Carmel in Oz: 'Oh the flame trees will blind the weary driver...'

It's deepest darkest winter here in Sydney, and I'm having a 'dry July'. As was tradition in the UK I would usually take January off the booze, after the season of excess, when you're skint after Chrimbo and feeling icky and full of winter food. Of course January's the middle of summer here and party-tastic, so there was no question of giving up drinking, especially as mum and Keith were visiting then. July however is a perfect alternative, after the festival months of sponsorship wine, canapes and eating crap in the CBD, I'm skint as anything and it's very cold. Two weeks in and it's proving trickier than I had hoped. I keep getting invited to parties where the booze is free and my will is weak. We shall see if it lasts...

So things are becoming more 'normal' post-festival, as we immerse ourselves in debriefs, acquittals, financial year-end and wrap-up. It's a bit sad to lose my team, they've been amazing to work with this year and I'll really miss them. Now we're back to skeleton crew in the office, there's no-one to delegate to, and there are lots of empty desks :o(

Flame trees blossom

The season of the flame trees has commenced, and they are beginning to flower. Seasonal changes are much more acute in Australia, or perhaps I'm more attuned. I've been getting back on the bike, swimming in the mornings, and am back at Yoga with the magical Rick.

My yoga school

Catching up on my lack of festival films, I've sneaked home a few screeners from the festival stash -- the other day a gang of us watched a double-bill of The Chicken the Fish and the King Crab and Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon -- outstanding selection. Jason Statham was in town for the premiere of The Bank Job, an intriguing story which apparently is completely true but was buried under a 'D' notice in the 70s forbidding the press to write about it, where a bank heist is engineered to cover up some photographic evidence of Princess Margaret engaging in some dodgy orgy activities. Apparently they couldn't make the film until she'd died. Anyway, it was a bit disappointing, with a rather one-dimensional set of performances and some cliched set-ups, but the after-party was swell enough.

The main outcome of the evening was that I made the social pages. Oh la-di-da, I was in the Sunday Telegraph (the equivalent of the UK's Mail on Sunday!) Check it out...