Ah Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne: would it be home without the weather? It's a Melburnian obsession: every conversation, on buses, on trains, in supermarkets and offices, hovels and palaces, hovers anxiously about the weather. What do I wear today? Will that fur-lined overcoat become uncomfortably sweaty five minutes after leaving home, when the merciless gales razoring off Antarctica suddenly transform into balmy breezes, and a wholly unexpected flood of sunshine pumps the temperature up 10 degrees in five minutes?

Yes, being "under the weather" is an occupational hazard in this vile climate, and I am fallen beneath its baleful influence. But so is everybody else I know, so I don't feel so bad. All by way of excuse for my absence the past few days. However, as consolation, permit me to direct you to a fascinating on-line forum, Critical Edge, on the challenges facing contemporary arts journalism, a discussion that ended up circling obsessively around blogs, just as Melburnians get stuck on the weather. Well worth reading all the way through, as MSM'ers (mainstream media journalists) and bloggers and assorted hybrids engage in a frank and free and sometimes energetic exchange of ideas...