Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • MONA FOMA, with photos of @neilhimself and @amandapalmer

    I spent the entire day yesterday down at MONA FOMA, listening to bands, helping collect money for the QLD Flood Relief and wandering around getting sunburned. The line-up for the evening was what I was most interested in, Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentleman, then Neil Gaiman, then Amanda Palmer.

    The moment the doors opened to let us into the main stage area, the atmosphere was electric.

    Unfortunately, there was no seating available, so we had to suffer through, sitting on a thin mat on top of concrete. It wasn’t ideal and I have the bruises and sore hips to prove it.

    Sitting on the hard concrete floor.

    Mikelangelo was excellent. Funny too – his voice is like melted honey and you just want to listen to him sing for hours. They were consummate performers and the crowd adored them.

    Then there was, of course, Neil Gaiman and his cult following. I love his books and I was looking forward to this.

    I’d bailed out of sitting on the floor and headed up to where frogpondsrock and my brother were sitting, up in the tiered seating, we had an excellent view of the stage and during Mikelangelo, excellent sound.

    That wasn’t the case with Neil Gaiman. Something happened with the PA system and when he started to speak, we could hear barely anything and what we did catch sounded blurry. I caught every 3rd word, which is a shame, as hearing him read was what I was most looking forward to. I could hear the sound of Neil’s voice and it sounds like it would have been brilliant too.

    Instead I took photos, enjoyed the atmosphere and wished that the seating and sound were better.

    As Neil finished, the roadies started setting up for Amanda Palmer and the crowd flocked in. Because she was singing, we were hopeful that the sound would be better, and it was, a bit.

    Can I just say, that Amanda Palmer is brilliant? Her voice, her stage presence, all brilliant. I adored what I got to see.

    Digression: My body is broken. It doesn’t work as well as I’d like and I get to do fun things like dislocate joints, or spend hours throwing up for no reason. This makes things interesting and my body has crappy timing, generally.

    I was enjoying the show, and taking photos at the same time, right up until the lady in front of me sprayed perfume and I had a minor body rebellion. I figured it wouldn’t be polite of me to throw up down her back, so I bailed out.

    I spent the rest of the gig listening from the flood relief tables and chatting to the lovely Stephen and his wife Mary. I would have loved to have seen the rest, because like I said, she is brilliant. Absolutely fucking fantastic.

    So, that is what I did last night. What have you been up to?

    ***

    Oh and can I just shout out to Nathan – who is spending the days at home with the kids alone while I attend all these gigs and review them on twitter. Thankyou honey. I rather love you. xx

    More photos over at Frogpondsrock

  • So excited, MONA FOMA and I’m going to be a very busy girl

    A few weeks ago, I applied to 93.6 ABC Radio for a chance to be a micro-critic at the upcoming festival of art and music – MONA FOMA (Mueseum of Old and New Art, Festival of Music and Art).

    I’d thought about it and figured that it wouldn’t hurt to apply, I was incredibly interested in a lot of what they were doing and already had plans to see Grinderman and Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer.

    I got a phone call this morning – I was selected to be one of the micro-critics. I get free tickets to the ticketed events and to attend as much as possible of the free stuff and then tell everyone what I think on twitter.

    You guys, I am so excited. I’ve got to head down and give an interview on the radio with the other micro-critics later this week, my tweets will be getting read out on the radio during the festival and it’s all just very cool.

    There are some amazing people coming to Tassie for it and I can’t wait.

    I’m going to be so busy for the week of the festival and I’m planning on dragging Frogpondsrock around to as much as possible (helps that she is my driver), while Nat stays home with the children.

    I’m so excited that even falling on an electric fence, while standing in a puddle with wet shoes couldn’t make me grumpy. A perpetually breaking hose pipe didn’t bother me.  Even scrubbing water troughs and baths filled with algae didn’t upset me (although, totally not my favourite job – can I run a competition to allow someone else to scrub the duck water out for me?).

    Thankyou to ABC Radio for offering this chance too. I’m getting to work with some pretty cool people (I can’t name the other micro-critics until everyone has confirmed, but I have been cleared to say I’ve been chosen) that I like a lot.

    And thanks even more to Stephen Estcourt, because without his gift of an iPhone, I wouldn’t have been able to apply!

    Now ‘scuse me, I’m off to continue dancing around the house.

    I’m staying well away from electric fences however.

  • Sunday Selections – everything is flowering!

    The garden, despite the frost a few days ago, it doing rather well. The frost killed off the top leaves on a lot of my plants, but the plants haven’t died, thank God and they’re flowering now.

    I’m crossing my fingers that everything goes well from here.

    Purple podded pea flowers

    Yellow tomato flowers

    baby pumpkin with flower still attached

    Orb spider sitting in its web

    honey bee cleaning its mouth

    Climbing bean flowers

    For more Sunday Selections, go and see Frogpondsrock

  • Birds falling from the sky?

    I originally wrote this in August 2009, after Nathan and I witnessed the middle of a flock of birds falling out of the sky. In light of recent events with birds dropping dead in Arkansas, Louisiana and now Sweden, I thought I’d repost it.

    ***

    A few days ago, our local newspaper ran a story on sparrows being found dead throughout Hobart, or disappearing entirely.

    Nathan and I read it and remarked that there were entirely too many sparrows about in our parts and good riddance. We were talking about it again today as we were driving. We pointed out the huge flocks of sparrows (and starlings) sitting on the fences and power lines.

    Then we saw the weirdest thing ever.

    A group of sparrows flew towards the road. There were probably 50-60 birds? As they flew in a group, they banked over the Highway to turn around …

    … and the middle just fell out of the group. Mid flight, twenty birds dropped to the ground dead. Nathan and I were stunned. It wasn’t the kind of thing we were expecting to see at all.

    As we drove through the dead birds littering the Highway, I peered out of the window expecting to see one or two shaking out their feathers and hopping away, stunned, but not dead.

    No.

    They were dead.

    Twenty or so birds, just fell out of the sky with no warning. All at once.

    30 metres up the road, another six or seven birds were dead in a group on the road.

    It was honestly the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.

    Ever.

    ***

    Afterwards, the deaths were deemed to be caused by Salmonella poisoning, but I’m not convinced. Surely if it were Salmonella poisoning, they would have died on the ground, not on the wing and all at once?

  • Can we all spare a dollar for the poor hard done by millionaires?

    Poor retail millionaires. It’s our fault they aren’t making as much money anymore. Instead of a 45ft yacht, they had to buy the 30ft one. Such a sacrifice they’ve been making and now, they’re banding together to let us know how angry they are about their profit margins.

    The loudest of these millionaires is one Gerry Harvey, founder of Harvey Norman, who by all accounts, is having to cut down on his caviar fund, all because I bought my kids toys online this Christmas.

    “You’ve got every second person in the country importing things from overseas, evading duty, not paying sales tax,” he said. ”You’ve got an awful lot of retailers that are going to be going broke after Christmas.’‘ [source]

    He’s been all over my TV and the newspapers, complaining about online shopping. The way he speaks, you’d think that online shopping was the devil incarnate.

    Can we all hear the sad music playing?

    I shop online, for a variety of reasons.

    I have two small children, with sensory issues, among other things. I also have incredibly bendy joints, that dislocate regularly. Getting into a shopping centre isn’t easy for me.

    I tried to shop in store before Christmas and it didn’t end all that well. I tried to browse the books, as quickly as I could, knowing that I had my partner and the kids (4 and almost 2) in tow. 30 seconds into browsing, my son bolted. I chased him and brought him back to the books, wherein he promptly melted down. Screaming at my feet, I couldn’t look at books anymore. Amy was getting overwhelmed with her brother screaming and started to whine.

    I picked Isaac up and slung him under my arm, dislocating a few ribs in the process. My partner grabbed Amy. We looked at each other and left, fast. We’d been in the shop for 5 minutes and bought nothing.

    I ended up buying all the kids presents online, slowly. My son has a birthday in a fortnight, his presents should be arriving in the mail this week.

    We live an hour from the major city, so shopping isn’t something that we can do on a whim. It takes time and preparation. It’s much easier for me to just sit down with a cup of tea after the kids are in bed and order online what we need, as the actual logistics of remembering to buy new fitted sheets for the beds (because Amy cut holes in our other ones with scissors) or getting to the DVD section, it’s a bit beyond what I find easy.

    At the end of the day though, it’s all about price. We survive on a shoestring budget and shopping online saves money. With cheaper products, even with shipping included, it works out better for us. We don’t have to waste petrol on a trip to town, I don’t get exhausted and dislocate things and the kids don’t spend the next few hours screaming. Instead, I wait for the postman each morning, when my parcels are delivered direct to my door. Win win.

    Gerry Harvey expected the Internet and online shopping to be a passing fad, that he refused to participate in. This is what he had to say just two years ago:

    “I’ve got an online part of my business, but I definitely would not put more into it. That’d be a recipe for a disaster.”

    “Online people do not make any money,” Harvey also told SmartCompany. “The whole world was conned with online retailing. People say I’m a dinosaur, and I’ve had people coming to me with sites and saying, ‘Oh, look at this, they have 10,000 or 20,000 hits!’ – but it’s a con, a complete con.” [source]

    Poor Gerry Harvey. If we’re not careful, next time we see him he’ll be sitting on a street corner, begging for money so he can buy some smoked salmon, and it will be all our fault.

    Because of online shopping, dollars have been taken away from a very rich man.

    Shame on us for wanting better deals and spending our dollars carefully.

    Shame on us.