G'deve.

I don't think "G'deve" is a real term. But I'm an Australian and I vote and its past midnight so I can says whatever words I please. I'm sitting in my darkened lounge room with the remnants of my candles burning post-Earth Hour. Husband is off galavanting somewhere on a river boat with 13 other lads in a show of "hetero-masculine tradition" (otherwise known as a bucks party) and hence this is my second night alone in the house of Desmond and why I am sitting up in the lounge room in front of the computer at silly o'clock with my poncho on askew. It's a bit weird, but still distantly familiar.

Anyhoo. While I'm waiting for the folks upstairs to turn their music off, I will type some words and see if any of them are interesting.

I guess my general situation just now is important for contextualising my virtual absence. I fell back into my merch roots and have picked up a few shifts a week selling such things as t-shirts and the occasional babushka doll, for various theatre shows. Today I did Riverdance at the Capitol. OhmygodsomuchEnya. So it is nice to have some work to do that isn't too taxing and I know I am good at (although the Enya part not so nice). While most of the folks there are a little less enthusiastic than me, I am running with my early eagerness in case the novelty peters out. But I like asking the little girls if they know how to dance, and I'm not yet tired of middle-aged men commenting on how tired my arm must get holding that programme up in the air all night. And I've lost count of how many people I've made laugh. I'd say at least seven. It isn't the ideal scenario (working nights while Ben works days), and the pay isn't amazing, but it makes me feel good, which is more than I can say for any other work I've done in the last year or so.

Next week I start temping with a prestigious theatre company and it is VERY EXCITING even though I am just doing reception and such. I've also got another interview on Monday with another creative company so things are rolling in the right direction. I'm hoping to carry on doing the merch shifts for as long as I can without falling over from exhaustion. Funds have been dangerously low and so this double earning means I can finally get back on the metaphorical horse again. If it continues well I can also afford to get back on an actual physical horse again. Win-win.

Band activities have also stepped up due to a long overdue photo shoot followed by a stint in the studio recording a hit single. And also rediscovering Pop Tarts. Seriously, how good are Pop Tarts. The chocolate ones. Trying to get 5 people in the same room at the same time with instruments is becoming slowly more difficult, so this has become a priority again. Between this and the shift work I decided to quit choir. Sad but necessary. Perhaps I will take it up again later in the year. Also I need to write more songs. There have been a couple. One I can't really talk about yet. It's a surprise (not for you, but I still can't talk about it). The latest one is called "Frozenlake" and I guess I'll post my horrible demo of it sometime after the band have had a good listen to it. Harmonies are fun.

So that, dear reader, is what I've been doing for the past month or so instead of breakdancing or volunteering at a school. Sorry. I do, however, have 4 more months up my sleeve. Alright, yes, I'm wearing a poncho. But you get the gist of it.

I'm going to bed now. In the meantime here's a video completely unrelated to All.Before.Thirty but shows you what my band have been doing. Mostly being quite silly.

An open letter to The Car

Car,

You are no doubt aware of the care, attention and money that Ben and I have poured into you. The way we washed and buffed you in an attempt to bond. The way we changed you from a young hoon's doof-machine to a clean respectable vehicle. The way we tried not to lose our minds every time you decided to stop running for no apparent reason in the middle of heavy traffic.

I have less than four months now in which to successfully learn to drive and get my provisional licence.

Do the math. Your days are numbered.

Regards,
Dee

Harbour walks: Milsons Point to Woolwich - Leg 1

I don’t think my skin has been this brown since primary school, when we were made to go to swimming classes each morning in the summer. Being from Scotland, it was Ben’s parents’ prerogative to spend as much time soaking up vitamin D as possible while they were here. But it made me tired. Embarrassingly so. But thank goodness for them, otherwise this harbour thing was going to get away from me, I think. 30 km in 2 days – 14.5 in the first, and 15.5 in the second – was far more than I would ever have done on my own. High fives for playing tourist in your own town.

The first trick was to get a multi-trip pass that allowed us to get on and off all trains, buses and ferries for a week. The walks were organised as such that we would be trekking between ferry terminals, a short distance by water, considerably longer by foot as the shoreline meandered in tentacle-like shapes away from the middle of the harbour. Day 1 started from Luna Park, went around Lavender Bay and McMahons Point, Berrys Bay and Balls Head, Berry Island and Gore Cove to finish at Greenwich Point.

The boarded walk from Luna Park to Lavender Bay is rather nice – gardens hiding funny little sculptures, including Blinky Bill and Nutsy who along with Enid Blyton were pretty much solely responsible for my childhood devouring of books. Wendy Whiteley’s garden is also worth a visit. Views of the harbour from the top of the stairs were exquisite, although views of thousands of spiders perching atop gnarly webs, not so much. From McMahons Point, we followed the water around to Blues Point. Did you know that this is the only part of the whole city where you can stand directly opposite from the centre of the Harbour Bridge? Me neither.



After a while, I must admit I started to get Bridge fatigue. It’s hard to get sick of the sight of it normally, but taking new photos at every slight variation in height from sea level and angle from shore slowly became more tiresome. Except it is such a lovely dang bridge. You want to get the shot. But you also remember you’ve got 12 more kms to go before you can go to the pub. It’s a mental wrestling point.

The path winds through grassy parklands, an old timber yard, and a disused industrial site which used to be the BP Oil Terminal. It’s landscaped now, with the bare sandstone walls left where they were once curved to fit around the shapes of oil tanks. The steel walkways above the site allow for more elevated sightseeing and lead down to Balls Head Reserve, where we took the scenic route along the bottom of the cliffs for a while.

Our route right around was blocked due to a closed path, but the reserve isn’t very big anyway. We retraced our steps and met up with it on the other side before heading back up towards Waverton. The Pasks recommend The Coffee Shop Pats on Bay Road for lunch. The French toast was alright for $5.50 and the croissants are huge.

A couple of coves later and we took the low tide route along to Berry Island. It's almost tropical in there, lush and cool and beautiful along Ballasters Track. This turned into the Gore Cove track and finally down towards Greenwich Point where we could catch the ferry back to Circular Quay. Ben had a dip in the Greenwich Baths while we were waiting; I sat on the shore and meditated to the sound of shells being lapped onto the sand. Then it rained.

And that was Day One.

But--

Brain: Well, here we are again. You should probably write something and post it this time.

Mouth: Yeah, well.

Brain: Stuff has happened, you know.

Mouth: Yeah, I know.

Brain: So, what, that's it? Look at you. Sitting here with your porridge-encrusted bowl and half-empty glass of juice. You're pathetic. Even the Wii thinks so. He told me you've not done your 'My Routine' workout for 34 days.

Mouth: ... Shut up.

Brain: Here's the drill, cumquat. You're going to apply for a couple of jobs this morning. Then write a blog. A proper one. Then if you're doing really well, you could write something vaguely resembling a song.

Mouth: But--

Brain: HUP! I don't want to hear it. The fact that I'm your brain and this is an entirely internal monologue is not relevant. Shhh.

Hello!

--where they found everyone taking pictures of each other dressed as sea lions! Yeah, I know! What were they even-- oh hey. Sorry, I didn't see you there. I have kind of been ignoring you lately, haven't I. I really... I'm really sorry about that. It doesn't mean I don't care. Honestly. I'll make it up to you.

This is intended to just be a quick one to re-establish myself in the blogosphere, since I have been holidaying in my own city for the last couple of weeks trying to keep up with my husband's parents who are visiting from Scotland. They are machines (wonderful, lovely machines). Machines of walking. We knocked out an "official" 30km of Harbour Walk coastline over two days, and an unknown number of other, smaller scenic walks around the city. I will elaborate in a separate post, but wow, did we chew up that harbour. Save for one relatively short leg on the north-east side of the Bridge, I have now completed the whole of the northern harbour. Just the west and the south to go, then... is that trepidation I smell?