I had a family-oriented interlude in the week's entertainment on Thursday and Friday, because I went to spend some time with Julian, Fleur, Natasha & Josef up in Lane Cove (or Brisbane, as Johannes referred to it - but then he's a south-of-the-harbour Sydneysider and, for them, anything on 'the other side of the bridge' might as well be in a foreign country - oh how London of them).

I was expecting to do a spot of babysitting of Natasha & Josef, to let their parents have a night off for a change, but it turned out different: Fleur's cousin Todd was up in Sydney for a job interview, so I wasn't in sole charge, and they took Josef with them to the school parents' evening that was their choice of entertainment for the evening - and as Fleur said, how OLD is that?! They even put Natasha to bed before they left. So we had a quiet evening, with a few beers when Julian & Fleur got back.

Friday I plugged myself into the net for the day and caught up with myself. Or, to be more accurate, I plugged myself into the net for the time that Natasha was at pre-school; before and after pre-school I was called upon to perform tickling and silliness duties. Ah, playing with her is a palliative for the ache in my heart that I feel at being so far from my nephews & nieces, but it's no cure.

That evening we watched "8 Femmes", a bizarre but ultimately gripping French film about eight women (surprise surprise) who are stuck in a house together. The film begins when the man of the house is found with a knife plunged into his back, then goes into a song-and-dance routine (I told you it was bizarre), then explores, Agatha Christie-like, the motives each woman had for killing him. Don't worry, I won't say whodunnit.

On Saturday, after a morning of play, breakfast, play, chat, play and tickling, I tore myself away from my Sydney surrogate family and headed back to Johannes' place in Woolloomooloo. There I was just in time to say goodbye to Chris, who was heading back to Canberra for a friend's birthday party. After he left I did a load of washing and repacking and all that jazz, then helped Johannes prepare for the dinner party he was hosting pre-parade. There were six for dinner: me, Johannes, Tom from the other night, Alan, Mark, and Simon, a Dutch guy who is spending a few weeks in Sydney and who Johannes met a few days ago through a mutual friend.

After food we walked up to Oxford Street to find a good spot to watch the parade from. We met Guy from the other night on the way there. The spot we had was on the corner of a side street with a wide angle of view and close to the barrier; not bad for only turning up half an hour before the thing was due to start. As night fell, the crowds swelled in anticipation. People turned up after us wielding stepladders, and in the end I felt we were quite cut off from the crowds by the crescent-shaped wall of artificially raised spectators that formed behind us.

The first element of the parade was also the one with most impact: Dykes On Bikes! There were fully 400 lesbians, some in leather, some in less, astride a stream of big grunty motorbikes that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. It was a modern-day Amazon invasion, something that could have been out of Mad Max. The crowd went wild every time the dykocade came to a halt and revved their engines, purple-tinted headlamps punching defiantly into the gathering darkness.

It was a tough act to follow. Indeed, it seemed there wasn't much of an attempt to follow it at all; many of the floats seemed more about local community issues than glitz. But among the more impressive marches past were the Bears, kitted out in Roman gladiator gear (well, skimpy leather versions thereof); the New South Wales police, who were singing & dancing jazz standards in a very accomplished manner; the Gay Raelians, complete with alien masks and anti-religion slogans; the Asian Boys, who did a nice bit of formation line dancing; and the S&M Leather Dungeon float, which was, well, basically a leather dungeon on wheels.

A few hours after it had begun, the parade was over. I think maybe I was expecting more of it. I had visions of Rio-style Carnaval uber-glam. Perhaps my slight disappointment was more to do with the fact that I was seeing it in close-up and not edited for TV. And of course you didn't get even an inkling of the hugeness of the crowds, because the spectators were spread out along the 5km of the route.

Thankfully, the Mardi Gras all-night party was a different story entirely. The walk there through streets which only hours before had held half a million people was eerily quiet, but as soon as we reached the entrance turnstiles the press of humanity was fully in evidence. And there were ALL sorts of people there!

Considering how chilly a night it was (it had been raining earlier in the day, but luckily it had cleared up for the parade - so unlucky all you fundamentalist Christian groups who prayed for rain - and that's no joke, apparently some congregations do exactly that every year), clothes were scarce.

Okay, so in the three main dance arenas where it was hot & sweaty like it should be (shades of uni-era sweaty bops) clothes weren't that necessary. But even the many outdoor food stalls and dance areas were thronged by seminaked guys (mostly) & (occasionally) girls. I suppose some of the chunkier chaps could claim a certain amount of subcutaneous protection (not unlike my humble self), but still, it made me feel cold looking at them standing there in nothing but body hair, a codpiece and some S&M harnesses. It was a bit like having a night out in Newcastle. Except actually I've never seen anyone in S&M gear on the streets of that fine city. I was thinking more about the feeling cold on behalf of others thing.

While the music was pretty good, the laser lightshows were fantastic! I stood mesmerised for some time by the particoloured protruberance that hung majestically from the roof of the medium-size venue; its smooth chrome surfaces caught the laser beams and scattered them throughout the hall, casting kaleidoscopic patterns over the roof, the walls & the frenzied masses on the dancefloor. And I just love that effect where the laser beam creates a funnel of gentle luminescence, through which you see clouds of dry ice passing by as over some sort of inverted planetscape.

I must be getting old: I was hoping to stay the distance and not leave the party until 10am, but my weary bones (not to mention my still sore feet) were having none of that. I did at least manage to stay up until the first light of dawn around 6, and that without partaking of any of the chem-E-cal st-E-mulants on offer, if you get my drift. It's not my sc-E-ne. At least there was no difficulty getting a taxi, which was a blessing because it was still bloody cold out.

Over the last week or so, I've been having lots of thoughts about what I want to do next in Australia. Do I want to find work in Canberra? Do I want to get down to Melbourne and work there? Do I want to come back to Sydney? Do I want to find a big pot of money and never have to work again? (Duh, let's see now, erm, I think yes!) I am in a bit of a tiz, truth be told. It's exhilarating to have so much freedom to choose what to do with my life, but sometimes I find myself - horror of horrors - yearning for the unempowered stability of the work routine I left behind in the UK.

Neatly sidestepping the metaphysical stuff, which I'm not going to resolve by waffling on about it here, on Tuesday I popped into town to sort things out with the optician, then headed back to Joe's house to pack my things. At lunchtime I was met by Chris, a friend of Johannes' in Sydney. I had mentioned to Johannes that I was heading back up to Sydney for a few days to catch up with people before I moved on to Melbourne, and he told me Chris was driving up to visit him anyway, and would be happy to bring me with. So that saved me the hassle of getting on the bus.

We rocked up at Johannes' flat in Woolloomooloo at about 3.30 and found Johannes working away at his home office. We had a quiet afternoon of tea and conversation. That evening I went with Johannes to the open air cinema at the North Sydney Oval cricket ground to watch The Motorcycle Diaries, the story of Che Guevara's journeys round South America with a fellow medical student. It was beautifully shot, and the magical dreamlike feel of the film was heightened by the swaying of the huge inflatable screen in the gusty breeze that played across the oval every now and then.

This coming weekend will see Sydney's world-famous Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. Seeing as Johannes & many of his gay friends will be watching the parade on Saturday and then going on to the all-night Mardi Gras party, I've decided to 'gay it up' with them for the next few days and experience this most flamboyant of Sydney fixtures from the inside, so to speak. Both the parade and the party promise to be great spectacles, judging by the popularity of previous years' events.

So item one on my agenda for Wednesday was to buy a ticket for the party. This costs a cool $125, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I thought what the hell. Chris & I walked into town after a spot of breakfast. First we went to buy my party ticket, and then we headed to Ikea - yes, they have Ikea in Australia too; in fact, the one we went to has the distinction of being the smallest Ikea in the world. Chris needed a few bits & pieces for his house in Canberra (they don't have Ikea there yet), and I went along for the nostalgia of needing bits & pieces for a home I don't have right now. After a lunch of Swedish meatballs at the Ikea café (ah, the joys of brand standardisation) we caught the bus back into town.

Russians are arriving in Sydney in a big way, just as they are in London. The bus driver was a Russian woman, and there were two Russian girls stood next to us for most of the way back to town. It annoys me that I can understand only every fiftieth word; enough to get the vaguest idea of what's being discussed, but not nearly enough to indulge in the guilty satisfaction of true eavesdropping.

That afternoon I went for a swim with Johannes at the seawater swimming pools just round the headland from Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo. I thought this might help my blisters (I'm still suffering from Friday's self-inflicted footsole frying incident). It was a bit strange swimming in a pool with lanes but with the buoyancy of salt water. I kept expecting to have a huge wave break over my head, or see fish swimming about. It was also weird because, with the blustery winds coming off the harbour, swimming south felt like swimming uphill while swimming north was a piece of cake.

In the evening Johannes was out for dinner with friends. I joined Chris & his old housemate Guy for dinner at Doma, a Bohemian café and restaurant. Wow! The food was SO good!! It was just like being back in Austria: hunks of salty roast pork with gigantic crackling, massive dumplings, sauerkraut, rye bread, and super tasty Czech beers all over the place. They had Krušovice on tap and a variety of other beers in bottles. It was like a home from home. They even had the trademark beef dish from London's Czech & Slovak House, svic'ková, which Guy enjoyed greatly. Mmm!

We walked up to Oxford Street after dinner and met with Johannes & his friend Tom in the Oxford pub, one of their regular haunts. After a few there we moved on to a decidedly gay pub/club called Manacle. It was heaving! It seems Mardi Gras week brings hordes of tourists to Sydney. We had to fight our way between muscle-bound, moustachioed, leather-clad blokes to get to the bar. The air smelt very male as well; plenty of musky sweat was in evidence. There wasn't a single woman in the place, except for a serially pierced goth-looking serving wench behind the bar.

The evening's entertainment consisted of a little camp guy in a black leather waistcoat and cap getting members of the audience up on stage to show off their tattoos. I wanted to start singing "get your tats out for the lads" but somehow it didn't seem appropriate. I got the feeling the compère wasn't all that popular with the clientèle; they were a much more burly bunch than him, and his flouncing about seemed incongruous. Apparently he and his boy band colleagues are a recent addition to the pub's activities.

Johannes tells me that Manacle is probably the most full-on male bar in Sydney, but I survived the night intact and unmolested. In fact, once I was chatting away to Tom (an interesting guy; he used to play cello at the Opera but now he's working as a fork lift truck driver because he got sick of the musicians' constant politicking) I forgot I wasn't in a bog standard pub. Once again, appearances proved to be deceptive, and the freakiest looking people turn out to be the least threatening. It was a pleasant and interesting night - even if the beer was decidedly shite in comparison with the Czech place.

Weekend Two in Canberra was a bit more low-key than Weekend One. Perhaps that was only to be expected; I mean, last weekend was truly phenomenally large.

My lingering sore throat/cough thing, that I've had actually since leaving Sydney, flared up again during the night of Friday & Saturday. I decided to take it easy and try to knock the illness on the head, starting by not actually getting up until midday. Ten hours' sleep made a good start on shaking the lurgy off, and spending the rest of the day reading Volume 3 of Simon Schama's A History Of Britain also helped.

That evening, I went with Joe, Jess, Rachel & Rachel's mate Lucy to the first Super Twelve match of the season, featuring Canberra's own Brumbies against their nemesis from last season's final, Christchurch NZ's Canterbury Crusaders. We met up with a bunch of people at a bar in town and caught a free bus laid on by said bar which had last year had free booze on board, but this year was sadly dry. This did not go down well with our group of passengers, in particular an incensed Matthew, who had spent the day with some other guys at the Races and was in need of sustained alcohol provision. But the journey was mercifully short and beer was to be had at the game.

I like a good game of rugby, and people were expecting this to be a great one. The play was good (except for an inexplicable failure of the Crusaders to raise their game in the face of a Brumbies fight-back in the second half), but somehow the atmosphere didn't happen. The stadium was almost full, but it felt more like sitting in a park having a picnic than watching the home side trounce a good opposition, even though we had seats right near the front and there were serried ranks of yellow-capped Brumbies supporters all around us. Luckily, there were a couple of non-Brumbies supporters sat next to me, and the banter we had with them went some way to making up for the lack of excitement round about.

We caught another free bus back to the bar, then Jess drove me & Joe down to Filthy's for a post-match digestif (that's wanker talk for beer). Quite a few people were in, including Jess's sister & her boyfriend, and Nick the barowner's girlfriend & her twin sister. I got chatting to an Austrian girl called Eva, who is au pairing here in Canberra. So that's two Austrians I've met in Australia in two months! Later, feeling the effects of a heavy night last night and a heavy evening today, I got a taxi home and fell into a long, restful sleep.

On Sunday I awoke feeling slightly better but still under the weather. I really don't like being ill. And it's so unusual for me, too! I haven't been ill on my travels since a year ago in Bangkok, where I had a twenty-four hour flu, and the time before that was the coldy sore-throatyness I had when staying with Justin & Sam in June of 2003. I am a man of normally iron constitution. Perhaps I've been burning my candle at both ends here in Canberra. Well, if a rest is called for, a rest I'll have. I spent the day finishing the History of Britain and feeling sorry for myself.

In the evening, Rachel & Lucy picked me up to go to Tropfest, Australia's short film festival which is screened open-air simultaneously around the country. There were sixteen films, all under seven minutes, ranging from comedy to drama, from animation to live action, from good to better.

Sitting on the grass with thousands of other people, I was put in mind of Glastonbury. Not by the atmosphere so much as by the desire to be able to detach my legs and not get a sore back! But the films were worth the minor discomfort; I particularly enjoyed one which showed two homeless guys imagining themselves surfing, weaving every strand of that Australian quintessence into a powerful story of sights, sounds, tastes & emotion and transcending, all too briefly, the tawdry reality of their depressing life on the streets. This was eventually judged the winner, and I'm not surprised.

Monday was my last full day in Canberra. And thankfully I woke up feeling healthy again for the first time in a fortnight. I had a leisurely breakfast in town at a bar called Gus's which was the first place in town to have tables on the street. Apparently they had quite a battle with the authorities over the right to do this. The food was delicious (bubble & squeak made with sweet potatoes) and the coffee was astoundingly good.

I eventually wandered over to the National Museum again, and can now say that I have seen all there is to see there. It's great! But the layout is a little haphazard.

In the evening I was invited by Matthew to join the party that was being held in Kirsty's flat to mark the Oscars. I met Joe at his office and we walked there together. There were about 30 people there, and they had all put $10 in a pot and entered an impromptu competition to predict the Oscars. Kirsty had gone to quite a lot of trouble, with an Excel spreadsheet beamed onto her living room wall giving updates on the positions of all 30 participants each time an award was presented.

Benjamin, the French guy I met the other night, was responsible for the catering, and boy did he do a good job! The roast beef was to die for - plenty of garlic, cooked on the outside, mouthwateringly pink on the inside - and he had somehow found a marvellous selection of cheeses. Everyone was tucking in with gusto, and a good time was had by all. I couldn't have had a nicer last night in Canberra!