Shadows.

Her family moved from Sydney when she was young, travelling a few hours up the highway and settling in a small lakeside village many miles from the nearest settlement of any significance. Her father and mother ran the local boat hire and her younger brother grew up wearing a lifejacket, safeguarding him in the event that he wandered away and fell off the wharf. It happened frequently, so she tells it. She went on long bush walks with her twin sister, sailed catamarans on the lake and caught fish, eels and squid armed only with a hook and a line. She had her first kiss there - the boy with soft lips who became a man and who, years after her life had moved on from this lakeside settlement, would take his life and extinguish it for reasons he never explained. She did unspeakably cruel things to Toadfish, the kind of things you can only get away with as a child. Ants and magnifying glasses, Toadfish and stamping feet. Curiosity is a defence against a multitude of childhood crimes.

When she talks about these years at the lake, it always sounds idyllic to me. Winter never happens in these tales and I picture her existing in a blaze of heat and sunshine, her skin brown from a life spent outdoors, not inside playing on gaming consoles or glued to a computer. She shows me photographs taken during these years and I recognise the woman in those pictures of a girl. I wish I'd met her sooner, been her friend back then. My lips were as soft as his, I'm sure - but I'm equally sure that we'd not have kissed, her and I. She would have been kind and friendly but nothing more. I was trying too hard to be somebody else back then, somebody cool. Turns out that she never went for the cool kids much.

Inevitably there is a darker side to this life. She talks of nights barricading her door, protecting herself from the drunken, angry noises on the other side. She talks of shouting, of arguments, of crying. She talks of her brother, the boy who grew up in a lifejacket, and of slipping notes under his door when he was sad, when he had been banished in a maelstrom of harsh words for some minor offence, blown out of proportion by too many wines or beers. She speaks of tears and fear, of wishing she could leave and of her mother bundling the children into a bomby old car and leaving him again, this time for good. They always returned, the summers continued and the photographs from this time show the smiles, only the smiles. Photographs cannot tell a whole story though; all they can capture is a moment, an instant. Sometimes all we see are the smiles. Look at the eyes though, and sometimes you can see shadows there if you look closely.

Today, some thirty years later, that lakeside settlement has moved on. Her family moved on too, moving out long ago. The boat hire is gone but the house still stands, with new owners forming new memories within its walls. We have been back to the house and to the lake on a few occasions over these past years. When we do so, the memories she talks of are the good ones, the ones captured on film which show a time when summers seemed eternal and nothing bad ever happened. Sometimes when we are alone, we touch on the negatives hidden in the pouch behind those photographs. She accepts them as part of her life, who she was and who she is. I see her as strong, resilient and I tell her that. She tells me that some days she doesn't feel strong and I tell her that it's okay; that we all have days like that.

I look back at the photographs we take together now, photographs which her son will use one day to remember his own childhood. We look happy and carefree, smiles as fierce as the sun which blazed down upon her, a young girl in a small settlement on the side of a lake all those years ago. I look back at the photographs we take that day, looking for shadows in her eyes, in her son's eyes, in my own. I look closely and I look for a long time but see none. Today at least, in this frozen moment, all eyes are clear.

Contemplation and the car.

Picture the scene; a middle class town in the affluent south-east of England. It's the mid-nineties, maybe three years before Tony Blair and his cohorts take over the UK and everyone learns the chorus to 'Things Can Only Get Better' off by heart - admittedly not a very difficult task, given that the title's almost the entire chorus. These are innocuous times, better than the Thatcher years but a few years removed from the nationwide euphoria of Euro 96 and the subsequent feelgood factor that predates Labour's landslide victory in the 1997 election. Other things that have yet to occur include two first marriages, one second marriage and the arrival on the scene of one knife-wielding ex-girlfriend. I have recently split from another unsuitable girlfriend and have moved back to live with my mother and brother - except that my brother isn't there very much. He is still doing his law degree in Oxford, an hour up the road from where we live in a leafy suburb on the outskirts of Reading.

I am in my early to mid twenties at this time and if there is any stigma attached to moving back in with your mother, it doesn't really impact on me. In these times, I am constantly protected by a big shield of alcohol fumes. They deflect everything - nothing gets within 20 feet of me unless I want it to. Sadly it also works on women, whether I like it or not. I resign myself to a single life, nights at the pub with my friends, marathon sessions playing computer or watching videos and lying in bed mastur...... sorry; contemplating my life. If I had the motivation to spend less time contemplating my life and more time actually contemplating my life then maybe things would be different. I might be at Ikea instead, looking at flatpack furniture called Oddo or Stengaar, hand-in-hand with someone called Stephanie or Ruth. In reality, that Babylon-5 box set isn't going to watch itself and regardless of that, it's hard to concentrate on anything serious when your wrist's aching like hell from all that contemplation I've been up to.

My brother comes back from university for the holidays and I am pleased to see him. This is still a relatively new sensation as my brother and I have spent many years at loggerheads. We fight and bicker throughout our childhood and into our teens but become closer the older we both get. We get on well by the time he goes off to university at eighteen, to the extent that I often go up to Oxford and spend an evening or a weekend with him. So yes, having my brother back home for the holidays is a good thing. If nothing else it gives me another person to go to the pub with.

The pattern is often the same. My brother and I will walk the short distance to our local pub, the Bull & Chequers. We will sit there and put the world to rights over a few pints. Later I might persuade him on to the spirits; typically bourbon or, in his case, gin & tonic. Then as the night is winding down and the bell for last orders is being clanged, we will have the inevitable conversation about going on to a club. Inevitably it happens and inevitably we find ourselves at Sindleshams, not because it is a great club - that doesn't exist in Reading - but because it is relatively close to the pub and someone has walked through the pub handing out flyers which give you entry to Sindleshams free of charge.

It is three of us on the night in question; my brother, his friend Mike and I. We've drunk our fill at the Bull & Chequers and have taken a taxi over to Sindleshams. We sit there on the first floor of this grotty club and look around at all the girls and boys strutting around in their finery. They look like they're having fun. We, on the other hand, look like three men in slightly dodgy clothes who probably don't have girlfriends. We sit around our corner table, drink our drinks and carry on talking. In all honesty the night was looking like a non-event a while back and it's only getting worse as time passes. We don't have a great deal of money left and Sindleshams is a dull, dull place if you're in any way sober. A relatively early night is looking on the cards, right up to the point that I go up to the bar to get the next round of drinks.

I've had a cash card for some years now but, for some reason, I've only ever used it to withdraw money from ATMs. The idea of swiping for purchases hasn't really occurred to me but all of a sudden, standing at the bar, I see their EFTPOS machine and something in my head clicks. I look at the pile of silver in my hand, just enough for three halves of lager before a tragic return home, and I put it back in my pocket. Then I get out my debit card and reassess our drinks requirements. One swipe later and I need a tray to carry the order back to our table. We decide to keep hold of the tray for when we go back and order again. My bank seem oblivious of the fact that my account has no money in it, so it seems stupid not to take advantage of their accidental generosity. All of a sudden, a totally mediocre night is looking..... still mediocre actually - but at least we have the resources available to drink ourselves into a coma. Thank heaven for small mercies.

A few hours later we leave Sindleshams and get a taxi home, having drunk god knows how many Budweisers and tequila slammers. There may even have been B52s involved. The cab drops us a short walk from our house, presumably because we don't have the full fare between us. We start the five minute walk back to the house, unware that the fun's not really started yet.

Mike and my brother carry on walking when I stop to answer a call of nature. We are cutting back down an alley, it is dark and very late and I really can't hang on until we get home. I say that I'll catch them up and I watch them wander off down the alleyway as I get up close and personal with a fence. Eventually I finish, put everything back where it's meant to go and start walking to catch them up. I reach the bottom of the alleyway and come onto the road, a quiet cul-de-sac road, the kind that Harry Potter's aunt and uncle would live on. My brother and Mike are nowhere to be seen and that comes as a surprise. Have I really taken that long to pee? It hadn't seemed like it. No matter, they'll be heading to the house and so I carry on walking. The street is deserted apart from a young couple standing next to a car and I think nothing of it until I draw level with them and they call me over.

"Are you with those guys that just came past?"

I've had a few drinks but I can tell by the tone in their voice that they haven't stopped me to tell me that my brother or Mike have accidentally dropped their wallet on their way home. I play it safe.

"I'm by myself - why?"

Technically that's not a lie. I am by myself. They can see I've walked up alone but I think asking them 'why' probably blows a big hole in my carefully constructed cover. Not that it matters - they are in the mood to be expansive.

"We were just about to go to bed up there" says the man, gesturing up towards the upstairs window of a nearby house. "We were looking down at my new car that I picked up this morning when these two guys walked up, looked at it and then climbed onto the bonnet. They walked across the roof and down on to the boot, then jumped off. I banged on the window and they ran off. Are you sure you don't know who they are?"

My last utterance might not have been a lie, technically speaking. The next words out of my mouth most definitely are.

"No, sorry. If I see them I'll let you know".

Why I say that, lord only knows. It's so obviously a lie and all three of us know it. I start to walk towards my street. I don't look back - only a guilty person would look back. I do however decide to take a slightly longer route back to the house, just in case they haven't believed me to the extent where they decide to follow me. I walk fast, cutting through a garage block and walking an extra street before heading back to the house. I've seen nobody, so I am pretty sure they've not followed me.

I am right. They've not followed me. They've not needed to, as they are standing outside my house when I get there. They are in the middle of a very loud argument with my brother and Mike, who appear to have been waiting for me to show up with keys to let us all in. The man doesn't look surprised to see me but he is too busy screaming at my brother and Mike, accusing them of being vandals, louts and thugs. When he's forced to pause for breath, his girlfriend takes over. It turns out that she's the scarier of the two but that doesn't concern me too much. Somehow I have lucked out of this predicament. Somehow this is my brother's argument, not mine. It makes a refreshing change to watch somebody else getting in trouble - I could definitely get used to this, I think. I contemplate going in to bed and leaving them to it, but they are blocking the doorway and anyway, as much as I like my brother these days there is no way I can miss watching Golden Boy getting a verbal kicking of this calibre. My only regret is that I have no popcorn - this is better than the cinema any day of the week.

My brother is studying law at this time in his life, but even he knows he can't win this argument. He is very apologetic and remorseful. Mike isn't being anywhere near as co-operative. When the man threatens to call the police, Mike chips in with a very calming and helpful "he's studying law at Oxford - you can't beat him. Do what you want, it won't work". The guy and girl get even more animated and I wish I had a large coke as well as popcorn at this stage. The decibel level gets louder and I look up at the darkened windows around us, waiting for one of them to open and a neighbour to scream more abuse at us. As fun as it is, it probably needs to calm down now and reluctantly, I step in and apologise on behalf of my brother and Mike and tell the couple that they know where we live if they want to take it further in the cold light of day. Words to that effect. I'm polite and reasoned and eventually they get tired of arguing. After all, it's late, what's done is done and they've shouted themselves hoarse. Finally they leave. Mike gives them a head-start just to be safe, then goes home himself leaving my brother and I alone in our front garden. We go into the house and away from the spotlight of public scandal and neighbourly humiliation. I am sure I see several pairs of curtains twitch as we close the door behind us.

The next morning, I find the whole chain of events quite funny. My brother isn't meant to do this kind of thing. He's spent his life being the clever one, the smart one, the one with serious prospects. It's only taken twenty years but it turns out that we've found something I'm good at and which he sucks at - getting away with criminal behaviour. He's suitably chastened by the night's escapades and I can get away with taking the mickey out of him for a bit, so I do so mercilessly. It's only after I've sung the theme song to Prisoner Cell Block H for the 20th time that he snaps and tells me to fuck off. We never hear from, or see, the couple whose car got trashed and my brother eventually goes on to graduate in Law rather than find himself being pinched by its long arm. It's probably better this way - I suspect he'd wouldn't have enjoyed being a prisoner's wife.

All these years later, we're both older and wiser. My criminal activity is confined to illegal downloads and, to the best of my knowledge, my brother's descent towards prison both began and ended with the car-walking incident. These days my brother is responsible and mature and has even been known to write a reasonable blog entry now and then. As for me, I come here when I feel like contemplating my life these days. Sometimes it works better than others but one thing's for certain; my wrist feels a lot better than it used to.

Five degrees of separation.

1.

The postcard has a Spanish feel to it, a picture of a bull emblazoned across the front. I turn it over and look at the blank space in front of me. The address I will write is one I know off by heart. The message itself is harder to phrase.

She's been gone less than a day. I said goodbye to her at Heathrow last night, watched her go through passport control and stayed until she turned a corner and disappeared from view. Then I got in my car and drove here, to Windsor where my father and his wife live. I will be staying with them until my circumstances change, until I can walk through that same passport control and turn that same corner. Conservative estimates from the Australian High Commission in London put that at between eight and ten months. We've only been married a month, her and I, and I'm saddened to think that our first year together could be our first year apart.

I do some calculations in my head. Right now she's probably flying across the top of India on her way back to Australia. That observation seems as good a place as any to start and I take the pen from my pocket and write that on the postcard. I tell her that she chose the wrong time to leave; that it's a beautifully warm and sunny Sunday. I tell her that I'm sitting in a bar I know she'd like, that I saw this postcard and thought of her. I tell her I miss her and end by saying that I'll see her soon I sign my name and fill the rest of the card with kisses. On my way back to my father's house, I buy a stamp and drop the postcard in the red post box at the end of their road. Eight to ten months, and she's been gone less than a day.

2.

The days and months ahead are filled with work, with seeing my family but, above all, with paperwork. Emigration is no easy process and it takes longer than I'd like to get ready for sending. Forms need to be completed, documents need to be witnessed, copied and countersigned. Witness statements need to be obtained, police checks and medical reports need to be booked and the clearance certificates received. Above all, money needs to change hands. Close to five hundred pounds simply to lodge the visa application alone, not to mention hundreds of pounds spent on certified copies of official documents, medical examinations and police checks. The package I finally send to the Australian High Commission in London is weighty and summarises my life thoroughly. The final inclusion is the most important: my passport. All being well, it will be sent back with a visa stuck to one of the pages. I take the package to the post office and pay the extra amount to have the package tracked and signed for. After all this effort and expense, I want the guarantee that it arrives safely. If I'm to have the future I hope for, it's absolutely essential for this package to arrive where it's meant to.

We speak regularly on the phone. Mostly the calls are good; she tells me how she's moved back into her house and how great it is to have her son back in her life after 8 months away from him. She tells me how the two of them are going to redecorate the kitchen, ready for my eventual arrival. She talks about going back to university and starting a Fine Arts Degree, she tells me how her family are doing and how she's coping. In return, I tell her what's going on in my life and how frustrating it is trying to speak to someone - anyone - at the High Commission in London to find out how my application is faring. I tell her how I've been allocated a case-worker now, but that she's never at her desk when I call and never returns voicemail messages. I tell her how my family are, how living at my father's is going. I tell her which of our friends I've seen since we last spoke and how they're all doing. In reality, my wife is starting her life and I'm sitting thousands of miles away waiting for permission to do the same. It feels like she has the monopoly on news and I'm just treading water. Sometimes that gets to me and sometimes our calls aren't good.

The calls that aren't good are really very bad. The best part about arguing is often the making up, but that's impossible when the two of you are on opposite sides of the world. We take it in turns to scream, shout and protest. We call back after the other's hung up, intent on continuing the row until we make our point. Sometimes the call back never comes and when you eventually ring to apologise and make up, the phone goes unanswered. When it goes like this, I feel every second of the night and every mile of the distance as I lie there in the darkness, unable to sleep.

3.

The long, hot summer inevitably gives way to autumn. The days shorten, become cooler. The clocks go back and when I'm awake, she's invariably asleep on the other side of the world. I sink myself into my job during the days and continue to spend evenings and weekends with my family and friends. Seeing our mutual friends who remain in London is often bittersweet. Being reminded of what you had makes you want it back all the more keenly. I continue to play the waiting game, leaving messages on my case-worker's voicemail every week just to try and find out how my application is going, whether they require any more information or whether it's just a question of time.

It turns out to be time, and my timing eventually turns out to be almost perfect. I arrive at my father's one Tuesday afternoon in November to find that the post office have tried to deliver a letter addressed to me. It had to be signed for, there was nobody home and so they left the calling card. I can collect the letter from the postal depot in 24 hours time. There's only one piece of mail I'm expecting that would require a signature and there's no way I am prepared to wait another 24 hours to get it. I check the time that the card was left - ten minutes ago - and get back in my car, driving back towards the depot and scouring the side streets, hoping to spot the postman. It takes me a few streets but eventually I locate him and get my letter. It's smaller than I expected and there's some weight to it. It feels suspiciously like a passport. This is it. Either way, this has to be it. I tear open the envelope, read the letter and look at the visa stuck into my passport over and over again.

Later I phone my case-worker and thank her. I don't really know what I want to say but I want to say something. As always, I get her voicemail but this time it doesn't matter and I leave the message anyway. Then I get in touch with my family, my boss and, as soon as the day breaks in Australia, I phone my wife and tell her the news. She asks why I didn't wake her up and tell her the minute I found out. I don't have an answer for her, but that doesn't matter either.

4.

I stay in the UK for Christmas, my flight out of Heathrow booked for early in January. It gives me time to save money to take with me, just in case I struggle to find work for a month or two after arriving. It also gives me the opportunity to spend a final Christmas with my family and I'm grateful for the chance to add to the memories I'll take away with me. I write letters to my brother, mother and father, instructing them not to open the letters until I'm gone. In essence, I tell them that I love them, that they make me proud to be part of them and that I'll see them again and keep them in my heart until that time comes. My departure date draws closer and I say goodbye to my father first, then my brother. My mother is the last, driving me to Heathrow on the day I leave and staying with me until it's my turn to go through passport control and to turn the same corner that my wife did five months previously. My mother gives me a card and I open it once I'm through passport control and by myself. It's personal and beautiful and almost a mirror image of the letter I wrote her.

The first leg of my flight is from London to Hong Kong and I wake just the once. There is no such thing as time on a long-haul flight but if night-time were to exist, this would be the dead of night. The cabin is silent apart from the drone of the engines and the hiss of the air system. Around me, everybody sleeps. The stewardess sees me stir and pads over quietly to offer me a bottle of water. We are 30,000 feet up in the darkness and for a moment it feels like her and I are the last two people in the world. I thank her quietly, offering a conspiratorial smile which she returns. Later I sleep again, waking to shuffle off the plane at Hong Kong whilst it refuels. Two hours later, sat back in my seat, we hurtle once again through the night, rising into the sky and heading to Sydney. I sleep from the moment we take off.

5.

I see her before she sees me. She looks exactly as she did all those months ago on the other side of the world and I can't help but stare as I move down the arrivals hall, wheeling my luggage in front of me. My hair's longer than when she left and maybe this is why she takes a moment to recognise me.

The moment she does is one I will never forget. Shock registers on her face, almost as though she wasn't really expecting me to arrive, and then she breaks into a run up the hallway towards me. I push my trolley away and she crashes into my arms. We say nothing because this needs no words, just time to take everything in. The reminders come in waves, one on top of the other; the scent she wears, the smell of her hair, the way her body fits against mine. Five months later and we still fit. I always knew we would, even when the phone calls were bad and it felt like I'd never get here. I knew.

My luggage trolley rolls down the hallway, away from us. Eventually it slows, comes to a halt. Neither of us see that happen and it will be some time before we retrieve it and leave.

Six months on.

When it finally happened there was no Hollywood moment and no string section accompaniment. In the end, it came down to a group of us gathered around his bed, in a private room removed from the ward he had occupied for the last four days of his life. This new room was too big for him, for us. The ward had been intimate and we had milled around him to talk, to sit close and to spend time with him. This room was one that we couldn't fill with conversation, bodies, silence or tears. It dwarfed us and made him look even less substantial than he had previously. The distance became too great too quickly.

His decline when it came had been rapid. Four days ago he had left the High Dependency Unit and moved onto a shared ward, seemingly on the road to recovery. He looked different, more sallow and his features more defined. When he smiled, it was an old man's smile, frail and fragile. Even his eyes had changed, as though some unspoken fear had finally been allowed to rise from where he'd kept it hidden all these months and take up residence in his face. Despite all of this, he joked and alluded to the life he would have when he finally returned home. He even fell out with his wife, a sure sign that he was feeling better. We recognised him, hidden in this new sinewy, skinny body covered in a voluminous blue nightgown. We recognised him more with every visit and convinced ourselves that we had more time, that he had more time. We booked to go on holiday for a week, sure that he'd be there to hear all about it when we returned.

One night he went to sleep and when he woke, things had begun to change, to deteriorate. His concentration fell away and his speech began to fail, to become slurred. Words which had always come so readily to him became lost in an effort to breathe and to concentrate. Under the nightgown and that thin, bruised skin which now broke and bled so easily, his body began to shut down. There had been too many years of abuse and too much trauma from the surgery he had endured for it to renew itself. Within 24 hours he was on oxygen, reduced to writing his thoughts, instructions and observations on a notepad or pointing to letters hastily scribbed on a piece of A4 paper. Conversations were torturous, filled with mistakes and misinterpretations but they were still conversations, still a chance to connect and communicate. Even at the end he was correcting his english and ensuring that we didn't just understand the basics of his point but that we fully grasped every single word, correctly, exactly as he intended his thoughts to be heard. This man is the reason that my stepson always refers to 'X and I' rather than 'me and X'. I tried my to educate my stepson for months but to no avail, yet he managed it instantly and effortlessly. If he was leaving us now, he was doing so using the appropriate phraseology and if we didn't like it or it made conversations last longer than they needed to, that was just too bad.

The medical staff were honest with us - the next twenty four hours would be crucial. His body would either find the reserves it needed or it wouldn't. It was that simple in the end. We cancelled our holiday that night. Whichever way it went, this was not the week to be leaving.

So we didn't leave. He did though - at around two o'clock the next afternoon, in that large room that was just too large. We had been in the corridor waiting for him to be moved and we all knew the significance. This was the final stop, away from the prying eyes of the ward and the other patients still focused on surviving. His focus had gone now. He was still and wax-like, his skin a strange yellow hue. If there was breathing, I didn't see it. The nun came to baptise him and said that she felt a weak heartbeat as she performed the short ceremony. At the time I was angry; he wasn't a catholic and had no time for religion. He wouldn't have agreed with it. Now I know better. He would have have understood, as I do now, that it's as much about the people who survive you. His wife will spend her life with a multitude of what-if's running through her mind. His baptism, whether it came in time or not, gave her one less thing to worry about. He'd have understood that and accepted that and I often wonder what took me so long to see it.

The nun offered some words of comfort and left us. He had gone too. Looking at his body, I recognised aspects of the man I'd known for a short five years but, as always when a life departs, something personal departs with it. The man lying motionless in the bed in front of me was almost a stranger, no longer carrying the essence of the man I'd known, the man who'd given me a hard, hard time until he trusted that I loved his daughter as much as he did. He had been a man I looked at and recognised parts of myself in over the years but today he had gone, leaving just a thin, still shell behind. Even though I knew this was the last time I'd ever see him, it made leaving the room just a bit easier.

Having said that, we have seen him since then. Every so often we'll be walking down a street or walking through the club and, out of the corner of the eye, there he is. We look back to say hello but the moment's passed and somebody else stands in his place. It turns out that there are a lot of old men walking around in polo shirts, short shorts and gnarled old sandals; many more than I ever realised when he was still with us. I know - I've very nearly said hello to them all over these last six months.

Six months, Bill. I didn't even realise it had been that long until today. Six months ago I wrote a farewell to you here and this isn't meant to be another. No; this is a "hello", an "I've missed you", an "I was walking along the harbour today, saw a tanker coming into dock and thought of you". I guess when you boil it down, it's just my way of saying hello six months after I said goodbye. And that's it; that's all I wanted to say.

All the things I didn't do.

So I'm sitting at work on Friday, all ready to get driven down to Sydney by my boss who's going there for meetings separate to mine. It's coming up on 11am and I'm ploughing steadily through my work safe in the knowledge that we're not leaving until around 1pm. Then my boss announces that he's going home sick and cancelling his meetings. Twenty minutes and a rather fast walk to the station later, I'm sitting on the 11.28 train out of Newcastle.

The journey down is fine. I read my book most of the way, plugging myself into the iPod for the last half hour of the journey. By then we're out of the wilderness and heading in through the northern suburbs of Sydney. Over the water and past Sydney Olympic Park, we pull into Central just after 2pm and I make my way to the City Circle line and catch my connection through to Circular Quay. Sydney is warm and bathed in sunlight. I can smell the harbour as I walk towards my hotel and even after a long train journey, my mood is as light as my step.

I've stayed at the hotel I'm booked in once before. It's described as a 'boutique' hotel but that description seems to cover a multitude of sins. Let's just call it sufficient and leave it there. I check in, drop my bags and just have time to wander around The Rocks before I have to head over to work for my 'professional development workshop'. I'm intrigued - what will I learn, I wonder?

Turns out nothing, although I enjoy the workshop nonetheless. Apparently I'm supportive and empathise well. I'm not overly loud or boisterious but neither am I a sociopath who's incapable of speaking to others without sweating. On the plus side, I get a free pen and there are hot nibbles afterwards. On the downside, nobody's kicking on after the event and I'm faced with the unenviable task of filling an entire evening in Sydney's CBD with nobody but me for company.

It starts well enough with the obligatory walk around Circular Quay. I stride into the dusk, having changed out of my suit and into my preferred uniform of jeans, teeshirt and a zip-up top. I forgo the iPod because, well, I'm in Sydney. Don't I want to take in the sounds as well as the sights? Turns out that I don't - the sounds aren't anything special unless you count a couple of drunks outside McDonalds telling the world and his wife to go forth and multiply. I head past the ferries, up towards the Opera House and then cut back into the city proper. Rush hour's in full effect and people are milling around everywhere I look, rushing past me on their way to somewhere, from somewhere. Me on the other hand, I'm just walking. Nowhere specific to go and no clue as to what could hold my attention. I check my watch - I've been walking for fifteen minutes and I can't work out if it feels like a nanosecond or a lifetime. All I know is that it's not even half past six yet. The night yawns ahead of me ominously.

In the end, after having walked block after block of anonymous identikit city, I find myself a fast food joint and grab a large burger and fries for dinner. I can't work out what's more tragic; the fact that I do this or the fact that I eat in, taking as long as possible to digest my food so as to kill more of the night. By the time eight o'clock rolls round I've truly lost the will to live. Somewhere in Sydney, something remarkable is happening. Sadly it's an invite-only soiree and my name's not on the door. I trudge dejectedly to my hotel room, switch on the television and watch a load of shows I could have watched at home. Indeed, I suspect that Vanessa and Henry are doing exactly that, 100 miles up the freeway. Sleep eventually comes around eleven o'clock and I don't try and fight it.

Friday dawns early and I hit the shower, get dressed, then check out and dump my bag. I meet Sarah for coffee at the Portobello Cafe just up from the Quay. We chat for a while over our drinks and then head into the office together. I'm feeling better, well rested and with the boring part of my stay behind me. Today is a meeting with a Product Manager and then an indulgent multi-course Italian meal with company and conversation focused around a shared love of football. Sure, it'll be a late finish and even later arrival home but it only happens a few times a year and it's worth the sacrifice. So I'm sitting in the office on Harrington Street, looking very professional and feeling very important when my phone beeps. A text message from Kerry back in my usual office which reads 'you have an email saying your lunch has been cancelled'. On the plus side, I'll be home at a reasonable hour. On the down-side, the trip's really starting to feel like I made it for nothing. I pad the morning out with discussions and meetings, then grab my bag from the hotel and head to the railway station. I pick up lunch from yet another burger joint and stink out my train carriage with onion rings and bacon. Some of the other passengers look at me disapprovingly but, by now, I really couldn't give a rats. I stick my iPod on, block out those people around me and watch Sydney disappear as my train heads northwards, closer to home.

At some stage I begin to drowse. I'm woken rudely from my slumber at Gosford, around halfway through the journey. Four backpackers are sitting a few seats across in my carriage and they're playing music through the loudspeaker on their phone. They're playing it loudly - so loudly than my iPod can't drown it out. I switch to Nine Inch Nails, thinking that surely Trent Reznor's screaming could drown out even the end of the world. It might do, but for some reason it can't overpower an acid drum & bass version of Finlay Quaye. It's easier to move carriages than it is to ask them to turn the music down and, as I head to the next compartment, I realise how right the personality test I did yesterday was. Passive doesn't begin to describe me some days. Today is one of them.

My second and final carriage is better. Sure there are a whole load of kids wired off their skulls on McDonalds but I'd rather take boisterous kids than Finlay Quaye any day of the week. It helps that the children's mother is trying to have a sleep in the seat in front of mine, so she screams at them to shut up every so often. Bad parenting it may be, but at least I can relax a bit. The mother discards her copy of the Daily Telegraph under my seat. I read it and get a worrying insight into her mind. No wonder she's cranky - the Muslims are trying to take over the world and the government's selling us down the river, it seems. I read the sport section, then chuck the rest of the paper under my own seat. If Heinrich Himmler gets on at Tuggerah, he may appreciate the read.

My train finally pulls into Hamilton at just after 3pm. I stop and grab a coffee from Suspension Espresso, pleased to be home and back on familiar ground. There's no sign of my bus and it's a nice day - a hint of sun peeking from behind ominous clouds which are the colour of diluted black ink. Something tells me that they won't release the rain any time soon; they're just there for decoration today. I begin to walk home, along the Maitland Road at Islington, over the creek and through the bottom part of Tighes Hill before I see the sign announcing that I'm in Mayfield, my home suburb. I step through my front door some thirty minutes after getting off the train. Two buses pass me on my walk and I could have jumped on either of them, but I enjoy walking home so much that I decide to carry on to the bitter end.

I get home and nobody's there. Henry and Vanessa are out but at least the dog's pleased to see me. Well, she's pleased to be let out to go to the toilet anyway. I sit myself down, catch up on all the football news I've missed over the last two days and, eventually, Vanessa gets home. She makes the appropriate sympathetic noises about my time away and spends the rest of the night expressing surprise that I'm this pleased to be home again. We go for a drink at the Mayfield Hotel just after sunset. I ask her how her night went and it turns out that she did indeed watch the same shows I was watching. I ask her what she thought of the final one but it turns out that she fell asleep and didn't find out how it ended. It doesn't matter though - all that matters is that I'm back where I belong after being somewhere that I didn't.

The All-Stops Express.

Tonight is my last night at home until Friday. To put it in a less dramatic way, I'm not at home tomorrow night. I have an alumni event in Sydney to attend late tomorrow afternoon, so will be travelling down to Sydney around 1pm tomorrow. The event won't end until 5pm and, with everyone else being based in Sydney, the general concensus is that it will kick on somewhere else. We'll be in The Rocks so there are no shortages of places to go.

The train home from Newcastle takes just under 3 hours. I've always felt like I live a long way out of Sydney but in reality it's no further than London to Bristol, the distance I talked about in yesterday's posting. That distance makes you feel well removed from the hustle, bustle and stress-laden Sydney lifestyle but equally, it makes getting down there a torturous task when you need to. Because the train takes so long, my company's putting me up in a hotel tomorrow night. It's one that I've stayed at before (so have my mother and her husband, come to think of it) and it should be fine. Sure, I've stayed in better but I've also stayed in worse - and it is well placed. I'd much rather stay in The Rocks than in the City proper.

I found Sydney absolutely compelling when I first got here. The Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Circular Quay and its ferries - not to mention the cityscape itself. It's very different from the London skyline for sure. I'd go to Sydney and feel very enthused and happy to be there, I'd walk along the Quay, from Bridge to Opera House. I'd wander through the city, towering glass buildings reflecting the light from passing cars and buses as I just strolled in the humid night air. I felt like a tourist trapped in a resident's body and it was marvellous. Now though, I'm more used to it. I've seen it a good many times now and, as much as I always get a kick out of seeing the sights, something's definitely changed. I guess it's no longer got the 'wow' factor it had a few years back. I've been there too many times for it to be new any more. Hell, I even know my way around on foot these days. Unless I head out of the CBD, it's pretty fair to say that I couldn't get lost if I tried.

There's another thing too. For a lush, iconic city in the tropics it tends to shut early. Sydney's got the harbour, the climate, the bars..... yet come 11pm on a weeknight it's dead to the world. Walking around the CBD on a weeknight after 10pm is like walking around the City Of London at the weekend - there's nobody around with a few notable exceptions - and experience has taught me that you don't strike up a banter with those exceptions unless you fancy taking your chances.

Of course it's the company that I'm going for - and that's company with a small 'c'. It's a chance for me to catch up with people I haven't seen for 8 months and that will be good. Mind you, if they're not up for kicking on after the event finishes then I'm pretty much sitting in my hotel room with takeout from McDonalds and watching whatever passes for entertainment on television that night. Sure, there's going to be satellite television most likely - but the football season's over at the moment and I have no desire to watch yachting on ESPN or boxing on Fox Sports 1. Damn my timing - I'd best pack a book just in case.

On Friday I've arranged to have an early coffee with Sarah, a girl who used to work in our office and who now works in Sydney. After that I'm heading into our office on Harrington Street and spending the morning shadowing one of our managers. That will be pleasant for sure; how worthwhile it is will depend on a number of variables over which I have limited influence. Still, I'm going to stay positive and tell myself that it'll be good. After that it's off to lunch. Those of you who've been reading a while might remember that I mentioned attending a football lunch in a posting earlier this year. It's basically a select gathering of the football nuts in my industry and I'm spending the afternoon in a bar in The Rocks eating Italian food and watching football dvds and talking all things football with a group of blokes sitting around in replica jerseys. Put like that it sounds a bit..... dweeby... doesn't it? Fact is, it's probably more than a bit dweeby - but I never was the coolest kid in class so it shouldn't really surprise anyone.

After that it's a case of getting the train home. To put that another way, it's a case of getting a link from Circular Quay to Central and then a train out of Sydney. During the peak hour period. On Friday. The chances are good that I'll get a seat. The chances are even better that I'll end up with some smelly person sat right up against me, at least until Hornsby. The chances are then staggeringly good that I'll want to sleep but be kept awake by schoolkids who have OD'd on red drink right up to Gosford.

You'd think it got better after that wouldn't you? Wrong. Dead wrong. You see, after Gosford, we have to pass through the Twilight Zone.

Newcastle has a bit of a reputation for being a bit rough... uncultured. To an extent it's deserved but there's one area even less cultured than Newcastle - and that area is the stretch of land between Wyong and Cardiff. I can guarantee you that every drunk, shambler and general lunatic will get on or off the train between those two stops. It's the longest hour of the journey and if I manage to sleep through it, I count my blessings. Normally I just pretend to sleep, my iPod on loudly so that I can drown out the strange noises the misfits around me are making. The minute the train pulls out of Gosford, my life expectancy percentages will have increased in direct proportion to the average IQ of the train's passengers. What's even better about leaving Cardiff is that it means I'm only 30 minutes from my home stop and getting off the damn train once and for all.

It probably sounds like I don't want to go to Sydney. That's not true - it's just a long and involved process, that's all. It's also made less attractive by the fact that I really like being at home. Home doesn't need an Opera House or a Harbour Bridge or even high-rise, reflective cityscapes; it's got something far more compelling than that. The minute I step off the train at Hamilton and see the neon lights flashing on the crappy bar across from the station, I know that it's only a matter of time before Vanessa arrives in the car to pick me up and take me home. That sense of happiness and belonging fills me with the kind of enthusiasm that Sydney did when I first arrived in this country, so if spending a night away gives me the chance to relish coming home again then it's well worth the journey.

Dying tonight.

There have been a few times in my life when I thought I was about to die. I remember the first very well, although I admit to being a little sketchy on the exact date. I was young, probably around eight or nine, and we were living in a pebble-dashed terraced house in Staple Hill, a suburb of Bristol on the South West coast of the UK. It was the four of us back then; my mother, father, brother and I. We would have had a dog, too - probably our second dog Freya, she of the pie-eating and general food stealing fame. This was before the family move to Reading that followed a few years later. Back then, we lived in Bristol and Reading was what you did with a book in your hand.

That year, be it 1979 or 1980, my family took it in turns to contract flu. By that, I don't mean a heavy cold - I mean bona fide influenza. To date, I have never been as sick as I was back then and these days when I'm off work and return to fill out a sickness absence form, I always write 'heavy cold' in the description box. Once you've had flu, you don't call anything else by the name. I remember feeling really, really sick for the first time in my short life. I don't remember how long I coughed for, how long I stayed in bed for or how high my temperature got, but I do remember the day that my chest became so congested with phlegm that breathing became difficult. The more I tried to breathe, the more crap I sucked deeper into my chest and the harder breathing became. I got very, very scared and remember crying and shouting repeatedly that I was dying. In hindsight, I was making a pretty good racket so I doubt that lack of oxygen was really going to do for me as long as I could protest that vociferously but anyway, the point is that the fear was real. I remember it vividly and I sense I always will. I honestly thought I was going to die, right there and then.

Fast forward just over 20 years and 100 miles west. I don't know the exact date but I do know this isn't how it should be. It's a work night, it's late and I'm sitting on a wooden stool in the kitchen of my first floor flat in North London. I've lived here for a while now and I like it. My first marriage has gone south and, like some people do, I've jumped headlong into a new relationship and moved in with the girl. It's different, exciting. The sex is good (for now, anyway). There's only one slight problem - the girl I live with is standing in front of me with a kitchen knife against my throat.

How this came about, god only knows. I remember arguing with her, although not what that argument was about. It could have been something as banal as her being unable to find the television remote and then getting more and more angry, accusing me of not looking hard enough to help her and then of deliberately hiding it to cause her grief. Me being me, my response wouldn't have been overly supportive by that stage. Maybe that's how I got here - or maybe I'd got some freshly washed sheets dirty by accident and the argument had spiralled from that. Basically I should have admitted to something and apologised for everything a good ten minutes ago, if not sooner. Now, sitting on that stool at one o'clock in the morning, looking into a face that I don't really recognise these days, I wonder if this is the moment that I leave this world. Common sense would say not but let's face it, common sense doesn't put someone who claims to love you in a position where they have a large knife pointed in your direction. Time slows, moments are drawn out and you become aware of everything around you - almost as if you're preparing to take in one last gulp of life before the lights go out.

I find myself wondering how it came to this but, more importantly, how I'm going to get out of this. I talk, I admit to things I didn't do, intentions I never had and I promise to be a better person. Anything to get me off this chair. Eventually it works. I persuade her to calm down, put the knife away. I talk her back to bed and tell her that I'm just going out for a walk - to clear my head. I click the door shut behind me and tread quietly down the old wooden steps, never actually calm until I'm through the big front door and out on the street. I walk through North London, stopping at the all-night coffee shops run by the Algerians and the Moroccans. I order thick black coffee and smoke cigarettes with the locals. Then I do the same again. After all, it's not like I was going to be able to sleep anyway. Inevitably, hours later, I find myself walking back to the flat. Despite the area's reputation, I never feel in danger out on the streets of North London when I'm walking and it's late. I feel the wind and hear the traffic and smell the exhaust on the air and I wonder if I've ever felt more alive. I also wonder how many more times this will happen before I finally leave. Just the once, as it turns out.

Now hit the fast forward button again and come up to the present, to a well-to-do house in Sydney's affluent Northern Beaches. We have travelled down for the weekend to see family on Sunday but made the journey late on Friday night so that Vanessa and her mother could shop for cheap stock at Manly Markets on Saturday morning. I am distinctly unwell. My breathing's fine, my temperature's normal and no psycho ex is holding a knife to my throat, but I find myself nauseous, with absolutely no appetite and unable to keep any food down - or in - for prolonged periods. Maybe I should have stayed in bed at Joan & John's place but I tend not to do bed-rest so instead I'm out at the markets with Vanessa, Henry and Jacky. Later after the markets are done, we send Jacky home in a taxi and the three of us sit on Manly Beach to have lunch. It's a beautiful day, warm and filled with sun. We buy a large portion of hot, salted chips and I eat just five of those chips, only because I feel I should try and keep my strength up rather than through any real hunger or desire. Later we walk to the local gallery and I am grateful that there are public toilets nearby for me to throw up in. We walk around the coast to a lovely aquatic reserve cove and paddle in the crisp, cold surf - but my highlight is finding the one remaining toilet that isn't occupied on the two occasions I need it at short notice. That night at dinner I order a small bowl of soup; again to try and keep my strength up rather than because I'm hungry. The soup's a success - it stays down for around 2 hours before reappearing. It's at that stage I decide to go to bed and try to sleep.

My night is disturbed and my dreams are strange. I tell myself that this is just temporary, that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Deep down though, I'm wondering if this is something more serious. Maybe this is the start of something major and maybe I'll never be the same again. Maybe it's the start of bowel cancer, stomach cancer or something else entirely. Deep down I know it's just a bug but it's laid me low and ravaged me, more than any illness has managed since I was a young boy living in a pebble dashed terraced house. I find myself wondering if this is how I'll die - not suddenly through asphyxiation or stabbing but slowly, painfully and without dignity, in pools of my own waste. It's a long night and I'm glad when it's over and Sunday's upon us. I'm even more pleased when Sunday sees me able to keep down fluids and small portions of food. Maybe I needn't write my epitaph just yet.

The meeting with the family takes place in Sydney's Botanical Gardens. We have lunch together, I manage to eat and I am able to show some flashes of my usual self. Vanessa drives the three of us home just after 5pm. Although I know she doesn't like doing the drive from Sydney to Newcastle at night, she refuses my offer to share the driving and I love her all the more for that.

Monday comes and the bug draws its final breaths before expiring just after midday. I play it safe, calling in sick to allow myself time to recover for sure. That gives me an extra day of recuperation and that's fine with me as despite having packed so much into the weekend, I feel as though I was cheated out of a significant part of it. I cook spaghetti for dinner that night. Much like the North London air in the early hours of a morning all those years ago, it tastes sweeter than it has any right to.

There will be no news.

Today is a non-day for purposes of blogging. It may feature in a retrospective when I'm old and famous and worthy of retrospectives, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

The weekend sees us travelling south to Sydney town. I am sure that I will have a good time and equally sure that, as I travel up the freeway home again on Sunday night, I'll be pleased to leave it behind me.

Anyone who happens to stop by between now and the next posting, I wish you a very, very relaxing weekend.

Causchwitz

Something didn't feel right the minute I stepped through the gate. I grew up reading Enid Blyton books which featured farms with cutesy names, red-cheeked affable old farmers and fresh apple pies cooling under a cloth on the open window sill. This place was different - as far removed from Willow Farm as you could imagine. Yes, there were farm buildings but no haystacks in sight - and the farm buildings that existed were white, shiny, clinical and unwelcoming. If I'd not known already, one look ahead would have told me that this wasn't a place where things came to grow or be nurtured.

There were no cows in sight from where I stood but, seemingly from all around me, came the sound of cows mooing. The noise was low and constant, occasionally punctuated by a short lived, high pitched cry as, somewhere, something bad happened. From within the wipe-down white buildings came whirring, the buzzing of machines and of steam-driven equipment. I noticed the concrete was wet, a watered down mix of chemicals and blood having drained for hours from within those buildings. And then there was the smell.

I have been to farms before. As a young child, we holidayed in Devon at the charmingly named Bolberry Farm. There were cows - plenty of them. I remember seeing them rarely in the stinking paddocks which lined the entrance road from the narrow, single track country lane. Once or twice we saw them being herded down that road to the milking sheds and, yes, I remember the smell they left behind them - the overwhelming stench of faeces caked to the paths, tracks and, inevitably, our shoes. It was deposited in such quantities that it reeked. It became the air that it hung so heavily on, yet I grew accustomed to it and found myself gagging less as the holiday passed. Somewhere in my head, it became a farm smell and not a poo smell. Farm smell good, poo smell bad. I was fine from then onwards.

This smell now was different though, and became stronger as I walked to the rear of the building, to the business end. It was a mix of many different scents. Primarily it was still based around cow shit - certainly the holding pens in front of me which held a good thirty cattle must have been at least 6 inches deep in the stuff. The cows milled around aimlessly as I watched. It was only towards the front of the pen that they were being moved with more purpose, into single files which disappeared inexorably beyond view into the building from which the rythmic noise of presses and power tools eminated.

I couldn't stay in this spot any longer and there was only one place left to go. Slowly, I began the walk up the ramp towards the killing rooms.

They say that when you die, something leaves your body. Here in the killing room, a cow is clamped in place by its neck and stunned with a massive burst of electricity to subdue it, calm it, stun the crap out of it. All being well, it won't feel as much when the steel bolt is shot from a compressed air gun, right through the front of its forehead. Death is almost instantaneous but two things leave the body during this process; that final high pitched cry I heard earlier and a voiding. Maybe not the soul but definitely the contents of the bowels. I come to realise that's the main difference in the smell here. This sudden death produces a hot, feral explosion and, as the faeces is hosed back towards the sides of the pen, flowing back towards the cows waiting patiently in line, it rises and invades your nostrils. You cannot escape it and can only watch as the beast's still-warm body is released, pierced with hooks and hoisted roughly into the air to be dragged further into the building - to be hacked up, have its skin and hide ripped off and its bones removed. Nothing is wasted - it is either stacked, packed or ground to dust. I notice that the floor of the killing room is thick with blood, flesh and and hair. Pressure hosing of the floor will take place sporadically, in between killing shifts, but you sense that no amount of cleaning or scrubbing can eradicate all the stains from this floor or completely remove the odours that hang in the air. Death takes a long time to leave your nostrils.

It's sobering, in all honesty. We eat a lot of meat but never really think hard about where it comes from. As processes go, this one is probably a lot better than some involved with ending a life. The one thing it can't do is prevent that life having to end. When you meet the eyes of the men who work in the boning rooms or the killing rooms, there's an expression that they all share. They stand there in protective clothing and gauntlets, covered from throat to toe in dried blood and look at you as if to say ' what did you expect - somebody has to do it'. And they're right. Somebody has to. Not me though. Thankfully not me.

As I left, I noticed one of the cows which remained in the holding pen. It had a tear streak of dried blood coming from the corner of its eye which ran down its cheek and from all the smells and images that bombarded me that day, it's that one image that sticks; that I just can't shake.

Lists - when a posting just isn't enough.

Seeing as I'm short on time and have plenty to do tonight (and let's face it, nobody's really interested and I'm really keeping this blog going for myself these days), the weekend can be summarised in a list as follows.

Saturday

Coffee at Roladoor. Very enjoyable.
Haircut. Very pleasing. Cheaper too, now my stylist's moved salons.
Soccer. Good game, ending in a loss. Couldn't begrudge them their win, though.
R&R at home. Always nice. Just what weekends should contain.
31st birthday party. Great fun, fantastic decor and ambience.
Dinner party. Even greater fun, many laughs and some male bonding (albeit with the enemy) over The Ashes.

Sunday

Sleep-in. Very nice.
A few art galleries with the missus. Always fun but especially this time, where the art quality was even better than usual.
Making a soup into a stew. Just what Sundays in winter spent by yourself were meant for.
Watching the first Ashes test slip away. Inevitable.

Monday

Waking to find they'd drawn it. D'oh but hurrah, especially because England didn't deserve to and I know for a fact it'll piss the crap out of my friends and mother-in-law!
Work. Kind of necessary.
Dinner at the club. Always fun, although we're about to go so I should hold fired on that statement and see if I come down with dysentary first, really.

And that, dear reader (note the singular), was my weekend.

One thing that hasn't featured on the list is phoning the UK. That's on my list of things to do. It's been an age since I spoke to my mother and, right now, Telstra are running a 'give your mother a call' ad on television. I should and, this week, I will. The weekend's out - we're in Sydney all weekend but one of the benefits of having a near-retiree as your mother is that she doesn't work Wednesdays. Wednesday night it is, then.

The rest of the family - you're on the list. Promise. Yeah, I know I've said it before but I will call. Even you, Nathan.

Waffeur theen meent time.

Sometimes it's not all about the finest venues, the finest menus and living the high life. As enjoyable as that can be, it's often nothing compared to the guilty pleasure of slumming it. You know - socialising with the proles rather than the nouveau-riche or tucking into a battered sausage and chips rather than fillet mignon in a cheeky jus. That's where I'm coming from today because, all things going to plan, tonight sees us back at Mayfield's Mecca of Grease, the poignantly named 'Diggers Club'. It all depends on Henry getting a good half-yearly report from school. He's had a challenging but rewarding first six months of high school and, upon receipt of a good report, we're all off out to dinner to celebrate. Chances are good that his report will meet the required standards so we'll be making the short walk down the street to Diggers.

It used to be called Mayfield RSL before the most recent facelift. Sadly the facelift stopped a little bit past renaming the place and a long way before steam cleaning the carpets, putting a fresh coat of paint on the gaff and fumigating the patronage. In my experience, clubs around NSW are much the same - more than a little desperate and tragic no matter how much the owners have invested in refurbishments. Diggers, however, really does feel like the club that time forgot. For one thing, it's absolutely huge and that kind of surprises you. You expect small, ramshackle little bowling clubs to have a hint of deterioration around them but a club the size of Diggers, you'd expect them to have overcome it with more success than they managed.

Anyway, it just adds to the guilty pleasure that is our visitation. It doesn't matter that I spent last night preparing and cooking a hearty vegetable soup - the minute Vanessa suggested that Henry, Steve, her and I go to the Diggers Club for dinner tonight, the soup was forgotten. It'll keep until Sunday and anyway, Diggers did get one thing in their facelift that I approve of. An All-You-Can-Eat buffet.

We've only been twice so far - once when it opened and once just after my birthday. I got a free voucher from them as a 'happy birthday' gift so we all traipsed down there. As someone renowned for their appetite, it will come as little surprise to you that I rather like all you can eat buffets. Now I think about it, there's not much to dislike about them, is there?

Vanessa's not a big fan though. She's forever weighing herself and planning to lose weight. The last time we went to the buffet, she was the most svelte woman in there by around 200kg. Seriously, some of the women waddling around that place were bigger than the buffet carts. You'd have thought that Vanessa would have eaten her usual fill, looked at the behemoths wandering around her and felt good about her sassy little shape but no; she looked at them and, by association, became 'one of the women who eats at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet'. That was the last time we went.

Poor old Vanessa. Women have such a hard time don't they? Imagine being given a plate and told you can fill it up as much and as often as you want - then having to worry about the after-effects. It's not a position I'd want to be in, admittedly. Thankfully my biggest concern when we visit isn't my calorie intake or whether deep fried potato gems count towards your five portions of veg. No; all I care about from the minute I get in, right up to the minute I leave, is out-eating Henry.

He may be a teenager with hollow legs and the metabolism of the Roadrunner but I normally have the experience, staying power and sense to beat him. Normally by a whole plate - anything less and outside adjudicators need to be called in to count broccoli florets - not to mention rule on whether a spoonful of uneaten rice counts for more or less than 3 chips. If he does 5 plates, I have to do 6. Well, I don't have to, obviously. I could just eat my fill, what I'm comfortable eating, then sit back contentedly and let Henry eat however much he chooses to. It could be a nice family dinner instead of a continuous game of masticatory one-upmanship. Where's the fun in that though?

Anyway, I have standards to uphold. I have a somewhat legendary reputation for being able to eat which has even followed me across the world to Australia. Back in the UK it was all about demolishing a pasta bake. Here, it's expanded to incorporate chilli nuts, rissoles, pretty much anything. As I've said before, the minute my metabolism slows up I'm either well and truly buggered or on the biggest diet you've ever seen in your life. Until then, I may as well play to my strengths. Henry thinks it's all about eating as much as you can but it's really not - it's all about pacing. Sure, have your deep fried goodies and your plates of chips but believe me when I tell you that there's no way you'll manage 6 plates of food if three of them are deep fried. Nope; go for the noodles, the casseroles, the meats and keep the deep fried items and the carb-heavy dishes to a minimum. That way, when your stepson's looking rather pasty, full and sweaty and you're sitting there looking good and feeling fine, you can either declare yourself victorious or crush him even further by encoring with a plate full of desserts. Then you can truly sit back, loosen your belt a notch and relax in your glory. Sure, he may be taller than you, better looking than you and fitter than you - but you fit in down at Diggers All-You-Can-Eat. You're one of them now - and he's just a wannabe. Maybe with some training he'll make it. Hell, maybe one day he'll even beat you. Not today though. Today belongs to you. Embrace it.

Changing rooms.

Looking back at it now, I should have seen the warning signs flash before my eyes the minute Vanessa mentioned that she was thinking about rearranging the lounge room. We were sitting down watching television two nights ago when it came up. Right now we have two lounges in the room - one against a wall and the other one, a red lounge, out from another wall. That second one creates a mini corridor effect, separating the lounge room area from the walkway that takes you from the front door into the rest of the house. It's never given me any problems, let alone food for thought. Until now.

Vanessa wanted to move the red lounge. The problem, she explained, was that the corridor walkway felt cramped and she was always catching bags on it when she walked through the room, laden down with groceries or purchases for the shop. I took a look at the wall space dimensions we had available, the location of the window and the fact that the TV aerial and gas outlets were immovable, pretty much guaranteeing that the television and gas fire would remain where they were. That didn't leave too many options and I made non-committal noises that I thought would placate my wife. In my ignorance, I thought my response would indicate that a) the room was fine the way it was, and b) she needn't worry her pretty little head rearranging it.

I should have known better on a number of fronts. Firstly, I have been resistant to every single change we've ever made in the house. It's stopped none of them happening and I've always admitted that they improved the house once the changes had been made. Secondly, I always underestimate Vanessa's determination to carry out these plans. Once the suggestion comes out of her mouth it's not a question of how or if, it's always a question of 'when'. A few months ago, my lovely wife was sketching plans of our back yard on a whiteboard we own, swapping sheds and garages around, moving vegetable patches, the clothes line and the pool to create a better outdoor space. She consulted Felicity and Paul and, eventually, me as well. I was lucky in that Paul didn't like the plans in their entirety, which is the main reason our back yard's still the same - that and the fact that it would cost some money to rehash it anyway. Having said that, deep down I know it's not settled. At some stage, the back yard will be altered. I'll object and be negative but it will happen and I will end up admitting that it looks better. Then I'll completely forget that next time Vanessa suggests an improvement around the place. It's like Groundhog Day meets DIY SOS, and no mistake. Welcome to my world; my world of self-induced pain.

So no; I shouldn't have expected the lounge room discussion to have been put to bed. I should have expected to come home and be forced to discuss it again, right? That's a fair assumption but Vanessa had a bit of spare time on her hands yesterday and, after she finished a batch of fairy cakes, she found herself standing in the lounge room for a little too long. Leave me in there for ten minutes and I'll put the Playstation on. Not Vanessa though; I arrived home at 5.20pm last night to find the shelves emptied, one lounge piled full of stuff and the other lounge against the window wall. The other stuff was piled on the floor in precarious piles as Vanessa and Henry lugged various pieces of furniture from point A to point B, assessed the feng shui and general appearance, then lugged them to point C to repeat the process. My supportive 'you can't see the television with it there' was met with a withering stare and a loving 'leave me alone' so I made my excuses and left. Never have a pile of dishes looked so attractive.

By the time dinner was ready, the room was nearly finished. The end result was the red lounge being moved, a few lamps and coffee tables being moved and that was about all. I hate to admit it, but the room does look bigger now. You would have thought I'd learned by now wouldn't you? Actually, you wouldn't. Me being me, this is pretty par for the course. I don't know what we're eating for dinner tonight but I'm pretty certain that, should dessert be warranted, humble pie will be up there on the menu board.

In the deep mid-winter.

Hibernation has set in of late. That's one of the reasons that I've not updated earlier, anyway. We're deep into winter now and whilst the skies are clear and blue and the days are sunny, the downside is that the nights are clear and cold. Our house is a 1950s weatherboard house with a tin roof. It has many endearing qualities but heat preservation isn't one of them. As a result, most evenings we spend in the lounge room with the gas fire hissing away until we're toasty. Seeing as the computer's down the other end of the house in a room where heating is reliant on a plug-in 2 bar electric heater, I have been choosing to stay warm in the lounge room and leaving you uninformed as a result - not that you've missed anything riveting, in all fairness. That said, it's been too long since I last updated you so here it is - my update.

The weekend passed in a marvellous blur. Henry's soccer game was as entertaining a 0-0 draw as I've ever seen and the coffee & sausage sandwich went down a treat. After that was over, we had just enough time to head home and relax for a bit before leaving town. Henry & I dropped Vanessa off on the Central Coast as she was staying with her friend Barbara. We then continued down the freeway to Sydney, Henry and I, to go to the WWE live event I got tickets for a few months back. You can get as sniffy or cutting as you like about that; I really don't care. Fact is we had a great evening and it was very good fun. It was also nice to spend time with Henry where it was just the two of us. I hear some real horror stories about step-parents and step-children, how they fight or don't get on or how the whole family dynamic is really screwed up the minute a parent remarries. Whether it's through luck, hard work or a combination of the two, that's never been my experience. Anyway, we had a great night, ate hot chips and drank large cokes, cheered and booed and clapped and shouted. What's not to like about that?

The journey back was nice and easy. As I get older it's not so much about what a great time I'll have when I arrive somewhere, it's about how easy it will be to get to and from there. Sad but true. The live event was at Sydney Olympic Park which, as the name suggests, was built for the 2000 Olympics. These days it's used for football matches, concerts, that kind of thing. A guy I work with complained 2 weeks ago that he'd taken 3 hours to get out of the car park after the second State Of Origin match at ANZ Stadium but thankfully, Henry and I had no problems getting away from Acer Arena. What's more, we didn't even have to drive all the way back to Newcastle. The plan was that we'd drive to Barbara's on the Central Coast, meet up with her mob and spend the night there, plus the Sunday with them. Around 90 minutes after getting into the car, Henry and I were pulling up at Barb's place. Her son and fiancee had long since gone to bed but Vanessa was still up so the four of us sat around for a bit before bed.

Sunday dawned early on the Central Coast. Barbara is very different from Vanessa; she's an early riser who gets going immediately. Everything is planned and timed and that's how we found ourselves woken up around 7.30am and sitting down for breakfast a little after 8am. What makes it all okay is that, as well as being an early riser, Barb's also an amazing cook. It's not very often I sit down for breakfast but when you're offered bacon, eggs, chorizo, tomato, coffee and juice.... well, it's worth getting up for! We finished up, then went to two lots of markets. Vanessa and I managed to get a wrought iron brazier for $10 which will come in really handy when we get our new back deck built. Hell, in the short term I could even stick it in the dining room where the computer is - you might get more updates over the next month if I did....

After the markets it was time for lunch. Marinated king prawns, cold meats, salads, roasted potato pieces.... Barb really doesn't do 'opening a tin of spaghetti' lunches and I'm always grateful when I sit down at her place for something to eat! We hung around for a few hours after lunch, then got on the road again and got home with an hour or so of daylight left.

The weekend didn't end there though. Well, it did - but I also had Monday off work. The reason is that Monday was my fifth wedding anniversary. Vanessa's too, obviously - but her first marriage lasted close on 200 years, whereas mine was a lot, lot shorter. Five years is something I wanted to celebrate. I certainly didn't want to be sat at work, so I took the day off. We lazed around, went into town, had some lunch, then went over to Vanessa's mother's for dinner that night. All in all a very sedate, satisfactory day - and the perfect antidote for such a hectic weekend.

Since then it's been business as usual. Work, cooking, sleeping, the usual. So there you go - bored but updated. Now I'm out of here to go and do the dishes and cook dinner. It's the only way to stay warm in that kitchen at this time of year, after all......