April 26th 1985 – après ANZAC and back to work. My diary records very little of work – in fact none really, except on the rare occassion I get to leave early or miss a day or get someone to work for me. Like most of the days in this book, today starts after work at 6:30pm when Anne Jones collected me to go shopping – enormous, expensive shopping at Coles New World in New Farm I expect. $80 with an exclamation mark is how much we spent – outrageous for three, maybe four people for a week or so.
As usual, the evening began at home and about 9:30pm moved to La Boite Theatre, where Off the Top was still running. The diary says we didn’t leave New Farm till 9:30pm, which means we missed the Street Arts Juggling Troupe and we missed Adam Couper
and Michael Golledge and we missed Sezel People’s Big Band and we missed Funny Stories. I remember Adam and Michael – famous in La Bamba circles for their physical comedy and particularly their Samurai Breakfast skit. We would have made it in time for Stephen Bishop and Richard Scholes – Stephen the original dentist-by-day; clown and mime by night and Richard the magician. I know Stephen made the clowny big time in Cirque du Soleil and I now know, thanks to the electronic interweb, that Richard is still magician-ing. They were followed by the Clifford Holden Radio Hour, which I noted was really good, but, in all modesty, that could have been because I did the sound. I also noted that the original, ‘two Caskey boys’, John and Rick (as opposed to those Caskeys-come-lately, Sean and Lachlan) did well and that Michael Whelan’s rendition of Minnie the Moocher was great. Here’s a slight ‘Minnie the Moocher diversion…
Peeking ahead into the mouldy ol’ diary reveals a couple more days of very similar activity ahead. Maybe it was repetition I needed. Maybe it explains why I haven’t beento the theatre since about 1990.
Mondoworld 