So mad March in Adelaide is over and we can all get on with our lives. However, it has been good to get out and see so many people given the potential source material.
First off the rank in Mad March was Writers’ Week. I attended one talk on how the petro-chemical industry has been lobbying hard with the government and what naughty boys they are. It was a full house and there was fulsome applause by the bien pensant for all the green motherhood statements by the speakers. At the next talk on the USA, the audience was even bigger at perhaps 2,000 sprawling up the grass banks while several hundred were just standing. As many people are still palpitating at the re-election of Trump, perhaps they were attracted by the blurb on the official website, which pronounced that ‘Americans are neither willing nor able to save themselves from themselves’ and that ‘friends, like Australia…can offer practical assistance in designing and implementing political and social reforms that are necessary if America is to become truly great.’ Clearly Tall Poppy Syndrome has disappeared from Australia.
With frequent reminders over the tannoy that the festival is free, it probably explains why so many old people attended, and I mean older than me. I can understand why the Writers’ Week needs to be free as the price of electricity in Adelaide, based mainly on renewables, is twice the price of that in Melbourne. When anything is free, people assume possession of anything and everything and there was a frequent scramble for seats. Having just listened to a talk at one stage, I was standing next to my seat waiting for the next talk when a woman attempted to sit on it. Totally oblivious that I might sit on the seat, she seemed miffed when I pulled my seat away, folded it up and gave it a bear-hug.
At the end of one talk a young woman was walking down a grass bank and nearing the bottom she tripped and performed a perfect face-plant on the lawn. It was like watching the felling of a tree and she even bounced off the lawn. If face-planting was an Olympic sport, she would have won gold and she seemed to get more applause than the just-finished speaker. After a brief recovery she was strong-armed off the venue by security, charged with affray and generally just drawing attention to herself.
Some Festival attendees also seemed spatially challenged when it came to queueing at the café with several coming through the exit and jumping the queue. One woman having queue-jumped then planted herself in front of the small ice-cream cabinet. As I waited patiently behind her hoping to apprehend a Rose Petal and White Chocolate ice cream, said woman seemed to be lost in her own world and proceeded to do as much as possible to inconvenience me, or so it seemed, though she was obviously just oblivious to everyone behind her. She stared at the cabinet for an age and on opening it, she re-arranged the tubs of ice cream to her liking as if she was just tidying up her own pantry. She stared at the cabinet some more and finally withdrew a tub, which I thought would be the end of it. But oh no, she read the ingredients on the side of the tub. When she started to google the ingredients on her smartphone, I decided enough was enough. Drawing on my inner bogan accent I suggested to her ‘Hey lady, if you’ve finished inspecting the ice-cream can you move along as I’d like to get an ice-cream before my next birthday, which is in September.’ She was not amused. I can only say in my defence it is never good to come between me and an ice cream especially Rose Petal and White Chocolate from the Barossa no less.
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The demographics of the Fringe are altogether different as you have to pay to watch so it is much more of a mixed crowd. It must be my age but my enthusiasm for all things Fringe does not burn as fiercely as it did when I was young. I must have been keen on Fringes as I was once auditioned for an acting troupe performing at the Edinburgh Festival. I think I was just keen on theatre, and I once did three nights at The Old Vic. It’s a long story but as we know the past is another country.
At this year’s Fringe I was waiting for the lights to go down at one show. Sitting next to the auditorium steps I was nearly drowned in gin and tonic as a bearded gent tripped and stumbled forward in my direction. His drink hurtled towards me and only a quick lean to the right saved me. However, his momentum was such that he was about to face-plant in my lap. I thought this was a bit early in the evening for such behaviour as we had not even been introduced but I guess it is a way of making friends.