happy easter

The Easter weekend has a repuation for cold, wind and rain in Sydney and yesterday we awoke to a cold, cloudy morning and as we left to take the dog for a walk it started to rain. We took a gentle strol to Naremburn and Cream, our clostest cafe and as we sat and ordered the rain, from a solid blanket of cloud, got heavier and heavier. Pavements and roads running like rivers stuff, more Noah than Jesus if you want to continue the biblical theme. The staff were wearing bunny ears that in that weather seemed even more ridiculous than they would have otherwise. It was rather funny to see a six-foot something very blokey-bloke in a fitted black t-shirt and bunny ears gazing into the near distance, clearly despairing at yet another Easter flood in Sydney.

We took a soaking on the way back to the house. There is a stream at the bottom of Hallstrom Park that is at the bottom of our road. Into this stream flows rainwater runoff. When we had passed it on the way to the cafe it was a small thing; an hour and half later we heard it before we saw it, roaring along it's course. It was rapids of some size and both Sally and I were shocked at it's new fall-in-and-you-die size and speed. The stream passes underground and emerges some way further down the gully. I really, REALLY would not want to find myself in the underground part with a storm approaching. You get a good feel for it's power as you walk under a road bridge and over the stream, on a metal grate footbridge from where you could see the churning water dissapear into a 6fr square black hole. Erk.

Soaked to the skin and with no sign of the wether improving we headed to Chatswood shops to get Sal here belated-by-a-month birthday present and to meet Jason and Josie for brunch.

Quick aside; just looked for a link to Halltrom Park and found this beat of a website - toilet map! Agovernemtn site letting you know where bogs are. How cool is that? Seems to be designed with the ageing and incontinent in mind. The internet serves up another gem.

Meanwhile, back in Chatswood we were in a jewellers where Sal picked up a very nice, classy Longines BelleArti watch that apparently

Longines’ new BelleArti collection is a tribute in grace and elegance to eternal feminism. It pays homage to the extraordinarily productive period of the 1920s. Based on a historical model, this new collection reinterprets the Art Deco movement through aesthetically pleasing and contemporary timepieces.

So there. With no sign of an improvement in the weather we all heade dback to our place to spend the rest of the day, evening and night slobbed in front of the tele. I headed out for a run to the south side of the Bridge and back that I enjoyed more then usual because of the weather. I was pretty well soaked by the time I got ot the Bridge and from the north side I could make the city to the south out only as blurred sillouettes through the pissing rain. Folks were huddled under the two towers as I made my way over, being smacked by horizontal rain from the ocean side. Some walkers had clearly given up on any hope of staying dry - smart move - and were taking the soaking to half of their body. One guy in particular looked half-and-half, his grey hooded sweatshirt dary and soaked to one side along a dead straight line down his back. As I turned for home and ran back north I was met by a wall of brolly-weilding Japanese tourists (I am guessing Japanese), some runing to get off of the Bridge. It had a bit of a disaster move look about it.

I got home to an empty hose the other having left to get the snacks and DVDs that saw us through the remainder of the day. Movie one was that rarest of things, a film starring Johnny Depp that is utter shit. The Astronaut's Wife. Even on a wet and windy day, even if you can see if for free, for the love of God don't. Its bollocks. Most interesting thing about it - Depp uses the word c*nt in it. Hope he did likewise to the director. Things got somewhat better with Nightbreed, but despite being made in 1990 it has a waaaaay 80s feel to it and you'd be better of reading Cabal, the Clive Barker book it's based on.