RIGHT SAID ED | In less than a month London is going to be transformed. Not from Olympic fever or Trenton Oldfield histrionics (fingers crossed) but from a righteous celebration that will be the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

RIGHT SAID ED | Forget Kony. Forget the Mayan prophecies. Forget Bieber, One Direction, Charlie Sheen (and any other headline grabbing celebs). Forget the Arab Spring and the US Elections. Forget everything! Because in 2012, London is all you need to know.

RIGHT SAID ED | Is it just me or is Twitter all the rage at the moment?

RIGHT SAID ED | What happens in London, the capital of rain, when a bit of drizzle falls on the tracks? Pandemonium! That’s what happens.

RIGHT SAID ED | Apparently yesterday, the third Monday of January, was the unhappiest day of the year! But I just don’t get the hysteria.

RIGHT SAID ED | And so you have safely negotiated another New Year’s Eve! Well done and welcome Australian Times – 2012. What a year we have to look forward to.

RIGHT SAID ED | 2011 has been an action packed year for Australian Times. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, our readers and our writers, for contributing to such an awesome year.

RIGHT SAID ED | It’s that time of year when inevitably my expat Aussie mind starts thinking of home. Thinking of the sun and the surf and my mates playing cricket on the beach. Of Christmas with the fam. Of an Aussie summer and cold VBs on the back verandah.

RIGHT SAID ED | If you’re reading this and your calender hasn’t flipped into 2012, then you still have time to donate to the thing that is growing on my top lip – yep, my Movember moustache! You still have time to donate to anyone’s for that matter.

RIGHT SAID ED | It’s fitting really, that on the banks of the River Thames that’s where I bumped into Tony ‘budgie smugglers’ Abbott.

RIGHT SAID ED | I’ve got to hand it to the Poms. Watching Guy Fawkes Night in and across the UK is one of my greatest thrills.

RIGHT SAID ED | Just how sensitive are some people?

RIGHT SAID ED | I was honoured last Thursday with one of the biggest privileges of my life. I was royally invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. Needless to say it was one of the most amazing nights of my life.

RIGHT SAID ED | Australians living in the UK are a fairly tight community. We drink together, we play together, we travel together and together we reserve the right to whinge about the weather and whinge about the whinging Poms.

RIGHT SAID ED | Cockroaches. For some, that one simple word can evoke fear, revolt and panic. And no, I’m not talking about Queensland rugby league fans.

RIGHT SAID ED | I’m not too sure whether to love an ‘Indian summer’ or not! Of course I love any opportunity when the sun decides to shine in England and I can do as the Poms do and find the nearest green space, strip naked and marinate in the sunny goodness. But…

RIGHT SAID ED | It was my birthday last week and as I prepared to celebrate turning yet another year ‘younger’, it dawned on me that sometimes in England, the Poms have things round the wrong way a little.