ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

Huge muffins / Eric Cantona

I'm back in Hobart, Tasmania. One of my favourite places. I'm staying in a really posh hotel, the sort of establishment where they have a stab at working out your family tree and post it under your door while you're having a nap. It's only for one sleep unfortunately, tomorrow I downgrade significanty, however I couldn't pass up the chance to spend a night in a converted jam factory. mmmm jam ... This afternoon I made a pilgramage back to the Machine Cafe in Salamanca Square for one of their muffins, which I believe to be the best in the world. They are huge; you're presented with a square slab of bun the size of a kitchen floor tile. It doesn't look like a muffin until you turn it over and see the muffin-base pimple protrouding like a Braille full-stop on a sheet of A4. Today I had wild mushroom and parmesan. For lunch and tea. Tomorrow I will go back and try the strawberry and white chocolate. Aside from muffins, can I recommend the film Looking for Eric? I've been a bit nervous of Ken Loach films since I went to Cinema Paradiso in Wanaka and accidentally watched a miserable one about drug addiction and setting fire to caravans. Looking For Eric certainly has it's Loach-allotted portion of drugs, guns and gang violence, but despite this it is a warm and funny film at heart. Much of the warmth and humour comes from Eric Cantona who plays himself in the context of a depressed postman's invisible friend - bet you didnt see that coming! It is a valuable lesson in what happens if you cross a postie: "I know where you live..."

Chocolate pudding and other things including secret tunnels

It was a busy week this week. First there was an internationally recognised dust storm, which even made the news in Canada (Canada!) and has totally changed the colour of my washing machine. Then there was a great early morning flight over the harbour (it's the quickest way back to base, honest).

Then there was night time secret abandoned tunnel exploration in the hill behind my house. It was just like an Enid Blyton adventure (After bedtime! Dark and spooky! Abandoned tunnels! Risk of smugglers!) apart from the bit where the tunnel went steeply downhill and ended up at the back of a restaurant where they were playing the BeeGees really loudly.

Finally there was the best pudding I have ever had. In a small tapas restaurant near the harbour I ordered Eton Mess (strawberries, cream and meringue all smashed up together) and my friend ordered Chocolate Fontant with Dulce de Leche. If you took a bit of the Eton Mess on your spoon and added some of the warm sticky fondant with the toffee sauce and then slowly inserted it into your mouth ... and let the deep rich chocolately flavour mingle with the chilled fresh fruit and then take into account the crunchy meringue texture and the general toffeeness ... you'd understand why I was too raptured to take a photo ...

Dust

I have a visitor from the UK staying with me at the moment. She opened the blinds at 6am, snapped this shot then went back to sleep thinking it was just a very impressive sunrise.

I awoke an hour later to the radio playing "It's the end of the world as we know it" and scenes of Armageddon outside. I assured her that this was not usual. We turned on the telly and discovered that a fierce wind had taken a thin layer of soil off the middle of Australia and dumped it on Sydney. Needless to say everyone went hysterical.

The ABC news website was full of classic comments: "In Sydney's south-western suburbs I've just woken up to a glowing red window! Thought it was Armageddon! Either that or South Korea had nuked us!"

South Korea! It must be bad. They don't even have nuclear weapons.

Another ABC contributor wrote: "Red. Dusty. Making hard to breath... There are baby birds dead in our backyard. And our cat's gone missing."

Maybe it's like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, except instead of the dolphins running off when the earth gets destroyed, it's the cats who decide to escape? I wandered outside to see for myself. Spooky ...

Clown show

My visit to New Zealand coincided with Christchurch Arts Festival. Thankfully I have friends there who have small children who like being taken to clown shows, otherwise I would never have got to go. It was a bit like a kid-friendly version of Fuerzabruta (the Argentinian circus show that camped out in a black tent in Edinburgh some years ago). The clowns were sad and wore floppy hats, which made them look like rabbits. Almost two months on, the snow storm remains a fresh memory, probably because of the bits of snow I still find in my pockets. My little friend went to bed that night clutching the brochure for the Christchurch Arts Festival, which must be a first.

This is not how you spell poo

There were several of these signs pinned to the shrubbery along the road the other day. I corrected the spelling on the first one, then found that someone had beaten me to it on the next bush. In hindsight I wish I'd given the author public credit for the apostrophe.

And I saw a bandicoot too ...

It's called poi - fire twirling. My friend is very good at it, and it's mesmerising to watch. I was allowed to try with bean bags on string, and even then I kept hitting myself in the crotch, so it was just as well they weren't alight. It was a magical evening. There was a mist over the water, and some divers were in the ocean near the shore; you could see the light from their torches as they swam around. And on the way home I saw a bandicoot! Just need an enchidna and I have my full-house of cute Australian mammals.

Six Years Earlier

I was just randomly looking through some of my old photos and I came across these memories from 2003. They seemed to appropriately match my apocalyptic mood (a result of staying in this evening and watching the DVD of 28 days later). I thought I'd stick them up here now because in 2003 I didn't have a blog and it was such a fantastic experience and I can tease lots of Australian people reading this who won't have any idea about what's going on! You had to be there ...

 

     

  

I saw the bicycle video before you

This video has been around for a while now, so this is going to seem like I'm jumping on the bandwagon - but I saw this ages ago! Before it got really popular and before you got sent the link in an email by friends in Nepal, etc. It's a guy, on a bike, in Edinburgh. If you haven't seen it yet, this is the video that makes me so happy ...

My home in Edinburgh is ten minutes walk from most of the locations. I have even sat on some of the benches he jumps over, and have sheltered under trees he rides up. Even better, I saw the man himself once practising outside the Standard Life building at the top of Lothian Road (the bit where he cycles round a circular bit of slanty wall). He timed a jump, landed right in front of me and rode off ...

Moody muffins

Probably the most moody poppy-seed muffin photo you will ever see. They didn't taste amazing. But they popped fully formed out of my new silicone muffin tray as easy as a row of ice cubes. That's why they're upside down.

Getting up early

Australians get up really early. If I leave my flat at 6am for work, the beach is already busy with swimmers, walkers, joggers and kayakers. Some of the joggers have small dogs, or large off-road baby buggies. Some have a small dog AND a baby buggy. You get extra points for spotting those combinations. This morning I saw a guy with his kayak balanced on a baby buggy. If he had had a small dog with him that would have been a full-house.