Sometimes, no matter where you are, you just have a bad day. No two ways about it.

Standing There Captain of Industry Melanie Howlett told me that recently that when she moved to Paris, which she had been wanting to do forever, she was surprised to find that she still had the odd day she would much rather have spent in bed. She found herself taking these days very seriously because HOW CAN YOU HAVE A BAD DAY IN PARADISE? Does that mean there's something wrong with paradise? Does it mean there's something wrong with you?

I am currently here:

Meeting people like this guy:

And this little one:

And heading home into this:

Not only that but I am uninterrupted, hanging out with my closest friends, two of the best people in the world, with good food and drink and a collection of wombats.

But sometimes, you completely misplace your confidence or an idea just isn't working, or you sound too much the same as you did last time, or you're just bored with it, or it doesn't sound as good as it did yesterday.

In those situations, I usually think about things like this:

And talk to the others about how to fix the stupid problem or rewrite the scene or whatever, and then I have delicious pasta made by Stew, and get the giggles with Reets about how Michael Jackson and Pam Anderson are supposedly a couple (I know we're far away over here but surely that one is a joke on us?) and everything's ace and I am once again an extremely gifted but underacknowledged genius.

Good to know though, that everyone has bad days, even in Paradise.

Thanks Rita. Thanks Stewart. Thanks Bundanon.

PS. Check it out. Trees kissing! What could possibly be wrong in the world?

They say any publicity is good publicity.

I suspect "they" are publicists.

I tend to think of it like this: any publicity is somebody else's publicity. So, unless you are actually WRITING the article about yourself, you are going to be pigeonholed in someone else's version of the story. Thus when I was interviewed for Standing There Productions' first comedy festival show, I tried to remember to say when and where the show was on and what it was called. Because any publicity is good publicity.

The next day, I was quoted in the paper saying I was thinking of handing in my citizenship documents and deserting Australia for more enlightened shores. Hilariously, as I was agonising over being completely misquoted and not in any way promoted or mentioned in the context of my show, I received a text message from one of my besties that said simply, "Bon Voyage, traitor".

So, with that in mind, it is not really that surprising that when the Bundanon artists' residency was described as part of the Triple J "Hack" programme today it sounded great and excellent and fabulous, BUT it sounded a little less like an inspiring history-steeped artistic and natural wonderland and more like a "fully tax payer funded" relaxation retreat for dole bludgers who liked wombats and dancing.

While I do like wombats and (tragically given my attempts in this field) dancing, Standing There Productions is not on a fully-tax-payer-funded artists' retreat. Nor would we want to be, actually, I don't think. From what I hear, retreats involve eggplant facials and yoga and vows of silence and "spiritual discipline" and weeping through the pain and so on, and although a face massage or a moment's silence is okay once in a while, we have work to do here.

By the way, in terms of historical and artistic legacies, check out this building (Ropes, this is for you).

This is the Education Centre on the Riversdale site up the road from us. The Boyds originally bought Riversdale and moved to Bundanon when it came up for sale, because they'd loved it once when they visited friends there.

The Riversdale site is gorgeous and great for a fully-tax-payer-funded walk in the afternoon sun. Just looking at wombats. And dancing.

Byeee!

Tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday at 5.30pm) Standing There Productions is on Triple J!

Okay, so today was, without a doubt, the most action-packed day at Bundanon artists' residency so far. Mind you, the second-most action-packed day at Bundanon artists' residency was when I thought I was lost in the bush and shrieked in terror because of a horrifying noise that turned out to be the camera lens retracting.

We're on a fairly relaxed wicket, you see.

Today, we had more visitors and saw more people than we usually see in a week. First up, there was Polly. Polly is a friend of Barb's. Barb drives a vehicle known locally as Barb's Bundanon Buggie, which is a red golf buggie that goes like the clappers and which can be seen tearing around the farm doing, from what I can tell, good deeds. These good deeds include:

1. Cleaning your bathroom when you're not looking.

2. Tick removal supervisor. (I got a tick this morning. See? Action-packed!)

3. Enjoying the act of going fishing on weekends but not so much enjoying the eating of fish, which is one of the many reasons I like Barb and also is why my omega three levels are currently excellent.

4. Polly. This is Polly:

Polly is very sociable and almost as fond of Barb as I am. She particularly likes butting into Barb's legs, which I have made a bit of a rule not to do. Polly was rejected when she was born. She was a blue colour when Barb's Bundanon Buggie drove to the rescue and she is now, as you can see, equipped with a very nice woollen jumper and some stockings that Barb has obviously made her.

Anyway, as if that wasn't enough excitement. Then, we were to be interviewed by Tom from Hack on Triple J. We had been asked in the morning if this was suitable for us and we happily agreed. Rita and Stew suggested it would be a good idea to mention this website. I thought that was a good plan and sounded really easy. What could possibly go wrong.

It had been a while. Perhaps I should have practised interacting with other human beings. Perhaps I should have asked Rita to have a pretendy-conversation with me. I should have said, "Go on Rits, ask me anything. See what happens".

 Here is what happens when (having barely spoken to the outside world for two weeks) you are interviewed on radio at an artists' residency with which you are deeply in love.

1. You proudly, excitedly, winking at your colleagues, mention this website, which, it turns out, is not in fact, per se, a website at all. You have gushingly advertised a dead url on national radio. Good start.

2. When babbling about the creative process or something equally ridiculous (I actually used the expression "thinking outside the square" at one point) you have to pause for a moment due a large crash in the nearby bush. The interview is briefly put on hold. "I'm okay!" says a jetlagged and bleeding Rita, who has fallen while sprinting up a rock.

3. Later, while heading home and reflecting on your baffling stupidity in forgetting your own website that you've been writing on daily for three years, you decide to break into a sprint to expell the probably overblown embarrassment caused by too much human interaction.

The path of course is an uneven gravel path and your chosen footwear for this sprint is the humble moccasin. Spectacularly, over several metres, you hurl yourself at the ground, skidding quite some way on your bleeding, begraveled hands. Looking up, you see the car with the Triple J reporter and the people from Bundanon in it turning away down the driveway.

Standing There Productions. Apparently the boy one understands gravity.

 Oh well. At least not all the action is humiliating. This evening, to say goodbye to our friend Margot (who writes in the writers' cottage and tells us the mornings at Bundanon are lovely) we all got together for dinner. It was lovely (fresh fish!) and we chatted and I picked bits of the road out of my hand. We meet the new Margot (a pianist) soon.

 Also. You knew I'd do it. Here is Stew's timelapse video from last night outside our studios. There were three of them out there last night. This one's the biggest. He'd want to be. Yeesh. Check it:

Well, Standing There Prouctions is now complete at Bundanon.

We have, as Stew said when we first got here, pretty much a Standing There Productions Compound, which of course is now complete thanks to the addition of the very exhausted Standing There International Prize Winning spunkrat, Rita Walsh. Rita arrived this evening, wherein she was supplied with peppermint tea, a nice warm bed, and the entire Press Gang boxed set. As most doctors know, this is the holy trinity of jet lag cures and Rita should be up and about in no time.

It's wonderful to see her.

Stew and I looked at each other at one point and realised suddenly and with an unfamiliar embarrassment that both of us had in fact been talking full speed ahead since the moment we clapped eyes on her. Talk about overwhelming.

Meanwhile, we've been extremely busy on various different projects, including something we are working on in the video, below.

See if you can see the bit where Stew attacks me with a hammer. All in a day's work. And yes there is rather a large amount of bum crack in this video, although actually, if you look closely (and I advise you not to) I think you'll find I am actually clothed in that area, so please don't fear.

It's not often I post twice in one day, but that's just how prolific we are over here at Bundanon. Here's what Stew's been up to:

By the way, for those of you who have heard my lecture series about kids' TV,

here's some back up

. Fairly cute backup.

There are lessons to be learned at Bundanon, Yvonne and Arthur Boyd's farm in New South Wales. Not just lessons about art and history and nature, but life lessons.

For example.

Don't drink, and avoid contact.

This is excellent advice, particularly when both elements are practiced together. No, I have no idea what this contraption is, but I am grateful for its gentle reminder.

Also, in case of fire, it's always very useful to know where the fire extinguisher is. In this case, it is carefully labelled:

This one was in the middle of a paddock. Very good to know.

If something in life (say, a wombat) interests or annoys you, it's probably best to get a parent to pop over to the wombat's house and have a bit of a look at the situation:

Remember: chances are, if you can see me, I can see you:

That probably goes for all of you.

Yes. Even you guys.

What do you think of that?

Guys?

Guys?

See you guys later!

Also, just lastly, if you're a writer and you're wondering what other jobs you could do to get some money to support your habit, it might be a good idea to become a photographer for the covers of scary airport novels.

More to come. Stew's working on some crazy videos. Rita's arriving on Sunday night via LA via Melbourne via a wedding via Wangaratta. Wow. I might go and have a cup of tea.

Yesterday, after probably the most productive bout of work I've done the whole time I've been here, my hard drive died.

I swear it has comic timing.

It did this before, just after the most productive bout of work I'd done on our 2007 comedy festival script, an adaptation of which I am now working on. Maybe it's the project. Either way, I am, and shall remain, unimpressed.

They day before this happened, we had just driven to Nowra. Driving to Nowra is a metaphor for progress and civilisation if ever there was one. It's a rough road to get there, it has coffee and an art deco movie theatre and lovely people who do small talk and run bookshops, but its main achievement is a sprawling pod of enormous, cheap shopping centres around which bored youths gather, in many cases with their own children, and eat fried chicken with plastic forks. In the carpark prowls a man in a luminous jacket. The parking ticket guy. "Watch him", say the locals, their eyes narrowing.

If you're at Bundanon, you really have to want to go to Nowra, in order to go to Nowra. You really have to need supplies. If you could eat grubs and moss, you probably would. But, the day before yesterday, we went to stock up. Stew needed a cable from Dick Smiths. I needed a coffee and some fresh vegies. It took forever. The parking ticket guy was prowling, there were products here that were cheaper over there, there we youths eating chicken and effectionately giving each other the finger everywhere you looked. Knowing I didn't want to come back, I had two coffees in order to make it worthwhile. Not having had a coffee for two weeks, I then went completely silly and had to go for an hour-long walk upon my return to Bundanon. Pacing around the farm past wombats, birds, and kangaroos, I promised myself I wouldn't go back to Nowra unless there was some kind of national emergency. Then, fuelled by my two coffees, I wrote prolifically (noticing briefly that there was a funny noise in the computer) and went to bed.

HA HA! said my hard drive. THIS IS MY CUE!

Please, I beg you, back up. Do it now! Leave! Back your stuff up! All it takes is one tiny little thing to go wrong and you lose everything. Doing a backup the previous day, Stew had called from his studio, "Has that file trasnfer finished?" and I had replied, "Yes".

I was wrong. Although I have backed up recently, and I sent one of the most recent versions of the thing I was writing in an email to Stew yesterday, I am yet to discover what terrifyingly important things I have sent off into the ether. Not to mention my software. Not to mention my internet bookmarks from the research I'd been doing. My hard drive, somewhere in hard drive hell, is raising a patronising eyebrow and saying, "Well, you could have backed it all up. It's not like you haven't been here before." It's probably hanging out with my previous hard drive. Playing cards and reading all my old stuff.

So we had to go to frigging Nowra again. The day after I swore we never would. So we did, we went straight back to Dick Smith's and bought another expensive cable. Thanks to some seriously impressive nerd work on Stew's part, although my hard drive is wiped, I have my computer back and I can start afresh, resurrecting the files I did back up.

Still, if there wasn't a gallah outside my window and a week-old lamb in  a cardboard box in the studio next to mine (had a cold night, rejected by mum) then I doubt I would be coping quite so well with my hard drive's sense of humour.

Thanks to Stew for helping me. Thanks to Nowra, as a metaphor for civilisation, for saving me by providing a cable. Thanks to the wonderful Julia for taking me through the Boyd archives yesterday and letting me wear white gloves and marvel at the original Picasso and all the Boyds and Nolans and therefore making an otherwise terrible day completely and utterly worthwhile. I doubt you could every truly complain of a wasted day at Bundanon. Hurrah for that.