Panic and pink post-it notes.

So Berlin was wonderful. Sunny, charming, intoxicatingly cool and laid back and just, perfect. I couldn’t have asked for four more lovely days.

All of which I’ll get to tomorrow, hopefully. Because right now I’m swimming in pink post-it notes and panic.

The first of the lasts. And another first.

I should be packing for Berlin (I did mention I was going to Berlin somewhere back there didn’t I? August long weekend? Plane tickets a birthday present from the husband? Pilgrimage to my favourite city One Last Time? Ringing any bells?)

Anyway – we’re off tomorrow after work and I am so looking forward to it. Four days to bike around, eat good food, drink wine in the sunshine and trawl flea markets for treasure. Happiness on a stick.

A Chinese revelation and not just any wine bar

It was Lovely Boy’s turn to discover somewhere new this weekend, after my Oval revelation on Tuesday. 

It’s just a disgrace that his discovery was Gordon’s Wine Bar. I mean, the man has been in London for near on a decade and by his own admittance has walked down Villiers St on his way to and from Embankment station more times that he could contemplate. And yet he’d never heard of Gordon’s, much less crossed the threshold down into it’s dark and atmospheric space. It’s a fucking travesty of the highest London order. One I remedied pretty quickly.

An Oval gem

I suppose it’s true for any city really, but I love, love, love the fact that after five years in London I’m still discovering, and being introduced to, new places in London that tickle my aesthetic and cheap wine imbibing fancies.

A visit to the Young Vic

Two of my favourite things converged this week – old, dear friends in town and a trip to the theatre.

Back in my Bondi days O and I dedicated every Wednesday morning during that prolonged moment of ‘06 otherwise known as occasional-part-time-work-but-really-just-unemployment to pottery classes at the Pavilion. It was cathartic, creative, messy and always ended with a smoothie and a stroll along the promenade. For tense, frequently miserable days, they were a consistent weekly highlight.

After several terms we had more ceramic arte than we really knew what to do with but that was never really the point of the exercise.

I wrote a book.

Elsewhere in the world brilliant friends of mine are on the brink of delivering small humans. This week, yesterday, I was borne of a book whose labour has only taken three and half years. I feel overwhelmed, elated, terrified and not sure what to do with it. I just keep staring at it. For several hours last night it went like this:

(Dazed wandering about the house, book invariably clutched to chest or held at a length with look of clinical curiosity.)

“It’s a book. I wrote a book.”

“I, me, I wrote a book.”

“I wrote this.”

“A book.”

“It’s a book, an ACTUAL book.”

“Oh my god I wrote a book.”

(Ongoing disbelief and dumb wonderment etc. etc.)