Website design and development
I had a lovely trip to Sydney with my family this past weekend.
The main reason for the trip was to allow Hazel and I to go and see The Giacomo Variations, thanks to Christmas present tickets from Hazel’s sister Aileen, an experience I wrote about here.
I also had the opportunity to catch up with a little slice of Sydney history that is very special to me.
My summer festival of reading continues with Shots by Don Walker, keyboard player formerly with Cold Chisel and more lately with Tex, Don & Charlie.
Like Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy, this is part memoir and part autobiography and there is a considerable overlap in the chronology between the two works. Both authors are counted among Australia’s greatest songwriters, they have places and experiences in common and one or two supporting characters crop up in both books, yet the end results are very different creatures.
I went to see the Sydney Festival production of The Giacomo Variations at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday night.
It was as challenging, engaging and inspired a piece of theatre as I have seen in many a day. To my mind, it is ideal festival fare, stretching the boundaries of how theatre and music interact, demanding much of the audience and rewarding those who get into it.
How to Make Gravy is a memoir by Paul Kelly, sometimes called Australia’s greatest living songwriter, a people’s poet, or our master songsmith.
But it’s not really. This is a book about Australia: the Australia I grew up in, and now live in. Really, this is a book about me.
If you don’t like reading about grown men getting emotional, then don’t read any further. But then you probably won’t like Kelly’s book either. Or his songs.
