If you're ever performing at a festival, be it musical or otherwise, here is some advice on what to say if you run into trouble and need to get the crowd back on your side:

a) Scream "Make some noise, Melbourne!" (obviously insert whichever local reference will win you the most support here. The more specific the reference to the crowd, the better). If you can mention the locality by slipping it into some lyrics or referring to a local sandwich shop/how good the burgers are/the queue to the toilets etc, you're doing well.

b) Scream the reason for the festival, followed by a long woooooo!!!! (For instance, a mere "2007 Woooooooo!" will set the crowd going for another half an hour)...

c) Imply somehow that the crowd is discerning/rebellious/unspeakably attractive. I was at Falls Festival the other day and someone asked for a show of hands as to how many people had managed to sneak alcohol into the venue. This is a perfect example. Naturally, every single person on the entire surf coast raised their hands and shouted for joy at being included in such a dangerously edgy minority.

d) Rock. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you say. If you're really quite excellent at performing, you'll be alright.

So, there's my first advice for the year. Happy new year everyone. 2007! Woooo!

While you watch four films in a row, the world goes on around you.

When you go to your first film, it is daylight and conservative MPs are crossing the floor in Parliament over the Migration Bill. When you come out, having seen a slow Iranian film, an animated Richard Linklater film, a nature film, and (accidentally, wrong cinema) an Australian film about kids in a small town... there are cabs all up and down the streets of Melbourne and the city rings with the voices of angry cab drivers on the steps of Parliament.

After eight hours of movies, the Migration Bill has passed. A man has been charged with the death of the taxi driver he (allegedly) threw from his cab. And you've turned another year older.

It's all a bit much to take in, really.

By the way, as well as the above, I'm adding to my list of films seen so far: Detour de France (about cycling but actually about Aussie blokes being disgraceful), Music in Exile (supposed to be about New Orleans musicians post-Hurricane-Katrina, but just a bit too full of white people telling about their pain for my liking), Tough Enough (German gangsters) and You're Gonna Miss Me. This last one was a corker. Docco similar to Capturing The Friedmans in many ways only with broader subject-matter and made by a first-time director.

Dear the tallest guy in the world,

Congratulations on getting into the Guiness Book of World Records and everything. I guess that must be pretty exciting in terms of things to tell people at dinner parties.

Does it necessarily mean, however, that when you go to a Whitlams gig you absolutely have to stand directly in front of me?

When you push past everyone, just as the gig is really warming up, and tread on their feet so you can see Tim Friedman better, must you do it while wearing a hat?

Do you have to jerk your head unpredictably and drink your huge large-man-beer right in front of me, deliberately blocking my way when I try to get past - back to the place I was in before - so that I start to hate everything about you, including the jumper you are wearing, which in happier circumstances I may have found comforting, but which now I am convinced was purchased in a boutique shop down a back lane for more than the cost of the wool, the sheep that made the wool, and the farm that reared the sheep that made the wool?

What I resent the most about you is the back of your head. It betrays your arrogance and your insensitivity: it's not looking - it's not seeing - it's not even listening to the music. It's just holding your head together like a bulldog clip.

The couple next to me suggest that I should take your hat off and hurl it backwards to the bar so you would have to trawl through the crowd (excuse me, excuse me, sorry, excuse me) and fetch it back to cover your pin head. But you're a big bloke and I'm a small woman and you realise that just as much as I do, which is why I drop my chewing gum on your vintage converse shoes and do a little twisty thing with my foot when I pretend to accidentally stumble onto you on my way out.

You'll also find that you have a new entry in the Guiness Book of World Records, too. Same category, though. "World's Largest..."

So, congratulations. I guess I'll see you at the next gig I go to. Before then, I'm going to befriend your colleague, the World's Strongest Man, who (I predict) will not enjoy prats in expensive jumpers and will take whatever action he deems fit in the circumstances to remove the back of your head to some other place, where I am not.

(And yes, everyone, I am getting older. And yes I did notice that The Corner won't allow smoking in the venue anymore. I obviously whole-heartedly approve of that decision, and did briefly consider writing a letter to add to what I hoped was a groundswell of public support. I also wondered why they don't serve cups of tea at the venue, whether they were mandated under health and safety regulations to sell earplugs, and why on earth they have to start gigs so late when clearly we all need to be in bed soon because the morning is the best part of the day).

Today is the first Sunday for four weeks that I haven't had to cram everything in before a seven thirty show. It's the first day of no comedy festival shows whatsoever.

So I got up at two this afternoon, after a rather colourful night at the festival club, and I thought very seriously about getting some of the work done that Rita and I had scheduled in for Sunday. Then I got dressed in what clothes I could find that weren't held together by cigarette smoke and rain (it's been a very healthy couple of weeks) and I went for a walk. Which was quite adventurous, considering the other option was staying in bed.

In other news, Sammy J, the guy who plays the Young Liberal in I Could Be Anybody, was awarded Best Newcomer last night at the comedy festival, which is enormously exciting and he should be sent to the congratulatorium (along with Tim Stitz, who is already there. They can have cups of tea together by the fire and talk about what to do next).

Also, I went to the Victorian College of the Arts graduation ceremony the other night. I was outraged that I had to pay thirty dollars to go and watch someone walk up on stage and collect a piece of paper. I would now like to retract that outrage. It was quite brilliant, with bits of film, music, dance, and performing that really made me wonder (once again) what life would have been like for me if I'd gone to art school.

Ben Hjorth, who played Oliver in our play, People Watching, led the most astonishing chant from the back of Hamer Hall in Melbourne. The people who did Men of Steel at the comedy festival performed some of their hilarious food-fight puppet comedy (a genre consisting, I should think, only of them) and the kids from the school of dance made me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my body (walking? sitting around? Pathetic!). Then, hours into the ceremony, a shambles of musicians appeared onto the stage and played some awe-inspiring stuff (and I'm leaving out the actors and the film makers because I'm far more interested in watching things I don't know anything about). So there. Pretty excellent stuff. Stew graduated (and surprised everyone a little when he took a polariod of the actual moment he shook hands with the Vice Chancellor) and then my friend Simon graduated, as did our 1st AD from I Could Be Anybody, Eva Tandy (who was whooped with considerable gusto by the rather reserved audience). I'm very lucky to know these people.

Anyway, I have to go and fall asleep over my new book, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. Yay for learning things from other people.

There are some Ani Difranco lyrics that go like this:

They say goldfish
Have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time

... which is not necessarily a song about how bad my memory is, but it is yet to be conclusively determined that it isn't a song about how bad my memory is.

Why do I forget things? Why have I carried a letter, hand-written, addressed and with a stamp on the envelope, everywhere I've been since February? Why haven't I posted it? It's a nice letter, it talks about my plans for the year, about the weather being too hot and about the Christmas dinner starting to wear off.

Why did I carefully fill out the Women's Health Survey I get sent every couple of years, and then leave it on my desk for four months? Why go to the trouble of filling in all the little boxes (DEFINITELY, LESS DEFINITE, NOT SURE, PROBABLY NOT, NEVER) and then leave those medically significant answers lying face down against an old program for the Astor Theatre and a postcard from someone in Noosa?

I don't know why I do these things. Sometimes I think I should do yoga and sudokus and cryptic crosswords and low impact weight training so my mind becomes a steel trap for facts and bits of information like where I'm actually going and what I'm doing on the 96 tram when in fact the plan was for me to get on the 86 tram and pick up my car and drive it home.

Which is of course why I find myself asking all these questions. I find it deeply depressing that I can't even remember the correct procedure for getting myself home of an evening. Tonight, I was supposed to go to the car. I forgot about the car and went home. The reason for this? Well, because I was distracted, of course. Why? Because I was doing a sudoku so my mind would be sharper and I wouldn't forget things.

Don't you think that's cruel?