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I think I've talked about this before, but sometimes I find myself confusing life in Australia with life in London. Sometimes I think about a biscuit or a shop and I won't be able to remember which country it was in.

It's hard to describe, but I remember for a good year of living in London, I'd always talk about Australia as being home. I'd talk about things back home, life back home, biscuits back home. I'd long for a pasty or a bottle of Solo. I'd actually physically miss these things. And then one day, home changed. I'd be returning from a holiday and suddenly, I couldn't wait to be home in London.

I've always thought it was a bad thing, a sad thing, to be a person whose home was a part of two countries, or even three or four. I always thought they felt misplaced, not quite belonging anywhere; a bit here, a bit there. I always thought I wouldn't want that to be me. But now, somehow, it is me. And I think it's ok.

A potential skill

I think I could be a human sniffer dog.

Now, before you all go trying to Google this as a potential career change for me (thanks for your support, it means a lot), there isn't such a thing. But if there was, I'd totally be leashing myself up trying to find missing children and bad smells in cars. Honestly, I have a very keen, some might say acute, sense of smell. I only wish I could put it to good use. For the skeptics out there, I'll list some of the things I have smelt before others or as a lone smeller. Before I start, let me just preface it by saying some smells might seem everyday/trivial/hey, I've smelt that before, but I'll repeat it for you again, 'smelt before others'.

* Specific butterscotch feet smell
* Burning pan handle
* Match burning off poo
* Bad smelling jeans
* Shoes off under the table
* Scalp/unwashed hair
* Fake tan users
* Sometimes my own snot (too gross?)


Skilled, right?

Knobs

I’m always reluctant to discuss work colleagues on this blog. But then again, there was The Penis and Angry Little Man, who I felt if I hadn’t mentioned them, I’d be doing you, my readers, a disservice. So I find myself once more with this quandary. I have battled and the need to share has won again. So here we go.

I am surrounded by knobs.

Honestly, I am like a moth to their knob flame. Due to my low tolerance of people, I had to check with Partner D to see if I was being harsh. He had quite rightly not informed me of their knobage upon my return from holiday incase it tarnish my view of them. Turns out they are knobs. Big ones. Big, brass, posh, brown nosing knobs. I applaud people with enough of a blindly optimistic love of advertising to have the desire to climb the ladder, but for the love of shelf wobblers, be subtle about it. Please, I have a highly sensitive advertising gag reflex.

Let me recount yesterday’s conversation with them.

Scene: I have just got into work. It’s been raining and I have an umbrella in my hand. It’s 9:30 am, official creative start time.

Me: Hi
Knobs: Hi, is it raining outside?
Me: Yep
Knobs: That’s what you get for being late.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. This would be the third time the time police have mentioned what time I get in.

Knobs.

Deep fried balls

Hello everyone,

It's me. I'm back from Italy, slightly pudgier and sporting rather weird tan marks where I decided to cleverly wipe my legs with sunscreen, kind of in a 'I've just washed my hands after going to the toilet' way.

It's always hard talking about a holiday after it has happened. Naturally people ask how it was. My conversations usually go like this:

'How was your holiday?'

'Yeah it was good thanks?' (this is the point where I make a note that they may or may not want me to expand on this)

So let's pretend you're interested in my holiday and I'll pretend like I'm good at building a cohesive and interesting story in my head that can then be filtered down and out of my mouth.

Rome is one of those places that absolutely drips with history. Around every corner, even under every footpath, history smacks you in the face or is waiting to smack you in the face if they ever get around to excavating more of it. If Paris were a woman, she would be the girl next door, if Rome were a woman, she would be a dirty blonde that probably wasn't wearing any undies.

Naples is intimidating at first. But after the initial paranoia that everyone is a pickpocket, it's got one hell of a personality. Sure, it's not as pretty as its neighbours but you come to realise that it's the slightly fat guy who has a great personality that you learn to love and who bizarrely has a rather large shoe collection on every street corner.

And then there's Pompeii, my childhood dream. I've nerdily been wanting to go there since 1992 after doing a talk where I was encouraged by my mother to dress up in Roman garb and bring a vile of sulphur for everyone to smell for dramatic effect. Truthfully, I'm lucky I didn't get beaten up for being such a brown noser. Regardless of my lack of 90's cool that I'm still waiting for, Pompeii was amazing. I prepared myself to be disappointed but I didn't have to worry about facing such lows because it was nothing but a historical high. Seriously, how can you not be thrilled by walking through a city preserved for thousands of years? And it had a brothel! You could choose your sexual positions by pointing to a picture above the door - genius! I inhaled history that day. INHALED IT. Dreams were made.

Sorrento's highlight was the locally caught fish I ate for dinner, seaside, around the corner from all the tourists.

Capri was ruined by a little something I like to call God's Piss (I just made that up actually) otherwise called rain. The good thing to come out of Capri was a fantastic in room picnic with marinated aubergine and getting to lesson 45 of French with Michel Thomas.

Sicily was not quite what I expected. But if you want to eat some amazing pizza and risotto balls, go to Chefalu on the north coast. It's a cute town with a 7/10 beach, burning sunsets and great food.

Can I tell I'm getting bored of typing?

Second wind.

Holidays are great in the fact that you want to eat everything in sight. Is 1030am too early for gelati? Hell no, have two. Holidays are not so great that after 12 days of pastries for breakfast, even the thought of custard filling only gets half an ooh. But having said, I'm definitely not complaining. Deep fried risotto balls so yummy that they stop you talking for a good two minutes. And Sicilian pizza is mind blowing - especially when it's for breakfast. Equally as delicious are crunchy filo pastry parcels filled with orange zest and ricotta.

Tired now.

Ciao.

Paris

I have muchos newsos so I’m going to feed it in as slowly as the storyline of Clark and Lois’ romance on The New Adventures of Superman.

First off, I went to Paris on the weekend.

I love Paris. I wish my mother had forced me to speak French as soon as I left the womb. It would have made me a much cuter child or at least deflected attention from the bald patch and boy looks if I was running around saying things like ‘oui maman, c’est jambon’. But unfortunately, she chose to converse with me in English and each time I go to France, my high school French gets worse and worse. Trying to dredge up lessons from 11+ years ago makes my brain feel like a sausage dog trying to walk up stairs for the first time.

I guess what I love about the city is just the feeling of oozy decadence. It’s ridiculous, rude, beautiful and proud. Walking on the white stone paths of the Luxembourg Gardens makes me feel grand. Eating a falafel in the Marais fills a hole of hunger like you wouldn’t believe. Trying to choose a cake in Laduree is almost impossible. But perhaps the most wonderful thing about it is that I can go and experience all these amazing things at the drop of a hat. I’m lucky, I know I am. For all the grey skies, rainy days and cold winters I complain about, it’s all worth it for a weekend in Paris.