I’m Not Doing Requests

This is a bit weird, innit? You all sitting down like that… So says Mr Gallagher, three songs into his set, to his hitherto entirely seated audience at St Kilda’s The Palais theatre. Do you have to sit down? I mean, have they told you that you have to sit down? <pause> Well stand up ...

You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

So. No posts since September would appear to suggest that I have become a person who does not blog. I’m not entirely sure how this happened. Maybe it’s Twitter’s fault. I used to look at the world for things that made me think “I should blog that”. But that’s so very 2004. Now if I ...

MWF 2011

MWF 2011
As someone was pointing out in The Age the other day, this city sure loves a festival. Pick any time of the year at random and you can be sure that a festival of some kind will be taking place at that very moment. Just as some world cities are on a permanently heightened terrorism ...

It’s All Happening In Fitzroy

So there we were, out on a sunny Saturday afternoon for a bit of a walk. we’d already been over to Brunswick Street for a bit a lunch (where there was an amusing incident with a newspaper) and then wandered up towards North Fitzroy and over to Rathdowne Street before heading back towards home. As ...

Do You Remember The First Time?

Do You Remember The First Time?
So asked the giant green letters scrolling across the roof of Melbourne’s oddly shaped, boxing ring slash gig venue Festival Hall on Friday night, shortly before Jarvis and his reformed Pulp took to the stage to ask the same question in song form. Well yes, Jarvis, I do actually. For me it was the 23rd ...

My Favourite Transaction

Some time ago my bank here in Australia added a somewhat baffling new feature to all their cash machines. Now, every time I go to take money out, the machine asks me if I’d like to save this particular amount of money as my “favourite transaction” (which then gets saved on the initial screen so ...

Lies, Damned Lies, and Exchange Rates

According to today’s The Age: RISING living costs and a surging Australian dollar mean it is now more expensive to live in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth than in London, Vienna, Rome or New York. A startling claim, I’m sure you’ll agree, but something doesn’t quite ring true for me about this. Why should a ...

Having The Most Successful Show On Australian TV Must Be Such A Pain

Funny. Only the other day I was reading an interview in the weekend paper with the host of Channel Ten’s long running weekend morning music video show, Video Hits, which mentioned how profitable it is for the network: At Ten, Video Hits is seen almost as part of the furniture, having been on-air in various ...

Dear World’s Media

I know I shouldn’t expect people to, like, know stuff any more and I know it doesn’t really matter, but I post this here because: 1. I can’t believe that I seem to be the only person in the world who has noticed; and 2. It’s not often that that English degree I spent three ...

Your Call Is Important To Us

I was transported back to an earlier time, last night, as I sat listening to hold music being told that my call is important but that all the customer service agents are busy right now, and I realised that I don’t really do this any more. Much as I loved living in London, it seems ...