I don’t like buskers, as a rule. The musicians are cool, of course, and I like those silver-painted guys who pretend to be statues. But the comedians who think they’re circus performers and circus performers who think they’re comedians irritate me. It’s the way they try to rile up the crowd by putting them down, the way their lines are so premeditated and the way their jokes all seem to involve money. I get that it’s their job and all, and like everybody else they need to pay the rent, but I’d much rather give my money to someone who is engaging than someone who's essentially a glorified beggar.

Like this guy. The tall one. He was engaging.


Random. Spontaneous. And absolutely silent.


Except for one moment when he stood ceremoniously at the microphone, coughed once, then went back to disdainfully handing out ticket stubs, taking them back, peering at them with a torch, then sending people off to different seats for no apparent reason.

He was one of the acts Katie and I caught at the Hoopla Festival in Darling Harbour on Sunday. The others involved people dangling from the sky, or more precisely, the bridge...


...people dangling from other people, who were dangling from the bridge...


...and some guys in tuxes who did acrobatic things to the tunes of a jazz band.


It was free and awesome and not quite like any Easter I've had before, but that's cool. The important thing about holidays isn't what you celebrate, but that you celebrate. Some people spent this weekend celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, some the ideas of hope, forgiveness and new beginnings, and some just the chance to spend time with old friends and family. It doesn't matter how you celebrate, either, as long as you do something special, and do it with other people who are also doing something special. Might be a turkey dinner with the family, or it might be an afternoon at a circus festival.

This is especially important if you're thousands of miles away from most of your favourite people, and you know they're going to be sitting down to a big family dinner without you and posting pictures of it on Facebook the next day. Because that's apt to make you feel a bit sad, unless you can say, "But I spent my day hanging out in the beautiful Australian sunshine, eating banana fudge ice cream and watching the flying trapeze, and then I came home, made my housemates cookies and ate spoonfuls of icing straight from the bowl," and let's be honest, how sweetjellybeans is that?