A new day

The festival has now finished and I have finally got my life back again. I’m still feeling exhausted but at least the pace of life has slowed somewhat and I’m starting to think about other things again. This morning (my first day off since April!) I woke up with a hangover after last night’s leaving party for our temporary staff. I shook off the headache, wrapped up against the winter chill, and embarked on a bracing clifftop walk from Bondi to Coogee. The scenery is beautiful here, especially with the winter sun and stunning blue sky. Past Bronte beach is a cemetery on the clifftop, overlooking the sea. Reading the gravestones here is a fascinating history of immigration, as many of the people buried there were born in Europe - mainly Ireland and Italy - and were among the first people to settle in Sydney. Here I paused a while and said my goodbyes to Jonathan. I couldn’t be at his burial but I hope I was there in spirit.

Waverley Cemetery in the winter sun

My housemate Ruth has a family vault in this cemetery, which I discovered on the far bank, featuring Italian tiles and photos of her relatives!

It will be strange on Monday going into the office and being back to skeleton crew now that our teams have all reached the end of their contracts. The last few months have been exhausting and my thoughts are turning already to 2008’s festival, and the huge task in front of us.

The marketing girls

With one of my new-found evenings I went to the theatre this week to see Othello at the Opera House. Coincidentally I went on the day that UNESCO declared the Sydney Opera House a World Heritage Site, so that was pretty cool. It really is a stunning building, I will never get bored of seeing it. The play wasn’t great – Iago put in a good effort, but Othello had no presence and was laughably wooden. Shame really. I plan to see as much theatre as possible over the next few weeks, and get to know a few of Sydney’s theatre companies.

Hopefully now that the festival is over I will have more interesting things to blog about, so check back for more thrilling instalments! I have also uploaded some pics onto my flickr site from the parties and the inner workings of the festival, so check those out too.

cx