/karen/

Ten: Thursday 21/07/2005

Monday, 25 July, 2005

I have a date with Ben and the Great Ocean Road. We set out at 8 with minimal breakfast, trying not to wake Kathleen. It's a long drive and I keep falling asleep for most of it. When we get to coast, it is breathtaking.

Obligatory Ben and Karen shot:

We stop for lunch somewhere I've forgotten the name of and ate burgers. Then the drive continued and we were back at the coast, spotting the first of the apostles.

(Did you know that the 12 Apostles were also once called “The Sow and her Piglets”? I kid you not!)

There was this strange sign on the way down to the beach. I don't quite get it:

We drove on a little further and there was the tourist centre and the helicopters and little clumps of people milling about. We saw the “martyred” apostle

and of course all the others. It was very pretty!

Then we turned around and went back the way we came, me falling asleep again in the car but waking up just as we were heading back into Melbourne to put on Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and direct Ben where to go. We are back in time for dinner and we encounter Kathleen coming back from it, warning us it was the worst college meal she'd ever had. We carefully avoid the chicken and order the gnocchi but she's right; it really is the worst meal ever.

I spend most of the evening packing before a double dose of Law and Order. Then Kathleen and I polish off the American Gods weblog which, I have to say, I really enjoyed. It was lovely getting the origins of Neil's blogging habit and the behind-the-scenes look into what it's like to be a published author (from copy-editing to exhausting signing tours), the dramas and humour of everyday life (like losing your voice:

Wednesday, May 23, 2001

I'm in Argentina.

Spent today at Conrad, my publishers. I managed to do a press conference before lunch despite having no voice at all. I mean, none. Nothing. Nada. Zip. When I open my mouth this is what comes out: “... ....”

The press conference only worked because Cassius, my editor at Conrad, spent the last four days with me as my translator and all-around help. He sat next to me at every signing I've done since I got to Brazil and listened to the answers I gave to the questions people asked. He learned that, mostly, if you ask me the same question, I'll give you the same answer, or similar. And he heard those answers over and over again.

So at the press conference, they'd ask a question, like “Are you working with Terry Gilliam on the Good Omens movie?” and I would simply lean over to Cassius and whisper in his ear, like the godfather (his simile), or like a particularly large and malevolent glove puppet (mine), and mouth “Can you take this one?” and he'd do three minutes of stuff he'd heard me say whenever I was asked the question before—and he'd say it in Portuguese, which was more than I ever could.

) and his reaction to September 11 2001. I cannot believe the amount of sushi he eats—it's just incredible. And it's funny that he and I once owned the same kind of computer (Toshiba Libretto: you think my current laptop is small, you should have seen this!) Oh yes and I recognised an element of the Endless Nights “Death” story from his trip to Venice (scroll down to September 21).

It was a little sad to have our journey with Neil finally over and we tried to compensate by reading bits and pieces from the rest of Adventures in the Dream Trade. I guess we will just have to make do with the rest of his blog.

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