Smoke lingers 'round your fingers...Train heave on to Euston...Do you think you've made the right decision this time? Oh...

Feels a bit weird to be back in London living and working. I don't feel like I've put down roots yet but it does feel kinda like being home. I think finally having my own space really makes a difference. I'm loving the new house. The landlords are really splurging on the back yard and are doing it up all fancy like. When we first moved in it was just a mudpatch but in a couple of weeks we'll have decking and grass and heaps of plants and rock gardens and even a mature Japanese maple up the back. It's gonna be tres bonza.

The new neighbourhood is something of a paradox. Our street has been yuppified and gentrified and is pretty nice. Just down the street we've some wikkid cool shops and pubs and a HUGE Tesco's just near the station ("If anyone asks, I didn't get 'em at Tesco's, ok?"). But just one street over are council estates and scrap yards and burnt out shops and gangs of hooded kiddies on bmx's with metho on their breath and a glint of hate in their eye. Or it could just be conjunctivitis. And everywhere redolent with the stench of wee. Or maybe that's just my room...

I heard an awesome new term the other day to describe a half aussie / half kiwi, such as myself. We're called "quassi's".

Went to my first West End show last week. It was called "Bill Hicks: Slight Return" and involved this english actor pretending to be possessed by the ghost of Bill Hicks and returning to earth to continue preaching his philosophy of indiscriminant drug use and dick jokes. At first I thought it would be naff cos it would just be a dude trotting out Bill's old material, but even that would have been awesome compared to what it actually was. This guy was pretending to be Bill Hicks and was doing NEW material (what?) but he had neither the intelligence, the charisma, the anger or the cutting wit that made Bill Hicks great. He just came across as an arrogant fanboy riding on the coattails of a far superior talent.

This weekend I went to the 2nd Annual International Tattoo Convention, which was wild. It was this dingy warehouse in a dingy part of East London on a dingy street called Brick Lane. The place was jam packed with tattoos and piercings and plugs and scarring and body mods and shaved bits from arsehole to breakfast. Never have I seen such a collection of the weirdest, sketchiest, dodgiest people imaginable...kinda like the crowd from every metal gig you've ever been to...or all of Paul's girlfriends. Seems like the big thing in tattoo fashion right now is Punkabilly and head tattoos. That's right, tattoos ON your head. The highlight for me was hanging out at the Suicide Girls booth (now there's some ladies you'd wanna take home to meet your mum), and the lowlight was accidentally brushing up against some fat sweaty leathery 60 year old dude with his shirt off and getting his nipple rings caught on my bag. Ewwwww! It was like touching a suitcase from a porn0 shoot...but less hot. I managed to meet a NZ tattoo artist who works in a studio here in London and her work is awesome. I'm all lined up to get my Belco Metal tatt done, so Paul and Azza better remember our drunken pact or there'll be trouble.

There's so many awesome live gigs coming up: Bill Bailey (Manny from Black Books), Ardel O'Hanlon (Dougal from Father Ted), Ross Noble (curly-haired Scouser comedian of triple J fame). There's a live performance of Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds at the O2 stadium where The Company have a corporate box. Remember being scared shitless when your dad played that album in the 70's? Wikkid. One of my flatmates, Chloe, works for a theatre producer and they're currently running Footloose: The Musical. She's getting free tickets for the house and we're all gonna go along, but frankly the rest of them are all just a bunch of tourists cos I was the only one who can actually remember the 80's...I'm the only one who can legitimately pick up their sunday deuce.

So any word on when the election is gonna be called? I'm itching to unleash my overseas voter fury in the anihillation of those Liberal feckers...not that I'm being political or nuthin'...I just hate arrogant twats.

I've got 2 weeks "on the bench" as we call it, then off to Chicago for a week and then I start my new project with reviewing a new CRM system for some company's newly-formed broadband division. Should be a hoot! Beats working on tax stuff. How's that for a joke: I leave the Salt Mines so I don't have to work for The Company over there, and when I start work for The Company over here the first project they put me on is with the Irish Salt Mines. You don't need to be Alanis Morriset to appreciate the irony in that.

Hope you're all fit and well and bristling under Howard's yoke. Drop me a line sometime...let me know you're all still alive...it's lonely out here.