Monday 4 June 2007

The Grey Warriors

This year’s Sydney Writer’s Festival has come at one of the very few times in my life when I am not actually committed to working and, as such, I’ve found myself available to go to quite a few of the events.  I’ve been suitable impressed that all of the events I’ve gone to see have been very well populated – less impressed by the fact that so many of them (especially the free ones) have been so well populated that I’ve been unable to see them because on no less than three occasions I’ve missed the cut off by about five people.  And this is by still turning up more than half an hour before the event has started.  Sydney is obviously a city that is in love with the written word and also one that’s so starved for celebrity that even a C-list celebrity like Richard E Grant (his own words!) can pack out an amphitheatre with paying fans.  What’s really struck me about the crowds that are filling up all the free events  though is that a very large group of them are grey haired retirees.  Is this because they’re the most literary minded demographic in Sydney?  Is there a retirement home hidden away in The Rocks that I’m not aware of?  Or is it just that they’re the group with the most time on their hands and they’re the only ones who can afford to spend hours queuing up for the freebies (a few of which have been catered with cheap wine and rubbery cubes of cheese)?  I was quite concerned that there no St Johns Ambulance volunteers patrolling the epic lines and I was just waiting for some of the frail old codgers to collapse as the minutes slowly crept on (and maybe I’d be able to take their place) but these grey warriors were determined to get their free entertainment and no winter sun or creaking joints where going to stop them.  I was also witness to some extremely brazen line pushing by the old dears - ‘Is this where we were, Gladys?’; ‘Oh no, I think we were a few people up but let’s not cause a fuss’; ‘’We were here an hour ago but we just nipped off for some lunch’ - who’s going to challenge that kind of defence?  You?  Certainly not me ...

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