Another hot Australian day

Posted by lukewrightpoet Category: Diary Entries

My dream-like reverie in Adelaide is almost at an end. I have been here days but it feels like weeks, in a good way I hasten to add. I have spent much of the time alone reading or talking to myself. Good times indeed. I don’t think I have totally shaken the jet lag off, I am sleeping for six hours a night and napping for a few hours in the early evening or afternoon. That won’t be possible this evening as I am due at The Persian Gardens by 6.30pm. The show starts at 7 and I’m on at 8. I’m feeling pretty tired and run down, but I think a few easy hours in the hotel room will do me good.

It’s strange to think I haven’t even done the show yet. I feel perhaps a bit too relaxed. But I know the material and after last night’s response I am not too worried about how it will go down. Last night’s crowd had come for music and they liked it. Tonight is my own crowd, it really should go well. I need to make a decision about keeping Mimms O Clock or not. Sooz reckons I could do it if I explain the concept of British service stations, but so early into the show that might be tricky. That said, I do like the poem and I’d rather not fiddle about with the show too much. I think I’ll probably do Sex Butler in place of Stuck in the Middle.

Today I went down to the beach and Gleneng again. I spent a half hour lolling around in the water before doing the jump off the pier I had promised myself yesterday. It’s probably a 20 foot jump, maybe a bit more. I’ve done a jump roughly that high before, with my mate Simon in Corfu. What always strikes me is that it doesn’t immediately become fun once you jump. It actually gets more scary. There is time to think in the air. Fucking amazing though. Simple pleasures, eh?

After that I wondered around the beach complex debating what to do next; should I go on a flume, should I play crazy golf? Until I realised that I was just looking to spend money for the sake of it. In the end I set off home, keen to have a enough time to relax before the show. Yesterday I only left half an hour to get dressed, warmed up and walked to the venue. I was tense and I nearly didn’t get my vocal chords going on time. Today I need to take things slowly so I can enjoy the process.

I finished Atonement today. That book kills me. Cecilia and Robbie are Sally and I and this morning I sat on my sofa and cried for about 15 minutes. Often it feels good to have a cry, but today it just made me homesick. I found the tone at the end of the novel more satisfactory than in the film. In the film Briony seems a bit too smug and self-satisfied with her giving her sister and Robbie a happy ending. It comes across as an author’s God complex and leaves a bad taste after such a tragic story. In the book she is forgiven more, the pace of the coda allows for less melodrama (and less Vannessa Redgrave) and Briony’s decision is more pleasing for the reader.

I have started J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Hardly upbeat, but thus far impressive. I have Amis’ Money (not his actual money, that would be theft) for the plane home. I am looking forward to it as it’s supposed to be his best, and if it is better than The Rachel Papers then it’ll probably be my favourite book.

One thought on “Another hot Australian day

  1. Yeah!
    Go to the other side of the world and READ BOOKS!
    Take ecstacy and fall asleep.
    Be a rock ‘n roll star and play Perudo.
    Go to a glitzy Bob Dylan premiere and leave early to go down the pub.
    Yeah!

    You should come home?
    We’ve got home-brew to be getting on with.

    Yanny.x

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