Here is the news!

In tonight's headlines:

Carol (lady at work) managed to get hold of some Marks and Spencer's PERCY PIGS!!! for me and Karl (another British friend at work) after we expressed our sadness at their absence from these shores. Carol is from Essex originally but has lived in Australia for 20 years and is now an Australian citizen, and I think she was a bit excited to try these revered sweets!



Australians call all sweets "lollies" it seems. Absolutely no distinction made between actual lollies, on sticks, and those that lie stickless. They also seem to delight in calling chewing gum "chewie", which makes it sound more like a child's plaything than a substance nonchalently rolled in the mouths of rockstars and naughty schoolchildren. One night we were on the train and this drunk girl kept going "does anyone have chewwwiiieeee?", as if forlornly calling for a lost puppy.

In tonight's cultural review:

Theatre



We went to see the Sydney Theatre Company's production of The War of the Roses cycle, quite a while ago now actually. The War of the Roses is a modern adaptation of eight of Shakespeare's history plays (see if I get this right: Richard II; Henry IV Parts 1 & 2; Henry V; Henry VI Parts 1-3; Richard III). The total production is 8 hours long and we saw it spread over two nights in a very hot week in January, when it was rather pleasant to spend the evenings in a cool. air-conditioned theatre. It was an impressive production, the set design was amazing (and it rained golden glitter over the whole stage for about an hour in the first part), and Cate Blanchett was brilliant as Richard II. Her voice is so strong, she really suits being on the stage. The guy that played Falstaff was also really good, it must have been fun to play him. I am fond of the Falstaff character.
The intricacies of the plot are quite difficult to follow, especially as it is obviously condensed considerably from 8 plays into effectively 2 and all happens quite fast, but essentially most people either get killed, go mad, or both.

Unrelatedly, we went back to the Sydney Theatre Co. a week or so later for a Sunday afternoon tribute to Harold Pinter. Cate Blanchett, Robert Menzies, and two other actors performed monologues and sketches from his works. It was really good, and made me realise that I am seriously under-read in the Pinter department. This must be rectified promptly.

What with all that and Benjamin Button the week before, and am quite all Cate Blanchett-ed out. She is a great actor though, and it really shows on the stage.

Opera

We saw Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci for 'Opera in the Domain 2009'. I like Italian operas, they are like crazy little episodes of Eastenders, everything happens! It was free, and fun to sit out in the park.



We didn't really know anything about it until we turned up, so we weren't very prepared. Next time we'll organise picnic blankets and wine and nibbles - there were people there with quite posh looking spreads for their supper!



There's the stage once it got dark.

Film

Finally saw Slumdog Millionaire on Tuesday. I won't bother faffing on since you've all seen it by now I'm sure, but it really is so good, really uplifting. After the film we went to Kammandhenu on King Street for some Indian/Sri Lankan/Malaysian delights. I have been training myself to eat spicier food lately (I am a firm believer that you can train yourself to like most tastes) as it was becoming a bit embarrassing being frightened of asian restaurant menus, and am really starting to enjoy it. And we got Mango Lassi to drink....mmmm lassi.

In tonight's weather:

It has pretty much rained since February 10th. There have been a few nice days, but it's been cloudy, drizzles a lot in the morning and hasn't been that warm. Oh well, I'm glad to see it's not just England that gets dodgy summers!

Valentine's Milk

My valentine's flowers. Mark also got me an amazing tweedy waistcoat from Cue that I can't wait to wear to work on Monday!

Battled our way through the rain on Saturday to see a band called The Devoted Few perform at the Apple Store on George Street. I hadn't heard them before, but I was quite impressed. They weren't playing as a full band, just doing an acoustic set of slower songs, but the songs sounded good and the singer has a really good voice.

Following this, we went to see Milk at the cinema. I'd been looking forward to seeing this for a few weeks, and it didn't disappoint. It's a biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, and on a wider scale, it's about the gay rights movement in during the 1960s and 70s.



In my opinion, Gus Van Sant makes better films when he doesn't go too 'art house'. His last couple of films, Last Days and Elephant were a little too self-indulgent in my opinion, although Elephant at least was actually a critical success. Milk is a return to a more conventional narrative. Although it has a similar feel in parts to those other films, it is held together better by the story being told. And Sean Penn is brilliant in it. And I must admit I do love Diego Luna a little bit...it's the accent? I might learn spanish...

It seems crazy that all the events depicted in the film happened so recently. It's distressing that as recently as the 1970s, people genuinely believed that allowing homosexuals civil rights was akin to granting civil rights to criminals. What is more distressing is the number of people still existing now, in 2009, who still believe this. The idea that a 'family unit' (I detest that phrase) made up of anything other than a man, woman and their own, biological children could lead to the downfall of civilized society is laughable. I have met gay couples with far more conventional home lives than Mark and I will probably ever manage and it is disturbing that just 30 years ago their lifestyle itself would have been illegal, and indeed still is in many parts of the world.

*inflammatory view on evolution alert !!!* One day we will all have mid-brown coloured skin, bisexual with the ability to reproduce a-sexually, physically a bit withered with poor eye-sight and hearing. [And if science keeps advancing, an average life-expectancy of about 768 years.] There will be no more need for war, and global warming will have made it too hot so we will all work from 'home' which will consist of specially built cool-boxes.

We are all the same and we are all doomed and everything is transient so in the meantime let's all love each other!

Blue and yellow purple hills

So it's all back to mundane normality this week after the fun of having Mark's parents visit us over the last couple of weeks.

What joy it was to have days off work and outings! These included Manly, the zoo, Darling Harbour, Glebe, Newtown, Leichardt, and so many other various locations, but one of the highlights was definitely our trip to the Blue Mountains last Thursday.

We caught the train to Katoomba, which took a couple of hours. Sydney's western suburbs are so depressing to travel through, although the train did sweep me through two of my most favouritely-named suburbs: "Doonside" and "Rooty Hill".
Katoomba is lovable. It's all a bit old style, with a plethora of little cafés and a tiny proper 1970s shopping arcade (think "Arndale") full of antiques-y shops along the main street. The street leads straight out into the bush if you follow it down, and everywhere is so quiet and spacious. It's obvious why the towns in this area are such popular weekend retreats for Sydneysiders who spend their weekdays stuck in offices and being jostled all over the street and stuck in traffic jams.

We did a walk from Katoomba to Echo Point, from where you can see the Three Sisters. It was a cloudy day, which was actually good, as the lack of direct superstrength australian sunlight made the temperature more bearable for walking.



There is a cable car that does the trip in a slightly more direct way. But we went for the long way round.



The 'Mountains' are more Hills, really. But still, we all like a good sandstone formation, don't we?





Mark looks like a little sprite perched upon this log.

I'm looking forward to going back in Autumn for another walk.

The weather has turned quite dramatically this week. Whilst last week was glorious sunshine and temperatures in the low 30s, I have now just had to turn the TV up to hear it over the heavy rain drumming away on the roof, and am wrapped in a scarf to keep warm. Hopefully this will reach as far as to provide a bit of respite for the poor people of Victoria who have all been so tragically burned away.

Life on Mars is about to start on the TV, and I need to put some new audio books on my iPod to help pass the time during a depressingly uneventful period at work this week. I shall be back soon with some sort of ** Cultural Review ** as there is so very much I could rave on about!