It is an awesome time of year in Adelaide because the festival of arts and its fringe begin. It’s a wonderful time of the year, the city is full of vibrancy and vibe, and I find it fuels my motivation to create and to work harder at my own art. (Slightly political note: I think in this state we still don’t properly acknowledge that government policy which relies so heavily on festivals is not necessarily fabbo for fostering and developing local arts and artists.)
There’s quite a bit of parenting I’m shit at, but one thing I do well is take them to stuff. I curate an excellent programme that spans the spectrum of arts experiences from visceral to cerebral, I take a couple of risks, and throw in a few of the commercial certainties. It’s great, I’m terrific, you know this, it’s great.
So I’ve spent a few hours today looking through the programmes to see what there might be that the lads and I can do together. It’s been a bit more difficult today than in previous years. One of the reasons for that is that I’ve got a slightly fuzzy brain. You see the mister was less jetlagged than expected last night so we ended up going out and when we got there I realised that because the mister is here I don’t have to be a responsible adult and I proceeded to down gin cocktails like a teenager who has just discovered west coast coolers. The main reason though is that they’ve got their own opinions about what they do and don’t want to see and when they do and don’t want to go. It’s also not so easy to find things that not only appeal to adolescents but that they are happy to go to with their mum. Nonetheless, I’ve locked a few things in and even managed to squeeze in a couple of things before the mister jets back off to his mysterious life.
I made one interesting observation while I was analysing the programme, and that is that there is an ever-diminishing number of Dave/Davo/Davids plying their comedy wares. In 2009 when I was last in the fringe there were more Dave/Davo/Davids than there were women and that included if you added up all of the women in all of the lineups. This says something more about the age demographic than it does about gender, and watching your name go so entirely out of fashion is one of the more disconcerting experiences of ageing and certainly one that no one warned me about.
And now if you’ll excuse me I need to go and shake off the last of the gin haze because I am out for dinner where I am told there will be champagne.