Strange things happen when you move back 'home' after a long jaunt overseas. Things that took on monumental importance while away suddenly seem insignificant. Like the AFL grand final, for instance. In 2009 I convinced some poor unsuspecting Americans to join me in an Irish pub full of Aussie expats to watch St Kilda take on Geelong. The 2010 draw between St Kilda and Collingwood found me in a dark, dank Hostel basement pretending it wasn't two degrees and five in the morning but a sunny, spring afternoon in beautiful, football-mad Melbourne. Admittedly last year I can't remember what I was doing but I had a two month old baby and in all seriousness it probably wouldn't have mattered which country I was in, the game would have been a crazy blur in which I pretended that I knew that a) I was awake and b) what I was watching.
Anyway, given all this, you'd think that this year I might have organised a BBQ or gone to a pub to watch the game on the big screen. That I would have been genuinely excited to be back in Melbourne on 'the last weekend in September'.
Turns out, not so much. In fact, surprisingly I felt quite ambivalent about the whole thing and, with Emilia being too little and Matthias not having lived in Melbourne long enough to be indoctrinated into the game, we went wine tasting instead.
