Sandy Claus

I was off to the CBD today for my six-monthly Pieroth wine-tasting harbour cruise. Passing the old Pyrmont Bridge pedestrian walkway at Darling Harbour, I noticed the colourful banners decorating it for the Christmas season. Then I realised I actually knew the junior male model on every second banner! Way to go, Sandy Claus!

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...

Happy Junk Food Day to me

Yesterday had to be declared an emergency Junk Food Day due to the timing of the staff Christmas luncheon at school - yummo - and my birthday dinner at Victoria's BYO restaurant in Warrimoo in the lower Blue Mountains last night.

At school we do a Good Taste/Bad Taste Kris Kringle gift exchange - two raffle tickets at the door upon entry. I did rather well: a package of body massage creme and other pampering goodies for my Good Taste gift, and a "music of the 70s" Karaoke DVD for Bad Taste. A colleague had no need for her Bad Taste gift of pooper scooper and doggy poo bags, so Jack scored well too.

I've been to Victoria's twice before for staff dinners: once when it was sub-leased as a French restaurant, for a short while and again when it reverted to Italian with the return of the original owners. They run a birthday scheme at Victoria's, whereby on your birthday you're invited to take $25 off your meal. A deal too good to ignore, I reckon. Last night was a cosy group of four friends celebrating my last year in the fourth decade. I had the chicken pancake and the veal, with some BYO Pieroth red. Superb! (I understand they do weekend breakfasts in the summer months. I'm very tempted.)

I hope too much damage hasn't been done to my waistline. I shall know tomorrow. That's when I'm also planning to devour the huge piece of leftover pavlova I was bequeathed from the Christmas luncheon. 'Tis the season to be greedy.

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!

Curry in a hurry?

Briefly - tonight I'm off to explore the menu of a local Indian establishment: Tamleni Indian Restaurant. I'm not very brave with Indian food and I'm hoping there's plenty of milder offerings.

Wish me luck! Or perhaps a tall glass of icy cold milk.

Captain's log: Supplemental. The restaurant was most enjoyable. We didn't get too brave with the hot stuff, but the Pieroth BYO wines I took turned out to complement the food perfectly! A great night.

Into the soggy night...

My online Star Trek friends and I are heading off to Baia San Marco restaurant in Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour tonight. I was planning a leisurely ride in on the fast country train, curled up with a good Star Trek novel ("Vanguard: Reap the Whirlwind"), but my friend Rosalind is swinging by in a car to pick up her cache of wine, ordered at the Pieroth wine cruise last February (I bought plenty of my own, so wasn't tempted to sample hers, and it's been safely in storage while she was overseas).

So wish us luck as we take on the motorway in wet conditions, Friday-night-of-a-long-weekend, but hopefully in the opposite direction to commuter traffic.

After the restaurant, it's off to Pyrmont for an all-night marathon of ST episodes. Or snoring (not a comment on the episodes, but it's a 40+ thing I think; lots of Nanna naps to get through the session these days).

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.