thursday night i stayed up late, working so that i wouldn’t have to friday. i had plans up my sleeve! plans that were almost scuttled friday morning, when the kid woke up a little later than usual, slightly dribbly in the nose, and announced that she was really ever so not well. it turned out (or, as i chose to see it) she was quoting “charlie and lola“, to which she has lately become addicted, and i figured (chose to) that the dribble was cosmetic, so we caught the slightly later bus and made it to playschool just as the kids were starting their morning snack.

i hightailed it to badde manors, and squeezed into the corner booth in the back. i like it here; it’s kinda rumpled, and the service is friendly-tinged surliness. i like it so much i didn’t even mind the freeform jazz dee-dee-dee-dee-dee on the stereo. even when they switched over to the tibetan chanting over a dancebeat that my yoga teacher used to play during class, it didn’t jar. well, ok, it jarred a little. when i first started coming here, over a decade ago, i didn’t realise it was vegetarian (although maybe the rumpled surliness should have been a clue?), because meat has never been the main event for me. but then i noticed that sometimes it was hard to get people to come along with.

the thing is, you would not feel like you were missing out if you ordered — as i did, yesterday — the mediterranean breakfast. when it arrived at the table, i think i may have gasped, or at least, inhaled audibly. the previously surly waitress caved in and smiled a little. “enjoy that,” she allowed.

and how can you not? four wedges of toasted turkish bread, topped with fried eggs, sprinkled with za’atar; fried haloumi; fried eggplant; pickles; olives; slices of tomato and cucumber. a veritable bazaar on a plate, and the only downside to such generosity is that if you try to work it such that you are alternating bites of everything, instead of say, eating all the lovely crunchy, salty, melty haloumi in one go, the cheese would have cooled down by the time you’re halfway through, and taken on the squeaky-between-the-teeth consistency which is less than ideal.

but it was otherwise perfect, perfect with a pot of actual, brewed chai. too many cafes serve damn chai lattes made up with too sweet flavoured syrup, but this handsome teapot is full of leaves and twigs, pours four glasses of spicy, not-too-sweet tea, and the last serve gives you a heartening gingery warmth in the back of your throat.

in a little over an hour i was well-fortified, though perhaps a little too distended in the belly, to try on a pair of $18 jeans at target up the street. i’d been looking forward to seeing the veronicas’ new fashion line, and although i liked the little chain with the dangly plastic punkrock charms hanging off a miniskirt… it was all just too red and black, and besides, everything was child-sized 7 to 14. well! just the jeans then.

things were going according to plan: i met up with an old flying monkey at the UTS gallery for the fun exhibition, + & – = X, 20 years of typo-graphics from the tokyo type directors club, before adjourning for long, long lunch at xic lo in chinatown. it’s not especially tasty here, but today at least, the summer rolls were fresh, and the “healthy drink” — barley, ginko nuts, dried longan, red dates and strips of seaweed in a sweet brown syrup, topped with a hillock of shaved ice — did a good job of pretending it wasn’t just a glass of sugar water.

and then suddenly the afternoon was mostly over, and it was time to spring the kid from playschool. i found her out back, shoeless and lightly dusted — like a cinnamon donut — with sand from the pit, and we headed back up broadway for an afternoon bun at breadtop with some good folk from a distant past. there are people with a grudging and uneasy relationship with facebook, but having orchestrated recent reunions with long-lost friends, over facebook, over baked goods no less, i cannot say that it is a bad thing.

nellie?