London and Shitty Estate Agents It was no thanks to the idiot(s) at the estate agents, but we finally got into our new flat yesterday. And, following Sal’s spur of the moment decision to hire a large transit van yesterday, it’s now full of stuff too.

Continue reading

Rejecting once again the living hell that is the West Coast Main line on a Friday evening, I chose to return home to Southport for Christmas by plane, just like I did last year. Rather predictably, it took me longer to get from work to Heathrow than it did to get from Heathrow to Manchester, but that wasn’t my favourite example of the ludicrousness of modern cheap air travel: On arriving at the airport, I…

Continue reading

Moving, just keep moving… This lunchtime, after much queueing and some rigmarole in the bank, we finally obtained the necessary funds in the appropriate form (your handy choice, from the estate Agent that likes to say “no, you can’t write us a cheque”, of either a wad of used fivers or an IOU scrawled in Eddie George’s blood), and signed up for our fab new flat in London’s-trendy-Islington ((c) the daily mail). We move in…

Continue reading

Middle-aged Telegraph Reader I’m a worried man. Yesterday, I returned home to find two items of junk mail waiting for me. Now normally I would just put this stuff in the bin and think no more of it, but I was disturbed by the type of people who have started writing to me. One letter was from The Daily Telegraph, who wanted to tell me about their latest wine offer. I don’t think I’d read…

Continue reading

It’s got nothing to do with your Vorsprung durch technic, you know Shrugging off the nasty cold that’s been bugging me ever since returning home, but which thankfully seems to be on its way now, I headed over to the Brixton Academy last night to see Blur for the second time this year. On the whole they were very good, choosing to play more of a greatest hits-y set than they did when we saw…

Continue reading

…Vulture Street, which was named after the street in Brisbane where the album was cut… BBQs attended 4, BBQs assembled 1, beautiful sunsets 2, hot air balloon trips 1, rainy days 1, sunny days at least 15, loops of Qantas radio channel 7 on which I heard the same 3 Powderfinger/Alex Lloyd songs at least 10, thousand miles flown over 20, photographs taken 181, bottles of champagne 3, bottles of wine too many to remember,…

Continue reading

Suite at the Hilton, dahling Somewhat optimistically, the locals (or at least Gary, Sal’s friend Anna’s uncle, who took us on a tour of the city) like to think of Perth as a kind of mini Sydney, without the fancy bridge and concert hall, obviously, but with an impressive harbour, and lots of sunshine. The views of the city from the Kings Park are stunning, especially during the evening as the sun goes down, reflecting…

Continue reading

Skippy The Happy Kangaroo Although we have only just returned to Melbourne, it will soon be time to leave again to travel over to Perth, which everyone says is very nice. We spent the last few days travelling away to Colac, a small country town around 2 or 3 hours away from the city, to attend the wedding of Sal’s good friend Liv (in which Sal was acting as one of the three bridesmaids) and…

Continue reading

Melbourne As the photos, when I finally get round to uploading them, will testify, it’s been bloody hot here mate. I mention this only to illustrate my first observation about the natives–they do like to talk about the weather a fair bit. When they aren’t talking about house prices, that is. Perhaps it’s just a myth that the English talk about the weather (or, for that matter, house prices) all the time, as the rest…

Continue reading