A Truly Engaging Evening

I’ve had a bit of an exciting week. I’ve just gotten engaged to my beautiful fiancée, which means that my fiancée and I are now creatively finding as many ways as possible to work the word fiancée into every sentence we utter (fiancée). I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in the whole proposal process, and I was a little alarmed to see not just my friends, but a few complete strangers filming the event on smart phones. It’s not that I’m shy by any means, it just meant we were immediately in a race against time to get to all the family and close friends of me and my fiancée by phone before YouTube beat us to it. It sounds silly, but when we went FB official with it after a couple of days, we had over a hundred likes in less than two hours, which was really affirming and really quite intimidating at the same time. I wish I could send the screenshot to my high school self, and say “don’t worry about it mate, this is how popular you’re going to be one day.

Let Us All Rejoice

Australia Day is one of my favourite days of the year, probably second only to Christmas. For me, it’s a great day to spend time with mates, celebrating the freedom, lifestyle and general awesomeness that characterises our country.

Yet for some reason it continues to polarise peopleinto camps of those who love to get together and have a great time and those who think that’s a terrible idea.

It’s been particularly trendy this year for people to post opinion pieces about how Australia shouldn’t be celebrating. That we’re all just drunken bogans and that doesn’t count as a culture. That we shouldn’t be celebrating the arrival of European settlers because it’s distressing to the indigenous population. That Australia is a crap place and what have got to be happy about anyway?

With the qualified exception of sensitivity to Indigenous Australians, these are all stupid ideas. And even that sensitivity seems to be the domain of inner-city intellectuals, rather than anything generated by Aborigines living in traditional lifestyles. Living and working among aboriginal people up here, I’ve never heard anyone use the term “invasion day” except on the news from Canberra.

Honestly, I’d be open to changing the date, but not to moving the celebration away from summer. And I’ve had about enough of being told that enjoying my great country by having a barbeque with friends isn’t a sufficiently sophisticated way to celebrate.

There are plenty of places around the world where these people could go if they’re concerned that my celebration of life doesn’t have enough cello ensembles. Those are the sort of places that don’t go in for this terribly common barbequing thing, largely because their weather is crap and so are they. I’m sure they’ll all be very happy together.

As for the rest of us: Let us rejoice, for we are young and free.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

1000 Words a Week

As I said last post, for someone who claims to be a writer, I really didn’t do anything near enough writing last year. I plan to do something about that this year, but it’s already getting away from me and I’ve barely started.

I’ve set myself a goal of writing at least a thousand words a week of some form of prose. It won’t necessarily all appear here on my blog: much of it may well be in one of the novels I claim to be writing or articles for publication elsewhere. Nonetheless I’m aiming for at least fifty two thousand words by the end of the year.

I’m very aware that this year is already two weeks old, and I’m quite a ways behind the eight ball to start, so here’s the word “cabinet” eight hundred and thirty two times to make up for it:

cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet gladiola cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet  cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet cabinet

I really wouldn’t bother making anything of that, but you can if you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

Even Bigger

Happy New Year Blogosphere. Kim and I celebrated New Year in Sydney, at a friend’s party with a great view of the harbour fireworks. Last year seemed like the year everything was going to happen, and in many ways it was. One Body started to gain some momentum, and Top End Comedy took off like a freaking sky-rocket. I didn’t get anywhere near the amount of writing done that I wanted to, but I did manage trips to America and Thailand, despite four months of unemployment.

One might think I’d had a big enough year to sit back and have an easier one, but 2014 has only just started and it’s already shaping up to be more intense than the last. Everything that happened last year is still happening, but bigger, more intense and more exciting.

I can’t wait to get started.




Garry with 2 Rs