Preposterously likable. It's the phrase I remember most from the Writers' Festival. Why do we crave it so much, being likable? Preposterously suggests trying, I think. He's talking about McCain. A politician. And how else do you get elected except by being likable? I think about all the things I do to try to be likable. I wouldn't elect me. Naomi was certainly trying. But she's a woman so she has to. Look at you, you'd do anything for a warm look.

It's cold but the house is preposterously tidy. Inspections are motivating. We look inside another house, and it's mostly not tidy. It's a house divided into nine people's homes. We only look in six of them, but that seems like more than enough in one afternoon. I try to think of the most interesting thing I saw in six peoples' homes in a fifteen minute period. It was almost a lime green retro bedside clock. It wasn't Barbara Cartland on the wall, because we could have seen that anyway on the sign outside. I think it was a bath on legs in a kitchen so crowded that you could put out your hand and touch the hot plate while you were soaking.

At drinks in the perfect house there are lots of children, which isn't quite perfect. One of them has a tantrum and then comes back to announce that she's simply overtired. Others eat twisties from a bowl and that keeps them quiet. There's a man with Bert Newton jokes. Almost everyone lives in the neighbourhood. Arthur shakes my hand and smiles.

Di brings coffee for the origami making baby wranglers. Ham and lentil soup. Ratcat's not there. It's scaring away the cockatoos. I'm winning Scrabble but there's yellow sun against a stormy sky and we head to the Courthouse. Tooheys Old and initiation stories from Illinois. Then I search every book shop on the strip for Muriel Spark.