Pages of England

Dear Melbourne,

Sometimes I do wonder if I would love England as much as I do if I had lived here right through and not spent more of my life living on the opposite side of the world. And I am not meaning socio-economic and politics and all that stuff but that imaginative sense that you develop about places as you grow older.

Me, most of that came from reading. I went to a lecture (read: gate-crashed) last night by Gillian Leathy about Children's Literature Translation and she made a terribly interesting point that while we consider Children's Fiction to be "international" precious few contemporary stories are being translated into English from different countries and the flow goes all the way back the other way - mostly English books from England. This is both good and bad - and I feel this happens sans translation in Australia. Famous Five? Any Enid Blyton is terrifically English as is the majority of our classic fiction for younger readers. It's true that writers like Melina Marchetta, John Marsden and Jackie French produce fabulous localised fiction but for some reason Australia does not have that same accessibility on the page. Of course the world view of England through these pages is idealistic and far from reality in many cases.

Side note: I said "rotter" to someone the other day as in "the rotters!" and he looked at me like I was mad. I am positive that this is from the Famous Five books or perhaps The Scarlett Pimpernel; The Young Ones or Vicar of Dibley or Stephen Fry and completely "English!" It was quite hilarious.

So anyways, the point being (eventually) that perhaps I love England because it was not a reality, or it was a distanced reality filtered through dappled sunlight, regency bonnets and Victorian Christmases. Then again it might be that whole colonial thing, Melbourne, my dearest they have a Poetry Library here in Royal Festival Hall. We seem to reverse migrate back here to the seemingly cultural hub of the world don't we? When in reality we have so much of it at home. Hmmmm. Interesting thought perhaps.

But then you know, you see this scene and there you go.

You couldn't be anywhere else.

Love

Tils x