Ah!

Ah! the week after Mardi Gras.  Not that I partook in any of it this year.  Rightly or wrongly I decided to stay away from the festivities, and indeed remove myself entirely from them, by buggering off to Melbourne for the weekend.   

Ah! Melbourne.  I do love it so.  Everyone that knows me knows I feel this way about the place, so I won't labour the point here - although I wish I took a pic or two for Facebook.

Ah! Facebook.  What a funny and fickle little thing it can be.  It seems to have created an entire virtual universe of it's own and of course it's take up among the early thirtysomethings in my social circle has been reported at close to 80%.  These are my statistics, based on my Facebooked:Non-Facebooked friend ratio calculation.  Does this mean I actually have only another 20% of friends?   

Ah! statistics.  I love them.  I hoover them up whenever I can.   I am known in work to regularly browse the OECD website for fascinating figures on the GDP of nations I have neither heard of nor would I ever want to read about again.   I am a total anorak when it comes to these things.

Ah! Anoraks.  Remember them?  Not sure if anyone on this side of the hemisphere would be familiar with them but for their benefit (and it IS a wonderful piece of knowledge) an Anorak is a jacket/coat that is generally made of shiny synthetic material with padding and optional hood, for winter warmth and rain protection (in my day it didn't provide much of either).  And when I was just a wee young lad, they were all the rage among the inner-city offspring of my primary school (and any charming trendy associations of inner city upbringing a la Inner West of Sydney is NOT applicable to the scummy knackers that I am talking about). 
Myself - I would have preferred a leather coat but finances were tight.  So tight that a happy memory of mine was when my mother sent my father into "town" one Winter to buy myself and my two elder brothers some "lovely warm duffel coats" for the upcoming weather, she  somewhat naively let myself and my brothers tag along with Dad for the ride.   Now I'm not saying that my old man was an easy touch or easily misled, but we somehow managed to persuade him that Duffel coats were for peasants (they were, are, and always will be - I'd rather keep warm by carrying a lump of plutonium in my pocket) and that these shiny puffy new anoraks would do just as well and look "cooler" at the same time.   

Ah! My mother's face when we all came back through the door...