Phil Brown

Saw the Paris Opera Ballet last night: stupendous, magnificent, extraordinary … and very long. Three hours was stretching the friendship but I guess it’s all good for French-Australian cultural relations. Never mind about the malodourous Frenchman sitting next to me, halitosis and all. And why did he have to hog the arm rest throughout the whole show? That ain’t etiquette, is it? If he had screamed “Bravo!” one more time I would have throttled him, although my hands may not have fitted around that sweaty neck. But hey, I did enjoy myself, really I did and the sets were magnificent, particulartly the elephant, although my favourite bit was when one of the poor unfortunate under-fed ballerinas dropped the stuffed bird she was holding, turning an exquisite routine into a ballet version of Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch. “He’s bleeding snuffed it!” Remember that? What a hoot. I thought of this and much more while I waited for the ballet to finish and as usual I wasn’t stingy when it came to the applause because I’m always so glad when a show is over. I stayed up until well after midnight basking in the afterglow.

Nobody writes about surfing the way Tim Winton does. When I spoke to him just after Breath (which has just won the Miles Franklin Award) was published he did point out that it was not a surf novel, despite the subject matter. It’s about much more, of course, but it works as a surf novel too. In fact it’s pure filth! That’s a good thing. The only other novelist I have read who can do surfing in print  is the American Kem Nunn and if you haven’t read his book The Dogs of Winter, do yourself a favour. Those of us who surf appreciate it when a writer gets the surfing stuff right but few manage it. There are, of course, the surf mags but the mindless drivel most of them serve up nowadays is undigestible, not to mention offensive! But Winton is a surfer’s surfer and he writes about it in a masculine but poetic fashion. Breath may be for everyone but we surfers are the only ones who really get it - a la the old Tracks motto: only a surfer knows …