Sun-day

Guess who's back on the streets? We've missed you Big Red! A rainbow even popped out to welcome her.
Oh hey - did you hear? Little Edie's childhood diaries are being released as I Only Mark The Hours That Shine... Can't wait to read them!

Cross off the list

This time last week we had a rather debauched night out in Kings Cross to celebrate this year's Young Australian Journalist of the Year winners. It's such a fabled part of Sydney and yet one I've never really got to know too well. It's a place where even a weeknight feels sleazy, not dangerous so much as grotty. But all the lights and characters make for great pictures... except perhaps for the paparazzi shots I ended up with of a homeless dude. He just wanted to pose...

One week on, and what a contrast. Three consecutive nights of yoga take their toll on the unflexible body, so my yoga buddy and I restored our equilibrium with a late Mexican dinner and a few beers.


Since my days in Sydney are now numbered, there are suddenly all these things I want, nay, need to do one last time in case I don't come back. My housemate and I are formulating a list of last hurrahs to have - meat tray raffles, bowls clubs, greyhound racing, etc - let's face it, the places on it almost all serve beer. So it's good to tick the Cross off that list...

Ephemera

This week's flowers: orange and pink tulips. I was worried a Friday night jaunt to the Different Drummer (not to mention Indian Kitchen on the way home) might wilt them, but I stripped back the leaves and trimmed the stems and they are looking fantastic. Such clean shapes, almost architectural in the way they strive gently upward.


Love the wooden interiors and the light and reflections in this shot of a vintage car I spotted near the Randwick bowlo on Saturday. It was a beautiful crisp winter afternoon. This is her from the front:


And the back:


This poor little guy was left to fend for himself at a bus stop, but I'm sure someone took him home eventually.


But the two best things I saw on the weekend, I was too slow to capture on camera. The first was on Glebe Point Road on Friday night, taking the aforementioned tulips home to bed. A guy was crossing the road on a scooter in what I first assumed was an amazing bright blue suit. Closer inspection, however, revealed he was actually in flannelette pajamas. It was an audacious and enviable fashion choice.

Even better was on Sunday, when my eye was caught by a BMX. The rider was a Chinese man who was 80 if he was a day, with shopping bags dangling from his handlebars and one of those great communist fur hats. What a champ.

WARNING

The following scenes may cause distress to those who pine for Dutch-style bikes but can't afford $500 for new wheels, even if an awesome company in Melbourne is now making them locally.
Oh Papillionaire. You're breaking my heart with your hott, hott bikes. At least on your website I can spend endless procrastinatory minutes of my workday fantasising about the different paint jobs and leather trimmings and wicker baskets I would customise you with. Oh, your swoopy step-through frame, your chain-guards and handlebars like a delicate hipster's moustache...

And speaking of hipster facial hair... How utterly fabulous is this? Are you sitting down? OK.

The Seersucker Social from ReadysetDC on Vimeo.

There's a group outta DC called "Dandies and Qaintrelles", and while you may have heard of tweed rides (where bike geeks get gussied up in their best houndstooth and hunting caps), this weekend just passed they organised a "seersucker social". Think straw boaters, suspenders, floaty floral dresses, pearls, and loads of seersucker. Add bikes, a lack of laws requiring the wearing of helmets, and many good-looking young hipsters; serve over endless emerald lawns on a sultry afternoon, and garnish with mint like a classic southern cocktail. Delicious. We need to organise one here for spring!

PS: Quaintrelle may be my new favourite word.

"A quaintrelle is a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and cultivation of life’s pleasures..."

Pride & penguins

Parcels from publishers are no real novelty at my work; we recieve at least a handful of books each week, all hoping for reviews. This glut of books is at once a luxury and a little bit of a waste... one can become a little careless with books when they come too easily. Just as you never appreciate a cold beer like you do after a day of hard work, books seem somehow sweeter when you've had to earn them. Not that today's gift required strenuous labour...

I had all but forgotten signing up to be part of the promotion for 75 new Popular Penguins. You know the ones - they're only $10, they're classic titles and they have those fabulous orange covers that are at once timeless and totally retro. The good folks at Penguin had the fun idea of getting 75 people in each state to pose with the books. Ultimately 75 would have the new titles photoshopped in and become part of a video.

I didn't make the cut. Just when I thought maybe I hadn't missed the boat on being discovered as a super (book) model... nope, that ship had sailed and I remained flustered and unphotogenic in its wake. But I still got to choose two books and a cute little Penguin bag! So my next reads are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Northanger Abbey. It's the only Jane Austen I've not yet read, so really looking forward to it.

Like so many girls, bookish and otherwise, Austen has been a huge part of my life. I still remember vividly when the BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice first screened on TV. It was the bonnet drama that stopped a nation. At that point in the mid 1990s I was still a rangy barefoot tomboy, mortified to the point of having to cover my eyes and blush profusely if a kissing scene came on TV. But while it was some years before I truly appreciated Colin Firth in a wet shirt, I loved every second of P&P.

Later mum bought all six glorious hours on VHS, and my sister and I learned every word (suprisingly the ability to quote Lady Catherine de Burgh at will has actually made me new friends, though I must say this doesn't work at every party). Our Barbie dolls didn't swan around Malibu or Surfers Paradise; they sported incongruous tans for Regency England and squabbled over bonnets. We did take some poetic licence in our dollhouse re-enactments; we thought Mary Bennet should marry the odious Mr Collins, though when we grew sick of him he became the victim of an unfortunate pianoforte-falling-out-a-second-storey-window accident.

When we studied the text in high school english, I was shocked that there were girls who'd never seen the series, let alone sung along with the jaunty opening titles in feverish anticipation at what was to come. I found myself feeling desperately protective of the adaptation, particularly when my schoolgirl compatriots thought the actress playing Jane wasn't hot enough to be the beauty of the family. Lizzie Bennet is surely the most irresistible literary heroine of all time, however, and when my classmates fell for her in their turn I looked on knowingly, with a sense of smug pride I've since come to associate with introducing friends to a charming suitor you still can't quite believe is yours.

Sure, we all like to think of ourselves as Lizzie but few of us can really come close. Personally I think I'm more like docile Jane, if she were uglier; or slutty, inappropriate Lydia if she had more of a misanthropic streak. At any rate, I will oblige my mother with many years yet of fretting about having to support me as an old maid...

Warnings / promises

Don't tell me you're afraid of the past
It's only the future that didn't last
And you said something
You said something
Stupid like
Love steals us from loneliness.
Happy birthday
Are you lonely yet?

I've made a huge mistake...

This little guy hanging in the mexican restaurant reminded me so much of renowned nevernude analrapist Tobias Funke, I had to take a photo. In the sober light of day, however, the mustache is really the only resemblence. Which raises the disturbing question of why I'm projecting a TV character I haven't seen since my last Arrested Development marathon - approximately three years ago - onto restaurant decor after sixteen glasses of red.

Oh, Tobias. Nobody, but nobody, will ever be as inappropriate as you.


Tobias Fünke: Okay, Lindsay, are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over - an analyst and a therapist. The world's first analrapist.

Tobias Fünke: No, no, it's pronounced a-nal-ra-pist.
Buster: It wasn't really the pronunciation that bothered me.

Michael Bluth: You know what you do? You go buy yourself a tape recorder and record yourself for a whole day. You might be surprised at some of your phrasing.
Tobias Fünke: Butterscotch. Wanna lick?

Narrator: Tobias listens to a day's worth of his own words, to see what Michael was referring to...
Tobias Fünke: [on tape] ... even if it means me taking a chubby, I will suck it up.
Tobias Fünke: Nothing wrong with that.
Tobias Fünke: [on tape] Oh, I've been in the film business for a while, but I just can't seem to get one in the can.
Tobias Fünke: It's out of context.
Tobias Fünke: [on tape] I wouldn't mind kissing that man between the cheeks.
Narrator: ...and he realized there is something distinct about the way he speaks.
Tobias Fünke: Tobias, you blowhard. [chuckles]