A perfect Scrabble day.

11:19pm – Stormy weather has returned unconstrained. I woke this-morning to a steel-grey sea thrashing the coast for the sin of being the first obstacle to the mighty South Pacific. All day the wind has howled, and the training for the City2Surf got suspended with the advent of serious rain.

Instead I got down to business. Picked that old acoustic up and began working on 3 songs I’ve been working on. As well as finally trying to get to grips with playing the album tracks on my own with just the guitar… a daunting prospect, given the production style of the record. I haven’t played live for years. The last incarnation of g-raff was in 1997, back in Northern Ireland. Seems like a lifetime ago, which in many ways, it is. A different me, a different Ireland – I would never have believed that just 6 years later I would writing from Sydney, from a country where the same queen’s head is on the coins, but no-one knows why, and certainly no-one cares. On the subject of coins, I have to say that the UK’s coins are still the most beautiful in the world. No debate.

D. roasted a duck for lunch today. A 24 hour operation as she had to prepare the bugger yesterday. We hung it up on a coathanger above the cooker for want of those murderous hooks you see in Cantonese steam-pot restaurants in the chaos of Chinatown. Sorry, vegetarians. It was WICKED!! Lovely stuff. Gave me the fuel to add some touches to the site, in its ever-expanding nonsensical ivy-style propagation. What wall am I climbing, though, and what is over the other side? Who knows?