Category: Adelaide

Advice, freely dispensed

Every year at Adelaide Fringe and Festival time the searches for nutri grain nuts and bolts and ‘slow as a wet wig’ diminish in proportion to the number of searches for ‘jokes about Adelaide’ and ‘Adelaide jokes’. I suspect not all of these searches are by visiting comedians, but include a fair smattering of writers rewriting the first paragraph or two of presentations they made at Edinburgh or New York; buskers and other street performers; the odd critic who wishes to sound informed in their dispatches back home.

I do think that rather than internet searches you’d be better off getting into town a day earlier and spending the time wandering around and reading the local ‘news’papers, but since you’ve come to me for advice, let me provide it.

Unless you can find a way to tell said joke with stunning originality, we find the following really boring:
– weird disappearances and murders;
– the one way freeway;
– the balls (easier to make funny in original way than some other subjects, but tricky nonetheless);
– Mike Rann (surely he’s put even himself to sleep by now);
– the pandas;
– our own boringness.

I’d offer you some suggestions, but I’ve been away for two years, and when I left we were all still making jokes about Nicole Cornes and water restrictions. Having said that, I think the bogans at the Clipsal 500 are still fair game, but that’s just me.

talk to you tomorrow (or perhaps the day after)

There is possibly a better winter lunch than a toasted sandwich, but I doubt it.

I had an email from a friend today and she told me that in Abu Dhabi at 11 pm last night, it was 45 degrees. Myself? I am sitting in front of a gas fire, half a bottle of red still to go and not to mention that block of green & black’s dark chocolate that hasn’t been opened yet.

I have a great number of other things to say, because it is mighty fine being here in Adelaide. But right now I’ve got wine to drink and chocolate to eat. Perhaps tomorrow.

The journey continues

From miscblogphotos

A rather cliched photo of Adelaide

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Two days ago, a google search asked my blog

What the fuck am I doing in Adelaide

This cracked me up because I mean, really. Asking me that is a bit like asking the Man in the Moon, ‘Are there aliens?’

I wonder whether the person on the other end of the search had a look around and, if they did, what they thought. (yes, yes, I know there are site analysis programmes that could tell me this stuff, but they’re awfully confusing for a person like myself, and, because they just add another layer of procrastinatory potential, they are best left alone).

More generally, it is a source of endless fascination to me the way in which the internet is no longer used simply as a source of yes or no questions (do I have bowel cancer); or of statistical possibilities (what are the chances I will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s); or of factual information (how to make alpaca milk cheese); or of verification (slow as a wet wig?); but increasingly as a source of divination.

What the fuck am I doing in Adelaide?

I fully appreciate your desire to know, your feeling that there must be an answer, that if you only look hard enough you will find it. But really, I don’t know that google is the answer. Get a tarot reading, read your stars, stay up too late drinking too much with your friends, yell at your partner, read Jenny Diski, speak to whichever spiritual forces you believe. Whatever it is you do, if you are in that frame of mind, you need to get off the computer.

Any minute now, I’ll do something productive with my day

There’s a lot to do in Adelaide at the moment.

You could bore yourself to death listening to the local ABC in the afternoons (I don’t mean to be rude, but honestly, if I have to hear one more time about how there’s no manners like there used to be etc etc etc).

You could enter the community ideas competition to tell people what aorta be doing in Tarndanyangga (dudes, just add more detergent to the fountain more often, that’s always good for a laugh – it’s called the Three River fountain, I’d forgotten that I knew that).

Tonight, you could got to a meeting out at the dogs in Angle Park and learn how to join a greyhound syndicate. If you were so inclined.

You could go down to the Showgrounds and watch the Pig Hall being demolished and collect some memorabilia from Centennial Hall (Beatles floorboard or 1500 watt globe) . You could go to the zoo and look at the place where they’re going to put a new entrance to get you to see the new pandas. You could take a tour of the Treasury tunnels for History Week (actually, I’m supremely annoyed with myself for missing this).

Or, you could sit at your desk, refreshing bloglines and clicking Get Mail.

Isn’t that smell lovely?

It is raining to the point that I might have to shut the window in my garrett.

This, in case you do not live in a city which is so dry that you must pump the washing machine water onto your front lawn, is brilliant.

If you need me, I’m in the backyard. Willing the rain to keep going, because there’s a chance that it will not.

UPDATE: It did not. As you were. With the buckets in the shower.

Lots and none at all

I went in this competition (you just apply for everything you see, don’t you, said my friend) and now I’m one of three official Festival bloggers. You can see my entries over here if you’re interested. I think that might be the extent of my blogging for now.

In other news, things are up and down and up and down and up again. On the up, the head lice seem to be under control. We’ve been through a lot of conditioner. Tea tree oil has been recommended by a great many people (including river, see below).

If you need me, I’m just here. In my air conditioned house. I know. Not environmentally sound. But we haven’t used it this year. And it really is hot.