juliet

Things I have been up to of late:

• Seeing Leonard Cohen, who was awesome, and I nearly cried, er, several times (Hallelujah was one of them; also I think the spoken word version of Thousand Kisses Deep). Very, very much worth it, even if I was right at the back (the advantages of a seated gig: decent raking, decent acoustics, so it didn't actually matter that much).
• Surfing! Another lesson yesterday (at Bondi Beach this time). It wound up being a small class (only 4 of us) & all girls, and the instructor was incredibly enthusiastic and made cheering noises whenever any of us did anything remotely competent. I stood up all the way in! Albeit in a slightly wobbly fashion. Intending to get a couple more practices in by myself before the next lesson.
• Getting up before dawn (i.e. 4.45am) this morning to go down to Bondi for the Dawn Chorus concert. It was lovely, and surprisingly popular. After which I went for a sunrise swim, which was also lovely. Bondi is pretty busy by 7.30am on a Saturday morning. Doubtless more so today because of the concert, but the lifeguards are there from 6am every morning in the summer.
• Getting noticably fitter, thanks to a) the fact that Sydney is full of hills, & that there is at least one hill (depending on your definitions) each way between my flat & the two places I cycle to most often, viz the CBD, and Bondi; and b) carrying the bike up & down the stairs daily (I can now lift it straight up to my shoulder. I'll be doing cyclocross next.) Also clearly losing my mind, as evinced when I decided to race a roadie up the second half of the hill out of Bondi this morning. (I held him off till the last couple of hundred yards, which wasn't bad given that he was on Snazzy Unladen Bike & I had a pannier full of crap, as ever.)
• Enjoying this whole "freelance & therefore no fixed hours" business. Hurrah.
• Progressing to the point where I am capable of trapping a cockroach with the glass/paper trick & chucking it out of a window. What with that & the obsessive-nightly-kitchen-cleaning, I haven't seen anything scuttling for a couple of days, which I am tentatively labelling a Win.
• Going native: not only have I acquired a pair of thongs, but the word I use for them in my head is "thongs" (this being Aussie for flipflops). They are strictly for the beach (I can confirm that sand + bike sandals Does Not Mix, so the bike sandals get locked to the bike on arrival) and for going upstairs to the washing machine on the roof, not for walking around the street, so I haven't gone that native. I have however worn running shorts to go to the supermarket, which I would never have done in the UK. It's quite a lot warmer here, in my defence. (I love the running shorts.)

I think that's it, more or less.