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Breakfast at Tiffany's Newsletter
April 2011
The Royal Wedding Edition
What a splendid occassion it was, everyone well and truly frocked up for the night, the bling was blinding, including flashing tiara's!!
Apologies:Sarah
A big thankyou to Leonie for hosting this special event
Special Guests in Attendance :
The Queen Mother- Betty Kilburn
Princess Inga ( Heather) attended with her twin sister Freda( Susie) from SwedenSusie after too much to drink !!!!
Royal Highnarse -Julie
Duchess of Kent - Jenny
Baroness Von Crunt- Fran
Furgie - Jane
Miss Havesham from Great Expectations- Susan
Camilla crossed with Princess Anne - Julia
Lady Cock Knee - Gaye
Lord Farqarson - Merryn
Lady Alice- Jill
Queen Sylvia from Slovakia - Shelle
Countess Carnegie - Leonie
As you can see from the very impressive list the night was one full of bling and glamour, what a knockout Freda and Inga were from Sweden. The night was onne to remember not just because we were watching Wills and Cate take their vows but also because we were treated to some great entertainment.
Baroness Von Crunt gave us a beautiful rendition of ?????? and who will ever forget Camilla's I want someone to buy me a Pony, Clip Clop!!!!!!!!!!!!
There was a Royal Feast to be had as well with more than one bottle of champers being popped.
Audrey did try to run a meeting with very little success, the pointer was given a real workout.For those of you who are interested the book reviewed was
The Shelley Beach Writers Group by June Loves
It was a lovely book, very easy read, nothing that topical to discuss I suppose but a nice one for those considering a sea change.
The title that has been suggested for this month's read is the following:
The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper. see link attached.
The pre-publication hype about this book is intense. It’s the first in a two-book deal rumoured to have paid $300,000; her first book since her debut novel A Child’s Book of True Crime made her a worldwide literary sensation; the book that began life as a series of magazine articles on Palm Island that won Hooper a Walkley in 2006. How does it live up to its great expectations? Perfectly well, thanks.
From the first pages, it’s clear that you’re in the hands of an extraordinary writer, one who spins out perfectly observed sentences and intricate observations, in a manner eerily reminiscent of Helen Garner (who calls this book ‘enthralling’). One Gulf country town has ‘an edge of menace, as if it were always high noon’. A man’s face is ‘a rash of cancers’. Like Garner, or Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood, Hooper puts herself in the story; but she is only there in the margins, as a stand-in for us, the urban middle-class readers; our way into the story.
Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for either swearing at a policeman on the street or singing a faintly insolent song, depending on who you believe. He was slung into the back of a police van by the ‘tall man’ of the title, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, the ‘boss man’ of Palm Island. The next day, he was found dead in his cell. This is the story of what happened next: the coronial inquest, the riot that rocketed the story to the nation’s front pages, the charging of Hurley for murder (making him the first police officer to be found responsible for a black death in custody), the trial.
Hooper is there from the beginning as an ‘embedded’ observer, spending time with the Palm Island community. Here, she brings the complex looking glass world of the island to life – a world where time is irrelevant, where the ghosts of the past (victims of the stolen generations and the frontier wars) are omnipresent, and where dysfunction is normal. It is a place where heavy drinking and domestic violence are so much a part of the fabric of everyday experience that they are unremarkable. A place where, within living memory, Aboriginals were not allowed on the streets where the whites lived and had to ‘salute any white person they passed’. It’s also a place where Cameron’s sister Elizabeth looks after a flock of neglected children who pass in and out of her house, but is unable to save her own adolescent nephew, who succumbs to the weight of his suffering and commits suicide.
From the first pages, it’s clear that you’re in the hands of an extraordinary writer, one who spins out perfectly observed sentences and intricate observations, in a manner eerily reminiscent of Helen Garner (who calls this book ‘enthralling’). One Gulf country town has ‘an edge of menace, as if it were always high noon’. A man’s face is ‘a rash of cancers’. Like Garner, or Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood, Hooper puts herself in the story; but she is only there in the margins, as a stand-in for us, the urban middle-class readers; our way into the story.
Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for either swearing at a policeman on the street or singing a faintly insolent song, depending on who you believe. He was slung into the back of a police van by the ‘tall man’ of the title, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, the ‘boss man’ of Palm Island. The next day, he was found dead in his cell. This is the story of what happened next: the coronial inquest, the riot that rocketed the story to the nation’s front pages, the charging of Hurley for murder (making him the first police officer to be found responsible for a black death in custody), the trial.
Hooper is there from the beginning as an ‘embedded’ observer, spending time with the Palm Island community. Here, she brings the complex looking glass world of the island to life – a world where time is irrelevant, where the ghosts of the past (victims of the stolen generations and the frontier wars) are omnipresent, and where dysfunction is normal. It is a place where heavy drinking and domestic violence are so much a part of the fabric of everyday experience that they are unremarkable. A place where, within living memory, Aboriginals were not allowed on the streets where the whites lived and had to ‘salute any white person they passed’. It’s also a place where Cameron’s sister Elizabeth looks after a flock of neglected children who pass in and out of her house, but is unable to save her own adolescent nephew, who succumbs to the weight of his suffering and commits suicide.
Next Meeting date to be confirmed but at this stage and if it is alright with Gaye it will be at her place or we could meet at Morning Sun Winery.
Give me a heads up what you would all like to do.
Sunday 29th May for Brunch
Yours in Reading
Audrey xx
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