Reading List Update: December 2021

Book covers: Funny Stories, Suburban Songbook and Punk Outsider

Funny Stories, Prophets of the Absurd, by Hugh Wayland. Outstanding! Superbly put together, this account of Sydney’s Funny Stories performance troupe from the 80s is a brilliant read. For those of us who were there at the time, it brings it all back to life. For those who weren’t, it’s an insight into inner Sydney […]

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Public Art in Corrimal

Public art in Corrimal

Corrimal is quite a suburban kind of suburb. We have a Woolworth’s, a Coles and an Aldi but on the other hand we don’t have a stand alone greengrocer. There’s pretty much one or two of most shops you need (if you count hardware superstore Bunnings in the next suburb over), although there’s also 14

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Smash, Bread & Circus, 1984

Smash!, Bread & Circus, 1984

I came across this clipping of a review from 1984, and it brought back a few memories. After stints with the (then) NSW Theatre of the Deaf in 1982 and the Marionette Theatre of Australia in 1983, I was Sydney-based and an experienced theatre-in-education performer when TIE was at its height as a crucible of

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Funny Stories, by Hugh Wayland

Funny Stories, by Hugh Wayland

Current reading is a birthday treat to myself: Funny Stories, Prophets of the Absurd by Hugh Wayland. It’s a memoir by one of the members of this highly influential Sydney comedy troupe of the 1980s. It is glorious. It’s self published by the author, you can find out how to get it from the Funny

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The Bookmakers of Claremont High

Old fashioned bookmaker's tote board

I was listening to ABC radio this morning, where Simon Marnie was taking calls about people’s jobs when they were at school: newspaper deliveries, chemist’s assistant, golf caddie and butter stacker (!) among them. It reminded me of the side hustle – I can’t really call it a job – that I had during the

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Mary-Lou Stephens

Mary-Lou Stephens

Having recently finished reading The Last of the Apple Blossom, by Mary-Lou Stephens, I decided to write a review. This set me to thinking and writing about my friendship with Mary-Lou as a preamble to the review and, in my usual long winded way, things got a little out of hand. So as not to

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Cheat’s Paella for One

paella

Ingredients 250 gm cooked brown rice 10 cooked cocktail prawns, tails removed 1 or 2 chicken tenderloins 4 slices chorizo, quartered 1 pork sausage, cooked and chopped 5 julienne slices red capsicum 5 julienne slices yellow capsicum 5 raw green beans, halved at angle slice Tbspn of frozen peas 2 slices white onion, roughly chopped

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