Good bread

Multi grain bread, 750 g by Luneburger German Bakery Sydney Australia

You know, there are worse ways to end a day than this: firstly, you find a parking spot on Pitt Street without driving round the block for what seems like days. The lift down to Town Hall Station is working, as is the lift in the Galleries Victoria (who chooses these names?). Mind you it only seems to want to go up to the second floor, not down from it but that's okay because I'm in search of books at Kinokuniya after which I take the goods lift back to the basement.

The book store was quiet, almost tranquil although I doubt that this Japanese-owned megastore ever attains that Zen like state. I bought Petals Of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and A World Of Difference: an anthology of short stories from five continents (which is part of my strategy to win the Ulrick literature prize in 2009 ... not!).

Back underground I visited the wunderbar German bakery where a delightful young woman with an accent just like that of Jamie Lee Cutis in Trading Places sliced the loaf I bought, placed my cheese roll delicately in the paper bag with terrifically efficient tongs then added a blueberry strudel (for free because ... but never finished her sentence). It truly is great bread and who would have expected to find it there in the subway passage leading to a railway station.

On the way home I stopped off at the new mega-bottle-shop to buy a Shiraz for Michael Small to say thanks for binding Amelia's play in a book called S S Heliotrope. The guys in the bottle shop must love customers like me. I don't drink alcohol (although I had a mouth-full ... literally but don't ask ... of vintage champagne with the New Year's fireworks up a hill near Windsor). So I asked for a bottle of decent Shiraz because that's what Michael would like.

To drink immediately or lay down for a while, the shop assistant inquired?

Need one ask?

So ... for imbibing tomorrow ... he suggested St Hallet, a Blackwell Shiraz 2007 from the Barossa Valley in South Australia. It could be turpentine for all I know but I doubt it. I hope Michael enjoys it, although I doubt his pleasure will come even one hundredth of the way towards the fun I had writing the play for Millie (see the almost unbelievable but, in a way, wonderful night of 14th November when the peerless Lettie Lariot was born).

Anyway ... here ends the prosiac tale of the simple pleasures of an ordinary man. Happy but tired and ready for his bed.
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