same same

After I got back to Sydney from Melbourne last week, it was with a bit of a proverbial bump.

The weekend had been extremely expensive, for which I take full responsibility. I would like to blame the Tories or George Bush, but even I can't really pin this one on them - and so for the remainder of the week it was a case of going to work and staying in during the evening. It goes without saying this is not the kind of activity that lends itself to blog writing - I don't want to write about it every day, and I'm quite sure you don't want to read it.

I fell into that soul destroying trap last week of being bored at work because there wasn't much to do, whilst simultaneously trying to avoid doing very much. Clock watching kicks in. I actually wouldn't mind being challenged in my work, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Every day I am served up a diet of very basic tasks to complete, and I am starting to wonder if I can stick this for the remainder of my time in Sydney, although quite what else I'm going to do is a moot point.

Anyway, enough of this talk. One thing I am determined to do when I get back to the UK is approach being there in the same way I have being in Australia. By that I mean making the effort to explore more of the country and find out more about its history. Whilst in a book shop the other day, I glanced through the Lonely Planet guide to England. Within a few minutes I discovered that there used to be a bridge connecting the Isle of Wight to the mainland, and that people from Norfolk are described as "having one foot in the water and one on the land". That's two things that I was either blissfully unaware of - or are actually complete and utter bollocks. Either way, my point is I'm sure there is more to discover at home than I have previously.

The sheer vastness of Australia also opens your eyes to how there is so much to discover in Europe so easily. I've been to a lot of places in Europe, but it has been a bit embarrassing to find Aussies who saw more during a travelling break than I have in 29 years of my life. They rightly point out how easy it is with budget airlines offering such absurdly low prices. It's weird, I didn't think twice about going to Melbourne on my own last weekend, but it has never occurred to me that there is nothing to stop me doing precisely the same in Europe if I wanted to.

Back home Norwich mathematically avoided relegation at the weekend with a 2-1 win at Leicester, now managed by our ex-boss Nigel Worthington. It is really weird getting these results in the middle of the night, and I suspect even weirder for Australians in nightclubs listening to me drunkenly talk about it and how much I hope we beat the Scum next weekend...