I Draw A Comparison

 Back in the days when I was known as Elizabeth by my school teachers, I compiled a project called 'Western Australia'. I was in Lower IV 26. 26 was the room number, Lower IV was year 8. In her feedback, written on a pale orange card, my Geography Teacher, the lovely Miss Smith, wrote: ELIZABETH: mainly WESTERN AUSTRALIA. In the corner of that card, she drew a fairy penguin. I've had a soft spot for penguins ever since.

On the other side of the small card, Miss Smith wrote this: "Your nice grassy folder had some original and interesting ideas in it, with good illustrations. The range of relevant information was wide, from Continental drift to Camels, and even though you veered from your subject by discussing the Barrier Reef, it was still a good effort. A(-)". 

Not much has changed in my approach to projects since 1976-7. The anthology I've been working on, Festival in a Book, A Celebration of Wenlock Poetry Festival, also has some original and interesting ideas in it, most of them not my own. The illustrations (by Emily Wilkinson) and design (by Gabriel Watt) are a bonus. The range of relevant poetry is wide in terms of the Festival itself, and the poets also veer (as you'd expect them to do) towards love, childhood, loss, celebration of nature, and death. 

A brackets minus. What a mark. Thank you Miss Smith. In old school terms, A was for near as damn excellent considering your age and stage, and minus was for not quite. The brackets? They were for but nearly. My project was: not quite near as damn excellent considering your age and stage, but nearly. I was very happy with this grade. If the anthology is judged by contributors and readers as: not quite near as damn excellent considering her age and stage, but nearly, I'll be delighted.

Maybe it was that carefully-wrought mark and Miss Smith's recognition of the effort I'd made that set in my 11 year-old head the bouncy thought that one day I would visit Western Australia, and the other parts of that country-continent that aren't WA but are closer to it than South Hampstead High School, 3 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3. It's certainly been a thought leaping kangaroo-like around my head for a few years: a thought I put into action back in the spring when I booked tickets to Perth, via Singapore. I leave in 5 weeks, once I've completed the distribution and launch of the anthology. 

And now that I've made the analogy between these two projects 46 years or so apart, I'm wondering if there's an equivalent of the Barrier Reef in Festival in a Book - a whole section that's crept in because, well - who wouldn't want to put the Barrier Reef (and Tasmanian Devils and Koalas) into a project on Western Australia to liven things up from a baseline of sheep farming, wild flowers, mining, endless sunshine, and salt lakes? 

My 'Western Australia' project has maps of the places I'm going to visit soon: Perth, Denmark, Margaret River. It has useful advice about the climate. I'll be able to identify the common wax-flower if it's still common and found over areas of coastal sand heaths, usually growing from four to eight feet in height with a mass of white to pink or rose-red flowers. I've shaded in areas of one map of the whole of Australia with 'areas with more than 15 people per square mile' - so I'll know where to look for night-life, and in which direction I need to face to make it to Melbourne, Sydney, Katoomba, Hobart, and Launceston. And all the time, I'll be on the look out for penguins.