Keep on your dress

Not much of anything in particular, Sydney

A pretty cruisy weekend came by where a Friday night was spent slaving over a hot stove. I'd wanted to try and re-create my mums Pork Schnitzel or quite some time, so after a trip to David Jones Food court and homewares section, I returned with some Pork and a tenderising mallet. I bashed seven bells out of that meat before frying it up nice and juicy with toasted breadcrumbs and all the other secret ingredients. The taste test was satisfying, it was pretty close to how mums tastes... though not quite there, I was gonn either need more pratice, or local ingredients!

The following Sunny morning, I got myself outta bed before the crack of dawn and headed down to Coogee with my camera. A few snaps as th sun hit the golden rocks before headed back home to have a look at what I managed to capture. A bunch of us met up as friends for a fine cooked breakfast and coffee before heading to Sydney city centre to go check out my third World Press Photo exhibition since being here. Similar high quality photo journalism to previous years it was.

After a cruisy afternoon, Lauren and I stayed up late before heading to a local pub to step back 9hours to the UK GMT for the FA Cup final. It was kinda wierd having a room full of neautrals, watching it more for the sake of it than knowing much about the teams... all except one drunk Cardiff fan who thought he was actually at the match.

Calm Like You

Degustation Weekend, Lithgow, NSW, Australia

As Benny, Lauren and I drove out of the city, the temperature dropped a little more than we'd been accustomed to of recent times. The olbigatory road-trip stops were made to re-fuel and re-stock on nibbles for the 2hour journey out further than West of Sydney. This weekends purpose; to become degusted.

Around 15 of us in total had registered on Rog's weekend menu; the commitment to prepare a meal (course) for all in attendence over the period of around 48hours... that was always gonna be a lot of food!

So as we pulled up at Toad Hall in Lithgow once more, the night sky had become berieved of all cloud and the milky way was all that could be seen, those stars always amaze me whenever I get far away enough from a city to actually see more than about 5 at any one time! We headed in to the warm and festive scented cinnamon aromas, which happened to be Alisons mains that would kick off the weekend.

Myself, Lauren and with more than a little help from Matty, put much love into the Friday nights dessert - chocolate Brownies - one batch for the nut lovers and one for those that had allergies. The nut lovers one went down a storm with all that natural walnutty goodness packed inside every gooey slice! Past fits of giggles, people soon started passing out as Friday rolled into Saturday.

Saturday, the menu powered on with an awesome brekkie from Matty, mid morning Scones by Louise and Aaron, a hot n spicy lunch by Benny, and Ems legendary cupcakes making a cameo in the arrangement too.

The day between eating, consisted mainly of badminton, volleyball, reading, soun baking to an extent (our 22 degrees paling in significance to the whopping 27 that was blazing in England at the equivalent time of day) lounging around and, well I think you get the gist. As the sun dipped, the light was fantastic and I made the most of the warm hues that you only really ever seem to see around this time of year; at least in the Southern Hemisphere!).

Afternoon tea was from the Irish element in the house, with Louise making some damn fine scones with Irish coffee which left the path clear for Rog's Kangeroo Stew; 6hours in the making to explode upon everybodies pallettes. Todd rounded off the evening eith his Spumoni. Group rounds of Taboo kept us busy into Sunday.
Kiri swept everyone away with her berry topped pancakes before Oren capped off the culinary capers with some home made muesli bars and biscuits... a throroughly delicious weekend. Now what happened to that gym membership???

Mr Writer

"It only takes one match, to burn a thousand trees"

From watching these guys 3 back to back years at V festivals back in Essex, I've been through different phases of emotion toward the Welsh trio. The first few albums are now marked as pure nostalgia trips for my early twenties; of times when driving was something I'd do to kill time whilst I waited for the months to tick by toward a snowboard trip or Summer camping trip shared with 70,000 others.

Then fame brought a couple of duff albums; I remember standing in front of one of those Chelmsford trees wondering if burning that tree might be a little more enjoyable than listening to the guys perform there latest material in front of a virtually lifeless crowd. Then I swore I'd never watch them again, but then in recent years, since my exhile to the rest of the world, two new albums that flipped my opinions back favourably, especially since they lost that drummer.

So here they were in my new hometown, playing at my regular gig haunt the Metro. The sound they carried (while pretty sharp) is that of a "best of" tour, one that makes individual songs seem amazing but altogether, a little disjointed as there evolving sound gets the big 'shuffle' applied to it.

It was fun, and it was great to see some faces I've now seen almost enough times to class them as friends, despite never saying hello. Thanks Kelly, 'Doorman' was my surprise favourite.