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LETTERS@FRANKIE.COM.AU Dear frankie, I just received a displeased frown from the gentleman two seats ahead of me on the train for audibly laughing while reading an article in issue 129. As we all know, such expressions in public are now a big no-no. Reading “The gift of a good story” has been such a delightful way to spend my hour commute out of Melbourne, and it was Jack Vening’s story that had me giggling like a schoolgirl, reading about the embarrassment of receiving hentai in the mail. Let’s be honest, though – he definitely ordered it, got caught and has gone so far as to write a fake article about it to clear his name, right? I haven’t picked up a magazine since I was a young teen buying Dolly…

CUP OF CALM Everyone should own at least one ‘special’ mug. While your $4 department store ceramics are fine for the daily “I need caffeine NOW” routine, the ‘special’ mug is ideal for those moments when you want to let your brain know, “Hey! It’s time to relax.” Like your cosy Sunday morning coffee in bed, or your nightly hot-chocolate-and-book ritual. Our pick for ‘most special’ mug is this cheery one by shuh. $69, shuhlee.com FEET TREAT This lovely number is called a ‘black and white pebbles turkish bath mat’. A long name, to be sure, and the word ‘pebbles’ has us thinking about less than sunny times on certain English beaches. Thankfully, though, the Turkish element here makes the whole thing seem much more cheerful, and these particular pebbles…

Hi Sophie. What’s the idea behind your Beachology series? This project emerged as a response to the restrictions of lockdown. During the prolonged periods of COVID isolation, producing social documentary work became incredibly challenging, as access to public and communal spaces was largely removed. Leaving home, let alone entering social environments, was no longer simple or spontaneous. As was widely reported at the time, UK beaches became a popular destination during the summers of 2020, 2021 and 2022, offering an alternative to international travel. Ongoing flight cancellations, sudden lockdowns, costly testing requirements and the slow rollout of vaccines made travelling abroad difficult and unpredictable. At the same time, the UK experienced unusually sunny summers, turning domestic holidays into the most accessible form of escape. The beach quickly stood out as one of…

I was 10 when typing first entered my life. A computer the size of a baby hippo appeared on a desk in our house, and being the young scholar I was (you should know, I did not learn to read properly until Year 3), I was ready to write my first novel. When it was finally my turn at the beast, I stretched my arms out in front of me like proper writers do in the movies, planted my hands confidently on the keyboard, only to discover it took me five minutes to find my first letter. What was this jumbled-up nonsense?! I demanded my mother explain why the keyboard wasn’t set out alphabetically. She patiently told me that the layout was called QWERTY (after the first six letters in…

“I’m having trouble breathing in,” Courtney Barnett sings, her voice ringing a familiar note in the city where her music came of age. It’s a packed Melbourne/Naarm pub on a wet Sunday night, where 200 of the musician’s closest friends, family and fans are squished against each other like sardines. Rain is hitting the windows with a purpose that feels forced – the music is hitting it right back with a force that feels purposeful. “The room was very energetic and exciting,” Courtney says of the show a few days later, the sun now streaming in from the window behind her, framing her silhouette against a backdrop of that same old city. The ‘secret’ show was the first gig she’d played in Melbourne for a while, a homecoming of sorts…

Every week, Rosie Heselev visits her PO box to pick up the snail mail sent to her from some of this country’s most isolated people. She’s the co-founder and editor-in-chief of About Time , Australia’s first national newspaper for the incarcerated, and the letter writers are people in prison and detention centres. They’re hoping to contribute pieces of writing to the print paper, which is freely distributed each month to every prisoner in every state and territory (apart from the Northern Territory). “We receive letters every day… It’s a real privilege and joy for me,” Rosie says. “We also get submissions through our online platforms from people who have been inside and are now out. I got about three this week from people who read it while they were inside.”…

How has your fashion industry background influenced the way you operate your own label? I’ve worked, interned and apprenticed for locally producing fashion businesses from as small to as large as a local producer can get. I have gotten to try a lot of key tasks in other businesses: sample-making, small-batch sewing, pattern-cutting, spec development, quality assurance, e-commerce. I even did bespoke hand-work when I was a tailor’s apprentice. It was a diverse six-year period where I was a little sponge. Plus, my fashion degree. My biggest takeaway: you need to have a willingness to know the entire production and operations process. There is no part of a clothing business that isn’t interwoven with your overall outcome. It’s all worth developing skill in – even the mundane stuff – because…

As an employed and responsible mentally ill person, I regularly seek out ways to “smooth my brain” after work. For those who are not terminally online, having a smooth brain means that you are incapable of absorbing bad or stressful thoughts, because your brain is just so smooth. It’s basically the TikTok-era equivalent to the old-timey saying “water off a duck’s back”. To achieve a perfectly smooth brain, I must undergo the process of consuming something that’s so easy to concentrate on – so “lowbrow”, as some folks might call it – that all the lumps and bumps in my noggin which normally attract things like overthinking and catastrophising become impenetrable. As soon as the clock ticks over to 5pm, my main aim is to transform the ridged mass inside…

Tell us about your collection. What kinds of objects and trinkets have you accumulated? The majority of my collection is made up of thumb-sized objects that I’ve acquired in a variety of ways. Friends give them to me; my grandma passes her own pieces down; and sometimes I’ll spot something special in an antique shop and bring it home. But my favourite finds are the ones I literally stumble across on the ground. They always feel like little gifts from the universe, like a tiny reward for surviving another day: “Here, have something that’ll make you smile.” Every bottle cap, toy and die has its own memory attached. Some of my mini-collections include over 50 vintage dice, a growing family of miniature screwdrivers (I think I’m up to six), stone-carved…