-hour games go well into the early hours – the time difference between Dubai and Adelaide is not kind. I wear my chess hoodie, bought in London at the end of 2019 in a chess shop that was unlike anything I’d seen before. My partner looked at books while I sat, gazing at the glossy boards around me, feet throbbing from a day of walking the cold streets. Now, far from London and blanketed in my living room, I listen to commentators analyse the moves of Russian Grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi and World Champion Magnus Carlsen. I manage to follow their strategies most of the time, tricking myself into thinking that this will better my game. It feeds my eagerness to improve.

I follow players on Twitter, laugh at chess memes, feel the communal heartbreak of Nepomniachtchi’s loss. This world of chess envelops me with a tight squeeze. And while I do not leave the house, except for sprawling walks through my neighbourhood, my world feels bigger. As though I can sense the size of it through all the people I encounter over the board.

I discover I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Throughout the pandemic, the chess community swells.

People isolating have time to learn. Grandmasters who are no longer travelling from tournament to tournament

sells The Big Issue outside the Health Department on Royal St, East Perth

photo by Ross Swanborough

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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Assunta

VENDOR WEEK

Letters to Our Younger Selves Big Issue vendors from around the country offer words of wisdom, kindness and compassion to their teenage selves.

Whatever You Do, Go and Chat to John place, you’re going to meet people, like Donna and your Big Issue family, who treat you as the person you were always meant to be.

You’re lucky that you enjoy your own company as much as you do, as not everyone is the same.

This means you are going to have time to embrace all your passions in life. You’re a tech whiz, and future technology is going to open the world to you. You’ll make friends with people all over Australia and the world, and be able to share your recipes, your love of coffee and your barista tips of the trade online. Make sure you do those computer courses!

I don’t need to tell you that having special needs can make some things more difficult for you. You’ve already dealt with the teasing and have learned that a great attitude is going to help you overcome anything. You’re fiercely independent, and you’ll need to continue to be throughout your life. Allow your confidence to grow. You’ve already had some fantastic teachers that respect you and provide help when you ask for it. Learn from them and seek out people who can see your talents as you get older. You’re different – but no-one is the same.

And whatever you do, go and chat to your new friend John at Wellington Street Bus Station, and ask him to take you to The Big Issue office and introduce you to Bill and Jim. It’s lucky you make the most of every opportunity and have that adventurous spirit, because you may surprise yourself at what a great salesperson you are!

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That’s right, Assunta! You are going to have fun down the track experimenting with different names before you settle on the one that reflects your uniqueness and inner self! I just want you to know that you’re going to become the person you’re meant to be and find beautiful people who love you for being you.

You already have the qualities at 16 that are going to hold you in good stead in the years to come. You’re a hard worker; just ask your grandmother whose garden you do. Treasure the time you have with Mum and Grandma because they are not going to be around forever. You’re adventurous and always give anything a go, whether it be selling The Big Issue, welding or truck driving. Don’t let your driver’s licence go – you’ll regret it if you do! And most importantly, know that when you put your mind to something, nothing can hold you back. Remember this, because you may not be having the easiest time of it now, and you will need that inner strength to get through it.

I know that you have always had feelings that things are not quite as they are meant to be and that these feelings can make you feel uncomfortable. You don’t have the language or understanding at the moment, but you will, and this knowledge will change your life. It’s going to be okay, and you will reach a point where you will be living as your true self – happy and strong. Not everyone will stick by you in your journey, and you will choose to leave these people behind. In their

18 MAR 2022

Dear Assunta,

Jack L

photo by Michael Quelch

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

sells The Big Issue at Martin Place, Channel 7, Sydney

VENDOR WEEK

You Are a Good Kid ones that you can rely on when you really need them. You don’t want to live a life without them in it.

When you are a few months away from being 17 you will cross paths with people that will encourage you to be dishonest. You will know who I’m talking about, because money doesn’t come that easy when it’s honest. Walk the other way before you find yourself breaking the law out of duress. It’s easier to walk away instead of dealing with the guilt that comes from those stupid choices.

Take note mate. When times are really hard and alcohol and pot are not helping, don’t turn to ice – and I’m not talking about what comes from the freezer either. Seriously it will wreck you.

You’ll become homeless, you won’t have a care in the world. You will become a version of you that doesn’t need to exist.

I know you already question God’s existence and it’s a question you struggle with for a long time, but you don’t have to. God is real and He really does care. Life will be a whole lot greater if you find Him before He finds you. God has a plan for you and it is not to harm you but prosper you. In God you will find peace that surpasses all understanding. Just believe it.

Most of all on 2 March 2019 in the middle of the day make sure you are at Woolworths Town Hall store. Stay there on a milk crate until the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, the woman that visits you in your dreams, comes along and asks to pray for you. Let her – it’s the best thing that happens to you. You will get married and have beautiful children who adore you.

Don’t make the mistakes I did. It leads to a life of regret and pain. Even if you do make these mistakes, God takes it all away. His Grace is sufficient.

I know these things because I’m the guy that handed you this letter and that guy, my friend, is you.

15

Don’t worry about the guy that just handed you this letter – but it’s probably best you read this to the end.

I know the moment to give you this letter. You are at that bloke’s place, the one who caretakes the Caltex servo. It’s 5am and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself. You got so wasted you couldn’t even get the slice of pizza to your mouth without dropping it several times. You spent an hour throwing up. School’s in a couple of hours and you are about to get a lift home and pretend you haven’t been up all night drinking for the first time. On the way out to the farm, Rob is going to say that when he is tired his foot gets heavier on the pedal. This guy becomes your brother-in-law, by the way.

You know mate, you need to make some decisions that keep you on track. You are a good kid but you are easily influenced and the fact you can’t say no makes you the prime candidate for being used to do things you shouldn’t. I hope you take this letter seriously and when some of these occasions arise you choose to use wisdom and walk the other way, or do things differently.

Otherwise the road to the right track is a long way back.

For starters, don’t drink. It’s not a good life and eventually you get sick and tired of waking up sick and tired.

You know, your mother isn’t going to be around forever. I know everyone dies one day but your mum dies so much earlier than you would expect.

No matter what happens in life, always have time for her and always let her know how you’re feeling and what’s going on in life. Cos when she goes, you can’t get that time back, and you don’t want the last words you hear from her being “I feel like no-one cares” and your response is “don’t be silly Mum”, as you are more worried about getting drunk and stoned.

Don’t ever cut contact with your family, because at the end of the day mate they are the

18 MAR 2022

Hey Mate,

Marian

photo by James Braund

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

sells The Big Issue at The Causeway and the Vic Market, Melbourne

VENDOR WEEK

This Is a Joy You Will Know sparrow, flying across an endless expanse of flat grey sea. There will be no ordinary wind to support your flight, but only the wind of an urge to fulfil a duty which is a hard, yet glorious discipline. From this sparrow, to sparrowhawk, then eagle. Years later, a sea eagle will appear in plain sight, and you will know the joy of watching a wedge-tail eagle family spiralling up in warm gyre, disappearing.

This will be a meeting of nothing but fulfilment.

This is a joy you will know.

You will remember your wish not to go to high school, your wish to come across Merlin, and your sense of needing to work outside – hands in soil, eyes in sky, skim-walking clouds – as well as your self-chosen ideal occupation as poet-farrier/ blacksmith. You will come across the Finnish epic poem, the ‘Kalevala’, and be gladdened, shocked, delighted and saddened by it. It will feel familiar.

You will have dreams which are impossible, but you will wake from them with the greatest conviction that those dream events have taken place. Recollection and treasuring of such dreams will lead to beautiful happenings, impossible to predict.

Much of your life will be like this. Do not worry about that.

You will have an amazing daughter who snorts with laughter, just like us. You will be so proud of her. She will astonish you with her ability to prioritise and organise.

Know that you will be blessed in your friendships and that love is worth worlds and eons of pain. You will be very glad you are alive and free to be part of The Big Issue.

The relationship style that you will most deeply cherish, venerate and respect is that of the mutually enriching teacher-student, adept-disciple type. This will prove your best and most beautiful working ground.

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Whose name changes with the weather, just as the colour of your eyes changes from blue to blue‑green to blue-violet to blue-grey, here are a few words of encouragement for hard times.

Some will be very hard. There will be close encounters with madness, rape and intentional cruelty. The madness will be easy enough to understand. The others, not. You will live in grief.

But girl, loving girl, you are strong and can see.

You will learn how to work the grief into joy. It will not be easy or quick, but you will learn to live content with radical disarmament, with fierce vulnerability. The gathering of healing energies will be slow. You will learn to never give up.

Do you remember how after our father’s suicide, not long before you turned 12, you longed to find him, to bring him to peace and freedom, once you had seen how futile it would be to take your own life? Your sense of feeling lost and disoriented will diminish, but not disappear. The above is all that will be hardest to bear.

It is alright to feel strange, out of place and uncertain. It does not matter if you are not terribly sensible – plenty of other people are, and the fabric of the world sparkles with a dash of folly now and then. Yet, here is a caution: try not to indulge in unthinking impulse to the degree that I have done.

You will find delight in your growing awareness of not knowing very much at all, and often knowing less than seems at first-glance possible.

You will find equal delight in learning, and even more in the pictures and images that lead to understandings which are not measurable, but very precious.

In the company of very kind and wise friends, you will be able to markedly lessen tensions and unease. When in the embrace of the natural world with such friends, there will be a time when you will know yourself initially as a dull-coloured

18 MAR 2022

Dear old younger person,

sells The Big Issue at Haigh’s and Body Shop on Rundle Mall, and Unley, Adelaide

photo by Nat Rogers

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

18

David

VENDOR WEEK

There Will Always Be Something To Look Forward To since finishing high school, you’re about to experience something better. And for the next four years things will pan out well for you. You’ll have many friends; you’ll feel very accepted by all of your peers. And you’ll have fun. Enjoy it. Because you’ll think that all your problems are behind you, but a new challenge is just around the corner.

You complete your music degree successfully, but then have to overcome several obstacles. First, you are a migrant and there are lots of issues with remaining in Australia. It takes a large chunk out of your life. For seven long years you do not know what the future will hold for you. During that period, you will not have secure employment.

There are times where you will feel angry, fed up, frustrated. But then thousands of Australians will sign a petition supporting you to stay, and in 2017 everything changes when you are allowed to remain in Australia indefinitely.

Then in 2019, you hear of The Big Issue. You are told that you could be earning money when you sign up. You are quite enthusiastic about it. When you join, in February 2019, you do not know how it will turn out for you – but you do not give up. You keep trying to sell magazines and calendars, day in day out, for the next three years. You manage to build a profile of buyers; some also become friends.

You always want to thank people who buy copies.

I hope that whoever reads your story will be thrilled and inspired – including you!

19

I cannot believe that you have been walking this earth for 40 years. I can remember not too long ago, you were in your teens, twenties and thirties.

Growing up in Malaysia, things might not be looking good for you right now. You were born with total vision loss, and your family and people around you do not know why it happened to you, what they can do to support you, or how your future is going to turn out.

At 14, you are a stay-home boy; everyone else in your family is either at school, college or working.

You feel like you are just wasting your time doing nothing. You aspire to be like your siblings and other members of your family, but your parents enrolled you in school very late. But soon you’ll go to a boarding school that’s especially for people without vision. You’ll then have to learn things very quickly – like how to read braille and how to write – in order to pass your education. It will be quite hard, but to everybody’s surprise, you will do it.

However, your situation will not improve straight away. You will find yourself becoming more agitated and frustrated. But never give up.

Just keep pushing, because there will always be something to look forward to. You will decide to go to university.

When you are 24, you will be excited when you get the news that you have been offered a place at the University of Adelaide. After being housebound

18 MAR 2022

Dear David,

20

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

XXXX

The Big Picture

Around the World in 100 Mags

From community building to good health, friendship and inspiration, street paper vendors all around the world tell us what their magazine means to them.

by Tony Inglis Editor, International Network of

Street Papers

“I was looking for a job for about 20 months.

I didn’t have money. It was a very bad time for me. One day, a vendor named James suggested I try being a vendor. I went to the office a day later, and the same day I was a vendor! I was working so much. It’s been necessary for me to overcome some very dark times – homelessness, no money. In the morning I start, and I work until the evening.”

21

Adnan

The Big Issue Brisbane, Australia

18 MAR 2022

I

t’s good for me, it’s good for my English. I’m making new mates, I have so many mates now!” says Big Issue cover star Adnan, who sells the magazine in Brisbane. “For example, I am sick now, so I haven’t been selling and yesterday, two customers called to check on me. I like it! I don’t have my family here – all my family is in Turkey – so it feels good for me socially.”

If you buy The Big Issue, you know what it is: an enterprising solution to poverty, an empowerment tool for those experiencing homelessness or marginalisation, and a bloody good read. But it is the people who sell the magazine and others like it – on the streets, outside shops, and at busy intersections around the world – who know what a street paper truly represents.

“For me, street papers mean a lot more than just a job to go to!” says Memet, who sells Lice v Lice in North Macedonia. “It means inspiration – I enjoy rap and hip‑hop music and, while I’m on the streets, it inspires the songs I write. Communicating with different people is very important – it gives me a sense of belonging. That moves me!”

The International Network of Street Papers comprises more than 100 publications like The Big Issue and Lice v Lice, in 35 countries worldwide. There are thousands of street paper vendors like Adnan and Memet, each with different motivations for donning their uniform and taking to the streets to earn an income.

For some, selling the mag is about community and connection, forging friendships with fellow vendors and regular customers. For others, like Rudolf who sells fiftyfifty in Düsseldorf, Germany, it’s about fostering good habits – he says that selling the magazine has helped him maintain his sobriety. While for José, who sells Ocas” in São Paulo, Brazil, the magazine has been a lifeline: “The street paper saved my life. That’s not an exaggeration.

It was a way out for me – it helped me get out of a catastrophic situation when I found myself homeless.

It has given me work, dignity and several friends.”

No matter what their motivation is for selling, for vendors, street papers are worth more than the paper they’re printed on. “It has changed my life,” says Adnan of The Big Issue. “Before the magazine, I was alone. Very, very alone. Slowly slowly, I made friends. And slowly, slowly, it made my life better. And for me, it’s good money... I’m working so much, and it’s making me happier.”

Clóvis

Aurora da Rua Salvador, Brazil

“To me, a street paper is sobriety and security. It allows me to live a dignified life, far from my addiction to alcohol. Selling Aurora da Rua was the best choice I could have made. Even in the pandemic, I managed to keep my income, as my point of sale allows me to access people in a safe and peaceful way. Everyone wants to know my life story.”

Enkete

Iso Numero Helsinki, Finland

Mark

Megaphone Vancouver, Canada

“Street papers – especially Megaphone – foster curiosity in what’s going on in your own backyard.

The focus is on local happenings, achievements and developments in the neighbourhood. Selling Megaphone has given me a different perspective. It has also made me a more outgoing person. It’s the interaction with customers, most of whom I don’t even know by name, even the regular ones, that makes selling the magazine all worthwhile. They are really helping me come out of a hard period. It has been a bright light in a dark time. It’s become about more than just making money, it’s a chance to connect with the community.”

“For me the magazine means sivistys [a Finnish word meaning “self-cultivation” or “gaining wisdom” on a personal level]. That goes for myself. It is very important that I read Finnish every day and learn more of the language. Since I sell the magazine, I have to understand what the headlines and stories mean.

I want everyone to read it.”

Brian

22

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Denver VOICE Colorado, USA

Nenad

Liceulice Belgrade, Serbia

“A street paper allows you to become part of regular society. When you become homeless, you quickly understand that you’re separated. You realise there are two different worlds. Through the VOICE, I’ve gained more friends than I’ve ever had in my life.”

“The street paper relaxes me. I like to sell it and I’m good at it, and that calms me down and makes me happy. I got used to both nice words and criticism.”

“ Ocas” changed my life. It has been fundamental for me since 2004. It entered my life in a dark period, when I was living on the streets. I lived in that situation for 11 months. But by selling this magazine, I was able to change my life because with the money I made I was able to pay for a place to live and food to eat. I became a normal man that was living collectively again. It allowed me to study, to learn English, to become a published writer. I am going to be a member of the Ocas” project for as long as I am alive and as long as the magazine is released.

Claudo

Ocas” São Paulo, Brazil

Marcus

Traços Brasília, Brazil

“Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’. However, these rights end up being denied in several places. Therefore, it is important to value the role of street papers in the reintegration of vulnerable populations so that they have access to an education, income, and social and psychological assistance. I have personally witnessed how a street paper – Traços – has transformed my life. Only in this way will we be able to achieve a more equal and dignified society for all.”

18 MAR 2022

“The street paper is my livelihood. It pays my rent, it pays my utilities, it pays my…everything. This is my job, this is my business: I enjoy doing it and, if it wasn’t for this, I have no idea what I’d be doing. It’s now been 10 years [selling The Contributor]. I was gonna quit doing it eight years ago – I had a job lined up and everything. Then I got hit by a car, smashed both my shoulders, shattered, and, you know, metal everywhere in my leg meant I couldn’t do the job. In fact, it was hard to do anything for a long time. I was in the hospital for 55 days. So, I’m really glad [I have the street paper].”

Roberto

Ocas” São Paulo, Brazil

“The street paper is my ganha pão, a Brazilian expression that means ‘with this job, I can live’.”

23

Keith D

The Contributor Nashville, USA

Dreams Alexandra O’Sullivan packs her car, her son, and goes her own way.

Alexandra O’Sullivan writes fiction, creative non-fiction, articles and reviews.

Her work has appeared in publications such as Seizure, Meanjin and Archer. @alexosullivan84

illustration by Luci Everett

24

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

T

he day after we moved in I let Nicholas ride his skateboard down the hill that sloped past the front fence. Only as he hurtled towards me, fast and getting faster, did I question my permission. He was riding beautifully, his weight low on the board, but how would he stop? I leapt in front of him, my arms out as if to catch him, yelling “get off, get off, get off!” His eyes bugged and he rolled onto the road to miss me, skinning his elbows and knees. I hurried him into the house and knelt on the bathmat in front of him, dabbing disinfectant onto his grazes, while he sat on the edge of the tub, wincing but brave. The words “bad mother, bad mother” flickered between my ears. The new town was supposed to be safe.

Those two words echoed, in the following days, like a bad dream I couldn’t shake. To keep busy, I unpacked our moving boxes, but I left the one that

held his dad’s face, encased in bubble wrap, wedged between other photographs. I wondered, as my eyes slid over the word fragile scrawled on the cardboard in black texta, if he’d come to our old house when they let him out of jail. I imagined him hammering on the front door – the same door he’d slept outside the first Christmas Eve after the restraining order – then, learning we had cut and run, skulking away.

If I was a bad parent, I wasn’t the worst.

We’d moved in October 2020, during the coronavirus second wave lockdown. At the checkpoint on the edge of the “steel ring” surrounding metropolitan Melbourne, I’d shown the cop my letter from the domestic violence charity, my golden ticket to the regions. He’d let me through with a tender “have a nice day”. I’d pressed my foot to the accelerator and turned the radio up loud as the hills rose either side of my car,

I started doing yoga every morning in my office, seeing fragile upside down between my legs in downward dog. I kept my palms pressed to the floor, feeling the solidness of the foundations beneath. It was the first time I’d had an office, a whole room to write in. One morning, when Nicholas called out to me, I called back, “I’m in my office,” putting emphasis on the final word.

Later, when the regions went into another lockdown, I found I didn’t really mind.

I felt guilty for not being more focused on the news as case numbers rose in 2021. But the return of the pandemic was not my greatest fear. Send me back to prison but I will always stand by Nick, his father texted.

It was interesting the way he chose to taunt me with my own victories, with my triumph over the few small issues.

More interesting, though, was how this time I found counterarguments crystalising guilt-free in my mind.

No regular citizen can just “send” anyone to prison.

Just like no “small issue” will get someone arrested for domestic violence.

Out walking late one evening, I saw two masked neighbours bump elbows over a shared fence. I smiled as I walked by, buoyed by their respect for each other’s safety and for their gentle commitment to intimacy.

When I woke the next morning, I felt less lonely than I’d felt in a long time. I made a coffee and sang a few bars of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’. Then I took my cup to my office and sat in front of my computer. I opened up a Word document just as I heard Nicholas calling from the other room. I went and sat on the edge of the bed.

I swept his beautiful fringe across his beautiful face.

“I heard you singing,” he said.

“Did you?”

“Yes, but in my dream.”

“Ah.” “It was so strange,” he said, wiping sleep from his eyes. “I couldn’t make out the words.”

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS IMPACTED BY FAMILY VIOLENCE, CONTACT 1800 RESPECT ON 1800 737 732.

18 MAR 2022

Half an hour later I dragged myself out of the camping chair and staggered, sun-drunk, into the house. I put my cup in the microwave, watching the numbers counting down to hot coffee, my kind of celebration. Nicholas was already playing computer games in his room. I could hear him yelling with his friends over the phone to go to some meeting place in the virtual world. I imagined them, a group of elaborately styled avatars displaying a 10-year-old child’s devotion to excess – rainbow hair, angel wings or buffalo horns, and guns, lots of guns – all meeting within the strange world of block scenery in pastel colours, their only playground during lockdowns – and the only one since we’d moved away.

2021 did feel weird, but no weirder than 2020, I thought, as I opened the microwave door.

We almost had it right for Nick apart from a few small issues, his father had texted me, the day after he was released from jail for charges of stalking and harassment. I hadn’t moved house yet, but I’d been busy packing, having rushed my move forward due to his unexpected release. I was committed to my plan, but I recognised the lurch of guilt in my guts. What right did I have to interrupt this downward trajectory? I’d had a sense I was causing pain to avoid it, swapping one type of violence for another. It was the same feeling I’d had while jamming his photo into the moving box because I didn’t know what else to do with it. Now, two-and-a-half months later, it was still jammed in there and sealed up tight. I went back out to my camping chair, the coffee cup hot in my hand. I had no plans for the day, for how I wanted to start the year, the rest of my life.

In the afternoon we went for a drive. As we toured the town, I tried to listen to music, getting static, my car radio not yet properly tuned to the local stations.

“I love this song, Mum. Great lyrics. Schhhhhe, krrrrsh, shcrrrr!” Nicholas pretended to sing along.

I laughed, feeling suddenly as if everything might work out alright.

A few days later, I caught up with a new friend at the park. Tamara knew the vague outline of my situation.

We stood together and watched the kids, her two boys and Nicholas, pile on each other as they went down the slide, tangling limbs as they inched downward in a mass, laughing with the joy of rough bodily contact.

“Does he remind you of his father?” Tamara asked me, out of the blue.

I thought for a minute.

“Only his sense of humour.”

“Oh! That makes me want to cry!”

But not me. I’m just grateful I still have someone who can make me laugh.

25

crammed with luggage, four guinea pigs, one cat and my son. The next day I’d let Nicholas ride down the hill in our street because I wanted him to see the house the same way I saw it – a chance to finally have some fun.

But as I’d covered his knees with bandaids while his father’s critical voice – how would he stop? – looped in my head, fun still felt like an impossible dream.

On New Year’s Eve there were fireworks in the night, but when I woke on the first day of 2021, I couldn’t be sure if the ones I remembered seeing through my bedroom window were real or part of a dream. I made a coffee and sat on a camping chair on the front lawn, trying to work it out. The crackles, the flashes of colour, had made me sit up in bed – or had I? The action, the image, slipped somewhere between vision and fantasy, between my eyes and my mind.

Nicholas came out wearing pyjama pants and no shirt, his hair frizzy from the pillow.

“Hello,” I said, overly cheerful. “Happy New Year!”

He blinked at me in my dressing gown, still slumped in a camping chair in the sun, despite my attempt at festivity.

“2021 feels weird,” he said before he shuffled inside.

Ricky They’re dropping like bar flies.

Rock and a Hard Place

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

A

26

by Ricky French @frenchricky

nother year passes and another venue closes in the city they call the “Live Music Capital of Australia”.

But we needn’t be so Melbourne-centric about these things: live music venues have been dying in cities all over the country for a long time, chased out by rising rents, developers’ greed, gentrification and – maybe the elephant in the room – the decline in popularity of live music. That’ll do it.

The Curtin Hotel in Carlton recently announced it was being sold, “…most likely for apartments”, according to the current tenants, who host live music in the upstairs band room. Chalk it up. They’re dropping like bar flies wherever you look. Venues that aren’t being replaced by apartments are being replaced by wine bars. Maybe Generation Z has spoken?

Things looked to have come to a head back in 2010, when over 10,000 people marched in Melbourne at the Save Live Australia’s Music (SLAM) rally. Liquor licensing policies that deemed live music venues “high risk”, forcing them to comply with costly security regulations, were the target of the protesters, and were blamed for the closure of The Tote, one of the city’s most hallowed haunts. A grand finale was hastily organised, and hundreds crammed into the sweaty band room for one last hurrah, featuring rock luminaries such as The Drones, Spencer P Jones and Spiderbait.

People cried; most were in disbelief. How could an institution like The Tote close?

But the story was to have a twist. The Tote reopened, just a few months later, under new management, and the hysterics around that “final gig” turned out to be a little premature.

Fast forward another 12 years and The Tote is still open. Some gigs are sell-out affairs, but on many nights let’s just say there’s plenty of room to dance (note: no-one dances).

Life is tough for small bands, and the problem lies not so much in finding a venue

as finding an audience. Why would the owner of a pub, who’s paying premium inner-city rents, dedicate floor space to live music when they might struggle to attract a dozen people, when they could rip up the sticky carpet and become a gastropub? The answer is that many owners are totally committed to live music, are musicians themselves, and do it for the love. Many get annoyed at bands for not promoting their shows and doing their bit to attract punters. “Got a gig coming up?

Here’s an idea – maybe drop some posters down to the bar” is a not uncommon cry from frustrated owners and bookers.

Anecdotally, crowds at small venues have been dropping for some time. Established bands can still pull a crowd, and the higher up the ladder you go you’ll find people are hungrier for live music than ever. Festivals sell out, international touring acts fill stadiums.

But what’s happened to the little league bands?

It seems the subcultures that used to sustain small bands have fragmented or dwindled as their members grow old. Are there still goths, or punks or emos? Or did they go the way of the Mods and the Beatniks – to the suburbs to raise a family and go to bed by 9pm?

Perhaps young people don’t want to spend their weekends standing in a darkened dive bar watching mostly terrible but occasionally really great bands?

Sticky carpet always finds a way, though.

The SLAM movement resulted in legislative change: most music venues were no longer deemed to be “high risk”. But those invested in the lasting survival of pub rock need to also look inwards.

It’s got me thinking though. I wonder: if I sold my guitars, could I afford an apartment in Carlton? Old rockers gotta live somewhere…

Ricky is a writer and musician with a few old guitars up on eBay.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

A

while back, going into or coming out of a lockdown, a rare window of not being confined to a 5km radius, I bought a chunky canary yellow 1970s Panasonic R-72 Toot-a-Loop wearable AM radio bracelet on Facebook Marketplace.

Design-wise they’re a glorious bit of kit, a bulbous plastic circle with an off-centre hole to accommodate your wrist, and which with a quick twist becomes a stand-alone pop art radio. Totally fabulous, and totally impractical for anything except opening montages from 60s/70s films featuring girls dressed by Mary Quant. Which is precisely the point.

I’d to-and-froed with the seller, I’ll call her Lynn, online. It was $150, which is A LOT, right? And I wanted to ensure it a) worked, and b) could fit my wrist into its tiny hole.

Measurements were sent, assurances were made. I wasn’t convinced, but had an “Ah, screw it” moment and drove the 30km. Thirty kilometres! It felt like going overseas. I was met by a matter-of-fact dude who was Not Lynn, and who said Lynn couldn’t come to the door, because she was crying, as the radio was her favourite possession.

So much I didn’t say. “My man, way to drain the fun from my supposed-to-pick-meup purchase.” “Does Lynn need a hug?” “This is a large modern house, you’re giving off prosperous vibes, why not sling Lynn some buckaroos so she can keep the adorable wrist bling?” “WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU?” The Toot-a-Loop is now displayed in a cabinet in my lounge room, in close proximity to the era-appropriate orange shag rug, but whenever I look at it, I think of Lynn.

Those of us addicted to garage sales and FB Marketplace – and we are legion – are in it, sure, for bargains, but stories are the kicker. It also, absolutely, makes it easier to let go of your stuff if you can pass on the history. Objects carry meaning and story, the monetary value is largely irrelevant –

regardless of what capitalism tells us. We bought a couch from an Italian interior designer who gave us a blow-by-blow of her divorce; a washing machine from a family who’d outgrown it when they had unexpected twins; and a flamboyant lounge suite from an Iranian family who imported it from Turkey, and were proud of the quality. “This will last you your life,” the mother said.

When singer and legend Rebecca Barnard had a garage sale I attended with bells on, and got a blue military-band jacket that was the uniform for Tim Rogers’ early 2000s band, The Temperance Union. Later, I attended a fancy spoken word event wearing said jacket, and it was awkward because, unbeknownst to me, Tim Rogers was on the bill. Trying to neutralise any stalker vibes, I went up, told him it was a coincidence, but figured he’d be chuffed to see the jacket. “Hmmf,” he said.

“So who do I blame for selling that?”

I feel you Tim. It’s hard letting go, even when things have served their purpose. I just held a garage sale, to clear the room chock with stuff left at our old share house. We moved in that slip between first and second lockdowns, and left acres of books and records and trinkets behind. It was still a wrench, but I clawed back a couple of books, including Dad’s copy of Pilaff Bey’s Lovers’ Cookbook, with a foreword by Graham Greene (containing recipes for men to reclaim their, er, vigour).

It’s odd, having people rummage your possessions. But a delight when they find an item that lights them up. I took their few dollars, told them a story, and with the transaction completed we both felt lighter.

It’s the best way. I still wish I knew why the Toot-a-Loop meant so much to Lynn. I wish she’d wept her story out to me.

Fiona is a writer and comedian who’s gonna pop some tags.

18 MAR 2022

Twice As Nice

We bought a couch from an Italian interior designer who gave us a blow‑by-blow of her divorce.

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Fiona

First Day

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I’m trying now to be the person I wished I had growing up.

by Ivana Brehas @ivanabrehas

Ivana Brehas is a writer, actor and filmmaker based in Naarm/Melbourne.

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t happened so quickly and amazingly,” Evie Macdonald says, reminiscing on being cast as Hannah in the Emmy Award-winning Australian series First Day. “All of a sudden, my whole life has changed.”

It was her first acting role, and a groundbreaking one: she’s the first transgender actor to play the lead role in an Australian scripted TV series.

Written and directed by Julie Kalceff, First Day follows Hannah as she navigates high school life as a newly out transgender person. Macdonald was playing a 13-year‑old in the show’s first season, but the cast is getting older, and this new season now sees Hannah dipping her toes into the dating pool.

“For me, [that storyline] was really crucial,” Macdonald explains, “because I feel like there is so much negativity out there around dating a trans person and the humiliation that can come with that. There’s nothing wrong with being in queer relationships and that’s why it’s so important that Julie showed that on TV – that love is love. You can’t pick and choose who or what you love. It’s just who you are.”

Last season dealt with Hannah’s fears of being outed and her struggles with finding acceptance. But this time around, the series delves deeper into the more insidious effects of transphobia, exploring the challenging territory of microaggressions. When Hannah is pushed into the public eye during a bid for Class Captain, she finds herself on the receiving end of frequent backhanded comments about her gender. It’s an experience that resonates with Macdonald.

“On social media, I get a hundred comments a day like, ‘Oh, you’re really pretty for a trans person,’ and I’m like, what is that supposed to mean? People think they’re being positive when they say things like, ‘I can’t tell that you’re trans.’ But that’s not a compliment.”

Hannah also becomes vocal about LGBTIQ+ rights this season, speaking out publicly even when it means risking backlash from other students. Hannah’s activism mirrors

FIRST DAY PREMIERES AT 5PM ON 31 MARCH ON ABC ME, WITH ALL EPISODES AVAILABLE TO BINGE ON ABC IVIEW.

18 MAR 2022

From dating to transphobia and fighting for LGBTIQ+ rights, actor Evie Macdonald breaks new ground in First Day’s second season.

Macdonald’s real-world efforts – she’s a devoted champion of the rights of trans and gender diverse young people, and has visited Parliament House in Canberra to campaign for legal reform. In a time when trans rights are threatened daily, she says vocal support is more essential than ever.

“I grew up wanting somebody to be able to fight these battles for me and help me along in my journey…and I didn’t really have anybody that did that,” Macdonald reflects. “I’m trying now to be the person I wished I had growing up, for somebody else.”

At the age of 16, the pressure of trying to help other trans and gender diverse kids can be a lot to deal with, and Macdonald copes with the weight “one day at a time”.

“I’ve done a lot in my life for the fairly short time I’ve been here. But if I can help somebody and have a positive impact on their life, I’m going to at least try.”

But the responsibility of helping others doesn’t rest on Macdonald’s shoulders alone. Adults, particularly those in positions of authority, can use their power to help young people in need. In First Day, one such adult is Ms Fraser (Brenna Harding) – an empathetic, respectful teacher who acts as a kind of emotional anchor for kids like Hannah.

“It’s so important to be a good ally,” Macdonald says. Her advice to teachers who want to support trans and gender diverse children is simple: “Just listen. Listen to what they have to say, really take in that information, and try and find out the best solution to help them. If they say, ‘Miss, I actually don’t like the pronouns that you’re using,’ say, ‘Okay, what do you prefer?’ and listen to the student. It’s going to have a better impact on how they’re learning in class and their relationship with you.”

First Day has received widespread success and critical acclaim, paving the way for the production of future seasons – and Macdonald has some ideas for her character’s future storylines.

“I would really like to see some of Hannah’s background – her family and relatives,” she muses. “Going into First Day, we don’t get to see what Hannah’s transition was really like and what she went through to get to where she is. I would be so curious to see more of her backstory and what her relationships with her family are like now.”

Though Hannah is Macdonald’s first acting role, it’s unlikely to be her last. “Growing up, I always wanted to be an actress. Most importantly, I wanted to play Ariel in the live‑action version [of Disney’s The Little Mermaid]. Sadly, Halle Bailey took that,” she laughs.

“But I also would have loved to be in the Avatar movies,” she continues, lighting up with enthusiasm. “I would have killed to be in those!”

With seemingly endless sequels planned for the Avatar series, could she have a shot at a future instalment? “I have to talk to James Cameron,” she jokes.

Whether she plays a mermaid, an alien or an everyday kid, one thing seems certain: the future is bright for this young star.

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Growing Up in Public

Nilüfer Yanya

Music On her new release, London singersongwriter Nilüfer Yanya gets her guitar out and tackles restlessness, idleness and solitude in the big city.

by Kate Reid

Kate Reid is a freelance writer based in the Blue Mountains. Her work has been published by ABC Everyday, The Sydney Morning Herald, Broadsheet Sydney and We Are Explorers.

PHOTO BY MOLLY DANIEL

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Painless, Really

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fter more than two years of being stuck in the same surrounds, singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya began to think a lot about her sense of place and solitude. It’s a theme that snakes its way through her much-anticipated second album, Painless. “It’s about relationships, people, life, but also relationships with your space and your surroundings,” says Yanya, calling in from her London home. “I think that’s definitely a pandemic thing – it turns out it’s really important how you feel about where you live.”

“There was also this pull towards nature. I did find myself trying to include that in the lyrics.

[That] feeling that you’re in this concrete world, but you really want to connect with the actual world,” she adds.

It took a while for Yanya to get to this reflective place. After the release of her acclaimed debut album Miss Universe (2019), an exhausted Yanya took a year off from writing any music. When she finally felt she had the inspiration to write, her approach was different. “It kind of just came straight from centre and it was very instinctive.

I think because I hadn’t written something for so long, I felt really grateful for whatever I was writing,” she says.

On Painless, Yanya has created a diverse, roving album that traverses the dreamy and melancholic, the raw and frenetic. The tracks – which manage

my voice and my guitar, and that can be anything I guess, but for me, it always sounds quite rocky and grungy.” This may be best felt in the single ‘stabilise’, where 90s guitars mesh with a driving drum beat to chart a tale of restless idleness in the city. Or the contemplative ‘anotherlife’, which has a meditative, bouncy quality. It’s this range that makes Yanya such a striking new artist. Her broad scope never feels clunky or forced, but instead seems to expand her unique world, which straddles mystery and rawness with real style.

To her, experimentation is just part of the process. “If something sounds cool you just go with it; it seems like a shame not to include it,” Yanya says. “It continually helps me broaden that sense of what is my music and what is my sound. I think I’m still finding it as well.”

On her new album Yanya has stretched her songwriting, working with the likes of Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo and Bullion, as well as teaming up again with Miss Universe collaborator Wilma Archer, this time on co-writing duties.

“I wouldn’t have normally done it like that in the past, because I’ve felt like that’s cheating, or it’s not really my work, but it was a cool feeling; it was different. I was so happy to write,” she says.

The co-writing element of Painless seems to have allowed Yanya to be less guarded. These are her most personal and frank songs to date, songs

that focus on dejection, the claustrophobia of city living, heartache and quietening your own needs for another person. But among the ill, uneasy feelings, light still seeps through. “When you’re in it, the music to you makes you feel good, so even if it’s a sad song you’re just focused on it being a tune,” she says. “It wasn’t until the end [of the recording process] that I was like ‘oh it’s quite bleak’, but then I realised there are also these moments of hope.”

With the album now out in the world, Yanya will be heading off on tour across Europe and North America. After years of pandemic-induced disconnection, it will be a chance for the artist to communicate more deeply with her fans and get an insight into the work she made insularly and often remotely. “You get these weird moments of clarity on stage” Yanya says. “You kind of see things differently, and lots of things make sense.”

PAINLESS IS OUT NOW.

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to sound both straightforward and complex – are anchored in the artist’s staggering vocals, distorted guitar and ear-worm riffs.

Yanya was first struck by the guitar in her youth. She played the piano as a kid, but her real passion – and desire – was to learn the guitar. She liked its immediacy and the way that a simple chord could feel full of emotion. Her touchstones were The Strokes and pop-punk that her sister recommended. This fascination with the guitar remains stronger than ever. “I keep on finding new ways to be excited about the instrument and its sound,” she says. On Painless, however, she’s expanded her sonic palette to include new, more obscure string instruments, like the Turkish bağlama or saz, which her father used to play when she was growing up.

While critics have often described her music as drawing from elements of pop, jazz and trip-hop, Yanya feels her work is rooted in a rock tradition.

“When I play on stage I’m like yeah, this is a rock band,” she says. “My music at its core is just me,

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You get these weird moments of clarity on stage. You kind of see things differently, and lots of things make sense.

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PHOTO BY TYLER AVES

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Books What I really wanted to do was showcase my world.

Omar Sakr

by Doug Wallen @wallendoug

Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria, and a former music editor of The Big Issue.

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mar Sakr’s path to writing his debut novel has zigzagged along the way, taking a notable detour into award-winning poetry. In fact, readers of his collections These Wild Houses (2017) and The Lost Arabs (2019) might be surprised to see him delve into a different format. But his new book Son of Sin is the culmination of a lifelong ambition to write fiction.

“It was poetry that surprised me in the last few years – that’s where I found my voice and learned how to write,” says Sakr by phone from Western Sydney. Prior to poetry, he had devoted himself to dark, mind‑bending stories in the vein of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman. But they didn’t work, and it wasn’t until studying poetry that he realised what he’d been doing wrong.

“I was very conceptually focused, so it was about the idea rather than the language,” he recalls. “Poetry taught me to pay attention not to language generally, but to my language. The way that I think and speak.

That should be what every writer is focused on.”

That sense of comfort with his own voice is apparent right across Son of Sin, the sensitive yet often bracing story of a queer Muslim teen coming of age in the sprawling Western Sydney suburbs where Sakr grew up. Sakr’s flowing third-person narration and vivid descriptions create an immersive world of sensory detail, where readers feel like they’re experiencing the distinctive food, family, culture and sexual awakening that so shapes the protagonist, Jamal.

Despite the presence of magic realism in his early stories, Sakr sees the novel as a work of social realism. “What I really wanted to do was showcase my world,” he says. The author doesn’t just capture the intense homophobia present within Jamal’s immediate family and his wider community in the 2000s, but also the background static of racism and other prejudice that are present in daily Australian life.

Opening amid the anti-Muslim sentiments following 9/11, the book touches on the flow-on effects of the

SON OF SIN IS OUT NOW.

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Poet Omar Sakr’s debut novel – about a queer Muslim teen’s coming of age – put the writer through his paces in his quest for emotional truth.

Cronulla riots in 2005 and the Marriage Equality Plebiscite Bill 2015.

Sakr approaches the story with a remarkably tender touch, balancing moments of joy and trauma in a way that rings true. Jamal gleans a new perspective when he travels to Turkey to reconnect with his estranged father at the close of his teen years. But it’s by no means a pat turn of events. Nursing aspirations of becoming a book publisher, he winds up transcribing the dialogue in reality TV shows for Turkish audiences. Even after he moves on from feeling guilt and shame about his sexuality, he still dreads coming out to his family.

Some of these details ring true to Sakr’s own life, but more the sensations than the actual events.

“It’s autobiographical in that it mirrors my life as I understand it,” he says. “What I’m trying to do in my work is always to replicate the feelings rather than the fact of living. What it felt like, rather than what it was.”

Being so acutely attuned to those feelings, was it difficult for Sakr to relive his coming of age while writing the book? “It really was,” he admits. “It affected me a great deal. Revisiting those traumas was quite difficult.

I learned to look at those events differently, and I had to struggle with the impulse to hurt Jamal as much as I was hurt. It was a really strange thing to realise that I was trying, in some ways, to almost punish this character.”

While it can be confronting to follow some of Jamal’s experiences across the book, there are moments of unexpected lightness that make Son of Sin read more like a refreshing glimpse into someone’s actual life than like a stock coming-of-age novel – or a thinly veiled autobiography.

“I had the chance to do something different, and play out a different way for things to go,” says Sakr. “For him to have realisations that I didn’t, for him to be better in some ways and worse in others. So that was a very interesting and challenging part of the process.”

Sakr even ends the book on a surprisingly humorous note, landing a nuanced tonal moment that might have eluded many first-time novelists. And rather than torture Jamal simply for cathartic effect or gift him with an easy resolution, Sakr finds a way through that’s much more true to the vagaries of real life.

“That kind of messiness of life is something I really wanted to be in this,” he says. “You can be working towards a resolution and life will fuck you up.” As a painful example, Sakr cites his own experience of losing both his father and his uncle in the space of a week.

After writing Son of Sin full-time for close to two years – an intense period that dovetailed with the isolation of lockdown – Sakr is releasing his third volume of poetry next year and thinking about his future prose work. That includes the prospect of circling back to short stories. Now that he’s found his voice, there’s nothing holding him back.

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Sin City

Film Reviews

Aimee Knight Film Editor @siraimeknight

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n ear for eye, the black box stage of contemporary theatre becomes a dark cinematic space for naming the sociopolitical boxes in which Black people are too often trapped. Esoteric and poetic, but with an unmistakable clarity of vision, this heated feature from British playwright debbie tucker green takes her 2018 play of the same name and fills it with filmic flourishes, like non-linear manipulations of time, place, voice, costume, body and spirit. Among the ensemble cast, Lashana Lynch (No Time to Die) plays an upstanding uni student who confronts her unethical professor (Demetri Goritsas, Black Mirror) with ice and fire.

The Australian premiere of this ferocious film opens ACMI’s Dissenters, Lovers & Ghosts: New British Cinema line-up (31 March to 17 April). Far from a last-gasp overreach of cultural imperialism from Old Blighty, the suite features artists from the margins by exploring the theme “Who Are We Now?”. To that end, the program boasts the national premiere of social-realist thriller County Lines, the first Victorian screening of lauded drama After Love, and the chance to see semi-recent gems Lovers Rock, Saint Maud and Mogul Mowgli on the big screen. As per a cultural exchange program running in collaboration with the British Council, the BFI Southbank will, in turn, present Antipodean films to London audiences later this year. I’m hoping that Friends and Strangers, a cunning study of so-called “Australian” identity, will make the cut. AK

LASHANA LYNCH ON FIRE

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Shove over, Wake in Fright (1971). There’s a new rendering of white Australia’s bent for aggressive friendliness – and the killer colonial hangover it cannot hide – in town. But where that Ozploitation classic mined city folks’ fears of the outback, with its dusty, working-class denizens, Friends and Strangers finds terror in the waterfront real estate of Sydney’s North Shore, populated by upper middle-class drifters like Alice (Emma Diaz) and Ray (Fergus Wilson). Writer-director James Vaughan’s debut feature is a droll look at concrete and ennui. Though the plot wafts around like a lost moth, its feigned naivety is a sly cover for commentary on class, age, art, the monarchy and our local fear of feelings. Harnessing the quirks of colloquial patter – “Ya reckon?”, “Should be good”, “Can’t hurt” – Vaughan prods the national capacity to say nothing of substance. An anthropological reading of people pissing privilege away like a big, cold beer, Friends and Strangers shows how settler anxieties spread like salt damp through a haunted house. AIMEE KNIGHT THE DUKE

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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Based on a true story, this whimsical film from Notting Hill director Roger Michell stars Jim Broadbent as Kempton Bunton, who stole a valuable Goya painting – Portrait of the Duke of Wellington – from London’s National Gallery in 1961. Holding the portrait to ransom as a way to campaign for the rights of the elderly and impoverished, Bunton comes off as a lovable, comic folk hero. The Duke tells its story in a rollicking tone, with jaunty music and playful editing. It makes for easy viewing, but ultimately leaves the film lacking a sense of depth. Take Bunton’s wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren), who works as a maid and is the sole income-earner in the household, as well as the only one who cooks and cleans – meaning her unpaid labour allows Kempton the time and freedom to go on his fanciful escapades. The film never acknowledges this power imbalance nor does it interrogate the intersection of gender with age and poverty. While The Duke is a lighthearted bit of fun, these underexplored storylines feel like a missed opportunity. IVANA BREHAS

RIVER 

In this visually stunning documentary, Australian nature filmmaker Jennifer Peedom (Mountain) explores how rivers have shaped human culture and history. Narrated by Willem Dafoe, the film is a hazy cascade of dreamlike visuals set against a score performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

It opens with aerial views of fast-moving rivers, waterfalls and ice caps as Dafoe rushes through a condensed history of civilisation, asking when humans stopped treating rivers as sacred and instead as subjects. The film falls flat in its attempt to contrast the Global South’s reverence of the river with the industrious North’s need to control it.

There’s an over-reliance on predictable tropes: Asian rice paddies, South-East Asian children in fishing boats, religious ceremonies of the Ganges. The film lacks a critical examination of how capitalism has brought rivers to their knees. To quote Dafoe, “Are we being good ancestors” when we can’t even examine ourselves? SAMIRA FARAH

Small Screen Reviews

Claire Cao Small Screens Editor @clairexinwen

THE SPINE OF NIGHT  | SHUDDER

THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY

 | APPLE TV+

 | APPLE TV+

To some people, success isn’t enough. Take Jared Leto: seemingly discontent with his previous acclaim, Leto has recently become known for his overblown and irritating Method acting. The same could be said for Adam Neumann, the real-life entrepreneur behind failed start-up WeWork, and Leto’s latest role, in WeCrashed. The show, based on a popular podcast, follows Neumann’s precipitous journey from grifter to entrepreneur to laughing stock, where billions of speculative dollars were burned in the process. Anne Hathaway brings little more than a stern look and girlboss bluster to Adam’s wife Rebekah, a spiritually vacuous heir to the Paltrow fortune (yes, that one). The series’ undoing lies in its undue focus on the Neumanns’ outsized personalities, with little interest in the system which enabled their delusions.

What should be a breezy airplane movie is an unforgivable eight-hour slog. Neither a raucous romp nor a furious dissection, WeCrashed defaults to smugness in the absence of substance; the audience is invited to laugh, but rarely to think. JAMIE TRAM

There’s something on Ptolemy Grey’s mind – the only problem is, he can’t quite remember.

Dementia takes hold of his ageing body, a condition he struggles against to solve the murder of his beloved nephew, Reggie.

Haunted by the spectres of a Jim Crow-era upbringing, Ptolemy is a man running out of time, desperate to piece together his long and strenuous life. Hope and great risk come in the form of an unethical medical treatment that “cures” dementia for four weeks. Nothing short of convincing, Samuel L Jackson assumes the role of a tortured soul with wild eyes and contemplative quietness; though he’s lost his memories, his history is written all over his face. Through Ptolemy’s experiences and those of his caretaker Robyn (Dominique Fishback), the series confronts the psychological trauma endured by Black Americans – albeit flatly from moment to moment. Much like Ptolemy’s own headspace, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey comes in and out of focus: sincerely thoughtful at times but all together scatterbrained.

BRUCE KOUSSABA

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’ve often thought that my dog can sense the slightest shifts in my mood, almost like he can read my mind. The new ABC docu-series A Dog’s World With Tony Armstrong (premiering 22 March) proves I’m not far off – and that the moniker of “man’s best friend” is no exaggeration.

Delving into the ancient lineage of our loyal canines, scientists explain how generations of human-dog socialisation have led to unique evolutionary traits: dogs are one of the only species that can think abstractly in response to human emotions and facial expressions.

Host Tony Armstrong breezes through 10,000 years of history with charming ease, helped by footage of frolicking and skateboarding pups.

Although the series skims over the darker questions of human control – including our disruption of wild habitats – it offers insight into how different species can meaningfully shape each other. It even theorises that human development may have gone wayward without the help of our furry friends.

More fluffy adventures can be found over at Disney+ this month. Turning Red, which features Pixar’s first ever female director (Domee Shi, Bao), follows a dorky Chinese Canadian teen that “poofs” into a red panda whenever her feelings reach a fever pitch.

The film also marks an exciting stylistic departure for the studio, with dreamy pastel backgrounds and anime-inspired “chibi” designs. Shi’s earnest vision of a schoolgirl bulldozing her way through puberty and family secrets may be Pixar’s freshest project in years. CC

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WECRASHED

SEEING RED

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A scholar’s chance encounter with a mystical priestess sets off an epic tale of conquest, sorcery and bloodshed. In this animated fantasy, a magical blue flower offers untold power – along with dark cosmic truths. Featuring the vocal talents of Lucy Lawless, Richard E Grant and Patton Oswalt, The Spine of Night is a star-studded, surprisingly sincere adventure. However, sincere is not to be confused with sanitised. Graphic violence abounds – dismemberment and disfigurement, both magical and murderous. Nudity is likewise plentiful, though always matter of fact, neither played for laughs nor revelling in objectification or brutality. Visually, the rotoscoped animation errs on the side of caution, prioritising accuracy over expression. The strength lies in the background paintings, with moody mountains and castles rivalling illustrations from old-school fantasy novels. Ultimately a convoluted parable about the pursuit of knowledge tainted by greed, the film has more philosophical musings than hack-and-slash thrills. But even as its seriousness holds it back, the uncompromising retro vision commands respect. AGNES FORRESTER

Music Reviews

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WHO IS ALDOUS HARDING?

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ow to describe Aldous Harding?

The New Zealand artist has spent the past eight years shirking easy categorisation, as well as avoiding explaining the meaning of her work.

Her self-titled debut, released in 2014, was informed by folk, largely featuring acoustic, ethereal songs that contained their own unique combination of menace and melancholy. Her last two records Party and Designer (produced by John Parish, known for his many collaborations with PJ Harvey), saw her sound and subject matter grow more playful; singing in many different vocal registers about airports in Dubai, screaming birds, aliens and her inner child.

One could call it surreal, but I think the best explanation I’ve seen of her work has been ‘‘impressionistic”. While she really is a singular artist, for me her work often brings to mind the late Dory Previn, a poet and singer, whose work is theatrical and haunting, full of fables and dreamy, child-like quality.

Harding has again teamed up with Parish on Warm Chris, which anchors itself in the stranger corners of 70s experimental pop‑rock – think Nico and John Cale. Songs hypnotise with plodding piano and organs, and Harding’s multiplicitous voice, which stretches itself to even stranger territory. Her voice is liturgical, angelic, wry, squeaky, jazzy and cartoonish. As for the lyrics, I will have to give it a fair few more listens before I can begin to crack its cryptic, strange beauty, which includes skies, Bambi and the sculptor Henry Moore. IT

Isabella Trimboli Music Editor @itrimboli

SOMETHING I ONCE HEARD NICK GRIFFITH 

Anyone who’s heard Nick Griffith’s assorted bands (Big White, High-tails, Bored Shorts) will already be acquainted with the South Coast multi-tasker’s talent for hook-driven guitar-pop.

He reaches new heights on his second solo album, which opens with the title track’s pure-spun bubblegum jangle before slipping directly into the bright and spontaneous power pop of ‘Dream Come True’. Griffith traces most of these tunes to his travels in Spain and Portugal, after which he adapted the demos with help from members of Big White, The Middle East and Body Type. The single ‘Island’ provides a mellow entry point for newcomers to Griffith’s songbook, spinning anxiety-induced escapism into a gorgeous ballad warmed with ruffled organ and playful percussion. Most surprising, by contrast, is ‘Barcelona’, a pulsing synth-pop throwback that extends to nearly six minutes with plenty of open space along the way. Something I Once Heard is a fairly short outing at only eight songs, but Griffith packs the half-hour running time with casual revelations, plucking yet another classicsounding chorus seemingly from thin air on ‘Waking in the Dead of Night’. DOUG WALLEN

ANGEL IN REALTIME GANG OF YOUTHS

BY THE BOOK PARTNER LOOK

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The death of a father, and the release of family secrets, are at the centre of angel in realtime, Gang of Youths’ ostentatious third album. The Sydney band, now based in London, are known for their arena-primed rock songs, and their new record certainly delivers this – and then some. Gospel choirs, orchestral sweeps, claps, rollicking guitars and Dave Le’aupepe’s vocals are in full force.

The palette is more diverse than previous releases, with the band adding a touch of electronic flourish. Lyrics are bold, weird and sometimes completely silly, swinging from self-deprecating confessions to verbose, street-preacher proclamations. The result is a mixed bag, with an outsized ambition often leading to bloated songs that would have done well with less adorned approach. ‘the angel of 8th ave’ is a case in point: an unabashed love song by way of The Killers and Springsteen, stuffed with corny lyrics and clichés. They are best when straying from their rock roots, like on the soul-driven ‘tend the garden’. ISABELLA TRIMBOLI

United by the bonds of love, sisterhood and friendship, Partner Look – out of Melbourne and Germany – possess a connection that makes their straightforward yet affecting indie-pop gleam. Named after the German phrase for two people who wear matching clothes, the band’s debut record possesses an unforced charm that only years of performing in bands – Cool Sounds and Studio Magic – can bring. Opening track ‘Partner Look’ kicks things off with an infectious sense of fun, its repeated refrain giving the band its first of many earworms. This playfulness is captured again on the Ambrin Hasnain-led ‘Rodeo Tragic’ and ‘Grasshopper’, the latter a whimsical tribute to a grasshopper who meets its end. The band tackle more personal subject matter too, with Lachlan Denton and Ambrin’s sister Anila exploring their sense of home on ‘Geelong’ and ‘Endless Plains’, while Dainis Lacey offers an endearing romantic sentiment on ‘Chipsy’. By the Book showcases four songwriters who bring out the best in each other. HOLLY PEREIRA

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

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FOUND, WANTING NATASHA SHOLL

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A departed mother’s penetrating voice narrates Craig Sherborne’s fourth novel, addressing her surviving son in a distinctive stream-of-consciousness flow. Named for the son’s place of solace, where he nurtures would-be problem horses in paddocks far removed from the confusing tumult of society, The Grass Hotel symbolically pairs these two family members who aren’t ideal models of love and support. The son much prefers the company of animals, while the mother holds court with stubborn vanity. When the family’s kindly patriarch dies, the other two lose that tempering presence and the mother descends further into dementia. The writing shows off Sherborne’s considerable experience as both a poet and playwright. It can be an uncomfortable read, both in its head-on confrontation of death and in the mother’s unfiltered, increasingly unreliable commentary. But it’s well worth those moments for its frank depiction of the way someone else’s presence lingers in our internal monologue, often unbidden. DOUG WALLEN

Natasha Sholl was in her early twenties when the man she planned to marry died beside her in his sleep. The sudden loss of him plunged her into a grief that was diagnosed as complex PTSD. Years later, a second intimate loss compounds the first. The reader is immersed under the author’s blanketing grief – as she alternately kicks against it and submits to its weight – for a long time, from the memoir’s opening pages. It starts off fractured, staccato, disoriented. “I needed help. To exist.” This can be difficult to read, but acutely captures the emotional texture, inherent contradictions and impossible social demands of grief. Sholl is fragile and tenacious in equal measure. Similarly, she struggles throughout to balance her loyalties to living and dead loved ones. That constantly negotiated balance – and her willingness to tell on herself – make her an intriguing narrator. JO CASE

STRANGERS I KNOW CLAUDIA DURASTANTI 

What does it take to know another person? Do you even need to understand someone in order to love them? Strangers I Know is a novel alive with an almost impatient curiosity. The narrator, Claudia, is seeking to understand her family. Both her parents are deaf and don’t share a common language. More confusingly for Claudia, they are prone to inventing stories, creating myths and telling outrageous lies. Set between New York, London and southern Italy, this novel explores what it means to belong when everyone is speaking a different language. As someone with hearing loss, it wasn’t surprising to learn that the author’s parents are deaf; Durastanti’s approach to storytelling feels like a deaf conversation. The novel resists linearity: it is responsive and recursive, deeply layered and logical. Each sentence becomes a story within itself: crafted, considered, yet surprisingly loose, playful and continually gesturing beyond itself – pulling in anecdotes, memories, and references to historical figures, artists, literature and film. It is simply dazzling. FIONA MURPHY

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THE GRASS HOTEL CRAIG SHERBORNE

18 MAR 2022

he literary scene offers a host of reasons to keep calm and imagine what’s possible this month, which, after flood, pandemic and the possibility of world war, does come as some relief.

The longlist of 12 for the 2022 Stella Prize is a dynamic list indeed – extending beyond the standard novels, memoir and short fiction to include, for the first time, poetic forms as well. Seven of the books on the list are from debut authors, and five are from First Nations writers, which is cause for optimism. Stay tuned for the shortlist announcement on the 31st of this month.

Giramondo’s HEAT literary journal has made a triumphant return for the first time in 10 years. The journal will be published every two months, with a renewed commitment “to challenge convention and spark international exchange”. Edition #1 features some energetic new writing from Josephine Rowe, Sarah Holland-Batt, Mireille Juchau, Brian Castro and Cristina Rivera Garza. It’s a compact, singular, boundary-pushing little mag, bright orange in colour and well worth a look.

Melburnians will rejoice that the Art Book Fair is underway (17-27 March). If you’re into the intersection of art, design, language, publishing and DIY, then this is the place to be. There’s talks, launches, workshops (including one on how to make your own zines by The Sticky Institute) and the opportunity to hang out at the NGV and buy many beautiful, beautiful books. Read widely and well, folks! MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

A few days later, I was doing yoga (I’m becoming a yoga person – it’s a whole character arc) and at the end bit where you lie on the floor and try not to go to sleep, I looked up at the ceiling fan. The whole room was reflected in it. There was a tiny me on a tiny yoga mat.

A pile of washing over there. A cat over there. I thought: look at that person, living her life.

Another way to come at your life sideways is to look at photographs. An accidental hour sitting with someone, giggling at things and trying to remember things and telling stories, while the day grows slowly darker around you and your cups of tea go cold.

At my kid’s school, they use Google Earth to study geography. Don’t know what Google Earth is? It’s basically satellite images of the entire planet/your street/a forest in South America/wherever you want to go. Honestly, though, the kids just love it because they can look at each other’s houses on it. Travelling the world remotely is by no means as incredible as travelling the world via aeroplane, but the thing is, it’s free, and you don’t get jetlag. You realise, when you’re somewhere else, that your life is happening while billions of other people’s lives are happening

too, in many different cultures and environments and languages. Your life flashes before your very eyes when you do this kind of thing, I reckon, because you’re comparing yourself not to other people you know but to a whole world of people you don’t know. What a mind-blowing thing.

The other time I feel like my life flashes before my eyes (but without the almost dying bit) is when I hear a song I haven’t heard in a while. Nothing like music to take you – almost physically – back to a place or a time or a person you love. There are some songs that are too much for me because of this.

That’s how powerful music is. If you try and think about what you were doing that long ago for work, or what your worries were, you might not be able to put your finger on it. But the lyrics to your favourite song?

They’ll come back, unbidden, as soon as the opening chords sound.

I had a friend play a trick on me recently. She told me about someone who was trying so hard to do the right thing but who was too busy and very stressed and whose life circumstances were just not enabling her to focus on this thing. She was blaming herself, when really the problem wasn’t that big in the scheme of things. Oh, how I felt for this friend. How I empathised. At this, my mate clapped her hands at me and said: “Ha! It was YOU ALL ALONG!” and I realised she had changed a few details and made me EMPATHISE WITH MYSELF. I think this is what they call “self care”, and it was true: I did not judge the stranger I had not met (and who in fact did not exist) as harshly as I had been judging myself for whatever it was (not cleaning the house, probably).

Public Service Announcement: take a look at your life from a different angle. Pretend you’re someone else for a minute. Listen to an old song. Look at some photos. Put down the laptop and look at the ceiling fan. It’s nice to get out sometimes.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The new series of her radio and podcast series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

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T

he other day, my life flashed before my eyes. When a writer says this, what they’re often describing is a computer malfunction.

That’s exactly what I’m describing now. My laptop, with all my stuff on it, became a broken piece of hardware rather than a host of unfinished projects and creative possibilities. Yes, I had it backed up. No, I don’t need your advice about “the cloud”, although thank you very much because I have had to learn all that the hard way.

So I had to get it fixed. That meant that for several days, I wasn’t myself. I was no longer a writer. I was a person in the world. I didn’t crouch over a laptop for hours. I read some things and went for a walk and cleaned out a few cupboards without thinking I should really be getting back to it.

Public Service Announcement: have your life flash before your eyes (without the almost dying part). It’s fascinating what you’ll see.

18 MAR 2022

News Flash

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

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PHOTOS BY WANGARATTA CHRONICLE AND ISTOCK

Tastes Like Home The Big Issue’s Will

Apple Pie Ingredients

Method

SHARE

Grease a 23cm pie dish. Preheat oven to 210°C. Place flour, icing sugar and butter in a large bowl and, using your fingers, rub in the butter. Add the egg yolks and mix until a dough is formed. Put on a lightly floured bench and push into a ball.

Divide into two portions, one slightly larger than the other. Roll the larger portion between two sheets of baking paper. Cover bottom of the greased pie dish with the rolled-out pastry. Roll out the remaining pastry for the top. Cover both in plastic wrap and refrigerate while making the filling.

Combine the apples, sugar, cinnamon and cloves with two tablespoons of water in a large pan. Cover over low heat and cook until softened, stirring occasionally. Once cooked, pour off any juice and remove cloves. Add marmalade and butter to the pan, mix and cool.

Pour apple mixture into pastry-lined pie dish.

Brush pastry rim with a little milk or water, put on the pastry lid and seal together edges with a fork.

Slash holes in the lid, brush with milk and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 180°C and bake for a further 30 minutes until golden.

PLAN TO RECREATE WILL’S DISH AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR CREATION! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME

Will says…

F

illing my life with food gets me very excited. Apple pie reminds me of growing up on the family farm and having family gatherings. My Nanna would make the best homemade apple pie, and then my other Granny and I would make a delicious vanilla custard – it was tastebud heaven. I had a special bond with Granny.

She would treat me like everyone else; she would always make sure I was the first to help when it was time to do the dishes. I loved being treated just like everyone else.

I have cerebral palsy, live in a wheelchair and I have some intellectual disabilities.

I love looking back at all my wonderful family memories and traditions. Food says community to me because enjoying a great meal is a great way to get together with those who are important to you. It’s why I decided to publish my very own cookbook, Will and Friends Assorted Recipes. It is full of recipes I have gathered from friends and family. I have designed my cookbook to be accessible for everyone – it stands up on its own, with easy-to-read recipes while you cook. It was really important that my recipes cater for people with disabilities. I am very passionate about making things inclusive.

I have really enjoyed publishing my cookbook. I have met many wonderful people and love selling it while being a long‑time vendor of The Big Issue. I’ve been selling The Big Issue on the streets and out front of the local Big W in Wangaratta for over 17 years. I love nothing more than getting out in the community, meeting people and making them smile. It’s my absolute dream job and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do it.

I always strive to live my life to the fullest and enjoy the great things life has to offer, one of those being amazing food.

For me, going out and doing these different things – selling The Big Issue, making my cookbook, getting the support of my carers to help build a small business – gives me a lot of freedom and independence. I really want to be an example to people, to show them that you can build a great life and follow your dreams, even when you have limitations.

WILL SELLS THE BIG ISSUE IN WANGARATTA, VICTORIA. WILL AND FRIENDS ASSORTED RECIPES IS ON SALE VIA MOOREFOODS.COM.AU.

18 MAR 2022

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon 2 cloves 1 tablespoon marmalade 30g butter milk for glazing extra caster sugar for sprinkling

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2 cups plain flour ¼ cup icing sugar 185g butter, cubed 2 egg yolks 4-5 green apples, peeled, cored and chopped into chunks ¾ cup caster sugar

BIG ISSUE VENDOR WILL WITH HIS OWN COOKBOOK

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45.

By Lingo!

by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au CRAFT

CLUES 5 letters Canada’s leaf Cockerel bred for eating Force, urge Gripping device Quite enough 6 letters Common food fish Easily detachable (necktie) (hyphenated) Force, coerce Of Swiss mountains Sketching implement 7 letters Big‑billed water‑bird Make (crosswords) 8 letters Whinge

N

I

A

E

P O

L

C M

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

8 7 4

1 5 3 8 6 8

3 3 7 5

7

6

7 9 2

5 2 3 9 4

1 4

6 7 1

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Succumb 5 Muscles 9 Elongates 10 Eight 11 Arsenal 12 Twitter 13 Mood 14 Grapefruit 16 Redirected 19 Ibid. 21 Gourmet 22 Handout 24 Gizmo 25 Underwear 26 Element 27 Audited

DOWN 1 Siena 2 Crossword puzzle 3 Urging 4 Battler 5 Misstep 6 Sheriffs 7 Lightbulb moment 8 Saturated 13 Mortgagee 15 Primrose 17 Catsuit 18 Echidna 20 Snared 23 Tired

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Dame Nellie Melba (in 1927) 2 Dundee 3 Frangipani 4 They both took the same number of Test wickets, 355, for wicketkeeping and bowling respectively 5 c) The wife’s weight in beer 6 True 7 Peter Capaldi 8 Christmas Day 9 Strollout 10 Le Bateau by Henri Matisse 11 Two 12 Liquefied petroleum gas 13 Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem (Best Actress and Best Actor) and Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons (Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor) 14 10 15 The brassiere 16 The Factory 17 Having a shower 18 1984 by George Orwell 19 Cape Byron 20 Ringo Starr

18 MAR 2022

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues?

Every answer must include the central letter.

Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

43

Word Builder

Many of us discovered (or rediscovered!) a fondness for crafts over the last couple of years. (Some of us were too busy reading dictionaries. Not me, though. A friend.) In the 6th century, cræft meant “physical strength” or “power”. By the 1500s, the “power” sense of craft had disappeared, leaving behind two main senses: “expertise in a particular field” and “an occupation that requires technical ability”, particularly where this occupation involved working with the hands.

While these meanings have survived to the present day (especially in compounds such as stagecraft), we’re much more likely to use craft for pastimes that involve making something decorative with our hands. Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be over here with my dictionar— uh, knitting.

Crossword

by Steve Knight

Quick Clues

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

1

2

3

4

5

6

9

7

8

10

11

ACROSS

1 Yield (7) 5 Bands of fibrous tissue in the body (7) 9 Stretches (9) 10 Number considered lucky in China (5) 11 Cache of weapons (7) 12 Popular social media platform (7) 13 Disposition (4) 14 Citrus (10) 16 Diverted (10) 19 Latin abbreviation denoting from the

12

same source (4.)

13

21 Epicurean (7) 22 A free sample (7) 24 Gadget (5) 25 Briefs, for example (9) 26 Component (7) 27 Checked (7)

14 15

16

17

18

19

DOWN

20 22

25

26

27

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

DOWN

1 Remove herb stuffing from cucumbers, chop

1 Starts from scenic Italian enclave near

5 Maybe traps catch shellfish (7) 9 Two tech billionaires in stretches (9) 10 Finishes off high tea, drunk by dinnertime

2 ZZ Top lures crowds to dance shirtless. You’re in

up, then fold (7)

perhaps? (5)

11 Arms behind heads, necks and legs (7) 12 Sounds like a cheap way of communicating (7) 13 State of mind or twist of fate? (4) 14 Citrus and stewed fig – rapture! (10) 16 Rose, Harry, Eric and Ted sent elsewhere (10) 19 Single offer from the same place (4.)

21 Foodie in Spooner’s camper (7) 22 Charity to debut in Home and Away (7) 24 I go crazy over Zoom tips for device (5) 25 Briefs UN Secretary, essentially breaking Red

War conflict (9)

26 Some clientele mentioned a particular

feature (7) 27 Model I dated takes turn to be ticked off? (7)

Arezzo! (5)

the middle of one (9,6) 3 Pour gin generously, sample when driving (6) 4 Boxer left in pound (7) 5 Young woman favourite for promotion and a trip (7) 6 She plays for Western Force? (8) 7 Bomb them till gun goes off. That’s when it hit you (9,6) 8 Soaking in unoccupied spa with grotesquely rude tat (9) 13 Lender’s arm got twisted. Wow (9) 15 Plant particular lines in audition… (8) 17 …playing Atticus in a onesie? (7) 18 Prickly Aussie backing Fortune 500 in China (7) 20 Caught Andrews broadcast out west (6) 23 Beat it up, Ruby (5)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

8 5 3 7 1 4 9 6 2

9 7 4 5 6 2 8 1 3

1 6 2 9 8 3 4 7 5

5 3 9 1 2 6 7 4 8

4 8 7 3 9 5 1 2 6

2 1 6 4 7 8 5 3 9

7 9 5 2 3 1 6 8 4

6 2 1 8 4 9 3 5 7

3 4 8 6 5 7 2 9 1

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Maple Capon Impel Clamp Ample 6 Plaice Clip-on Compel Alpine Pencil 7 Pelican Compile 8 Complain 9 Policeman

18 MAR 2022

24

23

45

21

1 Tuscan city (5) 2 Form of brain-teaser (9,6) 3 Encouraging (6) 4 One who struggles (7) 5 Blunder (7) 6 Law-keepers in westerns (8) 7 When the penny drops (9,6) 8 Soaked (9) 13 Lender (9) 15 Plant with yellow flowers (8) 17 Tight fitting one piece garment (7) 18 Spiny mammal (7) 20 Trapped (6) 23 Exhausted (5)

Click 20 MAY 1999

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

46

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Shane Warne

T

his is the day in his life Shane Warne wanted to go back to – the day his son Jackson was born. The same Jackson who said that “sitting at the poker table, walking around the golf course, watching the Saints and eating pizza is never going to be the same,” now that his father has died.

I was interviewing Shane for The Big Issue cover story for Ed#605, a Letter to My Younger Self. He was typically open and honest. He explained that his mother taught him manners – Warnie, despite the larrikin image, was as polite a person as I have encountered. “Always smell nice and have good manners,” he said, which has stuck in my mind. It was clear, talking to Warnie, that the most important thing to him was family – he nominated his parents, Keith and Brigitte, as his heroes. He was not averse to confronting his disappointments, like when his AFL team, St Kilda, told him his services as a player were no longer required, which meant that aged 18 his one and

only dream was shattered. At that time the notion of playing cricket for Australia was not on his radar. He made it clear in our interview that while he had many friends – just look at the roll call of household names who have mourned his passing – it’s the close core friends that count.

The clock was ticking and Warnie had to move on to his next engagement – it was a Friday night and his old club, the Stars, were playing. But I had one more question. “Shoot,” he said.

For the first time in our chat, he was a little lost for words.

He hesitated. So unlike Shane.

Maybe he didn’t really want to say.

Maybe it hurt too much. But he said it anyway. The day in his life he would like to return to – there were two of them. The day his first child, Brooke, was born, and he was in England on an Ashes tour.

And the day his son, Jackson, was born, when again he was touring England, on the dressing room balcony at Cardiff, wishing he was home in Melbourne with his wife Simone, child and baby. Third time lucky – he got his wish to be present at the birth of his third child, Summer.

God bless, Shane. Luv ya.

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18 JUNE 2020