BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.................

I spent my working life as a professional accountant, but words have always been more important to me than figures.  Perhaps this is why I was attracted to the taxation field, where the focus is on advice – written and oral – and where I could foster verbal skills more so than numerical ones.

The professional advice I gave over the years is buried and lost in old files (and remains confidential), but I’ve saved copies of speeches and other bits and pieces that may be of interest.  And in recent years I have written occasionally for pleasure………and my daughter, Laura, and son-in-law, Martin - having expressed interest and been given copies - have encouraged me to create a blog site and to post some of my stuff.

Some of the postings will describe places in Melbourne and surrounds where my son, Dan, and I have had breakfast on Saturday mornings.  This all started around seven years ago.  Although a 60-years-plus resident of Melbourne, I realised that there were many areas of the city with which I had no familiarity, and I thought the way to become better acquainted would be to visit with a specific purpose.  Dan agreed to be my companion, and since January 2005 we have been journeying to a different suburb each week for exploration and breakfast.  Of course, other pursuits are allowed to have precedence, but on average we manage our excursions on about 30 weeks each year. 

The idea is that we walk both sides of the street, noting in the process all the places serving breakfast; then we make the choice, and return for our meal.  Over the years our emphasis has changed – we used to favour those places that were able to provide sausages with a cooked breakfast.  But these days we seek out porridge and Bircher muesli.

The breakfast, while a necessary part of the ritual, is not the key part – we don’t sit down until we have scoped the whole area, checked-out the shops and other premises, noted the degree of affluence or otherwise, and formed a view about the locale. There are numerous suburbs in a city the size of Melbourne (about 3 million souls), and frequently there are several shopping strips and centres in the one suburb.  Which explains why, as of writing, we have been to over 200 precincts (and had over 200 breakfasts!) – with a couple more years in prospect before we have to re-visit old favourites. 

It is self-evident, indeed fatuous, to say that I shall add additional posts as time permits.  My life is full, and busy, and this blog site is a byway not the main thoroughfare.  Nevertheless, I expect that it will give me much pleasure, and I trust that readers will share in that pleasure.

Gary Andrews

7 June, 2011