Chesty Bond

There are only three of us on the tennis court because Gina and Scott are already in Dublin.

Chesty Bond watches us play from the tower across the road. He's winking but I don't think it's about the standard of play today. I try to concentrate on the basics: moving my feet and watching the ball. It's like those road signs: Police now targeting...speeding. Noonie now targeting...moving feet and watching the ball.

Noonie and I walked the south end of King Street, Scrags being the natural point to turn around. Allie tried to get everyone calling it SoNew (as in South Newtown) but we don't seem to have that kind of sensibility. It reminds me of "Stop trying to make fetch happen", from Mean Girls. Totally random.

At the expanded shop across from Scrags we buy $3 plastic stripey rings and they give us cup cakes with red and white icing to celebrate their opening weekend. I try to barter on a job lot at Dragstar but the sweet shop assistant says she's not allowed to deal. Fortuitously I only buy the skirt and then later Annie comes home with a totally fetch shirt that she bought with me in mind. Suddenly I have the wedding outfit.

Later we see Wedding Crashers. Trev says the only reason he's dragged himself out of the house post buck's night is because he wants to be alert and prepared to the possibility of crashers at their wedding. I say that I'd probably welcome them, but that's before seeing the film.

Having the idea is the same as doing the thing, right?

I think I lost confidence right after the spam commenters hit. Felt disconnected, like I couldn't register anything of interest. Then I went to The Alfred for a $5 steak with Avi and it all turned around.

First, because my pay didn't go into my account at precisely the expected moment, I didn't have the $5 to pay for my steak. Thanks, Avi. You know where I live. Then we ran into Avi's friend, Craig. He used to be the manager at the Southern. Now he works at an Irish pub in the city. While Craig is ordering his steak Avi says that it used to be a lingerie bar. Craig doesn't hear. Craig has just returned from visiting his girlfriend in the US. He says he liked it. Americans weren't as bad as he thought they would be. Craig has salad with his steak but Avi and I just have mash. Craig says New York was hot, especially the subway. His girlfirend lives in Jersey. I feel like I live in a bad rock song.

When you buy a beer at The Alfred they give you tickets. The students next to me ask what the tickets are for. The bar guy says that there's an hourly draw and it jackpots to $1300. On the $5 steak menu it says that the jackpot is $3100. Maybe bar guy is dyslexic. Either way it's not challenged while we're there because no-one wins.

The afternoons are getting longer and Arabella and Skye come in to look at the sunset over that island where they used to film Water Rats. Intense orange at the horizon, like the mandarins on my desk. Silhouettes. Crazy palm tree shapes.

Later we sit on the balcony, drink a glass of wine and talk about how we think that having the idea is basically the same as actually doing the thing. Jo says thank god because otherwise she would have hardly achieved anything in her life. I agree because it means that I don't ever have to write the blog about The Bravery.

I text Andrew asking what I should wear to Lisa's wedding in Scotland. His reply: Tailored masculine suit, outrageous hat, red lips and vertiginous heels. I say it sounds a bit Celine Dion, what does vertiginous mean and I'm not sure. He says that people in the UK will realise it's inspired by Isabella Blow, wear it, it's a winner.

I think there'll be plenty of time to ponder the outfit and the wedding reading when we're hanging out in our apartment in Amsterdam listening to the juke box. Feel smug for having got passport application in with (several...actually three) days to spare. Time to go home.

Saying for the day: too C for S

Shops that we would like to see open on Hickson Road

- dry cleaner
- bootmaker
- pharmacy, especially if it sells cheap but good mascara
- one that sells fishnet tights
- actually, Mecca, as in Cosmetica, would be good too
- Arabella says a beautician but I doubt that I would use it

p.s. Noonie has expressed some interest in a retrospective blog about The Bravery. It's coming. Almost formed in my head and even more motivated now that the SMH has bought into the Bravery v. Killers debate.

Painting the Side of the Pub

In Kurri there's a man up a ladder painting a mural on the side of a pub. There are flames and firefighters and, with his outline in front of the orange licks, he becomes one of them as he paints. We drive up the hill and there's another pub with another mural. Perhaps it's what they do here. There are many pubs and I imagine him working his way around them all.

As we drive through Keinbah and there's a child in a flanellette shirt sitting on his shins in the paddock near his house. Like Michael K he is a gardener.

Sarah Blasko and my headache. Beck is at less than his best. Pickle is car sick and vomits on the back seat, but by the time we arrive he's eaten it so there's not really anything to clean up.

We pass three people riding woolly ponies and turn into the drive. Dark blue hills in the distance. At the bottom of the gully all we can see is the brown dry slope of the hill in front and a sliver of light blue sky. The stock yards are halfway up the hill and as we pass them the sky forms the majority of what's on screen in front of our eyes. Large. Large, and light blue.

I used to fly up this road with the back wheels sliding out towards the race as I took the corner too fast. Now I worry that my car will bottom out. Perhaps that's maturity. I think of it as age.

We eat chicken soup sitting in the sun underneath the jacaranda tree, and then I fall asleep on the lounge. The buzz of the horse races is in the background. Raining at Eagle Farm. From time to time Pickle sniffs close to my face and although I don't open my eyes I know that he's wiggling and wagging in order to prompt an exchange.

Tonight roast pork and then mandarin cake. We need to be done in time for the rugby and The Bill depending on your priorities.

We give the birthday presents. Fragrance for Lorraine, and we promise Hon a new wheelbarrow from the hardware store in the morning. He says he'll help us put it together. It's not occurred to me that it will need assembling: hardware is the original IKEA.

Hon mistakenly calls their dog by my name. I'm OK with that. She's a lovely dog.

Nothing works. Everything is hard.

Wrangling the Winners

They need a net, he said, talking about the wranglers. It was their job to make the award winners go backstage rather than into the audience once they had finished their acceptance speeches. There was so much to concentrate on, though, that once all the actors' names had been remembered the stairs proved the default escape. One writer/director thanked his family, the producer, dramaturg and Peter Garrett while next to me his friend chanted: the actors, the actors, the actors. During the Dame Joan Sutherland package the same friend gasped: she looks like the queen.

Beautiful things: the neon pink and rust cityscape of The Producers set and Lucy Bell's italian.

A shop called Kevin

Last Night: the launch of Sydney Design 05 at the Powerhouse. There is a coffee table made from what looks like brush brooms joined together. The brush is on top. Fine for displaying coffee table books but not really for cups of coffee, which would seem to be the primary purpose of any coffee table. (Why not tea table, I wonder, and then for an instant I doubt that coffee table really is the name that we all call it. It seems so strange on contemplation.) We speculate about how often you'd need to turn it over to remove the detritus collecting at the bottom of the brush. It should be in proportion to how often you vacuum underneath the cushions of the couch, I think.

Tara says the Sydney Design logo matches my skirt. The logo's green and she seems jaded. Tim has the first copy of his book, though. I see other people from a distance but don't talk to them necessarily. It's Friday and I'm tired.

Noonie is wearing the dress made of old chairs, and people love it.

Twice watiers ask if they can take my wine glass. No, actually, I'm waiting for a refill, I say. The third time, I do feel compelled to surrender it and let them get on with cleaning up.

Later we go to Golden Century and Noonie wangles us a table. Amanda is appointed orderer. I write it down so that we can keep track. It's still in the Bruce Springsteen bag, the order list, visible through the side plastic: whole BBQ duck, minced pork with beans in XO sauce, S + P squid...It should be known as the over-order list.

This morning: A sunny walk to the city. On Kent Street there's a dry cleaning and alterations shop called Kevin. A boy walks past me wearing a navy hoodie with tiny white seagulls on the front and immediately I know he was at Sigur Ros. There's a rotund Indian man on Broadway wearing a bright turquoise parka with a fur collar. And in Sussex Street in Chinatown the sun sparkles off the leaves of the trees so that I can only look at them out of the corner of my eye. I think if this wasn't a city I know so well, that it would be very exciting.

Jonny leaves a message to say that Interpol and Bloc Party are on Music Max on Fox. He knows I don't have Foxtel but thought I might be interested. I wonder if he's stalking me. Michael Winter thinks too much about punctuation, but he had a five hour window in London and spent a large part of it at Cafe Boheme. I love that. And I know it because I'm stalking him virtually, via his blog.

It's the Smiling on the Package

Interpol is the soundtrack to my week. I haven't been able to stop listening since I bought the CDs on the weekend. In the car. At my desk. Jonny emails that his favourite track is number 6 on Antics. It's about having a boring life and wanting to break out. My favourite track is Evil.

At Martin Place I talk to Max Markson. He always looks sharp. Good tie. I tell him that Katie Harvison is my friend. I always say that when I see him because it's all I can think to say to him. It's lucky I only see him very occaisonally. We both wonder aloud why you would move to Darwin, and laugh. Then we have to get to our seats.

As we walk past John Singleton he says hallo. He looks dishevelled. I think of him paying $50 to not have to wait in line for his coffee.

Then Georgie Parker gets photographed for the Sundays with my Bruce Springsteen bag.

After work we drink a glass of wine on the balcony and we laugh a lot. We think we're funny.

I go to Noonie's for lentil salad and she shows me the vintage clothes she's been buying at the shops around her new office. Her favourite dress reminds me of the fabric on the dining room chairs at Gran's house. Pickle is itchy. And Avi is at the pub.

I remember a red dog standing in the fork of a jacaranda tree.

I sharpen my eye pencil out the window when the traffic is stopped.