Tales of Supermullet and the White Man's Overbite

One and two half days in Adelaide:

Bleeding nose. Sunburn just walking to get the gin and tonic.

Wet hair on the way to the premiere. The coolest beer ever on a wide verandah overlooking the square as the sun blazes down in the evening.

Sweet Tired Tim on the lawn, and Fran gaining satisfaction from forcing people to be civil to her. Resisting introductions because this is leisure, not work. A party of triumph where Dave Gleeson is the best-known celebrity. Quentin excepted. Easy to cause a stir. Walk around. Alone. With a sense of purpose. In a loud dress. But then we're on the impressive balcony and I pick up the wrong beer and swig. Bits of dirt stuck to lip gloss. I do enjoy a bit of an edge but you need to keep targets in on the joke. Martinis at Distill. Organic. Marketing gone crazy. What, the olives?

I'm talking, talking, talking to a guy in a long grey coat about a Land Rover driven into a raging creek in a time long past. Talking about walking. Wearing only a drizabone. Having to call Danny. Arriving. To dry off. Blue skin. From the lining.

Then, chicken kebabs, and: "Walked off. Too popular."

The full circle of gin and tonic. Britney on TV.

A blue cattle dog tied to a tree in front of the Supreme Court. Laksa in the market and a fly. Dead. And caught between the glass and the menu. A yellow rope in front of The Exeter. Not allowed to set foot before. Coopers exclusive on tap.

Rain during sunshine. Intellectual dressing. Thinking too much about it. Giving myself these challenges.

Excuse me, can I just interrupt you from The Spectator to discuss my new earrings?

Pulteney Street. All the way. But asking as well. To be sure. Remembering the wideness of ashphalt (sp?) on either side. Straight down the middle all the way. That's freedom? Except making way for the car that proves us wrong.

Paul's Fish Caf. Questions. Can't I just be funny? Not set goals. Not have any kind of plan. Not admit shortfalls. Ten year plans are so meaningless if you're going to live forever. You'll never miss out on life then. The luxury to lie on the couch endlessly recovering from the night before.

The Apple Merchants. George Benson and Give Me The Night. Supermild, and so I smoke one. White man's overbite like no one has ever analysed it before. I teach them the gopher. And then the reverse gopher. I'm thanking the DJ and wincing at myself.

And then I eat one. An apple. It's crunchy. It's the next morning. I'm rifling through racks of vintage frocks and I can barely get my hands between them they're packed so tightly. They're adorable. They're surefire winners. And they're cheap.

Last week I couldn't get in to the blog but I was thinking about these things.

Coasters, which are useful and underrated. An 80s image selected with apparent cruelty for the front page of the Daily Telegraph. The opposite of Valentine's Day, which according to Ray is steak and blowjob night. Brett Whiteley and ambition. The Art Gallery of New South Wales and how it makes me feel. That (This & That) Put (Here & There) Out of Sight of Polaris is gone, and who knows why? OpenAir Cinema, bats across the screen and a hard, fraught summer past. Ten Days on Earth. A boy man with a life punctuated by catering. Seersucker suits - Lloyd and Master and Charles Dance have that in common. Dame Judy smoking to save her life.

A hot Sunday punctuated by texts from LT. The first, soon after I wake: "Who do we think we are? One day someone will write a book about us, a farce maybe." The next, two words: Mark Dapin.

The girl serving us at the burger shop needs to eat one.

In my dream I'm lying in bed and there are spiders above me. They are furry and actually they look like monkeys. They have yellow faces and hands and are suspended crawling over wire mesh like a false ceiling between us. It's the same mesh that keeps the pigeons from roosting at the Wharf. I am terrified that the spiders will fall through and onto the bed. Then I'm walking into a restaurant and Gabriel is sitting at a table alone. Jim O'Mahony as well.

And now, next door a kid is crying because his Dad is writing a note on his picture. It's on the under side and they're debating whether it can be seen or not.

I'm thinking about navy blue. A lot. It's time to go back. I'm also thinking about black lace up school shoes.

Jesus is Awesome

It's interval at Sweeney Todd and while swearing we'll never touch another pie as long as we live (read: until next weekend) we're downing champagne and trying to move subtly around the room to eat as many ham and tomato sandwiches as possible.

Turn the grinder, three times, smoothly.

Afterwards we're in Gina's stag rumbling round and round the corkscrew of the car park. And then College Street with the windows down. People stare at this car. The back window of the mini bus in front says JESUS IS AWESOME in giant letters.

Scott's been at cricket training in the centre of the SCG. He claims he saw a group of people standing on a street corner at Central, arms in the air, saying Raise the Lord. We joke around with Praise the Lord, Ray's the Lord for a while and then fall silent over the pizza with four types of meat.

At the William Wallace (and after)

It's raining and the white terraces are painted copper in the evening light that Ray says will bring hail.

We peer through the window of the gallery and imagine we have the means to buy art. Isn't Ken Unsworth a sculptor?

There's a man sitting at the bar eating soup. Ray says he's here every night, and I wonder how he knows about the consistency. Tonight the soup man is not alone, a friend by his side.

The phone rings at the bar and it's for one of the punters. Who is it? he says. It sounds like the barmaid says John Howard but it's possible the whole bar has misheard. Alright, I'll take it, he says. Laughter all round.

Over steak and chips, we talk about Babel and branding, the surface area of food and the copywriter who can't write because of the Scissor Sisters. Ray says he likes to eat peas without chewing them. I'm sometimes distracted by people playing pool behind Chris. There's a football team wearing shiny shirts and drinking in the corner.

When I get home they're eating mushroom risotto and talking about boys at uni who had crushes on Ed. Then we get on to Louis Lusty and Snoop Colquhoun. Pickle is under the table with his legs in the air.

Road Trips

As we're driving with the windows down past the RAAF base listening to Bruce Springsteen and imagining we're in Top Gun I realise that, ironically, what I missed over Christmas was the road trip.

There's a sign that says Koala fatalities this year: 1, and underneath, Koala fatalities last year: 35. It's only February Noonie says.