Hello again, my faithful readers! You'll all pleased be pleased as punch to hear that after a period of assuredly not-so-pukka tonsilitis-type illness, I am once again feeling ticketyboo. And, hey-ho, working in Melbourne's poshest boys' school is perhaps affecting my choice of lexis at the mo. I am sitting (naughty me!) at my desk in the admin building of Scotch College, demonstrably NOT working! Well, that's not strictly true: in the gaps of time where I am waiting for things to print off, I am multitasking and writing up my blog.

So anyway, not too much to report. Most of this week I felt a lot less ill, but I wasn't really 100% physically and mentally until Sunday, which was a lovely day spent enjoying a sunny early winter day, both indoors (I had lunch with David, a radio presenter friend of mine in Richmond) and outdoors (I had coffee at Yummy Bread with Rainnie).

But back to last week: work at the engineering firm that makes the label applicators was same old same old, but there was an added twist of a celebratory lunch on Friday because sales have been going rather well. We ate at an Ethiopian restaurant in Footscray, which is a multicultural inner suburb that is reminiscent of the shabby but funky parts of London like, say, Hackney. The food was excellent! Between the six of us we had some raw minced beef with crumbly yoghurty cheese; a lamb curry; a lentil stew; and a beef & chilli curry. They were served on a huge platter that had been lined with Ethiopian flat breads, which tasted really tangy, yeasty & sourdoughy and with their springy texture were perfect for sopping up the curry dishes. These culinary delights were washed down with imported Ethopian beer that wasn't bad either.

See? I must be well again, I'm focusing on food!

Friday & Saturday I had a bizarre job: I was the man putting up the information onto the platform screens at Spencer Street station, telling people when & where to catch their trains! It sounds like a total trainspotter's kind of job, but in fact it was nothing of the sort. The closest I came to a train the whole time was listening in to the walkie-talkie chatter of platform staff and the signalling people (I had to listen out for any last-minute platform changes, of which there were a few). I was housed in a draughty portakabin office - the station is undergoing a major refurbishment - and had plenty of time to read my book (Brick Lane by Monica Ali), because all that was required of me work-wise was to keep the screens up to date, which took about ten seconds every five minutes.

Easy money, then, really. But it wasn't that great, which sort of surprises me, because I thought I would love a job like that, where I had to do nothing but read my book. Oh, and the worst thing was, I had dinner from one of the station convenience cafes. Foolishly, I decided on a battered sausage. It's honestly years since I've had one, and the first few mouthfuls tasted great. But bloody hell did that thing wriggle & writhe in my gut! I could barely sit still after I'd eaten it, my stomach was churning so much. It just goes to show that I've been eating healthily these last few months, that a bit of fried food could have such an effect on my insides.

See? I really am well again! More food talk!

Oh, I've just remembered something that happened the other week which I haven't written about yet. I was walking Fiona (the law student in my house) to her tram stop late one Sunday evening, because there are reports of a rapist/psycho on the loose in our area (but I haven't seen one), and on my way back to the house I cut through the bit of park that sits behind the Melbourne Museum - did I mention I live two minutes' walk from the museum? - to make my walk a tad more interesting. Well, anyway, there in the park I was molested! By a ferocious pack of possums!

I could see some shuffling creatures ahead in the gloom of the ill-lit park, and so I walked towards them thinking they were maybe squirrels. Of course, possums do the same job in these parts, so I wasn't too surprised to see those cute little marsupials going about their business. What did surprise me was their total lack of fear. Indeed, as I stood there about ten of them converged on me. They're about the size of domestic cats, but they don't look so comfortable walking. When they started sniffing my feet and taking appraising looks at my legs, I decided to get the hell out of there before they decided to climb me and start harvesting nuts!

I'll end on a personal victory that I celebrated finally, after weeks of effort, last week. I actually managed to watch a leaf fall off a tree. You wouldn't think it would be that hard, would you. I mean, it's autumn, all the leaves are falling off the trees and carpeting the ground in swathes of burnished hues, but just you try and watch one single leaf - I mean actually watch it with the focused part of your vision. They never bloody drop off! Like a watched pot never boils, a watched leaf, I have determined, never falls. Instead they hang on to that twig with a tenacity worthy of a grasshopper clinging to the windscreen of a moving car. But then, sitting in the window of Kate's room (Kate has gone to Bali for three weeks, so I was enjoying her view across Argyle Square and its many fine trees), I at last observed a leaf set out on its short one-way trip to oblivion. Autumn somehow has more meaning for me now.