“Is Green OK?”

Thursday saw my first trip to the race ground itself (and in fact my first trip to a race ground anywhere, for that matter), as we headed to Flemington for Oaks Day. Unfortunately my betting abilities were in no way improved by my proximity to the races themselves, but it was still a fun way to spend the day, swanning around in a suit, drinking cheap Champagne, eating “Dim Sim” on a stick (a bizarre…

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Pleasing to see that I’ll still be able to keep up with the fortunes of Everton if I ever have to live over in Australia for some reason, at least as long as we have an Australian player–the Herald Sun, the shabby sub-Daily Mail Murdoch tabloid that is ubiquitous in these parts, providing a handy does of right-wing paranoia and scaremongering for those with a fear of the different, tells me that “Aussie Tim Cahill…

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If you ever find yourself on the streets of an Australian town centre, you might get to witness a very Australian shopping phenomenon: businesses attempting to drum up trade by employing some hapless assistant to stand outside with a microphone announcing the various bargains and discounts on offer. I’ve seen this before, on my previous two trips to the country, and I’ve always found it rather amusing, in a low-budget, 1970s kind of way. Still,…

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