M-Town

been fighting the the flu all week so I approached this weeks Melbourne visit with a degree of trepidation. We had a lot to fit in in 24 hours but the boss was determined and given the fact she has personified awesomeness for the last few days I figured the least I could do would be to attempt to make the schedule work.

First up was a visit to the National Gallery for an Art Deco exhibition on loan from the Victoria and Albert. Lize was goggle eyed and dreamy, loved it to bits but I ended up sneaking off to look at my favourite Picasso sketch and left her wandering in a daze. She picked up a catalogue to bring home with her and has formed an unhealthy obsession with Lallique glasses.

Then off to the hotel where we intended to camp for the night. In the course of an adventurous drive we discovered Melbourne City Council seen to have eliminated right turns at a lot of intersections meaning we kind of arrived at the hotel by a combination of guesswork, cursing and dumb luck. Checked in, then we hit Brunswick Street for an awesome chorizo pizza and some yummo pesto chicken pasta and then had a little meeting with a dude who's trying to sell his bar to us. Checked out the bar as well, great potential, buggerall overheads, the only issue being everything I pointed too was leased or rented. It started to beg the question whether there was actually anything to sell . The visit was inconclusive and I'm going back tomorrow to maybe try and pin him down on a few things. Nick our old bar manager has put his hand up to run it for us so I will be involved from afar on this project so if it does go ahead, Lize and I get to preserve our weekends etc.

Then it was off to the Gertrude Hotel for Jules and Yuko's 21st birthday celebrations. Fabulous times were had, the place was rammed with hotties and top blokes in fancy dress and many pints of Pipsqueak were quaffed. Caught up with all the old staff and some other dear mates and had a marvellous time. Of course we kicked on, the dirty old Pony being the late bar of choice. Had an in depth convo with an old Inpress staffer, saw 10 minutes of savage dirty rock from a band who remained anonymous, realised I was on of the five people there not on crazy drugs and drank a little too much. At this point Lize fell down the stairs (a combination of a broken high heeled shoe and too many Stellas) so it was back to the motel for a pie and a ginger beer.

We both pulled up pretty rough. Lize has a bruised bum, sore elbow and wounded ego, I managed to get chilli sauce in my eye and we were both rocking fair hangovers. After a slow and painful drive home it was nice to spend the rest of the night curled up with Squitter on the couch watching shit TV.