Things that go bump in the day.

Things I like about Sydney No. 58: Things That Go Bump in the Day

As I explained in my last Reluctant Sydneysider posting I am used to Things That Go Bump in the Night here in the depths of the inner-city bush - be it marauding rats in the kitchen, possums pattering across the roof, or Sniff's rare but alarming habit of leaping up in the middle of the night and barking at some invisible (to us at any rate) enemy.

But daytime in Greenwich also brings its fair share of disturbances. There are the man-made noises of building work and gardening which resonate up and down the creek, amplified somehow across the water; the early morning racket of the kookaburras and the currawongs carousing in the tree-tops; the raucous passings-by of flocks of cockatoos; the sound of torrential rain (we're having a wet time of it these days); the high lonesome tweets of the King Parrots; and, periodically, the loud shocking thud of a bird flying smack bang into our many windows. These birds are the Things That Go Bump in the Day.

Last week I was negotiating the twists and turns of our driveway with a boot-full of groceries, returning home from Lane Cove (not the closest but probably our best local shopping). Locating our house for the first time involves a fair amount of intelligence and a modicum of derring-do because our private driveway is both difficult to find and in various states of decay. Once you've found it, usually by telephoning for directions having already got lost once or twice, you veer past our letterbox (which confusingly is right outside someone else's house) and head further down the increasingly delapidated track for the building on the right (the one on the left is much larger, posher and has a swimming pool...).

Talking of letterboxes, I would like to say that the American-style mailboxes which everyone has here at the entrance to their driveways is something I like about Sydney and perhaps to go on to write a whole blog about Australia Post. But the truth is I find them rather alarming. Although there is something lovely about having to trudge for three minutes up the drive to check to see if the post has arrived there is nothing lovely about the trudge back home having discovered it to be empty.

 And there is equally nothing remotely good about lifting that lid only to find a Huntsman Spider warming up your letters for you like a bird on its eggs (which has happened more than once). This latter worry means that checking for mail in the dark is a particularly risky business. (Here's a Huntsman to emphasise the point:)

Also, I often troop down the drive, lean over the mailbox to lift the lid and inadvertently push my face straight into a spider's web as other spiders have a habit of looping their threads from the adjacent telegraph-pole to our mailbox's lid. Whatismore, the mailbox is by no means waterproof and I often retrieve slightly soggy letters from inside and drenched local newsletters from the ledge above. You have to admire the Australians though for their honesty. None of our mailboxes are locked...if this were Islington, we would never receive any post, it would have been nicked by a hoodie the minute the postman moved on...

Our postman is a lovely man. The other day I caught him dancing down the drive, headphones clamped to his head, so I asked him what he was listening to. The completely unexpected answer was that he was listening to The Danse Society - an obscure 80s British New Romantic band whose first  (and perhaps only) album I happened to have bought, in St Albans, from the record shop in Marshalswick Quadrant, in 1981. This led to a conversation about the best electronic groups of the early 80s but the postie (to use the Australian vernacular) knew far more about the subject than I, citing demos, record label names, and vinyl pressing numbers with the slightly scary verve of a fanatic. Perhaps because he dances most of his route (but more likely because he seems to cover a vast area of Greenwich and we're at the very end of his schedule) our post doesn't arrive before three o clock and often arrives closer to five. And anything that needs signing or such-like just goes straight back to the post-office - the posties aren't going to tramp those extra minutes to our front-door.

All of which is a rather long diversion from the thrust of today's blog: Things that Go Bump in the Day. To which subject we shall now return...

There I was driving up to the house with the day's shopping, chewing on a Jelly Snake and singing along (aptly) to The Human League. I careened recklessly into the car-port (which is always fun) and got out of the car. Suddenly there exploded above my head a cacophony of squawking birds. I looked up and caught sight of three or four agitated Noisy Miners swirling around. I don't like Noisy Miners - they harass and harangue other birds, frequently swoop down to attack Sniff on our walks, and opportunistically fill up niches abandoned by less aggressive birds. As an example of their ubiquity when we lived in Campderdown the Noisy Miner was the ONLY bird to visit my garden of native plants specifically bought to entice our avian friends:

In addition, Noisy Miners have greedy-looking yellow eyes and sharp yellow beaks and make a terrible din.

Which is what they were doing now. And amidst all the squawking, there was a sudden great thud which caused the Miners to flee in an instance, piping and flapping as they left. Something had flown straight into our windows, braining itself. It now lay insensible by the front door like a misdirected parcel.

Unfortunately I am not very good in an emergency. When my parents were over here and my father fell over on a bushwalk and scraped all the skin off the top of his hand instead of manfully taking charge I just stared, panicked a bit and hoped that my mother would know what to do - which she did of course. (Although in my defence I did manage to get them both back to Sydney and to a hospital). When our next-door neighbours' burglar alarm went off the other month I just lay on our chaise-longue reading a book, blaming the rain, and wishing they'd turn the bloody thing off. I felt rather stupid when they came by an hour later and asked whether I'd seen anything suspicious as a lot of their valuables were missing...

Here I was. I had a motionless bird on the front doorstep, looking much like a goner, needing my help. There was no-one to turn to (Sniff is also useless in an emergency), time to step up to the plate...

The first thing I realised was that my stunned bird was no Noisy Miner. If it had been, perhaps I could have just ignored it and left it to its fate. However, before me was a bird I had never seen before, in all my bird-watching, binocular-bearing Sydney days. This immediately explained the consternation of the Miners in the first place - something foreign had dared to land in Glenview Street.

I unlocked the front door, tried to stop Sniff from feasting upon our feathered friend, and began to ransack the house for a cardboard box because I remembered that stunned birds should be placed in darkness and left to regain their strength. Unfortunately, I had dutifully recycled all our cardboard boxes only a few days before and couldn't find one anywhere except that with all the dog paraphernalia in it. Our bird was going to have to stomach the distinct smell of Sniff I thought as I threw dog treats and dog brushes and dog biscuits here, there and everywhere, knowing that every second counted...I then grabbed the dog towel (in for a penny, in for a pound), lined the box and went back outside to our victim.

I gingerly picked it up, admiring its magnificent plumage as I did so. So light, a small fluttering beneath my fingers. It wasn't dead. I thrust him in the box, closed the lid and sighed a huge sigh of relief. Stage One of Rescue Mission accomplished. Now to get him to the vet.

I knew that injured native wildlife are treated for free by any vet so, the dog in tow, we hared off to Sniff's most hated place, the Riverview Animal Hospital, with a rather more precious cargo than groceries in the boot.

Screeching to a halt outside the vet, I parked illegally directly outside their door, feeling like James Bond. I carried my cardboard box inside, rang the bell on the reception desk and waited for the vet to come along so I could reveal this, my special quaking booty:

The vet, interestingly but annoyingly, didn't have a clue what it was. They quickly whisked it off to keep it warm and comfortable and to help ensure that it recovered from its trauma. I have since done my research and think it's an Australasian Pipit. The reason why I've never seen one before is that they normally inhabit open grassland, not creeks and forests. The poor thing was far from home.

I had to fill in a form at the vets explaining exactly where I had found the injured bird because, if it were to recover, they would release it at the exact same spot so the bird can then continue its journey onwards, hopefully recognising where it is. I laboriously wrote out specific instructions on how to reach our front door which, as I explained earlier in this entry, is no easy matter. I asked them to let me know how the Pipit fared and bade it farewell.

So you can imagine that I was EXTREMELY vexed, after all my efforts that day, to discover a week later, on phoning to find out how the bird was doing, that it had been released accidentally when they were checking up on its progress...In other words, the bloody vet let the thing escape, out into a bewildering unknown landscape. Trying to be optimistic about this, there is a Golf Course round the corner from the Animal Hospital which could fairly be counted as open grassland. I'm hoping our Pipit found it, along with some new Pipit friends, and is starting a new breeding colony on the 18th Hole...But, more likely, it was squished by a lorry on the Pacific Highway as it woozily tried to work out where the hell it was.

I can only comfort myself with the thought that I am, after all, at least as good (if not better) in an emergency that the employees of Riverview Animal Hospital.

Things that go Bump in the Night

Things I Like About Sydney No. 57: Things That Go Bump In The Night

We had been left some scattered clues in the days before out-and-out warfare began - a ripped-open plastic bag here, odd scattered crumbs there, faint sounds of rustling behind the dish-washer as we turned in for bed. But it was only when things became obvious, when stealth turned to cheek, that we realised we needed to take action...

One morning Daniel groggily got out of bed to fetch his customary breakfast of cereal doused in lashings of milk. Padding barefoot across the corridor he felt something unusual beneath his feet. Readers of this blog might remember the time he trod on a Leaf-Tailed Gecko in similar circumstances and will hopefully sympathise with his subsequent wariness of coming across unidentified objects whilst barely awake. Looking down this time however he simply saw a discarded sunflower seed shell. Much less alarming, you'd think...But the plot immediately thickened as he discovered that this was not a single husk but the beginning of a trail of shells which he could follow, like poor old Hansel and Gretel, from the dish-washer in the kitchen right to the front door and its source - the bag of seeds lying there handy for feeding our daily visitors - the lorikeets, Thangam and Kevin, and our King Parrots, Simon and Rosie.

It seemed that during the night something had invited itself in for dinner, gorged itself on seeds whilst we slept the sleep of the ignorant and unwitting, and then disappeared leaving us to do the clearing up...

Those early scattered clues could no longer be ignored. Let us turn to the lyrics of UB40 for clarification because, bloody hell,

There's a rat in the kitchen, what are we gonna do?
There's a rat in the kitchen, what are we gonna do?

Obviously we're going to have to

Fix that rat, that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna fix that rat!


Or rather Daniel is, I'm not going anywhere near it...


We were not completely ignorant of the rat situation here in Glenview Street before this unwelcome guest. We've seen them scuttling along the balcony enough times, making daring foraging raids in broad daylight. And having seen them so clearly we know that we don't want then INSIDE the house for they are ENORMOUS and BLACK and PRETTY SCARY. They have long tails, scaly and sparsely-haired, which make them look  bigger and longer than your average British rat. And obviously they know their way around a kitchen, escape routes and all.

And, oh my, this particular rat was extremely clever. What followed felt like the Seven Years War, a battle between man and beast ("General Daniel and the Black Rat") that seemed to have no end. Until it did. A very abrupt one.

We firstly had to come up with a strategy. So we sat down with Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Plutarch's Life of Caesar and a History of the Borgias for some guidance. We soon decided against the poisoning route for two reasons - what if our furry friend feasted on the poison, crawled away and only made it to the back of the dish-washer where he or she would then die and lie there decomposing slowly for the roaches to feast on and for us to smell? And there was the Sniff issue. Poison that kills large Black Rats kills small, defenseless I'll-eat-anything dogs...

So, we had to get some traps. Daniel decided against anything nimby-pimby and, taking his inspiration from the leaders of the French Revolution, bought some steel-enforced guillotines from Bunnings that looked like they'd kill an elephant. And me, and Sniff...

And now began the elaborate plotting and subterfuge. The traps could only be laid when Sniff was absent because they'd certainly do him in. So each night, Sniff would be banished from the kitchen last thing, his water bowl removed and placed in the living room, and Daniel would lay out a series of traps on the kitchen floor in patterns which made it look like one of those intelligent tests for mice. He'd carefully put some peanut butter in the traps in order to entice Ratty in. And when that didn't work, he started to delicately balance sunflower seeds on top of the peanut butter.

But Ratty had been reading his own books for inspiration - Houdini's memoirs perhaps - for somehow he managed to snatch a few sunflower seeds from the jaws of death and wising up to the traps, avoided his fate for over a week. We fancied we could hear the faint echoes of rodent laughter as he dived for safety beneath the dish-washer each night, D'Artagnan of the underworld.

Every morning, the traps had to go back into the cupboard before Sniff could be let loose and Daniel could disconsolately go off to work. I never quite got the hang of how to disarm the traps myself, and before I could have a cup of tea would have to either make Daniel de-mine the kitchen or go in there myself and throw things at them until they sprung shut. And not being the best shot in the world this could be quite a business...

After two or three days of this, I was sitting having my own breakfast (sourdough toast and marmite, cereal's for rabbits and guinea-pigs) when out of the corner of my eye I saw a monstrous being sauntering across the kitchen floor. Ratty was out and about hunting for food, brazen as can be. I screamed, he fled and Sniff belatedly did what terriers are supposed to do and went ballistic, running around in circles, his fur raised all along his spine, barking, whining, seeking the RAT.

Who was long gone.

Several days of stalemate later, I came home from taking Sniff out for his lunch-time walk and on unlocking the front door found another trail of seed husks. This new trail led from the front door, across the carpet, over the hearth and behind the wood-burning stove where, lo and behold, there was a great pile of empty husks, evidence of quite how many days of leisurely feasting??? "THIS HAS TO STOP!!!" I cried.

Daniel steps up his game. He lays out more traps in ever-increasingly cunning patterns with tasty tidbits balanced just so. Our resources are fully mustered...Could we be on the verge of victory at last?

The traps are out, Sniff's in bed, the kitchen and living room lights are switched off. We're reading - Daniel The Guardian on his iphone, me Harrison Ainsworth's The Lancashire Witches - and suddenly, there is the loud thunk of a closing trap...We look at each other and simultaneously throw back the covers, leap out of bed and rush to the kitchen.

The end was quick and violent. We saw but a few twitches before Ratty breathed his last. Daniel's elephant traps proved efficient and, in their swift way, merciful. Our foe finally lay vanquished before us: a large, sleek, well-fed Black Rat.

We both looked down at our rat with a certain sadness, feeling somewhat less than triumphant. We had, after all, secretly admired our adversary and almost enjoyed his mischievous peregrinations into our world and the problems he caused us. We were both sad that a life had to come to an end but grateful that the Seven Years War was over.

Victory, as all Generals know, often has a bitter aftertaste...

The Sydney Aquarium

Things I like about Sydney No. 56: The Aquarium

There is only one reason that I can see to visit the tourist hell that is Sydney's Darling Harbour and that is for a trip to the Aquarium (unless that is you are interested in the history of ships in which case you can also pop along to the adjacent Maritime Museum or if you have a gambling problem in which case you'll walk through it to get to the Star City Casino). The Aquarium is housed in a long, low, unprepossessing building at the end of a parade of waterside restaurants. To reach it, having already walked a fair way from Town Hall Station, you will have to brave a line of waiters trying to entice you and your tourist dollars into their soulless brasseries, all touting for business like whores in a red light district, brandishing free coffee coupons instead of their breasts in your face. Refusing them is easy - you are on a mission to see some very crazy fish and some even crazier mammals, coffee can wait.

The Aquarium, above all things, is deceptive. It looks quite small on the outside but once inside it seems to go on for ever, twisting and turning down blue-painted corridors, vistas opening right and left, side-shows appearing constantly. And although it begins rather feebly wonders soon begin to pile on, ever better, building to a massive crescendo. You can only leave sated.

So, although you'll be rather miffed at the hefty entrance fee, don't fret as you start to meander past the first few tanks full of distinctly dull freshwater fish. As I (and once the Labour Party) said, things can only get better...

I do feel qualified to expound on the joys of the Aquarium - as soon as Daniel and I arrived in Sydney we paid a visit, I got a year's membership and came back regularly. So rule number one is this: unless you have ears of cloth, NEVER EVER COME DURING THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. Acres of glass tanks, those glistening, hard, unforgiving surfaces, are expert are reflecting back tenfold the million screams of overexcited children spotting a shark. Rule number two, unless you're particularly fond of queuing: avoid the weekend like the plague.

This recent visit must have been at least my sixth or seventh. It was a Monday and Rosie and I had to run the gauntlet of some school groups. How on earth primary school teachers bear a whole week of being around such high decibel levels I will never fathom (Rose told me to "hear the wonder and the excitement" but all I could hear was a bloody torturous great din, particularly near the animatronic shark which periodically opens its rapacious jaws and sends all kids into paroxysms of hysterical screaming). There was a group of kids in front of the platypus tank (which is one of the first things you come across near the Aquarium's entrance) which made watching the fantastical creature rather arduous and we decided to head off instead, via an octopus or two, to the jellyfish...

I was exceptionally feeble at taking photographs in the Aquarium - my Canon seemed to be stuck on a very long exposure which meant that each time I pressed the 'take-a-photo' button it took about three seconds to respond by which time my hand and brain had moved elsewhere and the resulting image was completely blurred. Not having memorised my Canon handbook (where is the damn thing?) I had to rely on Rosie instead. These pictures are all hers...

We ran past the dull freshwater fishes, the penguins (surely they should be outside having fun), and the afore-mentioned animatronic shark but slowed right down for the seahorses and, most miraculous of all, the sea-dragons.

I don't know much about sea-dragons -  I had never seen any before I came to Sydney. They are native to Australian waters, related to the commoner seahorse, and come in two versions: the wonderfully named Weedy Sea-Dragon and the aptly-named Leafy Sea-Dragon. Both are exceptionally curious wonders of evolution and, needless to say, endangered. Protected by the Australian government they are however often a danger unto themselves. Unlike seahorses they cannot cling onto things with their tails and are often swept ashore in stormy weather where they quickly perish.  Both camouflage themselves amongst seaweed, the Leafy Sea-Dragon being more expert than the Weedy Sea-Dragon which perhaps explains the latter's name...

We must move on. More amazing wonders to come in the shape of Pig and Wuru in the Mermaid Lagoon...

Pig and Wuru are two of only five captive dugongs in the whole world. Found separately, orphaned at a young age, they have only been put on display since we arrived in Sydney - quite rightly there was a great fanfare announcing the opening of their Lagoon. And dugongs are of course the creatures of legend which ancient sailors mistook for mermaids. And you can see why from the next photograph (not). Frankly, I think I look more like a mermaid than Pig (or was it Wuru?).

Rosie and I were lucky enough to arrive at feeding time and could watch the dugongs delicately pick out individual leaves of cos lettuce from a tray lowered into the depths. They have amazingly benign faces, sleek but scarred bodies, and an agility which was obviously the thing that conned all those sailors many moons ago. A plethora of other creatures share their lagoon and as you walk through the tunnels, rays and shoals of fish career past your head in exhilarating fashion.

Onwards, upwards. Literally. You have to climb out of the underwater world past some rather dismal mermaid murals, the staircases creaking ominously, supported by rusting chains.  But then it's back down again for another side-show - the one most people come to see - SHARK SYDNEY.

Again you can walk through tunnels underneath the water, through an enormous tank (presumably in the harbour itself) absolutely jam-packed with varieties of shark, rays, giant fish and two spectacularly large turtles. Obviously they all seem to be quite friendly - the only thing we saw being eaten was the squid being chucked in from the surface by a keeper.

There are some ferocious looking sharks in this tank. Indeed, most things in the tank would have you running screaming from the surf in seconds. The most dangerous-looking shark here - the Grey Nurse Shark - has been hunted almost to extinction because of its unfortunate teeth - they jut out from its mouth in fierce-looking rows, leading anyone coming across one to incorrectly assume they're lunch. Nurse Sharks are, in fact, fish-eating and harmless to humans. The big scary four - Great White, Tiger, Bull and Oceanic Whitetip - are thankfully not swimming around above your head, in this Aquarium at least. Head down to Bondi and it's a different matter...

There is also a shark nursery and a shark hatchery to visit because the Aquarium is one of the few places in the world that has a shark breeding program which successfully releases sharks back into the wild. Rosie and I saw some baby sharks which looked distinctly as if they had been fashioned from some mottled polystyrene. And a preposterous gaudy shark which gave the Weedy Sea-Dragon a run for its money in the decorative stakes.

Before you leave the Aquarium you pass through the Tropical section and an extraordinary final tank which teems with Great Barrier Reef fare and which has to be the biggest tank you're ever likely to see. Everywhere you look yet another species of ludicrously painted fish, closely followed by another and another, idles by. Just when you think you might have spotted everything, a new variant swims along with a preposterous nose or an unthinkable colour scheme or a permanently grinning face. Truly, a magnificent display of the wonders of the deep. And I'm more than happy to take you there and be your guide...

The Royal Easter Show

Things I like about Sydney No. 55: The Royal Easter Show

What to do on an Easter Sunday once the morning Easter Egg hunt is over and chocolate wrappers litter the floor? Church is not an option; the shops are shut; all roads out of Sydney are jammed with holidaymakers...

Aha! Why not go to the Sydney Royal Easter Show? An Australian institution...

Daniel and I have found excuses every year so far during our Sydney sojourn to NOT do exactly this  but this year we shamed ourselves into getting on the train to Sydney's Olympic Park, braving the great unwashed and going to the Fair...

As a show virgin, I relied on Daniel to steer me in the right directions...

First, we arrived....

...and, walking past the Olympic Torch which Cathy Freeman lit all those years ago and which is now transformed into a rather austere fountain, we headed straight for the Flower and Vegetable Pavilion...where it was Dahlia Day...

...and Pumpkin Day....

We hustled on through, past a cooking demonstration, past the Leaf and Leafstalk Inflorescence Vegetables (hard to drag Daniel away from them admittedly), and onwards to the Sheep and Wool Pavilion. Once there, the crowds thickened and it was difficult to get a glimpse of the sheep-shearing or the sheep-dog presentations so we simply made do with some sheep, lazily chewing in their pens, and some wool...

We then made a beeline for the Poultry Shed where things got really interesting...

Many of these champions were for sale at a mere 50 dollars or so...we were sorely tempted.

We breeze through the Alpaca Pavilion ("I don't like llamas" exclaims Daniel) and the Goat Shed (only one species of goat on display, the Boer Goat - a sturdy, burly beast) before heading onwards and upwards, towards the pigs and cows.

after which we stop for a 'German' sausage in a bun (see the animals, then eat the animals).

After watching some prize-giving whilst munching our hot-dogs in a large but empty stadium (we never did find out what the prizes were for - the commentator forgot to say) we stumbled across some cowboys doing cowboy things (apparently they were cattle-driving; it seemed a little random to me, but OBVIOUSLY I am no expert).

After these heady excitements it was on to even greater heights of exhilaration at the Wood-Chopping Pavilion, where we were just in time to watch the Veterans Final Upright Log Chop...

To calm ourselves down we left after one other chopping competition (missing the upcoming tree climbing) and visited the dizzy intellectual sphere that was the Arts and Crafts Pavilion where anything that wasn't intended to be eaten was so disturbing as to be (in the words of Rodgers & Hart) unphotographable...

Weary, footsore, sated, Daniel and I felt we were getting towards the end of our Easter Show Experience. We managed a desultory wander around the Dog Pavilion, saw some ludicrously coiffured mutts and their equally bizarre-looking owners, and were then headed for the train when Daniel remembered the National Displays. We hadn't seen the National Displays. So we headed for the Food Pavilion, bought a trio of marmalades and marvelled at the National Displays...

We were now feeling patriotic to our very core at Sydney's Royal Easter Show and this will perhaps go some way towards compensating us for missing the very Royal Wedding which seems to be about to go down in London... I'm off to learn the Australian National Anthem so that I can burst into it at appropriate moments (after all I believe it is Anzac Day tomorrow and I'm sure you have to sing it then).

And despite how it might sound, we had great fun at the fair (all for just 34 dollars, a right Royal Bargain.) I suggest you get yourselves down to the Olympic Park this week and thrill to the power of the Chicken...

Posh Places and their Lighthouses Part 2: Cremorne

Things I like about Sydney No. 54: Posh Places and their Lighthouses Part 2: Cremorne

Daniel and I have moved. Our new house (some people have rather crassly called it a mansion - I prefer the more Italianate villa) perches over Mosman Bay below Cremorne Point. It is all very idyllic and impossible to reach by car, which obviously comes at a cost. We had to train ten locals in the art of carrying loads on their heads just to get our silverware and Sevres in. My ankles are becoming trimmer since I have to walk ten minutes before I get to the car but it's all worth it, don't you think?

I am learning to deal with staff - we have four gardeners, the pool maintenance man, two maids, a chef, a full-time cleaner and a handyman - but the hoi-polloi I'm still having difficulty with. Unfortunately, there is a path running around Cremorne Point which is open to the public. Although no-one walks directly past our swimming pool they can look over it from one particular vantage point and people gawp, point and take photographs of our villa. The path then runs past the front of the house, alongside our walled garden and fountain (another Italianate touch that I'm rather pleased with - I close my eyes and sit there in the sun and imagine I'm sitting for a portrait by Michelangelo - you know, the painter) and I caught some ugly little man peering through the slats of our fence only this morning. He had a hideous little dog with him, which reminded me a bit of Sniff. I did feel a slight pang of remorse but Sniff obviously had to go back to the pound when we moved here. He has been replaced with a Saluki - something I can be proud of when the neighbours see me out jogging. I've called him Dante, which I think is rather fitting.

Our boat is moored in the bay and we have someone who looks after it for us and sails us whenever we like. The chef comes along on most trips as well which makes for so much work - I have to direct everybody, honestly it's quite exhausting. And now that Daniel is on a macrobiotic diet (like Madonna and Gwyneth, you know?) and I'm on the Master Cleanser Diet (Beyoncé's latest) and Dante's on the Raw Food for Dogs diet just planning a menu with the chef makes me need to lie down in the dark with a pitcher of Manhattans for an hour or two. And my personal physician has told me that too much stress will have an adverse effect on the Botox I treated myself to last week so heaven knows, I need to just take it easy.

Just around the bay is a lovely little Marina but, unfortunately, it is open to the public. So a bunch of us are getting together to try and make the whole of Cremorne Point a gated community. It would simply be heavenly then. As it is, there is the private sailing club, the private country club and the private businessmen's association of which we are members naturally. Sometimes I feel like I'm constantly yo-yoing backwards and forwards from one social event to another!!!! Goodness knows how Daniel finds time to work.

It was pointed out to us the other day, by some busy-body nobody wearing an anorak on our doorstop, that the gum-trees around Cremorne Point are slowly dying off. They tried to insinuate that we had something to do with it. Luckily for us, the previous owners of our villa cut down all the trees so we have a perfect view of the water so I don't care one way or the other. I slammed the door in the Greenie's face and got on with the important things - what to wear tonight, which cocktails to have mixed for our party on Saturday, and whether to get Dante a diamond or a pearl-studded collar.

At the end of Cremorne Point there is a divine, dinky little lighthouse. It seems to serve no purpose but looks awfully pretty. Along the way someone has made a public garden - it's also terribly pretty but why, oh why, make something like that and then open it to the public? It should be for residents only. Some people have no idea. I must bring it up at our next residents meeting. Along with a motion to ban all tourists from taking photographs of those, like us, who have better houses/clothes/cars/jobs/lifestyles than them. It's such an invasion of privacy.

Where is that damn maid? I need a drink. Yes, out by the pool. NOW!

Miniature fruit and veg

Things I like about Sydney No. 53: Miniature Fruit and Veg

It's been a long time since this blog has been to the supermarket. Way back in November 2009 I got inordinately excited about insect sprays and cheap asparagus but since then there has been silence on the grocery shopping front. And for good reason. I don't like the supermarkets here, they're not a patch on Sainsbury's or Waitrose.

But, this week Woolworths has gone, quite literally, bananas. Despite floods, droughts, earthquakes, plagues of locusts and all the other natural disasters that have been besetting this continent its shelves are groaning with the most extraordinary displays of strange fruit and vegetables. Many miniaturised. And London simply cannot compare with Australia for fruit and veg.

Take pears, for instance. Currently there seem to be about six different varieties in stock from dark-brown Beurre Bosc to greenish-yellow Josephines to yellow William Bartletts. And the weirdest of all - the Paradise Pear (also known as Faccia Bella). These are tiny, miniature pears, almost round, with a green skin blushed with red. And, as Woolworths say, ideal for lunchboxes...I have never seen the like.

These little Paradise Pears are, indeed, paradisiacal and might save me from eating too many jellybeans. Much healthier.

Plums are in season too. And again not just a single type of plum but many different varieties. We have blood plums (rich red in colour, obviously),  the freaky plumcot (a cross between a plum and an apricot, unnerving I know), black plums, October Sun plums (green), Tegan Blue plums and Sugar Plums - the miniature variation, below on the right.

Another good jellybean substitute, the sugar plum is intensely sweet and (I'm eating one right now) quite marvellous.

Australia apparently grows over 200 different varieties of plum so frankly Woolworths needs to pull their socks up a bit...

Past the miniature bananas (Lady Finger variety) and we cross the aisle towards the veg. And lo and behold, it's Alice Through The Looking-Glass over here too. First up, the aubergine. This is painful for me because aubergine is, frankly, the flesh of the devil and to have more than one variety is simply abhorrent. But there they are, nestling next to their fatter cousins, miniature little aubergines, specifically there to make me shudder.

More congenial are the miniature chillies (one of seven fresh varieties today) and the miniature red peppers.

I cannot venture near the olive counter (olives being the testicles of the devil) but no doubt there are miniature ones of them too. And stoneless ones, and purple ones, and freaky yellow ones. There are also enough varieties of tomato to make Daniel sit down in the aisle and weep (for he's of the opinion that an uncooked tomato is a thing of violence. Once cooked, on the other hand, they become perfectly harmless.)

So, as you can see, despite the dire warnings of empty shelves and escalating prices which we were  indundated with early in the year whilst the Queensland floods were in full spate, Australian farmers have somehow battled on to produce an amazing array of produce early this autumn.

Here's to them (and to all things small)!