How was your long weekend? Here’s the dirt on mine …
DD and I caught the bus to Manly on Friday night to see The Cruel Sea perform at Night at the Barracks.
Night at the Barracks is an annual concert series under the stars, featuring some of Australia’s most iconic artists.
It’s held at North Head on the site of the former Army Barracks. The collection of art deco buildings includes a parade ground, service areas and sheds. We’d never been there before and were fascinated.
Here’s a shot from one of the gigs last year that gives you a sense of the atmosphere…
We got there pretty early and sat on bar stools sipping drinks and eating fries as thousands of bogongs swirled overhead.
When Tex Perkins took to the stage he was his usual streak of sexiness – the Mick Jagger of Aussie rock still has it at 62!
We ran into friends of DD’s at the gig who coincidentally have a four-year-old son named after Tex and we bonded over me having one too!
On Saturday I reluctantly did some gardening. I hate gardening, but I was left with no choice.
The plumber is arriving today to repair the sewer pipe that overflowed on Easter Sunday (things move very slowly in body corporate land) and I asked the gardener to move the clivias around the pipe before the excavator arrived.
Messages were exchanged, photographs were shared, he’d even sent back a photo with the area in question shaded (pictured main) to confirm he understood the assignment.
I told him I needed it done before October 6 … I thought it was sorted … but he hadn’t turned up by Friday afternoon and was ignoring my increasingly panicked messages.
He finally replied and said he’d be there at 7am today, which was NO USE to me at all, as that’s when the plumber is scheduled to arrive.
So I texted my friend Emily and asked if I could borrow a shovel from her. She replied: “Sure. Dead body?”
I collected the shovel and dug up the clivias, which was the easy part of the work. Digging new holes to plant them in almost killed me. Dirty, sweaty, thankless job.
I was soooooo over it by the end – and so were my blistered thumbs. The last few clivias were just being chucked into shallow graves, whatevs.
My mood was made even darker by the news some dickhead, unlicensed p-plater teen had ploughed into 10 people lining the street in Wallsend to see the Knights bus head off to the NRL Grand Final.
Such a terrible tragedy that could have been avoided. We need to do better as a society in teaching about kindness, empathy and consequences.
The rest of Saturday was mostly spent recovering on the couch.
Sunday dawned with a drive to DD’s place to drop the dogs off while I went to Newie to visit my mum.
We had lunch at Valentine Bowling Club with this gorgeous view …
Afterwards, I decided to hang around to soak up the excitement of the Grand Final. Newie was a vibe following excitement building in the city all week.
My sister and her friend even appeared in an ABC News Facebook post about it …
I was keen to be part of the fun, so I met friends at Alder Park Bowling Club for a dinner and watching the game on the big screen.
We soon realised that our screen was running on a 40-second delay from the one in the bar – we’d hear everyone cheering their heads off and wonder what we were missing … Then fullback Kalyn Ponga would sprint across the field, grab the ball and run 95 metres in the opposite direction to score a goal.
Loved it, even though the Knights weren’t victorious in the end (which we suspected when no cheering erupted in the bar 40 seconds before the end of the match).
After a beach walk early on Monday morning, I drove back to Sydney for some couch time with DD, followed by a bowl of pasta at our favourite local joint, before driving home and girding my loins for another busy week.
I’m out the next three nights. I really need to learn to say no.
Song of the day: The Cruel Sea “Honeymoon is over”
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