Carlton’s recent foray into its spiritual home away from home, Lygon Street, brought the players into direct contact with all manner of individual, amongst them a noted Melbourne author and rabid Blues supporter as Michael Jamison so pleasantly discovered.

Jamison had made his way north along the famous retail strip when he was approached by the Koori novelist and Melbourne University creative writing lecturer Tony Birch, who promptly engaged in literary conversation with the dependable defender.
 
“It happened just outside Cinema Nova. Tony Birch came up to me to remind me of a book I’d mentioned in the paper two years ago entitled Beaten By A Blow, which was written by one of his good friends Dennis McIntosh,” Jamison said.

“Tony told me that he’d passed on my comment to Dennis and that Dennis really liked it. Tony then mentioned that he himself was an author with a couple of books out... and he just happened to pop across to Readings, buy a copy of one of his books, sign it and give it to me.”

Birch’s book clearly touched a chord with Jamison, who only recently flicked the final pages of the tome and was happy to volunteer the following critique.

“Blood is about a young boy and girl, Jesse and Rachel, who are always on the move with their Mum, Gwen - a free spirit to put it nicely who’s always between her next job and her next boyfriend,” Jamison said.

“Anyway, they all make their way from country Victoria to Adelaide where Gwen falls for a vagabond guy she meets. The guy brings a change to the dynamic, so the children decide they need to escape back to Melbourne without Gwen. It all comes to a head in the end and it’s a very happy ending, which is nice.”

Birch’s book helped fill the void for the well-read Jamison over the summer period.

“I always try to read as much as I can. It tends to happen more in the holidays and I’ve kept it up this year,” he said.

“I mainly read fiction, but I’ve started to read a few non-fiction books. There’s a couple of books by [the Canadian author] Malcolm Gladwell, including one I’ve just finished called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking about first impressions and our subconscious thoughts you might say. He has another one called Outliers which I’m going to start reading soon, and ‘Juddy’ [Chris Judd] put me onto that.”

Jamison added that Judd also harbored hope of one day penning a non-fiction about the little things you learn in life”. But did ‘Jamo’ consider himself a budding author?

“I’d like to, but I don’t know if I could,” he replied.

“At school I was more of an analytical rather than emotive writer. I always loved studying history at school, so maybe I could write something to do with the wars. My grandfather got shot down over Germany during World War II and survived it. He could speak a bit of German and somehow got taken in by some sympathisers so he got through that way.

“Also, my mum grew up in New Guinea and I’m about to read Kokoda, so it could be something along those lines.”