In which I am uplifted and have adventures.

A couple of weeks ago, Mark and I ate at Mamak, drank a cocktail at Opera Bar and finally attended an evening at the Opera House with Stephen Fry. Which was an entirely enjoyable evening and indeed an inspiring one, as Mr Fry recounted tales from his youth and not-so-youth, such as when he met Hugh Laurie for the first time and holidaying with Peter Cook in Egypt. He also ate a Tim Tam on stage and liked it a good deal.

Last Saturday, we scoffed coffee and pie at Black Star in Newtown before making our way to Oxford Street. Popped into old haunt Ampersand cafe bookstore to look for books and drink chai latte. Mark got a couple of philos books but I didn't find anything. I am starting to find that in second hand bookstores, I just gravitate towards editions of books I already know and love and want to buy them again....Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Goethe's Faust, anything by Joe Orton...I had to stop myself buying a great 1970s edition of What the Butler Saw - I really don't need a third copy!

Wandered on down into Paddington and stopped in at the newly opened Paddington Reservoir - the old site having been transformed into a new landscaped urban park. It's great in there - very calm - and there are chairs you can sit in so we did that for a bit.





Wandered around the market in Paddo for a bit, then back up Oxford Street for a look in Incu. We turned off in the direction of Rushcutters Bay and found some lovely streets, but got hungry so headed back up to Crown Street for late late lunch at Kawa (actually, Mark ordered breakfast even though it was 4pm!).
Then retired to the cinema for wine and to watch The Special Relationship which was good.

Sunday saw a nice bit of relaxation in favourite cafe, The Kick Inside up on Erskineville Road. Coffee and apple crumble, and a long hour's indulgence in my new David Mitchell.



Reading this is like slipping into a pool of velvet. Every page is so wonderfully evocative. And The Kick Inside is a great reading environment with its sofas and lovable coffee.



Then we caught the train to Circular Quay and did something I've had on my to-do list for a long, long time: Susannah Place museum.



Susannah Place is a row of terraced houses built in 1844 in The Rocks. The houses were continuously occupied from that point up until the mid 1970s, the last tenants moving out in 1990 at which point the terraces were handed over to the Historic Houses Trust.
We paid our $8 and joined the last tour of the day, and the guide took us through the houses, telling us stories of all the tenants along the way. The houses have been largely left as they were when last vacated, but have been furnished for different eras using the memories and photographs provided by former tenants.
The walls and ceilings were cracked and peeling, and you could see layers of paint and paper. The rooms were very small and cramped, with low ceilings, kitchens in the basement, toilets in the backyard. It was amazing the number of people that lived in those small rooms together - it was a real insight into the life of the working classes in Sydney in the 19th and 20th centuries. One had a double bed and a single bed crammed into a tiny bedroom, which had been shared by 3 sisters. Another house had a rudimentary shower installed in the basement, constructed it seemed from corrugated plastic, after the owner had become fed up of taking baths in the outhouse!
The tour also included watching a video where they took former tenants of the houses, people who had grown up in Susannah Place, and asked them about their memories. They seemed to remember a lot of hardship from their lives there, but it was fascinating watching them walk round the houses and say things like "we had our table here". It reminded you that real people had spent their lives there. Really interesting.

legislate everything !!!

On the weekend, Mark and I made a visit to the Justice and Police Museum down at Circular Quay, which had been on our weekend agenda for some time but delayed due to the surprise onslaught of very pleasant weather over the last couple of weeks.

The museum is housed in the building that held various different police and court functions throughout the 19th century, and has been restored to its former 1890s glory. Thus, you can wander through a reconstructed court room, police charge room and cells.



The cells were so dingy, and according to my guide leaflet, each would have held up to 12 prisoners at a time. There was only a tiny slit of natural light and each one was barely larger than my own small bedroom! It was a bit spooky.

What was good about the room set ups was that you could wander around everywhere - nothing was fenced off. You could go behind the desk and prod around, and there were lots of original 19th century court and police documents around so you could really get a sense of what went on there.

The rest of the building was more of a traditional museum set up, with exhibition sections on bushrangers, the development of forensic science and how it was used in some famous Australian cases, the history of the police in Australia, the development of various punishment methods, and a rather creepy room full of a collection of weapons confiscated from criminals over the years, the walls around the cases decorated with a disconcerting series of mugshots.



They were a random selection of mugshots of people arrested between 1913 and 1930 in Sydney. There were some really rather unpleasant faces staring out!

The main exhibition space was currently hosting the Sin City exhibition - a fascinating exposé of police corruption in Sydney, from the beginnings of the settlement through to the modern day. It's disturbing what has gone on, and the links between those at the top of the justice system and those at the top of the criminal world. Australia's criminal history (and present, to be honest) is fascinating to me as it has these big kingpin figures, gangs and crime families. The system of organised crime is much more open here, even a little more accepted. That's an aspect of life we just don't really get a lot of exposure to in the UK.
I remember when I first arrived here and started working at HCF, a girl at work was having a lot of trouble with a certain police station in Sydney, and some other colleagues were agreeing that that police station was corrupt and she would never get anywhere with them. At the time I just thought "naah that's silly", but after seeing this exhibition and the kind of stuff that's happened even in the last few years, it's made me wonder. There were endless bribes and high ranking police officials socialising with known criminal masterminds.
One of the most illustrative topics covered in the exhibition was the story of the Victoria Point Development in the 1970s. A property developer with dubious connections decided he wanted to knock down all the houses of Victoria Street in Pott's Point, to build a new complex. This would involve evicting many people from their houses, but they refused. The developer employed thugs, organised by a former NSW police detective, to terrorise the residents. Residents were threatened, assaulted in one case kidnapped. Eventually, video footage showed NSW police standing by in the street whilst the gang dragged people from their homes. Juanita Nielson, a publisher and vocal opponent of the development was mysteriously 'disappeared', presumed murdered, in 1975, an inquiry held during the 90s stating that police corruption had impeded the police investigation at the time.

The rest of the weekend was spent eating malaysian delights at Mamak in Chinatown (Mamak! Long time no see!), and brunching at South End on King Street (first time I've ever had food here in this homely little cafe - it was great!), in which the back room reminds me so much of the upstairs of Boston Tea Party in Bristol it's quite a delight. Also Doctor Who, of course. I don't know what I will do once Doctor Who finishes. What will I do on Sunday nights?? And Poirot has finished now too! I am frightened.

I want to make a food map of Sydney with all my favourite places on. Like a little guide to good things in each area, what they do, what they cost, what the vibe is like, who goes there, kind of thing. Best coffee, best takeaway, best for a chill out, best for a special occasion, all that. It will be very Inner West/Redfern/Surry Hills centred, I guess, but still. I might do it, even if only for my own reference! So I don't do UTTERLY DAFT THINGS again like forget about Mamak and leave it unvisited for the best part of a YEAR.
MEIN GOTT I love food. (P.S. I'm joining the gym. It's come to this!)