I doubt there's anyone who isn't aware of the Victorian bushfires at the moment.

In fact, there's so much being said about them now, four days after they started, that media coverage is creeping away from reportage into, well, a story on its own.

Still, most of us know people directly affected by this, and most of us want to do or say something, but most of us feel completely ill-equipped and useless and don't want to presume to speak words that others have the misfortune of being the rightful authors of.

So I'll turn the words over to the people who know what they're talking about and know how to help.

Most people have already given money to the appeal but if you haven't and you would like to, go here.

If you don't have money, you can donate blood.

If you don't have money or blood, you can donate old phone chargers.

You can help transport injured wildlife.

You can now donate stuff, rather than money here.

Like a bit of a jig?

Near Myrtleford?

Got a spare room?

Want to keep up on these updates? Go here.

So look, we're getting a bit hysterical over here about the heat. Apparently, tomorrow is the worst day in history, and it HASN'T EVEN HAPPENED YET. Worst day in history! That includes last week when I totally missed out on tickets to an Ani Difranco concert. It includes the time my hard drive exploded. It includes the time I tried to prove how cool I was at my new school by winning a swimming race and only realised AT THE END that I had been doing the wrong stroke for 400 metres. Yeesh. Tomorrow is going to be BAD!

It is times like these when one is best suited to consider perspectives other than the perspective from which one swelters.

Here are some perspectives I am quite pleased to consider:

1. Chris Buchannan's perspective. Chris Buchannan, who played Robin, the press secretary in Greatness Thrust Upon Them, our comedy festival show last year, is in a musical at the moment. That musical is called, almost obscenely, Zanna Don't. They had me at highlarious bastardisation of well-known pop culture reference. Seriously though, Chris is brilliant. I'm seeing it next week.

2. Nick Jaffe's perspective. Standing There long-time friend and collaborator Nick Jaffe had his goodbye drinks last night. He's the ridiculously adventurous one who sails solo in a tiny boat, around the world, in the big, big ocean. Good luck Nick! You'll be missed. Again.

3. My friend. Goes by the name of Scottish Phil. This is in order to distinguish him from all other Phils in the world. The great thing about the name Scottish Phil? Scottish Phil lives in America. Scottish Phil emailed me in response to my complaints of heat. Apparently it's NEGATIVE 20 DEGREES CELCIUS where he lives, with ten inches of snow. Ten inches! My eyebrows would be peering over the top.

4. My other friend. Goes by the name Boss Of Everything. I'm not even kidding. Of everything. She's currently the boss of what my childhood next door neighbour used to call Horse Piddle. The Royal Women's Horse Piddle. What with her being royal and all. She's having, and I've thought about this and I think it works, an extraordinarily ordinary time. I hope she gets better. Right after the worst day in history, which would be well spent in Horse Piddle, since it has what my sister and I used to call coolth.

5. Robin Geradts-Gill. He works with us on lots of stuff and is generally quite the contemporary gentleman. His band, The Little Stevies, are launching their album. Keep an eye out for it. Their single, Sunshower, which was shot by our very own Stewart Thorn, is here.

6. People who are not me. Last night, I went to a Leonard Cohen concert. This is code for: tomorrow might be the worst day in history but yesterday was pretty close to the best. L Cohen reminded his audience last night (me and four or five thousand others) that we are, simply put, lucky. Through no genius of our own, we live in a peaceful country, we listen to music, we watch film, we read, we run about on sporting fields and attach enormous importance to it, we think what we want to think and sometimes we say it, and we're allowed to, and that's extremely lucky. I'm going to try and get through the worst day in history, with that in mind.

So you know how I said it was hot?

About an hour ago, there was a refreshing cool breeze of NINE TRILLION DEGREES as opposed to the previous nine thousand trillion.

It is seriously the kind of weather that makes you burst into tears in a crowded tram. Not that I did that. But it was touch and go.

If you study Literature at some point in your life you will discover this: existentialism is a movement in literature most ably demonstrated by a book called, in English, The Outsider. You will, if you study Literature, learn this maybe 12 or 13 times. You cannot, apparently, know it enough.

In one of the 12 or 13 essays I wrote about The Outsider, in one of which I seem to recall I claimed that existentialism was a state of being usually only experienced by male protagonists in rich white countries (I did an arts degree) I focused on a segment in the book where the protagonist shoots somebody. In this segment of the book, pretty much the entire point of the narrative so I hope you enjoyed the spoiler, our protagonist pulls the trigger because of a number of factors, none of which has to do with morality. It's noisy, he's uncomfortable, and most of all: it's hot.

As we enter our second day of record hot temperatures in Melbourne today (the hottest in over 100 years) it strikes me that an unexamined element in The Outsider is that it's actually an ecological horror novel before its time. Heat killed a man dead. Heat can do that.

Heat stops trains - anyone 5ks out of Melbourne knows that. It also stops brains. Dear everyone I have to submit something to this week: please be thankful I haven't killed anyone and let me off the hook. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to stick my head in the freezer.

A little something about the Standing There Productions trip to Sydney.

Firstly, you know those brain scans they do to trace activity in the brain after certain stimuli? You know? Colour photographs. The brain is this big blue blob with tiny orange spots on it when the person's trying to find their car keys, but then, when the person is trying to find their way out of a maze or something, there's warm orange everywhere.

After Standing There Productions meetings, I am convinced of this, our brains must look like the warm glowing embers of magma.

So. We had a few of those meetings. Some of them involved other people, some of them involved us. Most of them ended with the three of us leaping through the surf screaming at each other that we're all moving to Sydney, our brains turning a deep, happy blue.

We saw five shows at the Sydney Festival. They were all good. Three of them were excellent. I'd say the best shows I've ever seen. They were more experimental, which is perhaps why The Gate Theatre (a beautiful Irish theatre company I've always loved) didn't come off as well as they usually do. They were performing Brian Friel plays (including this one and this one), which were written with that gorgeous precision, but perhaps it was the direction - I felt it would have been just as good to be at a reading.

Stew and I saw Smile Off Your Face, which was theatre that took you out of yourself: you're put in a wheelchair, your wrists are bound, you're blindfolded, and they wheel you away from everyone else to a show you experience mostly in darkness. It's phenomenal. Liberating. It sends you out into the world with a new face on, asking lots of questions of yourself. Also, for a show the majority of which you are blindfolded, some of the images are very striking.

We wriggled into the final three seats of a show called No Dice, which is still my favourite festival show, including the astonishing Lepage show. No Dice was a 4 hour long performance using transcripts from telephone conversations, performed in an almost pantomime style by brilliant performers using physical gesture, repetition, sensual cues (they made the room hot, they made the room cold, they gave you a sandwich and a Dr Pepper, they used sound and dance and screen and voice). For the first half, Rita and I had no idea the script was based on phone conversations, which made its madness even more surreal and which changed the second half of the show for us, making the experience (I think) even better. Speaking of surreal. Their motto? "Putting the W in mellowdrama since 1995". Read more about them. They are brilliant. I hope they take over the world. A world run by them - funny, weird, sincere, suggestive - would indeed be a fine place to live.

We then saw the Robert Lepage show I mentioned above; Lipsynch. The word for that show is: phenomenal. It went for 8.5 hours, had 5 intervals, involved 9 performers but seemed like it had a cast of maybe fifty, used the crew, the astonishing sets, the screen, opera, sound, words, language (everyone was bilingual) and perception to follow an intriguing story that everyone talked about - predicting the ending and all of us getting it wrong - during the intervals. It was like a film, like a novel, like a painting. It showed you its mechanics, too - it reminded you of construct. I won't describe it in my own words. They're not good enough. Robert Lepage is here. He can do it for you.

Other fun things by this year's festival director (for whom, virtually, I ovate) include Play Me I'm Yours (pianos throughout the streets of Sydney - play them if you want to) and, apparently, La Clique, although I didn't see that.

Aaaaanyhoo. Deadlines, now. Lots of them. Read about those shows, see them if you can. I'll have my eye out for them wherever I am in the world, that's for sure.

Now, to the beach.

So Stewart and Rita and I had a big week in Sydney this past week, seeing some of the best theatre we've ever seen, having some very productive meetings, and instituting a new policy.

I shall tell you about the Sydney Festival when I have more time, but in the meantime, let me just introduce you to our new policy:

Wherever possible (and this contingency should be maximised whenever the opportunity arises) Standing There Productions meetings should conclude with a swim, a surf, and/or a beer with a harbour view.

I know. We're so Hollywood. It used to be about the art.

Now. Somebody hand me my snorkel.

Hey so if you're in the mood for reading stuff, check this baby out.

Stew and Rita and I are in Sydney tomorrow, so I've been AWOL almost consistently, for which I can only apologise (see below for my history in this regard).

I'll try and update everyone on Standing There's movements in Sydney, which should include the odd festival show, if we play our cards right.

That is, if I get my work done. Ever.