This week’s guest speaker was our own resident author, Susie Anderson, sharing her experiences and recommendations for Club members to consider writing a memoir. As she told us everyone has a story to share and it can be a very rewarding experience to write either a memoir or a work of fiction.
Dorothy Gilmour also provided an update on her work with Rotary SAFE Families and how it is being expanded to reach out to a wide range of ethnic communities in their native languages. She expressed appreciation to Rotary Melbourne for their financial support and Hawthorn as the host Club for Rotary SAFE Families. Dorothy plans to reach out to as many Rotary Club Presidents across the District as possible in 2024 to encourage their support.
As a former TV presenter, Susie Anderson is no stranger to taking centre stage. This week, however, Susie took to the lectern at the Weekly Club Meeting as our guest speaker and immediately challenged the audience members to write their own stories. She had placed pens and paper on each table, encouraging everyone to start jotting down ideas for their memoirs. No time like the present! She addressed common concerns people had about writing their life stories, emphasising that everyone had a unique and valuable story to tell.
She acknowledged people's common hesitations when contemplating writing their memoirs, including feeling like they aren't writers or worrying that their lives haven't been extraordinary enough. Susie urged the audience to see this endeavour as a precious gift to leave for their families and as a record of a bygone era.
The Bookworms met on Monday to discuss “Old Filth” by Jane Gardam.
What a name for a book, let alone a respected person! How did it come about?
Goodreads explains:
Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar.
Yet through it all he has carried with him the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood. Now an eighty-year-old widower living in comfortable seclusion in Dorset, Feathers is finally free from the regimen of work and the sentimental scaffolding that has sustained him throughout his life. He slips back into the past with ever mounting frequency and intensity, and on the tide of these vivid, lyrical musings, Feathers approaches a reckoning with his own history. Not all the old filth, it seems, can be cleaned away.
Borrowing from biography and history, Jane Gardam has written a literary masterpiece reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling's Baa Baa, Black Sheep that retraces much of the twentieth century's torrid and momentous history. Feathers' childhood in Malaya during the British Empire's heyday, his schooling in pre-war England, his professional success in Southeast Asia and his return to England toward the end of the millennium, are vantage points from which the reader can observe the march forward of an eventful era and the steady progress of that man, Sir Edward Feathers, Old Filth himself, who embodies the century's fate.
Old Filth was nominated for the 2005 Orange Prize.
Once you have booked please let David Pisterman know to add to other members attending so rooms can be booked for the Conference.
Early booking finishes December 15th when prices will go up .
Pre the 15th December pricing is $340 Rotarians, partners and friends. First-time attendees are $250, and attending the Foundation Breakfast (well worth it, ) is only $40/per head
The Club dinner will be at the Rifle Brigade Hotel. ( More details to follow.)
It will be a conference to remember as the venue is excellent and a great lineup of speakers has been organised. For more information, go the the District website: Rotary D9800 conference 2024
A jester, court jester, fool or joker was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain guests during royal court. Jesters were also traveling performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town markets, and the discipline continues into the modern day, where jesters perform at historical-themed events. Wikipedia
