saturday afternoon

with a nice weekend of absolutely no plans ahead of us, peter and caught a tram into the city to visit the national gallery. peter hates the city - who knows how he's going to get along with new york on those very brief few days we're visiting in october.

friday night

friday night i headed back into the city with ruth and emma to see william's new play the mcneil project. jim mcneil was an australian playwright who wrote several plays during the seventies while in prison for armed robbery. he has since become one of australia's most well regarded playwright. william played a young, naive law student who ends up sharing a cell with two hardened criminals. it was an excellent play. we sandwiched the play in between dinner at the italian waiter's club (one of my all time favourite restaurants) and drinks at kent st.

thursday night

the melbourne writers festival doesn't kick off until august but we got a bit of a preview on thursday night by hearing richard ford speak about his new book canada at the atheneum theatre. i've only read one of his books and it was years ago but dad is huge fan. ford has this slow, introspective way of writing which isn't usually my thing. he's also the only writer in history to win the pulitzer prize and the pen faulkner award in the same year (for independence day in 1995). despite not being a huge fan he had a lovely slow way of speaking (completely with southern accent) and he was great to listen to.