MAN ABOUT TOWN

Having forced myself to stay awake all day, and rather over-caffeinated by the time night fell, I headed off to the North Melbourne Town Hall on Friday evening, respendent in a new outfit I'd partially purchased earlier that afternoon: an ornate, white 1930's dinner shirt complete with ebony tiepin and cufflinks, and a luxurious jacket of dark red velvet with black lapels. Coupled with jeans and a pair of black Converse sneakers, I projected (I hope!) just the right mix of glamour and grunge as befits the opening night of Melbourne Fringe. The evening began with a sponsors' meet and greet session in the festival club, which this year is situated in the main ballroom of the North Melbourne Town Hall. Schmoozing is something I can only do when I'm in the right mindset: jetlag and exhaustion made it a little more tricky than I could have wished for last night... Thanks to the addition of a new Fringe venue this year just down Errol Street from the Town Hall, the Lithuanian...

After a 12 hour flight from Frankfurt to Dubai, and then another 12 hours from Dubai to Melbourne direct (following a three hour stop-over) my plane flew into Tullamarine this morning at 6am. I got in the door a little after 7am, and my god it looks strange seeing my flat again for the first time in a month! My phone's been cut off and I suspect the mail has piled up down at the post office while I was away, but give me a couple of hours to get things sorted, and my life will be back to as close as it ever gets to normal. I'm buzzing nicely at the moment from the excitement of getting home, but suspect I'll crash in a few hours. Sleep will be good - after all, I have the opening night of the Melbourne Fringe Festival to attend tonight!

Just a quick note to let you, oh my faithful reader, know that I'm homeward bound, and currently sitting at Dubai airport killing three hours til I can catch my final flight back to Melbourne (probably via Singapore...). I'll get in to Tullamarine at 5.30am or thereabouts on Friday, and given that I haven't slept a wink yet, hope to get straight home and sleep for several hours. Then I have a chiropractor's appointment at 4.30pm to get me back into shape after lugging an increasingly book-stuffed backpack around with me for the last month; after which I head off to the opening night of the Melbourne Fringe Festival at North Melbourne Town Hall. I'll be a wreck, no doubt, but am very much looking forward to the Fringe, as much as I am to getting home. More details soon, in my next post, from the comfort of my own flat in Fitzroy...

Mon 19th September: Day 25 So anyway, I decided to stay in Paris - I'm sure there's more to this city than meets the eye and dammit, I'm determined to find it. Besides which, if I left today I'd only get a day and a half in Berlin, which isn't really enough time to do any city justice, let alone that one! The big problem so far with Paris, I think, has been a combination of several factors: The language barrier (makes me wish I'd paid attention in French classes back in high school!). Travelling alone. Hitting that four week slightly-homesick patch which I'm sure other travellers will be familiar with. And the fact that in most of the other cities I've explored on this trip I've been able to dig beneath the tourist surface and find a more authentic aspect of the city to enjoy. I haven't really been able to do that here, and I couldn't really do it in Barcelona either, in retrospect. See point one. So, Paris hasn't been the highlight of t...

Sat 17th December Checked out of my Amsterdam hotel and walked over to Centraal, the main Amsterdam train station. After cashing some more travellers cheques with a very friendly woman, I joined the queue to buy a ticket, only discovering after a 10 minute wait that I was in the wrong line. Ok, no big worry. Where's the International ticket office? Ah, there. Right. Enter office. 'Please take a ticket from this machine and wait til your number is called.' Easy, I think. Press button, take ticket. Wait. When my number is called I got to the window, only to be told by the woman behind the desk that my number 'does not exist, get a new number.' She serves someone else. Ok, this is strange. Back to machine. Press button. Wait. Same deal. My number does not exist. I have a brief moment in which I feel like the protagonist in some strange, Kafkaesque version of Terry Gilliam's Brazil : if my number doesn't exist does that mean I don't exist? I fret, angst-ridd...

Wed 14th September (Day 20) Rose early and walked across the river to the central Dublin bus depot, from where my guided coach tour to Newgrange was due to depart at 9.40am. I had a sinking feeling as I started walking there, and decided about halfway through the walk that I should abandon the tour and make my own way to Newgrange. This would involve a 50-minute train trip to Drogheda , perhaps a wander around the town, and then a bus to the Brugh na Boinne . Sadly, once I got to the railway station I realised that I'd forgotten to include Ireland as one of the five countries on my Eurorail pass, so instead of paying extra for the train I resigned myself to the coach tour instead. We left just after 10, with a fairly small contingent of 20 people, the majority of them aged 50+. The coach driver was informed and chatty, but by the end of the trip I just wanted him to shut up for five minutes so that I could soak in some of the landscape undisturbed. Our first stop was Monasterboice...

Monday 12th September It's not really surprising that I slept in until almost 11am today as I was exhausted, which meant that I missed out on the hostel's free breakfast and lost part of the day, but woke deeply refreshed and ready for a big day. It began with a quick breakfast (a smoothie and a cheese & ham bagel for those who like to know the minutae of my life) and then a visit to the Dublin Fringe ticket office to grab tickets to my first three shows (of which the promo artwork for one is pictured above). Then I headed off for a guided tour of Dublin's Trinity College , whose alumni include the likes of writer and wit Oscar Wilde , and Bram Stoker , the author of Dracula . Our student guide was casutic, witty and extremely entertaining as he pointed out various buildings, commented on college traditions, and showed us such landmarks as the two great trees growing on the college lawns, their roots buried deep in the graveyard of the old monastery which once stood he...

Sunday 11th September After a restless night's sleep (I was paranoid about oversleeping and missing my Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, the capital city of the Republic of Ireland, because I don't own a watch or a travelling clock) I eventually climbed out of bed at 8am. I probably only had about two hours sleep all night, despite getting to bed at the relatively civilised (for Barcelona!) hour of 2am, and so consequently was a bit of a grouch for the rest of the day. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been a problem, except for the circumstances of my flight. Richard's travel tip #18: Don't catch a Sunday midday flight from Barcelona - the airport will be full of still-drunk, loudly boasting British lads who are returning home from a weekend of shagging and partying and conspiring about what lies to tell their girlfriends. Worse, flights from Barcelona to Dublin at this time are, according to an Aer Lingus stewardess, traditionally full of Spanish high school kids on their...

Fri 9th September Awful, ghastly hangover this morning - that will teach me to hang out with a group of 20-something backpackers and match them drink for drink.... Left the hostel at 12pm with Carrie from Washington State USA, and our dorm mate Lourdes from Brazil, in search of sustenance. Unlike the constant rain of my first day, today was hot and sunny - the sort of weather I expected in Spain. Applied sunblock liberally in between taking painkillers and feeling sorry for myself. Brunch was at a tapas bar around the corner from our hostel, where I had several cokes to try and kickstart by struggling brain. After successfully navigating the Barcelona Metro, we emerged to behold Gaudi's Sagrada Familia . Oh, oh, oh what an amazing, miraculous building! Every detail bursts with creativity and inspiration. Stone that seems to have been encouraged to grow like a flower into strange curliqued organic shapes. Breath-taking attention to details. Cute workmen in hard hats and shorts. Leer...

Wed 7th Sept After a quiet night and an equally quiet morning at Rick´s place, I headed out to the airport by train to catch my 3.30 flight to Barcelona. I´m almost certain that the Australian actor Joel Edgerton was on the same flight, if not him then perhaps it was his brother Nash, who is an emerging film-maker, as well as a stuntman and actor, he sure as hell look familiar, and was definitely an Aussie, but I couldn´t get the chance to sneak a look at his passport even though I was standing behind him in the customs queue...not that it really matters. Flying over the chequered fields of England was rather pretty, as was leaving the coast behind and heading out across the English Chanel for France. Soon after we reached the coast the cloud cover thickened, but the flight eas smooth until we began our descent. Barcelona was gripped by thunderstorms and we had to fly straight through them to land. The plane lurched, rocked, and a couple of times seemed to drop straight down, leaving m...

It´s been an action packed few days so I haven´t updated the blog fora bit, sorry about that folks. I haven´t been knifed in an alleyway in Soho and left for dead, I´ve just been busy. Am currently in Barcelona. Anyway, on with the show... Mon 5th Sept Major hangover today - on a scale of 1 to 10 this was about a 5.5. It meant that I didn´t get up early as planned and head down to Salisbury by train: I went shopping instead. Purchases included a DVD of the classic film noir Double Indemnity , and a Roman coin from the reign of the Emperor Claudius , circa the invasion of Britain, from a cool little antiques dealer located opposite the British Museum. I also wandered around Bloomsbury a little more, discovering beautiful Bedford Square (built in 1775 - 80, and the only complete Georgian square in London) entirely by accident, and the house where the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848. If I´m not very much mistaken, Wilde´s Dorian Grey lived on Bedford Square... which remin...

Of the many cultural diferences betwee London and Melbourne (such as the postcards for the servivces of various prostitutes which are wedged in most piss-scented telephone boxes) one is the fact that drinking in public seems totally accepted, while at the same time there's hardly any junkies to be seen on the streets - not that I've noticed, anyway. One of coolest things about London is the way that major landmarks that you've seen a thousand times on TV shows or in movies suddenly appear beguilingly down a sidestreet or over a rooftop. Anyway, here's what I did on Sunday: Today was an action-packed day that began with a long walk along the south bank of the Thames... I got off the train at London Bridge, and walked down to the river, then eastwards to Tower Bridge itself. I couldn't resist walking over it, gazing around me at London in all its shabby glory as I went. I stared up at the marvellous Victorian facade of the bridge's towers, then across at the Tower...

My god, the energy of this city! I could definitely get to like it. After breakfast with Rick and Edvard I jumped on tyhe train, headed into town and had my first full day in London. I started off at the British Museum (which was, delightfully, clearly signposted as soon as I stepped off the train at Tottenham Court Road station). I bowed before statues of Cupid and Sekhmet (lion-headed goddess of ancient Egypt) and held a paleolithic hand axe that was over 120,000 years old. I gazed in wonder at the Rosetta Stone, one of the most important archeological finds ever made; stared in awe at the Parthenon Marbles and the Sutton Hoo helmet; wilted in the lack of air conditioning; and was generally amazed by this storehouse of loot from across the faded British Empire. An amazing place: if you plan to visit, give yourself at least an entire afternoon. Next I wandered the streets of Bloomsbury, and decided to be a flaneur for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I wandered into a random b...