Return to Perth

Susan and I enjoy the film festivals that are offered by the Palace cinema group. Each has their own strength althoug I have learnt not to go to anything in the German Film Festival that's marked as a 'comedy'. The Spanish Film Festival is always interesting because films come from South America as well as Europe but it's usually the French Film Festival that has the most number of films that we go and see. Of course, as you know, our taste in culture differs so we don't always go to see the same films. This year, for example, I went alone to see the new production of Albert Camus' famous novel, The Stranger, plus some police procedurals. I also saw The Great Arch with different company when I was in Melbourne. It's a film about the making of La Grande Arche de la Defense in Paris, designed by a Danish architect. The story is very similar to that of Jorn Utzon and Sydney Opera House: a designer with ambition beyond the budget and the imagining of the people ...

Many years ago when I was Station Manager of ABC's Radio National, I worked with Chris Westwood to create a daily series of programmes about the arts. Over time, the content has morphed and changed but there were still key elements of what we'd put together - shows about books, music, the visual arts and the performing arts. And suddenly, The Stage Show has gone. I'm sure the ABC will say that there'll be coverage of the performing arts in the context of their weekly Arts Hour but I think it's a tragedy the programs been cancelled given that the live performance arts of theatre, dance, opera, ballet, circus, cabaret, musicals are all still stuggling to regain audiences post-Covid. Roger Grant, Gwen Bennett, Norman Swan, me, Chris Westwood - 1992 2024 statistics produced by Live Performance Australia show that more people attend performing arts events than ticketed sports events. Of course, in those statistics the most popular category is contemporary music which is ...

One of the challenges of travel is packing. I'm not the sort of person who can travel for months with carry-on luggage. Especially if there's a range of temperatures over the weeks and even months one is away. This time it's going to be 28 degrees in Rhodes but 10 degrees in Issyk-kul. But the other challenge is how many pairs of glasses to take? If the choice is two pairs, then clothes have to match. For the last couple of trips, this has meant sticking to a limited colour range e.g. an aqua theme for Mediterranean journeys, reds and blues in Japan. As I was staring at my wardrobe trying to decide what to pack for our trip northwards that starts next week, I was thinking about the new clothes I've bought since coming to Perth, coourful tops that reflect the sunny world we now live in. But I was also seeing clothes from days gone by that I still wear. A tropical shirt I bought from the Paddington Markets in Sydney in the late 1980s. A pair of red pants that I bought in ...

Were you an Enid Blyton fan? As a child, I was an avid reader of the Secret Seven and the Famous Five books. I even have a charming take-off on my bookshelf: But I didn't ever read The Magic Faraway Tree. So when a film version was released with such wonderful British/Irish actors as Claire Foy and Nicola Couglan, Simon Russel Beale and Lenny Henry, I had to brave the school holiday crowds and go and see it. Susan and I were the only group without children but we didn't look as suspicious as if we'd been two older men sitting in a cinema enjoy the charms of fairies and elves and pixies. It was a delightful piece of story telling that deals with the challenges parents are having to cope with  all over the world  - children addicted to technology. Even the forthcoming Toy Story 5 is exploring that problem. [We saw the short while we were waiting for the main film.] Of course, having a magic tree nearby and access to worlds of spells and goodies and birthday wishes does make ...

This year's Easter has been a bit of this and a bit of that but nothing religious. Susan said a polite but firm "no" when our delightful neighbours invited us to a service on Good Friday. We've eached worked in our preferred spaces. Susan baking cakes and roasts in the kitchen. Me creating photo books and blog posts in the study. And in between, we've seen some of the Fremantle Street Arts Festival and more films in the French Film Festival. So there was nothing in particular to write about until Susan showed me an utterly charming Substack post about Australian easter eggs and bunnies from the wonderfully named commentator Snarky Gherkin:  https://substack.com/@snarkygherkin/note/c-238269703  I have to confess that we have Haigh's bilby's sitting on the dining table as we speak and we've been giving Lindt bunnies to visitors. Mr Gherkin says that the Haigh's crowd doesn't so much eat chocolates as curate them. Haigh's chocolate signals ...

Ever since Heather Mitchell took on the role of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2022, I've missed the production. I was never in the right place at the right time. Finally I managed to catch up with it at the State Theatre in Perth and it was absolutley worth the money. It's a clever biographical piece of writing by lawyer/playwright Suzie Miller about RBG and Heather Mitchell puts on a virtuosic turn playing not only Ginsberg from age 13 to 87 but also all the other characters including three presidents - Clinton, Obama and Trump.  For those of you haven't seen it or don't know much about RBG she was a lawyer who dedicated her life to fighting for gender equality (don't say 'sex equality', the judges will focus on the wrong thing, she was told) and civil rights. She was the second woman to be appointed to the US Supreme Court in 1993. The great tragedy of Ginsberg's story comes at the end. There was the hope that she would resign while Obama was in office so tha...