Ooh! Excitement!

There I was, sitting in Jackie's flat on Tuesday evening, beginning to get worked up about my job interview the next morning, when in hops Kate from the gym. Only she's early: it turns out she's knackered her knee while doing squats and now can't unbend it or put weight on her right leg. As soon as Jackie got home from work, the three of us drove to the hospital. But they wanted to charge $300 just for looking at it, so we found a doctor's surgery a bit out of town that was open until 10pm and went there.

I was pleased to have this distraction to keep me from fretting all evening. But it didn't work for long: as I lay in bed that night I had difficulty falling asleep (those who have shared a bedroom with me will know that generally I'm asleep - and snoring - by about three minutes after my head hits the pillow) because loads of thoughts were rushing around in my head.

So on Wednesday morning I got up at an obscenely early hour - 8am for God's sake! - and had a bite to eat before driving Kate to work in her car. She insisted on going in, even though she was on crutches and wouldn't be able to stand in the shop. I parked up, walked with Kate to her shop and then dashed up the road to my interview.

Luckily, Adrienne (the boss woman who interviewed me) was a lovely lady, and her colleauge Malcolm was a nice Scots guy. Otherwise it could all have turned very pear-shaped. I managed in my stress to throw a cup of water all over the interview table when Adrienne asked me to lay it for three people with crockery & cutlery. Part two of the test was to clear the settings away again. With the foreknowledge that I would have to carry the plates on one arm, and armed with how to do it, I just about managed to convince her that I wasn't absolutely crap. So now I'm on their books. We'll see whether any work comes up.

After I bought all my uniform (black trousers, black tie, black socks, black waistcoat, white shirts, and a waiter's friend bottle opener) I wandered around a bit in town and saw a preposterous art installation in a shopping mall which consisted of hundreds of black umbrellas strung from the ceiling, complete with fake thunder. Then I met up with Kate (who had been sent home by her boss until her leg is better) for some sushi before driving her home again.

Driving in Melbourne is a bit of fun, especially for one who hasn't driven in months. There is the added excitement of not colliding with trams. Plus the joy of not really knowing where you're going and having to cut across lanes of angry traffic at short notice. But we survived.

The rest of Wednesday was a bit of a blank really. I allowed myself to be exhausted by the job interview process - well, it is my first in years - and just sat around at home sending my CV to dozens (no, really) of temping agencies.

Thursday saw Kate leave for Canberra to go to her doctors up there about her knee and to spend Easter with her folks. I hope the knee gets better soon. She is already hobbling without crutches, which is positive.

I did more CV sending (no, really) in the morning and then in the afternoon went into town to wander about a bit. Then I remembered that today was the start of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I went to the box office to see if I could get hold of some tickets for this evening. It was four o'clock, so I thought 'okay, noone will be out of work yet, the queue should be a doddle'.

But how wrong I was! It turns out the computer system for issuing tickets is the most byzantine, over-complicated and illogical process ever. Plus it was Day 1, so everyone was still learning how to do it. So, when I finally got to the front of the queue an HOUR later, it took a good five minutes to sell me tickets to three shows - and they couldn't even process it in one transaction!

I just had time to pop up to Reading's bookshop and get a few more numbers for house shares (noone from the first crop has got back to me yet, which is a bit worrying) and then grab a bite to eat (from Wok In A Box - tasty kwei chou stir fry) before I had to return to Melbourne Town Hall for the first of the evening's shows.

I saw Stewart Lee, the English comedian famous from Fist Of Fun and many other shows. He was really quite funny! The audience was very small - about forty people - so when his mic was playing up it was no problem for him just to abandon it. I think he was a bit disappointed that there weren't more people there, but after ten minutes or so he settled into his routine. Quirky, punchy, very not Ronnie Corbett.

My second show was Terri Psiakis, a local woman who I heard a bit of an interview with on the radio the other day and thought she would be funny. And she was! It was much more in the story-teller mode, with the one event as start and finish of the hour's show - "I was on my way to a wedding and I had a panic attack" - punctuated by a series of digressions covering life as a single woman who wants to be single.

The third show was the acclaimed Puppetry Of The Penis, which has been running for years around the world. The two performers are from Melbourne and the show was first played here, so this was a bit of a homecoming for them. It's the final world tour for the show - aptly named the So Long tour. I guess they must be getting a bit tired of wandering around the stage naked, bending their dicks into amusing shapes. It was bizarre and mildly amusing, but I think all the guys in the audience will have shared my slightly uncomfortable going-over-a-humpback-bridge gut response to the ways these guys were twisting and pulling at their manhoods.

That last show started over an hour late for some reason, which messed up my travel plans for getting home. I set out on foot from the centre of town and walked for forty minutes down the road (about half way), taking some snaps of Melbourne by night along the route. Then a tram came out of nowhere; perhaps they were running a Friday schedule because it's a bank holiday tomorrow. I jumped gratefully on and rode the rest of the way to South Yarra.

I like Melbourne much more when it's sunny. Luckily, I've had unbroken sunshine almost since I got here. The mix of buildings downtown either sparkle or glow or radiate warmth, depending on their construction. Flinders Street station, for instance, is a fine example of 19th century red brick grandeur, reminiscent of St Pancras station in London, that vibrates in delicious ochre hues in the evening sun. But just opposite, on the south bank of the Yarra river, the pristine glass & steel towers of Southgate leap into the air shimmering, the vanguard of a high-rise tomorrow.

I'm trying to break away from the strictly chronological sequence of my blogs, because it's going to get pretty boring when I start each update with "I got up, went to work, had lunch, worked some more..." - that's assuming, of course, that I do ever manage to get gainful employment.

So anyway, in no particular order:

I went to Como House, one of a very few completely original houses from the mid-19th century to survive unaltered. It's just round the corner from Jackie's flat, so I thought it would be churlish to refuse a bit of culture on my doorstep. I ended up doing a guided tour of the house with a couple from Tasmania. It was really quite interesting to see how the house had been built with domestic service in mind - they had their own (madly narrow and steep) staircase to get to the bedrooms, so they could empty the chamber pots, for example. And the ballroom was fabulous! Apparently, it's used for weddings and private functions quite a lot.

I walked around St Kilda, which is the seasidey bit of town. There's a Luna Park funfair here, like in Sydney, and they both look a bit dodgy to be honest. There's also a cake shop recommended by Johannes for their Austrian specialities. I'll definitely be heading there again to make some purchases!

I walked around Chapel Street, soaking up the uber-trendy atmosphere and deciding I will never buy any clothes here - the chances that they would have anything big enough to fit me are, I am sure, very much tending to zero. But it's got lots of nice looking cafés that I might explore at a later date.

I walked around Fitzroy, which used to be a bit alternative but has become really quite posh, a bit like Camden I suppose in London. Again, some restaurants and bars that will be worth a visit back. I saw some nice teeshirts there, but was rather put off by the price tag. Well, it's not like I need more clothes anyway.

I went to the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival's market of local Victorian produce with Kate. We tasted our way round dozens of stalls, selling all sorts from ice cream to olive oil, and from organic fruit to cherry & chilli chutney. It was a lovely couple of hours in the hot sun, and wahey, we didn't need lunch after that!

I saw Almodóvar's latest film La Mala Educación, which I enjoyed greatly. It was starring Gael García Bernal, who seems to be in every Spanish film I've seen in the last three years! He played Che Guevara in Motorcycle Diaries, and he was the best friend in Y Tu Mamá También, which was a faculous Mexican road movie from a few years back. It was weird to hear him doing a Spanish Spanish accent; he is from Mexico, and although he did Che's Argentinian accent well it's a big step from South American to European pronunciation.

I made my own cappuccino using a real commercial coffee machine at the Coffee & Chocolate Festival. Now, when I have interviews for bar work, I can say truthfully that I have barista experience. Let's just hope they don't ask how much!

I met up with Rainnie again, and her friend Caterina from Tuscany. Caterina has all sorts of central European bloodlines, and she looks remarkably like my friend Selena, who shares a similar heritage. A coincidence, or genetic predetermination? We had a very amusing and boozy night out, including a stop at a vegetarian restaurant in St Kilda that had closed its kitchen but was giving out free pizza instead. And they had the cutest tiny little mice living just by the front door! Several bottles of red wine later (some consumed at a café on Lygon Street, some by candlelight in the park outside Rainnie's house), I crashed on Rainnie's sofa and headed back on a tram the next lunchtime.

I had a coffee with Dee, a distant relative of my sister's friend Sue. She is in her fifties and very lively; hopefully I'll make it out to a barbie with her, her husband & her grown-up children (who are my age) at some point. We were sat at a café in Chapel Street and the sun was so hot I got sunburn on my arms! Long may this weather continue.

I met up once more with Rainnie & Caterina for dinner, this time cooked at home. Caterina created a divine pasta medley of rocket, bocconcini cheese, tomato, mushroom and garlic; I did a couple of yummy salads, including my signature green bean & red onion special. We washed these down with a lovely drop of Alsatian gewürztraminer which wasn't cheap but was worth every dollar. (Caterina has trained as a winemaster, so understandably she doesn't do plonk - hooray!) Then we watched a DVD: The Wisdom of the Crocodile with Jude Law as a modern-day vampire, which was okay but not earth-shatteringly good.

I wandered along Lygon Street, which has its fair share of trendy bars and nice restaurants too. In fact, there's a common theme to the inner suburbs of Melbourne. They're all about quality living, just as the streets in the centre of town are all about quality shopping. I haven't seen so many handbag shops since I was in Milan!

Damn! I've just reviewed what I typed, and it's all bloody chronological isn't it! Ah well, old habits die hard. Also, it's all me, me, me isn't it? (Or rather I, I, I.) But then again, this is my website.

Watch this space for news on how I fare in my first job interview in years & years. I'm due to meet HotelStaff on Wednesday about a casual position as a waiter/barman, as recommended by the Irish girls at the Irish pub. Eek! I'm nervous!