Sam Cutler

I Drove all night from Sydney to attend the Byron Bay Writers Festival and arrived a little the worse for wear, which I subsequently found was the case with most of the participants. Writers sure do tend to have a “hung over” expression going for them (real or imagined!) and some of my fellow authors looked decidedly grey around the gills. Invited to dinner with a female namesake who’s also a writer, I was re-invigorated for the coming Festival with an excess of alcohol of such disproportionate generosity that went from being grey at the gills to green. I was to start the Festival with a massive hang-over, much (I surmise) like most of the other writers.

Sam, the female writer, fed me and ‘liquored’ me on the night before the Festival with typical Byronic excess and as I stumbled through  glass after glass of magnificent vino I comforted myself with Blake’s insight that “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”. Friday morning arrived, and as is my want, I rose at dawn to establish whether the sun was going to rise for me! My stomach certainly felt like rising (through my throat) and it was with great difficulty that I forced myself to concentrate on my morning puja. Each day I great the dawn with thanks for the gift of my life - even on those days when I have the most awful hang over! Having established that I was (indeed) alive, if only barely so; I got the program and discovered to my horror that I was scheduled to attend a seminar at 11.30am. A cruel blow ! Didn’t the organizers know that old rock and rollers are only at their best AFTER noon ?

The seminar was entitled “I’m with the band - musos on the move” and I was to be joined by Carl Cleves and Don Walker. Carl Cleves is based in Byron and is a lovely man who sings and plays his songs all over the world. I was particularly struck by his telling of taking his two year old son on the road with him for nine
years! A long tour, which encompassed places as far apart as Brazil, Mozambique and Europe. I sighed wistfully, wishing my own father had been so wonderfully adventurous, instead of which he’d gone and died when I was eight. The luck of the draw !

Don Walker was a quiet and introspective fellow, who had apparently toyed with the idea of becoming a theoretical physicist before opting for a career as a musician and song-writer in the legendary Australian band Cold Chisel. Again, a lovely man, and living proof of my own adage that “those who are lucky enough to survive the music business intact after a few decades of all the insanities of their involvement are invariably informed by a certain state of grace”. (as opposed to disgrace!) Carl and Don were a joy to meet, fun to rap with, and both droll and amusing. The session was punctuated by much laughter and general
all-round good humor and I soon forgot that (at the beginning of proceedings) I had felt simply dreadful. Byron’s like that ! You start out the day feeling awful and end up bathed in Byron’s beneficent generosity and feeling GREAT!

The Writer’s Festival was held in Belongil Fields in Byron and the weather was magnificent. Azure blue skies, mild temperatures, and dry fields ! This was Australia’s winter at its finest with the ladies in pretty dresses and the boys in T-shirts and everyone feeling ’summery’. There were over a hundred published writers in attendance and it was interesting to play ’spot the writer’ as I looked at the throngs of people wandering across the site from tent to tent in search of interesting events. Interested people ! What a joy to hang out in a throng of human beings who are joined together by a love and care for books! Some of the writers were easy to spot - those with white Panama hats and bow ties looking stereotypically earnest and magnificent, were easily identified. Others were so hard to recognize they almost looked like people ! (This is a joke, by the way) Writers and audience alike were wonderfully individualistic, eccentric and unique in their various fashion statements, so it was impossible to tell who did what solely upon the basis of how they were dressed. I was the only person I saw dressed completely in black and I wondered if some of the people might have imagined I was an undertaker who had written a book about what REALLY happens to the bodies before they are buried!

That evening, with the effects of the hang-over more-or-less mercifully forgotten, I was to attend a Writer’s dinner graciously hosted by my publishers, Random House. It was a magnificent affair, in one of Byron’s most prestigious establishments and I bent to the task ahead with positive enthusiasm. I got to talk with Geoffrey Robertson the eminent human-rights lawyer and he was graciousness personified and very  witty with a charming patrician sense of humor such as one finds ‘at table’ in an Oxford College. He amused me with a marvelous anecdote about ‘The Rails’ pub in Byron, a favorite hang-out of the Byron hippies. Apparently an uncle of Geoffrey’s had discovered that under some obscure  New South Wales statute a station could serve beer to patrons as long as a train was in the station. The old station had been converted into a bar, and a train was duly organised to stand permanently in the station. Permanent train, permanent permit to serve alcohol - job done! A clever lawyer sure can make life a lot easier! I then met Tom Keneally of Schindler’s List fame, and he was a delight. Eccentric and affable with dancing and  mischievous eyes, Tom made me feel a welcome member of the writer’s fraternity and we had a great discussion about creative non-fiction, the area which I rather pompously announced was my area of interest. And so the evening went on, with literally lashing of alcohol and the food coming so slowly that all the glaciers in the Himalaya might have melted before pudding arrived. Opposite me sat a young man who wrote children’s books, whilst beside me sat a man who had written a book called “Playing cricket with the SAS”. I was in heaven and finally departed proceedings just before midnight as the jokes got bawdier and the alcohol threatened to render me unconscious. Needless to say I didn’t drive, but got a taxi back to an apartment the Festival organisers had thoughtfully provided me. I passed out trying to watch the cricket test match between Australia and England and I woke on the following day at dawn with all my clothes on and even more of a hang over!

Puja was completed under a shower so hot that I wondered if I was melting. My liver felt as if it had already melted anyway and the rest of my  body felt like it wasn’t far behind! I grabbed one of my books and wondering and wandering headed into Byron to see if I could find a place for a coffee.  It was  before seven in the morning and very few of Byron’s inhabitants seemed to be on the streets. The place looked deserted. I was lucky to find a cafe and to my delight the three lovely ladies working in the place welcomed me with beaming smiles and that gracious languid body language in which Byron ladies love to specialise. I subsequently learnt the ladies were all from France on working holidays but no matter - they LOOKED like they were from Byron and they behaved like they were, so they WAS  (as it were!) Three coffees and  four cigarettes later I felt much better and I gave them a copy of my book as a thank you for resuscitating me. As I now felt ‘human’ I opened the Festival Program to discover what I was supposed to be doing. It was 7.45 am and I was (more or less) ready for anything .

The horror ! Now the Festival wanted me to participate in a seminar called “You couldn’t make this up: facts wilder than fiction” at the ungodly hour of 9.15 am. What to do ? When the going gets tough the tough get going, so with a positive attitude I got a taxi to where I had left my bus parked on the outskirts of Byron, warmed the baby up, and headed for the Festival site. My co-conspirators were Domenico Cacciola and Tom Gleeson with Janet Steele in the chair. Domenico (call me “Mick”) was a former policeman who had substantially been responsible for exposing corruption in the Queensland police and directly involved in gathering the evidence which had led to the famed Fitzgerald Enquiry; Tom Gleeson was a comedian who had written a book called “Playing Cricket with the SAS” and I was a former Tour Manger. Three VERY different characters for sure, and I wondered how we were going to make any kind of sense. The session was hilarious and punctuated by ribald laughter from the three hundred odd people who were in the audience.

As “Mick” was explaining how corruption was an endemic problem in the Queensland police, and I was explaining that corruption had never been a problem in the music business (an unlikely tale but there you go!) we hit upon the brilliant solution to the problem. In a perfect world we’d let all rock and roll managers become policemen and let the policemen become rock stars, thereby satisfying everybody’s deep and unfulfilled longings. It was one of those sessions and “Mick” was as heavy as Tom was funny and we had a ball whilst Janet the moderator did her amused best to keep the proceedings vaguely on track. Once again my hang-over deserted me and the sheer exhilaration of participating in the Festival ‘drove my blues away’.

On Saturday evening I was intending to be in bed earlier than a Church of England vicar. I had another day ahead of me and ’sermons’ to prepare ! At least I knew that my contribution was not to be until 2.30pm on Sunday afternoon so I promised myself a blissful night’s sleep. I would spend the night in my bus I promised myself, as is my custom, for I have slept in the bus for so long that sleeping indoors now feels strange and unsettling. The coming afternoon’s session was entitled “And then it came to me - how I found my writer’s voice” with Domenico Cacciola, Stephen Dando-Collins, and Gretel Killeen. Potentially the session would be either a piece of cake or a lump of concrete but those were cares to be addressed in the morning. I was getting ready for bed at eight o’clock in the evening which is a sorry admission for an old rock and roller to make but does give you an indication of the state I was in ! As I took off my shirt,  I suddenly remembered, with a sinking heart, that I had agreed to appear that evening in a Writer’s Cabaret !! What utter foolishness had possessed me to agree to such a thing ?? I must have been mad !

(to be continued!)
© Sam Cutler 2009