Apologies to regular readers for the late posting. Sunday was a busy and slightly frustrating day because there was a problem getting internet access, so today I elected to forgo the delights of Writers Week and stay behind to catch up on e-mails and blogging. I also took the opportunity to wash my hair. At least, I call it hair, but it's more like the stuff that grows on sweetcorn - soft and limp and fly-away-in-the-slightest-breeze stuff. So on the day I wash my hair I never plan to go anywhere as the cornsilk will not allow itself to be confined until it has acquired a bit of dirt and grease. That takes, usually, about 24 - 36 hours. Yes, I do use gel. Yes, I do use mousse. Yes, I do use hair spray. The cornsilk laughs at them all.

My Adelaide hosts, Annalou and her husband David, have been most hospitable. Annalou picked me up from the bus station on Saturday evening and brought me to comfortable quarters at their home in the hills that surround this fair city. I've come to be on friendly terms with Buster, Rastus and Zelda - furry critters who live here - and have met son Hugo, who in the manner of many young adult children, came home to collect some washing. This is a pleasant area, generally cooler than the city, which means a lot when it's mid to high thirties Celsius!

David, Annalou and I spent Sunday running from one tent to another at the Writers Week campus. We heard William McInnes first, then a panel of four ex-pat writers talking on how this had influenced their work - each was a native of one place and a resident of another but none had either locale in common with any of the others, so it led to an interesting mix of cultural experiences. On thing stuck in my mind: that an emigrant and a refugee will have completely different mind-sets when it comes to settling down in a new place. The former is largely optimistic and forward-looking, while the latter is likely to feel a keen sense of loss for a long time, if not permanently. These attitudes cannot help but affect their writing styles.

Last Thursday, I gave a workshop on Creative Writing, 21st Century Style to the U3A writing group in Mount Gambier. Like me, many of the participants had become thoroughly confused by the expectations of modern readers. I started by asking for ideas on how stories written in the last 10-15 years differ from the ones we used to read when we were younger. Many suggestions sounded quite negative. "Too much padding" said one member. "Too much bad language", said another. "Too much violence" and "Too much sex" were other complaints. We spent the next couple of hours discussing why this new style had come into being and it was gratifying to see the dawning realization in participants' eyes that these features have not arisen out of some perverse desire to make books thicker and more expensive or to provide salacious entertainment. Next Sunday I might list the points we discussed to see how you feel about them. It was the sort of workshop I wish I'd done ten years ago and like a born-again religious convert I am trying to spread the word and persuade others of my generation that we should all take the precepts of this new faith to heart. Of course, by next Sunday I will have had heaps of input from Writers Week and will have so much to tell you that I might burst at the seams before getting it all down on paper, so perhaps Spreading the Word might have to wait. (I will try to remember to update the "What I've been reading and reviewing" column at left, too. I haven't actually stopped reading and reviewing: I just keep forgetting to tell people about it!)

By the way, The Specusphere (see link in my profile above) has gone bi-monthly. The first issue in the new format is just out, with lots of previews, reviews, articles and fiction. We've uploaded eight new reviews, three of them written by me and others by Stephen Thompson, Sonia Helbig, Simon Petrie, Joan Malpass and Bobbi Sinha-Moray. I hope you will enjoy them all.

Tomorrow is my sixty-fifth birthday and I'm looking forward to spending part of it with Annalou and David, and part of it with my daughter Billy Jo. It's Festival time in Adelaide - Writers Week is just one small part of the huge Biennial Festival of Arts for which this city is justly famous. After a few hours at Writers Week, Billy Jo and I plan to have a meal and hear some free performances in a park, renamed for the duration as the Garden of Heavenly Delights! Doesn't that sound like a super way to spend a birthday?