Hey look everybody: I did a re-design! More of an un-design, really, since I removed a lot of elements. And what I left on the page is loosely aligned at best. But it's great to spend some quality time with fridaysixpm again.

Here's how it went down.

It's a Friday night, and I'm tired but wired. I've just finished reading Tim Winton's latest novel, Breath (middle bit about surfing is awesome, framing story a bit heavyhanded, but geez what a writer) and I'm not ready for sleep yet. The iPod is on random and so am I.

Then my mind reels back to a review I wrote yesterday. Yesterday was a difficult day. I was eating sudafed like candy and bouncing off the walls of the dusty 6th floor attic I call "office". All of a sudden, I dropped into drisky mode. When the review is online, I'll post a link and you can see for yourself: it's about the play Frost/Nixon and I start talking about rocking chairs. VINTAGE drisky.

You know, the other day someone was saying maybe I should delete all the archives of fridaysixpm. Like, it was immature and embarrassing, digital detritus that could only hold me back. As if! I only wish I still cared about Big Brother as much as I did in 2002.

Blogging is fun and I'm back in the groove.

I’d been trapped at home for three days by a combination of rain, a sick boyfriend and my own inherent laziness. So perhaps that’s why, as our car motored along the Western Highway from Melbourne to Clunes, I started singing. “We’re going to Booktown!” “All aboard the Booktown Express!” “You can always go - to Booktown”.

I wasn’t the only one to jump out the car with alacrity and gulp the crisp autumnal air of Clunes, a small town near Ballarat surrounded by low, golden hills. The residents of Clunes came up with the idea of Booktown last year as a way of combating the dip in the town’s fortunes following the drift of industry, business and residents to the city. This year it was a two day event with music, author talks, sausage sizzles and over fifty second-hand book dealers set up in various historic locations across the town. The atmosphere was great, the locals were really friendly, and I loved wandering around the glamorous gold-era buildings.

The books themselves were a bit underwhelming: at least a quarter of those fifty stalls were military history, and the rest seemed divided between needlecraft manuals, local memoirs and Bryce Courtenay. These books weren’t even kitsch enough to be cool - except for one I found on the history of beer can collecting. I still managed to accumulate an even dozen of books, mostly from $2 bins: Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Jolley, Shirley Hazzard, a first edition George Johnston (yes - still $2),and some other stuff I’ve forgotten already. I’m not sure I even intend to read some of these. But it was such fun! I’m going to Booktown again next year - perhaps on Saturday morning instead of Sunday afternoon, but still singing all the way.