Saturday, January 27, 2007

Australia Day Redux

It's late(ish) Saturday night and as we pass the halfway point of the Three Day Weekend the oracle has burned rare earths, applied ungents, sorted the entrails and cast the stones, and decreed "Outlook good".

Friday (Australia Day) I went to a long leisurely lunch at the home of a friend of mine who is heading overseas for a few months. He lives in a huge Victorian terrace with a very talented artist and her beautiful old Staffordshire Terrier "Tigger". It was such a wonderful afternoon. A Morrocan influenced vegetarian feast for 12, all of us gathered around a huge refectory table in the gorgeous paved courtyard. A hot day, but with dappled shade and some cooler afternoon breezes.

I only knew a few of the guests beforehand, but enjoyed meeting everyone. The eclectic bunch included a 71 year old herbalist (amazing woman!) and two gay couples, one who had been together for more than 30 years and the other couple (only in their late forties) who had been together for 25 years. Two of the guests brought their own dog "Zelda" along to play with Tigger, and in the late afternoon the hostess collected a beautiful blind old Border Collie she was going to be looking after for the rest of the weekend. By dusk we had discussed lefty politics, dog shows, Spanish cinema, pop culture psychology, Buddhism, feminism, tartan coffins and writing your own eulogy. All in all a fantastic afternoon.

(My verchacte home pc won't let me post the photos, but I'll post some early next week. Expect dog pics.)

Today I went into the Buddhist centre and spent 3 pleasant hours restocking the bookshop shelves, unpacking from the event last weekend and putting the place back to rights. It may not sound like fun, but I pottered and tidied, and then my friend Alan gave me a lift home in the afternoon. Once home I did a quick ring around to find someone to have a beer with* (verdict: "My sources say no") but settled for a night in with Iron Chef: America and a repeated (but still good) episode of RocKwiz. Not exactly up to the grade of cracking a coldie in a room full of homosexualists, but I've had worse evenings. Relaxing really.

Tomorrow's agenda is Yum Cha in the am with Mikey (the lovely ex) and June & Frank (the lovely ex-inlaws), and then an afternoon beverage-fest in the outdoor courtyard of the Green Park Hotel with Mikey and some other friends. Then I shall have my coldie, and there will be homosexualists too. Yay.

* Stil & 'Pong, apologies if you guys were free tonight but I just realised I should have rung you guys too!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is not a single word or thought in paragraphs two and three that I don't absolutely love. May I sigh contentedly on your behalf?

Lovely.

Oh, and paragraph one made me laugh. And made me jealous-- my Magic 8 Ball always makes me sort the entrails.

Anonymous said...

For the record, the word "homosexualist" has now passed into my vocab... while we were pancaking it up yesterday afternoon Ma asked me if I'd actually seen the Doris Day version of Calamity Jane (the music in the pancake place was a trifle homosexualist itself, as was at least one of the staff), and I found myself off on a riff about them taking away your "homosexualist card" if you haven't seen at least three Doris movies... :)

Anonymous said...

Ah, Andrew, thanks for the thought, but ’Pong and I weren’t in having-a-beer mode Saturday night anyway. We’d decided (finally!) to have an evening together — the joys of working completely different shifts most of the time.

The Other Andrew said...

Michael, it was a brilliant way to spend an afternoon. I'm thinking that I might actually contact a couple of the people from the afternoon to see if they'll sit for me and my camera. The artist who lives in the house especially.

Yani, hah! Glad to see I have had some influence!

Stil, awwwwww. That's nice, and a good idea.