It seemed to be one of those 'nothing'� days that are so frequent in cities like Hobart. The ones where the sky is not blue or black but just '� white, transparent ' as though the very heavens had given up on us all and had taken themselves away to some more active place. I imagine the skies in Brazil or Bali never do that. But Hobart chugs and Hobart strolls along, and never dances, and perhaps we don't deserve a sky. We always have our wind, after all. The wind never gives up on trying to blow away our cobwebs.

The air smelled of nothing and of everything: spice smells from the Indian takeaway mingled with freshly set asphalt and smoke from the Road-workers' bent cigarettes. The perfume sprayed by the rain from yesterday was fading, as perfume does with age, into the brick walls of the cafes and shops, who breathed in its scent and smiled, welcoming customers, inviting them in to the miniature worlds of beauty products and books. And the world music store smelled of laughter and 1970's vinyl.

I was wearing my maroon velvet jacket because, even though it was February, it still pays to dress warmly in Hobart ' you never know when a sudden gust from the Antarctic will hurtle through and ruin a perfectly nice sunbeam. You can sometimes smell the fragrance of seal blubber as its particles hurtle through, alone and lost in this strange grey city. And besides, I like my maroon velvet jacket. I think it makes me look rather bohemian which, of course, I'm not.

My husband, Colin says he prefers me in no clothes at all, whenever I ask, but of course, that isn't practical in our climate. He says he prays for global warming to reach Hobart.

North Hobart was busy, as it always is in the middle of the day, with people who would rather eat than work. I felt like dolmattakis, from the Turkish restaurant ' they seem to have a crispness to them that is uncommon in dolmattakis. I could smell their tang and frailty through the open windows, through which I saw a fat man laughing, and a thin girl scowling.

But I hadn't come down here for dolmattakis. I'd come down here for a ripped off slip of paper from the laundry noticeboard. And dreams of dragons.

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