Why is that your body always knows what your plans are?

Yesterday, during a Law Week event in which two people dressed as chefs attended a mediation meeting referreed by a woman dressed in a full boxing uniform with gloves, I suddenly started feeling off colour. By the time I got to the Law Week Oration by Lex Lasry QC about defending unpopular causes in a climate of fear, I was positively struggling.

So, my body has held out through the comedy festival, the film screening, and even most of Law Week. But now, the day before I board a plane to HOLIDAY CITY CENTRAL, my body decides to pack the flu alongside my toothrush and my new shoes.

The worst part is, Rita and I are both in this together. I swear, if either of us ever got pregnant, the other one would suddenly shack up with someone just so that we could schedule in a convenient double-birth (preferably in the same hospital so that we could still have production meetings).

So, I missed my first diary entry in a while yesterday, and I might miss a few more if the illness and the literary glory of the Writers' Festival all gets too much. Hopefully I'll be able to report back, like the Official Media Representative from the Standing There Productions Fact Finding Team, with many cutting edge and salient points from the front.

Even if I do mostly just end up complaining about the flu.

Three more sleeps until the Sydney Writers' Festival!

I haven't read nearly enough. That is to say, I've read stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with the writers who are speaking at the Festival, which means that I'll be completely lost at question time unless someone discusses Richard Feynman, Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard or either of the Bridget Jones Diaries (and if anyone is losing respect for me right now, I have a pre-prepared and mutlilayered thesis on this topic which I DEFY anyone to contradict with authority).

So yeah, all I have to do is pack, which, given I cleaned my bedroom in the same way geologists meticulously carbondate layers of rock on the weekend, is hopefully going to be easier than it would have been.

Before then, I'm going to a whole lot of cool Law Week stuff, getting a haircut, getting my pants taken up, doing my dry cleaning, finishing some Standing There Productions stuff, reading up on the Writers' Festival, getting a flu injection, claiming back my eye doctor money on medicare, getting health insurance, taking up yoga, and starting my own charity.

Either that or I'll do nothing and then pack on Friday morning.

Since we shot our film late last year, two of the people involved have become married and are now pregnant (details sketchy as to whether this happened on set), three people have left or are leaving to go overseas, almost everyone has changed jobs, and one of the crew members has been recruited into the German army.

Just thought we should have a bit of a look at ourselves.

I saw two shows this weekend.

The first was at Melbourne University, and it was a musical about working, called Working. I know! How clever!

Seriously though, it was really fun and there were some beautiful voices on stage (embodied by people, you understand) so I enjoyed it, which, given I was completely starving and totally knackered on account of my having dressed up as a judge at seven thirty that morning, was somewhat of a surprise. It starred Reuben and Margaret, who had also dressed as judges that morning, who were (and you'll have to see a couple of posts below for this reference) really quite lawsome.

Then, last night, after the day from hell and with half a mind to stay home and watch crap on TV, I dragged myself to the theatre again. Not only did I drag myself to the theatre. I dragged myself to a show I had heard described as "experimental" and "absurdist" and which had written on the door of the theatre, "WARNING: SHOW CONTAINS SMOKING, FIREARMS, AND ADULT THEMES". Wicked, I thought to myself. The trifecta.

And not only that. I went by myself.

The reason I made myself go to this show even though I felt like a clump of oatmeal, is that it's on at a brand new theatre called The Black Lung, which is in Smith Street, Fitzroy (see here) and which is run by a bunch of people I know who are all very clever and very interesting and who also make me laugh. Anyone who decides to start their own theatre deserves at least the price of my ticket (which was ten dollars by the way - which should be the price of ALL theatre in Melbourne and which is why I find it endlessly amusing that the MTC runs all these "investigative sessions" where they ask random selections of "young people" why none of them go to the theatre. But I digress). So I knew that these people were smart and interested in making different stuff, and so I made myself go even though it was experimental and absurd and I felt like the most experimental and absurd thing I felt like doing was going to bed without brushing my teeth.

Anyway. It was called Avast, and somehow they managed to have it make sense but contain no cohesive narrative whatsoever. In that sense, it was genuinely insane. I was sitting on the edge of the room where I could see the audience reaction, which at times was half the point. The woman next to me was a pysch nurse who expressed her genuine concern for one or two of the performers' mental health. The guy on the other side of me was prone to a donkey-like laugh that would set off whole sections of the audience, and one or two members of the cast.

Okay, so here's what happened: There was a guy in a washing machine with Ochre in his pants (of course) who told this other guy he was adopted and so the other guy pretended he was blind and then slipped during the fight scene and appeared to break his nose (brilliantly done). There was a guy who played a tin whistle and ran full-pelt into a closed door. There was a bloke in a mask who recited a speech until he was shouted down by the other actors. There was this couple in the audience who tried to leave because the woman was feeling sick and things were a little politically incorrect and quite crazy and claustrophobic and she was sobbing, sobbing, and her boyfriend was trying to leave but they were shouted at by one of the actors, who then apologised and called off the show and offered everyone their money back and then after people started leaving the theatre this woman in a full opera costume got up from behind a chair and sang an aria while simulating sex with the tin whistle guy.

And then everyone went for beers.

You've just got to love the theatre sometimes.

Usually, and I think this is maybe part of why I like to write, I really love people. Or, I love listening to them and watching them and working out what makes them like they are. Sometimes, if someone is being a jerk on the train or acting like a princess in a cafe, I'm quite interested in watching everything play itself out. Even if they're being rude to me. It often doesn't annoy me, or whatever. It kind of fascinates me and I stop whatever I'm doing (including having a conversation) and instantly cling like a sea creature to the little personality performance that's going on within ear shot.

But then, sometimes, people just thoroughly, comprehensively, overwhelmingly bother me. And what bothers me most about people who bother me is that they're bothering me at all, because I know (from my eavesdropping work) that people are just a complex mix of ego and emotion and doubt and self-conscious, conflicted, angry confusion about the rest of the world.

As a writer, I know this, and I also know that any biases, weaknesses or peculiarities in my own character are exactly the elements that lead me to respond to people the way I do, and so my own anger or annoyance at other people is actually more to do with me than to do with them.

But MAN some people shit me. Usually it's people like the guy who was at my gym today, who was a bully. Usually it's bullies. Bullies or people who are unfair or people who are idiots pretending they're better than you, or they know more than you. Pulling rank, essentially. I don't think I could have been in the army.

Anyway. Guy at gym today, size of a house, enormous and sweaty and lifting heavy weights with a theatrical gusto not entirely necessary in the Council-run gym full of grey-haired people with "FIT FOR LIFE" t-shirts, and people like me wearing baggie trackies and runners they've had since year eleven. Anyway, so I'm doing this weight machine thing, and I slowly rest the weight to readjust my grip, and suddenly there's a huge sweaty fist on the machine in front of me, and I can hear someone speaking to me. I take my earphones off and look up this enormous body at this huge purple head saying, "I'll just push in here between sets".

He wanted to get on the machine. The machine I was on! I was so astonished that I said okay, and I got up. I thought maybe there was a rule. Then I thought about how maybe there were also rules that bullies with purple heads are not allowed to leave their weights lying around on the ground (as per the sign on the wall that says DO NOT EVER LEAVE WEIGHTS ON GROUND) and other rules that the purple-headed are not allowed to leave their lurid green and yellow sweaty beach towels all over the equipment while they steal other people's machines from under them. I thought about how maybe there was some kind of sub-rule about physical intimidation and general pig-headed arrogance. Then, just like that, I was furious.

So I got more furious. A woman pulled out in front of me in a red sports car because she knew I would slow down because I was in a Ford Laser. I looked horrified and she did a schoolyard what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it face, and I shouted into the hot Ford Laser for the next couple of hundred metres, eventually muttering myself into a silence as I parked my car.

I parked my car out the front of my house, which at the moment has a sign on it that says it's for sale. It's not for sale, the house out the back is for sale, but people are confused, and other people are wandering down the side of our house checking it out. The house out the back is built right behind our house and has a clear view of our living room and our backyard. I mentioned this to "James" - the real estate agent - who told me that it wasn't true and that in fact you couldn't see my house. I told him you could see my house from the living room. He said, "Oh yes, but not the bedroom".

I said, yes you can. If you open the window in the bedroom upstairs you can see right into my house.

He said you can't open the window.

I said you can.

He said you can't.

I said I just did.

He said I think you might be mistaken.

I said, what, about whether or not I opened a window?

He said, excuse me. He spoke to someone else. It was a woman with an American accent. She wondered if they'd had many people through the house today. James said not many. She said that's interesting. That might be because the open for inspection time listed in the newspaper is half an hour early.

He said, no it isn't.

She said, yes it is.

He said no it isn't.

She showed him the newspaper.

He cleared his throat.

She described the crowd that gathered at the advertised time. She used the words "angry mob".

I liked her.

I'm thinking maybe I stay inside this evening. A wanker ratio of 3:1 never bodes terribly well.

This has been my timetable this week:

Monday: work at Victoria Law Foundation, go out in evening to Arts Law Week event entitled "You Be The Judge," which is all about sentencing laws and which is attended by members of the public with various agendas and which makes me think it should be compulsory for people in law schools to sit through such discussions (ie discussions about what happens to the offenders the lawyers help convict, and what the public thinks of the legal system). Also very interesting to see the people who run the legal system defend it (very impressively in this case).

Tuesday: boring.

Wednesday: Victoria Law Foundation in the afternoon (after a most unproductive morning in which it was proposed by me that I get up early, go to gym and get lots of work done, but which was overruled by me so that I did virtually nothing, got cross with myself and went to work). After work, went to a play reading for Arts Law Week, which happened to star everyone's TV favourite Bud Tingwell, and... my sister. Bud was good I guess, but he was clearly threatened by the stage-stealing performance of my sister, who had only two lines (both of them in the first half) and who was as excited as I was by the fact that the catering at interval was provided by the CWA.

Thursday: Unproductive morning followed by self-induced fury (see Wednesday). Afternoon: go to Victoria Law Foundation, get wig and gown in order to dress as judge and stand in street at seven thirty Friday morning advertising law week because haven't found anyone else to do it, make phone calls, rush out. Go to eye doctor, who renders me temporarily visually impaired so that cannot read either of the two books I am reading (breaching the one book rule), and cannot even guess at the sudoko, which Stewart smugly completes while I sit by and tell him my pupils are being diluted. ("With what?" he asks). Specialist tells me he's never seen healthier eyes in his life, sees me for five minutes, charges me nearly two hundred dollars and tells me to wear sunglasses for six hours. After blindly stumbling home to parents' house to return and borrow things, I go to a Centre of Contemporary Photography exhibition, get in the car, go home. Pass out.

Today: Wake up at OBSCENE O'CLOCK (possibly a quarter to). Get ready to spend morning dressed up like judge in front of streams of people getting off train at Flagstaff Station, most of whom I went to Law School with and are in some cases only a decade or so away from being dressed as judges themselves, step outside to find it is DARK and there is a fog so thick you can barely see you sister who you are going to work with because she often gets up this early and thinks nothing of it and in fact is going to gym before work and pilates in her lunch break. Go and stand outside Flagstaff Station. Call out things about law week, not thinking to be quite as hilarious as the other two people working on Parliament Station, who later reveal that their spruiking campaign is based on the phrase: "Law Week - It's Lawsome!" After spruiking, spend rest of day at Law Foundation, drive stuff around Melbourne returning it, get home, go with Rita to musical at Melbourne University (it's called "Working" - should be interesting) then go to drinks, other drinks, other drinks, possible other drinks, and then home. Collapse, pass out etc.

Tomorrow? Production meeting at 9.30am. Possibility of Rita being late and Lorin being later: somewhere in the high 90% range.

Today I had my eyes tested. I was seeing a fuzzy shape in my left eye.

I was trying to organise a bunch of people to dress up as judges and promote law week in the street at seven thirty tomorrow morning, and I had to rush in to get my eyes tested and then keep trying to work out who was coming when.

Problem is, when you get your eyes tested for blobby shapes, the people in white suits make your eyes numb. They put this anesthetic eye drop thing in your eye and you have to wear dark glasses and you can't drive a car (so just like a rock star - but imagine a Ford Laser instead of a stretched limo). So anyway, I had to get people to read my text messages, write my emails, and pretty much do everything for the next hour or so. It was nice really.

Except the end result is this: I'm going to dress up like a judge and go and stand out in the middle of King Street in Melbourne tomorrow morning at seven thirty.

Hopefully by then I'll be able to see.