Five Days, Five Dress Codes

One of Johnny's favourite things about his new job (which he's still loving, by the way) is the complete lack of a dress code - it's a tiny company so there's just no need. You might think that would make dressing simple, but the choice of what to wear to work is actually complicated when there are no rules at all. John's natural nerd-tendency to slob around in jeans and a T-shirt is tempered by two factors - firstly, he actually likes wearing a nice suit every now and again, and secondly, he works with an italian man who dresses quite elegantly. How to reconcile the two forces?

Easy! For the last few weeks, John's been using a revolutionary scheme he calls the Five-Way Open Approach to Regalia (or FWOAR for short). What it boils down to is a gradual lowering of standards as the weekend approaches:



Monday Maximum Attack or "Going for an interview, are we?" A strong nod to Stylish Italian Man with the full suit-and-tie treatment.










Tuesday The tie is ditched (a nice relief - it often makes Johnny overheat) for a look Bec calls The Hugh Grant.







Wednesday The middle of the week is celebrated by dressing like a middle-aged man, apparently :-)










Thursday Things are starting to slacken off, hence, a nice pair of slacks.











Friday Or indeed, Pub Friday as it is almost universally known over here, requires very little effort. And the clothes are pretty casual too!

Viva Valencia

It seems every time we go to a city where we struggle with the language, that city turns on some spectacular festival, carnival or street parade to commemorate something that we're completely unable to decipher. It happened in Barcelona, it happened in Athens, and on our recent visit to orange-capital Valencia, halfway down the East coast of Spain, it happened again!

After jetting in bargain-style (1p per person each way!*) from London, we landed late on Friday night at Valencia's shiny new airport. This town has its public transport sorted too, with a metro train waiting for us down a set of escalators just beyond Customs. Are you paying attention, Melbourne? Weirdly, the town seemed pretty dead - we thought that at 10pm-ish, the streets would be full of Spaniards getting out for some pre-dinner drinks, before sitting down for dinner at about half-midnight. You know, those crazy Spanish and their late evening meals! It seemed Valencia, despite being Spain's third-largest city, is actually quite provincial. In fact, we struggled to even find a restaurant that was open at all - and when we did, it seemed to be full of fellow tourists. Weirder still, due to a major language barrier with our waitress, we ended up communicating in French! A very strange introduction to a Spanish town!

The next day we wandered in standard semi-aimless tourist fashion, quickly coming across the Plaza de la Virgen, overlooked by the handily-named Basilica de la Virgen de los Desamparados (Basilica of Our lady of the Defenceless/Homeless/Abandoned Ones).


Then, all of a sudden, while we were stopped for a coffee, all hell broke loose. The bells of the Basilica began ringing out and quickly all the other churches in town joined in, occasionally punctuated with what sounded like cannon fire. Then, from every corner of the town, marching bands started converging on our location!


The festivities continued all day, including late-night parades featuring pretty horsies.


On the Sunday we returned to the Plaza de la Virgen for a quieter coffee, only to find troupes of flamenco dancers arriving to dance on a big stage. We did not (and still don't!) have any idea what it was all in aid of, but we were very pleased to be spectators!


By now, we realised that the quiet Friday night was just the locals' way of charging up their energy for a massive weekend!

(* plus booking fees, fuel surcharges and taxes bringing it up to 12.49 per person each way...)

Gorgeous George

While we were planning our move to London, Johnny had a certain great hope for our new life: to find a friendly neighbourhood cat who would pay us semi-regular visits for milk and cuddles. We had both felt starved of feline company since leaving our cat Tuesday back in Melbourne.

As fate would have it, John's dreams were realised on the very day we moved in. We were literally turning the key in the lock, excited to finally be living in London town, and the words "now all we need is a cat" had barely escaped his lips when, out of nowhere, appeared a large ginger cat! He then proceeded to follow us into our flat and stroll around like he owned the place. We christened him George after one of the Weasley twins from Harry Potter (it's the ginger thing...)


Since then George has made himself somewhat of a regular at No 10, following the sound of Johnny's deliberately jingling keys as he walks up the path. We've discovered he lives across the road, but seems to divide his time between several of the houses in the street. A very friendly neighbourhood cat, then. We're certainly not complaining!