There is all this stuff I want to say but it doesn’t feel like the right time to say those things at the moment. I need to dwell on them for a little while longer. It is frustrating. I’m looking for that fast forward button. I want things to start now. Moving on.
Yesterday morning, Mum and I dropped Matthew at work and headed off to the Hotel Broadway markets. We parked the car at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs and walked the rest of the way to the Hotel Broadway. It is a relatively small market but it was good. We got some Mangrove Honey 🙂 We walked home via the specialist food shops on Balaclava st, which open at 7am every morning! We had a good walk, window shopping, garden shopping, people shopping watching and I had fun taking some photos.
Last night I went to catch a 9pm session of Atonement with Thor. There were four other people in the cinema with us, when the movie finished and we walked out, the others had disappeared. weird. Sweetness was the choc tops we got. Made at the cinema, the sticker on the package cheerfully proclaimed, they were choc tops from outer space. a real ice cream cone (as in conical), real chocolate instead of that weird tasting stuff but what really topped it was the ice-cream. I had after dinner mint and it was a nice pale green in colour and full of flavour. Atonement was good, I liked it, well I liked the first 95%. The ending was such a cop out though. Now I know you can’t always have happy endings but if you want to have a sad/angry ending, how they did it was not the way.
Sunday; Pabbi, Matthew and I went to the bookfest. They brought home a wall of books each. I on the other hand brought home a couple of books that I had been looking for and a stack of Delicious and Australian Gourmet Traveller magazines, 15 for $3, bargain.
Quite a few Saturday nights ago , Mum joined Matthew and I at the Step Inn for A Very Voodoo Christmas. The reason? Cactus Cadillac were playing their second gig, I had missed the last one as I was in Melbourne and Mum didn’t go. This gig though was very much a family affair with numerous friends and family of Cactus Cadillac along for the ride 🙂
I like the Step Inn in theory, I like that they are booking a very wide range of shows from folk to dub to pyschobilly and everything in between. I have a love/hate relationship with the lights though. Sometimes they are excellent, sometimes they are good, other times they are crap and it changes drastically between bands on a night. Cactus Cadillac were the first band and they had dim blue lights on their faces but normal sunlight lights at waist level. For the other bands though it moved to just normal sunlight lights as the whole lighting which was focused at the very front of the edge of the stage which meant that most time band members were in the fall-off, whilst the instruments were in the full light. It was interesting. That is why most of these photos are just photos and nothing more. I would take red Zoo lights over patchy lights any day.
Cactus Cadillac.
Cactus Cadillac is fun. They are boys who have slept on our floor numerous times over. Whilst Carter may be my primary little brother, Tom and Yuki are round often enough as well that they are just part of the family. I enjoyed the set, it was by no means mind blowing it was only their 2nd gig and Carter was distracted by the cricket on the TV at the back of the room apart from that, they are doing what they enjoy 😀
The Dead Ringers.
I only saw a little bit of this set as I went over to Tounge and Groove at West End to see The Chocolate Strings (damm great music) with Clare as her farewell before she headed to Washington DC, where she will spend the next 9 weeks or so as an intern for Massachusetts Democrat Congressman, John Tierney. Jealous? yes. The Dead Ringers were a band that I found on myspace looking for local alt-country bands so I was surprised seeing them at a Bad Moon Show but they do have a fair bit of rockabilly elements in their alt-country.
Foghorn Leghorn.
Some nights you just need some Ska to keep you going and Foghorn Leghorn are always there to provide. They have this absolute cracker of a songs about Emo kids and cheering them up, there is actions that go with it, it is pretty darn amusing.
The Bad Moon Company.
What do you if a few songs into the set the double bass gives up the ghost? You become a rockabilly covers band whilst people attempt to fix the double bass. You get it working, you go back to playing your own blend of rockabilly/pyschobilly. Then the double bass croaks it again, repeat steps from before. It croaks again. You play it to the best you can. Everyone goes home early because it just doesn’t want to work. That was quite sad as I was looking forward to a big night of Bad Moon Co goodness.
This is my papa, as of course you very well know. I had been out in the garden trying to get some photos of the wild wind we are having at the moment. I wasn’t able to get my shutter speed as slow as I wanted it though (need to pick up some ND filters) so I came inside and took some photos of Pabbi getting tea ready. I have no idea what he was looking at when I took this.
Morning Tea on Christmas Day is always a sugar filled event; rum balls, apricot balls, vanilla rings, lebkuchen, loftkökurs. Then a touch of savoury with pineapple dip and salmon dip.
It is also a time for all of Grandmum’s good china to come out. I think Grandmum would roll over in her proverbial grave if we used anything but the good china (proverbial because she was cremated). The glasses are one of the most treasured pieces in the good cupboard, my aunt brought them back from Venice many years ago, it does feel quite refined drinking lemonade out of those glasses 😀
It is now 6 past 6 on Christmas Eve. Mum is in the kitchen preparing dinner.
The tree is now decorated and the presents are under the tree.
I am sitting here listening to a mix of Dar Williams, Joni Mitchell and Eva Cassidy. Pabbi has not yet broken out the Mahalia Jackson, possibly because the record player is downstairs connected to his computer. I have actually just added some Mahalia into my playlist.
We talked to Karl for a while this afternoon which was really nice. Yay for Skype! I have had a headset for a while now but the mic port on my old computer didn’t work. It certainly works on the new computer. We have now talked to Karl twice in the past couple of days. It is almost like he is living down south which is why he doesn’t come over for tea or home for Christmas instead of up north.
It would be nice to have Christmas in Iceland one year though (Mum, Pabbi. hint, hint). Next year looks like it could be a very nice Christmas though as one of my brothers and his family are planning to have an Australian Christmas.
I have been going through my photos from a concert the other night, which at this rate will probably be up some time after Christmas.
I am about to go set the table and then it is the waiting game till it gets dark enough to light the candles and eat dinner (another reason why daylight savings is bad for Queensland, I don’t want to have to wait till 8pm on Christmas Eve to have dinner).
