Bella’s blog

I’m living in Costa Rica for a bit, down south near the Panamanian border on the sunny Caribbean coast line. I have a gorgeous jungle house near the beach, and am working on my next book – a novel – eeek.

There are sloths, howler monkeys, toucans and vivid fish in the clear aqua waters, it’s completely paradisaical here…more updates soon

I’m house-sitting in a lovely property right in the middle of the desert in an oasis in Palm Springs. I’m writing like a demon, almost half way through the next book which is awesome. Time, peace and beauty are my muses right now.

My mother has been researching our family line and found this funny little gem about my great, great, great grandmother Mrs. Tricklebank.

Evening Post, Volume XVI, Issue 280, 26 November 1878, Page 2 

It is somewhat extraordinary the insane desire some persons exhibit for getting into trouble. One of that class, a Mr. William Leonard, met with his deserts on Thursday, when he was relegated to Wanganui Gaol for two months, in default of a £10 fine inflicted for improper conduct in a railway carriage. It appears Mr. Leonard, being a second-class passenger, became tired of sitting upon the hard board, and by way of change seated him- self on the lap of Mrs. Eliza Tricklebank, the wife of a well-known respectable settler at Palmerston, following up that liberty with several attempts to kiss her. Mrs. Tricklebank very properly objected, and backed up her refusal with some “striking” proofs, where- upon Mr. Leonard transferred his attentions to another lady. Mr. Ward, the Police Magis- trate, who happened to witness the whole of the proceedings, paid a high compliment to Mrs. Tricklebank, for her courage in having the offender brought to punishment. Manawatu Times.

 Okay, okay it’s a crap poem but it’s the only one that has ever been published!

An old friend of mine from high school,  Troy Fraretta (Go Kelvin Grove High) just published a poem and I thought it was really beautiful and poignant, so here it is:

Why are you still searching.

When you’ve already found what your looking for.

Running around like a little boy lost.

Cant quite keep up with you.

So what was it they said.

That makes you restless

When others are in bed.

What was it they said.

To make you see with such search tears in your smile.

So what what was it, what was it

That made you cry your heart on your hands.

Oh poor boy, Oh poor girl.

Don’t you know you’re a man now.

Don’t you know you’re supposed to smile.

Look down at the others, self pity was shown the door.

You’ve risen so far and yet you see nothing of this world.

Nothing of yourself, where is your joy.

In simple pleasures.

In simple things.

The smile of a child looks upon you.

An angel may visit soon.

Then again it could always be a demon.

Your defenses at the ready my love.

Don’t you know you’re all grown up now.

Your old life turned inside out to the new you.

So where are you now.

Off again.

Chasing dragons down main street.

Chasing dreams that never came.

Where are you now.

Off again……………………….

Troy Fraretta

To win Biting The Big Apple and a bunch of other really cool books, enter here :

www.fashionising.com

good luck!

If you are making the move to the bastion of  big, the staircase of smog, the town of tinsle; yup the city of angels; fair ole ye city of Los Angeles, then this very cool guide –  a helpful, or unhelpful, friend (depending on how you look at it) sent me –  will help you on your way;

Californians drive automobiles or autos at least as much as they drive cars — a sign saying “Auto Toll” on a toll booth doesn’t mean the toll is automatically collected, as it would in Australia or Britain, it just means that the toll booth is for cars only. Cars have hoods rather than bonnets, trunks rather than boots, windshields rather than windscreens, gas pedals rather than accelerators, emergency or parking brakes rather than hand brakes, tires rather than tyres, turn signals rather than blinkers, and license plates, not number plates. Confusingly, although cars are usually registered, you will often be asked for your car’s license or license number — in this case they want the number plate or registration number.

The disks in disk brakes are called rotors. Cars are parked in parking lots, not car parks. Streets meet at junctions as well as intersections. Cars pass slower cars rather than overtake them; intersections are often controlled by stop lights rather than traffic lights. Lorries (or, if you’re Australian, “semis”) are trucks, eighteen-wheelers, big rigs, or, increasingly, semis (usually pronounced “see-meye” or “sem-eye”); caravans are trailers. Trams are street cars or trolleys. Those huge self-propelled house-on-wheels things that choke up the highways are called recreational vehicles, RVs, or motorhomes. A mini-van is what you and I would call a van (i.e. something the size of a Volkswagen Kombi or similar Japanese van); the word “van” usually refers to something much larger — those large Ford or GM conversions that probably seat fifteen people and often have all sorts of external ladders and frills attached. What Australians call utilities (”utes”) Americans call pickups.

Trucks and cars stop at truck stops off freeways (not Motorways); those little side-of-the-road lay-bys or temporary rest areas are turnouts or pullouts. Campgrounds are also likely to be advertised as trailer parks; lookouts are vista points. Roundabouts are usually called traffic circles. Railway stations are train stations (and railways are railroads) — the use of the word “station” on its own here is uncommon: it’s nearly always given with a modifier like “bus station”, “postal station” (i.e. something like a British sub-post office), or “train station” (and, given the lack of passenger trains in this part of the world, the word “station” on its own will almost never refer to a train station). Pedestrians walk along sidewalks (a footpath is generally something that hikers use, and pavement is what covers roads); they cross the street at crosswalks (and doing so illegally is called “Jay-walking”).

The center of a city is almost invariably “downtown”, used both as a noun and an adjective (e.g.: “I’m going downtown today.”, or “They’re rioting again in downtown Berkeley.”). “Downtown” may or may not include the city’s shopping center as well as the business center (the latter may be called the financial district). Americans buy gas at gas stations, rather than petrol at petrol stations (and gas comes in US gallons not litres). Gas stations have restrooms (or, at a pinch, bathrooms), not toilets — the word “toilet” seems vaguely rude in American usage, and is almost never used in public. Restrooms have faucets, not taps (but the water that comes out of them is called tapwater).

You pay your check with bills (i.e. your bill with dollar notes). Cheques are checks. Five cent coins are nickels, ten cent coins dimes, 25 cent coins quarters, one cent coins, oddly enough, are pennies. No one ever uses the numerical name for coins — people generally won’t have a clue what you’re talking about if you say “five cent coin”, for example. You wait in line (rather than queue) for service; you typically do this at stores rather than shops. Pubs are usually bars. Housing estates are projects. Foreigners are often aliens, leading to some weird signs and notices at places like airports (”Aliens Use Gates 1-6″). People eat french fries rather than chips, and (for the British) chips rather than crisps. Californians hitch or give rides rather than lifts. People of both sexes here have a fanny — in American English the term means buttocks — so what Americans call a “fanny pack” (”bum bag” in colloquial Strine) doesn’t sound quite as bizarre to Americans as it does to Britons or Australians.

Californians (and Americans in general) often don’t distinguish between “insure” and “ensure”, using “insure” to cover both cases. In this country, “momentarily” usually means “in a moment” rather than “for a moment” — when an American airline pilot announces you’ll be landing in San Francisco “momentarily”, it doesn’t mean you’ll have to rush for the exits…. “North” is sometimes abbreviated “No”; “South”, “So”, sometimes leading to confusing bus destinations like “No Berkeley BART” or signs like “So. Sacramento” (presumably this is read aloud dramatically as “So. Sacramento!”). “Cyn” is a common abbreviation for “canyon”.

The use of the words “double” or “triple” in spoken phrases like “double 2″ (for 22) or “double l” for “ll” is rarely used or understood, especially when giving phone numbers (and yet the Automobile Association of America is universally referred to as the “triple-A”…). For example, the phone number “555 8899″ should never be given as “triple-five double-eight double-nine”; it must be given as “five-five-five, eight-eight nine-nine” or “five-five-five eighty-eight ninety-nine” to be understood at all (this seems to be a West Coast or California thing mostly — in my experience, people in other parts of the country have less trouble with this). Dates are normally written in Month / Day / Year form, e.g. 5/21/05 or May 21, 2005 rather than the international Day / Month / Year convention (e.g. 21/5/2005); this can be really confusing for foreigners (it’s still confusing for me after all the years I’ve lived here).

Americans take public transit or mass transit (where it exists), rather than public transport; public phones are pay phones (and, astonishingly, they tend to work most of the time). Public toilets generally don’t exist (you have to try to find a toilet (sorry, “restroom”) in a likely-looking mall, store, or bar, often having to humiliate yourself in the process by asking the owner or store attendant for the key; in any case, many cafes or restaurants won’t let you use their restrooms unless you’ve eaten there).

The ground floor (street level) of a building is always the first floor; the term “ground floor” will provoke blank looks if used. Off-licenses (English) or bottle shops (Australian) are liquor stores (and are usually only found as liquor stores in the rougher parts of town; the rest of us get our beverages — never simply drinks — at bars, supermarkets, or specialty wine stores). When a Californian asks you “What’s up?”, they’re usually not asking “What’s the problem?”, but rather, “How are you?”, “What’s going on?”, or “What’s happening?”. When a Californian asks “What school did you go to?”, they invariably mean what college or university did you attend — not which primary, secondary, or high school, as the rest of us in UnAmerica would assume.

The word upside means above, towards the top of, or on top of something (e.g. “I’ll slap you upside the head”, or “Put it upside the shelf”); in back of means behind, i.e. “It’s in back of the store” means “It’s behind the shop”, not “It’s in the back of the shop” (as I once thought). When a Californian says “I could care less” they mean they couldn’t care less (this one is common in the rest of America, too). And like the rest of America, the word “literally” almost always means “figuratively” here, e.g. “When I heard that, my head literally exploded (dude!!!)”, or “She lives literally millions of miles away!” (presumably then, she’s one of those for whom the “Aliens Use Gates 1-6″ signs at SFO are meant literally). Earthquakes are often referred to as temblors. The word is Spanish; many people (even Californians) seem to think it’s actually “tremblors” or some such variant to do with “tremble”).

ha, who’dathunk it

Oh, and yeeha!

Sorry, the reason you haven’t found it in the shops is that Biting The Big Apple isn’t released until December (not Nov) 2009 for the Christmas season. Comin’ to a book store near you. Well, only if you are in Australia or New Zealand, otherwise Euopre and America, you can get it on Amazon.com!

Great news – my book Biting The Big Apple is getting re-released in a smaller paperback that fits perfectly into your purse in a few days ( in November 2009.) It has a great new cover too (yes, I look hot as a cartoon lol.)  Why not buy a couple of copies and give them to your friends or loved ones for Christmas! xxB

I’m in Australia, mainlining cups of tea while working on the synopsis to the next installment of Biting The Big Apple – Cringe-ment (my new word for the day), embarrasment and shame aside, I’m going to have a hell of a lot of fun writing it.   Thanks again to all those people who wrote in to request a sequel, I really appreciate your support.

I’m  loving being back in Sydney again – even the freak dust storms are beautiful. Waking to blood orange red dawns breaking over my balcony, the still hot air soothed by tufts of cool breeze. The light of home, beautiful, translucent and clear.