Poppies from the Professor

Perky Pancakes

Hello Little Bloggy! No, I haven't forgotten you. I've simply been shunning you for a week. Why? Let me see...

A lack of subject matter? No. There's been a birthday dinner at one of my favourite restaurants, fun at the pub, Shakespeare at the opera house, breakfast in a Japanese garden, home made sushi, tangy lemon tart, a good DVD, an episode of Sex and The City (we're just getting the last ones now) and a big bunch of beautiful poppies. Lots of delightful things to bang on about really.

A niggling case of the blues is to blame. No good reason. Just a bit blerk.

And then I got sick.

So this morning I decided to give my sorry self a big silly hug from the inside with some pancakes! I used a packet of buckwheat pancake mix and experimented by adding frozen blueberries and sliced banana before slopping them into the pan. Then the soothing pleasure of watching the edges brown and the bubbles rise around the dark purple and golden yellow blobs. All the private fun of the big flip, then flop, a steaming breakfast stack, spread with a little honey and I was in heaven. Still on the theme of self indulgence, I followed it with cups of tea and a whole jabber of daytime TV.

MmmHmm! Wallowing Good!

Out and About: The Gold Coast

All that glitters is not gold.

Certainly not when it comes to the great shining cubic zirconia in the Gold Coast crown, Surfers Paradise. I do not believe that the gaudy mess of high rise buildings, souvenir stores and dingy shopping malls that hug the endless but well populated beach is any longer the Paradise of many surfers. Never the less, on our little sojourn last week, Miss Pipstar and I found there a temporary Paradise of our own. Our luxury girl’s un-weekend was dedicated to self-indulgence at every turn with plenty of sunshine and girly chatter.

Lovely highlights included:

• Endless blue sky, perfect temperatures and minimum wind.
• Hours dozing on the beach or by the hotel pool with books slumped on chests.
• Large and delicious over priced meals eaten with impressive appetites and finished only when the discomfort of being over fed set in, unencumbered by reason or guilt. (Nothing fancy or exotic. We felt like fish ‘n chips, Chinese and hamburgers, so we had fish ‘n chips, Chinese and hamburgers.)
• My lovely new green rubber thongs (footwear, not underwear).
• Sharing fruit and yoghurt for breakfast on the beach with someone else who really does enjoy having fruit and yoghurt for breakfast.
• Sleeping while we should have been at work.
• Cocktails while we should have been sleeping.
• Making pals with the owner of a cocktail bar ensuring a night of priceless pricey drinks for free.

"Funny"(?!) highlights included:

• Missing our flight up due to a 2 minute discrepancy between Pipstar’s and Jetstar’s timepieces and due to the now unpopular airline’s badly applied check-in policy.
• “Ocean Views” admired from our balcony only with some clever neck craning.
• Enormous and deafening influx of potbellied, hairy, topless bikers and their potbellied, scary, shiny bikes for a Harley Davidson blare-fest.
• Brief nude sneak around hotel, with teeny towels for modesty, looking for a spare key to get our keys out of the locked locker room after our sauna.
• Suffering a case of “Influenza” to top all previous cases of “influenza” after serious run-ins with Sangria, Cosmopolitans, Lime Caprioscas, Black Widows, Grasshoppers, Jagermeister shots, Frangelico and Malibu the night before.
• Missing pedicure and manicure due to afore mentioned “influenza”.
• Checking out of hotel with it’s luxurious plumbing to spend three quarters of our lives on a jerky bus to the airport while nursing afore mentioned “influenza”.
• Managing bouts of nausea (flu) while sitting through the 20 minute delay caused by a nervous flyer being dropped back at terminal after taxiing out ready to take off. Then further 35 minute delay while they took all our bags off to find hers.

(For the information of interested parties: No more than two rows of knitting were completed while away.)

Big smiling thanks to Miss Pipstar, without who’s charming and much-appreciated company, this blissful and relaxing trip would have been instead merely a time-killing exercise in tourist hell. XXOO

(Grumbled no-thanks to Jetstar for their service and winning attitude.)

Hush Hush

Shhh. Can I let you in on a secret? Don’t tell Franky…

A little while ago now, Pipstar and I found ourselves feeling quite tempted by the ridiculous sale one of our budget airlines was having. With laugh-cheap flights to tropical places we couldn’t resist and quickly nabbed some tickets. Now that the time has come, I’m treating myself to a surprise Spring trip to the Gold Coast!
Boy will I like it. I’ll be flying up with Pipstar tomorrow morning and staying two nights in a handy 4 star hotel (also cheap rates from wotif.com). The weather up there is already warming up, while Sydney lags through Spring, so it’ll be a great opportunity to get a bit of practice in for Summer.
My bags are packed, my legs waxed and my toenails polished. All I have to do now is spring the news on myself, hopefully before I start to suspect anything, (why are my legs so silky smooth?) right after work today. I’m a little jealous of myself right now, to tell the truth, but I deserve it… don’t I?
Have fun in Queensland Franky!
As for you, little blog, she’ll see you when she gets back.

Out and About: Australian Museum

It struck me as a fine idea to go and see Rex & Max Dupain’s Sydney, an exhibition of photos taken by a father and son of the same familiar subject, my beautiful Sydney Town. Yes. What a wonderfully grown up and sophisticated way to spend a Saturday afternoon, strolling from one picture to the next, interested expression fixed, thoughtfully stroking chin. While I enjoy a most amateur dabble with a camera, I consider the Professor to be quite talented in the area and as a newcomer to Sydney, suspected there would be a lot of interest in the exhibition for him.

As it happened, Gretta and Flit also took to the idea, so I packed the four of us up and set off to the Australian Museum for our share of culture for the weekend.

Eh hem. After paying our entrance fee and locating the info desk, it quickly came to light that I had somehow "stuffed up big time", (I believe that was the popular expression). The much anticipated collection was not at the Australian Museum but actually at the Sydney museum, across town. “Stuff up” it was and urbane photos they did not have...

In the face of unexpected plan changes, our group was happy to oblige. We morphed seemlessly into a gaggle of oversized kids, finding renewed fascination with the skeleton exhibit, and drooling over the pretty coloured minerals. We took disgusted delight at the bugs and creepy crawlies, our faces pressed up to the glass, and we were enchanted and impressed all over again by the might and wonder of dinosaurs. After hours of exploring the “educational” exhibits with eyes wide and minds wandering, the four of us skipped happily out of the museum in search of ice cream.

Maybe next weekend we'll try the Museum of Sydney.

Stepping Out

Last night, as I stepped out into the wintry wet with the satisfied glow of a class presentation success still tingling in the tips of my ears, I thought it the perfect time to sweep by the Professors place and whisk him off to the movies. He is lucky to live merely minutes away from Cremorne and the gloriously showy Orpheum cinema, a faithfully restored art-deco building, born in 1935, now lost in modern Sydney.

So it was that I found myself skipping puddles in the faint coloured glow of neon, the Professor in hand, as we dodged through the rain along Military Road, he in a trench coat (with trackies on underneath!) me in my little brown woollen coat. Gliding into the old foyer carpeted in patterned red and orange, lit with stained glass lights, I must admit that for all I could tell, WE were in a technicolour movie together!

With tickets to see “The Life and Death of Peter Selles”, we settled into our red velvet seats in the marvellous wonder of the Walsh theatre, where I was able to enjoy the childish feeling of excitement that always comes with the cheesy sound of cinema adds, then the gradual dimming of lights and tease of “Coming Attractions”.

It seemed fitting, then, that we should spend the two hours looking back over the life of a movie star; costumes, old studio sets, expensive cars, famous scripts and artistic tantrums. In the case of Peter Selles, the glamour and awe surrounding him was tarnished by the self-indulgence of fame and fortune, making his life somewhat of a miserable tragedy. The professor and I, however, stepped lightly from the scenes of our 1940s Romantic Drama and happily back into our 2004 Sydney life, but not before a kiss goodnight in the rain…