I guess most of you have heard that I didn't get my second year visa and so will be coming home. God damn the economy!! I am so sure that if I had applied before Christmas they wouldn't even have checked, just like all the other people who got theirs illegally!!!! ARSE! Anyway its irrelevant now. A 'moot point' as I believe they say. I will be arriving in Heathrow on the 5th May and will be around for 3, maybe 4 months at an absolute push. Please form an orderly queue 
I'm pretty gutted to be leaving Melbourne and Richmond, especially. As I always do I have built up quite a little network of routines and habits around the place which will be sorely missed when I leave. I will no longer be able to leave our junk mail in No. 19's mailbox, go to KFC in my jammies or get free drinks in the Riser. No more shall I enjoy the commute to work - and I do, I really do. I feel like a grown-up normal part of society. Never again will I be 2 kms down the road from Yarra Stadium Park; home to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Hisense Arena, Rod Laver Arena, Olympic Stadium and the Victoria Stadium; soon-to-be home of the Melbourne Storm NRL team. I am a supporter of the Melbourne Broncos and enjoy my late-night breakdowns of how the Richmond Dons are doing with the BP man after work on Saturday nights.
It is the over-friendly, slightly arrogant way that Australians have about them - the way which I so loathed and couldn't fathom when I first got here - which I have come to....alright, not quite like, but have certainly got used to. The perpetual pessimissm of the English is a constant joke here and a character trait which, although I wholly adhere to, still annoys the hell out of me! I must try and be more laidback!!
See you all in 3 weeks.
Will have the taxi waiting at the airport for you.
Dad xx