Autumn is finally turning to winter now in Victoria. Gusts of wind are shaking the golden leaves from Melbourne's myriad trees and pushing cloud banks quickly overhead. We've had the first proper rain since I got to Melbourne two months ago, so my brolly's back in my rucksack (although I haven't actually had to use it just yet). And it's no longer a viable option to walk the streets in a teeshirt - unless you hanker after pneumonia.

Talking of disease, I am feeling very crook (as they say in these parts) at the moment. Well, what can I say? I'm just out of practice at this work thing. A full week of work, plus a hard weekend of play, left me pretty wiped out. Monday's return to the chilly expanses of the Pickfords Data Management warehouse saw me lugging more crates of files over to my desk, building up a tiny sweat in the process, then sitting down in the draught and moving nothing but the fingers of my right hand as I typed the six-digit reference number of each file into the database. A recipe for catching a chill. And I went one better: I'm suffering with another bout of tonsilitis.

The pharmacist convinced me to buy "natural antibiotics" in the form of some high-dose echinacea tablets (actually they've got some other herbs in too) which to be honest haven't really done the trick. I'm still feeling pretty crap four days on. I'm also ingesting copious amounts of cough syrup, cold & flu tablets, nurofen, and latterly Betadine throat gargle, which tastes pleasantly medicinal but I'm not sure it's doing that much.

Luckily I wasn't ill at the weekend, so I could still get out and do stuff. I met up with Tom for coffee in Williamstown, which used to be a naff port town opposite Melbourne on the harbour and is now becoming very trendy, with lots of cafes and restaurants. It feels like your typical British seaside resort town, actually, in the way that reasonably pleasant waterfront buildings are interspersed with architectural horrors in a seemingly haphazard pattern. I caught myself thinking in a Yorkshire accent and wondering where I could get a bit of fish and some mushy peas.

The views over to the CBD are beautiful. With the time of year and the weather we're having, I felt I had walked into an Impressionist landscape painting: the sky, the city and the sea were all shades of pastel blue, and the almost imperceptible foggy haze left the contours of the city's skyscrapers slightly out of focus. Then there were the masts of the many fishing boats moored at the water's edge to give it that olde worlde feel.

This weekend it was Jodie's birthday, and her boyfriend Chris flew over from Dunedin to spend time with her. As is obligatory, we went for a slap-up meal on Lygon Street and headed into town after for drinks. Chris, Jodie, Rainnie, Nea (Jodie's Finnish friend from her hostel) and I ended up in the Cherry Bar, that favourite haunt of ours on AC/DC Lane, listening to an eclectic mix of seventies, eighties and nineties rock and sucking down a few beers. I have discovered Little Creatures, a beer from Fremantle, which I like very much.

To return to the meal for a moment: Jodie had picked a restaurant that Rainnie & I didn't know, so she gave us the address. It was on Lygon pretty near my house. Rainnie parked her bike at my place and we walked over together, chatting about this and that. We were walking along the "evil" side of Lygon, where the restaurants employ people to intimidate you into choosing their restaurant, something which annoys both of us but which ordinarily I would just grin and bear. But for some reason I was emboldened this evening, so when a horrible old Italian man said to me "you sit here! or you go home make yourself crap dinner" I stopped, turned to him and gave him a piece of my mind.

But wouldn't you know it? We were outside the very restaurant Jodie had picked! We felt very sheepish as we found our way to Jodie's table. I had just said I was unlikely ever to want to visit his establishment (or words to that effect) and here we were sitting down for dinner. Rainnie & I were convinced they were going to spit in our food, but Jodie didn't want to go anywhere else because they'd already ordered champagne. Oh well, I didn't taste any saliva of a third party in my dinner; not that I'd know what to look for taste-wise, now I think about it. In the end it was a lovely meal, with Nea & I singing Jodie jazz songs for her birthday and everyone having a good time.

On Sunday night I met up with Jodie & Chris again for dinner. They were staying in the posh hotel in the Crown Complex, which is Melbourne's casino and purpose-built nightclub area on the south bank of the Yarra river. Their room was huge! It reminded me of the bad old days travelling on business for PG around Europe. It was a world away from Jodie's backpacker hostel; although that's history now, because Jodie has moved in with Rainnie. Yep, that's right, my two best buddies are in one place now! It should make meeting up much easier.

And now I'm going to go away and feel sorry for myself some more, and maybe read some more books. Being ill and lying around at home all day certainly gives one time to read: this week I've devoured The Da Vinci Code (well, everyone and their dog has read it so I thought I might as well; and it's a page-turner even if it's not literature); A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian (a delightful comedy novel about love, war and tractors - trust me, it's great); and 1421 (a compelling book detailing how the Chinese discovered the New World - and Australasia & Antarctica for good measure - almost a century before the Europeans). I await belittling arguments from my historian friends with trepidation! (By the way, historian friends, that's a not-so-subtle hint for you to email me and tell me how you're doing.)