After 12 years, approximately 300 issues, 200,000 words and one or two (okay, maybe three) missed deadlines, this is my final column for The Big Issue. Columnists come and go, but this one hung around and made himself at home – at first on page 12, then later wherever there was space – and for that I’m very grateful. It’s a responsibility I’ve guarded with my life. In all those years I never missed an issue, never took a break, and only occasionally woke up in a sweat thinking, No, that’s it, I’ve written about everything I possibly can.
In truth, banging out 650 fortnightly words on a topic of my choosing wasn’t the greatest impost on my life. It’s the dream gig, really. Over the years I’ve covered all sorts of pressing issues: how to set up a tent, how not to do home renovations, why I like autumn, what I’d like to do to the jerks who dump rubbish in our local creek, the time my sister infected the entire household with nits, and, more recently, the life cycle of bagworms. Frivolous, irreverent, possibly irrelevant, the work of a columnist is most definitely a form of journalism – you look at the world and come up with some sort of theory about it. With luck, you entertain; once in a blue moon you inform. Occasionally you bomb out.
I came to journalism late, and I’ve traversed different areas, including science writing, feature writing, profiles and travel. For a while, I made decent coin reviewing forklifts and farm machinery – hey, if it pays the bills… But I’ve always thought of myself as a satirist. For a few years I put on my mystical cap and wrote satirical horoscopes in these pages. Each January when the country was on summer holidays, I filed ridiculous “breaking news from the campground” columns. I poked fun at everything I possibly could, mostly myself. Turns out I was fruitful fodder.
The first piece of advice I got when I started writing this column was: “Don’t try to save the world.” The man who gave me that advice was the same man who gave me the column, former editor of The Big Issue, Alan Attwood. It’s no exaggeration to say I owe my entire writing career to Alan. He was the first proper magazine editor to publish my stories, the first to encourage me to pursue my dream. He also put up with me at my precious and demanding worst. Those demands included that he make me a columnist, and, over lunches in Melbourne’s Chinatown and vaguely clandestine meet-ups outside the statue of Sun Yat-sen, he finally threw up his hands and relented. You could say I had a lot of confidence back then, or maybe I had nothing to lose. I’m not one to give advice, but perhaps if there’s something you’ve always wanted to do, maybe you should give it everything you’ve got?
So thank you Alan, and thank you to current editor Amy Hetherington and the rest of the editorial team for indulging my random musings for so long. I especially thank the vendors. Without them there would be no magazine, no column, no patient study into the lives of bagworms hanging from our correa tree. I’ve met and chatted with vendors in cities across the country, from Sydney to Broome, and they often give me ideas for columns, or proffer reviews of previous ones. I hope you continue to support them.
And lastly – although it should really be firstly – I’d like to thank you, the reader. There’s no-one more important to any writer. Thank you for your feedback, your emails and letters to the editor, your engagement and encouragement. May your garden be blessed with bountiful bagworms.
By Ricky French
Ricky French is a writer and musician and Big Issue legend.
Published in ed#745
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