Painting the Bridge

Andrew Christie

Quest

Thai La Ong – A Valentines Day Saga

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We’re going out for dinner and I’m nervous. Not covid nervous, Valentine’s Day nervous. I’m expecting crowds, booked out restaurants, purveyors of crappy roses, magicians, even. Due to a series of entwined exigencies now lost in the depths of time, Strop and I managed to exchange our wedding vows on St Valentine’s Day. It is an error we are still paying for. You simply cannot go out for a quiet wedding anniversary celebration on Valentine’s Day, so we usually shift the date to avoid the crowds and complications.

But not this year. This year is our fortieth. Just let that ruby-coloured number sink in a moment. Forty years married. To which should be added The Years Before—a period of indeterminate length—during which we hung out with sufficient intensity as to produce a baby girl. Makes you feel old just thinking about it.

So, our fortieth—our Ruby Anniversary—and we’re in Sydney. King Street beckons. Strop has romantic notions of taking Painting the Bridge back to where it all started, but I don’t think Izote Mexican still exists.

Romance seeps away. Pragmatism builds a bridge. Thai La Ong is still there, and one thing you definitely cannot get in Bermagui is decent Thai food.

This will be a family affair. We are to be joined by a daughter, a granddaughter and a nephew. The Stropolina, the Lagilou and the Chippy.

First off, Strop and I embark on a nostalgic walk from Newtown Station along a sultry Enmore Road to see what has become of the place since we stopped paying attention. It seems a bit tidier. A bit quieter, maybe. Hard to tell really, as it is still the middle of the afternoon. Some new joints. Some survivors.

We end up at the Warren View where things have changed. Covid measures are serious here. There are separate in-and-out doors. The young woman behind the bar wants to verify our log in. Us old folks from the coast aren’t used to quite so much covid-tainted reality. The beers have changed too. Lots of funky, and probably very hoppy, hipster beers from pop-up breweries are available. Watermelon flavoured! Probably rhubarb too. Or turmeric. The very helpful bar person directs us to beverages that suit our individual needs and we proceed through to the renovated beer garden where Strop proceeds to break her knee on an over-sized steel girder holding up our table. It could easily hold up the harbour bridge but has been given lighter duties, no doubt in the service of irony. (Ha!)

The beer garden is airy and feels more spacious than on previous visits. The covid marshall wears a jaunty high-vis sash, and the place is full of families and young children, some of whom are intent on driving their prams, and their hovering fathers, to the edges of navigation. I am tempted by the offerings on the blackboard, but Strop reins in my impulsiveness by reminding me to save myself for Thai La Ong.

On that self-righteous note we drink up and head for the pre-dinner rendezvous at the Courty. Where we run into the Chippy just getting off his bicycle. Timing, eh?

While he finds a convenient pole to chain up to, Strop and I form an orderly queue outside the pub. Covid rules. Numbers restricted. Scan here. Wait there. Some people go out. Some go in. More people go out, we go in. For our convenience, and to avoid crowding around the bar, we can order with our phone. What a wonderful world. Just download the app, create a log in, nominate a payment method, no, not that one, try again, what was it you wanted? Beers. Anything else?

It took a while—about as long as it took for us to start doubting that the system actually worked—but a jug of Coopers and three glasses arrived eventually. Cheers.

Having mastered the system, and anticipating delays, we order more beers. And chips.

The Stropolina and Lagilou arrived. Cheers. Lemonade. More beers. Cheers.

Eventually we peeled ourselves off our stools and headed onto a twilit Kings Street. The crowds were a bit of a freak out for us country folk. Narrow pavements. Single-file negotiations. Strop and I rubber-necking, playing spot the difference.

“Didn’t this used to be…” “Yeah, but look, that place is still there.” “Is it open?” “Hard to tell…”

Definitely no frozen yoghurt places. Still a few burger joints. Plenty of Thai. Perhaps a bit more Turkish.

And Thai La Ong was still there, right where we left it.

Not as busy as in pre-covid days. Almost empty, in fact. It was still early because we were dining with a two-year old, but I imagine that the absence of international students has devastated the cheaper end of King Street’s restaurant business.

But looking on the bright side, they had plenty of room for our little party and Lagilou wasn’t going to disturb any intimate romantic dinners. After a while we realised that there was a steady stream of helmeted take-away riders coming and going. That’s where the customers were—at home, watching Netflix.

Complimentary prawn crackers arrived and were devoured. Then we had to remember the rules of ordering.

Number 37. Ginger Stir Fry. With chicken.

Mussaman curry. Spicy rice with pork belly. Pad See Ew. Duck salad. Boiled rice.

Yum.

Strop and the Chippy distracted Lagilou with drawings of motorbikes until the food arrived.

Yummo.

Duck salad—know what I mean? Ma-ate, you don’t get that in Bermi. Pad See Ew, yum. Pork belly, yes please.

The only real disappointment was the Mussaman which was tough and overly sweet.

We wended our weary way back along King Street in the wake of Lagilou, who wielded a rainbow flavoured icecream cone as if it was a wand, bestowing blessings on all, and asking “What’s your name?” A fitting end to another memorable episode of the quest.

OMG it’s almost a thing

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So, at long last the new book is now officially imminent. It has been to the copy editor and had all its commas rearranged and plot holes filled up with fast drying patches of exposition. Now it is being proof read by my wife—backwards, line by line. (That really is love.) Meanwhile I have made a cover that I am almost completely happy with, but will probably tweak a bit more.

So now it is time to try to drum up a bit of interest.

The new book is called The Ridge. It is largely set in Lightning Ridge, an opal-mining town in outback New South Wales that has a reputation for heat, eccentricity, and black opals. The genesis of this story came from a couple of converging ideas.

I have long wanted to write something else featuring Large, the villain from my first book, Left Luggage. Basically I didn’t want to abandon a character who was so much fun to write. The Ridge is not a proper John Lawrence book, but it occupies the same world. I like to think of it as John Lawrence adjacent.

The other idea came from my father. In his last years he was bed bound and unable to paint anymore. Without any other creative outlet he started coming up with story ideas, which he would pitch to me when I visited him at his nursing home. Dad had written a detective novel during the war, while he was in New Guinea. It was called The Flaming Jacarandas, an image I managed to slip into Comfort Zone as a kind of tribute to Dad’s long lost masterpiece. Anyway, one of Dad’s ideas was about an old opal miner who finds an enormous opal which might have magical properties and which causes all kinds of tragedy. I would sit by his bed and we’d talk about how the story might work, but I never really took it seriously because magical stones are just not my kind of thing. Then I had an idea of how Dad’s story could be a legend that formed the backstory for my ideas for Large’s return.

The book took a while to write because there has been a lot going on and merging the two ideas hasn’t always been straightforward.

It will be out in the world soon and you can make up your own mind if you think it works.

In the meantime stay safe. Wear those masks. Get that jab.

How’s the new book going, Andy?

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I get asked that a lot and to tell the truth, it’s been a bit of struggle.

I have been flailing around in the muddy middle of the book for what seems like months. Back in November I got off to a flying start, piggybacking on the momentum of Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month–look it up, it’s definitely a thing). I got about half way through the month and halfway to the target of 50,000 words and then hit a wall. Admittedly the wall was in the shape of a second hand tinny.

I spent December putting electrics in the boat and took it on a couple of fishing trips. Then it was Christmas holidays and family beach time. After everyone went away at the end of January I spent more time working on the boat and catching flathead in the lake and the river.  All this time, though, I was still thinking. Thinking, thinking, thinking–it still counts as writing, even when you are fishing, I checked with the union.

Eventually I decided I was trying to tell the wrong story. So I killed someone off, promoted someone else and re-jigged the timeline. Then I made a lightning trip to Lightning Ridge, driving the length of the state to do some research. Came home and re-wrote the start. It felt good. But now I’m back in the middle, where I left off, wondering what comes next: writing bits and pieces without any confidence, and not moving the story forward. Researching stuff I don’t really need: I know a lot about poisons now.

And now we have the builders in–renovating the kitchen and bathroom. We have moved downstairs to the studio while this is going on. So there are plenty of distractions and excuses for procrastination: lots of power tools, lots of blokey conversations to eavesdrop on, and plenty of decisions to be made.

You sure you want the tap over there? I mean we can do it, if it’s what you want…

But this morning in bed, listening to the wattlebirds chortling in the dark, I had another hard think about the book and decided what the problem was. I don’t really know where I’m going, not really. I need a destination. A couple of key set-piece scenes and a finale will give me something to aim at. So I will write those next, then having created some waypoints and a safe harbour I will return to the soggy quagmire in the middle and set sail once more.

That’s the theory.

How is your Sunday going?

Launching A Book (Would Be Much Easier If All You Had To Do Was Smash Champagne)

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Well it’s been three weeks since I launched book number 3.

Well, when I say launch… It depends who you’re talking to. Normal people think of a book launch as free drinks at a bookstore, and an author caught in the spotlight. Indies (what self published authors like me call ourselves) think of a launch as finally getting the thing finished and on sale. Pressing the go button on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iBooks, Google Play, and all the other online retailers with stupid names. And even stupider publishing interfaces. And then there are the print-on-demand paperbacks through Ingram Spark. Another daft name, another infuriating website.

Then, Ping! There it is, all shiny and full of expectation, floating in the void of the interwebs: the culmination of two years of anxiety and exhilaration.

From worrying about if there was actually a story there, and will anyone care, suddenly you go, “Look at that, I made it. And it looks all right, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Snazzy cover, hey? Hello?”

And then it’s pretty much all graphs and tables. Sales trickles versus torrents of advertising expenses.

And questions: Where is everybody? Where are all the reviews? Come on, it’s been three days; plenty of time, surely. What does CTR mean again? ROI? Read through? And what time is it in America? Why do they always have to be a day behind?

Help.

Then some reviews appear. Two. Three. How many ARCs did I send out?

A couple of five-stars, though.

Woohoo.

Better than a poke in the eye.

What next? Should have a party. After all it’s been two years, should have a bunch of parties. I mean launches.

Anyone looking for Christmas-present ideas?

Saltwater Café – Voucher System Part 2: Redemption

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Greetings from the treehouse.

As I explained in the last episode, some very generous friends gave Strop and I gift vouchers for local eateries when we moved to the south coast. The last of these was for Saltwater Café, a little stand alone fish and chip joint perched above the waters of the boat harbour in the middle of Bermagui.

We had already sampled their wares a couple of times, mostly sitting at the tables in the nearby park, watching the boats and other harbour goings on, and fighting off the gulls. The setting is fantastic, and the fish and chips are a match.

For this special voucher-powered visit, we decided to try the dining-in experience instead. We went for lunch and found a table out on the balcony, so we would still be in the fresh air. The café part of Saltwater doesn’t seem to get the same lunchtime queuing action as the takeaway window. There were only two other couples there the day we went.

We decided to maximise the value of our voucher by trying to sample as wide a variety of offerings as possible. So we ordered the Seafood Platter, however as Strop is a stickler for healthy eating, lifestyles, we opted for grilled instead of battered. This last-minute lurch away from my usual cholesterol-charged dining tendencies put us in line for an unexpected treat. When our enormous platter arrived, its foundation layer was made up of enormous yellowfin tuna steaks. I imagine that this is subject to seasonal variation, but we were very impressed. While Saltwater Café is primarily a takeaway operation, it obviously makes great use of the local catch, and they decided that a grilled platter should make use of the best grilling fish they had. It was very terrific, but a little more generous than even we could cope with.

On top of the tuna there were plenty of other treats. The oysters came in two styles – natural and with grilled cheese. Now, the whole grilled oyster thing can be controversial, and I admit it seems a bit weird to me, but then others argue that eating oysters any way is weird. In any case, I for one am happy to eat them any way someone is willing to prepare them. The prawns came two ways too: grilled and cold. There were also grilled scallops and a pile of calamari. Plus chips and salad for the vegetarians.

It was a feast, but we had left some room for an after-lunch gelato, and walked away with a takeaway box jammed with leftover tuna, and a surprising amount of dignity.

The aptly named Gelato Clinic is in the new boat harbour complex, within an easy cast of Saltwater Café. We have always been impressed by the unusual and delicious flavours this joint produces. My favourite so far is coffee and cardamon.

So now all our vouchers have been redeemed, and I am very happy to report that there is no danger of us starving down here, so far from the bright lights of King Street.

Mimosa Winery – Voucher system part 1: The Vouchsafe

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Back last year when we announced that we were decamping to the far south coast, a couple of things happened. Some people burst into laughter, others into tears – but some gave us vouchers. Gift vouchers to be exact, for restaurants in our new neighborhood. I suppose they thought that otherwise we would never get a decent meal again, or that we, and this blog, would fade away, with nothing to sustain us but the gorgeous Sapphire Coast scenery.

We received three vouchers: one given to me by the Stropette and the Stropolina, and two others given to Strop by her bookish mates. As the vouchers were received into our hot little hands well before we were actually due to depart, it was obviously important to keep them safe. I naturally found a cunningly secure place to store mine. I put it in my spare wallet – the black one that I keep in the top drawer. And I backed up this repository with an internet-wide reminder system that would beep and flash, reminding me to look in said spare black wallet, once we were safely relocated, and in a position to enjoy the fruits of the voucher. Foolproof. Obviously.

Strop stuck her two vouchers to the fridge door with magnets. Very strong magnets admittedly, but still, its a system that is basically lacking in any type of cunning. And where is the back up?

It wasn’t until I began to pack up my office that the fatal flaw in my cunning plan became apparent. I was going to have to pack up my top drawer, which meant moving the spare black wallet from it’s safe place to another safe place. Easy. Except when we arrived at our beautiful new abode, and started opening all the boxes, the spare wallet wasn’t where I thought it would be. The opening of each box from then on, was greeted by a rapidly inflating bubble of hope and desperation, which then burst as my scrabbling fingers reached the bottom. There was no sign of the wallet. The wallet had gone into the void, over the event horizon that forever separates lost from found.

Meanwhile of course, Strop’s two vouchers were back on the fridge, waving gently every time the door was opened. Hello, they seemed to say, here we are. Let’s eat.

In the end it didn’t matter because everything is on the internet and the Stropette just emailed a new copy and Strop printed it out. Surprisingly she made something of a point of putting it on the fridge with the others.

Anyway, the vouchers were a very generous set of gifts, and they have given us a running start at the local eateries.

Our first voucher-fueled outing was to the Mimosa Winery restaurant, which is down the road a bit. About 15 minutes drive. (We now live in a spread-out world where distance is measured in driving times rather than in walking times.)

We dragged our friends Zena and Peter along for this outing. They are locals now, refugees from Canberra, and have been our guides to living on the south coast. We stayed with them when we first started looking for somewhere to park our escape pod, and we fell in love with their local area.

Our visit to Mimosa Winery was on a perfect Sunday. The way you always imagine autumn weather: blue skies, warm, and no wind.

The restaurant is perched on a hill overlooking vineyards and surrounded by artfully backlit coastal forest. You enter the restaurant from a courtyard on the high side (excellent accessibility), and proceed through to a large deck over looking the vineyards.

Now Peter is a man of strong opinions and an Irish complexion, so he was initially wary of the table we were offered on the deck. However, after a bit of umbrella heaving we settled ourselves down at the newly shaded table and began the nattering. This largely consisted of valuable advice on how to survive life on the Far South Coast.

Where did you get your firewood from? Oh him, he’s all right, but there’s this bloke in Quaama that will do you a truckload for the same price. Fresh fish? There’s this place down a back street in Narooma. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s bloody good value. Jam? If you’re not making it yourselves, the 777 supermarket in Bermi have all those Eastern European brands. (These are what our family has lovingly referred to as Chernobyl Jam since that unfortunate incident with the radioactive cloud.)

It took the arrival of the waitress to bring our attention back to matters of immediate consumption. That was when the irresistible force of Strop’s desire for a glass of Rosé met the immovable object of Peter’s disdain for pink wine.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

His objection seemed to be based on the fact that Rosé is an abomination, neither red nor white, and definitely not complex enough. Zena I and felt compelled to maintain our respective party loyalties, so a demarcation was established down the middle of the table with Shiraz on one side and Rosé on the other.

For entrée we split down the middle again. Szechuan squid vs Porkbelly, but this time Zena and I had our money on the squid. Unfortunately porkbelly was the clear winner, even though the squid held its end up gamely.

Zena and I again teamed up for the mains, opting for the fish of the day – Blue-eyed cod – while Peter went for confit duck breast, and Strop went for local mussels. Zena thought her cod was a bit overdone so the event ended up a tie between the duck and the mussels. Both of which were excellent.

There were only three competitors in the dessert round, Strop having decided to rest on her laurels. Zena and Peter with their chocolate mousses in martini glasses vs my plucky little passionfruit semifreddo. Luckily for me the semifreddo kicked it out of the park. It was strong and clear and very passionfruity. A real zinger.

The afternoon, and Mimosa Winery, proved to be worthy of the generosity of our friends and family. It was also heartening to see the restaurant relatively busy. It wasn’t full by any means, but there were plenty of punters willing to make the drive and enjoy a terrific lunch.

So thanks be to the voucher givers. You know who you are.