Michael Neff 2012

"And the odd thing, you see, is that I don't think that's how I really am. I just can't believe that I'm this muddy thing crawling about in the muck. I don't feel as if I am. I simply can't tell you how I feel inside! Clean and bright and beautiful--like a song in the sunlight, like a sigh in the summer air."

- from The Mouse and His Child

Michael Neff is a bartender and cocktail expert who wrote an article in Serious Eats in December reflecting on Russell Hoban and his love for this book.

Debby Trimmer 2012

"We're toy mice," said the child. "Is it Miss or Mr. Mudd? Please excuse my asking, but I can't tell by looking at you."

"Miss," said the little creature. She was something like a misshapen grasshopper, and was as drab and muddy as her name. "I'll be your friend if you'll be mine," she said. "Will you, do you think? I'm so unsure of everything."

"We'll be your friends," said the child. "We're unsure too, especially about the little dogs."

"I know," said Miss Mudd. "It's all so difficult. And of course everyone bigger than I tries to eat me, and I'm always busy eating everyone smaller. So there isn't much time to think things out." As she spoke, she flung what looked like an arm out from her face, caught a water flea, and ate it up. "It's so distasteful," she said. "I know it's distasteful. I've got this nasty sort of a huge lip with a joint in it like an elbow, and I catch my food with it. And the odd thing, you see, is that I don't think that's how I really am. I just can't believe that I'm this muddy thing crawling about in the muck. I don't feel as if I am. I simply can't tell you how I feel inside! Clean and bright and beautiful--like a song in the sunlight, like a sigh in the summer air."

- from The Mouse and His Child

Posted on Facebook and left in the stacks at Title Wave Books, Anchorage, AK

Lindsay Edmunds 2012

"I'm not wound anymore," he said.

"Well," said Frog, "I don't suppose anyone ever is completely self-winding. That's what friends are for."

- from The Mouse and His Child

Left in Peters Township Public Library, McMurray, PA, USA and also posted on Facebook

The most readable part of my SA4QE quotation photo is the last two lines, which I took from Chris Bell: "The books live on. Long live the words." 

See Lindsay's blog

Twitterers, Facebookers and Bloggers 2011

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

- from Turtle Diary, tweeted by Joe Snow

Place of dismemberment? said Kleinzeit.
Everywhere, all the time, said Hall of Records.

- from Kleinzeit, tweeted by David Dixon

Sometimes now I dream of music. Not opera music, what it is I don't know. Over me, under me, all around me. I can hear it, I can feel it. when I wake up it is gone. Lost, nothing remembered.

- from Come Dance With Me, tweeted by John D here and here

‘A sense of loss pervades the paintings of Peter Diggs,’ wrote the critic Cecil Berkeley about my last show at the Fanshawe Gallery.

- from Amaryllis Night and Day, tweeted by remotevoices

There's nothing beyond the last visible dog but us.

- from The Mouse and His Child, tweeted by Chris Bell

(Bat bowl from the Victoria & Albert Museum that inspired The Bat Tattoo)

Facebooked by Olle Lawson

A Dog shall rise and a Rat shall fall.

- from The Mouse and His Child, Facebooked by Alison Baker

I do not like the way you slide,
I do not like your soft inside,
I do not like you lots of ways,
And I could do for many days
Without eggs.

- from Egg Thoughts and Other Frances Songs, Facebook-commented by Becky Morgan

I am actually a believer. I have faith that there's nothing that cares about us one way or the other.

- from The Bat Tattoo, tweeted by Danielle Carr

I searched in my A to Z for anything Balsamic but there was nothing.

- from Amaryllis Night and Day, tweeted by Squirmelia

And finally, here's a lovely post on the happy birdaycake blog from 7 February 2011 in which a mother and daughter make a real "Marzipan Pig" - not exactly a 4qation but just as tasty...

Russell Hoban at the Serpentine Map Marathon, 16 October 2010

Russell Hoban onstage

Last weekend Russell Hoban made a rare public appearance - an onstage interview for Map Marathon: Maps for the 21st Century, a multimedia event featuring dozens of writers, artists and academics hosted by the Serpentine Gallery at the Royal Geographical Society, London. During the interview Russell talked about the "mystique" of maps and the part they have played in his work, and his new novel Angelica Lost and Found. The SA4QE event and The Kraken Hoban community also got a mention. A number of SA4QE/Kraken stalwarts were in attendance including Anthony Davis, who takes us back there now. A transcript of the interview is included below.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER MORRISON

Travel difficulties / delays apart, and despite being without a MAP at the crucial moment requiring a circumnavigation of the Royal Albert Hall, all turned to the good! Peering into the dark of the RGS's lecture theatre soon revealed the features of some well-known Krakenites, and I even had a seat reserved where I could witness Gilbert and George, rather tangentially, reading their 'mapping' of postcards that, to their eye, featured the Union Flag (they know so much better than to call it the Union Jack!), i.e. a list, in alphabetical order, of the largely arbitrary - and not without a comic bent - titles that they had given to these cards whose collection they had so dutifully curated; likewise their mapping of 'telephone [box] cards', but only those that - to their mind - left something to the imagination.

For me, seeing these icons of the gay art world and hearing them talk about their maps of county towns and seaside resorts was a very fitting prelude to Russ's own session, and one which made the whole protracted jurney (sure some Riddley?) quite worthwhile, as, of course, did seeing Russ again and a no. of Hobanites, old and new.


Eleanor Bron started the session with a lovely reading from the start of The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, although I really don't know how she kept her composure with the noise and bustle of people re-taking their seats, and generally milling around the lecture-space as if no thought-out and sensitive rendition were being given. [The reading is available from Thoughtcat as a 3mb mp4 audio file; you will need to turn up the volume as it is quite soft.] Russ was then helped, with the support of a clearly much-needed arm (that of his would-be interviewer and host, Hans Ulrich Obrist), down, across and up to and into one of the padded chairs to the right of the lectern: his physical frailty was patent, and I'm sure that everyone watching (not just those who knew him) must have felt for the effort that he was making just to be present at this event.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (l) with Russell Hoban

So much was Russ enjoying being there, though, that it was evident not only in his mental liveliness, but also in his quirkily engaging quality and character of speech, which were immediately to the fore in his first answer. Coupled with these was the comfortable way in which he was clearly sensing the room and its occupants, as the professional communicator that he is. (In fact, he could be seen, once settled into his chair, already putting out what one could call tentacles or feelers for this purpose.)

After first answering a question about Lion that arose from the reading, Russ had politely, but definitely, to decline to address the second one put to him [of whether he thought that the "master map" that Jachin-Boaz wanted to make for his son to "show him where to find whatever he might wish to look for" was a kind of precursor to the Internet; "Can I dodge that question?" Hoban responded, to the delight of much of the audience]. I felt this exchange spoke volumes about the lack of preparation on the part of the interviewer, in establishing a rapport with Russ: I am guessing that, otherwise, he would not have offered a lead that was felt to be so inappropriate that Russ seemed quickly to have decided that he would prefer to answer a different question and volunteer some information.

I'm not definite about this, because I obviously imagined that the question asked was going to be turned to, and Russ then talked about something else, but I think that what he had been presented with was a too circumscribed way of inviting him to share feelings about his works and their genesis: I believed at the time, and still do, that overstepping a question to present material that one would have one's audience hear, rather than just the response to some tired or otherwise vexing or uninteresting enquiry, must have been the right one. (I know from talking to Russ that he, rightly, does not reward poor questions with his attention, and I think that it is because he simply doesn't find any life in them, and so the questioner is punished, in a way, with an impoverished answer.)

I had been glad to learn, from his answer to a question about Riddley [see below], that he had used maps in writing it, both an early Ordnance Survey map of Kent, and one, of a futuristic nature, that projected that a former channel of water would reopen, separating the rest of the county from an area that he called The Ram. For me, this fuels an existing desire to be guided around the lands over which Riddley roams (and from which others have come), and to do so in, on and around a vehicle with a like-minded crew, willing to absorb the sights, sounds, drinks and other delicacies in a joint exploration of what this very different county tells us about the places in which Russ placed the unfolding of his story. 

The interview

The following is a transcription of the interview from an audio recording by Richard Cooper. The recording started in the middle of the answer Russell Hoban was giving to the above "dodged" question about maps and the Internet.

Map from Treasure Island (Wikipedia)

RH: ... As a boy I used to send away to the Canadian-Pacific Railways for their maps and they sent me these wonderful maps with the provinces and the states in different colours and blue for the oceans, and maps are a - how can I say... er, take Robert Louis Stevenson's book Treasure Island - every edition, whether hardback or paperback, has that map in the front, and you look at that map and you know good things are in store for you. [laughter] And that is more often that not connected to action - you look at a map because you want to get somewhere to do something. Sometimes it's just you look at a map to know where you are. And when you first approached me about this stuff I began to think about maps and it hit me all of a sudden that maps were the precursor of language. And I was thinking - we don't know whether prehistoric man, Cro-Magnon man, had language or not, but I was imagining a couple of Cro-Magnon guys, and one of them wants to tell the other where he saw a herd of mammoth. And first of all he would have to establish the man he was talking to himself, so maybe he marked something in the dirt with a stick, make a stick figure or maybe just some kind of a mark, and then he would have to indicate time somehow - it was time behind him, it was yesterday, he saw the herd of mammoth by a river and there was a big rock. And so then he would scratch in the dirt the river and something that indicated the passage of time, say the sun going up and down, and that would be the first map. And from that map he had language. And now you get into a taxi and the driver has a satnav, and [inaudible] maps of the heavens, so it all began with a guy drawing with a stick in the dirt.

HUO: What about your own maps? Do you have a collection? Gilbert and George talked about the huge collection they have of maps, do you collect maps?

RH: I have often used maps. When I wrote Riddley Walker I had a copy of the first ordnance map, I think it was the very first one which was during the Victorian period, and I also had a put-together composite of the ordnance survey maps for the area that I was working in, and I had this up on the wall, it's a big thing, and I also had a chart of the Thames Estuary, which indicated places that I needed to refer to. And I have smaller maps that showed parts of Kent that I was working in. And the maps are always a strong support and a kind of inspiration - as I say there is a mystique about maps that I have responded to all my life, and working on those maps, with those maps, I got Riddley Walker done, and I also drew a map of my own which I put together with the help of - I forget the organisation they were with, it might have been an agricultural college, I don't know - who showed me how in the future the Wansum Channel between one part of Kent and the other would probably open again, so there would be water flowing between the main body of Kent and the other part, which in my book is called The Ram.

HUO: Are there other books of yours with maps?

RH: Well, The Mouse and His Child has a little map in it, and The Trokeville Way has a map in the front. Oh and I'm also thinking apropos of Stevenson's map in Treasure Island, in Edgar Allen Poe's story The Gold Bug I believe there was a map too. And maps are frequently used in thrillers, you know, where the bad guys are after the map that the good guy has, and there are... I think that as a boy we may have sometimes played chase games in which one person had a map.

HUO: I am curious to know about your latest novel, Angelica Lost and Found. Any connection to maps there? If not, I am curious to know anyhow, it would be great to hear about your new book.

RH: Well [laughs], it's a funny thing, when I wrote the book, it didn't seem out of the ordinary to me. It happened to be about a hippogriff who falls in love with a flesh-and-blood woman. The hippogriff is an imaginary animal, and this imaginary animal falls in love with the flesh-and-blood woman, and they achieve intimacy [laughter], and one thing leads to another all through the book, and the imaginary animal has a voice in the narration. And as I say, when I wrote it [there was] nothing remarkable about it, and then I'm trying to figure out where it was coming from. And in 1997 having read Barbara Reynolds's wonderful, wonderful translation of Orlando Furioso I wanted to do something with the characters and the ideas that were in it. And I tried to do something with the hippogriff, whom I called Volatore, and it went on for two pages and fizzled out, and I couldn't see what to do with it. And then a couple of years ago I took out a folder I had called Ariosto Revudebus[?] - I looked at my notes and there was nothing there, and I began to think of another way of doing it, so that's when I started writing Angelica Lost and Found, and that impetus carried me along to the end of it. I might say that the main stimulus that got me started on it was a painting which is reproduced on the cover of the Italian edition of Orlando Furioso, and the painting is by Girolamo da Carpi, a 16th-century Italian painter, and it shows Ruggiero mounted on a hippogriff rescuing Angelica from the sea-monster called Orca. And this painting is interesting because - it's on the cover of the book Angelica Lost and Found - the painting is interesting because first of all it differs from previous paintings by da Carpi, like his Madonna and Child: this painting is almost naive in its rawness, and oddly Angelica is squeezed into a corner held behind a rock, and you can't even see her whole body, you can't see her too clearly, and over here in the sky is this hippogriff with Ruggiero sitting on it and raising his sword. And that painting stayed in my mind. And that was how I got started thinking about what to do with these characters, Ruggiero, Angelica and the hippogriff, and that's the novel.

HUO: I have one more question and that is, I hear a rumour that every year on your birthday, your many fans, also known as the Kraken Club, leave quotes from your work on yellow paper in many places they hope will be picked up. I read also that one member left 33 quotes in 29 locations all across London, which is almost connected to mapping. Can you tell us about this fan club?

RH: Well I don't remember how The Kraken came into being [we do! - Ed], but it did and as you say they ... select quotes from my books and they type them on yellow paper. I use yellow A4 - people ask me why it's yellow A4, and it's because when I was in America I would read many books that would say "The man had a plain deal table on which was a ream of ordinary foolscap". I thought what was foolscap? Maybe it's a kind of paper they make fools' caps[?] out of*. When I got to London I found out foolscap was a size, but I still thought of it as being yellow paper, and that is why I write on A4 yellow paper.

HUO: Thank you so much Russell, thank you very much. [applause]


* Richard notes: This bit of the audio was difficult to hear and the connection with foolscap and yellow doesn't really make sense; there is more information on the SA4QE FAQ page about Russell Hoban's choice of paper. Coincidentally though a Google search I did to try and shed light on this turned up this curious Fool’s Cap Map of the World.

Following Russ's appearance, the attendant Hoban fans filed out of the auditorium in an effort to say hello to their man. Anthony takes up the narrative again.

Anthony provides light for Russ to sign

One of the photographers for the event had asked Russ if he could walk 100 metres to where a studio had been set up, and he had had to decline to take those steps (pun intended). Instead, then, some shots were then taken of him in front of a temporary - and easily overlooked, by those such as I - barrier between the public areas and the stage door [see the result on the Serpentine's Facebook page], so, at this point, Gundula [Russell's wife] said that Russ was in need of a glass of something. When she said that the whiksy (hic / sic!) that I happened to have about my person would be too much, investigating the environs allowed me to rustle up (pun intended!) a glass of Merlot. It was then decided that occupying a free table in the bar was the best way around giving 'hospitality space' to Russ, which had not otherwise been forthcoming, and also to his guests.

Gundula and he had been so kind, and had bought wine for everyone (two bottles each of red and white from the bar - I should rephrase that: they weren't buying two bottles of wine for each person, but four bottles to serve us all!).

Russ and I had a chance to talk about a few things [and he also chatted to the other Hoban fans present and signed books they'd brought]. Maybe / maybe not (in a flicker sort of way) you weren't there yourself - but had you thought that you might have been there on a map that Russ might compile of all of us here to keep us close and near, which he might have in his breast-pocket, or even in his heart...?

See the full set of peter morrison's photos on Flickr (also featuring several other contributors to the Map Marathon)

Alida Allison 2009

Here are my quotes for Russ' big day--

From the short story The Ghost Horse of Genghis Khan:

Genghis Khan, said John's mind. The mind was much older than the boy, it was as ancient as the stars, it remembered all sorts of things that John had never known. It was curious about everything and it was playful, it was obsessed with names and the sounds of words: Khwarizm, Khurastan, Karakorum; Gengis Khan, Genghis, Genghis, Genghis, it said, Genghis galloping, galloping. The thudding of unshod hooves is in the name; the bending of the bow is in the name, the bow of horn and sinew and lacquer. The rider twisting in the saddle draws the bowstring back and looses the arrow, the hiss of the hungry arrow cleaving time and darkness, cleaving forgetfulness so that the galloping of the ghost horse of Genghis Khan is fresh and strong in me.

(as published in The Russell Hoban Omnibus, p763)

The house was certainly grand enough for her, or indeed for anyone. The very cornices and carven brackets bespoke a residence of dignity and style, and the dolls never set foot outside it. They had no need to; everything the could possibly want was there, from the covered platters and silver chafing dishes on the side board to the ebony grand piano among the potted ferns in the conservatory… The house had rooms for every purpose, all opulently furnished and appropriately occupied: There were a piano-teacher doll and a young lady pupil doll in the conservatory, a nursemaid doll for the children dolls in the nursery, and a cook and butler doll in the kitchen. Interminable-weekend-guest dolls lay in the guest room beds, sporting dolls played billiards in the billiard room, and a scholar doll never ceased perusal of the book he held, although he kept in touch with the world by the hand that rested on the globe that stood beside him. There was even an astronomer doll in the lookout observatory, who tirelessly aimed his little telescope at one of the automatic fire sprinklers in the ceiling of the shop. In the dining room, beneath a glittering chandelier, a party of lady and gentleman dolls sat perpetually around a table. Whatever the cook and butler might hope to serve them, they had never taken anything but tea, and that from empty cups, while plaster cakes and pastry, defying time, stood by the silver teapot on the white damask cloth.

from The Mouse and His Child

Paddy, Jan & Russell Caleb 2008

Hello there

The Mouse and His Child is one of our favourite books, and we thought we'd celebrate the return of beavers to Martin Mere at the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust's centre with a few words from Jeb and Zeb. We left one page of yellow A4 inside the hide and another copy by the beaver sculpted from wood outside.

"Jeb," said the voice of Zeb, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"A beaver," said Jeb without hesitation.
"A beaver?" said Zeb.
"A beaver!" echoed Muskrat.
"Right!" said Jeb, clicking his teeth and whacking the floor of the lodge as hard as he could with the flat of his tail. "Beavers do things! They cut down trees! CHONK! BONK! Make dams! SPLASH! KERPLONK! Beavers get rich!"

from The Mouse and His Child

Best wishes,

Paddy, Jan and Russell (age 18 months)

Yvonne Studer 2007

Dear Russ, dear Krakenistas, and dear 6th-form students from HoPro Zürich

On my very first SA4QE tour in 2003, I half-secretly 4qated the school where I work by hanging up quotations on various pillars and on a pinboard over the photocopier by the entrance to the school library. Half-secretly, because I told the deputy headmaster and also the librarian about my doings and met nothing but support and big smiles.

'Sometimes one's got to laugh, you know, or go mad.'
'And,' said Schwarzgang.
(Kleinzeit, 1974)

The photo of the photocopier was used in the collage on the 2007 SA4QE homepage. This year something more effective was wanted, not least because it's also the fifth anniversary of SA4QE. So I decided to read one of Russ's books with my sixth form and somehow involve my students in this year's celebration of Russ's 82nd birthday.

Originally, the book was to be Turtle Diary, but as this novel is still out of print, Kleinzeit took its place and I'm happy to report that it is the highlight of my working week when I can go into my English class to "teach" Russ's novel rather than, for instance, the elusive differences between the 1001 ways of expressing future time in English...

As my students are very hard-working young people and since this time of the year is particularly stressful for them, I didn't want to ask them to go 4qating with me today. Instead I chose an individual quotation from Russ's works for each of them, printed it out on a sheet of yellow A4 paper and gave them the sheets on Thursday, 1st February. Of course I first told them about the project (they were properly introduced to the verb "to 4qate", including its pronunciation "fork-you-ate") and I also showed them a few examples of past 4qations so they could see what good company they would be in when I made them part of it all.

These were the quotations:

The moment will not stay. We seek out places where the sorrow will be lessened, places where there is heart's ease in the sorrow, heart's comfort amidst the pain. For good or ill the moment will not stay. How fast the world flees in all directions from us! (...)
We must find in ourselves the shapes of letting go because we're not free to become what we're going to be next until we let go of what we are now.

from "Mnemosyne, Teen Taals, and Tottenham Court Road", The Moment under the Moment, 1992


~ ~ ~ ~

Sometimes he played the guitar quietly, improvising tunes, but more often he had no wish to let out anything that was in him, nor did he look for anything new to take in. Whatever thoughts and questions were in his mind carried on their own dialogues to which he paid little attention. The feeling of emptiness rushing towards something became a waiting stillness.

from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, 1973


~ ~ ~ ~

Oh yes, I thought, feeling something good just around the corner of my mind: just be all the way in it and you're all right.

from Turtle Diary, 1975


~ ~ ~ ~

...The grown-up is only a thin coat of chocolate over the hard nut of the child. Whatever you were as a kid, you still are when the chocolate gets licked off or scraped off.

from Linger Awhile, 2006


~ ~ ~ ~

Could I be a turtle? Could I through an act of ecstasy swim unafraid and never lost, finding, finding?

from Turtle Diary, 1975

~ ~ ~ ~

'That's it,' said Serpentina. 'Nothing is the ultimate truth.'
'Nothing?' said the child.
'Nothing,' repeated Serpentina. ...
'I don't believe it,' said the mouse child. ... 'I wonder what's on the other side of nothing?' he said.
'Tiny upstart!' said Serpentina.. 'Who are you to seek the other side of nothing?'
'If I'm big enough to stand in the mud all this time and contemplate infinity,' said the child, 'I'm big enough to look at the other side of nothing.' ...
'Ah,' he said, 'there's nothing on the other side of nothing but us.'

from The Mouse and His Child, 1967


~ ~ ~ ~

'Con este tango nacio el tango,' she sang, 'y como un grito salio del sordido barrial buscando el cielo' (With this tango the tango was born, and like a cry it left the squalid slum, seeking the sky).' ... Klein had no Spanish, didn't know what the words meant, but they seemed vitally important to him, seemed the very flame of life in the darkness...
'I can't actually put canyengue into English,' said the Argentinian translator Klein found in the phone book the next day. 'It's a lunfardo word,' she said. 'Lunfardo is a local vocabulary in Buenos Aires and it's used a lot in tango lyrics. Canyengue carries the idea of the suburbs and the common person of low social condition whose manner of dancing the tango is earthy and full-blooded with no added-on refinement; canyengue in the hips means dancing with the real feeling of the tango.'
'Canyengue,' said Klein to himself later. 'Canyengue in the mind, from the outlying districts of the cerebral cortex and the limbic system. Either you have it or you don't. Right...?'

from Angelica's Grotto, 1999


~ ~ ~ ~

I was waiting for something now and the waiting was pleasant. I was waiting for the self inside me to come forward to the boundaries from which it had long ago withdrawn. Life would be less quiet and more dangerous, life is risky on the borders. ...
Come, I said to the self inside me. Come out and take your chance.

from Turtle Diary, 1975


~ ~ ~ ~

'Sometimes there's good news when you least expect it,' he said.
'So tell me,' I said.
'Have a look.' He folded the paper as necessary and passed it to me. ... There was a one-column item with a colour photograph of an upside-down bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup sporting a right-side-up label. SAUCE FLIPS TO GO WITH THE FLOW was the headline.
[Heinz] has spent millions of pounds and three years on research to come up with an upside-down bottle with a cap and valve in its bottom. It is a solution that customers hit upon years ago - seven out of ten say they balance their sauce bottles on their tops.
'How's that grab you?' said Selby.
'It's definitely good news,' I said.

from Come Dance With Me, 2005


~ ~ ~ ~

The world-child has been told that this is a world, ... and it believes it; it is the energy of this belief that binds the world together. The world-child holds in its mind the idea of every single thing: root and stone, tree and mountain, river and ocean and every living thing. The world-child holds in its mind the idea of woman and man, the idea of love.

from The Medusa Frequency, 1987


~ ~ ~ ~

Fidelity is a matter of perception; nobody is unfaithful to the sea or to mountains or to death: once recognized they fill the heart. In love or in terror or in loathing one responds to them with the true self; fidelity is not an act of the will: the soul is compelled by recognitions. Anyone who loves, anyone who perceives the other person fully can only be faithful, can never be unfaithful to the sea and the mountains and the death in that person, so pitiful and heroic is it to be a human being.

from The Medusa Frequency, 1987

~ ~ ~ ~

'Who can know anybody?' said the bookshop owner. 'Every person is like thousands of books. New, reprinting, in stock, out of stock, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, rubbish. The lot. Different every day. One's lucky to be able to put his hand on the one that's wanted, let alone know it.'

from The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, 1973

I'd be delighted if the yellow sheets were 4qated further but there is no need for them to wander on as I know they are in good hands where they are now. The only thing I asked my students to do is to pose for a picture with their yellow sheets and their copies of Kleinzeit, which they all did, and I'd like to thank them once again for being game.

Happy Birthday, Russ, love and all the best to all of you,

Yvonne x

Kerry Power 2006

This year I chose a quotation from The Mouse and his Child:

There's nothing beyond the last visible dog but us.

Yearly trek down to the Melbourne underground, Parliament Station, the bench seat, Platform 4.