The Perfect Diary is a week-to-an-opening diary which features one wonderful work each week, these are what’s on offer this month. Below them is a list of events, current and historical for each day of the year.
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2 April
to
8 April

Q: If you could live forever, would you and why?
A: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because, if we were supposed to live forever we would, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
Miss Alabama, 1994
9 April
to
15 April
King Prempeh had 3,333 official wives and painted his house twice a year with human blood.
His Majesty King Edward VIII

Barbara Licha - Expectations

 

Terminus

He loves what he hopes will last, which gone,
Begins the difficult work of mourning
W. H. Auden

Home from work, rural town outskirts, damp rented house, and he knew. Before the sound of the ute's rackety engine had died, adrenalin stab. Afterwards, bum edge on the naked window-sill, ash spilling unheeded, one foot on the barren floor, the other hooked tenuously around an ankle, a hand clamped under an armpit, he tried to analyse what had alerted him. Only the quiet, as still as the past. Or expectation? Gathering shadows spreading like a stain, the garden doomed to await his promises forever now, and he thought about how you don't notice signs of life until they're missing. lnternal doors wide, as if in shock, fireplace dark, no skeletons left in any cupboard. He heard each vehicle pass on the way to somewhere. Heard birds. Heard the wind. Heard a distant dog barking intermittently, the sound hanging with a forlorn echo. Heard the significance of past conversations. And, each second, he heard the pulse of his life slipping by.

S M Chianti
16 April
to
22 April
Dont just do something! Stand there!
Lindsay Anderson, instructing an actor.
23 April
to
29 April
I believe the oldest people should be drafted first. They are the ones who start war.
Amelia Earhart

Luke Bowering

 

Alex Taylor

30 April
to
6 May
Freuds theory was that when a joke opens a window and all those bats and bogeymen fly out, you get a marvellous feeling of relief and elation. The trouble with Freud is that he never had to play the old Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night after Rangers and Celtic had both lost. Ken Dodd.
7 May
to
13 May
People in positions of confidence with us must be utterly oyster. Queen Elizabeth II to Crawfie (Marion Crawford), her governess for 17 years, ostracised when she published her memoirs The Little Princesses.

 

Verbamania: "Don't Place Feet on Seats"*

Don't place feet on seats.
Don't lace seats with peat.
Don't pace streets with meat.
Don't greet snakes in pleats.

Don't chase freaks in heat.
Don't cheek Greeks with leaks.
Don't tweak geese in sheets.
Don't seek cheats with grotes.

Don't waste cakes on mates.
Don't take notes at wakes.
Don't soak pigs in flakes.
Don't make jokes on lutes.

Don't shoot jacks and scoot.
Don't tote sacks of jute.
Don't talk back to sneaks.
Don't place feet on seats.

*with thanks to the Melbourne Metro Transit System

Julian Meyrick

 

Clem Beer
Festivals and events in Australia this month
Do you have any events you would like to add to next month’s list?

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historical events - quote sources for verification

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entries in black appear in the diary - entries in red are local holidays - entries in dark grey are verified - entries in light grey are not
1 April April Fools Day. Festival of Fools, Sydney. International Dancing Competition, Crown Tower Hotel, Melbourne. First issue of OZ magazine published, 1963.
2 April Taily Day, Scotland (engage in buttock-related pranks). First motion picture theatre in the USA opens in a shop in Los Angeles, 1902.
3 April National Sculpture Forum, Canberra. Bluebottle Beach Winking Week, NSW.
4 April Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. Independence Day, Senegal. Liberation Day, Hungary. Martin Luther King assassinated, 1968.
5 April Qing Ming Jie (Tomb Sweeping Day), Taiwan. Phar Lap dies in California, 1932. Introduction of the Kit-Kat (then called Chocolate Crisp) by Rowntrees in Britain, 1935. Paint roller invented by Norman Breakey of Toronto, Canada, 1940.
6 April Chakri Day, Thailand. First Olympic Games in modern times, Greece, 1896.
7 April Bundanoon is Brigadoon, pipe band festival, Bundanoon, NSW. World Health Day. Socialist Arab Baath Foundation Day, Iraq. International Tuba Day. A heatwave of over 170 consecutive days at or above 37C ends, Marble Bar, WA, 1924. First non-stick frying pan sold in France, 1956.
8 April Palm Sunday. Passover. Advance Australia Fair becomes Australias National Anthem, 1974. Buddhas Birthday.
9 April Bells Beach Professional Surfing Competition, Torquay, VIC. Jern Utzon born, 1918. Jana Wendt born, 1957.
10 April The safety pin is patented, 1849.
11 April Mersham Shoehorn invents the pipette, Surinam, 1327.
12 April Festival of the Southern Ocean, Mallacoota township, VIC. National Folk Festival, National Exhibition Centre, Canberra. Songkran Festival, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos (bathe statues of Buddha and throw water at each other). Maundy Thursday. Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space, orbiting the Earth for 108 minutes, 1961.
13 April Good Friday. Bendigo Easter Fair Festival, various venues in and around Bendigo, VIC. Nambucca Country Music and Cultural Festival, Nambucca Valley, NSW. Batlow Easter Bazaar, Batlow Memorial Hall, Batlow, NSW. Circus and Street Theatre Festival, Darling Harbour, NSW. Deniliquin Jazz Festival, Deniliquin, NSW. Thai and Nepalese New Year.
14 April Great Goat Race, Lightning Ridge, NSW. Four Winds Easter Concert Bermagui, NSW. Hughenden Country Music Festival, QLD. Gilgandra Easter Weekend Spectacular Cooee March, NSW. Coober Pedy Opal Festival, SA. Blessing of the Fleet Festival, Ulladulla, NSW. Easter Rodeos, Boulia & Eromanga, QLD.
15 April Easter. Melbourne Autumn Music Festival. Easter Dancesport Championships, Mile End, SA. Kangaroo Island Easter Fair, SA. Pinnacle Guinea Pig Races, Grenfell, NSW. Jibeta Matsuri (Metal Phallus Festival), Japan. Sydney Morning Herald carries news on the front page for the first time (instead of advertisements), 1944.
16 April Easter Monday. Barossa Vintage Festival, SA. Charlie Chaplin born, 1889. Leonardo da Vinci born, 1452. Half of the front page of The Sunday Telegraph is blank as a result of censorship by the Minister for Information, Mr Caldwell, 1944.
17 April Anniversary Day, Southland, NZ. Hana Matsuri (Flower Festival), Japan. Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails, Americans start building fallout shelters, 1961. All Sydney dailies, the Melbourne Herald and the Adelaide News are suppressed by the censor for defying regulations, 1944.
18 April Zimbabwean Independence Day. Yemmerrawannie, an Eora Aborigine, dies in England, having been taken there by Governor Phillip one year before, 1794.
19 April Oracles of the Bush Festival, various venues throughout Tenterfield, NSW. Day of Disembarkation of the 33 Orientals, Uruguay.
20 April Passover begins. The first detective story, Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allen Poe, published 1841.
21 April Young on a Platter, Carrington Park, Young, NSW. Earth Day (first observed 1970). Kartini Day, Indonesia.
22 April Milton Scarecrow Festival, Wason Street, Milton, NSW. First desktop fax machine takes six minutes to send one page, New York, 1966. First record of roller skates, London, 1760.
23 April William Shakespeare borne, 1564.
24 April Bright Autumn Festival, Bright, VIC.
25 April Anzac Day. Liberation Day, Italy. Liberty Day, Portugal. Robigalia (celebration of the Roman god of mildew). Women vote for the first time in an Australian election, Adelaide, 1896.
26 April Worlds worst nuclear accident, Chernobyl, 1986. First post office opens in Australia, Sydney, 1809. Canned laughter used for the first time, NBC, USA, 1949. Peppercorn Day, Bermuda.
27 April Passover ends. Independence Day, Sierra Leone and Togo. Franois Fresnau makes the first raincoat, French Guiana, 1847.
28 April Australian Science Festival, Canberra. The Phantom is born, 1911. James Cook lands in Botany Bay, 1770. The Royal National Park, NSW, becomes the worlds second national park. Decaffeinated coffee introduced in Germany, 1903. Mutiny on The Bounty, 1789. Festival of Flora, Ancient Roman festival, begins.
29 April International Dance Day. Vintage Jazz at Wyndham Estate, Dalwood, Hunter Valley, NSW. Peter Sculthorpe born, 1929. Francis McEnroe creates the Chiko Roll, Victoria, 1951.
30 April Canberra International Chamber Music Festival, various venues throughout Canberra. Walpurgisnacht.
 
       
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