Fiestas, Cocktails and Polish Festivals...

Was lucky enough to have my very own Judges Associate visit for the weekend.

She flew in on Saturday and after a morning tea of canoli we decided to hit Brunswick St. Much to our surprise half of Johnston St was close doff for a Spanish Fiesta - I have never seen so much paella in my life! We settled down to share a plate of paella behind some bins in the gutter (there were no seats anywhere and you can't share paella standing up!) and consequently ended up with saffron fingers. Because we were planning some nice boutique visits we thought it best to wash our hands. Unfortunately the pub had no soap, but water was better than nothing.

I had some success though - sepite having been up Brunswick St only five days prior I actually managed to buy some Christmas presents! So I'm feeling very good and polishing my halo as we speak. Or write. Or read. Whatever.

So the whole afternoon was spent looking at beautiful things, marvelling at the crazy Melbourne weather (hot, cold, raining) and wishing we had thousand sof dollars to spend on ourselves.

We went home and had a little lemoncello to prepared ourselves for a tram trip back to Brunswick St to go to a cocktail bar. I can never choose what to have so the bar staff picked for me. Four hits and one miss (I hate cherry flavour). Several lovely drinkies, a proscuitto and rockmelon pizza later we tottered back home on the tram.

Talk of school days for some reason inspired the dreaded 'bringing out of the year books'. I seem to have been a slightly twisted and possibly bitter young woman - it was the scribble on the sporting pages saying 'Death to all netballers' and the scrawl across the Rock Eisteddfod page saying 'That was shit, utter shit' that worried me most of all.

Husband arrived home from games conference mildly squiffy, the three of us talked shit for another hour or so and then went to bed. An hour later Buster freaked about the storms that was brewing and made her unease felt by woofing and crying at our door then breaking into the spare room to frighten the life (and sleep) out of our guest.

The next day opened with rain -lots of rain. I was higly dubious of the predicted 30 degree day - more fool me. Of course, I'm in Melbourne, so I only had to wait an hour and it was boiling bloody hot!

We decided to check out South Bank - we parked at Fed Square and as we were heading toward the bridge, the Judges Associate noticed a guy at a market stal with a Polish flag on his hat. Being of a Polish persuasion she wanted to check it out. Suddenly we realised we were in the middle of a Polish Festival! Where else could you accidentally stumble across two festivals?

We enjoyed the sea of red and white clothes, made some purchases at the stall and made our way on to South Bank, where we found ourselves in a craft market. So many market stalls had launched themselves upon us poor innocents! But we survived... with ice cream from Trampoline mostly. I had peanut nutter and white choc raspberry. Yummy!

I dropped my Judges Associate at her hotel and we are hoping to catch up again before she flies back to Sydney and I fly up to the Berra.

Have jsut had a small Singing Office rehearsal, have another on Wednesday. We are on the telly this Sunday!!!