Boris

It was a very reluctant hello we said to Sydney this morning; we've become so blase about the place now I hardly bother to look out of the window as we glide past the harbour bridge on our approach.

One of the things I've noticed about coming home to Sydney is how quickly the climate can alter while you've been away. You can fly out of Sydney in winter and return a week later and find it looks like spring all over the place. Today it looks (and feels) like an Australian summer and I've noticed even the trees we face across the gully have changed colour since we left.

When we got back to the flat there was the usual welcoming committee, including a sizeable cockroach crawling acrss the carpet in our bedroom and another (medium-sized)huntsman spider in the stairwell, only this one was too busy to notice us; busy scooping up his lunch in one of his right hands and dropping it into his mouth using a sort of clumsy three point action. I asked Darren to go out and kill him but he refused and seeing as I'm too scared to do it myself, he's still there, for all I know slurping happily on a skinny flat white from Gloria Jean's

Our week in Noosa has left us feeling relaxed, though we ended up on a double date last night because we'd already agreed to meet Lucy and Paul in their apartment at five o'clock when Pippa and David suggested dinner at the yacht club at seven. Much as we've resolved to stop stressing ourselves out with social arrangements back home in the UK, we found ourselves doing exactly the same in Noosa, just because it was too difficult not to.

Anyway, in the event there were no tables at the yacht club so we ended up eating take-away on our balcony until almost midnight. Pippa and David are our NBFs (new best friends) and we're looking forward to catching up with them when they get back to Sydney.

Until then, I'll just be here, keeping my eye on Boris in the stairwell, who's worryingly close to crawling onto our balcony.