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It was nice to spy again the familiar shapes of the bohemian Sydney from the sky last night after a two-week Mexican absence ... and to be in a company of Mal's mates made it even more magical! The Darling Harbour was surrounded by a strange golden misty, dewish, veil and somehow the Little Snail looked bigger from the first level than usual. The same Little Snail used to be up the road from Christopher's place in the 1980s at Bondi where so many wild wild Polish parties took place.

This time it was not a coincidence to bump into Kerrie and Fiona or Nigel and Joe or John and Bernard. What a small world too as some of the people at the table knew some people I used to work with. The world is getting smaller and smaller just like the Little Snail is getting bigger and bigger ;-) The French Bernard is like me always amazed by the fluency and the number of European languages John and Patricia Azarias speak ...

Speaking of languages and stories, the turn of the page has met the turn of the times. No, the book is not dead, but more than ever it is backlit, portable and reduced to the size of a mobile phone screen.

The thousand-year-old Japanese classic The Tale of Genji, recognised as one of the oldest novels in the world, is now available as an online download. So is The Pillow Book, the 11th-century memoir of a shogun courtierFor more and more readers, the printed page is losing out to a new way of reading in the dark of Cold River

CODA: Ach, and the world is getting more and more dangerous Who Can We Trust?