Woke up. Had breakfast and a throat-soothing hot beverage. Still didn't feel like going to work so watched Studio Ghibli's 'The Cat Returns' on DVD (Sir's). Ate lunch, read a magazine then dragged my arse into work (I had to put a mag to bed, after all...).
In the evening I met up with Skippy in the city and we went to Ichi Ban Boshi for dinner before going on a quest to retrieve a lost personal item she left at a hotel the last time she was here. Then went to dessert at LNC Dessert House, where I had a strawberry slush. Strawberry syrup and condensed milk over ice - yum!
Then the best bit came: the weekend!
It was not ordinary weekend, but a long weekend. And being the first weekend in October it was no ordinary long weekend, but the Labour Day long weekend, which meant it was the This is Not Art festival in Newcastle.
Above: The All-Star Literary Smackdown (Team Fiction: Philip Gwynne, Marieke Hardy, Margo Lanagan; blurry host Tom Doig; Team Non-fiction: Anna Krien, Michaela McGuire, Gary Blackman)
Despite a few false starts getting there, thanks to Cityrail (trackwork on my line AGAIN and a dubious transfer at Hornsby that forced me to ask my seat neighbour 'uh, excuse me, but do you know where this train ends up?') I made it to my second home, the Newcastle YHA, at 1:20pm and my first session at City Hall by 2pm.
I might add that it was pouring with rain. By the time I sat down the skirt of my dress was soaked so it clung to me. A couple of sessions and three hours later it had dried (it was light jersey cotton after all), only to get soaked again as I headed across to a venue less than 100m away.
Anyway, a summary of the weekend as I'll be writing a review sometime in the medium future.
Sessions: Adaptation; Give me Cleo over Kerouac; Journalistic Ethics; Life in a Lonely Planet; Moving Units; Writing the Big One.
Hijinks: The All-Star Literary Smackdown (fiction vs non-fiction), The Great Gatsby Ball, Zine Fair & Makers Market; Wriron Chef; Spelling Bee; The Un-erotic Erotica reading.
Diversions: A visit to the obelisk; Totoro's Teahouse (right); Renew Newcastle.
The whole weekend was super apart from the rain and the uncharacteristic cold, which meant I had to walk around with my dinky beige rainjacket on the whole time. Good thing I ended up not finding a pair of beige shorts to wear and instead hung around in a blue dress or khaki casuals and a t-shirt.
I got a bit despondent at one stage as I didn't have any friends there (usually a few from my writing group hang out, or sometimes some of my other friends come up with me) but I did meet people and concluded in the end that sometimes it's good not to have people up there with you or there's a bit of sheeplike behaviour.
Spent too much at the zine fair as usual. Actually, I spent more on the zine fair than I did on travel and accommodation combined... But there were a lot of free hijinks that made the whole weekend solid gold from dancing to the jazzy version of the 'Sesame Street' theme song at the Gatsby Ball to the audience poll at Wriron Chef about whether to keep peanut butter in the cupboard or the fridge (cupboard!) to make the market spend worthwhile when spread over the whole festival.
Above: Wriron Chef (Rosie Pham, Benjamin Law, Lisa Dempster)
Had some trouble coming home when I switched trains at Hornsby and then the whole station lost power due to a lightning strike. Waited there for around half an hour debating whether to go to the bathroom. Fortunately the rest of the trip was quite a smooth run so I ended up getting home in 3 hours (30 mins over the best possible scenario, but an hour faster than the worst case scenario).
Feel like I should have typed out the second last chapter of my novel this evening instead of watching Shrek 2 with Sir. Now I need to unpack and put everything away. Work tomorrow (sigh).
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