You've Got a Friend in Me

Life was almost getting too normal. Working, fun at the weekends, and a new monotany of similar dinners and ironing during the week. But since Mitzi & Trish were living up their final week in Sydney, the monotany was forgotten as we partied through the week - at least for this week!

Monday ; Chinese takeaway night, Tuesday; Mitzi's friend John arrived from travelling South America so Pizza and beers when he arrived to stay with us, Wednesday was a large group frenzy Spanish Tapas meal in the city - awesome 8 course meal with a little too much wine, Thursday we went to a lovely Thai restaurant in Randwick and Friday night, after working hard all day the weekend began...

The main reason for my Sydney employment was a project this weekend. So after a hectic days work I couldn't wait to leave for the evenings entertainment; especially since I would have to work Sunday overtime.

I met the girls at the Hippo Lounge on the fringes of Surrey Hills for some early evening drinks and potato wedges before heading into the Gaelic Club for a little gig.

After missing out on Arctic Monkeys tickets I was sure to get the Zutons ones that went on sale about 6 weeks ago. Once our food and drinks were done, we went in and watched the support act. Not much to say here other than a weird lead singer who wore an old grey cardigan and had weird desires to wrap the microphone cord around his head. The interval came as we chatted to a few of the majority Brit & Irish crowd, discussing the merits of bad cardigans and odd stage manorisms.

Finally the Zutons made their appearance. "HELLO SYDNEY". Within 3 banging songs, the Scousers had the crowd around their pinkies. The venue was pretty small but meant the atmosphere and sound were top notch, miles better than the festival I went to back in Perth.

Buzzing after the gig (something I'd been craving for the entirety of my travels), we pushed on back to the Coogee Beach Hotel for some final farewell drinks.

Saturday arrived and was a complete contrast to Friday, the house was emotional and sad. I went to the airport to see the girls off. After a teary goodbye, I took a bus back home for a reality check. With just me and Flee the only tennants, the atmosphere had fallen away quicker than an Italian striker blown over in the penalty area.

So instead of moping around the place, we headed out to the Sydney Cricket Ground to watch the Aussie Rules footy. Flee knows the family of one of the Richmond Tigers players and so was able to get us free tickets for the away game against the Sydney Swans.

Being a cricket pitch the rest of the year, the pitch is huge. Too huge! You can barely see what's going on once the ball is half way across the oval. We drank a few beers, lapped up the atmosphere and tried our best to understand what was going on... but I swear at some point there must've been about 45-50 people on the field during play; 5 umpires, 18ish players per side, a couple of chaps in fluroescent jackets and a couple of physios, you wonder how Graham Poll would get along with this lot! Afterwards we went for drinks in the Entertainment quarter at Fox Studios (next to the ground) before I slipped off for bed.

Luckily I had to work on Sunday which helped keep my mind off of things at home. When I returned, we'd found a new flatmate...