Child of the Planet

The one thing I had my heart set to do, during my visit down south, was to spend a bit of time warming a seat in a proper cigar bar so we ended up at the big casino that lurks on the bank of the Yarra river. Walked down beside the river, turned right walking through a glass door, and we were swamped in a crowded shopping precinct. This must have been the ‘family friendly’ face of the casino, and it was jammed with bodies. We found the bar and were instantly transported to a quiet place where soft conversations mingled with the blue cigar smoke wafting around the low ceiling. I noticed that a decent breeze was keeping my smoke alight so there must have been an efficient aircon whisking the smoke away. She had an elderberry and champagne cocktail, He had ten year old Taliska Scotch. Attached is a video of bits snapped while I was down there.

The ‘local’ met me at her local train station out in the suburbs, and we spent the rest of the morning chatting and repositioning sun lounges, as we chased the sunny spots tracking across her overgrown back yard After a bit we decided to go out for pizza in the city and I insisted that I wanted to ride a tram. We don’t have trams in Sydney and it was a bit weird riding in a vehicle that was train shaped, but was cruising through the middle of road bound car type traffic. We ended up in a groovy pub. She was drinking white, I had red. We talked about the feminist position on scrunching and folding, the burgeoning popularity of tapas in Melbourne, and how it’s hard for a single girl to get ‘knocked up’ these days as guys have realized that the government will hunt them down and make them pay for the upkeep of the sprog (as a result condoms are gaining in popularity again.) What I thought was interesting was that she expressed the opinion, that single woman are more interested in hav...

I decided I needed a change of scenery so I spent a few days down in Melbourne over Easter. Melbourne is one of those cities where I feel instantly at home. Glasgow, Fethiye, Wellington, Nuremburg, and London are other cities that I have instantly grown an attachment to. The opposite would be places such as Las Vagas which make my skin crawl. My home town of Sydney is notorious for being sunny but soulless. Melbourne is known for being cultured and damp. Good Friday morning was cold and wet and swathed in cloud when I left my flat and caught the bus to the airport. While I was in Melbourne I enjoyed three straight days of bright sparkly solar radiation. Some folk reckon that global warming is to blame for this topsy turvey weather. If this is true, then Melbourne and England will become known for being ‘fun in the sun,’ while Sydney and Spain will assume the mantle of ‘soggy Sao.’ I had arranged to meet a local I knew from the Internet in the city centre, and not finding anyone wai...