Waiting For Reply

What's the mood? he asked, after the announcement that something like 400 maintenance workers at Qantas would be laid off. How would you feel, how would you cope, if you were told you wouldn't have a job in ten weeks time? The straggling heat. They knew exactly what they were doing. They followed the union delegate through a maze of side lines and parking stations, a short cut to the front entrance.They got the picture even before security woke up to what they were doing. Who owns it though? he asked, as the guards tossed them off the property; leaving them to stand at the entrance, talking to cars as they stopped at the lights.

He just wasn't sure how to negotiate anything anymore. Night time in Coogee. Glad it's Friday tomorrow. Want to go and see Capote. Loved In Cold Blood thirty years ago, God knows what I would think of it now. I interviewed Gore Vidal in London once. By this time I had got a bit blase about interviewing famous people and took along a couple of mates. He looked a bit surprised when he opened the door to us in his suite at the Connaught, I think it was, an enormously expensive London hotel. But despite the expense, the rooms were tiny and Vidal, a large man, seemed twice the size. Please don't be overwhelmed, he said grandly, as he swept us into the room.

He was a great story teller and seemed to enjoy meeting people from Australia, we were still exotic then, sincere, a long way away. The subject of Tangiers came up, and then Capote, somehow. He related the story in high, farcical detail. You know he looked like a Southern senator, in a green suit, he said, we hated each other. One day, after William Burroughs and Paul Bowles and the rest had made Tangiers famous, Capote declared he too was going to Tangiers. He arrived on a luxury liner with an enormous crowd waiting. But determined to ruin the moment, Vidal flew from Rome down to Tangiers and stood amongst the crowds on the dock. As Capote waved to the adoring and the curious and the cameras popped, his eyes lit upon his literary and social enemy. Vidal says it was worth the trip, just to see the look on his face. He got back on the plane and flew back to Rome.