A short trip to Sydney to visit Kelly’s family. Apart from a few brief day meetups strategically triangulated to be in locations unbound by COVID, this is the first time she has been able to spend some quality time with her mum (and one of her sisters) in over 12 months.

So whilst the girls caught up on gossip IRL, I seized the opportunity to take the Ferry into the CBD.

Mission: check out a few bookshops, nab a coffee, check out the huge half-twist of crystal toffee that is the newly completed Crown Casino, and get a measured fix exploring (hopefully) the tail end of intra-pandemic Sydney.

The ferry ride was a joy, I spent hours in the bookshops (yet emerged bookless…ye gods!), my coffee was too cold & too weak for my liking, the casino was an impressively appropriate architectural phallus and the overall Sydney vibe remained relaxed and resilient.

Even though the hand wash, QR codes and masks still run through it (wearing masks on public transport is still mandatory for example), it is – on this wet morning walk through the city- so very clear how lucky we are to have seemingly dodged the worst of the pandemic.