Editors and Ambos; plus two good movies

Hi. Just got in from the past three days away from home, mostly in Adelaide. Thursday night was kicked off with a nice chunk of barramundi - it's a fish, guys - at Amalfi Restaurant in Frome Street, in company with some fellow members of our State branch of the Society of Editors. Then we nipped up Rundle Street to the rooms where the Society's AGM was held and a new 10-strong committee voted in for the next year. As a country member I was able face-savingly to yet again - note the split infinitive - avoid with agility being dobbed in for committee jobs.

I treated myself to a couple of movies on Friday, at the Palace/Nova Eastend cinema. Where else? They're the Art House venue of choice. The first was the excellent, low-budget, odd and funny-serious New Zealand film Boy, set in a small coastal North Island community in 1984: events are viewed by a Maori boy left in charge, for a week, of the home and a few other kids - siblings and cousins - when his guardian grandmother must leave them to attend a funeral in distant Wellington. The tale turns interesting when unpredictable ex-con cheerful rogue dad (played by writer-director Taika Waititi) rolls up with two no-hoper mates. This film got huge brownie-point reviews in print, on screen and on radio, prompting my choice of flick, and the same for the second film of my day, Australian made Matching Jack, a movie set entirely in Melbourne and its bay port Williamstown, directed by Nadia Tass.

Much bigger budget than the previously mentioned NZ film; brilliant cast, especially Irish actor James Nesbitt with female Aussie ex-pat lead Jacinda Barrrett. I'd recommend this to anyone, but be warned that it's a modern tear-jerker. Potential lovers meet because their respective kids are in the same cancer ward of Melbourne Children's Hospital. And yes, at least one dies. Oops! That's called a spoiler. Sorr-ee. The title is in reference to the search for a matching bone-marrow donor, and the possibility that a match could lead to a leukemia cure.

I hope that the medical theme didn't in any way precipitate events later that Friday evening when my host was taken ill at the dinner table and we needed to summon an ambulance. Jeez, mate, I thought ya were a goner this time. Later I collected his wife who had gone with the ambos and their patient to Ashford Hospital, and the news was by then good. It was blooming impressive how fast, competent, and courteous, the two ambulance paramedics were, male and female. Hope I get them in the event of needing the same services!