Put this on your list

I know I said I was having a quiet week, but I got a last minute invitation to a launch for 1800 Cristalino Tequila.

I agonized for ages then decided to attend because a) tequila cocktails are delicious, b) I’ve been dying to check out the venue that that hosted the launch – Shell House and c) It’s been a hard week.

Well, more than a week has been hard but it finally got to me on Wednesday and I cried – fortunately I was working from home – and I also raised my voice at someone.

I am not a raising my voice kind of person, but my personal and working lives are both a bit stressful at the moment. It feels like I am parenting 50 toddlers, who are running late for preschool and are all refusing to put on their shoes.

And I finally ran out of patience with them.

So drinking tequila in a fancy bar seemed very appealing.

According to the PR blurb 1800’s Cristalino offers the ultimate drinking experience, as it captures the smoothness of a Blanco with the complexity of an Anejo.

It was so smooth that I didn’t mind trying a sip of it neat. It was delicious and so full of flavour, although I probably preferred it in the parade of cocktails that were served.

The venue was Shell House Sydney’s Clocktower Bar, with 1800 Cristalino paired with canapes and a four-course dinner in a private dinner setting.

Shell House features The Menzies Bar, a ground floor bar and bistro that takes its name from the building’s previous tenants, The Menzies Hotel, plus a dining room and terrace on level nine of the building and the Shell House Sky Bar on level ten.

The Clocktower Bar is beside the dining room on level nine and it’s very swank.

The building was built by Shell Oil Co and completed in the late 1930s, then operated as The Menzies Hotel from the 1970s up until the redevelopment.

While the hotel interior has been updated as part of the redevelopment, the building’s heritage facade and 1930s clocktower have both been maintained.

Pictured above is the Clocktower bar, which I photographed from outside on the terrace and also from looking up from where I was sitting.

I didn’t know a single soul at the event, but I made a few friends and then proceeded to talk their ears off about my new obsession with women in sport.

Not watching sport, I’m not really into that whatever gender is playing, but on my late in life realisation that it has really sucked to be a woman who was sporty until recently.

For example, the year before I was born, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon despite being attacked by the race director, who tried to physically pull her out of the race because she was a woman.

Out-bloody-rageous.

“The perceptions of women back when I was running – amazingly enough just 53 years ago – were that you were going to get big legs, grow hair on your chest, your uterus was going to fall out,” Kathrine told Sky Sports News.

“And it was widely perceived that it was really quite socially objectionable for women to participate in sports because they looked arduous. It looked like they were working hard, they were sweating.

“And of course, most women were very frightened of that image because their whole being was about being feminine, and attracting the opposite sex, and being accepted. I thought they were missing out on this wonderful sense of speed and strength, and really empowerment.”

Fast forward to Sam Kerr’s recent confession that she pretended to be a boy when she was a kid so she could play football because there were no teams for girls. And she’s only 29 so it wasn’t that long ago.

And they are still so far off getting equal pay.

My mind is belatedly blown that the playing field remains so uneven.

I’d like to hope the Matildas have changed that, but let’s see how the dust settles.