Falling in laugh

I should be writing the first uni essay I've had to write in years, but it's difficult to settle into a sitting-still pose for long enough after spending five days down in Byron Bay.

It's no great secret that I love a good writer's festival and I haven't been to one for ages, so I didn't hesitate when one of my new Brisbane friends invited me to stay in a share house over the weekend. And, I'm so glad I went.

It was great. My own festival highlight would have to be the whole of last Friday. I know that's cheating, but when the day starts with a random encounter with Tim Ferguson and gets better from there, it's tough to pinpoint an actual moment. We missed out on a seat in the first session we chose, so ended up spending the first hour in the ABC live-broadcasting tent where Mandy Nolan had me wiping tears from my eyes before my coffee had time to go cold. Sticking with the theme, I found a seat in the tent where Benjamin Law, Charlie Pickering and Fiona Scott-Norman were 'standing up for embarrassment' with chair Jenni Caffin. It was there that I fell in laugh and as lovely as other sessions I may have walked in on later in the day may have been, my mind was rampant with words that needed to escape and so I found a shady spot by the lake and scribbled in my notebook.

It's true that I had to go to Pickering's other events as well as a disco performance by Scott-Norman.

Even though the festival was fun and I have a heap of new scribbles to draw upon, the highlight of the weekend was meeting up with existing friends, making new friends and, top of the list, acting somewhat juvenile for days in a row. I learned that drunk people don't necessarily notice if their bed has been short-sheeted, that 'in your pants' is a joke of absolute hilarity that lasts much longer than it should and that I don't get out enough. Looking forward to next year already.