Until this morning, I hadn't had a conversation with anyone whose name I knew for two whole days. I had no deadlines except session starting times. I had no obligations, no responsibilities, although could I please turn off any mobile phones or pagers and was I aware the writers would be signing their books after the sessions in the bookshop which is to our left.

 

I've seen hilarious sessions, inspiring sessions, one or two quite dull sessions, and a couple of truly excellent surprises. Today, for the excellent surprises:

Excellent Surprise #1

Last night, just because I liked the title of someone's book, I went to the book launch. When she read from her book, a memoir about her (Scottish) childhood entitled Poking Seaweed With A Stick and Running Away From The Smell, I laughed out loud in the middle of a room full of people who knew each other, and I didn't want the author, Alison Whitelock, to stop reading. Ever. I bought the book despite my limited budget and I read the first few chapters with relish. Not actual, fruit-based relish. The emotional kind.

Excellent Surprise #2

Jeanette Winterson, whose book Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is one of only a few books I have ever read... wait for it... twice... wait for it... out of choice... wait for it... AFTER HAVING STUDIED IT, is as quick-witted, hilarious, well-informed, thoughtful and spunky as I'd imagined. Possibly more so. She ran a session entitled Ask Jeanette Winterson Anything! (punctuation not mine). And people did. Someone proposed marriage, someone asked herto clarify something in her thesis, someone asked whether she'd tried to trace her biological mother (the answer to which was quite moving - Winterson has always believed that her adoptive mother knew her biological mother and could have come forward if she'd wanted to. Winterson now believes she has built herself a bit of a profile partly so her mother could find her if she wanted to and partly because, having no biological story, she had to write her own story. I couldn't be missing, she said. There are clues in several of her books which Winterson believes her mother would know if she read them.

Excellent Surprise #3

Book launches, which are at about the time when you're dying of hunger and wondering if you should just call it a day, serve free food and wine. I know. Seriously. Next I'll find out there's free internet in the cafe in which they don't mind if you don't buy their overpriced coffee. Oh, wait.

Huzzah! (Somebody bring me a hot flanelette and a plate of shucked oysters would you please? Winterson? You're not doing anything. There's a good lass).

I JUST MET JEANETTE WINTERSON.

 

that is all.

I find it interesting that, in organising my trip to the Sydney Writers' Festival, I have checked in my bag before I have packed it, I have decided I've had a lovely time before I've arrived, and I plan to read the books by the authors I see discussing said books, after returning to Melbourne.

 

I would like to thank the world for accommodating my postmodern approach to the universe.

After the comedy festival, which was a month-long show and which tuckered me out more than I thought it would, I had a long list of things I wanted to do (some of which are listed below). Then, life happened. I got crook, I had a few major things happen  that were outside my apparently very limited field of control, and then, finally, this weekend, I returned home. I hoiked my suitcase upstairs, made myself a cup of tea, clambered into my PJs and said "I might lie down here for a bit".

 

That was on Thursday. It is now Monday and I have only just forced myself out of bed like one of those baby lambs, steaming and fresh from the womb, wonkily stumbling sideways into fence posts and attempting to shake off the cold. For those of you weren't in Melbourne this weekend, let me tell you what happened: it rained. It hasn't rained in Melbourne for an entire day like that since I can't remember when and this weeekend it absolutely throttled us.

 

Even if it hadn't, I still think I would have hybernated. The fact of the matter is, after a show like that, when everything has to be done instantly and all decisions need to be made, acted on, and followed through to their practical conclusion without any time for contemplation or analysis, I always end up hiding under a rock when it's done.

I realised the ther day what it is: I get passive. Having been active for so long, I now insist on hanging back. I read emails but I never reply. I scour the paper for information but don't really process it. I never make phone calls. I never make appointments. I read but don't write. I listen to music and watch TV (never films - going outside is an effort). I don't pay bills. I see friends only by accident and when I do I am weird and fuzzy and embarrassed and awkward. I hybernate, mentally and physically.

 

This is why the Sydney Writers' Festival is always such a godsend for me. It's always just after the comedy festival (with enough time in between for me to get a virus) and I have absolutely nothing to do there except for read, listen, watch, drink coffee while staring at the water and standing in a queue, and ask authors questions. If, in some hypothetical universe, I wrote a book and was invited to speak at the Sydney Writers' Festival, I might think twice about compromising the beautiful winter-sunned, expensive-coffeed, lonely but hopeful context-free zone that is the Sydney Writers' Festival experience for me.

I'm going on Thursday. When I return I promise to be a more active member of society, clad in daytime wear and doing adult things like paying bills, having conversations with actual people, and getting some work done. And I might even write something interesting in here, although that is by no means an iron-clad rock solid promise.

 

 

So... the post comedy festival bug has hit those of us not sensible enough to take an immediate holiday.

I am currently imbibing chicken noodle soup and harry potter. Also, I dropped Tim Winton in the bath.

Any other major developments will be brought to you immediately, as I imagine you desire to know all this and more. The action simply never stops.

 

 

 

10 things you just know you will do when your theatre season at the comedy festival is over:

1. Gallop into a headwind on a beach somewhere.

2. Fill your days with physical activity and cultural richness, going home only to sleep the sleep of the just. Legs tired, brain tingling, face beaten by the wind.

3. Eat healthy, tasty, colourful, fresh, ludicrously cheap food from the market presented gorgeously on a wooden table, possibly by a fire. There is warm bread. Someone is laughing in another room.

4. Spend long nights delving into matters you never thought to put into words with friends you should see more of.

5. Pay your bills.

6. Read books, rather than building tall cities of them around your bed until they form a teetering metropolis oppressing you even as you sleep.

7. Call your grandparents, who are ancient and who deserve more from persons for whom they built cubbyhouses.

8. Dedicate yourself anew to tasks such as cleaning your car, your house, organising your health insurance, finding out whether you even have a superannuation account, and redirecting the ten kilograms of incorrectly addressed mail that forms a pile in your living room.

9. Purchase new shoes.

10. See more theatre.

 

 

Things you actually do when your theatre season at the festival is over:

1. Realise immediately that you have no money with which to take time off to go to the beach/enjoy fantasy life of bread and laughing/ pay bills. Amend this by working for everyone at once, including on weekends. Call failure to go to gym/ be in any way physical "listening to your body". Only cheating self etc.

2. Fill all your spare time involuntarily with a twitchy, dream-addled, drool-inducing, neck-hurty sleep. Awake unsatisfied, grumpy, and frustrated.

3. Instead of eating well and having time to purchase nice food, eat expensively and often, due to lack of preparation as a result of use of spare time (see point 2). When at home, eat stale crackers and cans of tuna. Spoil self with black tea. Weep. Repeat.

4. Grumpy semi-murderous mood, overworking and odd hours due to use of spare time (see point 2) mean no contact with friends except for random encounters in the street. When greeted by friends in the street, it is usual to turn bright red, stutter something about the state of one's tracksuit pants, completely fail to make sense, and scurry away like a frightened guinea pig.

5. Pay your bills.

6. Attempt to read books. Enact point 2.

7. Call your grandparents. Forget that grandparents are on strict timetables mostly consisting of eating at the few times of the day during which you are either working or enacting point 2. Apologise. Enact point 2.

8. Completely fail to do any of the menial tasks you have been looking forward do, although the shambolic collection of unfinished tasks is - much like the book towers in your bedroom - a metaphor and you know it and everyone else knows it and you are a living cliche. You might as well take up smoking and become Russian.

9. Hate shoe shopping at the best of times. This time, look at shoes in shop windows. Consider trying them on. Feel pain of current shoes jabbing you with their nasty pointy little shoe fingers. Thought of trying on shoes oppresses you physically. Fail to purchase shoes. See metaphor above.

10. Note thriving theatrical pulsing heart of Melbourne. Repeat point 2.

 

 

... Nothing if not consistent.

Also, because I want you to know there is hope: I am going away with work tomorrow and will back on Wednesday in order to see a Hayloft theatre show - something I am really looking forward to.

 

After that, I might even have a break. Huzzah!

 

* repeats point 2 *

 

When I was 16, our school went on a ten day hike through the bush. We carried all our food, clothes and tents on our backs. We cooked all our food ourselves. We crossed flooding rivers. It was a hard slog. On the way back, in the bus, we had conversations about what we'd do first. Hot showers, hot meals, kilometres of chocolate, clean fingernails, clean sheets, warm socks.

 

Half way back to Melbourne, someone found something that had been left on the bus. It was a jar of a powdered orange flavouring used to make pretend orange juice. It's a product that still exists. It's called Tang. Shocked at the new discovery, the kid who discovered the Tang stood in shock for a moment and then held the Tang aloft. "TAAAANG!" he bellowed. Pandemonium broke out. The jar was emptied in moments. People dug at it with spoons, fingers, sticks, turned it upside down and devoured the sticky bits at the bottom. They vacuumed little piles of it off the palms of their hands. They argued over who was more deserving, more hungry, more needy of the hideous orange powder.

 

Later, at school, it was very hard to look those other people in the eye. Bonded though we were, the desperate shame of our sordid tangy secret ensured we kept our heads bowed when we passed in the hallway.

 

I was reminded of it last night. The hysterical exhaustion, the hunger, the ability to completely regress.

 

The following conversation took place between myself and Rita last night at the final night of the comedy festival at Trades Hall, after a month-long comedy festival season and a fairly massive Saturday night:

 

Rita: Want a drink?

Lorin: Oof.

Rita: We could though. We could have a drink and push on through. I'm going to give it try. Want one?

Lorin: Water would be good.

Rita: (leaves to get water).

Nine hours elapse.

 

Rita: (handing over water) Here you go.

 

Another nine hours elapse.

 

Lorin: You know what I'm going to do first?

Rita: What?

Lorin: I'm going to have a bath.

Another nine hours elapse.

 

Rita: Hmmm. Bath.

 

Another nine hours elapse.

Lorin: Are those two people fighting or are they about to pash?

Rita: Fighting. No. Wait. Pash. No... Who are they anyway?

 

Another nine hours elapse.

Rita: I'm having a spinach and cheese roll thing. Want one?

Lorin: No thanks. I've already had an iced chocolate, a hot chocolate, a massive bowl of pasta, a Coke Zero, three spring rolls and a month worth of restaurant dinners.

Rita: Cool. I'll be back.

 

Rita leaves. Another nine hours elapse. Person sidles up to Lorin.

 

Person Standing Next To Lorin: You involved in this?

Lorin: Sorry? With what?

PSNTL: The festival.

Lorin: Oh. Yep.

PSNTL: You involved in a show?

Lorin: Yup.

PSNTL: A comedy show?

Lorin: Yup.

PSNTL: What was it?

Lorin: That one. (Points at poster).

PSNTL: Right. Gough Whitlam.

Lorin: Yep.

PSNTL: Looks hilarious.

Lorin: Total riot. Start to finish. Honestly.

 

Person Standing Next To Lorin edges away.

Nine hours elapse.

Rita Returns.

 

Rita: Let's get out of here.

Lorin: I thought you'd never ask. I think there's some Tang in the car.