Friday night. What’s on your Friday night wish list, to make it a perfect end to your week? For me, Friday night wish lists have evolved beyond recognition over the last few years. I used to hang out for Friday night, to hit 5pm and start guzzling alcohol with my friends and live by our “eating is cheating rule”. I mean, eating is cheating? Seriously? I chose not to eat? God, I don’t recognise myself.
These days, all I want to do on Friday night is eat. In my pjs. I am old and boring like that.
But last Friday night was pretty awesome as far as Friday nights go. Check out this champion of checklists:
Believe it or not, one of the things I most looked forward to about coming back to Sydney was, despite popular belief, not the food. I know, crazy right? But true. I looked forward to a bunch of other things, and am still looking forward to many things, like meeting my friends’ new baby girls (two friends, two new baby girls, just this week. It’s all happening y’all).
But really, the thing I most looked forward to was getting a car and having legs wheels again. To go forth wherever I wanted to go. Which mainly, is to go eat.
There were a couple of weeks in March when I was recovering from surgery but hadn’t started working yet that I would comfortably label The Most Boring Weeks Of My Life. It’s amazing how empty my days seemed when I was home 24 x 7; I devoured the crappiest books off my parents’ bookshelf, I watched The Bold & The Beautiful daily (childhood memories), discovered TMZ (LOVE!) and I hung onto my online life like it depended on it. Well, my sanity surely did.
I replied to all emails immediately, in full and in earnest. I turned my Google chat status to “online” – this never happens, I’m always “busy” because I don’t know why, time is money? – I signed into MSN chat and get this, I even logged onto Facebook chat. I shit you not, up until then, I didn’t even know Facebook had a chat function!
I was so bored I even started reading spam emails. Oh yes, yes I did.
If you’re in Brisbane on a Saturday morning and the sun is a-shining, drive on down to West End Markets on Montague Road. It’s an eclectic mix of food, fashion and all kinds of odd things and definitely worth some wandering around. Last Saturday we did just that and not only did we pick up some cheap fruits and veg, I got me a jar of macadamia nut BUTTER.
OMG. I tasted some at the stall and died on the spot. I bought a jar but my dad says I can’t open it until I’m back in London. But WHY?! I want to rub it all over my face it’s so damn delicious.
There is a magical regenerative power to being sick at home. Especially for those of us who live abroad, when we’re down and out and all rugged up feeling acutely sorry for our lonesome selves, all we want is for our mums to be there, to tsk away at how we’ve not kept warm enough, but at the same time, caressing our feverish foreheads and lovingly nursing us back to health. And somehow, we get better so much quicker.
I’ve been so lucky as to have had all this happen while I’m in Brisbane. Because there is no where in the world I’d rather be right now.
Appropriate, isn’t it? I’d been home in Brisbane for about 36 hours and I’d already had two serves of my dad’s own caught crabs. First, a simple boiled sand crab and then on Sunday night, my dad’s chilli crabs. I said I could die happy, but I’ve now learnt to be careful what I say.
Because less than 24 hours later, I was hurtled away in a screeching ambulance.
