Blinky Bill

Jeeves’ Famous Hangover Cure

The Gerts grew up on P G Wodehouse and loved Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. Even though I read Right Ho Jeeves when I was about seven, I always remembered the dramatic effect of Jeeves’ hangover cure.

Christmas tips from Gert

Amanda Hampson : Sixty Summers

We came across Amanda Hampson among The Guardian’s Never Too Late articles. Here was a woman after our own hearts. She always wanted to be a writer, but life got in the way. In her late forties, she ‘ realised that writing a novel had become like Everest.’ She decided to get on and do it, and in another five years she had published her first book, The Olive Sisters. At the age of fifty she had this book accepted by Penguin. She is now sixty-six and has written two non-fiction books and five novels.

Office Of Nomenclature Stabilisation

Could Napoleon Bonaparte have torn down and rebuilt a continent if born Alfonse Petit? Could Winston Spencer Churchill have roused the English-speaking world as Ed Brown? Never. Gen. Ulysses Grant! What panache! Had his parents copped out with “Tim” or “Chuck” the Union must have sundered. There would be no bicentennial.

On Second-Hand Bookshops

The Gerts have been long patrons of libraries. My first ventures into the great City of Melbourne on my own at the age of ten introduced me to a wonderful library and a librarian who had my best interests at heart. But as my reading became all consuming, I realised libraries had a habit of culling their books every few years. Out with Barbara Euphan Todd and in with Enid Blyton. As I grew up I was forced to also patronise second-hand bookshops. Stephen Leacock, S J Perelman, P G Wodehouse; you couldn’t get their books in libraries. True, our father had many of them on his shelves, but I wanted to have them for myself. And the habit has continued.

Julie Halls: Inventions That Didn’t Change The World

Dig Two Graves : Carolyn Morwood

A situation favoured by many writers (the Gerts included) is the disparate group of people gathered together apart from the world for a short time for a particular purpose. From Agatha Christie’s family Christmas parties in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, to Liane Moriarty’s health retreat in Nine Perfect Strangers, to the Gert’s writing workshop in Writing is Easy; it is a great way to create tension and interaction between characters.