News

My father buys the Sydney Morning Herald every day, so for a while there I was right on top of current affairs. It's funny reading the papers again, in Australia, where as my best mate Rich put it, there are too many journalists and not enough news. Some of the front-page headlines I've seen since getting back include: Paul Hogan's tax evasion scam, Ian Thorpe is fat, interest rate rises, and the Howard/Costello leadership battle. All vitally important stuff. To me, reading the SMH is like slipping on an old glove, and feeling an all too familiar numbing comfort. It's a glove that badly needs an extra middle finger sewn on, if you get my drift.

The sports section is reliably plump, and the real estate section is positively obese. It's a weird combination of going for the lowest common denominator and then advertising commodities that are out of the average person's reach. Or maybe I've just been gone too long and half a million dollars is a reasonable starting point for a first home buyer.

I propose a new feature, called alquilar or whatever rent is in French, or any language that makes it sound sophisticated, with profiles of people's places who are renting. In our case, I'd wibble on about the floral frosted light fittings and how they combine with the stained white brick facade and astroturf on the balcony to invoke a timeless, delapidated chic ambience. The furniture? It has been painstakingly pieced together from all of the bits and pieces our friend had in storage. Then there's the ceiling, with the lunar surface, old school-classroom feel, that makes you want to get out a biro and a rubber band and shoot ink cartridges up into it.

But really, we're very happy here. Today we were down at Clovelly with the little guy, and I can see it's going to be brilliant in summer. He's starting swimming classes in October, and I had a dream last night that he was already freestyling, very well, and very quickly.