art attack

This week I decided to check out what was on at the Art Gallery of WA, in Northbridge. I got there about 5 mins before a free tour was about to start so I loitered in the lobby thinking I'd join it and get some knowledgeable insight into the artwork. The leader came over and rallied the people waiting and they marched off towards the entrance... hmmm.... As I tentatively start to follow (*thinking this doesn't seem quite right*), I realise that the whole group are approximately 16 years old and it's actually a college/school outing that I'm about to gatecrash. Luckily I managed to turn around before I tagged onto the end and decided to make my own way around the gallery. I saw Patricia Piccinini's exhibition 'Relativity', which, with its lifelike, but also strangely fantastical, sculptures, was really quite intriguing. I spent quite a lot of time simply marvelling at the intricacy of the sculptures with their fingernails and mottled skin, and then being fascinated by the weirdness of her funny little creatures, on the one hand, grotesque with scales and babies coming out of gashes on their backs, and on the other hand, cute and vulnerable. They were so lifelike, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd moved and as they were a lil' bit freaky, I did think I wouldn't want to be around for a night at the museum. I was kinda reminded of Ron Mueck's work (who, funnily enough, me and Ian saw an exhibition of when we were in Australia before many years ago), although his work was more freaky because of his use of disproportionate sizes rather than fantastical creatures, but again, really lifelike sculptures.

I then went to the State Library, which is also in the 'Culture Centre'. I had been informed that they have a good book shop of old library books for sale, and indeed they do. I imagine it's a bit hit and miss as to whether you'll come across a gem, but I managed to purchase a John Irving book and a Marge Piercy book for only $4. Bargain!

I couldn't take photos inside the exhibition but this is of the steps outside. The pink and orange colours reminded me a little of fruit salad chew sweets!

where am i?

I've been here a month now. I'm not sure if it feels like a long time or not. What i do know is that it's been pretty tough. It's not that i'm homesick, as such. I do miss people an incredible amount, but I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's adjusting to not really having a purpose. As much as we all moan about work, it does give us structure and routine and the chance to value our free time. R is always going on about being time-poor. Well, i'm currently very time-rich, but it seems, the more time i have, the less i manage to achieve! Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow. I haven't read a book since i got here. i haven't finished my one report which i need to do for work... WHAT have i been doing? I think i slept for about a week trying to get over the jetlag (which seemed to hit me a lot harder this time - i think because it was so cold) and adjust to the cold weather. I know i found it v. difficult to get out of bed some days! And obviously i don't know anyone. I've been to a couple of meet ups now and started yoga, enquired about some volunteering, so i guess it's all starting to happen, but it takes time. And poor Mr R. has had to put up with all my struggles. And without sounding like i didn't think much of him before (!), he has totally astounded me with his patience, generosity and general all-round goodness. And believe me, I have been difficult... crying over thick gravy is really not gonna help anyone! At the same time it's been great. I sometimes have to pinch myself that I'm actually so far away and experiencing living somewhere new. I have all this time and so many opportunities to do and learn new things. And i'm living in a cute house in a great location with my boyfriend. I'm pretty darn lucky really. And when we have days like this in winter and places like this to hang out, life is rather cool. Now if we could just scoot australia a lil' closer to brighton, things truly would be perfect.

tiger tiger (burning not so bright)

So coffee at Tiger Tiger, eh... well, Tiger, Tiger is in the city down a cute lil' laneway off of murray st. It's certainly a nice spot.. away from the hustle and bustle of town and i imagine, perfect in the summer to grab a shady table out of the sun. I'd seen the sign before and then googled it to see what people were saying. (I don't like to trust my own judgement... let's see what the rest of the world are saying first... and THEN i might grace them with my presence)... anyways, met R for lunch after his morning meeting... he was starving.. i can't eat (darn wisdom toothache) so we were after two coffees and a sandwich.... walk down the lane... the tables are busy, music playing, nice atmosphere... head inside to check out what the score is, what's on offer etc. We join the queue... we get to the front of the queue... we get shouted at? Really? Are there not better ways to tell your paying customers that it's table service? No? oh right, ok, then, go ahead and tell us off. The waitress was nice... but this woman.. the manager presumably... not so nice! So we're told that next time we have to have a table number but this time, we can sit outside and they will pass our coffee through the window. Ok then. We sit and wait for our coffees. Another waitress comes over as we're mid-conversation... fair enough, she's asking if we've just arrived... no, no, we say, we're just waiting for our coffee.... and as she walks off, i see her pull a face... an exasperated face... a 'roll your eyes' face... Like what's that about?! It probably won't stop me from going back if i'm in the city, in fact i'm kinda intrigued to see if this is usual customer service... but i'm not sure i'm gonna go out of my way for a repeat visit... and the coffee wasn't that good either. Tiger Tiger? It was certainly a bit fierce.

It's so unfair!

Yesterday I saw this guy in town. I was soooo intrigued to find out what his beef was... but i was too scared to ask, in case he was slightly mad and ranted at me for being a woman. Instead i sneaked a picture and ran away.

kiss and drive

How cute is this? This is out front of the school around the corner from our house. Designated parking bays for the parents to drop their kids off in the mornings and give them a kiss goodbye! Such a sweet idea. With my driving as it is, i doubt Mr R will be parking up there with me anytime soon.

pizza pie!

Now, I think pizza is my all time fave food. Which is pretty lucky because they do awesome pizzas in perth. The ready made pizzas in the supermarket don't seem to be up to much but we made a yummy one at home with roasted red pepper and garlic mushrooms - yum! But, I've also tried a few pizzas out and about. Pumpkin and blue cheese pizza at the Moon on William St in Northbridge. Soooo good! We ate in at Little Caesars on Oxford St in Leederville last week. This is a cute little pizza place that was absolutely packed. We'd been in town having a few beers in the other Moon (the English pub! ha ha!) and were totally not up for going home and cooking. We shared a medium sized pizza and couple of (glass) bottles of coca cola supped through straws and I think it was all gone in minutes! I'm not surprised these are award winning pizzas. Just another reason why i love the Leederville! We also got take out pizza from Stones Pizza (hmm, again award winning pizza!) the other night. Their menu is amazing and i would have found it hard to make a decision. Luckily R was being decisive and made the choices! No pictures I'm afraid, I don't think the pizzas stayed around long enough for photos!

Lake Monger

Today was an absolutely glorious beautiful sunny day which was much needed after all that darn rain. I did the washing (poor Chummy ended up going for a spin and a rinse as well after hiding in a pocket!)... and then i took my lunch down to Lake Monger, which we are lucky enough to have right at the end of our road. Lake Monger is a beautiful spot with lots of birds (including black swans!) and trees and open space and a great cycle/walking path that goes all the way around it. Usually (well, ok, i've done it twice) i jog, but this time I took my bike and went for a leisurely cycle (although I forgot it was uphill on the way back) and took some pics of the action (not much) down at Lake Monger on a wednesday afternoon. I tried to capture this one bird with the biggest feet (do they call them feet?) ever! Hopefully you can see just how big they are in proportion to his size. Today is also daddy's birthday so i called home and had a nice chat with the folks. happy birthday pops!

Desperate Housewives

Last week I stepped out of the comfort zone (and out of the house) to go meet a bunch of strangers in the city at a bar i hadn't been to. How brave am i?! Mr R. was very kindly searching for a stitch and bitch group for me on a website called meetup.com and stumbled across a meet up group called young but desperate housewives. Basically a few women, many of them new to perth/australia, looking to find some likeminded people to hang out with. Perfect, i thought! I very nearly chickened out; it was cold and i could quite easily have stayed in by the fire watching tv, but nooo, a few deep breaths, and i went and i'm glad i did! The girls were lovely and we had a really nice evening chatting and getting to know each other and now more events are planned including a craft day on sunday (i'm going to finally learn how to knit) and the movies next week. All good stuff! And i'm looking forward to hearing how my fellow friend in a new city gets on with her meet up group in vienna!

Movie week

So this week seems to be turning into a bit of movie-fest... which is perfect for all this rubbish weather we're currently having. The Revelation Film Festival is on in town and we got tickets to see The Family Jams, a film about Devendra banhart, joanne newsom and vetiver touring round america,which was great, really funny and just nice to watch these kids playing great music and having fun. I also got my paws on 2 free tix to see Snow and Ashes, a Canadian film about a journalist/photographer working out in a war torn eastern european country. It was a film made up of flashbacks so you had to kinda work out what was going on. My feeling at the end of the film was just one of detachment and both me and R said that we were left feeling quite cold. Perhaps that was the point - something about detaching from watching the horrors of war maybe? And then i won some more free tix (entering competitions all day - isn't this what people with nothing to do do?) for a movie called 'We are the mods'. Now, perhaps i'm missing something but it was bloody awful. cringeworthy even. i wanted to walk out (but i had a small amount of hope that it would get better - it didn't) and i haven't done that since seeing Toys back in 1992. It was about two girls in california set in the present day (as far as i could make out). I thought it sounded promising but nope, just cue bad scriptwriting, a really obvious non-exciting soundtrack, wooden acting, lots of shots of scooter riding and close ups of scooters. Really bad! It felt like it was written as a school project by someone who's just discovered the mod scene. Lame-o. BUT, as i say, perhaps i'm totally missing something! Saturday we bought a DVD player and joined blockbuster. First off we watched A Single Man. I love Julianne Moore (actually, does anyone not love Julianne Moore?). Colin Firth was really good and captured the heartbreak of losing his partner amazingly well from the start. Beautifully shot (as one would expect from Tom Ford's creative eye) but at times I found it a bit 'try too hard', particularly the arty water shots. The following night we watched Anti Christ. Again, visually stunning, especially the opening scene and charlotte gainsbourg was great. There was a lot of critical reviews about this film when it came out and i'm going to do some research into it. Yeah, it was graphic and i did have to watch through my hands for some of it (but hey, that's ok, i do that for most horror films and i love horror films) and misogynistic? I don't know about that. It's certainly given me something to think about and I look forward to talking about it with any film buffs who've seen it. We've still got Funny People to watch. But, hello! 153 mins for a comedy. I'm not liking it already....

So how are things down under?

So, i've been here now for 2 1/2 weeks and what have i learnt. Well, i'm learning that toilet paper seems to be really, really thin. I'm not a charmin/andrex type of person that needs ultra soft toilet paper, i buy recycled and unbleached but i've never had this problem in the UK before. But I've tried two different brands now and it's just thin! I've never been interested in how many 'ply's a toilet roll is. I'm not sure i even know what a 'ply' is but anyhoo, i'll be checking out the loo roll options in the supermarket a lot more carefully next time.

A lot of things are expensive here... probably because i'm still in currency converter mode but also, because things are just expensive. Greetings cards... how much would one reasonably pay for a piece of card.... $7! really? oh yesssss. Mr R in fact paid this much for a card just the other day. Really weird. Sooo, anyone with a birthday coming up in the next year will either be getting homemade cards or cheesy personalised ones from moonpig.com!

Come rain or shine

Ohmigod! the rain here is crazeeeeeeeee. It seriously has rained every day since last Thursday and I'm starting to get cabin fever a lil' bit. In the next rain shower break, i am soooo out of here! Still, the rain is kinda cool and it sounds great hitting the roof of our back porch and luckily i don't have to go to work or anything so no getting wet for me. On sunday i insisted that we went for a walk, rain or shine, so we headed to Floreat beach for a v. v. blustery walk (spot the autumn leaf on the sand!) and then rewarded ourselves with yummy refreshments at the Kiosk. The waves were big and not surprisingly the beach was empty but the cafe was busy! R had an amazing slice of carrot cake and hot chocolate and I had coffee and a brownie (which R said tasted like chocolate lard. Admittedly it was slightly on the heavy side!) R. let me drive home, which he has said he won't do again.... Right, it's stopped raining and the sun is shining... go, go, go....

Sherry & Bob lost in the city part 1

Bob's a big car. Yup, he's an automatic but he's big and I'm small. BUT, it's a straight two roads from the house to R's work. Easy peasy. Even for me. Say, however, I decide to take a detour to Farmer Jack's to buy macadamia nuts on the way back from dropping him off at 8.30am, the possibility for things to go wrong probably increase. And go wrong they did. I end up missing the turning for FJ's, driving into the big bad city, with options to join the freeway (uh, no thanks!) and losing all sense of direction. Add to this the fact that I'm still in semi-sleepy wear, I've got a banging headache and the petrol gauge is most definitely on empty. After two frantic calls to R (who also doesn't know where I am), a lot of swearing, some chanting of positive encouragement 'it's ok, you can do this' mantras and some bad road manoeuvres, I eventually make it home. Where I'm now comforting myself with cheese on toast and the duvet on the sofa. And now it's raining which means I can justifiably stay in and indulge myself with the Hills! Hooray! In future, I walk or cycle.

Bali Belter

Monday was a momentous day at no. 48 as R. v. excitedly cracked open a bottle of the newly homebrewed 'Bali Belter'! Woooooeeeeeeeee. And it was actually pretty darn good! I compared it to Fursty Ferret but i'm no ale expert. Anyways, we drank two big bottles of the stuff (and on a school nite, tsk tsk). R. is now moving on to lager brewing, in readiness for summer. Ale in the winter, lager in the summer. And so the laundry room continues to double up as the brewing room... sigh, how i'm meant to do my housewifely duties under such conditions, i do not know.

Das kino

Last week we checked out our local cinema in the v. cool Leederville. It's not a big chain type one but more arthouse-y which is perfect and only a 10 min walk from the house. Bonus. Made me feel homesick for the Duke of York's though and their comfy seats. The Luna seats are ODD. they're not flip up ones and in each row they're all kind of joined together, so if one person moves, we all feel it. Not the best design and not good for slouchiness, which i dig. However i did overhear someone say that they'd refurb'd the seats and indeed, they were a lovely bright shiny red colour. Anyways, we saw new Aussie film 'Animal Kingdom'.James Frecheville gave a great understated performance, as Josh, the 17yr old kid who goes to live with his nan and criminal uncles after his mom dies of a heroin overdose, conveying so much with very little dialogue. Ben Mendelsohn (he was in the Henderson Kids! Remember that?) played a real baddie and Jackie Weaver was superb as the matriarch, whose true colours really come out towards the end of the film. Pretty darn intense and a really interesting look at family loyalty, revenge and power. Oh, and Guy Pearce is in it too! I think I might do some research on Australian film making. I think the last Aussie film I saw was The Delinquents with Kylie Minogue when I was 11!

i love girls!

Girls are awesome!

A poor Trek record

Yesterday saw the first outing of the new Trek! (keen cyclists pls note the tyres were changed from the slicks in the photo above!) We drove up to the John Forrest National Park (just outside Perth) for a 40 km circular ride starting at Swan View, taking in the Boya quarry, Mundaring (where we stopped for pie at the bakery. Yum!), and some dry waterfalls. The ride's on the Heritage trail mostly on an old railway track and it ended with a frikkin' scary railway tunnel. Now, I know i'm not the bravest person, and after a day of cycling on a new bike on only 3 hours sleep, this tunnel freaked me out. It was totally dark, really stony under foot and I did not like it one bit! I'm such a wimp. All props to R today for patiently putting up with my calls for seat adjustments, gears and suspension moans, one uphill tantrum... and then after all that cooking me a yummy roast dinner whilst I soaked in the tub with a cup of tea. Oh, and we saw kangaroos!

So that's what HAL is short for

Saturday we went to Mount Lawley to check out the I heart Vintage Perth fair which I found out about from winifredandbance. Clearly I need to make a trip to Inglewood. Anyways, made it to the fair quite late in the day after staying up far too late to watch sport. Good stuff going on and lots of bargains to be found although I left empty handed. Boo. Then stumbled upon HAL, a pretty nifty boys shop with a nice line in sneakers and tees, to try to find some jeans for R. Also popped into Elroy and the Ruck Rover General Store (where they had polaroid film! - really wish i hadn't left my camera back in england).

coffee and cocktails

Yesterday arvo (seeeee, i'm learning the language already) I wandered around Subiaco. Grabbed a coffee at Spring Espresso on Bagot Road, a cute little coffee shop with bright sunny yellow paper cups. Good coffee and a few nice seats outside but not really the kinda place you'd while away an afternoon with a book. Speaking of which, a few doors down is the 'Romance Book Store'! Imagine, a WHOLE store. Didn't check it out but maybe another day. Last nite we went to Northbridge... Went for food and drinks at the Moon.... V. cool. They've got smart booths in the front but they were all full so we headed out back where there's a room full of mismatch sofas, armchairs and lamps. Super cool. Relaxed in a couple of battered old chairs with a marguerita and a yummy blue cheese and squash pizza. R drank tanqueray gin followed by (rather disappointingly) a warm beer. BUT, warm beer aside, a great place to hang out and definitely wanna go back. (and wine only $6 a glass!) (Yes, Englanders, this is cheap). Then, we wandered up and down (and then up and down a bit more) William Street trying to find Ezra Pound. Eventually worked it out (entrance isn't on William St and it doesn't have a sign)... after queuing for 5 mins (yessss, we queued to get into a bar), we made it in! And hmmmm.... pretty cool and i liked the outside alleyway bit, but much preferred the atmosphere of the Moon. And after a jam jar of tom collins for the lady and a long neck in a brown paper bag for the boy, we jumped on the train back to W Leederville and stayed up until the early hours huddled under the duvet for warmth watching the footy and the tennis.

Up close and perthonal

Sooo, here I am ('here' being Perth, WA) with the blog you've all been waiting for (or not). Anyway, so v. apprehensive about this (people can read this can't they which is a lil' bit freaky) but obviously my life is that important that people will wanna read allllll about it. Thanks to Craigy for the blog name... we spent... ooooh, about 5 minutes brainstorming cheap puns.... and came up with this one and only. And thanx ian for the last minute entry.. which i've used for the title of this post.

i can't believe i've arrived during an almost record breaking cold spell, having left behind glorious sunshine in england. Our house stands on little wooden legs, which is perfect for keeping the house nice and cold, we have no working heating and so we're currently living in one room in the evening with an old skool gas heater, hoodies and socks for company. Check out our 1970s vibe living room.