fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Jen's friend Lizzie was stopping with us for a week and I was happy to haul the poor girl around with me on my never-ending attendance of the latest free gallery event, movie or lecture. The first night she stayed with us we went together to see a brilliant Indian movie at the National Portrait Gallery. While the story itself was an unremittingly sad and emotional one of a poor family – the almost wholly female audience at one time couldn't keep their sadness contained and in one moment sighed, sniffed and knuckled away tears together in a testament to the exquisite emotional tension created – there were moments of extraordinary emotion, especially between the brother and sister, that made my heart ache for my brothers and sister. At the death of the sister I thought I was going to start bawling. Terrible form really. In direct contrast to the film's virtuoso performance on my heart strings on Thursday, Friday I got to exercise the cynical and disdainful muscles of my wan

I was a real groupie the other day, for the first time since I left Perth. I usually prefer to listen to live music cabaret style, with a table of good friends, liquid refreshment and no risk of a head-banging fan landing on my newly polished toenails! (my toe nails are ugly enough as it is). So I am a reluctant gig-goer at the best of times. One thing I do like to do, though, is support the bands that contain people I know and tonight I was finally invited to a friend's brother's gig. Walking into The Standard was like walking into the Grosvenor in the good old days of 2000 – plenty of boys with perfectly messy barnets, plenty of girls in perfect alternative outfits and the smattering of normal people who are usually old chums of or related to the band. I was introduced to Kate's brother - red-headed like his sister, he sported a flawlessly coiffed seventies mullet in deep copper. I was impressed with the grooming. Then I noticed that the crowd had a soothing seventies mul

I left a few songs into the headliner's set and headed for the tube, absorbed in my own reverie and itching to get home. I settled on the seat next to the window and stared out onto the platform. As the tube moved off, it kept pace with the passengers moving along the platform to the exit, and my pensive stare was obviously too much for one stylish young man. In a gesture of familiarity that is usually unwelcome in London, he tapped the window and smiled cheekily at me. A freely given smile with no hope of a return is all too rare in this town apart from babies and, lately, cute men from Blackhorse Lane ...

Thursday night was another sharp reminder of just how nostalgic I can get. I was out at the thoroughly antipodean Slug and Lettuce in Fullham for the first time in almost five months. Since then I had moved to Old Street and started going out to bars where my accent was the only Australian accent in the place. My subsequent move to Leytonstone placed me even further from the Kangaroo valleys of South and West London and deep in the Indian and black end of London. Being back in the bosom of London's Australian population was a shock for me on Thursday. Firstly, they just don't make boys like they do in Australia. My nights out in Old Street were nights when I was the same height as the crowd and too many men were disregarded because they were just too short. The only men that topped me were the black guys. Try to make your way through the crowd at the Slug, though, and you are nose to nipple with chests I took for granted back home and was all too happy to oogle again. I

I digress though! (don't I always when I talk about men?) The part of the evening that stays with me the most, however, beyond the shameless eyeballing of chunky six-packs and broad shoulders, was my catching sight of what was being played on the big screens in the pub. They were playing a DVD on Taj Burrows – champion surfer and native of Yallingup, the town I have holidayed in each summer since I was born. I miss Yallingup beyond anything else in Perth – I often go entire weeks waking up each morning in a haze of sadness because I dreamt aching dreams of rolling surf, sweeping headlands and endless empty beaches. As each shot of Taj surfing panned out to embrace the familiar bush covered dunes and arching line of pristine sand of Yallingup bay, I took the unexpected step of physically dealing with my frustration – I stamped the ground and moaned 'goddamnit I want to go home.' My last photo of Yallingup beach before I left Perth. Cave's House gardens in Yallin

Monica and I went for a walk around the lake the other day in a surprising haze of warmth and sun. We stopped to watch the ducks up-ending themselves in the water to graze the reed-lined bottom. As one bird rocked his head down and his bottom up my entire body felt, for a moment, the phantom sensation of the water gymnastics I used to conduct while floating in the ocean back home. I realised then that I have not been swimming for almost a year now, and I was feeling the lack. One of the first books on modern England I read was Alan Coren's Golfing for Cats, in which there is a chapter on the horrors of the British Health System, including a little moment where an arm needs to be amputated to rid a patient of his splinter. I have been literally terrified of the pools here since Monica recounted a tale that seemed to dwarf the splinter episode. Her father stubbed his toe in a public pool here and contracted a blood infection that nearly cost him his leg, as the doctors here were no

Now, I am going to do a little bit of shameless promotion here – I would write a huge post filled with my own thoughts on the Jack Vettriano exhibition, but I am disinclined to repeat what has already been put succinctly by my fellow fans. So if you want to read a really excellent review of a fabulous exhibition – with illustrations – go to Monica's blog for her post . The rest of the blog is well worth a look too ... and not just because I star often and, I feel, rather fabulously! I first saw Jack Vettriano's work when my brother's girlfriend bought him a print of the Singing Butler, and became a real fan when I walked into a little gallery in Woodstock in Oxfordshire last year and saw a whole room of his prints and bought a signed copy of one of his books. Our entire household are huge fans of the Scottish artist and all our thoughts come out in Monica's essay on the topic. What I will say is that Vettriano has a sense of narrative that echoes my own. When I entere