I am now up to the stage in re-writing my show from memory where I am sure it was funnier. I'm sure it was better. And more clever. And in fact brilliant. I'm sure it had a strangely genius quality about it.

But we'll never know.

Stupid exploding hard drive.

Also, according to the newspaper this morning, I am getting dumber. Having been vegetarian for twelve years, I am now a very shame-faced meat eater, against my finest political and ethical convictions. Now I find out I'm actually making myself more stupid. This might explain my script.

Just as a precaution, if you see me in the street, here is the kind of question I am getting tired of:

"You lost your entire hard drive? What, everything? Don't you back your stuff up? I always back my stuff up. I back it up nine times a day in three different languages and keep copies in four different buildings across five continents and then I send it to myself in a time machine and store it in a vacuum pack in the future."

And, to save time, here is my answer:

NO I DID NOT BACK MY STUFF UP OKAY YOU SMUG PRICK? I WAS BUSY. I HAD THINGS TO DO. I WAS "PLANNING" TO BACK MY STUFF UP. I WAS UNDER INSTRUCTIONS FROM RITA TO BACK MY STUFF UP. I DID NOT BACK MY STUFF UP. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? I HAVEN'T DONATED BLOOD FOR MONTHS EITHER. AND SOMETIMES I SWEAR AND QUITE OFTEN I FORGET PEOPLE'S NAMES AND ONE TIME I PLAYED A TRICK ON MY SCIENCE TEACHER BECAUSE I KNEW SHE WAS DEAF IN ONE EAR. I AM IN IMPERFECT PERSON IN MANY WAYS. BUGGER OFF, FOR INSTANCE.

That is all.

(Except this. Anthony Lane on Zellweger. Oh yes).

Me to the guy in the hard drive fixing place: Hello. What's the news on whether there's any data I can save from my entire last three years worth of writing?

Guy in the hard drive fixing place: Well. Er...

Me to GIHDFP: That doesn't sound good.

GIHDFP: It's without doubt the most damaged hard drive anyone in here has ever seen. I did a whip around. They all agree. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.

Me: Oh God.

GIHDFP: I can one hundred percent guarantee that you will never, ever be able to recover even a trace of data from it.

Me: Not even a little trace?

GIHDFP: When we turned it on, we heard a grinding noise. The heads on the hard drive were cutting into it.

Me: I hate computers.

GIHDFP: I'm so sorry.

I am re-writing the comedy festival show from memory.

I can't help but feel a little persecuted. Worst they've ever seen? Is someone telling me something? If they are, I wish they'd pipe down. A broken wrist and a broken hard drive are a slightly heavy-handed way of telling me to stop writing. Surely the carrot approach would work better than the stick. Offer me a highly paid job doing something else and I might stop writing. Break my arm and my hard drive and you'll just give me more material and get me really peeved.

You have been warned.

So the Sydney Festival was... well, it was fun at first.

We saw a few things, including the brilliant Small Metal Objects, the staging of which takes place at a train station (Circular Quay) and which broke down so many of the squirm-worthy pretensions that form the backbone of most theatre I seem to go to. It was truly inspired. If you haven't seen it: the actors converse into the headphones of the audience, who watch the crowd until they locate the bodies that match the voices. So you're hearing a conversation and you're looking at the crowd of (real) people at the station who don't understand why there's an audience with headphones looking at them, and then suddenly you realise two of the people in the crowd are the people having the conversation into your headphones. This does brilliant things to the way you watch/are watched/watch other people being watched etc that really makes you think. Add to this the fact that some of the performers are intellectually disabled and suddenly there's another dimension to the people looking/being looked at/"what's going on here? You looking at me?" scenario that already exists in a crowd of people looking at each other.

It would have been interesting to see the show on a weekday, when people at train stations behave differently. I saw it on a weekend, when people were slow, and curious, and bored. Hence there was a man who danced for the audience (what are they looking at? he asked his friend and then gave us something to look at, in case that was what we were there for). There was a group of young boys who circled one of the actors in a way that could have turned out to be threatening, except that all of us were watching, so it didn't.

I know most sensible people have already seen Back to Back theatre performing this show before, when it was in Melbourne, but I hadn't seen it. I'd see it again though, before the troupe (originally from Geelong) takes it overseas and gets famous. I recommend.

Anyhoo, then we went to see a Beckett play, at NIDA. Tell you what, if you've got any spare cash, you should get it down to NIDA pronto. Tin shed, that joint. Smell of an oily rag. Check out the foyer for instance.

Beckett was wonderful. Here is a photograph of Barry McGovern, but only because I can't find an actual photograph of his voice. Gorgeous voice, gorgeous performance, beautiful words, and all in all it was a fantastic piece of theatre with all the artifice that so often forms the basis of the aforementioned pretensions, but with none of the pretensions. Here is a review.

Then, on Sunday, when I had planned to work on my play, my hard-drive died and all my writing was lost. My writing, my notes, all drafts of the comedy festival show since early December... all gone. Forever. Back to the theme of this post: drama, with no pretension.

Back up your files.

Since then, I have been reading about important things like the abduction of children, the meltdown of the planet, the David Hicks situation, and war. Comedy Festival scripts and writing collections are really not that important.

Still. Back up your files. Now.

I am heading off to Sydney tonight to check out the Sydney Festival.

On Sunday, I am sitting in my Sydney hotel room doing lots of homework because I want Melbourne to win the battle of the festivals and I intend to do my part.

Me versus Ralph Fiennes. Clearly the poor chump is in all sorts of trouble.

See you Monday!

There's a vigil today in the city, in Melbourne, to mark the fifth anniversary of Australian man David Hicks being detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

I know, I know. Heavy topic to start with, but sometimes I stop and think about stuff, and today this is what stopped me.

The Americans are taking a "hard line", suggesting that the five years Hicks has already spent in Guantanamo won't be taken into account in any sentencing.

Whether or not David Hicks is a dangerous terrorist, there aren't many people I can think of who have been detained without trial in secret conditions for secret reasons by the most powerful democracy in the world, at any point in history. Rapists, mass murderers, dictators such as Pinochet and Saddam... all subject to a legal system (whether we like it or not).

It strikes me as quite bizarre that a country where citizens demand adherance to a constitutionally entrenched right to carry a gun can't recognise that giving someone a "right" or a "freedom" can result in the system imploding (give someone a right to carry a gun, they shoot someone. Give someone a right to a fair trial, that person is freed in twenty years and offends again). But the alternative is that there is no system at all.

Watching the play of 1984 this year at the Arts Festival in Melbourne, I realised that the reason I found it so depressing was that reality doesn't survive the comparison.

Now, consider this: the two Melbourne newspapers have the same story as their homepage online at the moment. Colour photographs, gushing press: Kylie has been voted the second most famous person in Britain after the Queen. Voted. Most famous. Kylie. Queen.

Do we think The Age and The Herald Sun are being satirical? Are they subverting the dominant paradigm? Is this a really hilarious joke about perspective? Or is reality really that much more insane and surreal than art could ever hope to be? I'm going with the former.

As part of the show I am writing, I'm researching Paris Hilton. Paris is already the most googled person in the world, so I'm doing our global reputation no good, not to mention the filters I've had to install in my search options (yeesh!).

Anyhoo, check out this mistake in a newspaper article about Paris. A nice little twist.

Also, just so Anthony Lane doesn't think he's the only New Yorker film reviewer I like (because obviously he is a big fan of the Standing There Diary), here is an article about film production and distribution, by David Denby. As with all New Yorker articles, it's probably a good idea to print it out and take it with you everywhere you go. Then one day, maybe three years from now, a train will break down when you're two hours from anywhere and you'll thank me for the David Denby article. There are still several unwrapped New Yorkers next to my bed. They span a very busy period in my life known as 2004, and I still haven't got around to reading them. One day I will. I might be a grandmother by then, but I'll be grateful for something excellent to read.

Do you think anyone would find it cool if I started an Anthony Lane fan site? Is there any way in which that's socially acceptable? Could I do it with irony? Under a false name? Under his name?

Probably I should go back to googling Paris Hilton.