Reflecting and Spain

Sometimes I wish I had never lived in another country so I would never know what I was missing. I don't think anywhere is truly a perfect place to live, but now I just feel these huge glaring omissions in my life in England. Like the sun; beautiful surroundings; affordable yet good quality sushi; amazing independent cafes each different from the next (Costa I want to bring you down*); Sundays on the beach; incredible restaurants; and...y'know...general joy, fun and vastly improved quality of life.

But I know that if I went back to live in Sydney there would be other empty holes that cannot be filled. Like family; The Guardian; BBC 6 Music; affordable and regular live music; London; proximity to Europe, and British and European culture, history and society; better clothes; and just a whole lot of really nice and interesting things that make you feel alive. What I also get in England though is a general feeling that life can just become a joyless daily slog towards not a lot.

I uploaded a bunch of photos the other week from my trip to Barcelona the week before Christmas, so here's a little insight into some fun in the Spanish sun (15 degrees and bright blue skies - perfect winter). Mark and I went out there to meet our friends from Sydney - Emma, Anya and Ellen, and another of their friends, Hannah.

Beautiful poinsettia in our apartment - the apartment was really nice and so cheap!

We went up to Gaudi's Park Guell - the only place I had really visited last time I went to Barcelona. It's so lovely there, although seemingly permanently heaving with tourists. It's like a lifesize toy park or a strange board game come to life.

View over Barca.

I made everyone pose as animals etc for photos but Mark would not pose!

We found this amazing cocktail bar called Pile 43 which served 674824 varieties of mojito. We went there twice actually. The lady who ran the bar was awesome and gave us vodka-lemon slice-turkish coffee shots along with our mojitos!

Mark and I on our second (early evening) visit... We visited the Picasso Museum which is really good and well worth a visit - I love it when you can see the progression in an artists work (often from a fairly traditional starting point - always particularly strange with an artist such as Picasso who ended up known for something rather more abstract and modern. I think my favourite instance of that kind of development is if you look at the works of Mondrian - quite a transformation!)

We ate paella and tapas and drank sangria and on our final day caught the train out to Figueres, a town famous as the birthplace of Salvador Dali and home to the Dali Theatre and Museum, which houses the largest collection of Dali works in the world. It's amazing - Dali helped to design it so the whole thing is like a Dali work in itself. He is also buried underneath the building.

The main courtyard. There are creepy people in the car and it rains inside the car!

Emma and Anya on the stairs...

It was nice to come home for Christmas, but Barcelona was definitely a fun distraction from surrounding stresses of life and work. Made me glad to be in Europe.

*Ubiquitous blandness is normally associated with Starbucks I know, but I learnt something from the Telegraph Magazine today: there are 650 Starbucks in the UK, compared with a staggering 1,300 Costas. That's more than there are even McDonalds.

Paperwork mountain

Even though we've been back in England for going on four months now, I still feel like I'm living in both Australia and the UK sometimes. Especially when I try to cope with my paperwork and finances. My red folder blows my mind right now. For every UK bank account there is an Australian one. I have separate plastic wallets for my separate tax returns, bills, statements....I started doing my UK tax return and got out all my Australian group certificates. Help?

In which so many things have gone on

Readers, dear readers, please do not think I have abandoned you!!! I have been moving and organising and all manner of other things.

So, back the the UK we go, arriving for February. Which, provided this Sydney February is as unpleasantly HOT as the last one, will be a nice time to leave. But, if this UK February is as unpleasantly COLD as the last one, it will likewise not be a particularly pleasant time to arrive. One cannot win, really.

We have moved out of Erskineville. Over to Surry Hills. All our worldly goods are in a container somewhere, waiting for their journey back across the sea. We got Crown to do our removals again this time - the guys that came were awesome, best removal ever - everything got so well wrapped and packed. Oddly a much better job was done than by the same company on the way over! They must have upped their stakes.

We are reduced again to a life out of a suitcase for the next few months. Until the novelty wears off I must admit it is a pleasant state of affairs, to have your life that simple that it all fits into one bag.



The living room in the new house... It's small but cosy. Surry Hills is ok, it doesn't have the community feel of Erskineville/Newtown. Lots of cafes, bars, restaurants, but doesn't feel like there's a lot to do unless you have a lot of money to burn. There's no bookshops, really. Although there is a great library.

We said a sad goodbye to two of our dear friends - Chesney and Totoro! Off they went in the crate!



The weather is very up and down at the moment. Which I guess is usual for this time of year as the skies adjust to being warmer. The rain is abundant but we we have had a few nice days. They have tended to be during the week though, unfortunately for me stuck in my office. Today we are rained off and stuck inside, although we did get a good brunch in at Four Ate Five on Crown Street (vegan mexican bean breakfast - YUM).

I should be off to Canberra next weekend, and definitely Melbourne the weekend after that, so there should be some more fun stuff to write about soon. Mark has been to a rockabilly-only barbershop and is sporting an excellent new hair-do. Last Saturday night we went to an astonomy open evening at Macquarie Uni and got to look through a telescope to see Jupiter and its moons, and Uranus. Also we learnt about how to find south using the Southern Cross constellation. We have eaten at Atom Thai, Cafe Sopra, Kai on King, Sofia, Bloodwood and Mamak.

I am spending the afternoon in Narnia, or more precisely in Ettinsmoor on the way to Harfang.....yes I raided the children's section of the library! Also watching the rain fall outside the window.....hope for a nicer day tomorrow.

roller derby & melancholia

Tonight I went to Roller Derby at Hordern Pavillion with Dean, Zane, Erin, etc (I was the heterosexual minority which was novel!) - Sydney versus Wollongong Illawara (Sydney thrashed them woo woo woo!). It was my first Roller Derby experience and I had a great time! The rules seem complicated but it's actually quite simple. And there is a lot of shoving - I was quite surprised how violent it was! The best thing about it is the showmanship aspect - all the girls have fun 'skating names' like "Peaches Obscene" and "Babycakes" and "Miss Sin Doll" and "Vindi Vicious" and the style is really burlesque - lots of make-up, minimal clothing, lots of lace and ruffles and tattoos and glitter and showing off.

Now I am home eating beans on toast and watching some awful film called Before Sunrise despite the fact the Ethan Hawke character is grating on my brain (keeps coming out with such cringe-worthy/scientifically disastrous/irrational gems as 'so 10 thousand years ago there were only a million souls, today there are x million, so where did all those extra souls come from, they must be reincarnated'). But it's set in Vienna and the premise is the characters meet on a train and spend the night in Vienna together, walking around. It makes me want to go to Vienna.

I kind of feel like Vienna might be one of those places like Sydney, that are just so close to reaching near perfection as a place to be. Vienna has, for me, almost everything. A beautiful city, beautiful surrounding countryside, great weather (reliably hot, sunny summers and reliably real, cold, snowy winters), low living costs (comparative to most western european capitals), amazing culture and history, great bars and fun nightlife (surprisingly, and something Sydney definitely lacks), plus plenty to fill your days with. It is safe, and quiet, the transport is amazing and everything is just so well run. The only thing it lacks is coastline and good food (austrian food has tendencies to make my insides revolt, rather quickly - it is just meat and stodge! No fish! No vegetables!). Two things that Sydney of course can offer, in abundance.

It is places like these, like Vienna, like Sydney, like Paris, like Melbourne, like Berlin....that make me feel sometimes there is no hope for me in the United Kingdom. But then I think, I have to find something. I have to look really hard and find something there, because I have to live there. This makes me feel a strange mixture of determination, hope, and confused melancholy.

100th post!!!

I just finished writing the last post and clicked back to the main dashboard page when I noticed my blog stats:

'The Life of Pie' - 99 posts.

So this is my 100th post! That doesn't really seem like many, since I've had this blog since I guess May or June 2008. Oh, 2 years!

Just a couple of weeks time will mark my two year anniversary of being in Australia. It's strange how settled we've become in that time. I never expected to get on this well, looking back on it, the first few months were quite hard for me. Mark had a far easier time, as he obviously went straight into his job as he arrived and Macquarie Uni pretty much did everything for him in terms of organising our move and sorting out all his bits for him. The first day we caught the bus out to the uni (pre Epping-Chatswood rail link!) his office was waiting with his name on the door and all the staff took us out for coffee.

For me it was a lot harder - I didn't work at first but ended up just being left on my own a lot of the time, which is quite daunting in a big city like Sydney with a non-comprehensive public transport network. Especially since we were accommodated up in middle of nowhere North Ryde, great for Mark (next to uni) but terrible for me as it took an hour to get anywhere. Then I started temping but it was very sporadic and I didn't really have a routine or guaranteed income. Stuff got a bit better when we moved down to Meadowbank and I started working at HCF, and then even better still since we moved into the Inner West. I LOVE the Inner West. I honestly cannot think of a better place in the world to live. And now I have my new job that I love (mostly, obviously not when I'm still there at 6.30pm like today) and a good salary and an awesome apartment and a piano and a brand new SEWING MACHING (thanks, Mark!) and great coffee on my doorstep and great food on my doorstep and an amazing park on my doorstep (Sydney Park) and I live in a city where just a 15 minute train ride to Circular Quay and stepping onto the Manly ferry can make me feel like I am on holiday all year round.

The weather is beautiful at the moment. Cold, so cold but glorious in the sunshine. Even Bondi looked beautiful at the weekend (I love Bondi in winter sun. Shame about the trashiness of it in Summer). This week is due to be warmer. It certainly makes up for the month of rain that we just suffered through. I'm wondering how this winter will be. 2008 was so cold, record low Sydney temperatures and it didn't even start to warm up until October. 2009 had the cold snap in June but by August was a delight.

Anyway, thanks for reading 100 posts, people. Or 50 or 20 or 1 or however many you've persevered through. In honour of the 100th post, let's all say hello! Leave me a comment, tell me who you are, where you are, why you read!

I'll start. I'm Anna. I live in Sydney ....

2009 Life of Pie Review of the Year

Well, the New Year's honeymoon period is over and the hope that a slight change in date can alter your life completely has faded.
I'm back to the old realisation that I am still too lazy to exercise more than twice a week or get out of bed until 20 minutes after I'm meant to leave the house, I'm still an unbrilliant writer with two unfinished and bizarre novels lying around, I still can't write song lyrics, or music for that matter, I still don't clean the floors as often as I should, I still can't stay focussed on one thing for more than 10 minutes, I still have bad skin and I still don't understand the fabric of the cosmos.

Who fancies a plunder of the old 2009 memory box, hmm? Hands up!

(Yes, my ego is such that I believe myself to be worthy of a 'review of the year', of the manner usually accorded to politics or the news)

January

Summer in January?? You better believe it, you filthy heathens!



It was hot, up to the late 30s (celsius) over the Australia Day holiday weekend. Mark's parents came to stay and thus sightseeing commenced, all over Sydney, foraying into the Blue Mountains and continuing into February.
We saw an epic Sydney Theatre Company production based on Shakespeare's War of the Roses plays, running over two evenings and starring Cate Blanchett. Also open-air productions of Cav and Pag as the Opera(s) in the Domain, ending the Sydney Festival.

February

February ambled past quite pleasantly, with little worth commenting on. It was hot, but not *quite* as hot as January. We endeavoured to save money...

March

We came back to life just in time for Sydney Mardi Gras! I hyperventilated over Russell's visit to Sydney.



The weather cooled down pleasantly as we headed into autumn.

April

We daytripped out to a Blue Mountains covered in mist over the Easter Weekend



The weather was iffy, fairly wet in parts which resulted in a fairly relaxed month of staying in.

May

We celebrated Mark's birthday with pizza followed by cocktails at Madam Fling Flong in Newtown.
Rainbow Lorikeets flocked to our garden in Meadowbank to eat the flowers.



June

Temperatures plummet. The night of my birthday hits 0 degrees, the record low recorded for Sydney. Sydneysiders are horrified by frost warnings. We REALLY miss central heating.



Fortunately things warm up again towards the end of the month - enough for a trip to the beach (with coats on!).
Goodness I do faff on about the weather don't I? You can tell I'm English.

July

Mark was away in Melbourne for a long while for conferences. I went to join him for a long weekend and oh my god it was SO MUCH FUN!!!



There was a great deal of riding on trams and not quite enough sleep.I decided I absolutely love Melbourne to the exclusion of all logic and rationale.
Also, back in Sydney at the end of the month saw the Flaming Lips gig at the Hordern which immediately became one of the best gigs of my life!

August

The Fellows arrived in Sydney!!! We did some sightseeing, and as it was an unseasonably mild August even managed to patronise the beach (with a cardigan on, of course). Did some old favourites such as the Aquarium and Manly, as well as some new delights, including the Sydney Tower and the Hyde Park Barracks.

So as to give the Fellows some summer on their summer holiday, we also jetted off up to tropical north Queensland for a week. It was the best holiday of my life! So stereotypically beautiful it was almost unreal....empty golden beaches, palm trees, sea as warm as a bath....it was incredible to see the rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.



September

All quiet again after the departure of the Fellows. Mark works hard, I work hard and we try to save some money. We also start househunting with a view to moving further into the city, looking around Stanmore, Newtown, Erskineville and Redfern.
Sam and Georgina visit us in the final days of the month and we have some fun for a couple of days. Unfortunately torrential rain scuppers some of our plans, but we hope they can come back again soon!



October

The first week saw our move from Meadowbank to Erskineville and the interesting task of trying to cram the contents of a 3 bed house into a 2 bed flat.
The rest of the month is spent unpacking and sorting, and I go to see the musical Wicked!!



November

We have a housewarming! Following this, we try to relax as temperatures soar in one of the hottest Sydney Novembers on record.



Mostly by going to the coast.

December

We get to watch Patrick Wolf and Jarvis Cocker play in the same week. I think my life may be complete, at least for that week!
We get champagne to celebrate the birth of Joshua, Mark's nephew ! (and mine under Australian law since I am legally Mark's de facto wife)





Chesney the Erskineville Wombat comes to live with us on Christmas Day! We eat oysters.

After an intensely dry start to summer, rain is what everyone in outback NSW wants for Christmas. The newspapers show an aerial image of a herd of cows huddled around a tiny patch of green in a vast expanse of dust. In true English Bank Holiday style, it rains right through the Christmas break, but at least the cows have a drink at last!

Our final evening of 2009 is spent on Observatory Hill in The Rocks, drinking gin and watching fireworks!

based on a novel by a man named Lear

Is everyone calm? I hope so.

December has been an extraordinarily busy month.

We began with an evening at the Opera at the City Recital Hall in Martin Place. Sydney opera company Pinchgut Opera specialise in staging obscure operas, and this year was L'Ormindo by Francesco Cavalli dating from 1644. It's quite good, it was well performed. I do love Italian operas as they are so over the top on the soap-opera drama. The ending was a bit rubbish though, which is probably why it's not a very famous opera. Back to the drawing board for you, Mr Cavalli !

Then I got to see my MUSICAL IDOL, JARVIS COCKER!!!! at the Metro theatre.



Oh my goodness he was brilliant!! He is such a great performer, and has such a great personality on stage, be it in distributing a chocolate bar to the crowd ("I know it won't go very far...."), querying the existence of an Australian Ipswich ("do you have an Ipswich? Is it nice? Ours is chronic."), and questioning the diet of koalas ("if eucalyptus just makes them sleep, why don't they just eat something else?")
He played a great mix of songs from both his solo albums and it all sounded so good! Ahh Jarvis.

Then two days after Jarvis was PATRICK WOLF!! which also was utterly brilliant.





The show even featured three costume changes from Patrick, and numerous instruments including an appalachian dulcimer ("I got it on eBay..."). I think I even enjoyed it as much as when we saw him on the Wind in the Wires tour at the Borderline in London back in 2004, when it was just him and a baby grand. This show was with a full live band, and he played all the best songs from his new album The Bachelor , as well as a lot from previous albums (only wish he could have played 'Bloodbeats', but it was not to be!) He seemed in a really good mood compared to some reports of recent gigs, he seemed to really love being in Sydney and changed several lyrics to be Sydney-appropriate, as well as expressing his love for the Sydney dining scene ("sorry if I look a bit fat - I just love your food so much").



Us at Patrick Wolf.



I got that blouse on the uber-bargain rail in that big vintage store in Surry Hills. It washed up well.

It's been really amazing for music here lately, what with Jarvis and Patrick, and we have also seen local Sydney band the Jezabels several times after months of silence from them - they are a brilliant band, a lot of Tori Amos influence. Also just a few weeks until the YEAH YEAH YEAHS which I am ecstatically excited for.

Other than that we have just been bumbling around, really. Trying to relax. Had a few good meals at old favourites Mamak, Kammandhenu, and Fatima's, brunches almost every weekend at Baffi & Mo (poached eggs on sourdough with extra avocado + skim flat white + fresh orange juice = best saturday breakfast ever). Also new discoveries in Cafe Sopra in Waterloo (great fennel salad), Bottom of the Harbour and their delicious fish and chips up on the esplanade at Balmoral, and a great new sushi discovery just a few minutes walk away on King Street in Newtown - Kai on King and their delicious chunky sashimi and steaming tempura.

All this has made us a little rotund so we have also been engaging in regular exercise in Sydney Park, where Mark and I compete in our pug count (extra points if you see the elusive black pug!). Pug count daily record so far has been 4 pugs. There are a lot of pugs in Sydney. OH puggy puggy puggy puggle how I want to scoop you all up and take you all home!

I am now off to do the washing up and watch Doctor Who. Mark recently discovered Newtown library has an extensive collection of old Doctor Who DVDs, which was pretty exciting! We are working our way through Tom Baker, currently.

spanakopita

[From FBI radio flickr]

We keep getting photographed at these things, like we're Syd-celebs or something, haha. This was at the Daisy Tulley show at the Hopetoun a week ago on Tuesday. I like Daisy, she puts on a good show and her music is quite original.

The thursday after that, I met Katherine after work for thai food and wine in Newtown. It was funnn to see Katherine again. On the way home the train from Newtown was late so I missed the 11.10pm connecting train in Strathfield by ONE MINUTE and had to wait for the 11.40pm. Well annoying. When I finally did get home though, Mark was waiting for me with hot chocolate: lovable.

Last weekend, the weather was AMAZING. On Sunday we went to Bondi and it was actually warm. People were on the beach and everything. We were not brave enough for the beach, so we went to the market. Bondi Beach Public School (where they hold the market) is amazing, it's got huge grounds and it's RIGHT on the beach. How awesome would it be to go there? I might have to have a child and put it in that school so I can live vicariously through it.








Mark went to Melbourne on Thursday morning so I am having a quiet weekend of pottering. On Friday night I went out with Karl and Sally and Richeal for some drinks at the Lowenbrau and fish and chips. Yesterday I walked a lot around Surry Hills, but it was cold so once I ran out of places to walk I went home.
I baked spanakopitas (sp?) earlier, so nice! I am terrible at folding pastry so they look like they were made by a 3-year-old, but they are pretty tasty.
Only three days of work this week because I am off to join Mark in Melbourne on Thursday! Woooooo.

OH ALSO, Friday was the 1 year anniversary of me being in Australia!!!!!

out and about

Mark and I at the FBi radio fundraiser gig last bank holiday Monday, 8th June.

[ not my photo, taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/fbi945/3610396077/ ]

http://www.fbiradio.com/

failure to be sensible, ill, too much rain

Not much has happened recently that has been particularly conducive to bloggery as of late. I apologise once more to those people (all two of you?!) who may or may not have been on tenterhooks awaiting the next exciting installment of my life.

Mark and I are both currently ill with colds. Mark with his second cold in only a couple of months. Mine is not quite as bad as his, although I fear that since he had it first and I may therefore be a couple of days behind in the cold timeline... To be quite honest I think I deserve lifelong immunity from colds after the horrific, almost-3-month-long cold I had starting immediately after we arrived in Australia, which included a period of almost a solid fortnight during which I could not breath through my nose at all. Not even slightly, not even with all the decongestants money could buy.

Mark had his birthday t'other week. I got him RayBan Wayfarers, crème brulée tea from T2 and the two Yeah Yeah Yeahs EPs ('Yeah Yeah Yeah' and 'Is Is'). He also has some books, including David Starkey's Monarchy which arrived from Bristol which he has already finished and which I am now reading - it's really exciting! And I now understand the Wars of the Roses which would have been helpful *before* I went to see the plays. Gah. We went to Ice and Slice in Newtown for dinner with USyd phil dept. (usual wednesday night dinner). Some of them didn't realise it was Mark's actual birthday until near the end of the meal, then started singing Happy Birthday and the WHOLE restaurant joined in!! Mark looked like he wanted to die a bit, it was so funny.
After food Mark and I went for cocktails in Madame Fling Flong, then had to head home because it was a school night.

Not much else has occurred. It is torrentially raining. Has been for a few days. Some towns in Vic/NSW are flooded.....this country seems to be permanently on fire or underwater....hmm. I am trying to save a lot of money, but keep failing by shopping. Had 17 minutes to wait for the train home from work last night and instead of waiting patiently in the station I went and bought another new top and new skirt! Aghh. Sense, pie. Sense. *shakes head*

Pootling and bumbling

After two weeks of running every morning at 7am (well, 90% of mornings!), I can now not only get all the way up the hill but half way down the other side without my heart and lungs feeling sick! Today is Saturday and involved a successful extra-long run. I will become healthy, I will! I feel much better already!

We went to see Mary and Max, Adam Elliot's new claymation film. I really enjoyed it, it was so funny but also really heartwarming and I almost cried at the end! It's about the friendship that develops between a lonely 8 year old girl in Melbourne and an equally lonely obese man with Asperger's Syndrome in New York.
She picks his address out of a US phone book and writes to ask him where babies in America comes from. Receiving her letter triggers an anxiety attack in Max, but eventually he writes back, and the film follows the ups and downs of their relationship and their separate lives over 20 years.
It's also quite funny in its send-up of Australian suburban life and you should all watch it. There's a bit where Mary sends Max a Cherry Ripe too and it reminded me that I must send EVERYONE a Cherry Ripe. Best chocolate bar EVER. UK Cadbury's should SO make them.

I went to the dentist on Wednesday and had my teeth prodded and cleaned to within an inch of their lives. It was so good, even if it did cost me $200 ! OUCH. I also got to go on the new Epping-Chatswood rail link which was exciting (yes I am tragic).

This week was SO cold. A couple of days were only 15 or 16 degrees and it apparently went down to 5 degrees overnight! Waa. The platypus, Mr L. Rogue, even registered a formal complaint about the cold with the platypus embassy, although we doubt he got very far. We bought a big electric radiator on Friday, and it is SO good. Heating me up all nice. Today the weather was much nicer though - it felt like a lovely English summer's day. After my run I did not one, not two, but THREE loads of washing and pegged it all in the garden. We had eggs and toast and coffee for late brunch and now Mark is working away on his shiny new Mac. I am going to work on a short story I have been poking around with for about 3 months. Spaghetti for dinner with Pie Special Tomato, Garlic and Basil Sauce, if I can remember how to make it!

Easter housekeeping

Poirot Egg says a belated Happy Easter. He has three eyes because when he solves a crime he turns to the perpetrator and says "trois yeux!!" ......twas you.....with French accent.......hm?....

Good Friday was spent trying to buy a bottle of wine, with no success. So we resorted to spending way too much on cocktails in Glebe before Raami's birthday party. Saturday was food shopping (the only opportunity to shop in the whole 4 days!) then watching Elegy at the cinema.
On Sunday, we took the train to Bondi and found an amazing fish and chip shop (Fishmongers) where we podged up, before walking around the cliff path to Tamarama and then Bronte beaches. I love Bronte. I think I could literally be happy forever if I could get a nice spacious apartment in Bronte, with Mark and a lovely puggy and I would walk along the sea and swim in the little open air pool and never leave ever. Unfortunately we are priced out of the area for the foreseeable, but who knows for the future...
We sat on the beach for a while then wandered back as it got dark. Walking back from Bronte to Bondi is how I imagine walking back from the French Riviera into Blackpool Pleasure Beach to be. Not that you could really walk from one to the other, and not that I have actually visited either, but UH Bondi is so tacky.

On Monday we took the train to the Blue Mountains, getting off at Katoomba to walk the Giant's Steps. The weather was rather different from last time we were there!



Echo Point, the viewing platform for the three sisters, where we ended our first mountains walk in February. Not much viewing to be done this time!



A bit like Narnia!



It did make for some quite dramatic views though.

After making our way to the bottom of Giant's Steps (believe me, it was HARD even going down, they are practically vertical!), we pootled along the path at the bottom, then back up Furber steps at the other end to the Scenic World centre. Unfortunately it started to pour with rain about half way up Furber steps, leaving us ABSOLUTELY soaked and having to navigate a path that had become more of a swamp. It was quite invigorating all the same, and fortunately we both had a spare dry t-shirt, but the train ride home was not what i would call comfortable!

It was then back to work for a short week. Last weekend, we took a trip to Parramatta so Mark could investigate the bike he is getting from Parramatta Bike Barn. Parramatta is actually ok. It is Sydney's biggest suburb with a big shopping and business centre in it, but it also has some nice old buildings and a pleasant square (which was hosting 'Parramatta Chess Festival', much to Mark's excitement!), setting it apart from most of the West which is just bland. It has a bit of history as a town in its own right, so it's worth passing through for an hour or so if you have an excuse to go there!

And now it's Monday again, *yawn*. I must away to bed. After discovering the shocking state of my fitness on our Mountains walk, I am on a new exercise regime and was dragged out in my jogging gear before the clock even hit 7am this morning. And it was raining so double sad face :( We're on again for tomorrow morning. I almost died going up a gentle slope so something must be done!

Also please spare a thought for a guy I know named James. He worked at HCF with me until a couple of weeks ago when he left to go travelling, and is a close friend of my friend Karl. He was involved in a serious accident on Fraser Island, Queensland on Saturday morning, reported in the Times here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6125177.ece. He is one of the two passengers who were airlifted to Brisbane and is currently in intensive care.

Dah dah daaaah...bloody old news!!!

Happy Easter, one and all! Easter in Australia seems to be roughly the same as Easter in the UK, except for one fatal thing that we did not realise: EVERYTHING IS SHUT. Public holidays I find a little bit odd here because their trading laws seem quite strict. So whereas in UK one can potter around the shops a little and it's generally like a second Sunday, here pubs are about the only thing open. You can't even buy takeaway alcohol to drink quietly in your home on a bank holiday it seems, yet you can go to a pub. Which is greatly frustrating when trying to buy a bottle of wine on Not So Good Friday to take to a friend's birthday party.

BUT first, let me take you back to a pre-Easter era; no, not pre-Jesus, but the era of the weekend before Easter....if such a weekend can be considered an era.

The weather has been nothing recently if not damp. There have been some pleasant days but the weathermen seem intent on conspiring against me to make them fall on weekdays when I am, of course, in work. Last weekend was no exception; it was, for the most part, overwhelmingly damp. That is not to say it rained the whole time, fortunately, but there was a certain moistness to the air throughout.
On saturday we headed to a cafe in Pott's Point for a late late breakfast, then walked up to the water.



Then wandered around to Mrs Macquarie's Point, which is...well, exactly where it looks in the photo below; the next pointy out bit of headland to the east of the harbour, which offers some pleasant views.









View to the East, away from the harbour.

We wandered through to the Botanic Gardens where I enjoyed this Queensland Bottle Tree:



And was bemused by the topiary letters "sex and death" in front of the tropical pyramid:



We looked at the lovable bats, still roosting in great numbers (although they are sadly damaging many of the trees and need to be gently discouraged) and read a bat fact sheet from the visitor centre, which was interesting.

On Sunday, Mr L. Rogue, our friendly house platypus stowed away in my bag to investigate an exhibition on Charles Darwin, the advertising poster for which having suggested that he may have been of some import in the development of the notion of evolution. It was indeed an interesting exhibition, focussing on Darwin's voyage to Australia and how his findings there helped shape his theories. And indeed Mr L. Rogue and his kind did turn out to have been a bit important. When Darwin saw platypuses on his travels, he noted that it behaved in the same way as a water rat, in the same habitat as a water rat, and yet looked different. If God made everything, why put a water rat in some places and a platypus in another? Of course, the platypus and the water rat have both evolved and adapted to fit their specific environments. The platypus held himself up to be the embodiment of evolution. What a vain, and yet lovable platypus.

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

My GOODNESS I have neglected you so long once more, dear readers. Although I do seem to begin most blog posts now with words to this very effect, therefore they are most probably redundant as you have likely grown used to my lengthy pauses between flashes of news and ponderings.

Many events have occurred and ponderings pondered over the course of time since I last opened up the white box of blogspot entries on my laptop. I shall write what I did this weekend I suppose, since it is freshest in my lovable little memory box.

As a brief preamble: last Wednesday, we baked a macadamia, date and beer cake. So named as it contains macadamia nuts, dates and a nice cup of Hoegaarden. It is a beautifully tasty fiend. Unfortunately little remains of it now.



So. On saturday morning we pootled our way in to a garage sale. Teenagers in Tokyo, a Sydney band, were selling many of their belongings in order to shift themselves over to London and live in a house all together and make music and generally have a lovely time.

I picked up a copy of Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance for the princely sum of $5, and we indulged in several of their homemade cupcakes. The sale was in the garden of a photography gallery, so we poked in that a bit, there was a Lomo shop in the gallery too. I really want a fisheye lomo a bit, but I'm not sure I'd ever really use it after the novelty wore off...



Grabbed a coffee in the cafe next door then poked in Paddington Markets. It's nice there, it's like a big version of the Glebe Markets, although more newer stuff and therefore not quite so interesting. But it made a pleasant stroll, and then we had a look in some of the Oxford Street shops, before ending up at Ampersand for salad and chai latte. Then because we saw these shoes with square toes we got obsessed with The Witches (because they have no toes which makes normal shoes uncomfortable for them) so we tried to get a copy of that.



We enjoyed the presence in Ampersand of 'Stirling Macoboy's "What SHRUB is that?"' I believe this would make a good basic concept for a new TV quiz show.

By now much of the city end of Oxford Street was becoming cordoned off and busy for the Mardi Gras parade.



We sat in the Cricketers beer garden for a while and had a few beers.





Then we escaped into Darlinghurst and found a cheap and cheerful thai restaurant for some dinner - well under $10 for vege mains but surprisingly tasty. Up the road is the Victoria Room, an amazing cocktail bar. It's how I imagine a really luxurious bar would have looked in colonial Africa or something. All opulent furnishings and indoor palms.





After some gin, we headed back down to the Mardi Gras parade. It was so amazing to watch! It's meant to be the biggest gay pride event in the world or something. There were so many floats representing so many things....drag queens, aboriginal gays, scottish gays, asian gays, big shiny corporate floats like foxtel and ANZ, high school lgbt communities, atheist gays, catholic gays, jewish gays, raelian gays ("f*** homophobic religion, love UFOs"), S&M, dancing lifeguards, sex workers unions, mature age gays (with a glittering pink triangle and the words "lest we forget" on the back of their bus), bears (bears have their own flag, aw), Amnesty International ("in 77 countries, love = prison; in 7 countries, love = death"), equality for same-sex couples campaigners, campaigners for same-sex civil unions, furries..... but mostly just a lot of happy people in a lot of glitter having a great time. There was such a brilliant atmosphere of love and acceptance there.





I love how Sydney is such a tolerant place. So different to what we are used to in the UK. It feels like somewhere where people can really accept you for how you are, like a little pocket of sense in a silly old world.

My leggy pegs ached SO MUCH after all that.

On Sunday, we found a new café in Glebe, Clipper Café, that had only been open since Friday. It was really lovable, all decorated clean and cosy, and did lovely juice and lovable sourdough toasted sandwiches. The staff were all really friendly, seemed like they were really interested in what you thought of the place and if you had any suggestions. I will definitely return.

Then I felt ill so we went home. I can't remember what I did then. I watched about 764872 episodes of House I think.

Now I am sleepsome. It is monday night, I am going to watch the end of Amores Perros then get the fast train to slumbertown.