Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Leaping straight into hockey sex (with Helen Garner)

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Jane and Fi consider coming out with their own self-help book and muse on the title: ‘Do Less, Be Happier’ or ‘Can I Be Arsed? Probably Not’… the jury is still out. They also chat about wassailing, cat incontinence, and the dangers of star signs. Plus, best-selling Australian writer Helen Garner discusses her diaries 'How to End a Story: Collected Diaries', and her new book 'The Mushroom Tapes'. We’re taking suggestions for our next book club pick! The brief is: books that deserve to be re-read. Our most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton. You can listen to our 'I'm in the cupboard on Christmas' playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1awQioX5y4fxhTAK8ZPhwQIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Tuesday, the 13th of January. We say hello and happy birthday to all. What would they be? Aquarius? I don't know. I'll have to look that up. Are we on the cusp? I'm feeling a bit cuspy. On the cusp for years.

I think Sagittarians have had their chips suddenly, isn't it? We've moved on to another one. I think we're in water signs. I feel we're in water signs. Eves looked it up. Capricorn. Capricorn. Capricorn.

Aquaris is from the 20th. Aquaris is from the 20th. Thanks so much for that. Thank you very much indeed. That's terrible, isn't it? That means that I didn't know the star sign of one of my children. Or you, sorry, Eve, that comes first. Eve, let me start that again.

My boyfriend. Oh, God, him. And him. Yes. What kind of a woman are you, been revealed? The truth has emerged. I didn't know. Your birth.

No, I don't like that star-sign thing because it just, it's so, it's so plays into my kind of rather natural pessimism about, you know, all relationships are going to go wrong. You know, if somebody had ever said,

oh, well, Capricorn and Pisces. Don't work. Don't work. You know, there would be a little bit of me that would go, oh, oh, okay. And so I don't like that. And then also, I mean, to twist that around, what a very, very bad idea if somebody said Pisces and Gemini

really gel for you to go out with an absolute tool just because he's born under the star sign of Gemini well all I say is like all Canterians I just think this is just a stupid load of nonsense I really do yeah no I'm with you I'm concurring or is there some no there isn't anything in it is there no no there just isn't okay

we were talking about self-help books and loads of you who had some really It doesn't really thoughtful responses to this actually. So we'll mention a few more that do genuinely seem to be giving some people a little bit of value. But I just wanted to mention Joy, who sent a very lovely email about dishcloths. It was, she says there's definitely an art to this important domestic routine. It keeps everything around the sink clean and tidy when done well. And not, as by husband does it.

He just tosses the cloth, dirty water and all, into the furthest corner of the sink to rank and horrible to the touch. Wonder what star sign he is. And we don't care. A mucky one. But what I really like about Joy is where she's emailing from and it's a small place in Victoria in Australia

and it's got such an interesting name I had to look it up. And I'm sure this isn't pronounced properly or I'm not pronouncing it properly. Darrow wheat, Gwim. Wow. Now do you know, if I saw that written down as I just have,

I'd say it was Welsh. Yes, it does look a little bit Welsh. So Darawit is spelled D-A-A-A-W-E-I-T. I mean, there's almost a Germanic twist to that, isn't there? And G-W-M, which I'm clearly not pronouncing properly, is G-U-I-M. Where does that come from? Is there, I don't know, possibly an Aboriginal link to that name?

Anyway, it's 45 kilometres north of Melbourne, and it's near, it's situated on a place called, no, it's situated, I'll get this right, it's situated on deep creek. It just sounds amazing. I just love a creek, I think. The local popular restaurant, I mean, having had a look, I think it might be the only restaurant,

is the cider house, which has got favourable reviews, 4.9 stars. That's not bad. Maybe there's just nowhere else to go. So they're not as big as they might be in another location. And I was really drawn. My eyes were drawn to this dish. Have I listened to this?

Lemon grass, ginger and apple glazed pork belly burger. No. No? I fancied it when I first saw it. No. No? Okay. No. Joy, good luck out there.

And I'm going to ask my friend who can do the Australian accent to try to pronounce the name of this place. Dare wee, Gweem. Right. I'm not sure she's got it. It's like there's a place on the way to my... mum's in Wiltshire. It's not quite the same. We're talking about

we've gone from the epic plains of Victoria and Australia down to Wiltshire. We always call it bagpuss What? Bagpus guys. Because the second part of it is G-U-I-Z-E and it's very rare to see a Z

on English road sign. I mean, apart from Ashby de la Zouche. Devises? And devises, okay. But I cannot think And we know that we've never pronounced it correctly. And it's not called bagpuss anyway. No. But I'd be intrigued to hear how a local would be attacking the guise.

Guise, guise. Tell us. I don't know. We've got an Australian theme to the podcast today because Helen Garner is our guest. It's an interview that I've already done. I've been up since the early hours of the cold face, Jane. I know you have.

In order to join Helen Garner, one of my favourite writers of all times. explain how significant Helen Garner is. Well, Helen Garner is an untapped treasure. She's a massive, massive name in Australia. She's one of Australia's most important writers up there with Jermaine Greer, definitely. And I think in this country, we have come to love her. She's recently won the Bailey Giffa Prize for her collected diaries. She's relatively senior.

So she's 83 years old now, and she's been writing diaries all her life. She's also a journalist. She's specialised in courtroom journalism, and she's a novelist as well. But her diaries are so brutal and honest and brilliant and funny. And they do that blissful thing where they rock between the domestic and the not quite so domestic. But the last kind of episode of her diaries, and the whole collected diaries is called this, How to End a Story, charts the demise of her third map. marriage to a novelist who she simply calls V in the diary,

but who we all know is Murray Bale, who is just, I'm just going to put it out here as a consummate tool. Well, you've got off the fence there. I've never read one of his books. I don't think I will be reading any of his books. He's a very revered novelist. And if he manages... What sort of genre of novelist?

So he writes novels, his most successful recent one is called Eucalyptus. And so they are stories of Australia, they are stories of family. But I haven't read one of his, so I'm not an expert on him at all. But I might try and read a bit of his novels just to see what he's like on the page. Because in real life, he's just an arrogant, what's it? So just as a tiny example, he tells Helen, they'd be married for a while, that he's going to embark on writing his new novel. And they're sharing a flat together.

she has to go and find somewhere else to live during the day, even though she's a writer as well and was writing from home, because he needs space around him. So it's just like, oh, mate, mate. So come on. So we've got lots to talk about in the interview. And if you've never come across Helen Garner before, please stay and listen to it and then take to her books with ferocity.

Because I think, as she says in the interview, so many women after the publication of her diaries have come. come up to her and tapped her gently on the shoulder in the street and said, my marriage was your marriage and I just cannot thank you enough for telling the story of it. This is only about her diaries feature or focus on her third marriage. Yes, she doesn't detail the demise of the other two. The middle part of her diaries is about her daughter. She's got one daughter leaving home and the first part of her diaries very much her kind of youth in Melbourne, largely in Melbourne.

But she's just a beautiful woman, she's got a beautiful mind. I just urge you to listen to her. And is she as hard on herself as she is on other people in her life? Well, weirdly yes and no. I think because she's just such a teller of truth, she really loves some of her work because it's good, Jane, and she's not afraid to say so. She's not doing that kind of faux humble.

Oh, I've got, I'm so surprised. I've been so lucky. Yes, she's not doing that. but she's definitely she's a very very wise head when I was doing the interview this morning I've been looking forward to talking to her because she's just

she means a lot to me as a writer I was stuffing a piece of toast into my mouth when she joined the Zoom calls so I embarrassed myself there and I looked I was at my desk in my house and I've got a child doing mock A levels at the moment

who's been using that desk because they just need a kind of fresh space from time to time, don't they? And I look down at my desk, which is usually a little bit OCD in terms of its order. And I saw a hash brown stuck to it with ketchup, halfway through the interview. And I thought, well, this is what it's all about for Helen Garner. Yeah. It's life living quite often in the domestic detail, telling you so much more.

What kind of, do you know, where the hash brown came from? Well, it was actually a hash brown bite. I'm glad you asked. Hasch brown bites are available at? So it would be in a freezer, hash brown bite. And they're a little bit confusing because they're tiny and they're kind of slightly, they're like a large pellet, the hash brown bites. And there is from a distance or with the wrong glasses on

a chance you can think it's a little bit of poo. So I did have to look at it very carefully because Brian, arrogant, arrogant little cat, he sits in that office quite a lot. but it definitely was Ashbra. I didn't eat it. I didn't put it in it. I was going to say.

But Brian is not guilty. No, he's not. I thought it was Barbara who is the incontinent. No, she's going to, no. Oh my goodness. So Barbara Cadabra has come good. She's grown into herself. And she's now our really, really lovely lap cat and Brian.

He's just a teenager. He comes into the room, yelps at everybody. Who cares, mate? He's like one of those bloats down at the Lido. I'm here. I'm here. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And whereas every woman just gets in and swims.

You know what I mean? Yeah, we'll never understand why the male of the species just needs to make their presence felt for it. Oh, the whistling. Let's just be honest, we've got one in the office. Oh, my gosh. If only we could. Right, let's just get on some practical advice from Josie.

And please take note here. Some hard-earned travel advice. Never eat chicken in Turkey. No matter how fed up you are, and I was, with salad, feta, tomatoes, olives and pitter bread, never eat chicken in Turkey. All right. Have you noted that? I have, Jane. Yes, I've also definitely removed a small piece of earwax that was lurking at the back of my left ear.

And Mrs. N., I wonder whether Helen Garner has read this book, recommends the following self-help book. Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office by Lois P. Frankel. that's such it just sounds so made up it's like it's like who moved my cheese when I first saw that title it was just like what my cheese

I had heard of this book and the title piqued my interest says Mrs. N in an almost last resort attempt I read it and followed some of its tips I don't remember everything now but small things like speaking your mind in meetings not being afraid to disagree with people

and daring to have an opinion on matters actually helped. She only took a slight tweak of my behaviour at work to get people to look at me differently. And lo and behold, some months after starting, being much more aware of the things in the book, I got a promotion. After that, I have never looked back. It really helped me to see patterns in the workplace,

especially to do with gender roles and to realise that I can change how people perceive me. Well, that all sounds very good. That does sound good, doesn't it? Yeah. If you were going to write a self-help book, what would the title of it be? I mean, neither you nor I would ever claim to be someone capable of writing a self-help. Oh, no, I never would.

But I might have fun thinking up a title. Yes, but that would be about as far as I'd get, and I still can't think of one. Okay. Can I be asked? Probably not, would be the title of my self-help book. No, yeah. I would, I'd say that rings true. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Let's just be honest. Can I say a huge thank you to people who've pointed out where the Metropolitan Hospital is? Oh, yes. So it doesn't come up on the Google Maps, which is where I was looking for it, because it is no longer a hospital and they're not allowed to do that, are they? Just in case, you know, in the moment somebody's going hospital near me and they turn up and find, as with this one, it's a business centre. It's not going to work.

We don't be able to help with that rush. But if I'd just use the actual Google, then I would have found this out. and Fiona has bothered to do this for me. I worked in Hackney in 1975 as a newly qualified occupational therapist. I remember the Metropolitan Hospital. Interestingly, the ground floor had six beds reserved for Jewish people. The other floors for general medicine. It closed in 1977 and became part of St. Bartz.

There was the German hospital, and that was a psychiatric hospital, the Eastern neurological, the mother's maternity, where my first daughter was born and a court's Hackney hospital which became psychiatric which is where I worked we used to have meetings in an old operating theatre I thought I think I got that one quite right yeah thank you

and eat bacon butties in ward rounds it wouldn't happen now well it'd be a good idea wouldn't it if the doctor came along with a bacon buttie I think you'd be more likely to be cheery about his presence at the end of the bed wouldn't you? Possibly it does seem a trifle on professional

Can I say? Sorry. I'm honest. Fiona says, oh my goodness, how it's all changed. I feel very fortunate to have worked in Hackney

in those days. We had such a laugh. We left in 2002 and are now in Hove. And Fiona's a fellow scouse. She's a woollyback. Is she a woollyback? What does that mean?

It means she's not technically. Remember the controversy that I have at the Liverpool City Council and the purple bins? By the way, my purple bin penholder is still doing great business at home. if you're not born within the city

then technically you're a woolly back it means you're a bit of a sheep you're rural okay get it got wood on your back yeah that's just explaining for southern is there and Fiona has sent the most fantastic picture of the operating theatre at the Metropolitan Hospital

which has got a lovely Dardo rail it's got some very effective Oh I don't know Sorry let's not start No let's not start a fight You say Dardo and these beautifully dressed nurses and it's always funny isn't it

I mean the doctor's there in everybody else is in medical units and outfits and the anisotist there is in a tweed suit and tie just completely formally dressed but certainly not for medical purposes you wouldn't have thought just bizarre I mean it looks like he's administering

you know he's just whipping up a cocktail he's actually putting somebody to sleep Why would there be six beds reserved for Jewish people? Why would that have been a kind of marker? Possibly some religious practices around modesty that would have to be different to the general ward. I can only imagine that might be an explanation. That's an intriguing detail and we'd love to know more about that.

And thank you because Sarah also looked it up for me. The Metropolitan Free Hospital, it is a business centre. it was squatted in first after the hospital closed and filled with artists and creative enterprises before and I'm sorry this is so often the case in East London it was sold to developers so there we go there was a fire station next to it as well which was knocked down

I think probably about 10 years ago which caused a lot of controversy so how times have changed no fire station no hospital on the Kingston Road I was thinking of you actually over the weekend when I caught the local television news bulletin, your region news. And there was the light item was about the popularity of wassailing. Oh, this is the tits of Hackney, pouring cider on the trees.

According to the lady who introduced the item, wasailing is becoming increasingly popular in Hackney. I'm sorry, I've sounded very derogatory at that. But a friend sent me a link that I then couldn't open to that. I was quite glad I couldn't open it because I don't know is it old Hackney doing that or was it quite a lot of people

you know with moustaches and plus fours I don't know I don't want to be judgy I don't want to be rude but it did look like perhaps blow-ins were early adopters of Wasayling in Hackney Yeah

Wausailing is kind of you welcome in the new year by wearing a few twigs on your head And that's fantastic Yeah good for them yeah very much so So if it was the ancient pagans of Hackney, I'm all for that. But I just sometimes think that, you know, there's a lot that needs doing in Hackney, actually. And it's getting this reputation for the froth on the top. And I just feel a bit uncomfortable with that, Jane.

I hear you. Lynn, it's just had a belly full. As a young woman with a demanding professional career in the 80s, a young mum in the 90s, and now I find myself in my mid-60s, life showed me that actually, despite what we've been told since the contraceptive pill appeared back in the 60s, we women cannot have it all without severely compromising our physical and mental

well-being. I really do feel that we shouldn't keep promulgating the myth that we can have it all, which is what the 5am self-helpers would have us believe. Women who can afford nannies and cleaners and have truly equal domestic responsibility sharing partners still aren't anything like the norm. So for goodness sake, don't even think about getting up at 5 in the morning. And as for self-help books, ask your mum, your granny, your best friend, how they cope. Right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lynn. I feel that Lynn's, you know, she's sort of heading for tether's end. But she's right, isn't she really? Yes. That's not crammed too much in. No. Let's do less. Well, there's the title of myself. Let's do less. Do less, be happier.

Yeah. When Cheryl Sandberg brought out her seminal work, lean in. It was very tempting for me to write my someone will work lean out seen out the window sit back is that what you did when you were smoking as a youth oh always yeah and it makes me laugh now because I mean obviously as a parent

I'm like a beagle I can smoke on the kids as they come around the corner so the idea that I could have smoked out of my bedroom window in our very small house in Winchester my mum never had a clue it's just not a clue but she was good enough to never say but yeah

all the things that we learn when we're parents ourselves. La Belle France is simply an opportunity to talk in a French accent. Best wishes come in from Melanie. I've attached a screenshot about moving to living and working in France, far from straightforward nowadays with many different types of visa. In many cases, a minimal level of linguistic skill is required. I didn't know that about moving to France, did you? I think have they become more insistent?

Yes. Yes. I kind of don't blame them. They're very, very protective of the French language, aren't they? I mean, we always note that at Eurovision, every single year, they're the one nation that still proudly sings in their own wonderful tongue. Yes. I think it's a very good barrier to entry as well. Because I think for far too long, English-speaking people from the United Kingdom

have gone around the world speaking English louder and louder. So that's a very good thing. Although it does work. What? Just shouting a bit in English. Just shouting in English. Health insurance cover, especially for people of retirement age, is required and it can be eye-wateringly expensive. And I read on another website that retirees must have a disposable income in excess of 64,000 euros per annum.

I mean, that is high, Jane. 64,000? Yes. So that's about, would that be about 50,000 pounds? A little bit more, I think. A little bit more, 55, possibly. But 55 grand a year in income. That's, yeah, that is a lot.

People opening a business such as a jit, like our friends on the TV show. Stop, stop. No, we don't need it. We don't need it. We don't need it. That alarm goes off when he's medication is due. Need to be up and trading within 12 months on arrival. So you can't just go over there and pretend that you're starting a business.

They're very bureaucratic. They'll be. They will. Yeah. The Marie will come round. I don't think it matters how much the house you purchase costs. The days of boarding the ferry tossing your watch over the side and being able to ask for de pan o chogler no longer cuts the mustard.

Or cuts the mutard, as we like to say, Melanie. So that's incredibly helpful, actually. So presumably, we have sorted it out, haven't we, for the Northern Ireland? couple because they can apply because of a Good Friday Agreement, so we know that. And also maybe they're, you know, maybe they've got an incredibly healthy retirement income as well. I do hope so. Oh, we're here for all those people with a healthy retirement income. We went, don't laugh too much at this.

We went to the Adventure Travel Show at the Business Design Centre in Islington on Saturday morning. You take your crampons? I was quite surprised by myself there too I love it I love it when I make you laugh properly I did look around I literally lasted about 11 minutes

we had to leave we had a bingo card there was you know everything So go on tell me who was there Did you expect to see Who kind of lived up for expectations Well I'm only mentioning it because

it was where the gold-plated pensioners had congregated. I mean, it was full of incredibly healthy-looking, optimistic and enthusiastic 60-somethings, very well-dressed in leisure gear, and they were enjoying the opportunity to go on some sparkling holidays that, I mean, are pricey. They are pricey, if you want. to go around Namibia if you want to go just small ship sailing of the coast of Croatia. If you want to go on a wildlife photography, very specific safari, that kind of thing.

I don't know why that's funny because I'd love to see the big, big, is it big fire? The big fire. The thing is, I can't take a photograph to save my life. There'd be the lion's tail. And then there'd be somebody's hat to be in the centre of your picture. I'd be like Brooklyn Beckham, do you remember his book of photography? It was better than his fish finger sandwich. Yeah, actually, I'm not sure he's having a great time.

He can't help. No, he can't help who his parents are. I do feel for him in this. Oh, no, I don't think anyone, that's the thing. None of us can help who our parents are. And I think in that case, you're right, he was born famous, so it's a tricky, tricky old option. Yeah, it's a difficult thing to opt out of.

And he seems to want to opt out of it. Pretty much impossible. Anyway, it was funny. And I just looked around and I thought, well, how fantastic. I mean, I bet that half of the people there were teachers, they are civil servants. No, but they've stood in classrooms and taught kids for 30 years. Of course they should be doing all of this stuff. But it's not a tribe that I'd often see myself.

So I didn't feel a huge connection, if I'm honest, Jane. But I like a fly-and-flop holiday. Oh, gosh, so do I. Yeah, I don't want to. adventure, fly and flop. That is honestly what I do. It's quite interesting, this acting drunk, apparently. We were discussing Paul Meskull in Hamnut,

playing a drunk William Shakespeare, and you weren't that impressed, nor was I, really. No, so this email's brilliant. Well, I think I might have picked up the wrong one. We've got a couple on this, but apparently he really was drunk. Pearl says, I agree most actors fail at being drunk, mostly because they overdo it. Have you got the other email?

For the quintessential held-back performance of acting drunk, you need to look at a young Anthony Hopkins as Pierre in the BBC version of War and Peace Circa 1972. It was sublime. Not to sound mean, says Pearl, but I think he'd be the first to admit he'd already had a lot of real-life practice. Yes, I think that's true.

I think he's got a biography out, hasn't he? An autobiography out, Anthony Hopkins, in which he does discuss. He was somebody who did drink. a great deal. Yeah. There is another email, isn't that? Well, there is.

It comes from Nicole, who looked up the trivia, in the trivia section on IMDB, that scene. And at the director's request, Paul Muskell got genuinely drunk for the scene in which Shakespeare is drunk. Muskell said it was a fun experiment,

but admitted he was hung over the next day. It's not big on detail, but it's enough. So that's intriguing, because he was, it's not a good, drunk. So that was actually him being drunk. He would have

done better to be acting it. I'm sure a lot of young Thespians listen to this so take note. If you're going to play drunk, don't get drunk. It doesn't actually work. Because he's a good actor, Paul Mascar, isn't he? He's got an ear. I mean, I think he's in slightly, is he in danger of being

overexplained? He's got another new film coming out I note the week after next. With another great actor, is it Josh O'Connor? Oh, Josh O'Connor. I mean, they're both very good and I think it's a gay love story. Oh, and that reminds me. I haven't succeeded in tracking down the sudsy erotic series.

Is it called Heated Rivalry? Yeah, available on Now TV. Yeah, but not to me on Now it isn't, because I've only got the football. Yeah, I'm going to, I might log in as you and have a ferret around. Yeah, but there's a lot of chatter about this series, isn't there? There is. So to any of our listeners who've seen,

heated rivalry. I haven't. Not for what I've tried. Do you let us know what you think? Have you seen any of it? I haven't, no. I want to watch it in a kind of bingable form and I need to confess my sins here. I've got to get through season two of Red Eye first.

Oh, you've gone there, have you? After all the mirth induced by the first one, I haven't gone to the series, second series. It's so funny, so bad. It's so bad. It's good. So, Martin, He's playing the lead RSO. I still don't know what that is.

Whatever. He spent most of his dialogue is delivered into his cuff because he's security detail. And he's got this great big. It's like the, you know, the windy telephone wire. So he's got one like it's from a trim phone in 1974 attached between his ear. Nobody spotted. And down his back, exactly.

And then he just speaks into his cuff. Agent Bride, Agent Brony, Agent Brony, Agent Brony, Agent Brody. Just all the time, and every time he does it. I mean, it just looks like he's smelling perfume in a department store. It's just ridiculous, Jane. The plot is absolutely malfunctioning. Leslie Sharps on a plane that's about to be blown up, and she just doesn't seem to care.

I don't know whether she thinks that the air miles will triple. I don't know what's going on. Perhaps you don't. And they just, every cliché is in there, they're always drinking whiskey. Oh, yeah. Actually, there's a lot of alcohol consumption when the stakes in these shows are really high. You'd think everyone would want to keep their wits about them. And they are always getting a lead crystal thing.

I cannot remember ever walking into an office that had a decanter of whiskey and two lead glasses by the side. No, exactly. But the security services are always drinking. They are. They're always pissed on the job, Jane. And I'm sick of seeing it. is why we're in the state we're in. It is.

But also, they can't all like whiskey. I mean, somebody at some stage has got to go their own way and say, I'd rather have a Malibu and Coke. Can I just have a tonic? Slim lie. Because I'm on duty in case you know. I'm trying to save the world.

Bloody hell. It's such an obvious hole in all of these plots. I just wanted to bring in a woman who describes herself as yet another Jane. She has said that she has found the book Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Birkman, a helpful self-help book. And I think other people have mentioned that too.

But really what I was interested in here, Jane, was that you say that you're a mum of three and a carer for your youngest, Pearl, who's now nearly 20, and Pearl has the most extraordinary list of challenges to face daily, says Jane. Looking after her is a lot of hard graft. She's never going to achieve the things mentioned

in most of the motivational tomes pushed at us at this time of year. And you know what? It doesn't worry her, one, Some years ago I wrote a blog about our experiences and at this self-improving time of year wrote a short bit about self-improvement based on Pearl's approach to life.

I do think her approach has taught me a great deal about mindfulness and living in the moment much more in fact than all the self-help books in the world. And there's a little bit that I did want to read out about Pearl based on what Jane has written about her and Jane says, Love your body. Pearl's body is a tricky and mysterious thing. Sometimes legs unexpectedly give way, tap, shake and hurt.

This in no way prevents her from using it as best she can. She adores food and punishing herself by refusing cake would not even begin to occur to her. In fact, if there was a mantra to live by, Pearls would likely be, be kind, eat cake. And there are far worse ways to live your life. I just thought that was excellent. I'm with you, sister, and do you know what, it just puts into context this ridiculous, and this is where we started, isn't it? Constant optimization of life. It is a choice you make whether or not you're ever able to say, this is enough, this is fine.

This is good. This is good, and I'm content. It's within all of us to choose at some point to simply say that. to ourselves. And this push, push, push to get faster, be better, be better, be richer. Bollocks. Yeah, I find it just exhausting and I wish that people, I wish more people turned away from it.

I think it's very unhealthy. So, you know, how lovely to hear from a mum who can see a daughter just enjoy the bits that will never be touched by a desire for endless self-optimisation. But let's acknowledge the hard work. that goes into caring for somebody with challenging needs, because how irritating must it be? And people are saying, you know, you can get up at 5 o'clock and do more.

You can, you know, your marginal gain is what's important to you. Your personal best needs to keep on changing when you're just faced with a lot. Yeah. Yeah, 5 o'clock, don't bother. No. Helen Garner's writing is so truthful that to read her is to have a constant pinging in your, head. Yep, felt that, know that. Oh, I hadn't realised that. It's like wiping the lens clean on your glasses. Helen's collection of diaries recently won the Bailey Gifford Prize. The last in that

collection is how to end a story, detailing the years when her third marriage started to fail. Her husband, Murray Bale, was and is a novelist. He felt his work more important than his wife's, once actually saying to her, who would want to read your diaries? Well, it turns out hundreds of thousands of us. Garner's novels have won awards two, so has her journalism, particularly courtroom journalism, and she recently published the mushroom tapes written with two colleagues, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnestine. It detailed the case of Erin Patterson, the Australian woman who murdered three of her in-laws by poisoning them with a beef Wellington, laced with deadly mushrooms. She had invited those relatives to the feast to share with them the sad

news she had cancer. That cancer was a lie, as was nearly every other aspect of her original testimony to police. She was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. It was a case that intrigued the world and Helen Garner, so we started our chat with her explaining her fascination for people who have, as she puts it, put their foot through the membrane of life. Well, yes, it's always seemed to me, or ever since I started doing, writing about courts and trials, it always strikes me that there's a membrane

well, I think of it as a membrane between the person you see in the dock who is accused of some frightful crime and the rest of us who are out here who are still contained in some world of normality. We haven't smashed out of our ordinary lives. But the person you see in the dock has or is accused of having. and I just, I'm fascinated by that thought that someone can, in one moment sometimes, just put their foot through the thing that divides them from people who aren't going to be tried and displayed in all their weakness and cruelty to the whole world. It's a kind of dreadful thought to me.

It's also true, isn't it, that there was something about this case that doubled up our anxiety about going through that membrane because this is a female poisoner. So this is a woman who cooked what should be a nourishing meal in her role as a provider and welcome her in a family. But actually the darkness behind it was, you know, ultimately dark, wasn't it? Yes, and I found her quite mysterious. When I've heard about the case, I wasn't really all that interested. I thought, I don't know why. I think it's because I'm getting a bit old and it's hard for me to follow a trial these days. You know, once I used to sit, you know, sort of tense with interest,

month after months. But now I come, I'm starting to lose my hearing a bit, and I'm not at ease in a court as I used to be. But I was struck by the fact that the whole world seemed to be obsessed with the story. And that in a way, sort of at the beginning sort of put me off. I thought, oh, everyone else is going to be thinking about this, so I don't need to think about it, and I'll just go about my business. But then my two, my two,

co-authors, Chloe and Sarah, said to me, look, we're going to go down to Morewell, just have a look and see what's going on. You want to come with us. And so I went with them and, well, you walk into a court and you see the person sitting there and suddenly it becomes very interesting. One of the things that really struck me was the conversation, obviously, between the three of you as women. I felt Helen that you were prepared to see more ambiguity in Erin than perhaps, and I'm assuming that your co-authors are a bit younger than you. And I wonder whether age does play a part actually in how you were viewing the proceedings. Oh yes. Well, I'm old enough to be their mother. I mean, with the whole generation between us. And they're both married.

well, they're in long-term relationships, and they've got young children. So, I mean, I'm a grandmother, and so that's a huge gap. And I think that the older you get, the less surprising things are to you, I think you've seen so much and read so much that you think, well, human beings,

they can do anything. They'll do anything. There's hardly anything that a human being, if pressed hard enough, won't do. And that's something that I think you just have to accept as you get older about what we like as a species. And perhaps younger people have still got some, well, I was going to say fantasies,

but hopes that it's not really that bad. The evidence piles up against Aaron, though, doesn't it, in the court case? So she did buy the dehydrator, her phone record show that she went to the place where these terrible, deadly mushrooms had been grown. She had a search history, including lots of thumbnails and pages about poisoning. But I still can't quite work out how all of that might explain a motivation for the murders, because these were close. family to her, weren't they? Did you ever come to better understand why she did it? No, I didn't. And in a sense, I think nearly everybody who's spoken to us about the book, ask that question, because it's quite a bewildering thing that she did.

It just, there's no way in which it makes sense. And you can look at it, this way and you can look at it that way and there's a lot that can be projected onto it from our anxieties and our own experiences but it just doesn't stack up on some level with something really wonky and wrong. No, I come away from it just as mystified as I was when I walked in, I think I could say. Yeah. And I suppose that's what makes us so terrifying, isn't it? Because we want to be able to understand people's motivations. But was some of it the simple fact that she had become estranged from her own family? And then the family that she had married into, she was very generous to.

She ended up being a wealthy woman and she had been able to gift them, houses, all manner of things. Do you think it might have been about gratitude? Did she feel that she just hadn't received back what she expected to in those relationships? that's one theory that appears in the book but but it's sort of as if what can I say about this it's as if we as ordinary people who haven't gone through that membrane we're sitting there listening to all this evidence and thinking well a lot of what she says we understand because we're women too and we're mothers and we're daughters and we know the strains of family life but at some point she just kind of went off on this tangent and I there was one one moment in the trial

that I'll never forget where Erin Patterson was speaking about when she and her she first married into quite strongly Baptist family and she'd been raised as an atheist but she met this young Baptist guy and he was very much still a practicing Christian. And so they got married and they went on a big, they moved to Western Australia and they had a baby. And she wasn't handling this well. It was, I think it was a very difficult birth, which caused great suffering to her and and to the baby. And her parents-in-law, her husband's parents back in Victoria,

which is on the other side of Australia, got in touch and said, look, we're thinking, we're a bit worried and we're wondering, would it be useful if we came over and stayed for a couple of weeks to help you with the new baby? And she agreed to this and was glad of it. And she agreed to this and was glad of it. And the way she spoke about it, I don't know, this really moved me and it's in a mysterious way, the thing that she said, that she was asked while being examined in the court, and how did you feel about having your mother-in-law in the house? She said, oh, I was very grateful. She was very kind to me. She was very, very good to me. And she helped me so much with the baby. She taught me to interpret his cries.

and that really hit me a blow. I was, the first thing I thought of was, I had that little fantasy of, you know, being a mother and the baby won't stop crying and you haven't slept for nights and you're just completely driven out of your mind with anxiety and exhaustion and fatigue. And, but you suddenly into the room, in her dressing gown and slippers, comes patting your mother in all, who knows how to deal. deal with a baby and she says, give me that baby. And I, this kind of melted my heart. And yet at the same time, I thought, I thought the way she expressed that experience was,

she just slightly raised the register of her speech. She didn't say he took, she, she taught me to interpret his crying. She said, he's cries. And somehow that made it to me terribly, um, sort of much more dramatic. And I don't know if she meant it that way, but I think she probably didn't. She was a very, very intelligent woman and highly educated. But she just, the register of her speech was raised at that point in a way that to me was sort of psychologically poetic.

Yeah. I've never forgotten it. It comes to my mind often and it sort of breaks my heart every time. And because, and eventually she get, and eventually she, murders this mother-in-law, the mother-in-law who came to her in the night when the baby's cries could not be interpreted. Well, it's detail like that, Helen, that makes you such a fantastic writer. There are so many tiny details in the mushroom tapes.

Do you know what? The one that really made me slightly smile and forgive me for trying to find humour in a very bleak place was the fact that Erin Patterson claimed that she had been a little bit poisoned too and had diarrhea after the lunch, but she still managed to do a two-hour round trip to drive her son to a flying lesson with this diarrhea and she was wearing white trousers. As you and I know,

nobody would wear white trousers if they're experiencing an incident of diure. You don't. That was very surprising to everybody. There was a lot of talk about diarrhea and like... So much poo. So much poo involved in that trial. Just before we leave the mushroom tapes, describing her son as going to a flying lesson might imply to people who don't know the detail of the case that her children were quite old, but they were very, very young, weren't they?

Nine and fourteen when this happened and when they had to then appear in court. And you described them as having had bags of stones attached to their life by what their mother had done, which is a beautiful turn of phrase. And I wonder, Helen, whether Australia and the worldwide media, have they left the family alone now? Are they really allowing those children to have a life away from this terrible scrutiny? Well, let's hope so. I believe that they're living with their father. And I really don't know much more about it. All I know about is what's happened to her.

But the children, actually they didn't. appear in court, only their police interviews were shown in court because they, for obvious reasons, it was just too traumatic for them to come to the court. If we know nothing about them, then they are being allowed their privacy. So much of what seems to fascinate you, Helen, is the disintegration of human relationships, starting off with this buoyancy of hope and then ending up in some kind of, well, on a beach of despair, perhaps. And I want to talk to you, obviously, about how to end a story.

And congratulations on winning the Bailey Prize for your collected diaries. You know, it is exactly the right accolade for you. And this details the third part of your diaries, the disintegration of your marriage to Murray Bale. And it's so brutal, it's so brilliant. But I wonder back in the late, 1990s when things were really horrid between you because of his casual misogyny, because of this looming and real, then infidelity. If you had known how right you were, how backed up you would be by

readers across the world, by so many women who understand your story, if you had felt that backup, if you had felt that support, if you knew you were right, would it have changed the story? What an interesting question. I'd never thought of asking myself that question. I think what happens when a marriage is breaking up, or definitely with that one, there's a sort of shame attached to it. You can't, you think, I can't believe this has happened to me.

I've allowed myself to get into this excruciating mess, and I'm going to have to get myself out of it. But you also, that shame also entails a sense that nobody else in the world is as idiotic as you as to have let yourself get into such a situation. And, I mean, you can't sort of ask for help. And the idea that, see, that's, I'm very interested that you ask that question because I was actually quite shocked after the book came out at the number of women who said to me, that could be my marriage.

I was deeply shocked by that because, of course, as I was just saying, I thought I was the last womb on earth. You know, I thought I am the only person who's really this dumb and this hopeless and has allowed this to happen to her. But people come up to, women will come up to me in the street, you know, strangers and almost whisper to me. I've just read your diaries. that could be my marriage. And so that, at that stage, when it was all over, was actually rather

comforting to me. But at the same time, it was an awfully bleak thing to know. Well, I mean, you have told the world a truth. And I think you're absolutely right in what you say about shame kind of keeps you in. But also you write so brilliantly about this kind of competitive spirit between your then husband and yourself. You're both writers. I mean, he appeared to simply believe that He was a better writer than you, more deserving of the title of writer. And you talk at one point, Helen, of feeling that you need to pull your own horns in. You need to be less of a person in order to stay in the marriage. When I was pulling these diaries together, that was the kind of thing again and again and again throughout the diary.

And I think this probably happens to most people if they keep a diary. you go back and you see these stupid mistakes you made and the thoughts you had and the kind of deals you tried to make with the cards you'd been dealt, the way you thought, well, you know, here I am and I'm married and this is the third go I've made at it and it's failing and it must be something I'm doing. I must be doing something that's wrong. And so am I going to have to make myself less, cut bits of myself, off in order to fit into what's required in a marriage.

I mean, that's, it's really shocking to look back and see the points at which you could have, I could have said, oh, is that what's going on here? Well, I'm out of here. There could have, there were moments when that seems, when you read it, it seems that that might have been possible. But I don't know what is that fog that comes into one's head in those situations. I mean, early on it's called love, being in love. I mean, the beginning of it, I was wonderful marriage.

You know, it was the first time I'd been with a man who really was in the same boat as me who loved the same things I did and thought the same things, we thought the same things were important. We were interested in writing. And it was wonderful to be with someone who didn't think I was crazy for caring about those things. There are so many brilliant descriptions there of the male ego, Helen, and I'm sure that an awful lot of women in their feeling of solidarity with you have really understood being on the receiving end of that ego.

And you do ask at one point, why are men so fragile? If he were getting more attention than I was, everybody would be at ease, tilt it, and everything gets unhappy and shadowy. Now, as you've said, you're a grandmother, you've got grandsons. Are you hopeful that that changes in their lifetime at least? Well, yes, that's what I'm hoping. But I think, you see, way back at the beginning of feminism, I mean the beginning of the second wave of feminism,

which is what deeply affected me, in those days we used to think all these bullshit ideas we had like that men and women really weren't all that different from each other we're really the same underneath it's all just socially imposed and and I look back on that now and I just laugh because I never raised a boy I only had one child a girl and and I understood her once as one does with with and and but but having grandsons, I've learned so much about men and what they're like. And my grandsons are now, they're both, well, one of them just turned 19 today, and the other one is 22, I think.

And so I've lived with them for their whole lives, basically. I've lived next door to them and being closely involved in their lives. And I understand a lot more now about men and their fragility and how they deal. with the world differently from women. There's so much more pride and secretiveness and the hiding of feelings and not being able to admit to feeling.

But really, I do think that my husband, the one I depict in the diary, was a very, very extreme case. A lot of those things. There's quite a lot of discussion between you that you tell us about as to how he might feel about people knowing what's in the diaries. And I think at one point you offer him the opportunity of agreeing that they won't be published for 100 years. And then you say no stuff that I'm going to publish them when I want to publish them. I mean, what has he made of your depiction of him?

I have no idea. We haven't spoken to each other now for several years, and we certainly haven't spoken to each other since the diaries came out. Well, he always used to make a point of saying that he didn't read my books, but I'm sure that he's got a lot of friends who will have written and informed him of what's in the diaries, and I'm sure he's not at all happy. He published a one-volume memoir of his own, which came out just before Mind did. I mean, I think he put a shot across my bowels. But, and in that book, he dismissed me in

about a sentence and a half. I can't help laughing because, I mean, I just, really? Is that the only impression I made upon you? And, but then I thought, well, he must have sensed what was coming. So he, yeah, wanted to get one in there first. His memoir was simply called he, wasn't it? There's no one. That made me laugh. E full stop. Yeah, Eiffel stop. There's some wonderful domestic detail.

And obviously, your diaries contain so much more than just a description of your marriage. And I really love the moments when we as a reader can kind of escape what's going on in your life with you. And sewing is a big thing for you, isn't it? You describe the muslin curtains wafting in the breeze. And I think you've probably made those muslin curtains. certain's yourself. Are you, are you still sewing? Are you a very creative person in other way? No. No. Unfortunately, I can't, I look back and I can't think why I decided to learn to sew. I didn't know how to sew. I mean, I could mend and I could, you know, sort of stitch things by

hand. But at some point when I was first with him, I thought, I'm going to get a sewing machine and I'm going to teach myself to zone. I'm going to go to a class. And so I went to a class and I loved it so much. And I made two skirts, and they were so fantastic. And I just wore them until they fell apart. And I did run up all the, you know, how you say, I ran up some curtains. I ran up the curtains in both the flats that I lived in. Not when we were together.

I don't think he would have liked muslin curtains. And he was in charge of the aesthetic, of course. But when I started to live by myself, I had a flat with a lot of the windows and what a sun was coming in. So I just went down to the material shop and I bought all this material and I just sewed curtain after curtain. It was very, very healing thing to do. I loved sewing them and they did puff in the breeze and they made, they were sort of buttery colour and they made a lovely light when the sun shone in. But my daughter actually gave me a new sewing machine for Christmas, this last, my last birthday, at least.

And we've got it set up, but somehow I haven't done anything with it yet. I haven't even mended anything. So I just wonder if that was just a burst of creativity. That's the way I thought of it at the time. But I must have been in desperate need. Well, how lovely to have a sewing machine back, though, just as a kind of symbol of hope somewhere on the table. Yeah, I don't have it set up the whole time.

I think so that you can go, I'm going to do it now and you walk into the room and it's all set up. That's a kind of, you know, it's like you like to have the iron set up. I like to have the iron set up so I can just turn it on and iron something and not have to wait 10 minutes drumming the fingers to what warm it. Yeah, I'm with you on that. And it's too easy to just find something else more interesting to do instead, isn't it? If the sewing machine is locked away in a cupboard. And when you publish diaries, obviously you have an opportunity. to edit them and you presumably needed to edit them. Is there a temptation and did you give

into it to actually redact quite a lot of things with the benefit of hindsight, you know, move the ornaments around on the mantelpiece? Well, I made an agreement with myself that I would do as little of that as I could possibly get away with. I mean, when I, obviously I cut a lot, because in any diary there's a lot of stuff that nobody else would be interested in mostly just procedural things or what you did that day that wasn't very interesting in you paid a bill or something like that. But so I cut a lot. But I made a resolution that I wouldn't make myself out to have been a better writer than I was at the time. But the thing about that is that I actually write as well as I can in the diary.

I don't just drop things down. I'm still keeping, I still keep one now. But I, it's almost as if that's how I taught myself to write. It's by writing your diary and just using daily events as a raw material for them. And I, I like to, I actually love writing with a fountain pen. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure out. I actually pushing it across the page. And I like shifting clauses and phrases around and making them nice.

And so when I go back and think, oh, well, maybe I could publish this, I'm sometimes surprised to find that the writing is a lot better than I thought it was. So I did, I would have, I did as little as that kind of improvement as I could get away with. Can I ask finally for your thoughts about the absolute horror that was the anti-Semitic attack on Bondi Beach in Australia? I mean, such a painful thing, we are talking so soon after it's happened. So the question, what will help Australia heal? I don't know whether it's even possible to ask that without it sounding trite and to answer it with any true sense of meaning.

but you're a very proud Australian, I know, and you're a very fierce journalist, so we would be interested in your thoughts. You will have read about the man in the white t-shirt who ran to one of the gunmen and seized him in a huge bear hold and took the gun off him. When that little bit of video appeared on TV,

we were thunderstruck by that. I mean, when you saw it happen, it was so astonishing, it just so brave and spontaneously splendid that, I don't know, I think the whole country just wept for a week after that. I just kept bursting into tears and feeling that I'd seen,

I was awestruck, but I'd seen this act by a brave man. he just ran in and didn't hesitate and I don't know there was something redemptive about that about that the sight of what he did and in a way I think a lot of us and I think well I'll talk about myself that that I found that I wanted to look at it again and again because I almost couldn't believe that I'd seen it and that it really happened. And then the huge numbers of people who rushed to the beach on ordinary Australians and people of every climb rushed there.

There were thousands and thousands of people who went there. And just the massive grieving and horror that there was in the country was very powerful and awesome. And this was before, as always, it began to be politicised. And then people started to, there was a sort of purity of emotion that happened around it

before everybody started seeing how they could use it for their own purposes. And I'll never forget. that. I feel enormously fortunate to have seen what that man did. And in a way, hanging onto that memory is just a way of making it bearable. Well, it's not bearable. It can never be made bearable.

But I feel proud of us for our outpouring of grief. and I know that because anti-Semitism is something very dark in the human race, in people, and to see the outrage and disbelief and desire to help and to be there and to be together and to mourn and grieve together, I found that terribly heartening. Helen, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you. We're very, very grateful for your time. Thank you for covering so many different topics.

I have read that you've got a new book coming out sometime about your grandson's football team, is that? Oh, yeah, that's already come out here. Oh, I'm so sorry. No, it is. We'll be coming out. It hasn't come out in the UK. Okay. But I'm having to tell you that, it's a book of, that people who are.

really enjoy and it's funny and it's full of laughter and sentimental tears. And when I do public events about it, all these nannas turn up. The front rows are full of tearful nannas because it's about grandchildren and being a grandmother. And yeah, I'm so glad I did that book. It really made me happy to do it. I had more fun doing it than anything else I've ever written. Well, that's brilliant.

When it reaches you. Helen Garner. So the mushroom tapes is out at the moment. I'd hugely recommend that. It's not a big book to get through. In fact, I wolfed it down in an evening. Helen Garner's thoughts on what has happened in the life of Aaron Patterson are just really good, good thoughts. And the collected diaries, which is called How to End This Story, is the one that won the Bailey Gifford Prize. It's a mighty, mighty tome because there are three books in there that's out now as well. It's a dip-in book. So with her diaries, I think you could read it in all manner of ways. You could do a whole year in an evening. You could just dip in and out. They're never dated, so you wouldn't be able to do that thing where you go, okay, it's February the 24th.

I'm going to read what Helen Garland is. Oh, I see. That's what I was thinking. No. So, and sometimes, you know, they definitely kind of jump around a little bit. But I like reading them in very fulfilling big chunks. And certainly in the third volume, It's quite a story that she's telling about her disintegrating marriage to he, full stop.

So I read that very much like I would have read a novel. This chap who needed another place in which to do his work, he did know who he was married to. Yes. So that was the attraction. So odd, isn't it? Yeah, in the first place, you know, that they were both writers

and they had this kind of intellectual spark between them. So no, he absolutely knew who he was. was getting, but didn't respect who he was getting. That's what I took from it. And how telling, if there's anybody listening who thinks, well, he didn't get a chance to give his side of the story. And there are definitely times as a reader when you think that. Well, he did get a chance to tell his side of the story.

And he chose to continue going down that path of diminishing Helen Garner's life by only including one little sentence about her in his own very important memoir. he full stop. So don't feel bad at all. You know what, Helen Love? You're better off without it. I'm just so, I sent Eva a text afterwards after we've done the interview. And she was back at base manning it,

just saying thank you actually for setting it up because our job is a privilege when we meet heroes like that. And I think we felt like that after. And Tyler, didn't we? You just think, this is amazing. We don't want to tip over until we're so lucky territory. No. Or do we? But I definitely want to acknowledge it's rare as a reader to be able to go,

oh, and I'm going to ask her about that. Yeah. That's what's lovely. Yeah, no, it is. It's a privilege. And we do like our jobs, and you should never, ever sniff at that. It's wild. I couldn't resist it.

I'm so sorry, it's very childish. I wish we could talk about that noisy bloke in the office, but we can't. No, no. Book club. Thank you, Eve. Book club, well rescued. Let's talk about book club. Now, we've had quite a few thoughts about rereading a classic so we can just see where it touches us this time.

And we've got one or two thoughts in mind already, haven't we? There was an interesting email actually, somebody saying, and I do apologise, I've lost it, but the email that said they were rereading the James Harriet books. Now, they were very cosy, weren't they? Yeah, and a lot of people really enjoyed them. But I don't know what they'd be like now. Who knows?

do do do do do do do and the new channel five version is gorgeous as well is it yes it's lovely it's one of those great shows that channel five does and you just think oh it's like it's just like swimming through very very pleasant chocolate yeah swimming through chocolate oh la la sounds like your second album okay so we'll take suggestions on books worth rereading i'm quite taken with the Rebecca. Well, so am I really, but we want to add a bit of Jeopardy. Oh, okay, right, yeah. So send us your Jeopardy thoughts.

Getting some Jeopardy. We're both going to have a whiskey. No, there's just no jeopardy involved in that series at all. There really isn't... Well, you're still watching it? Oh, yeah. Well, now I've committed to it, I've got to finish it. Oh, yes, that's that Presbyterian...

It is. And then I'm going to leap straight into hot gay sex. Right. Okay. So that's... By the way, that's a reference to heated rivalry as previously discussed. I can't watch it. It's not part of my package, so to speak. Right, Jane and Fee at Times. Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another off-air with Jane and Fee.

Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, two till four on Times radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DA. or on the free Times Radio app. Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury

and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.