Today I got into the writing thing a bit more. So much more in fact that I missed my tram to meet my friend for lunch and ended up being fifteen minutes late, which would have been surprising for said friend, who does not know me as intimately as most of my friends do, especially Standing There Producer Rita Walsh, who I have noticed has started leaving the house at about the time our meetings are due to start. This is, I assure myself, on account of my reliability. I am reliably around fifteen minutes late, counter-balanced by another, rather more useful characteristic, which is the number of pens I tend to carry on or about my person, in a range of colours and with a range of nibs. Everyone needs pens, people. Eventually, all of you smug bastards who arrive to things on time... Eventually you'll need to borrow one of my pens. Then let's see who wishes they'd stayed home maintaining their pen supply for that extra five minutes before they looked for their house keys for another ten minutes and then left the house, huh! Who's laughing NOW.

Rita, I realise this is a complete misrepresentation quite possibly besmirching your good name but you are more likely to forgive me than anyone else is, and I am taking advantage of that fact. On the internet. Oh yes I am.

So on the topic of me being a rewarding friend, my friend Michael sent me some excellent things in an email. Now, if I ever send excellent things to people in emails, I expect equally witty and well-considered replies, more or less immediately. Michael, on the other hand, received nothing.

Which was no surprise to Michael, who has known me for a much longer time than my lunch-time friend has. However, contrary to my declaration yesterday that everyone was fired, I have now re-hired Michael, who I credit now with thanks for providing the following excellent links:

For those of you who would like the inside story (as they say in the trash mags) on the Sydney Writers' Festival (which does not get enough coverage in the trash mags in my view)... then go here, and scroll down to the Writers' Festival posts, because Arnon Grunberg (who I've mentioned in posts on the Writers' Festival before) has certainly got a way with writing snipey things about people who make money writing books about time travel. And about people who think they're funny. And just about people generally.

And Oh. My. Lordy! For all you West Wing fans, go here. Michael, I know I just hired you, but you're re-hired. Absolutely cannot wait to see a full episode of this.

Also, and nobody sent this to me, I read it unaided in The New Yorker ... Check out this review of The Da Vinci Code, which I haven't seen but Anthony Lane is my favourite film reviewer and this is one of the rare reviews of his which is entirely, whole-heartedly, grumpy. Excellent.

I've been writing today. I haven't been writing anything good, but I've been typing things called words into things called sentences. Which is a start.

Also I read a bit more of Mr Feynman last night. He's a strange man but an excellent read.

More importantly, however, I am quite devastated to learn that Richard E Grant has been in the country and I have not taken up the opportunity to convince him to marry me.

I just about passed out the first time I saw him in Withnail and I. I could not believe any one person could be so entirely hilarious. The bit where Uncle Monty comes in and scares the crap out of him and he utters a line I cannot repeat here, I think is right up there among the funniest moments in film. As is cake and ale. As is the bit on the stairs where Paul McGhan asks him if he wants a cup of tea and he turns the word "no" into the most insulting thing in the English language. As is the bit where he's calling out the window at the school girls.

And yes, I have edited those highlights down.

Just think. He could have been mine.

Why did nobody tell me he was in the country?

You're all fired.

For reasons too humourous to mention, it was a public holiday yesterday. Which makes this last weekend a long weekend, which makes this week four days long.

So I took today off.

I've finished reading Tourism, which I had to finish on account of I started it.

Favourite bit: the bit where he tried scones, because it made me hungry...?

Then I read a book I thought I had already read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which it turns out I hadn't read and which made me cry. See here for a review and description.

Favourite bit: the bit where he pretends he's in space and "All I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you being anaemic was made in a star".

... I love that bit because it describes so many different things and alludes to so many others and also it's about something really simple. Imagine getting the infinite universe, molecules, time, space, and the inside machinations of the human being all into the one paragraph.

Smart arse.

On Friday night, I went to see the new Pixar film, Cars, which (even though traditionally I'm a Pixar fan) I was sure I was not going to enjoy. Not only is it a movie about cars, called "Cars", starring a racing car and not starring a socially responsible environmental message or a commentary on how stupid racing car driving is (!), but even worse, it's animated cars! So, you know, little cars with huge eyes and expressive windscreen wipers and stuff. BORING! Also, clearly this is a targeted grab for merchandising bucks from small children annoying their exhausted parents.

Anyway, needless to say I laughed until I was snorting like a piglet.

Favourite bit: a hardened old four-wheel-drive teaches a bunch of SUVs from the city how to drive off-road. Also, I find it genuinely hilarious when bits fall off people's faces when they're shocked. It's an old Pixar trick, but my Lordy does it make me laugh.

But the highlight of my weekend was definitely the Belle and Sebastian gig on Saturday night. It was unspeakably good. Anyone who can get the expression "you couldn't act your way out of a wet paper bag" into a song is a friend of mine. Also, by God they're good musicians. For real fans (ie massive nerds) go here for hours of procrastinatorial fun.

Favourite bit: whole thing just brilliant. Cannot possibly pick one song because would be unfair to other songs. Who have feelings.

Lastly, I watched the soccer/football/frenzy of excitement last night as well.

Favourite bit: the bit where I found out that one of the Aussie blokes, Scott Chipperfield, used to be a bus driver who played soccer for "The Wollongong Wolves". Now he's running around on a soccer field in Germany, jumping onto piles of other blokes in celebration whenever someone gets a goal. The best part is, fans in the know have apparently been chanting "Hail to the Bus Driver" from the sidelines. Excellent work.

As a result of the above, I now want to be: a child again, a member of Belle and Sebastian, a soccer player, a voice in a Pixar film, possibly a bus driver, and a scientist (I've also been reading Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman).

You'll notice "writer" is not in there. It's a tad slow, the writing. Just a little bit slow.

There'll be a breaktrhough any moment, I'm sure.

Today, I walked to gym. On my way there, I saw three garbage trucks pulled up next to a small park near my house. Bumper-to-bumper garbage trucks. Huge, full of garbage, empty of men. They dwarfed the other cars in the street, took up half the road, and thoroughly stank.

I wondered why three garbage trucks were hunched together like that in the middle of a suburban street. Last night was bin night in North Fitzroy, but I didn't see any council offices...

Then I saw six garbage men, still dressed in their fluorescent orange vests, sprinting around the park after tennis balls that were being thwacked with considerable oomph by garbage man number one, who had in his grip what was serving as a cricket bat.

I wondered if it was sanctioned by the council. It looked like fun. I didn't think it was sanctioned by the council.

On my way home, the trucks had left and the sun was setting over the empty park. It was beautiful, but it felt sad with the garbage guys gone. I hope I'm not working next Thursday so I can go up and ask them for a photo.

I'm half way through Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal's book, Tourism, which (as promised) I am reading in the bath, and sometimes cheating a bit and reading on public transport. Not the sort of book you want to be reading on public transport and have someone read over your shoulder, though, if you get my rather pornographic drift.

It's not what I thought it would be at all. I thought it was going to be something challenging and innovative and exciting, even if I didn't agree with what it said about race, or women, or sex. But actually I think it's just another pseudo-existentialist monologue about an enraged, solitary, non-communicative boy who can't express himself, but loves describing how broken and manly he is, and desperately wants to have sex with the only clever woman in his life who isn't his mother. Which is a story I've read before, and was boring even the first time.

But of course, I'm keeping an open mind.

Could be rip-snorter from here on in. Who knows.

Driving down Smith Street today to get to the post office, I saw a monk getting a parking ticket.

Smith Street is quite a "colourful" street in Melbourne. In fact, I once had to go to the magistrates court and make a statement in relation to some of the more colourful behaviour going on there in the early hours of a Sunday morning (a bloke was trying to glass another bloke because he'd found him in his house, removing certain items and placing them in a large rubbish bag, presumably without prior permission). Smith Street has a Cash Converters, a money-loaning shop, a TAB, and eight billion cafes, many of them vegetarian and quite a few of them requiring you to ask for a key to use the toilets.

Anyway. So I'm in Smith Street and I see this monk. It's not terribly surprising to see a Franciscan monk in Smith Street because they live around there somewhere (in a converted warehouse loft? In a terrace house with peace flags out the front? Who's to know?). Still, it's never exactly par for the course to run into a monk, is it. So I do notice him, solitary, walking away from the post office, in long, brown robes and sandals. And he goes to a little red Holden and he unlocks the driver's door.

You know that moment when you're half in and half out of your car and you see a parking ticket under the wiper and you just freeze?

Monks do that too!

I could see him spot it - a bastard parking ticket from the bastard council on the windscreen of his car - and he sat with the door half open just staring at it for about five seconds.

Then he calmly reached around and removed it, placed it on the seat next to him, and resumed whatever it is monks do on a Tuesday afternoon.

I was very impressed. No rage. No horror. No walking around the car and checking for chalk marks. No inspecting the ticket machine and gestering furiously in case the inspector could still see him and realise the error of his ways. Nothing!

I bet the monks pay for it, though. I bet it doesn't come out of his monk wage.

PS Melbourne had the spookiest weather today. Yesterday was the coldest day since August tenth last year, and the planes were grounded and the air was like pea soup. Today, it was that but with the added weirdness of some really spooky light and a huge orange sunset, like in a breakfast cereal advertisement. Thought everyone else should know - if anyone wants to shoot a horror film in the next four days, I'd get yourselves down here.

So I found a quote in the weekend paper attributed to Aaron Sorkin, who, for those who follow a different religion, is the guy who invented The West Wing.

Sorkin says, "Most of my time spent writing something is spent walking around the room not writing".

Oh... my... GOD I AM HAPPY TO HEAR THAT. I am so happy to hear that, it really is pathetic. My heart feels healthier. My blood pumps harder. I sat there ripping it carefully out of the newspaper and thought to myself, "This couldn't be better. It couldn't be better! From now on, everything is going to be okay. Ohhhh life is good. Life is rich with goodness and tart with the tang of as-yet-unwritten brilliant television dialogue."

And then today I thought maybe there could be one small change to the above quote. Maybe I would feel even better if the quote had read, "Most of my time spent writing something is spent walking around the room, eating bits of stuff out of the fridge, surfing the net, doing the dishes, and reading articles about the situation in East Timor, the question of nuclear power, and the significance of "gym culture" in relation to the western world's three most recent terrorist attacks (seriously, go here)".

But, coming just short of that, Aaron Sorkin has pretty much justified the last few, dreadfully unproductive, days of my life.

For that, and for the wonderful, hilarious, downright spunky character of CJ Cregg, I thank him. And I take the first series off my shelf and I decide there shall be another viewing. Just in case there's anything I missed the first eight times.

PS. If there is anyone out there who is an accountant or a tax lawyer, I would very much appreciate advice on whether everything I purchased over the weekend is now tax deductable as a result of the above Aaron Sorkin quote. I am willing to testify in court if required.