I haven't written here for a while. A few things have been going on, some great, some terrible, some merely mundane. Life, in other words.

The exciting news, from a Standing There perspective, is that Stew and I are going to fly up meet Rita in Sydney in January, which we've benn planning for a while but now we've found flights that work. Huzzah! I am currently trying to fit the following into what I imagine "flying up for a business meeting" should be like:

- Obviously will need to wear a high-powered suit, preferably with pinstripes

- Should get one of those entire-bathroom-in-a-toiletries-bag concertina things that go flip flop flop flop and suddenly you're standing in the ladies' bathroom at the airport with mirrors and makeup and hair brushes and a massage table and stuff.

- Should probably purchase spectacles in order to peer over them.

- Should practice drinking those cofffees in the tiny cups. What are they called again?

Obviously, given most of the meetings will be between myself, Rita and Stewart, this will not be fooling anybody. Still. Worth a try.

I know I've said it here before but Black Lung really know how to take all that is average in theatre, set fire to it and take a dump in its handbag.

I saw Avast and Avast II: The Welshman Cometh on Friday. They were scary, funny, touching, beautifully acted, and the set made me forget where I was but without rotating painfully in four separate subsections. They were amazing. And Avast wasn't even as good as I remember it being the first time (reviewed, if you can call it that, somewhere in these pages).

I read a bad review of these shows in the newspaper. The review said something about how the shows were both monstrously immature and in fact were really just boys with smelly bedrooms doing Dada mixed with Beckett mixed with Monty Python. Of course, there are elements of truth to this criticism, because it's the sort of criticism that can be levelled at any production involving the sentence That's so gay - that's gayer than the time you said, "Dad, I'm gay", and I have to say, if you can't take Avast and Avast II The Welshman Cometh on their own terms, you've obviously started to enjoy David Williamson plays at the MTC and you should send the younger reviewers (say, the forty-year-olds) along to review the real stuff. Brilliant, bracing and gutsy theatre. I wish they had something on every week so I could send everyone along.

Contrary to some of my less enthusiastic posts, below, may I now join myself in a chorus of joyful thanks in celebration of the wonderful nerdy powers that be: Ladies and Gentlemen... Nick and Stew!

*the crowd goes wild!*

Anyway look I'm excited.
 

Here's the deal: our website is now less likely to explode and die as a result of spam overloading in the comments section. This means people such as your good self can now, once again, post comments. We apologise for the rather one-sided conversation that has been droning on from these pages over the past few weeks. To be honest, I couldn't really do it without you.

Now, when you post comments, you need to prove you're not a robot. It's easy. You just have to believe.

Also, guess what? You know how I said ladies and gentleman Nick and Stew hurrah for them fixing the website and you all went mad with the screaming and the celebrating? Well guess which Nick I'm talking about? That's right! The Nick who helped us shoot our film a billion years ago and who helped us make our website half a billion years ago and who has, in the meantime, been sailing from Europe to America on a boat having previously know nothing about sailing, or boats, or how to speak in an international Kylie Minogue style accent. Now, however, he is devastatingly good at all of these things... and he's in Australia! It is very exciting to see him in real life, and although you still possibly have no idea who he is: this is what I mean when I say heart warming things like "this company is more than just the three of us" and so forth.

Okay so stay with me. So you know that exact same film of ours that Nick worked on that I mentioned like thirty seconds ago? STAY WITH ME. You know that film? Okay so you know the 1st AD on that film? Okay so maybe you don't. You know in that film how there was a guy who made paper aeroplanes? Okay so maybe you don't know that either, but anyway trust me THAT guy, well he's also very talented. His name is Robin, and he plays in a band called the Little Stevies. He also makes brilliant films, one of which was shot by our very own Stewart Thorn and was in the recent Human Rights Arts & Film Festival in Melbourne.

Anyway okay so you know Stew and Robin?

They made this.

There's not a lot of good news coming out of... well... anywhere today.

I'm spending today doing little jobs that have been annoying me for a long time, and as a result of this, I've had a lot of time to check the internet every half hour for an update on Mumbai, Thailand, aeroplane crashes, and the other, actual, news items that have replaced "MADONNA'S DIVORCE SHOCK".

Days like today bring out the worst in the media (for example a description on CNN of the "scene of mayhem", over a picture of a woman on a mobile phone, or, say, an article in The Age online today with - I presume - a copy editor's comments all through it) and it brings out the worst in people (some of the comments being posted on websites today are sickening). So there is a lot to be repulsed by.

And there is no antidote to it, and nor should there be. Things like this happen all the time and we don't know about most of it because there weren't four Australians involved. The power of the media is amazing, though, isn't it, because it does ink a few images onto your mind, and you carry them with you, while you post letters and write emails and do the odd jobs you were supposed to do months ago.

You carry them with you and you think about how one thing stands between you and these horrible events: dumb luck.

I hope these things end soon, and I hope I have the commitment to keep myself informed through news outlets like The Real News during the times when my local and national newspapers are obsessing about a chef from England who swears a lot and may or may not have been shagging somebody who is not his wife.

Doesn't everything and everyone just sometimes conspire to add up to the most infuriating collection of circumstances in the universe, ever invented?

I like to blame it on the fact that I juggle a writing life with a real life, but whatever the reason: if I were a website, I'd be lastminute.com

I'm quite good at planning actually. I do it in my Law Talking Job and I do it when we put on a show. Trouble is, if I know I've got enough time NOT to plan, I don't.

In Melbourne at the moment, it's raining. In November. This is not usual. In fact, in recent memory, rain is not usual. We here in Australia are in what is known as a drought. People, everywhere, are looking furiously at the sky and forgetting their umbrellas.

A couple of my friends have mentioned how annoying it is to have to change over winter wardrobe to summer wardrobe and then break into the winter one again. As in, actually unpack their wardrobes and put them in... vacuum packed bags? Outerspace? The toaster? I don't know. Point is, they're organised. They take umbrellas to work in the winter and pack them the night before.

SO GUESS WHAT THAT MEANS?

I TOTALLY WIN!

Days like this, weeks like this, when everything's unpredictable and the sky is likely to wee on you at the last second just when you aren't expecting it? THAT IS EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE!

HUZZAH! I AM BETTER AT LIFE THAN EVERYONE ELSE FOR A DAY! IN YOUR FACE!

You know what I was saying about writers reading?

You know how I was saying writers should read?

Writers should not read Ian McEwan. At least not if they're me.

Just thought I should provide that small caveat to my wholesome advice. As Nick Hornby says, if you don't like a book, do yourself and everyone else a favour and stop reading it, because there is no "right" or "wrong" when reading. You're always right. It's the pure selfish joy of reading. You get to put the book down.

By the way, for the record: the book is Saturday, and what I don't like is long, slow description of a man stumbling numbling through a right wing perspective he just feels wash over him like instinct. McEwan is smarter than that and should stop pretending he's not actually representing a more considered perspective. I didn't like this when Flannagan did it with the terrorist book and I don't like it when Helen Garner does it. Smart writers making their characters stupid and innocent thereby depriving them of the eloquence to defend the perspective they are invented to represent. It seems to be to be weak or dishonest. I think I'll go back to the young adult fiction. Immediately.