Mum and I spent three days in South Australia, and as always we managed to pack a lot into the long weekend at our disposal. Though I still didn’t get a proper look at Adelaide, I at least managed to see more of the city than the time I flew in for a U2 concert years ago, when I pretty much only saw the airport, the stadium, and the interior of the all-night internet cafe. I wouldn’t mind coming back for a third time and exploring it better.
After a brief stop at the Glenelg Beach, we spent time driving around Barossa Valley, stopping at a couple of wineries.
Then we drove to Hahndorf, an obscenely picturesque and quaint small town originally founded by German Lutheran settlers in 1839. It was packed with tourists, but as the day was drawing to a close the streets got a bit more nice and quiet. The main tree-lined street, with old sandstone architecture and flowers everywhere, is very pretty. Of course we just had to have German sausages and sauerkraut for dinner, topped with non-alcoholic beer.
Fishing with my Dad is a line of memories that runs back all the way to my childhood. I didn’t have a deep relationship with him as an adult and we weren’t in the habit of having real heart-to-heart conversations, so time spent together on an activity like fishing was our bonding time. There were long gaps where we wouldn’t go fishing for years, but in the past few months I was lucky to share a few trips with Dad, including what turned out to be the very last one.
The world’s only electronic psychedelic album sung entirely in Cornish; classy mature pop from the Everything But the Girl singer; warm and soothing techno-pop.
I have my friend and fellow fan to thank for a chance to attend this very special and unorthodox event involving one of my all-time favourite artists. I’ve lost count of how many times I saw Nick Cave live, but this speaking tour, with Cave candidly answering unpredictable questions from the audience and performing picks from his enormous back catalogue on the piano, was something very different.
I sadly missed out on the last time Florence + The Machine came to town about three years ago, so it was a thrill to see my favourite barefoot flame-haired pagan priestess live again.
Books are like cities. Some you only ever need to visit once and you absorb all they have to offer in one go, while others you could re-visit over and over, getting lost in its alleys and passageways and noticing new things every time. This book, not quite a traditional novel but more like a novel in short stories, about the community in a small coastal town in Maine, is so rich in detail and insight I can see myself picking it up from the book shelf a few times over.
yggdrasille.com 