Melbourne II

I think I will wait until tomorrow to write the long "what I have done in Melbourne" blog....It has been a good stay and I like the city enormously.

There is much less "attitude" than there is in Sydney...It is the kind of city our Aunt Jane would have loved because people are talking about whose grandmother married whom....I had a terrific dinner last night with my pals Dacre (it is pronounced like "acre" with a "d") and Jenny Smyth...decidedly not Smith!...Dacre is the retired commodore of the Australian navy, Jenny the granddaughter of the Symes family which founded the AGE in 1856...she is also the daughter of Rudger (sic?) Haggard's brother...he being a prolific and wildly popular pommie writer of early in the last century....we went to a French place...a charming restaurant with terrific oysters and escargots from the vinyeards and duck and the inevitable molten chocolate dessert which seems to have swept the world sort of like those "Kilroy was here" signs of my childhood (something no doubt about which you have never heard).

Just now I am all dressed up in a coat and tie waiting for the Smyth's chauffeur to pick me up for a dinner party for 8 they are giving for me....it should be interesting!