MANY MOONS AGO, before editing books was a glimmer at the end of my nib, I worked as an usher at Hoyts Midcity Cinemas on Bourke Street in Melbourne. It was the mid 1980s, which puts me in my mid-twenties.

I don’t know how I landed the job. More likely than not, I asked and was given. You could do that in those days. You walked into an establishment that looked vaguely desirable and wouldn’t be too soul destroying and you asked if there was a vacancy. People rarely turned you down and if one day you didn’t show up they presumed you’d given up and moved to Frankston to live on the dole.