a tasty juice to have is pear, cucumber and ginger.
sunday culminated in a waffle cone of badde manors sour cherry sorbet and pistachio gelato, and a detour into the side streets of ultimo to admire a row of decades old corrugated iron warehouses. before that, a two hour walk through the inner west to the inner inner west. before that, a big fat greek breakfast, which due to surprise “sydney weekender”-induced crowd delays, became brunch, which by the time it was served, became lunch.
whatever, it was tasty. “greek beans and scrambled eggs” on the menu, but plated up, it was beans (fat creamy white beans and al dente green beans) cooked in tomatoes and onions, eggy eggs, fried haloumi, avocado, baby spinach and a basket of turkish bread toast. oh, and a cup of tea. after which the boy’s mother cheerfully said, “round the corner for cake and coffee?”
it is a sad and unprecedented day when i turn down cake, but i didn’t think i would eat again until, um, tomorrow. obviously, three hours later, the ices proved me wrong.
saturday was napped away after crumpets and jam. i awoke midafternoon to stroll up to the corner and procure a fillet of snapper, a sweet potato and a little knob of ginger. a couple hours later, there were three bowls of fish porridge eaten as quickly as the scalding factor would allow, while watching potato battle on “iron chef”.
friday ended dismally at the table of a portuguese restaurant in petersham. maybe because it had started on such a high — double plates of pippis in garlic — there was only one other direction for the evening to proceed.
so, there was this girl visiting from england, friend of a friend, who due to a bottle of wine, or the professional requirements of being a barrister, or something, could not stop talking. towards the end of the night, after the boy (to my right) started telling her about travelling through pakistan, she (to my left) thought it appropriate to cut me out of her line of sight, lean across me on several occasions, and gesticulate with her hands not five centimetres from my nose. she really wanted to go to pakistan to scatter her father’s ashes, and to find pakistan and have it find her, and not be like when she went to india and was disappointed to not finally feel a sense of belonging, and —
oh bloody hell, shut up, and remove your hands from in front of my face, and your wine glass from my bit of table. no kiss goodbye for you when we all finally end up on the pavement at midnight. pah!
the oven roasted salt cod was meaty and good, and there were so many paprika-sprinkled potatotoes i couldn’t even meet them halfway. if only i could have shared the cab back to the city with them, instead of non-stop talking indian barrister girl from the UK.
the evening suddenly improved when the folk singer girl support act finally left the stage. it wasn’t that she sang badly, and really, she only played her guitar out of key once. her banter seemed a little self-indulgent, given that if she had not chatted as much, she could have gotten off stage quicker. maybe it was just that we thought bruce cockburn would come on at 9.30, and since it was actually folk singer girl who started keening about war at that time, we figured that the show wouldn’t be over until at least 11.30. way past bedtime. so not roskenroll. plus, it was like watching phoebe buffay.
the boy had said, as we walked up to the basement, “i hope he doesn’t just play all new songs.” having heard none of anything, they would all be new to me. it turned out that they were all things of beauty. how does a man play a guitar and make it sound like two guitars and a bass? and with just ten fingers! and what’s with that “sufi-rockabilly”? i was torn between wanting to listen to him all night, and wanting to go home to bed. fortunately, two encores took us past bruce’s bedtime too, so he said.
(i’m a poet and i don’t even know it)
midnight, i was finally able to step away from the annoying angelica houston lookalike who over the course of the show had been stepping backwards and backwards and rubbing her ass on me and flicking her scrubby ponytail into my face and sticking her handbag into my arm. but even she couldn’t spoil the big night out. yay bruce!
also, in an attempt to reverse the blood donation-induced anaemia, i had a hamburger (with beetroot) for lunch. all round, a pretty good day.
happy cake news! an end-of-day grocery and noodle soup excursion to chinatown resulted in the reliving of the very cake that caused such cake-fueled hysteria late last year.
and also, krispy kreme finally opens a store in sydney. but not until may. ntch.
that scene in “spirited away“, at the beginning, where chihiro’s parents stumble upon a deserted foodstall, an exotic feast spread upon the front counter. all manner of small roasted bird and fatty… um… pork? chihiro’s father sucks a large sacklike thing into his mouth. it looks moist and succulent and quite oily, i guess like a stewed eggplant. i think that i will never tire of watching this.
there were no mystery meats for me this morning, although i did get through that scene — and the one of the soot creatures’ feeding time — over two slices of black rye toast with maple syrup, and a cup of tea. after two bits of toast i felt like another. maybe for lunch. after some drawing.
at the other end of the lunch simplicity scale: a few days ago i bought a futo maki at david jones foodhall. the process in itself is simple enough. however you wouldn’t expect that a little round of rice and other bits rolled up in nori would contain this:
would you?
yes, the toll of (very bad) reality tv on the commercial networks is all too much to bear, and i’ve taken refuge in old fashioned documentaries. “wild australasia” on the weekend, for example, had some amazing footage of a billion sardines being herded towards mealtime against the west australian shore, by several hungry sharks and a speedy tuna. oh the drama! plus, it made me want sardines, grilled, now.
but has anyone else been watching the documentary series, “our boys” on the abc? it’s about students from a public school in mid-western sydney, which seems to be the antithesis of the kings school as portrayed in that documentary series of a few years ago. where the kings school boys la-di-dahed their way through gilbert and sullivan, the boys at canterbury high struggle to wrap their heads around basic english.
it’s sad to watch. the teachers are almost too dedicated and caring, and the boys are up against… well, a lot of the time, themselves i guess. (i used to watch “heartbreak high” and i thought the wise-cracking, disruptive student was a dramatisation, but it actually is infuriatingly true.) but also, poverty and a lack of resources and not very much to look forward to. and private schools get more government funding, why?
so i think this series is halfway through. one episode tonight, and another next tuesday. i want there to be happy endings dammit.
i’m in the middle of an illustration job at the moment, and until an hour ago had been in that limboland where the client has the sketch you sent them late last night, and has yet to tell you whether or not to get back to the drawing board.
turns out all is good. phew.
the illustration incorporates a child’s drawing, in fact a simulated child’s drawing, by me. this is a challenging prospect because it usually irritates me when i see “child’s drawings” in television ads or whatever, where the artwork has obviously been made by a grownup art director. maybe i need to instigate some regression by watching some children’s daytime tv and eating chocolate biscuits.
on my desk i have my long-neglected box of crayolas. the smell of the (nontoxic) wax is intoxicating.
someone help me before i pull a ralph wiggum.
oh how distracting. just as i was about to put an end to the day’s procrastination, my doorbell rang and a postman handed me a large brown padded envelope. inside, “optic nerve 9” and “summer blonde”, a collection of “optic nerves” past. i am joyous and lucky, and at the same time, doomed.
thank you, nellie.
what better thing to do on a weekend where it’s too hot to even think, than try and learn about implementing css.
sure. you might put forth the option of strolling into your local gelatissimo store and availing yourself of the yumminess on offer. there’s a secret deal at the moment where if you say to the cashier, “gelatissimo is yummissimo” he will smile at you in a way that doesn’t make you feel like a dill, and then he will give you a pretty alright discount.
but having already done that yesterday, i thought a day at mr. computer would be equally fun. so. here we are. a new layout. i was aiming to get it done in about a week, when this blog turns a year old, but i was editing and uploading and suddenly it was all up there.
does this text look inordinately small and illegible to you?
