Visiting Melbourne

A decade ago, or maybe more, I went into the “wrong toilet” at an Irish bar in Darwin. “Mna, that sounds like men, and fir, that sounds like female”, I thought to myself. In reality, it was the other way around, as I discovered, seated, when female voices appeared in the cubicles next to me. […]

Swedish Day at the Ice Hockey in Melbourne

You know the character, “Ronald Niedermann” in one of the episodes of the Swedish TV production of “The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo?”. He has a congential condition where he has no feelings of pain, and subsequent attempts to kill him off are completely unsuccessful. In the films, he has a steely gaze which basically […]

Visiting Melbourne – Sunday night at DT’s

For a bunch of reasons, there aren’t too many “gay bars” any-more. It doesn’t worry me too much, though a friend bemoans the lack of a “traditional” neighbourhood bar, where you can go and have a drink, have a chat, meet some nice blokes, and maybe “catch up”. Or at least that’s the case in […]

Day in Melbourne

It was one of those days. My alarm went off at 4.00am, but I stayed in bed until 4.30am. Being so close to the airport, I figured I could stay in bed until the absolute last minute. We left Sydney at 6.00am, got to Melbourne 7.35am. I slept most of the way. Caught the bus […]

Melbourne Day

“I feel like some ice-cream or some gelato”, I said to my friend Sue, so she suggested Brunetti’s at Carlton as one of those quintessential Melbourne experiences. We had plans of heading out into the country to look at some of the bushfire affected areas, and to do our bit to help their economic recovery, […]

Life is as good as Dancing Queen

“You have the best life” was the Twitter reply I received from @swedense I’d just written a note to say thankyou for all of his/her tweets about the Swedish Royal Wedding, while explaining that I too, was enjoying some Swedish royalty of my own. I was at an event featuring ABBA fans who had gathered […]

Death in Melbourne

For a while I thought I was actually going to die. For a while I thought my time was up and someone would need to break through the door of my hotel room to recover the body. I was THAT sick. Sue and I went out for dinner tonight at a rather good Chinese restaurant […]

ABBAWORLD Opening in Melbourne

The last time I attended an ABBA-related event in Melbourne it was the Australian premiere of “Mamma Mia.” It was a star studded event which culminated in having a photograph taken with Bjorn. There were fewer celebrities at the opening of ABBAWORLD. There was Anthony Callea who stood next to me for quite some time […]

Melbourne

When I called my friend Sue in Melbourne for a weather report this morning I’d already packed my bag. I didn’t really think I needed to ask if I should bring a jacket but something deep inside me thought I should. “Yes you do, it’s twelve degrees outside and I’m driving to work with the […]