Suddenly Summer

Summer is here!

Though summer may have started some time ago, according to the calendar, and I think I've been heralding false starts on this blog for some time now, this weekend was truly the beginning in my mind.

The first harbinger was yesterday's launch of the Sydney Festival. I'm sure I've expounded upon the wonders of the Sydney Festival in these pages before, but in brief, it is a momentous month long arts and culture fest with events all over the city. There's first class stuff everywhere you look. I've said it many times and will again: if there is one thing Sydney excels at, it is spectacle.

The First Night, was actually a whole day and evening of events, so Partner-in-Crime and I went into town in the early afternoon to spend the day nomadically grazing on song and dance. We heard Spanish/French songs in the art gallery, watched a string-art installation go up before our eyes, saw a roving caravan of psychedelic gypsy clowns, and witnessed a band of 80-year old Jamaican dudes rock out to "Rehab" (oh yes, that happened).

We planted ourselves on the picnic blanket in the Domain for a couple of hours to get a spot to watch the Aboriginal welcome to the festival and the singer Gurrumul open the night. We abandoned our coveted spots on the Domain lawn before the big concert started there, but we'll be spending a lot more time there over the next month.

Not us.

We took swing dance lessons in the middle of the street with a few hundred of our closest friends.

Our favorite act of the day was this old-time brass band from New Orleans (they played old time music; they were not old) called Tuba Skinny. They had the Depression-era look and feel down head to toe and heart and soul. One of the funniest things we saw was this little girl of about four who danced on the lawn right in front of them for the entire set. And man, did that kid have some expressive moves. I don't know where she learned it, but it was like she was channeling the 30's, too. The whole experience was completely in the spirit of the Festival.

Today, we took a ferry to Cockatoo Island (which I featured a bit more here) to meet some friends at an outdoor bar. There was a cool breeze, the drinks were cold, there was a DJ playing funky tunes, a steady stream of sailboats floating by, and we got to lounge on astro turf in beach chairs all day in the shadow of graffiti-ed warehouses and the Sydney Harbour. Aside from that awkward moment when I was trying to explain the Jamaican "Rehab" and managed to topple completely backwards in my chair and hit the ground (gracefully, P-i-C assures me), it could not have been hipper.

Tonight, I am relaxing with my slight sunburn and afternoon-booze induced fatigue as a perfect thunderstorm rages outside.

Yes, summer is here. I could not be more content.