I am in the Diamond Valley Leader.

That's my home town.

In the photograph, I am jump-starting a gum tree, with jumper leads and (these are the photographer's words) "crazy eyes".

If you are a Diamond Valley resident who maybe went to school with me or something, please understand that I was not in a serious accident impeding my intellectual or physical abilities, but merely am a victim of the media machine.

While we're at it, why is it that if you're a woman you're instructed by press photographers to "stop looking pretty - we want to see whacky. You're a comedian".

Why can't I be pretty too?

They say when you write on a laptop you should look away from the screen at particular intervals.

I never do.

So guess what. Someone invented a computer program that tells you when to take breaks! It's great! You install the program, you write for a bit, and then the computer reminds you every now and then to take a short (fifteen second) break, looking away from the screen. It does this by stopping everything you're doing and displaying a picture of a zen-like yoga dude doing a meditation pose. Then what happens is that you get back into your writing and just as you've entered a deeper level of creative consciousness, up comes the image of the zen dude. So you stop what you were doing and look out the window. You think about something else. You get distracted. You remember what you were doing and you go back to your work. Enter new creative zone... zen guy... window gazing... distraction... back to work.

Then it does it for TEN MINUTES WHEN YOU HAVE A DEADLINE AND IT IS ONE IN THE MORNING AND I TELL YOU WHAT, my friends, there is nothing - NOTHING! - more smug than a zen like yoga dude meditating in the middle of an EXTREMELY focussed moment of concentration.

Then - as if mocking me further - zen dude maintains his inner calm as I swear and get annoyed and grow further from my zen ideal towards a mental, frenzied, uncontrollable writer with no discipline.

But anyway. It was a nice thought.

Having written the script for our show, Greatness Thrust Upon Them, I am now 100% more fun. Given that during the writing of the script I was probably 300% less fun than, say, wading through pineapple juice with open leg wounds, I am probably still in need of 200% more fun points in oder to render myself social again.

Many of my friends are not speaking to me. Some of them because my absence is rude. Some of them because they're waiting for me to resurface. Some of them, I suspect, are currently down at the cop shop describing my hair colour to the missing persons unit.

What happens when you stop writing (and thus being locked in a room avoiding things) is that you have to do the long list of things that has built up while you've been locked in a room avoiding things. My list currently runs to one A4 page and consists, pathetically, of the following three things which will be on my list of things to do for the rest of my life.

1. Clean your room.

2. Go to gym.

3. Get a haircut.

The last of these was thrown into stark relief this morning when, on my way to my "other" job (the one where they actually pay me money) I was contemplating whether the massive gash in my stockings really did require the (annongly time wasting and expensive) purchase of a new pair of stockings. During the walk from home to work, the stocking gash - like an animated cartoon or a flicker book - majestically stretched further down my leg, into my shoe and across my big toe. Extremely uncomfortable. Ergo the answer to the question RE requiring new stockings becomes a resounding yes.

SO... (yes, I am aware this is a tangent and please hold on to your tickets, there will be an interval)... there I was thinking "gee, I need me some stockings - pity Myer isn't open this early" when Lo and behold! There's Myer - doors flung open, people streaming in off the street.

Now. At this point, it's important to flag that while I am not a vain person, neither am I particularly self-conscious about my appearance. When adults told kids that beauty was on the inside, I was the only kid who listened. Well. Me and the backstage dude in the trench coat and the acid wash jeans tucked into his shoes.

So - not usually very self-conscious. But for some reason, this morning, stumbling into Myer with my stockings ripped to shreds, my stupidly unfashionable, way-too-windswept total lack of a haircut, and my New Scientist laptop bag, I unexpectedly felt unusually... well... ugly. 

I wondered why that was. I deconstructed my subjective approach to beauty. I wondered why I suddenly felt unnaturally short and piggy, with extra limbs and stupid lips and big forehead, and the kind of haircut celebrities list in interivews under "biggest regrets". Was it because I'd been locked away writing for so long that I'd forgotten how to be around other people without doubting myself? Was it because I was so tired from rehearsals? Was it the moon?

Turns out, Myer wasn't open. Turns out, I'd walked through the doors of Myer accidentally, ushered (perhaps herded is a better word) into the ground floor of Lonsdale Street by Melbourne Fashion Week models arriving for work.

Yup. Turns out it's fashion week. Turns out, the doors to Myer had just been opened and the models (with Melbourne Fashion week registration) streaming into Myer had been waiting outside together on the footpath when I joined them. Turns out I was right in there with the best of them, displaying the new "stocking-tear with lack of haircut in the morning" look. They were all checking it out. They were all wishing they'd thought of it. They loved it.

Next big thing. You heard it here first.

Seriously though. Beauty is subjective and all that, but honestly, if you're going to mix with the supermodels, try not to look like Helena Bonham Carter baking people pie in Sweeney Todd.

I work with someone whose name will remain unuttered for fear of public embarrassment, who just mailed his diary and address book to someone in Frankston, with no cover note, for no apparent reason other than that he was concentrating on something else at the time.

I live for moments like this.

We had our launch last night of our new show, Greatness Thrust Upon Them. It was drinks, pizza, conversations, dancing, and there were a couple of silent auctions to support the carbon neutralising and public liability expenses (which are always ludicrous).

I am not yet able to report on the event officially, due to the fact that I am still in bed, and I presume the rest of Standing There Productions is still in bed too.

But my God it's a wonderful thing to be in a room full of friends and supporters who always come to our shows but who we never get to chat to. Our friend Michael Roper hosted the event (although as he said, it was really the people who turned up who hosted it) and he was charming and funny and thoughtful - although his reference to my doing something nefarious with a small boy's underpants on the school bus was completely uncalled-for and probably libelous.

So thank you to Michael for running the show. Thank you to Trades Hall for being wonderful, as usual. Thank you to Maie and Rose and Lucia and Dee and Rick Thorn who all pretty much deserve a permanent thank you from Standing There Productions for doing everything for us, always. Thank you to those who bid in the auction, thank you to the Howletts, thank you Fahey, Kathy and Katie. Thank you to those of you who had a chat to us, who came for a drink, who skipped from one event to another.

And lastly, because this is "my" diary, I'd like to thank Rita and Stew. Stew is always so busy running around thinking of things we haven't thought of that he sometimes (like last night) misses out on being front and centre. He shouldn't. Thanks Stew. Rita, meanwhile, is always planning, organising, convincing people it would be a great idea to do something for nothing, and then turning up looking gorgeous and being charming and never forgetting anything. Standing There Productions is all three of us together, but lately I've been cutting corners (due to the script and the auditions) so it really does make me grateful for the people who actually do all the hard work so I can stand on stage looking like I thought of it myself.

Yay for all of you.

I'm going to get a burger the size of my head.

So I've been missing.

Here's why:

1. We have a cast for Greatness Thrust Upon Them. We finished auditions and we had long and agonising conversations in Vietnamese restaurants and pubs and we now have a cast. Chris Buchanan is Robin - the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, Miriam Glaser is Sam - who runs the United Nations Environment Conference, and Julia Harari is Megan - who works for Sam and eats jellybeans.

2. The publicity for the show has been keeping the rest of us busy - tomorrow night we have a show launch - an evening of drinks at Trades Hall bar from 7pm. Here are the deets, writ large because I don't know how to make the image smaller:

3. More publicity, including a photograph of me looking about twelve and sporting a bowly haircut I know I will live to regret: here.

4. More publicity, in the form of a photograph for the local newspaper in my home town of Greensborough will not be reproduced here due to the fact that I was photographed jump-staring a tree (with jumper leads - not kidding), hanging upside down from a branch, and testing our public liability insurance (and my own dignity) by falling out of the tree mid photograph. The reason for this is because our show is in the comedy festival and therefore I have to be whacky. I am not, nor have I ever been, whacky.

5. Our website has had a bit of a facelift. It was done by SuperPaul, who is our Website Guy and who we all want to marry every now and then for his design expertise, his speed, and his generous dedication of time and effort to make us look much cooler than we really are (I speak for those of us falling out of trees).

6. Tickets for our show, Greatness Thrust Upon Them, in the comedy festival, are now ACTUALLY ON SALE ALREADY AND PEOPLE HAVE STARTED BUYING THEM. Yikes. Go here.

7. Did I mention I finished the script?

8. I went on a two day trip to regional Victoria (Warrnambool) for my "other job" earlier this week. Just when I was starting to think the entire world was about Standing There Productions' new show (honestly, have you READ the paper? Environment this, environment that. They're all talking about us)... it was lovely to go somewhere with a beach and to find out about things happening in local communities.

That's it from me. Those are my excuses for my absence. Here's hoping it was shortlived. See you at the launch!

The audition process is now over.

Over a hundred people auditioned for only three roles.

Casting is so hard. It’s just so hard. I’m exhausted.

Also, I’d love to go to Federation Square tomorrow morning to see the government apologise to the indigenous people, but I’ve got writing to do. I’m writing about historically important days in history. Ironic, no?