A lot to answer for

I got very excited in New York over Christmas. There were many reasons for the excitement, but the one that made me stop in my tracks and walk a few steps back to check out a poster on a billboard was the discovery that the writers of The Nanny Diaries have finally gotten around to producing a sequel. This may be news to some - those in the UK, certainly, where it's not destined to land on shelves for another month or so - but to quite a few, it will be no shock. It was out in New York, it was out in Australia, and it made the journey back from Melbourne safely stowed in L's luggage until it was pounced on by me and read in a flash.

It's taken me a little while to digest what I read there. The book was lacking several things, not least of which was the fantastic alliteration of the Harvard Hottie - now he has a name, somewhat disappointingly, and is extremely absent for a large chunk of the book. The years have rolled by faster in Nanny's New York than in the real world, though, and suddenly Nanny is jaded, nostalgic and approaching an early mid-life crisis.

Gone also is the biting but disturbing critique of the wealthy society families. It's not nearly as surprising now to discover the truth behind something Cherry told Ponyboy in The Outsiders a few decades ago: It's rough all over. We've been presented with the dilemma of the rich child who has everything they want except the love and attention of their parents often enough to have become desensitised to it. And if we wanted to know what happens when the children grow up and reach high school, well, we've had Gossip Girl to instruct us on the difficulties of their lives. The parties, the clothes, the dash to spend cash - it's all too familiar.

The difference is that Kraus and Mclaughlin set their novel just as it was all revealed as a sham. They hint at the outcome before the story even begins, with a quote about Bernie Madoff's relationship with his sons. The makings of something a little more serious than the usual chick lit romp are already in place - even if they just re-use the framework from The Nanny Diaries. But somehow, it all falls flat.

Maybe it was me. I've read a whole lot more books with pink covers featuring cartoons of impossibly thin but beautifully dressed girls. I've seen Gossip Girl, and the episodes focusing on what happens when one of the rich bastards gets caught out. But whatever it is, somehow, Nanny just comes across as a little spineless and whiny as she hangs out with her former school mates, swans around town getting paid and enormous amount of cash to do very little, it seems, and fails to stand up for those who deserve it. Nanny, the great defender of the unloved, the champion of the children, has gotten all growed up and lost something in her years living abroad with her world-saving husband.

Still, for any who haven't read it yet, don't take my word for it. Read the follow up to the book that is credited with lifting the lid on Upper East Side Manhattan. Take a peek into the sort of lifestyle we can only dream about. Then follow it up with lashings of Gossip Girl; because really, who doesn't wish that they at least had the option to reject that lifestyle?

Waxing lyrical

It's enough to make a girl get homesick. Reading the Melbourne newspapers online, I stumbled across an ode to Melbourne's arcades and laneways. Sure, it's advertising. It's selling a product that is, in turn, selling the bars and shops that haunt the back alleys of the city - the hidden gems that make Melbourne a place that takes some knowing. But reading through the list and seeing so many old haunts and places that I always meant to get to but never have, as well as a few I'm not as familiar with, well, it made the yearnings to be back in the Garden State that little bit stronger.

You can read it for yourself. See if you find yourself drifting towards the allure of Koko Black (incidentally, for any non-Melburnians who stumble across this, you don't just go there to buy truffles and the like; the hot chocolates are also just as good...and in the Block Arcade there's a fantastic chocolate shop as well. Or there used to be. Please god let it still be there). They may have missed out other gems, some whose names I can't even remember (the bar on the old town square? Anyone? I know it's something-Below and was designed by Six Degrees...that it's a great place to grab a drink on a sunny day, propped up on a bar stool outside in the sun). There are places outside of the city grid just as well worth mentioning that are missed. The Belgian Beer Cafe Bluestone - whoever thought of putting a pub in the grounds of the Institute for the Blind? It's genius.

But there you have it. Homesickness in a very concise dosage. All the things that Melbourne has that aren't weather dependent, that make it one of my favourite cities, a place that you have to spend time in, to get to know, like the quirks of an old friend. I've got less than one hundred days left living in London now. In around 150, I will be back in my home town, pounding the pavements, wandering the streets, searching for a job. And I might just stop off in Degraves St on my way out of Flinders St Station.