Holidays sweet holidays

Ah how sweet it is... to drink beer all afternoon with good friends on a Sunday, go see some live music and wind up eating chocolate on the couch in front of a cheesy movie before crawling off to bed.

After a hectic last couple of days in Perth which consisted of late nights finishing folios and last-minute packing and list-checking, it feels nice to have a few days off to sleep in and relax.

Melbourne had been great so far, I can really see myself coming back to live here somewhere down the track. The buildings and streets just have so much more history and atmosphere than Perth- I think I'm going to flip out in Europe :P

It was great catching up with all our ex-Perth friends last night in Fitzroy- our original choice of cafe was full so we became like a snowball rolling around the backstreets, picking up people one-by-one until we ended up rolling right back into the same cafe half an hour later to find a table empty and waiting.

After getting in a few jugs of beer, lots of conversation and a bang-up pub meal round the corner, we bit the bullet and went along to a live performance from the one and only Peter Combe. For those of you who are struggling to recognise where you know this name, cast your mind back 15-20 years... to a time before "wiggles" where all you needed to entertain kids was an acoustic guitar, bad hair and a bright waistcoat.

It was a surreal experience- to walk into a packed (and probably sold out) venue, filling with 20something hipsters alternately singing along at the top of their lungs and falling into giggling fits at the sheer hilarious experience of it all. There were so many songs that I thought I'd long forgotten, only to find myself singing along after the first few words... and the between-song banter was dynamite, with Peter exclaiming how much we'd all grown in the last 20 years :D
They played all the classics- Toffee Apple, Newspaper Mama, Spaghetti Bolognese, Mr Clickety Clane; as well as a few of the more obscure hits like Bag Dad and Blowflies.

After the first encore, the audience refused to let Peter (and trusty piano wizard Phil) away so easily, so they came back to pronounce that they had played their entire reportoire and would have to play Newspaper Mama one more time.

We staggered away emotionally drained and yet spiritually nourished, feeling a warm connection with each other having experienced such a mind blowing performance, and some of us even have the signed cd boxsets to prove it

-Liam