August 7. Day 219. Heading for a fall

 As a child we laughed out loud at the song about the old women stuck in lavatory. It's not so funny if it happens to someone you know and love. My neighbour Margaret had another fall tonight, this time on her way out of the loo. She was able to activate her panic alarm and a paramedic, other neighbours and I found her on the floor. She was distressed. "I thought I'd be there all night," she said.
If the truth be told we've been heading for this fall for some days. Last Thursday she struggled to make it down stairs and in the end had to cancel her hairdressing appointment because there was no way she was going to be able to make it to the salon. I also noticed she was actually wearing the panic alarm something she finds every excuse in the world to avoid. And when I visited this afternoon rather than get up and let me in, she threw the keys out the window so I could let myself in. Her knee was clearly distressing her. After past falls she has insisted she is fine and tried to resist a trip to hospital. Not this time, she practically begged. "I can't go on like this," she said. So hospital it was to be, although that was easier said than done. The paramedic came by car alone and said there was not a single crew available on the South side and there would be a long long wait until there was. That meant either waiting it out of someone negotiating those front steps. We decided on the latter but it was far from easy and took a lot of not very graceful manhandling. But we did it and we waved her off. Let's hope there is some magic that can be worked on that dodgy knee.

August 6. Day 218. Winners are grinners

It's nice when you think the most deserving entrants won. Being the judge pretty much ensures you have that luxury. But it's not easy, especially when the quality is universally high (although I suspect the issue would be the same if it was universally crap). It was awesome, too, that there were so many people's bums on sets in the theatre not just for the prize giving but for all the sessions. I couldn't help but wonder how of those who rocked up weren't in some way related to a performer. My guess is  not many and I suspect that's pretty common with most of the one act play circuit. This is a shame. Drama Teen and I frequently bemoan how "safe" many or even most of the programming choices are for theatre companies. They go with tried and true commodities because financially it's the only way to survive. We keep getting Cats because of brand recognition even if everyone with half a brain knows it is crap. In this festival, most took a big risk, big reward strategy. There was a play about a serial killer dismembering the bodies of his child victims. There was a play about a man being handcuffed to a traffic pole in his smalls on his buck's night and one about teens in a cancer ward. Only one title came close to a household name which made the joy of discovery all the sweeter.

August 5. Day 217. Colour my world

I saw daylight today - just not much off it. It is true I spend a lot of time in the theatre but today was a whole new level. Theatre in the morning? What's the world coming to? What the world is coming to is One Act Play Festival season. This weekend I am the adjudicator for Beenleigh Theatre Festival's offering. Friday night, all day and night Saturday and all day Sunday. This is theatre for whom too much theatre is never enough. I admit I was worried. A Saturday afternoon without an afternoon nap is an impossibility. Having the adjudicator fall asleep in the middle of your play is not a good look. I needn't have worried. The quality of the storytelling was really impressive. Sure festival entries are a mixed bag of colourful characters but that's its joy. And there was a break between the afternoon and evening session which allowed me to take in some fresh air and food and to snap the loris doing the same.

August 4. Day 216. Life without ballet would be pointless

Numerous studies have found that ballet dancers are fitter than footballers or other elite athletes. Both are, when it comes down to it, full contact sports. Only one, however, is graceful and performed in pointes. Try doing that footballers. Would you catch me at a football training session? No you would not. Would you catch me at a ballet rehearsal? As long as no-one expected me to put on Lycra, absolutely. Today I found myself at the Queensland Ballet headquarters were Ballet Academy students and dancers from Collusion, a dance and music ensemble, were rehearsing for a performance as part of the Restrung Festival at the Powerhouse later this month. Under the watchful eye of choreographer Gareth Belling the dancers unwrapped their LED light tubes which will be used in Muscle Memory. The delicate lights had just arrived and rehearsals until this point had used cardboard tubes as prop doubles. I'm reasonably sure with cardboard it would have still looked stunning. Lights just took it to a new level of grace and beauty.  I do not consider myself to be a ballet expert having effectively been expelled from ballet classes at age six because of an extreme lack of coordination. But I know what I like and I liked this a lot. It should something special.

August 3. Day 215. Whistle while you work

It's going to be a whole lot quieter around the office from tomorrow. This afternoon we farewelled my QUT journalism colleague Lee who retired after working at the university for 17 years. This will mean an office with far less singing. This will mean an office where no-one whistles. This will mean staff meetings without someone drawing battleships. Those battleships were legendary. The staff meeting battles were often legendary too. The sign "Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean the bastards aren't out to get you" is gone. The place won't be the same. So Lee, you may have retired but we know you are not the retiring type. Enjoy whistling while working on whatever it is you choose to do now.

August 2. Day 214. Lights up

Never a dull moment it the crazy life of me (actually my life is full of dull moments but mostly I try not to write about them). However by both design and accident I seem to encounter crazily creatives. This is not opposites attract, just the opposite. Indeed when you work in a Creative Industries Faculty eventually you more or less stop noticing the more eccentric types wandering about. In other workplaces a young man in a bear onesie with a couple of bags of groceries might fit the description of odd. Where I work it's just another day at the office. And it's not even as though outside work hours I steer clear. Tonight I headed off to Short + Sweet, a festival of micro theatre. These performances might be small in length but they were very big on entertainment value and the creative crazy quotient was off the scale. After a day exposing myself to other people's creativity, I indulged myself just a little on the way home from the Powerhouse. That view of the Story Bridge from the Valley end is one of my favourites. I even put the camera on manual. So creative, right?

August 1. Day 213. Busy little bee

 I'm just a girl who can't say no .... Honestly, I seem to seem to spend my life buzzing from one job to another. Some of these I have to do. Some of these things I "volunteer" to do or allow myself to be volunteered. This week my level of over-commitment has reached an almost new level of total crazy. I admit that the internal dialogue going on when I agreed to take on a mercy mission for hearing aid repairs was not pretty. But some days you've gotta do what you've gotta do. So off I went into the city. And there's my reward pretty as a picture. Yesterday there was a very down Margaret. As soon as the hearing aids went in she was beaming from ear to ear. It's not often you get to make that much of a difference to someone's day. It makes the rest of the jobs feel kind of trivial.