Up 'n' go art

I've been passing this work-of-art-in-progress now for several years. Located in the front garden of a row of industrial shopfronts on Coreen Avenue, Penrith, someone has been diligently hanging their empty "Up 'n' Go" instant breakfast drinks in the tree.

At first the tree reminded me, very much, of a bush in the yard of my cousin's house in Bargo. She discovered it full of used teabags one day, only to realise the ornamentation was due to her husband "decorating for Christmas" (Read: chucking his used teabags into the tree, for mischief, mainly).

The Penrith version of this art form features "Up 'n' Go" packets, which are threaded on wire - so there's been a great deal more planning than impromptu chucking. Simply marvelous urban art.

I took the pic on my way home from today's Pieroth wine-tasting harbour cruise. It semed like such a looooong walk... Hic!

Sunday's magic number: 94.0 - Sigh...

Bonus bottles

Louise, a work colleague, passed on some photos of last Sunday's wine tasting cruise. I look so... greedy. These are my freebie bottles - four of 'em - just for turning up.

Wild wines afloat

Put several work colleagues, assorted spouses and some fine Pieroth wines onto a Sydney Harbour showboat - shaken, not stirred - and hilarity will ensue.

It was the six-monthly Pieroth wine-tasting cruise today - and I did kinda feel sorry for Stewart, my wine rep. I already had an inkling of the way the session would proceed: trying to get my guests out of the Woolworths' gourmet food hall in time to catch the ferry. But there was poor Stewart on the boat, having to commence his wine talk while trying to make eye contact through piles of cheese, crackers, dips, grapes, blueberries, cabanossi, avocado, chocolate, and Portuguese tarts, etc - and diligently handing out the score sheets (with suggested ratings between 1 and 4), only to see that one of my teaching colleagues had scored her first drink as "Lovely".

"She's a kindergarten teacher," I warned. "Be grateful she's not writing in thick yellow crayon!"

About half way through the tastings, we were suddenly aware that we were the only table this year without a "slops bucket". Every taste test went down the hatch.

The day was certainly enlightening for James, a new friend from Canada, who (only six months into his stay Down Under) got to taste some Australian culture and humour along with the wines.

Retiring to the Cockle Bay Cargo Bar afterwards, for "steak fries" (they no longer make their iconic potato wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce), we suddenly had one of our gathering remember she'd left her handbag on the ferry. She was back a few minutes later, but seemingly much too late to have retrieved the handbag. And yet, she was holding it aloft.

It seems the ropes had already been released, the boat pulling out from the wharf - but the wayward handbag had made it into our wayward Kindergarten teacher's arms - but only by the kindness, and very true aim, of one of the showboat's cabin crew.

Perhaps it's a good thing that we didn't remember the cheese knife, left behind at our table, until much, much later...

Sunday's magic number: 90.6 - A great result for a week of great restraint, despite the Thursday morning tea, and today's wine tasting, of course. Let's hope the downward trend continues.

The only way to buy

Although the radio news predicted rainy weather for the whole weekend, and not returning to spring days until next week, it was a pleasant surprise to have a glorious day for our latest Pieroth wine tasting harbour cruise. And how nice that the trains were actually running into the CBD this time, and not off for track maintenance.



After getting back to the King Street Wharf, Darling Harbour, we ventured into the newish Lindt Chocolat Cafe on Cockle Bay, to sample their iced mochas! Wow. (I wonder, why do they need sugar sachets on the tables?)

Talk about "death by chocolate"... What a way to go!

Wasted day, feeling wasted?

Actually, Sunday wasn't a wasted day at all, but I didn't get much done from my original list of things "to do".

It was a glorious day to be on the Harbour, specifically the floating Sydney Harbour Ballroom, for the free annual Pieroth wine tasting and harbour cruise. A very relaxing, informative day, spent with three work colleagues and three Star Trek colleagues, soaking up as much wine as our palates would allow, and putting my order in for my semi-annual splurge on wine. Damn those trains, though; how come every weekend I want to travel into the CBD the trains are out for track maintenance?

Our cruise was booked for 2pm, but us Westies had to leave Penrith by 11am to guarantee finding somewhere for lunch first. Never a good idea to go wine tasting on an empty stomach (like last year). Sight of the day was AdamJ and SJ sprinting along Cockle Bay towards the ferry at 1.59 pm! For a moment there, we thought Adam was planning a giant leap across a watery expanse between two jetties. (Reminded me of a cross between The Six Million Dollar Man and the Long-Jumping Jeweller from Lavender Bay.)

We finished off with scrummy potato wedges at Cargo Bar, turning last year's accidental discovery (when searching for food to soak up the excess wine) into a tradition. And then a looooong walk back towards Central Station to get the rail bus home (and of course, it backtracked our trail all the way back to Wynyard, so we coulda saved time by walking the opposite direction in the first place).



I got home too pooped to write my review of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, as I'd originally planned. This (rather loud) musical was a very enjoyable Friday night's entertainment. Set against the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is highly reminiscent of Reg Livermore's Betty Blokk Buster, several characters from the "Rocky Horror Show", David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust", and the bizarre rock 'n' roll science fiction stage musical, "Return to the Forbidden Planet" - even featuring "Return"'s own Tina Harris (as Hedwig's musical director and keyboard player)!

Where "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was a comic tragedy, "Hedwig" is probably more of a tragic comedy. Young Hansel, an oppressed, androgynous boy from East Berlin, gets an unexpected opportunity to escape with an American GI - but only if he undergoes a sex change operation. The botched operation - the "angry inch" of the title - is the start of yet another set of terrible circumstances in "her" life, as the newly-bewigged Hedwig (played by iOTA) ends up in a US trailer park with no husband and no prospects. Life takes a temporary turn for the better when Hedwig finds success in music - and meets her "other half" in life, the intense and sweaty rock singer, Tommy Gnosis.

I've heard that the film version of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" has one actor playing Hedwig and another playing Gnosis, but in the stage version, the versatile iOTA portrays both "halves", with a dramatically monochromatic lightshow bridging the transformation. I'm assuming the film covers a slightly different set of themes at this point. The message that came through strongly for me, at this climactic switch of scene, was the ambiguity of whether we'd been watching only one person's story unfold here, or two.

Favourite line: Hedwig introduces her band's drummer, Dave Hatch: "You have to admire someone who bangs on things for a living."

I also liked Hedwig's thank you to Tom Mann, whom she assumes wanted to celebrate his fondness for white Toblerone chocolate and ancient Egyptian pyramids by decorating his theatre appropriately. The audience glanced up, as one, to notice a ceiling covered with large, accoustical, white, Toblerone-like pyramids!

The musical grants us yet another transformation, with Saskia Smith's Yitzhak: one more troubled character caught between genders and society's expectations. As much as I loved "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", we did lose Frankenfurter, Eddie and Rocky in that. "Hedwig" is, in many ways, so much more uplifting. Now that my ears have recovered, I must get around to playing the CD I bought of its showtunes.


My friend Linda brought me back this souvenir of the Berlin Wall in 1990. She collected the pieces herself. I wondered if I'd ever have an excuse to share it online.