As I walked through McElhone Place, Surry Hills this afternoon, the first thing I noticed was the smell of jasmine. It’s one of the great smells of summer in Sydney. And McElhone Place is such a beautiful street – where the neighbours have worked hard to make sure they have beautiful gardens – that I stopped for just a moment to take in the fragrance. Beautiful.

And then I saw the pussy cats. Sitting in a doorway was “the king cat” surrounded on the footpath by three others in court. It was a great scene.

As I walked further towards home I saw a group of young parents with their hoola-hooping children enjoying a glass of wine, the people outside Bourke Street Pantry on a ladder watering the plans, and a bloke just enjoying the beautiful spring late-afternoon daylight saving “light” we enjoy in Sydney. taking a photograph with his phone.

In my mind, I was contrasting their stress-free ends to their working weeks with mine. As I’ve ended the week, I’ve felt a lot of the “good” of a holiday has been undone. Combined with returning to work, I have a few concerns for friends and family who are going through some difficult things at the moment. The kind of things you wish they didn’t have to go through, and although you do your best to support them, you still wonder if you’re doing enough.

So tonight I’m doing my best to de-stress a bit.

A quiet weekend is planned, and then on Monday I start a new job. I’m feeling a bit Gen Y at the moment, having had 4 jobs (3 of them “acting” positions) in the last 18 months. This new one is “acting” too, though I’m hopeful it will become permanent for at least a couple of years.