Yesterday contained a relaxing afternoon of browsing through secondhand bookshops on Glebe Point Road with the Coaxer. The Coaxer has a high speed, glittering intelligence, which I very much like, and the ability to express herself with dazzling clarity and skill, which I love. I greatly enjoyed being in near proximity to her. She'd also come up with her own anagram for "Geri and Houston," which was "Hi, not dangerous."

Afterwards I walked over to Chippendale to interview Greg Shapley. I suddenly realised that Chippendale should actually be spelt Chip 'n' Dale, and that Newtown and Redfern, just nearby, might be better off being called Skubidu and Tominjeri.

The last part of the walk was frightening: once I got off Cleveland Street, and closer to the house, several stray packs of angry children loomed into view, throwing rocks everywhere and mouthing off at anyone in earshot. I wasn't much bothered with the verbal abuse, but I did develop a realistic concern about meeting an airborne rock. Despite the presence of a famous university a short distance away, I felt like I was strolling through Beirut on National Rock Throwing Day.

Greg is just about to release his debut CD, so we had a chat about that. But the interview was conducted under less than ideal circumstances. In addition to all the noises coming from outside (which included police sirens, fighting and the ever-present whistling of flying rocks), we also had to contend with Oscar and Taco, two absurd dogs. Oscar is a kind of criminal lunatic, and Taco is very sweet and not too bright. Both of them kept alerting to us to all the noise outside by making a lot of noise inside.

(Note for future interviews: try to conduct them somewhere peaceful. It may not even be worth the bother of setting up a tape recorder if you happen to be in a bowling alley, or an airport, or Beirut.)

Greg, who's as intelligent and as underground as anyone I know, voluntarily used the word "marketing." But not in a financial sense: he was just interested in alerting people to what he was doing. He made me realise I have never devoted even a second's thought to this subject, and perhaps I should. Along the way, perhaps I could also try to figure out what I'm doing. Perhaps I could make some notes in my notebook, which is now being safely looked after by a sturdy leather notebook protector.

...

As a general thing, I've noticed that I feel healthier in Sydney. I'm still walking everywhere, as is my custom, but this is far more exercising here than in Melbourne. Whereas Melbourne has long straight streets, Sydney has a jagged shoreline and a strange geographical feature called "hills."