"Hundreds, Thousands and Millions"
'twas a dark, rainy and blustery canberra night, following the 20,000 odd meal that my beloved has prepared for me over 21 years of Marriage, Miss almost 6, Ms 17 and I went off to the local college production of "Our Town'.

Methinks Thornton Wilder would be well pleased with the Australian interpretation of the quintessential small town story. The speech teachers had done a marvellous job imparting an American twang to the young peoples voices. If I had not known some of the actors I would have thought it a visiting US troupe.

In keeping with the minimalist design for the play, props were kept at a bare minimum, with the stage managers providing props at the very last minute, an effect which made the immediacy of the action eg picking up clothes or shelling beans more pronounced.

The choric stage manager role was played by two ladies, one with a light banter, the other with a severish style, their interaction and semi-modern attire narrowed the gap from the costumes and storyline of a plot representing life from a hundred years ago.

The human condition is changeless, life aye even the mundane is important, to see another person, to note their aspect and their being, is to find a value that makes life explode beyond the immediate, to touch the past, present and future with the hundreds, thousands and millions of experiences that do make us us!

An interesting aside, after seeing the play I now appreciate more the use of the word sir as an honorific by Americans, it has grated with me over the past 12 months since I first was greeted with it, but now I am more accepting.... Us English types see it more as an elitist term for knights and the royal and upper classes of society.....

favorite line: "It's like what one of those Middle West poets said: You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life ... It's what they call a vicious circle."

Anyway a full Wednesday comes to an end and so to bed!