There can be too much of a good thing.

Late lunch at The Gods Cafe, ANU. Size matters. Half as much would have done. The heavy load we students are forced to carry.

A good day to enter my sixth decade

Breakfast at Local Press Cafe, Lake Burley Griffen ...

then the Great Moscow Circus ...

then ...

the flat-packed furniture shop ...

before a little bit of campaigning
for Every Australian Counts

I love the smell of laksa in the morning

One of the facets of Sydney I miss by not living the at the moment is the range of food options available.  All over the city there are choices available from almost every part of the globe. And at lunch the range of food quality, decently priced, well cooked options is gobsmacking. You can eat crap if you must or dine like a King if you insist.  Or you can settle for a giant bowl of really good seafood laksa for $15 by a mob by the name of Sassy's by Chinta Ria in the food court on the fifth floor of the Pitt Street shopping mall. 

This experience is nothing like the chicken noodle soup ... was it by Knor? ... of my adolescence. Not even in the same universe.

Where would we be without a Sydney laksa?

Tab A into slot B

We drove home today from Ashfield to Gilmore via the IKEA store in Tempe.  Contrary to my worst fears and much to my surprise - given it's a Saturday after the sales have started - the vast warehouse was much quieter than I expected.  The canteen (no other word does justice to the awful utilitarian atmosphere of the eating place) was the busiest spot on the site.  Spike managed to capture my enthusiasm for the dining experience in her photo below.  

This thought may be unfair but it's the thought that came to me as we sat at the formica-topped retro table (it seems the 1960s have been back in vogue for quite a while).   I read the notice above the conveyor belt carrying off the trays bearing the remnants of the hopeful purchases of hundreds of less than wholly-satisfied diners which said something to the effect that all waste organic matter would be recycled to minimise the use of landfill.  I couldn't stop myself thinking of one of the deeply secret horrors revealed to Sonmi-451 in The Orison of Sonmi-451, the fifth of the nested tales in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas; cannibalistic re-processing of clones.  But I cannot tell a lie.  As grim as the experience may have been I finished off most of my 'fisherman's basket' with a side of garlic bread, so let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone.

The fish ladder on the River Tummel

As for the shopping, well ... it's IKEA.  Every fibre of my being revolts against the ways in which we're forced to follow the route layed out by the social engineers who have created the brand and all that comes with it.  I instinctively turn left when the arrow on the floor points right.  Whenever I feel my irrational, juvenile need to resist I turn round, retrace my track to return for a supposedly essential second view of a bookcase, sofa or table.  It's a bit like being a salmon, I imagine,  heading upstream, making your way home to primeval spawning pools via the fish ladder at Pitlochry Dam.  Sort of.  But only in my head.  Other shoppers simply regard me as troublesome - going the wrong way.

The point of IKEA, however, is to purchase furniture, fittings and home accessories that you think you need - in flat packs, of course, so you can get in touch with your inner carpenter back home.  I am no less guilty than all the other miserable sinners swimming against the stream in the great Nordic warehouse.  But I leave the assembly tasks to Spike, who has both the patience and the finger-function required.  We came, we viewed, we purchased: trestles, a stool, a reading lamp, crockery (so our Dutch visitors on Monday could all eat from plates, which seems the least we could do), cutlery, cheap wine glasses.  The bookcases we need are too large to fit in the car and the kitchen cabinet we fancied is out of stock.  

Galahad, Bors & Percival achieve the Grail,.  Morris & Co., Birmingham Museum

The Grail Quest it was not but we failed in a not entirely dissimilar way.  We shall keep on searching for the out of stock cabinet.  

One day - perhaps next October when the Canberra IKEA store opens - we may triumph.  Isn't that the enduring appeal of Romance - the journey, the trials and tribulations on the road, the momentary glimpse of the cherished artefact?  No.  I don't think so either.  I am not Sir Galahad nor was meant to be (to paraphrase Eliot) and we need that kitchen cabinet to house all the damn plates and bowls we bought.  IKEA the drug.  You always need just one more hit.

The first of several seasonal meals

The office lunch for Christmas.  We dined at Ottoman Restaurant in Barton where, it hardly needs to be said, the food is Turkish.  And not half bad.  

Dips - beetroot was best

The "cuisine [according to the menu] consists of classic Turkish dishes that have withstood the test of time."  So, few surprises made it to the table and you'd have to imagine that the meat eaters among our number - that'll be most of our happy little band of NGO campers - experienced more of what the place and its cooks have to offer.  But I'm not complaining.  We were all well-fed by the end of our time together.  It wasn't an exiting dining experience by any stretch of the imagination but it's the best meal I've eaten all week and I didn't have to pay, so thank you National Disability Services.  

Happy Christmas comrades - if that's not mixing one's ideological frames of reference.

Bargain books join the reading list

After a late lunch on Tuesday at the excellent Penny University in Kingston ...

Thinking about it now it may have been a late, late breakfast.  Spike had very dark bread, toasted, with a mountain of avacado and poached egg.  I had the Penny University Rarebit - bagel, toasted cheese, poached egg (perfectly done) and spinach - with side orders of truffled mushroms (not sure about that verb but who cares) and harissa baked beans.  We could debate whether or not I needed both 'sides' but ... you know ... they were there, on the menu, calling out to me.

After lunner ... way too late for our meal to be brunch ... we stopped off at the bargain bookstore between Penny University and the local IGA (a pretty dismal little supermarket if we're being honest about it).  The book store's unique selling proposition is that every book inside is $10, although there's a back room with a few bookcases on which every book carries a sticker announcing 2 for $10.  And there's a bargain bonus - buy 6 books for $50.  So it's not entirely true to its USP, come to think of it.  But my point is it's a shop full of cheap books.

Summer holidays reading list

We bught 6, bargain hunters that we are.  Spike, who was not feeling at her tip top best and therefore lacked her usual apetite for a book bargain, selected just one title, Persepolis.  I chose the other five.  It's a good bunch of books, don't you think?  All hard covers too!!  Now I just have to make time to read them.

• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
• Home by Tony Morrison
• The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
• Dracula by Bram Stoker and illustrated by Becky Cloonan

Spike started on Persepolis so I took Beatrice and Virgil.  Top of the pile.  Enjoying it so far.

Call that art?

Andy Warhol, 1963

We had brunch with Jon Simpson and Rosie Birch at the teeming Deus cafe on Parramatta Road.  The food was decent enough; nothing remarkable but a good place to sit and chat.  So we enjoyed a good couple of hours catching up on their whistle-stop tour of the UK, their five days in New York, New York and Spike's adventures in the Australian art world.  Jon brought a gift from MoMA.  He said he saw the poster and immediately thought of me.  Am I that transparently obvious?  A philistine! 

As David Bowie chorused on Hunky Dory

Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all

Scrambled on Enmore Road

My breakfast at Scrambled, Enmore Road.  Spike made the better choice ... something Mexican ... but I seem to have deleted it from my phone.  The food was so-so; nothing to get excited about but decent enough to convince you that you'd eaten a hearty breakfast ... even at one o'clock or thereabouts.  We'd had a busy morning.

The cafe is worth visiting.  Friendly folk, mixed clientele, plenty to watch go bye on Enmore Road.  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the smokers on the pavement tables just beyond the open shop-front.  If it's true that barely 17 per cent of adults smoke, I begin to think we've reached the point where smoking should not be permitted wherever food is served.  That's a Jack sentence, which one tries to avoid as much as possible.  Here's a simpler version: smoking ought not to be permissible wherever food is served.  Full stop.
.

"If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony."
~ Fernand Point