No, I am not dead - but I am working on it

Okay, so I didn’t post yesterday. My first missed weekday. In my defence it was a public holiday in Victoria - so I wasn’t at work and my local library and internet café were closed. (I like a public holiday atmosphere - all the shops are closed, all the cafes are full. It seems even more relaxed than late Sunday afternoon.)

Anyway, I’m busy wondering who died and left me their social life. Tonight will be my first night with nothing social/after work/out of the house in literally two weeks. I have been out every night for the last thirteen running if you count yoga and the “Joe Millionaire“ Canberra-lawyer-diaspora dinner held by my hosts in Sydney. Earliest time I arrived home was 8.30 pm, latest was 1.45 am.

This is getting to be more than I can handle.

So, I should finish of the tale of my time in Sydney. Friday night Mad Rob and I walked the entire length of the Sydney CBD twice in search of a mythical discount outlet with $2 polo tops for golf. This from a man with expensive taste in suits and business shirts ...

Still, he’s Mad Rob for a reason. (No offence, buddy.) My revenge was to drag him to a dinner of cheap burgers before we caught up the corporate hos at a new suit bar upstairs at the Chifley Plaza food court. The “hostesses“ were - um - buxom, really, really noticeably so. I mean, alarmingly.

But that’s Sydney for you: "in your face" overt.

Anyway, I wound up at Martin Place bar, again, but avoided cocktails for gin and tonic. The rest of the posse were aiming to get ruined, which they apparently did in grand style. Rob and I had a few quiet drinks and snuck off to binge on easter chocolate and Invader Zim episodes at the Coogee flat.

Falling asleep at midnight was a fantastic move. The next morning was a textbook Coogee summer day and we got to the beach relatively early. It was gloriously warm, the water was lovely, Coogee’s baby-waves were at their body-surfable best and there weren’t even any visible flabby, pallid, hung-over backpackers. Everyone was all beach-pretty and summer-perfect.

There were a few dark clouds in the sky, but none as passed the sun. A few waves were, by Coogee’s standards, towering dumpers wanting nothing more than to give the unwary a decent sand-scouring along the bottom - and there was one kinda disturbing homeless guy who wandered into the surf fully clad.

However, for the young, the employed, and those kicking off a long weekend - it simply couldn’t have been better. I had a mediocre café brunch and went back to the flat to nap while Rob went to a golf lesson, awaking in plenty of time to get myself to the airport.

I opted to travel in Coogee-perfect thick green silk, short-sleeved shirt, my tan cargo shorts and sandals. On arrival in Melbourne there was squalling wind and flailing rain lashing the airport terminal.

Welcome home big fella, I thought, rain lashing my ankles.

Saturday night I got even more Sydney action, catching up with Beth of fridaysixpm, her fabulous flatmate, and Beth’s houseguests - a pair of old, mutual ANU friends now resident in Sydney and working as - wait for it - lawyers. I’d seen one of them, in fact, regularly through the week as she works in the Sydney office. (They were up for the Grand Prix, which was made pretty eventful by the wet conditions.) We all went for cocktails and Mexican on Chapel Street.

The rest of the weekend passed in fine form, and now I’m looking forward to work as a break from socialising.

Though it seems Friday night I’m doing front of house for a small-budget political satire show. I get a free show, but have to miss the first 20 minutes to let latecomers in …