Wednesday: I take the day off work to meet online-friend-since-1999 Liz and her boyfriend, Alex, who live in Perth, but are in Melbourne on holiday. We go to the zoo. As usual, I've forgotten to bring my camera, but suffice to say, we see many animals. There's even a badger exhibit, but it being daytime and badgers being nocturnal, they're all hiding. There are also weighing scales that charge you a dollar to weigh yourself, as opposed to the 2p they tend to charge in England.

I see a girl who looks exactly like my online friend Meaghan did when she was eleven. She voices her admiration of my trenchcoat, which freaks me out, as Meaghan The Younger also possessed a deep love of trenchcoats and a tendency to speak to strangers.

We leave the zoo by a different exit and find some tramlines, but can't tell which side we need to wait on. Alex gets out his GPS and triangulates (by walking in a triangle), which establishes which direction is which. Back in the city, we go into a coin shop and I find an East Carribean coin shaped like a flower.

Thursday: One of my coworkers takes me outside to see a kookaburra. Sadly, I don't think it's sitting in an old gum tree, but then I know nothing about identifying tree ages and types so it might have been.

The poltergeist strikes again, and a strong carrier bag leaps, unbidden, off the sofa.

Friday: I accidentally leave my lunch at home and decide to spend the afternoon working there. I'm about to set off, when I realise I haven't yet wished my Dad a happy father's day or my brother a happy 21st (his birthday being the following day). I start composing an e-mail, in which I apologise for not making them animated cards, as I promised I would, but it was taking too long. I feel like a bad daughter and sister. Could I perhaps write a computer game for them instead?

So I set about writing a text adventure in which you have to collect a hundred thousand pounds, a helicopter, a set of steak knives in the presentation box, a little can terrier called Bobby, seven tickets to the Brazilian national mime theatre at the Riverside Studios, the complete memoirs of Donald Sinden, and a box of those little black rubber things that go "meep meep meep meep meep". (In accordance with Alexei Sayle's wishes in an episode of "The Young Ones".) It takes me three and a half hours to write, and there's some fairly nifty puzzles in it, including one that requires the command "kill bill". It's enjoyed. (But no, I'm not going to make it available to the public, as it's utterly lacking in artistic merit.)

I go home and spend several hours ironing out bugs in my "serious" game, leaving it hopefully only a couple more evenings away from completion.

Saturday: I go to Metal Mayhem and buy Nightwish's latest album. I'm charged $3.50 less than the price tag says, I think because I'm female. Despite being outraged by that kind of sexism, I love this shop.

I then go to the aquarium. Some of the display cases are amazing (including a couple of fish-filled arches you can walk under) and as it's been about eight years since I last went to an aquarium, I'm struck by how beautiful, grotesque, huge and disturbing fish and other sea creatures can be.

I make a pilgrimage to a distant goth shop. The assistant admires my Rammstein t-shirt and "Rammstein boots", but I find no clothing of interest. Despite winter solstice only being two days away, I have a couple of hours of daylight left, so I take a tram to the end of the line, then back. The view is boring, but someone's left a second-hand copy of the Australian classic "My Brother Jack" on the seat next to mine, so, assuming they won't attempt to reclaim it, I pocket it.

(If, though, by any chance, the owner is reading this and does want it back, let me know!)

I get inspired to begin yet another new novel, so I write 2000 words of it when I get back. Just as I'm about to set off for the metal night, a wooden ornament jumps off a shelf for no obvious reason.

Sunday: After much deliberation, I kiss someone male and not Bryn for the first time since October 2000. I see fit to spend the rest of my life totally celibate.

Towards the end of the night, one of the lenses falls out of my glasses, but I find the tiny little screw in my coat pocket. I go on to the goth night, and use the toilets there for the first time. There isn't space in the cubicle to stand in front of toilet and open the door at the same time, and the water in it is pink. They play the same music as always, and I spend most of my time there talking to a bloke who asks me questions like, "Is there a sociological parallel for problems with biodiversity?" It makes a nice change from, "I hate asking this, but do you come here often?" I tell him about my landlady's tendency to talk about her death in the past tense, and he tells me he's dead too and shows me the scar to prove it.

The night ends at 6.40 (as opposed to the 7.30 it ended at the last time I was there and after 8 the week before). I go to a quiet after-party type thing while waiting for the trains to start running and try to fix my glasses with a Swiss army knife. I drop the screw and it vanishes. This is the same screw that me, York-Alex and Berna once found on a dancefloor. I fix them with sellotape instead.

I miss the train by seconds. A woman sitting on the platform asks me if a train's just gone. I say yes and she curses herself for getting so engrossed in her book she missed it. I get back at 9. I need to set off again at 12.20, so I read and write instead of sleeping.

I meet online friend Ellie and we watch an Aussie rules football match between Essendon and Melbourne, along with nearly 50000 other people; the irony being that I've never been to a football match in England. (Although, of all the weird things I've done in my short life, travelling over two hundred miles to watch two international hockey matches surely rates quite highly.) I don't usually like to watch any sport, but going to a match was something I felt I should do while I was here, and I enjoy myself. I much prefer Aussie rules football to the English sort.

The tiredness doesn't hit me until 8.

My body seems to be compensating for its sleep deficiencies by giving me far more spots than befit a person of nearly twenty three who's barely eaten any chocolate in the last two months, though.