Brunch

Considering this is a country that had a whites-only immigration policy until relatively recently, the non-white immigrants have been making up for lost time since things changed. I suppose you don't get a reflective cross section living in Sydney; the honey-pot that attracts most immigrants to come and live in Australia, but it's certainly multi-cultural these days and as far as I can tell, it doesn't cause much trouble.

That doesn't mean that the immigrants don't stick together and live in enclaves because they do, but in general it seems to work, which makes me wonder whether it's down to the government's tough stance on the immigrants themselves, and in particular, their view that if you came to live in Australia, you live as you please providing you respect that this is a country with a white anglican heritage. There doesn't seem to be the same racial tension I feel in Britian.

Being British, I'm sort of used to living alongside Pakistanis and Indians. Here in Sydney your neighbours are much more likely to be from Lebanon or China or another south east Asian country.

I haven't spent much time in Asia, three weeks in Thailand and a couple of days in Hong Kong is pretty much my limit, but it was enough time to pick up on the cultural differences and to realise that people from this part of the world have different expectations and different ideas of what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. This evening at the gym for example, I spotted a naked chinese lady shaving her legs in the steam room. I'm assuming it wasn't an isolated incident because the management have actually stuck a notice on the wall which reads "Please Refrain From Shaving Your Legs in the Steam Room". Their error, of course, was to write the sign in English; Cantonese or Thai or Mandarin might have been more effective.

It's not the only sin against western culture I see committed in the changing rooms. Others include south-east Asians sitting on neat piles of other people's clothes while they tie up their trainers and the same people sitting naked on other people's towels after they get out of the shower. And there's a whole load of other stuff too horrible to write about here. It's funny, I'm probably seeing as much Asian culture as Australian culture in Sydney. Perhaps we should have gone to Coober Pedy instead.

Anyway, this morning one of the sofas has disappeared from outside our complex, which is lucky because we had another downpour last night. The other one is looking even more sorry for itself since a good soaking and the departure of its twin.

As Darren had been working nights, I took Ella down for a walk along the seafront and brunch at Coogee and met up with a lady called Lucy who I met in the admission queue at Sydney Aquarium a couple of weekends ago. I do realise this sounds a bit desperate, but the thing you have to understand about being an expat abroad is that you learn not to waste any opportunity to make new friends, particularly not ones from your own culture, and in my case, especially not ones from the north west as they tend to offer the closest match to my own sense of humour. They get Peter Kay - the aussies have never even heard of him.

In any case, although it was me that struck up the conversation, it was Lucy who suggested taking my phone number and Lucy who rang me to arrange brunch this morning, just before she disappeared into the giant shark's mouth and turned left towards to potato cod. If she'd been Australian, I probably wouldn't have heard from her again - remember Britney's promise we'd meet up this week? It went the same way as Niamh Dawson's mum suggesting she cooked us a roast dinner this weekend and promising she'd call.

Lucy and Paul are from Clitheroe in Lancashire and they have a daughter (Imogen) two months older than Ella. They left the UK seven years ago and lived in Auckland until Lucy's job was transferred to Sydney eight weeks ago. Unlike us, they had full relocation assistance (practical and financial) and have shipped 98% of their belongings across the water. No crappy top-loader washing machine for this lady.

We sat on the beach steps with take out coffee watching the girls chase one another on the sand. Paul was wearing a woolly hat.

I had a friend called Jo at school. Her dad used to wear hats exactly like that to go to the chippy because he could put his fish supper on his head and the hat would keep it warm on the journey home. We're not quite so desperate during the Australian winter, but it says something when a pom think it's cold.

"So what do you think of Sydney so far?" I asked

"Well, I'm really surprised how cold it is" she replied. "We have central heating in the house we're renting, which is like, rare as rocking horse shit. We have it on all the time".

"Lucky you. I'm freezing. Last night was a real two-dogger"

"Two dogger?"

"Yeah, it's a new Australian term I've learnt. I'm trying to learn them all. A one-dog night would be when it was cold enough to have a dog lying on your bed to keep you warm. A two-dog night is twice as cold.

And what about creepy crawlies. Have you seen the cockroaches or Huntsman spiders yet?"

They both looked horrified.

"No. And we didn't have nasty creepy crawlies in New Zealand either. What do they look like?"

"Well I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the full-grown Huntsmans are exactly like tarantulas, though their legs are a bit skinnier. Anyway, they're dead hairy and they have a beige stripe on their backs. And the cockroaches.."

Paul jumped in, his eyes like saucers - it's clear Lucy's going to receive minimal back-up when it comes to removing unwanted critters at night. "I've heard they're huge"

"Yeah, and they fly" I said. This was definitely news to them, and not welcome news either. Like me, it had never crossed their mind these buggers might be upwardly mobile. "Sorry to have to tell you that as well. But look, don't worry about the Huntsman, it's not poisonous and it's actually quite useful because it eats flies".

Christmas minus six days.