Leaving the Cave

Racked by insomnia and deprived of industrial strength bleach, I've decided to take out my makeover tendencies out on my blog.

After subsisting for 3 months without the internet at home (gasp!) I've finally returned to the land of the undead, and so - hope to resume more regular posting......


I'm also a bit scared that I've let facebook take the place of blogging - and - it's so dodgy, really.....

and it's been a BIG year so far...

In brief - Renaissance Girl dragged me south and I now find myself happily ensconsed in the Brunswick Love Palace. Much conjugal felicity ensues and - we even have a cat. It's so sapphicly blissful I could.... well.... smile! A lot. and i do.

Melbourne is *weird* - and I can't quite believe that I've left my beloved blue city of cliffs and seagulls for wide flat streets and endless grids of wrought iron brick bungalows......

and the weather is truly shite - I'm glad I spent a full 15 months in sydney - basking i temperatures of the low to mid to high 20's for most of the year. Melbourne doesn't really do weather in the 20 degree range - it kind of veers from the teens (11, 14, 19 degrees) right up to the low thirties. In a single day.and back again. they blame the weather on Adelaide.

No one ever warned me about melbourne heat - so it's quite a shock to realise that i've moved somewhere that is often scorchingly hot. There's been a drought here for the past decade - so it ain't really green or gardenish - and watching the spring flowers wild and fry in the slowly emerging summer is a bit depressing..... I can hardly bear to look out the windows when the tram passes through the browning savannah of Parkville (and we're still in spring) - and sometimes I glumly muse that Melbourne veers from all grey to all brown - without the vivid blues and tropical floriade of sydney..... and I sigh.

I discovered another other source of chromaporia just down the road.... In trying to reinstate my bookish habitus, I got a tram down to melbourne uni and went to an art history seminar..... which - content wise was pretty bloody amazing actually - but I had a moment of blinding horror and near hsyteria..... err.... wathcing the audience memebers enter - and witness ALL THE ART ACADEMICS WEARING BLACK. I don't just mean the odd pair of faded jeans, a t-shirt, or a jacket - but the fully fledged raven look; muted hair, tailored flowing robes of fine light absorbing garments around the small wraith like forms of the females, and impeccably tailored, impeccably noir shirts and jeans for the menfolk. I'd joked about this in sydney - washing ut the last of the orange dye from my hair, and buying a black leather jacket - but here confronted with a monochrome swarm of screaming class conformity I shuddered and quickly slunk out the back of the lecture theatre.....

Such traumas make it a bit hard to stay motivated for my tome completion - but that's what i'm here for - the final sweaty slog of editing, reshaping, structuring...... all in the absence of distraction from teaching, parties or bright colours......

I went and bought bright pink curtains for the study