in the pudding

Correcting proofs is such a big fat plastic hassle. It is the kind of thing where you're called to account for all the dumb decisions you've ever made. I thought I had totally ironed out all the creases in my DeGaris book by reading the entire thing out loud to myself over a couple of days, but no. It's still, as I discovered looking at it in cold hard layout, imperfect. 

I guess I like writing because it's a challenge, and it keeps me on my toes, but seriously, it is tough. Then there are those other weird unexpected almost indescribable problems that slowly bubble to the surface:

Poor Ernie Bye is depicted in this photograph from Table Talk with the most unusual variety of genital. I noticed this immediately when I clipped the picture but I decided it was a printer glitch but now, seeing it about to go into my beautiful book, I feel like it's a bit of a blight or at very least a distraction. I have asked whether it can be photoshopped out. I should have done that myself, a year ago. 

I wonder what happened to Ernie. He would have been the perfect age for WW2 but doesn't seem to have served, and I can't find any mention of him at all in newspapers. In 1950 there were at least three, maybe four Ernest Byes living in Melbourne; two (Ernest H. and Ernest M.) were living 2.5 km away from each other in Coburg and the other, without a middle initial, lived in Maribyrnong (the fourth is probably the business address, in the city, of one of them). An Ernest Bye died in Melbourne in 2000 but who knows if it's this one, there were clearly heaps. 

You're probably wondering what happened to Jean Wenborn of Brighton. Jean clearly adored weddings, as she went to another one in March 1938, when Phyllis Dunn married Alan Sundberg at St Cuthberts, Middle Brighton. There, Jean was one of the bride's attendants, alongside her cousin, Audrey Leggatt. This was such a freakin' mad trip she went to another in 1940, her sister Moira's, to Gillon Ronald Griffith of Riversdale Road, Hawthorn East. According to the Age 12 August 1940 p. 3, Jean wore a parma violet taffetas* frock and jacket. You'll never believe it but Moira ended up living in Marriage Road!!! That's right, 16 Marriage Road, Brighton. 

By 1956, according to a classified relating to her mother's will, Jean had apparently enjoyed weddings so much she'd up and married a man called Pim (history does not relate whether that was his only name).  She died in 2008. 

* sic, I don't know if this is a typo or taffetas was a thing not taffeta