I had no idea when I woke up feeling a bit weary and wrecked on Friday morning – after two nights of rubbish sleep – that the week would end on a high.
Work kicked off at about 7.30am due to a few urgent projects, then I clocked off at 4pm to go to Freshwater Beach with the youngest for a swim.
It was probably the last warm day of the season – a high of 26 degrees and still in the 20s when we arrived. The water was glorious and I had a lovely splash while the youngest caught waves.
As we were driving home the youngest suggested dinner and, as coincidence would have it, DD was heading to Harbord Hotel to see his son play with his band, Honey Nothings.
The youngest LOVES everything about Freshie, including Harbord Hotel, so we went home for a shower then backtracked there for dinner before the show.
Three bands were playing. The first were a surf trio whose instruments included something that looked like a pan pipe.
Then the Honey Nothings took to the stage and put on a great show, followed by Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird.
It turns out the youngest has been a fan of Cousin Tony’s music for a while, so she was stoked to see them live.
They were a pretty awesome combination of a lead singer with a Nick Cave-ish voice, a saxophone player, swirling melodies, a touch of nostalgia and some disco beats.
Watch one of their songs below:
While the bands were fab the crowd was quite rude. They were talking so much and so loudly that it made the music hard to hear at times.
I honestly don’t understand why you’d go to see bands and not actually listen to them.
It gave me flashbacks to going to an RTD launch pre-kids that featured Des’ree as the entertainment. Do you remember Des’ree? She sang Feel So High, You Gotta Be and Kissing You, which became a worldwide hit thanks to its placement on Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet soundtrack.
My ex and I were completely stoked to see her perform at such an intimate venue – for free! But the crowd were too busy getting plastered on Sub Zeros and loudly talking to listen to her.
We were so appalled that we went over and apologised to her afterwards. She was a bit shattered by the experience – we later discovered she suffered from chronic stage fright, which eventually prevented her touring – and offered us free tickets to her official show the next night, but we couldn’t go because … I can’t remember, but dammit.
Then Saturday night was spent enjoying a very fancy dinner for my mum’s 80th birthday. We took her to Cafe Sydney.
I am not, by nature, an extravagant person. Bargains are much more my thing.
But there’s something about downsizing, then turning 55, followed by your mum turning 80 that makes you want to splash out. So we had a very lavish time.
We started with a round of cocktails, then three glasses of Champagne appeared courtesy of my brother in law, then we had delicious entrees (I had Western Australian octopus with a salted cod croquette, aioli and a tomato and caper dressing), lovely mains (I had miso pork loin with pork belly, caramelised cauliflower, nashi pear, tarragon and jus) and a shared dessert (white chocolate lemon mousse, mandarin, mango curd, sable biscuit and lemon sorbet) and salted caramel martini.
Nom, nom, nom!
Mum is looking pretty fabulous don’t you reckon? She’s such a vivacious, stylish creature.
That’s just a slice of my weekend action. It was a biggie. And now a super busy week begins.
I hope your weekend was wonderful.
Song of the day: Party Rock Anthem
housegoeshome 
I feel the pain….in another life I wrote and reviewed and interviewed, and did a bit of TV….I’d rave about an act, based on my reviews, a local club, usually at or near our college, d book an act, and there’d be a great act in a room full of loud and rude people not interested….sometimes it’d work out well, but for newer artists, you felt awful….