A Month of Sundays: How to Go Travelling Without Leaving Town

A humorous and honest account of how the author spent a month exploring his home city, going to many out-of-the-way places with his partner and young child, and learned to enjoy the present rather than worry about the past. At 7 a.m. on Monday 1 September 2003, the day Lucy and I celebrated our eighth not-married-but-together anniversary, we were in bed with our ten-month-old daughter Bibi lying chaperone between us when the crash of breaking glass startled us awake. Bibi wailed. I jumped out of bed and crept to the window; three men were attacking the house next door with sledgehammers and crowbars. I sighed. It had begun. James O'Loghlin was concerned. His once-peaceful mornings would now be full of dust, loud radio and miscellaneous smashing from the demolition and rebuilding going on next door. Then came the idea: each morning James and his family would explore their own city. Between the three of them they'd lived in Sydney a lifetime, but it was full of places they hadn't seen and things they'd never done. It was time to do some catching up. Surely you can't have new experiences and feel the wide-eyed excitement travel offers in a city where you've lived for twenty years or can you? A Month of Sundays is a funny and personal account of what James found when he ran away from home each day and went looking for peace, fun and the mysteries behind the dating rituals of the whipbird. It's also the story of how he tried to answer to the biggest question of them all: how the hell do I live my life?