Veronika Wild

  Image by Apollo22 from Pixabay I had an odd encounter a couple of weeks ago. I was in the underground shopping centre when someone tried to phone me. The signal was really distorted so I grabbed my shopping trolley full of groceries and headed out to the back of the carpark to take the call. When I got there, there were several people already standing or sitting around and they all had their shopping trolleys too. As I was talking one tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You should move over there," pointing out a covered area between the carpark and the street, “Out of the wind, see.” When I finished my call I realised that they were all homeless and thought I was homeless too. My trolley was full of assorted shopping bags. Theirs were full of piles of clothes, ratty backpacks and maybe a sleeping bag wrapped up in plastic. I was already late for an appointment, but promised I’d come back and talk to them another day.   The weather was awful for the next week or so,...

  I'm celebrating today. I have just received the first copy of the reprint of my sister’s book. This means that at least one of my projects has come to fruition this year.   The first two small print runs had sold out and there were still some outstanding requests, but my sister hasn’t been in the best of health lately and couldn’t do it herself. It was supposed to be really easy.  Sabi deserves loads of credit for getting it out there in the first place, but best of all, it can now be bought through almost any bookshop anywhere in the world and can also be ordered online via Amazon, Booktopia, The Book Depository and possibly even this blog, when I work out how to put the widget on. Copies of the book are also available in several libraries, especially around Melbourne, at the Immigration Museum and in some University German Departments. I am talking about the English version here. The German version published by Verlag Sindlinger -Burchartz*   was re...