Quest

Looking for the perfect Christmas present?

December 9, 2016 by andyadmin Leave a Comment

Greetings from sunny but cold Cooma, on the edge of the Snowy Mountains in southern NSW. I’m down here for a week of fly-fishing and writing. Or maybe writing and fishing. I’m not sure of my priorities at the moment.

In my absence Strop has taken it upon herself to organise a Christmas sale of the John Lawrence paperbacks at Newtown Markets on Saturday the 10^th and 17^th of December. So if you are looking for a great present for Christmas, get along to Newtown Markets, from 10am and pick up a copy of Left Luggage or Tunnel Vision. Or get both.

The markets are at the corner of King Street and Enmore Road, just opposite the train station. Say hello to Strop for me. It’ll make her day.

Now I have to get back to figuring out what exactly all these rainbow trout are eating.

Wayward Brewing and a first look at Camperdown Commons

July 7, 2016 by andysomething Leave a Comment

The Wayward brewery is a relatively new arrival in our neck of the woods. It is hidden away, down a side street in a light industrial part of Camperdown, so it could have been here for a while. It is one of those places that you have to know about to know about. Strop and I ventured across Pyrmont Bridge Road to check it out on a cold winters night. It wasn’t our first visit to Wayward, that had been the week before, when we braved the tail end of an East Coast low to have a drink at our new local with Paul, Ashley, Ned and Mark. It was very jolly inside, with live music, a convivial crowd and quite a lot of beers were drunk. Especially by Strop.

Wayward is open four nights a week as a bar, but I assume that the brewery part is going full-time. The arrival experience a takes you down a broad ramp into a cavernous space with a bar on one side, a brewery round the corner, and a couple of smaller rooms at the back, that look a bit like Hitler’s Bunker if he had been around in the 1970s, or maybe somewhere in Falujah.

Reassuringly, the bar staff are all heavily tattooed and bearded, so at least we know we’re still in the inner west. They have a few wines for sale, but the main deal at Wayward is definitely beer. There is a row of numbered beer taps along the wall behind the bar, and above them a beer menu. There are a lot on offer, and the descriptions are pretty fruity. But in a good way – lots of pineapple, raspberry and passionfruit mentions.

The night Strop and I went on our own, the place was packed, mainly with thirty-something men. It turned out that the brewery was running tours, and most of the punters had turned up to be shown around and to try the range no doubt. Strop and I found a free table at the back, in one of the concrete bunkers. These things are so secure that no phone signals can get through, which might explain why there were some spare tables in there. The bunkers are furnished somewhat eccentrically, and feature a wide range of furniture. The chairs were very comfortable in a way that only the 1970s managed, although at the cost of aesthetics.

My first choice beer, the Camperdown (nominative determinism rule), wasn’t available, so Strop bought me an Otis, presumably named after the lifts. She chose the appropriately named Charmer for herself, which was strong and chocolatey. My Otis on the other hand had distinct passionfruit tones, which was pleasantly weird.

In the laneway outside Wayward there was a tent set up, and a sign promising Italian food. We went the whole hog and ordered ragu in focaccia, arancini, and polenta chips. It was all good but the ragu was a standout, especially on a cold and rainy night. Very warming. El yummo.

You can also get pizza ordered in from one from of the local pizza joints. Unfortunately, it isn’t one of the local pizza joints that we favour with our custom, but I will be more than happy if the guy in the tent keeps serving up the ragu.

Another new arrival in our area is Camperdown Commons. This is what has become of the old Camperdown Bowling Club. Nowadays it is a restaurant slash urban farm. I think I would have rather kept the bowlo but it had an unfortunate habit of going broke, and, frankly, serving crap food. The two facts may be related.

The new venture has high ideals, grows its own kale, has a chook yard, even serves Wayward ales, but we are yet to see if it walks the walk. There is a fair amount of style over substance going on. It is cleverly styled with lighting so subtle that Strop had to pull out the torch on her phone to read the menu. The furniture is very nice, slightly rustic, and wooden, and there are big tubs of firewood lying around as well. I kept looking but I couldn’t find a fireplace anywhere. Maybe they’re going to do wood-fired pizza.

During the schmoozing-of-the-neighbours stage of development, there was a lot of talk about this being a local joint for local people. A quick glance at the price list suggests that it is the sort of local you are probably going to save for the odd special occasion. Strop and I dropped in for a quick meal on its first weekend. The bar food was okay, but nothing to write home about.

Camperdown Commons (surely a name devised by a committee) promotes its locally-sourced everything, and ethical proteins etc, but there are nowhere near enough tattoos for my liking. Given it’s size, it is going to have to drag a lot of punters through the door. We shall see. I hope it is a success, especially after all the work they have done on the site. But unless they review the prices I will keep heading across Pyrmont Bridge Road for my Wayward beers and the ragu from the tent.

Spoiler alert: crime stories need some crime

June 12, 2016 by andysomething 2 Comments

It’s been a funny old day here in Sydney. Cold and mostly clear, full of deleted back story and birthday celebrations.

I have been writing in the living room because my brother is up from Canberra for our father’s birthday. 97. Not bad for an old fella, although he has taken to saying he is 79. Anyway, my brother is occupying the room I normally write in, so I am in the living room. And I am really enjoying it. It has the benefits of a cozy gas fireplace complete with fake coals, an excellent sound system that I can control from my phone, and a little table that is the perfect height for resting my legs on.

Having spent yesterday full of anxiety about what to do about the start of my new book, today I got to work. I have been cutting a swathe through the opening chapters, deleting acres of unnecessary backstory (some of which I was quite fond of), switching chapters around, combining some, and consigning others to the Spare folder. A kind of purgatory for scenes I can’t quite bring myself to cast into the flaming fires of the Trash folder.

All this carnage came about because of my writers group. Their reaction to what had been Chapter 3 was generally along the lines of “Sure, okay, but nothing happens.” Which was true. The only action involved a guy coming home from work and talking to his aunt. There was a bunch of back story and atmosphere (buckets of it), but it wasn’t good enough for Chapter 3, when we want to be moving things along a bit.

One of my group put it this way, “This is Chapter 3, right?”

I nodded yes, thinking that’s what it says on the first page.

“And it’s crime isn’t it? The genre?”

I nodded again, starting to worry about where this was going.

“So where is the crime? It’s Chapter 3 and all we’ve had is a prank, someone visiting his daughter, and now a guy comes home from work. I’m a crime reader. I want some crime.”

It was hard to argue with. By definition, a crime novel needs crime, and it needs it up front, not buried back at Chapter 6. So now the bank robbery (ooh, spoilers) has moved up to Chapter 2 and two chapters that were mostly back story have been deleted or smeared seamlessly across two action packed chapters. With no visible joins. That’s the theory anyway. I suspect that the surviving chapters are now a bit too long for their own good. So a bit more hacking will probably ensue.

In the midst of all this carnage, we had a family outing to visit Dad for lunch. He drank Guinness, we drank hipster beers. Eventually we all ate pizza, after Strop managed to find the only pizza joint in the area that was open at lunch time. By a happy coincidence they were also some of the best pizzas in Sydney. Then for desert it was Strop’s home made coconut-lime custard tart. El Yummo!

So if your father turns 97, get him some Guinness and some Mad e Pizza from Darlinghurst. And if you can get hold of some coconut-lime custard tart, you can’t go wrong.

Bauhaus West and Kafenes via a hipster parallel universe

May 28, 2016 by andysomething Leave a Comment

Last night someone served me a beer in a jar. It even had a picture of a hipster on the side, just in case you missed the joke. This cannot be allowed to stand. This is just taking irony too far. I’m looking at you Batch Brewing.

However, this assault on my drinking standards may have been just the impetus I needed to get me blogging. I have been bogged down last few weeks, working hard on the new book. Working with my editor and the beta readers, trying to get past fourth draft and into the fifth. It’s coming along now, I hope, having lost a few thousand words from what turned out to be a fairly flabby middle. (I could do with a bit of that myself, just have to find my own personal metabolic delete button). I’m currently editing in hardcopy which makes it all seem more substantial and as if I’m actually getting somewhere. It also makes it easier to get a sense of the thing as a whole, not just a series of scenes. The book will be called Tunnel Vision, and it will probably be finished sometime in September. Fingers crossed. It even has a cover ready to go which I’ll be flashing around like a mad thing at some point in the future.

So anyway, last night Strop and I hit Enmore Road without much hope or inspiration, as we are discovering that Enmore Road is mostly doldrums with a few islands of brilliance. We were meeting up for a drink after work and I’d suggested Bauhaus West, mainly because I had heard good things about it and I didn’t feel like another noisy Friday-night pub. We went to Bauhaus for a drink but ended up staying for a meal once we had a look at the menu. It looked a lot better than a lot of the other offerings nearby. Bauhaus W is somewhere between a bar and a restaurant. It has high stools like a bar, but with restaurant sensibilities.

We started out with a pair of excellent whiskey sours, followed by a Pinot Noir and a very nice beer, spoiled only by its container, which was straight out of some hipster marketing parallel universe.

Deep breath. Move on.

Anyway the menu sounded good, so we ordered a duck confit, some Chinese-y beef ribs, a side salad (not on the menu but happily provided), and chips. The food was very good, but very salty. Especially the ribs. On a Deb rating they would have been off the scale. When we mentioned this to the waiter, he came back with a message from the chef saying that he hoped it hadn’t spoiled our meal, but that we had managed to order the two saltiest dishes on the menu.

The atmosphere at Bauhaus was refreshing, good music, not too loud for us old people, and tables with views out to the street. Not much wrong there. It wasn’t cheap (3 Wendys) but I’d go back for the whiskey sours and the duck confit.

In terms of accessibility at Bauhaus W – okay as long as you don’t want to go to the loo. 1 Susan.

Our progress along Enmore Road has been fairly haphazard, and it will probably continue to be as we have given ourselves a couple of new rules. We will not eat at an empty restaurant, and, we reserve the right to avoid places we don’t like the look of. Which basically means we have no structure at all. Just like everyone else. It also means that our quest has lost any heroic pretence, which was basically all it had going for it.

Oh well.

A couple of weeks ago we had a lovely night out at Kafenes, which is a bit of an institution on Enmore Road. We had been there a long time ago to celebrate a birthday with Wendy, but I couldn’t remember much about it other than the generally warm vibe of a good night out. This is what Kafenes is excels at.

On our recent visit, we dined with Roy, Jill, John and Pauline, not to celebrate anything in particular other than just that we have known each other for a very long time. And that we were all available.

Jill had just had a procedure on her eyes and was successfully carrying off the nighttime sunglass look. It is a look usually favoured by rock stars, but Jill was managing to draw a few glances from people obviously wondering if she was part of the late show at the Enmore Theatre.

It is easy to see why Kafenes is is always full. The food is great, the service is warm and the whole place is completely free of irony. The menu features plenty of grilled protein and lots of hearty oven dishes. It is welcoming and homey in the most excellent of ways. We started out with all the dips and lots of bread. And quite a few wines. I seemed to have been left in charge of the pouring, not a role I am comfortable with, and I may have overcompensated. There was quite a bit of chat too. Then the mains arrived. When Kafenes says main they mean it, the serves are generous. There is still a little Greek doggy bag in our freezer, waiting to be thawed one night when cooking inspiration fails to strike.

I didn’t notice any salt, so I guess that’s 5 Debs. Money seemed okay so I’m going to say 4 Wendys. And I didn’t go to the loo so I can’t comment on that aspect of accessibility so let’s say 3 Susans.

Afterwards we stepped up the road to Cow and Moon for a gelato hit. These days we seem to be spoiled for choice, sharing our after-dinner gelato business between Cow and Moon, Gelato Blue, and Hakiki. And I don’t really have a favourite amongst that lot.

Cultural events and picking up threads

April 30, 2016 by andysomething 2 Comments

We had a big week last week. A packed program, as they say. Cultural events and a bit of getting out amongst the nature. It wasn’t planned that way just a series of fortuitous coincidences.

It started out on Tuesday night with Opera on the Harbour, then on Thursday we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and finished up on Saturday with a visit to Royal National Park. The thing that tied all these activities together was friendship.

This is a much busier program than we normally attempt in a week, and it got me to thinking about our wide group of friends, and the nature of friendship. Each of these outings came about because we needed an excuse to hang out with our friends. Not that you should need an excuse to hang out with your friends, but having an event, or an outing provides an excuse, and a framework. Even though all you’re doing really is feeding and watering your relationships. But it’s an important thing to do.

The Opera on the Harbour outing came out of the blue. Mark – the dog park friend who has become a real friend – works with them as a volunteer each year, and he had a couple of complimentary tickets, that he gave to us. What a treat. Turandot. We’re not really opera fans as such, but we are always up for a spectacle. And that’s what we got, along with a backstage tour guided by Mark, a lovely meal watching the sun set behind the city, and then some great music, a flaming dragon, and even some fireworks. What more could you ask of a Tuesday night?

The Thursday night outing was with Roy and Jill. A renewal of our lapsed cultural program, this time in the form of a visit to the Grayson Perry exhibition at the MCA, followed by a fair old natter, and a bit of eating and drinking.

I didn’t know anything about Grayson Perry, so wasn’t sure what Strop was so excited about. In fact I thought he was a woman, even before I saw photos of him dressed as one. His art is clever and funny and engaging, but I found it oddly unmoving. Certainly the craft of it is wonderful, particularly the pottery and the tapestry. His work reminded me of the Gilbert and George, and also of Reg Mombasa and the Mambo artists. But it left me a little bit cold. I’m not sure what it is, but it seems to me that Reg Mombasa and Gilbert and George have more poetry, or warmth, in their work. It was certainly worth the visit though, a large and varied exhibition.

Afterwards we went upstairs to the restaurant and were able to sit outside after Strop and Jill had wrangled a table for us. The food was good and there was plenty of wine, but I can’t really remember much about it as we were too busy catching up. That’s what you do with friends I guess, fill in the blanks, add to the ongoing story that friendship creates. Twining the threads together, our lives, our families, other friends.

Our visit to Bundeena in the Royal National Park was another chance to catch up with an old friend. We have known Wendy longer than the others, and we see her less frequently, but it’s amazing how you slot back into the old rhythms. I think we all tend to imagine ourselves as we used to be in our 20s, especially when we’re with the friends that we met during those times. It’s good to be reminded that we are all ageing together, our threads fraying and fading. We had a lovely walk through the bush with Wendy, ate chicken rolls overlooking the ocean and the rocks, then got naked at a beach we used to haunt. It was good to strip off and get in the water again, even if there is a lot more of us now. Paler and more wobbly, but still us. The swell and the rocks threatened to be unkind to our soft, old bodies, so we didn’t stay in very long. Retreating to the beach, we dug in the sand and talked and remembered.

I was struck by how each of these outings were based on unrelated friendships from different parts of our lives. Friendships that only intersect with me and Strop. At first I thought it was a fragmented bunch of relationships but now I think of it as a fabric, or a web, each of us a focal point through which other people’s threads pass. For someone like me who needs time alone, it’s good to be reminded how important maintaining those threads is.

Ballers – an evening with Great Balls of Fire

April 10, 2016 by andysomething Leave a Comment

I’m not really sure what to make of Ballers. It presents as a takeaway joint, with lots of red, white and blue on the menu, and tables that don’t invite you to linger. American colours, American-style menu. Meatballs is the name of the game. One of those menus where you combine ingredients from a series of lists. In this case choose your meatballs, your sauce, and your side. Then there’s a column called balls and buns, full of slider and sub options. it’s all very American in an ironic hipster kind of way. And there are lots of balls jokes. Especially in the loo. But the food is good and fundamentally Italian – apart from the slider business.

We arrived at Ballers after a long walk from the Belvoir Theatre, where he had just been to see The Great Fire, which was a great disappointment. Supposedly, a great new Australian play, it was yet another exploration of middle-class angst. Lots of talking and very little drama – the worst kind of theatre. So by the time we got to Ballers we were both thirsty and hungry.

Our first impression was not good. The place was empty and austere, with hard surfaces and high tables. Not exactly fine dining. We ummed and ahhed outside on the footpath, attracting the attention of the woman who was working at the counter. She scurried outside to entice us in while we were still trying to read the menu, saying “It’s all fresh, only fresh ingredients, all made on the premises, today.” Strop gave her the cold shoulder, turning instead towards the traffic on Enmore Road, but I tried a smile. “Thanks,” I said, “we’re just looking.”

We had a quick look down the road to see what was next if we decided to give Ballers a miss. Another Indian joint. This one also empty. We looked back at the menu again. Maybe it will be okay.

There is something appealing about the idea of a meatball eatery. It even has a special Italian name, a polpetteria. I was keen but Stop took a bit of persuading. In the end, despite the woman’s persistent blather we decided to give it a try. A decision that paid off.

The woman turned out to be the owner’s mother, called in to help out because he was short-staffed. She was very keen. Very. At least knowing why made it easier to accept her enthusiasm.

Strop went first and made the fatal error of choosing a vegetarian option in a place that has meat, if not in their name, in their reason for being. Meatballs. It’s all about the meat. Anyway, Strop has been a long-time ignorer of conventions, so she chose vegetarian meatballs, spicy tomato sauce and mash. I went the traditional route of spicy pork meatballs, tomato sauce and spaghetti. We also got a side of green veggies, a real Italian Peroni and a tumbler of rosé.

The food came quickly. It seemed as if we had only just settled down at the cable-drum tables on the street, when two steaming, enamelled bowls of meatballs were placed in front of us. My spicy pork meatballs were delicious with just the right amount of chilli, a rich tomato sauce and perfect spaghetti. Strop’s vegetarian aberration was okay, as good as might be expected, but the spicy tomato sauce was a bit too hot for comfort. It wasn’t just a bit spicy, it was very hot. The mash was excellent though, rich and creamy and smooth. The green veges were excellent, perfectly cooked, beans, kale, and broccoli, with a light, lemony dressing.

While we were there one other couple came in and sat inside and a couple of delivery orders went out, but overall it looked like a very slow night. I couldn’t help thinking that they might do better if they dropped the American/ironic-hipster imagery, and switched to Italian red checked tablecloths. There is a market for it, the Italian Bowl on King Street has been proving that for years. What’s not to love about delicious meatballs?

The pedestrian traffic on Enmore Road lived up to its eclectic tradition. Tonight there was a lot of brightly coloured hair on the young women, and a lot of black-clad young men carrying pieces of drum kit back and forth. Something for everyone.

On the way home we stopped at Gelato Blue, where I had the best passionfruit gelato I have ever had. Excellent work.

So go to Ballers. Ignore the imagery, go for the food, it’s great.