surely this is the last of the hot weather

I realise that I use this blog to whinge all the time (Mia is sick of hearing me complain; she obviously has a different view of what wives are there for to all the husbands of the last 10 000 years). In any case I'm not complaining, I'm being very positive and up. Surely this is the last of the hot weather until, I don't know, October-November? Look, I can almost tolerate hot weather in small doses, but when I say 'I', I mean my conscious spirit, and without wishing to spoil your enjoyment of my specially pleasurable personality, I have to say that one thing that happens a lot in hot weather is I develop eczema very quickly and it's ghastly. Yes, I know, it's all part and parcel of us wimpesque Anglo-Saxons who don't deserve the bounty clean Australian living gives us. Well, all I'm doing is saying what happens to me. I don't ask for it. I suppose I should take control or something.

Anyway, surely this is the last of the hot weather.

Meanwhile, I feel like I have forever been telling people 'I'm writing this study guide...' and I am, actually, writing a study guide and it seems to have been going on forever, but I now feel relatively confident that the end is in sight. I really believe (sucker that I am) that a couple of hours in the library tomorrow will see me right and I will be pretty much finished. It's been a lot like writing a book very quickly in my spare time about something much too important to treat so casually. But at least my colleagues have been around to make suggestions on drafts etc and stop me getting too harebrained in my textual assertions.

When my dear friend Naomi group emailed me to say she now had MySpace presence I thought, OK, I should get interested in this because I had only vaguely been aware. I can see why it's a fad along the lines of The Beatles and yoyos. It's a cross between toolybirds (sorry, well, really, just 'hi', Wayne) and Henry, Portrait of a Serial Friendster. You just grab people from all over the world and put them in your sack, and then ask others to come and admire what you've collected. My question is, when you see someone you've myspaced when you're travelling in the genuine community, do you acknowledge the myspacity of your connection, or do you regard it as a parrallel universe thing, or like telepathy? I am very confused about the whole thing, but at the same time, very excited that Gina Birch blithely added me to her friends. I am now apparently a friend to Gina Birch, whose music has meant a massive amount to me over the years as a member of the Raincoats and the Red Crayola in the early 80s. It's a thrill. I think Gina Birch is incredible. And she regards me as a friend.

The thing I was really interested in is was whether MySpace cut into, well, the third world. I did searches on African and Middle Eastern countries to see what was happening there. All the Myspacers in African countries, as far as I can see, were either white south africans or westerners stationed in Africa as soldiers or peace corps people. I know, what did I expect? Well, I thought maybe... I don't know... I had no preconceptions. By the way, if you look you'll get a false impression for a second because a lot of Americans say they're from African cities or nations I guess in the same corny spirit of claiming they're 100 years old or one inch high. Someone said they were from Djibouti, Djibouti and another person said they were from Nowhere, Nairobi or something like that - that kind of thing.

If I had a dollar for every comment on Myspace was just someone's name and another word like 'baby' or 'wazzup' and about fifteen exclamation marks, I'd be pretty happy. I suppose Rupert Murdoch thought that way too.

I like the combination of anonymity and friendliness in Myspace, anyway, I don't want to meet anyone, though, which the whole site seems to think is its main purpose. I like all the people I already know and don't need to like more. I suppose if I was a lonely youngster it would look like a bit of a smorgasbord however.