won't you come out to play?

two of the things i made for us to nom on nye:


upside down cake with nectarine, raspberry, blueberry and blackberry stewed in brandy and vanilla:



pavlova with cream, passionfruit and summer berries:

need a cool christmas present? my friend josh makes wicked limited edition tee shirts:

FAIRWEATHERFRIENDS.COM

i is in your computer haxxoring your lj omgwtfbbq

i was looking at 'offbeat brides' for cool rbp ideas, and there was this one couple who got all their friends to fill out the proust questionnaire in lieu of signing a guest book. 'cool idea', i thought, and decided to look it up. the version i found had emma thompson's answers. i fucking worship that woman. so here are her answers, followed by mine...

( emma thompson's answers )



( my answers )




( aaaaand david tennant being pretty, just to round things off... )

right. so i called the venue (peter rowland at gardens house) today. i hadn't heard from them for a while and had little idea of where we stood and i wanted to clarify a few things. this is how the conversation played out:

me: oh, hi, i just wanted to talk a bit about the menu for our event.
pr: *with audible eyeroll* we've already talked about this.
me: yes, we have, but last time we spoke you said that some of the items on the menu you gave us were not going to be vegetarian and gluten free, and i just wanted to clarify what the menu was looking like at the moment.
pr: but we don't have to worry about that til next year.
me: well, i'm a little worried about it now. gluten is a pretty big deal. some of my friends and members of my family will get pretty sick if there's gluten in the food, as will i, and i just want to be sure that-
pr: we've already talked about this.
me: i understand that, but i'm just not feeling like we're one hunderd percent clear on where we stand right now.
pr: i sent you an email.
me: i don't think i got an email, can you forward it on to me again?
pr: but i already sent it to you.
me: look, i understand that this might be a bit irritating to you, but gluten is a big deal for my family. i really don't want any of us to get si-
pr: well, we can't guarantee the food won't be dusted with flour.
me: pardon?
pr: we can't guarantee any of the food will be gluten free.
me: but you assured us it would be no problem before you took that gigantic deposit from us.
pr: well, sorry about that.
me: ok. well. we're going to need that deposit back then.
pr: fine.
me: fine.


i don't think i'm overreacting when i say that i'm pretty sure they've treated us so badly because we're a queer couple. i'm sure they have to deal with special dietary requirements all the time, so it certainly can't be that big a deal to sort out food we can eat. we were paying them good money to do so. they have been rude, disinterested and unhelpful ever since they realised they were dealing with two women, and that it wasn't going to be a white tulle affair.
i am so mad.

but something good has come out of it. we're having the r.b.p. at glen harrow instead. i called marg and she sorted us out quick smart - had the right date free and everything. it's SO much nicer, will be more intimate, cheaper, better quality food, and we'll be able to invite more people. last time i was there with bridie i was saying that i couldn't believe we didn't think of having it there in the first place!

hello from the big bouncing bosoms of ye olde home-and-heart-land. we survived 24 hours in transit and got here at lunchtime.

we were met by a lovely driver (thanks mama ros!) who wore a very smart hat, and only smirked a little bit when we mentioned that we had had to pay excess baggage (burke and wills were lighter travelers than us. for serious.)

my mummy was here when we got home and she made us tea and ushered us into showers, and then served us homemade soup and chickpea pancakes. she had already cleaned the whole house, put fresh sheets on our bed, etc, before we got here. she let us sleep for an hour, then made us go for a walk, came with me to get groceries, and soon it will be a totally legitimate time to go to bed! huzzah!

will post photos of last days in london soon. possibly tonight. possibly tomorrow. we'll see how long i stay conscious!

hello again! london continues to be very pleasant, and we are very comfortable and well looked after at chez katz. it's so lovely of dan's folks to put us up like this in their beautiful home!

i left off at the end of our second day in paris.

the next day began with a walk through the marais (the suburb of paris where we were staying), and a look at some stalls at a local market


when have i ever passed up an opportunity to take photos of flowers?


a mysterious mushroom tree (there was no angle to take this photo from that didn't have a busy background - but if you look hard enough you get the idea :p)


fromage! nomnomnom!



our walk took us to a garden with a name that were completely unable to pronounce. we sat there for a while and ate grapes and drank orangina. very pleasant on such a bright sunny day.



then we took the metro up to montmatre to see sacre coeur. here is sajee, with the view from sacre coeur spread out behind her:


the cathedral is a beautiful sight - especially when set against a bright blue sky



inside sacre coeur


i'm not sure how i personally feel about the catholic god, but i do respond to the idea of the virgin mary. whoever she was i'm certain she was an extraordinary woman. i lit a candle and placed it at her feet with a prayer for mothers and children, and for courage, compassion, and love.


we had lunch in montmatre in a little cafe where a man played cello to the diners. my salad had five kinds of cheese in it. win!

in the afternoon we went for a drive around the city and saw some of the big sights again. it was such a lovely day, and this was the perfect way to finish it.

bonjour! we are now back in london after a wonderful few days in paris. last night we were honoured with an invitation to spend rosh hashanah with the katz family, which involved much good food, wine and merriment, so i've left updating til this morning. i'm going to have to report on the paris leg of our journey in several parts, but i'm hoping to do that over the course of the day.

so! we had an uneventful flight and took the most expensive taxi ride of our lives to our little apartment in rue du temple in the marais. it was the cutest, frenchiest apartment you can imagine. to get to it you had to climb up four flights of old wooden stairs that got narrower and more rickety as you went. there was one more staircase once actually inside, and you could actually see roof tiles between the steps - we were staying on the roof! it had a curved ceiling with exposed beams so it felt like sleeping in an upturned boat. on the roof. it was so cool!

a short trip to the monoprix down the street saw us set up with the parisian necessities:


then we had an earlyish night.

the next day we started with a visit to the glorious and imposing notre dame. on the way we passed this very interesting fountain:

all the little contraptions in it whizzed and turned and moved with the water flowing through them. it was very cool.


i'm thinking of making a book entitled 'stained glass windows i have loved' - i'm pretty sure i already have enough material just from this one trip


the pope candles puzzled us until we found out a few days later that he'd recently visited the city


i was very impressed with the general beauty and splendor of the whole cathedral, and then we rounded a corner, i saw this, and it absolutely took my breath away. there was something about the richness of the purple glass, and the sheer size and delicate beauty of the whole thing that just stopped me, gaping, in my tracks.


after notre dame we went for a walk down the seine to the louvre.


i have been very nervous about this ever since we decided to come to paris - so much wonderful art, so impossible to take it all in! we decided to have lunch intheir restaurant (very delicious, btw!), look over a plan of the gallery, and just choose a section. we ended up taking in most of the richelieu wing, including the 15th-17th century dutch and german paintings, as well as some renaissance & medieval tapestries and objets d'art.





after all that excitement, and serious sensory overload, we had to have a nice long sit in les jardins des tuileries with some macaroons. oh yeah, they're gluten free! *happy dance*




stay tuned for the next installment! ♥

hello from the beautiful city of bath!

a quick catch up on the last couple of days - mostly in photo form (again) :)

we had a lovely last morning in stratford-upon-avon. we visited the beautiful churchyard of the holy trinity church ( more graves, and some weeping willows )

then it was time for a last stroll through the rsc gardens...


a farewell kiss for mr tennant...


and we drove to bath - we took a stroll around in the evening light and it was really beautiful




today we have been wandering happily around bath - ( home of jane austen, pretty architecture, and other cool stuff )


i really love this city. it's so old and so majestic, and it's easy to imagine yourself right into a jane austen novel here. am very tired now, though, so i won't ramble any more. big kisses to you all xoxoxoxox

hamlet.

fucking. hamlet.

i don't actually know where to begin with this...

the overall look was a modern one, and reasonably minimal, which they made work really well (it reminded me of the rsc production of 'a midsummer night's dream' that i saw about 15 years ago where the only props the players had were doors, umbrellas and ribbons). they made amazing use of light - particularly in the first scenes with all the confusion about the ghost - it was all torches and reflective surfaces and it really evoked a sense of fear and charged the scene with a frenetic energy. with the combination of that, and the main set pieces being mirrors and chandeliers, the designers and director found a metaphor in the design for the key themes that run through the play - madness and sanity, good and evil, hope and despair - the play explores these things, and the even more interesting liminal places between them.

hamlet's madness was beautifully interpreted by director gregory doran and by mr tennant. in some productions it's played with a kind of wild abandon that in my opinion diminishes hamlets intelligence and the overall design of his feigned insanity. yes, he has moments of doubt and incredible anxiety, but he never truly runs mad - it's all a show to help him in his purpose avenging his father's murder. tennant played an almost doctor-esque, goofy, funny lunatic, while interspersing moments of perfect lucidity, and that made him so much more believable as a bereft son on a mission that felt he was "cursed... that ever [he] was born to set it right."

by contrast, ophelia's heartbroken insanity was heartbreaking in it's turn. the family scene (act 1, scene 3) where she, laertes, and polonius talk together, sets up their closeness and affection as a trio, and this makes it all the more painful when polonius dies. in some other productions polonius' death is interpreted as comic because of the witty remarks hamlet makes about it in his mad ramblings and evasive responses to enquiries about where he has stowed the body. but polonius' death is what drives ophelia mad - her grief for her father is what pushes her over the edge, and this production made that so elegantly clear. mariah gale played ophelia as a passionate, exuberant young woman at the beginning of the play, and that set up the tragic inversion of her innocent exuberance into a passionate insanity that was perfectly beautiful, and unbelievably sad.
it was interesting to read in the program that in preparation for the part doran and gale went down to the river where a young girl called katherine hamlet drowned when shakespeare was just fifteen. they picked flowers and made garlands, and in the process found some of the flowers and weeds described by gertrude when she reports ophelia's death to the king and laertes. they saw that in order to pick them "her skin would have become muddy, scratched, and red-raw with [nettle] stings." and that's how she appeared on the stage - in a muddy slip, covered in dirt and grime, clutching an armful of bedraggled weeds. it was exquisitely sad.

this company definitely found the humor in the play too. i think that's what i loved most about it - the gravity of the themes, and the genuine pain and turmoil of the characters was conveyed absolutely believably, yet the humour in the text was honoured as well. the two funniest characters ended up being polonius (played by oliver ford davies as a lovable but slightly doddery man who, in is rambles, tended to lose his train of thought) and the grave-digger (played as i think my inexperienced australian ears interpreted as a yorkshireman by mark hadfield), though tennant's sensitive timing and clever inflection made this hamlet a very funny one too.

and from the fangirl part of my brain?
1. barefoot!tennant = hot
2. bleeding!tennant = hot
3. crazy!tennant = hot
4. horatio/hamlet = otp

further thoughts after the second viewing.



in other news, none of the actors made an appearance at the stage door. i waited, with a handful of other fans, and for two and a half hours, but in the end we were too cold and tired, and we figured that he must have left some other way.
having come so far i was pretty disappointed not to get a glimpse of mr tennant 'in real life', but after the harassment he has received from some other fans i can completely understand his reluctance to meet any of us any more.
shame.