365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 31 : Happy 20th Anniversary Sydney.... and Happy Birthday Nanna!

I have been in the Emeralsd City, as Sydney is often known, for 20 years today.

I can still remember getting on a bus on a Tuesday night in Alstonville, heading for Sydney with just one bag of clothes etc hoping that by being in the city itself that I might hasten QANTAS and their foot dragging over officially employing me as a flight attendant. They had offered me the position yes, but a concrete start etc was seeming an ever distant prospect and so, frustrated at being stuck in neutral, and running out of money, I headed to Sydney, and arrived very early in the morning at Central after the driver entered the City via my favourite street then, and now, in the whole world, King Street.

I was homesick, and uncertain about what lay ahead but determined to do something, anything to get life moving again.... and 20 years on, it has worked very well! I have the most beautiful guy in the world as my boyfriend, and the relationship grows deeper and stronger every day, I live in a great suburb, I have a fantastic group of friends that enrich my life at every turn, I enjoy my job and I have a rich and diverse spectrum of interests. Life is very good....

The marking of the way, which was quintessentially Sydney, and involved dinner at a sushi train on Bathurst Street with my gorgeous guy and close friend, Fahmi (see above top), a walk through Hyde Park to the Spiegeltent set up at one end of the park for the Sydney Festival (see above middle), and a performance by a vivacious fun Irish singer and her band called Sharon Shannon (see below) with an audience a typical Sydney mixed bag of socio-economic groups. The day was a lot of fun, and encapsulated so much of what makes my life so rich today - friends, boyfriend, the City itself, the Festival, and the general vibe of being in such an energetic, fun city.

I am one very lucky guy!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 30 (Saturday 30 January 2010) : Sonoma, Costuma, Invictus

I know the subject line sounds some of bastardised, poorly-worded Latin phrase....but it's not.

What it is, is a pithy summation of today which turned out to be far busier and more exhausting than I'd envisaged.

First up, my beautiful guy and I drove to Waterloo to try and find a costume for our fabulously themed event, Toyland, at Mardi Gras's Fair Day on the 21st. But the store didn't opne till 11 a.m. so he and I and our very good friend, Brett, filled in the time waiting with food and coffee at Sonoma cafe (see above).

Sadly , once the store opened, neither of us found an outfit, with inspiration being as thin on the ground as straight boys without a beer in their hand at the pub, but I at least managed to get some inspiration although it will take some work yet to realise my vision of Knob the builder, a gay parody of you know who. We do have some ideas for my gorgeous guy, which thankfully do not now include the brightly coloured and insanely warm (he would cook in the heat of Victoria Park) outfit shown in the picture below.

After 2 very long hours wandering back and forth through the shop, we ended up at the Last Drop cafe with Bill and Ian and effectively had a planning meeting for Fair Day with some great ideas flying thick and fast including a very racy business card for Knob the Builder and suggestions for his toolbox contents which include items most tradesmen (bar the gay ones) wouldn't recognise from their day to day work. Great fun, great food, and great company! (My guy, Bill and Ian are deep in planning in the photo below).

We went back to my beautiful guy's place and crashed for a while before heading out that night to meet up with good friends, Stephen, and Justin, for dinner at the Fox and Lion before seeing Invictus, a wonderfully inspired piece of film making by Clint Eastwood, centred on the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which thanks to the idealism and prgmatism of Nelson Mandela became a watershed moment in South Africa's post-Apartheid era. It was particularly poignant watching it with my close friend, Justin, who is South African and lived through the events portrayed in the film, and who was profoundly moved by what he saw.

We left Fox Studios at 11pm as the crowds were surging into the Hordern Pavilion for Tiesto and I gave thanks that I was going home to crash and burn in the loving arms of my beautiful guy.... yeah I know I am getting older but frankly I don't mind one bit.....

TGIF FUN - Tips for Healthy Living

Pets have a lot to teach us about living a healthy life, as the following pix show all too beautifully:

1. Eat well

2. Take regular holidays

3. Take up a hobby

4. Take regular relaxing baths

5. Read widely and often

6. Brush your teeth every day

7. Wear the things that make you happy

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 29 : Death of Pippi the Lorikeet

Who is Pippi the Lorikeet (not the one pictured but a no doubt close, and now grieving relative)?

Truth be told I don't even know if that was her (or his - he may have been a drag lorikeet for all I knew) but today this pretty rainbow coloured bird was killed and eaten right in front of my window at work by two crows, who's calls sounded like the long dead roaming the halls crying out in pain. While I am a big fan of documentaries, the idea of having my very own Discovery Channel moment play out in front of me was a tad disconcerting, even if it is a reflection of the dog eat..... I man bird eat bird world.

The interesting thing is this all took place in the middle of a BBQ area (see photo below - the bird is hidden in the shadows next to the steel gray light pole) used frequently by people and being readied to be used even as I type by a corporate gathering complete with DJ. They haven't spotted the remains of poor Pippi yet but I am betting it will be a fabulous ice breaker when they do....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 28 : Made With My Own...Sweat

Do you sense a recurring motif here?

Maybe you do; maybe you don't. Today's entry isn't so much about the heat of the day - though goodness knows there wasn't enough of the 'heat' you want! - but what happens when you try to put together an IKEA bookshelf on a humid day when it requires a lot of effort turning the screws into the shelves when there are no holes to screw them into.


OK that paragraph was replete with more sexual innuendo than anyone should reasonably be expected to read in a blog, but what it all boils down to is this simple Reksbo bookshelf extracted more than the usual pound of IKEA flesh.

Yes it's cheap and funky but oh my god they make you PAY for it....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 27 : Sweaty, Sweaty, Hot Yuck

It was a humid day.


Hardly surprising in a Sydney Summer where the clouds often hang around, and even when you have low temperatures, you can still sweat like a banshee. Or perhaps that's just me. I do see people in their suits walking merrily along with nary a drop of sweat on them or even a hint of a 'glow'. Quite how they manage this I don't know, but they are definitely gifted physiologically, lucky bastards!

Thanks to my predilection to sweat even at the mention of the word' heat', I am a lover of Winter. No, not the sleazy porn actress, thank you - there may not be a heterosexual porn actress with that name but it sounds like a heterosexual porn actress's name, to the ears of this gay boy - but the delightfully cold season itslef when I can wear nice clothes, and they stay nice, and unsmelly, and smart. Bring on the Winter chills, the scarves, the coats, and the biting winds..... I welcome thee with open arms.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 26 (Tuesday 26 January 2010) : Pancakes, Sleeping and Fireworks - Happy Ostraya Day!!

Happy Ostraya Day all! Aussie Aussie Aussie.....well you know....

After last night's big night out in Gayland, we (my beautiful guy and I) woke up a scant 5 hours later, showered - thank god as we might never have woken up properly otherwise! - met up with our friend, Fahmi, and headed over to Marrickville for traditional Aussie....blueberry pancakes. What the ?! The pancakes were lovingly prepared, along with sausages, scrambled eggs and cut pineapple and kiwi fruit, by our good friend John (he of John and Essie and the kids fame) who is American, and cooked pancakes the way he would normally do them. No problem as they were delish with lashings of maple syrup (not ginger beer - sorry Enid and the Famous Five!) but I did say that to be truly Aussie, they had to have been almost crepe-like (but a little thicker) with lemon juice and sugar.

That patriotic pedantry aside, we had an absolutely lovely morning with them, and then prompty crashed and burned on the bed for 2 hours, which was divine, fabulous, wonderful, and all those glowing adjectival words you use when you get to have a nap after a sleep-deprived night. After that zzzzz-soaked nirvana, we drowsily went to work on designing my beautiful guy's new IKEA wardrobe - more fun than you'd think but not as much fun as endless sex and Margaritas on the beach at Cancun - and then refreshed ourselves before heading out again with Fahmi and our night clubbing buddy from the night before, Steve.

We arrived at Enmore Park around 7 (with John and Essie and kids) after miraculously getting a park in very crowded streets, and promptly had some insanely delicious Serenity ice cream. Nothing like dessert before the main course, which in this case was a mish mash of Goan and mediterranean food. The wonderful thing about the Australia Day fair in Enmore Park, apart from the fireworks exploding right above in the most intimate pyrotechnics display I have ever seen (which transfixed John and Essie's kids as the photos show - Ben didn't blink the entire time I think!), is the exuberant intoxicating mix of cultures and nationalities that all come together in a fabulous microcosm of Australian society. The community feel and the chance to mix with so many amazing people, all of whom value the peace, and inclusiveness of Australia, and the time spent with our very own close friends made the night something truly special!

As did my beautiful guy's car hitting 222222 on the odometer, an event we brough on by driving the last 4km from 222218 around the backblocks of Erskineville, and then celebrated by photographing the dashboard out the front of a pub to the point where the bouncer came over to check out what the hell we were up to! It was a lot of silly, wonderful fun and one of the reasons I love my guy so much - he takes the serious stuff seriously but has fun with everything else, and is as sentimental and goofy as I am. I love him, and this was a fun ending to a great day!

Oh and last, but definitely not least, here's an adorable photo of my gorgeous darling niece, Zara ( in the arms of her mum, my sister Helen) at her first Australia Day celebrations on the Gold Coast :

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 25 : Tumbleweeds Through the Cubicles... Then Abs All Around!

I was expecting a slow day in Dodge with barely anyone in (well that much proved true) due to the Australia day public holiday on Tuesday 26 January, with a commensurate drop in workload, meaning I could catch up on all the outstanding less-than-urgent- items that never seem to make it into the daily chaos of demands that is my work day.

What I got instead was a frantically busy day with the only saving grace being that I did get to leave at a somewhat reasonable hour - about 5.15 after starting at 7.20 - and go home and get ready for the Big Night Out (BNO) at Stonewall Hotel, a gay nightclub on Oxford Street, popular with twinks (twenty something gays who bizarrely seem to be all wearing Flock of Seagulls hairdos which for an 80s lad is unnerving and odd!). There was no particular reason for this rare outing onto the Scene - I am about as non Scene Queen as you can get! - other than it was the night before a public holiday, and hence, why not?!

So after some drinks at Kinsela's, a pub on Taylor Square where I had my birthday drinks just two months before in this vaulted art deco room which is just gorgeous, we (myself, my beautiful guy, and great friends, Stephen and Fahmi... Stephen is the one with the temporary tattoo) had dinner at another pub nearby, The Courthouse, where the food was Ok but not brilliant, and which clearly has seen better days. It certainly wasn't in the same league as Botany View Hotel's gourmet food alas (see Saturday 23 January 2010's entry).

Still the food was edible - yep high praise indeed right?! LOL - and gave us the energy needed, along with a couple of vodkas, to go into Stonewall, which surprisingly was full of older guys tonight, with only a smattering of young guys in impossibly tight shirts, and shorts. We found a spot by the stage in a very crowded, narrow bar, and drank some, had a ball watching the drag queen compere, and ogling and touching the buns of the go-go dancers (purely to slip them a tip thank you! But yes their buns were gloriously tight, and as yummy as the rest of their finely-honed god-like bodies). We eve made it upstairs to the dancefloor, where young uys were dancing, kissing and groping each other in their underwear. We didn't join them in that state of undress (!!), and after a brief boogie, and near-defeaning by the insanely loud music (I love the music but have decided my ears just can't handle the volumes anymore...egad, am I becoming....older? GASP!), headed home at 2 a.m., after a very respectable 4 hours of night club dwelling, and after staying awake for far longer than I expected I could manage.

What a fun night! We must do it again soon..... after a jolly good nanna nap of course :)

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 24 (Sunday 24 January 2010): More Reversing of Garbage, More Svlarken Yarken, and More Vittels

After the sleep in to dwarf all sleep ins - ah the glorious loveliness of dozing on and off with no schedule to adhere to! - my beautiful guy and I wolfed down some toast, and hit the road, first for Reverse Garbage in Marrickville to pick up some more items for Fair Day (including 8 hot pink beanie baby bears! I know I am not straight but man did I look gay as I walked back to the car!), and then to IKEA for a 3.5 hour shopping odyssey (with friends, Fahmi and Stephen) before stopping for dinner at a Japanese Restaurant in Neutral Bay where we BBQ'd our own dinner.....YUM!

Yes it was an exhausting day but when you spend it with good friends especially one you don't see too often like Stephen, it's always lots of fun and we did fun things like eat $1 hotdogs and soft serve ice cream at IKEA - yep probably not the most sensible of dietary decisions but what the hell! - drive all across Sydney and laugh and catch up on anything and everything..... it was a great day with people I care about.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 23 (Saturday 23 January 2010) : I Am Melting.... Then I am Blown Away...Then Full as a Goog

I almost did melt....

The mercury raced with unseemly haste to 40 degrees Celsius and refused to budge until late in the afternoon when a cool change arrived..... like the Germans blitzkrieging across Europe in 1939! We went from deadly stultifying, cloying heat, during which we sensibly drove to shops and enjoyed the air conditioning therein (including the Remnants Warehouse where we picked up lots of the material needed for the fair Day Toyland spectacular, and my beautiful guy's favourite store, Spotlight) to gale force manic-crazy winds that drove dust, sticks and then driving rain before it. A delightful, charming Summer's day.....

I was already seriously considering not going to see Symphony in the Domain because of the heat - even though it is a yearly ritual and not going to see it smacks of ignoring a sacred rite of January - but the wind and soaking rain killed off the idea for good, and so after a drink or two and lots of chips with my friend Warren (who'd been rental apartment hunting all day, lucky guy!!) and my beautiful guy at the Sydney Park Hotel (as blue collar as you can get; so blue collar in fact that they had 1, count 'em, 1, bottle of wine for the non-beer drinkers, which was, um, me!), we decided to have dinner at the beautifully appointed Botany View Hotel. The bistro there is pleasantly unremarkable but it's the food that marks it out as something special - I had a lamb loins dish that including haloumi cheese and it was divine. Absolutely fabulous flavours, and it made for a delightful non-rainy, non-squally dinner with my beautiful guy, friends John & Essie, Fahmi and Stephen.

Thankfully the night was delightfully cool and we slept like.... well... exhausted adults......

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 22 (Friday 22 January 2010) : It's TGIF and time for some fun!

I got sent this chicken cartoon which is a hoot, and have included 2 Vimrod cartoons, which are whimsical, fun and just plain silly, and which I adore. Enjoy, laugh and giggle!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 22

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 21 (Thursday 21 Jan 2010) : Planning and Plotting and Catering

Who doesn't love a gay old time?

We all do right? Well some more than others, it's true. But it's we gay men who truly love going over the top, putting frou-frou and bling onto anything that moves, zhoushing and counter-zhoushing, all in the name of a camp good time.

In the spirit of all that's camp and fabulous, my beautiful guy (above in yellow) and I met with our fellow conspirators tonight for our second planning meeting for this year's Fair Fay. Last year we had a tent festooned with gorgeous purple and white cloth, lime green tableclothes and hot pink feather boa trim on cake stands, and this year is going to be all vibrant primary colours - red, blue and yellow and all sorts of Toyland fun and colour. It should be great!

One of the guys, Ian (who, along with his partner Bill, hosted the meeting at their home - final photo in the blog is of them - and gave us a delicious BBQ'd dinner) is going to go as a Drag-in-a-Box and has constructed this elaborate, shimmering box of luminous colour that will make him the costumed gay of the day! The rest of us have a lot of work to match him! His cake stand too is simply gorgeous and very much in the Toyland theme.

We made lots of progress, working out catering, some of the tent decorating, costumes (except my beautiful guy and I who are bereft of inspiration at this point), and even the beginning of a running sheet for the day. A running sheet in the heat that Fair Day normally attracts? No thanks - I think it should be a walking sheet.

Anyway, we're on our way and I know it's going t be jaw-droppingly, eye-poppingly, colour-riffically fabulous!!! Party on!!