2005-07-30 - 10:40 p.m.

"Don't give me no lip when you see me on the strip, 'coz I'm a local now"

Sneeze- "I Believe in Marrickville Part 2"
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Last night I walked back to my new place from the Townie. It took me 45 minutes. There's something comforting about proving I'm still within walking distance.

I live in a large apartment complex at the end of a small cul-de-sac. Turn left at the end of my street, walk no more than 200m and you hit the corner of Marrickville Road. Which for Jane and I has become the new King Street. It's alive, alive with Asian grocery stores, real butchers, barbecued ducks hanging in shop windows. Alive with delicatessans and second hand stores. And we have a big chinese restaurant (a real one, none of your lemon chicken and sweet and sour pork here- among the dishes are pig's intestines and duck tongues) which does daily Yum Cha a matter of minutes from us. Today was the second Saturday in a row we had Yum Cha- last week it was $30 for two of us, today $60 for three.

The station is less than 10 minutes walk, and the 423 or 426 bus will take you up to King Street and onto George Street all the way to Circular Quay. There's still some aircraft noise but not a train to be heard (our old place virtually rattled when a train went by).

We can do 95% of our shopping without going to Marrickville Metro (having said that we still rely on a large supermarket, it's just nice to be able to walk to it). I'm about 5 minutes closer to work, Jane's travel time hasn't changed.

We've been here six weeks now. A couple of weekends ago we bought a bathroom cabinet, a new bed base (with four drawers in it to make up for the lack of an "under the bed" to push all our junk), bed head and matching bedside units (only the bathroom cabinet is actually here as it's from Ikea, the other stuff will be a couple of weeks).

So all in all we're loving the new place :)
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Wish-list

New couch (fear not, the legendary old couch will not be thrown out, we're going to put it on the balcony- there really is that much room and it's protected from the elements by the balcony above).

New barbecue for the balcony (one of those good $400 ones, but not one that you have to take a second mortgage out for so you can spit roast a cow).

Computer desk.

Wall to wall bookshelves which we intend to build progressively from Ikea.

Gas heater.

Big wine rack with additional shelves, most probably for the laundry.

Laundry wardrobe to put vacuum cleaner, mop, broom, dustpan etc in.
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I've got to start writing more regularly (I shouldn't have bothered writing that, I could have cut and pasted it from any of my recent entries) else there's little point writing about random nights I had, because they don't really fit the continuity of keeping my life as a whole up to date, which I find necessary when I only write once a month.

Last night was fun. It was supposed to be a "guys night" with Mark and some of his friends, but after spending a couple of hours at the Slip Inn and a couple at Club Retro, Mark and I decided "Fuck this, we're going to the Townie". It's such a shame the Annandale thought of putting that on their t-shirts first because it's so much more appropriate for the Townie. It's the only place that no matter where in Sydney you start the night, you somehow end up there by about 2am. People only really head to the Annandale if they're seeing a band.

The dynamic of the Townie has changed a lot since the new Smoking laws have taken effect. Downstairs (where smoking is allowed) is a lot more happening, plus they have an Indie DJ which was great because we went from Whitney Houston and Madonna at Retro to the Clash, Bowie, Interpol and the like. Upstairs inside is almost deserted, but there's a courtyard that has just been opened upstairs which is now crowded with smokers.

Initially we didn't see anyone we knew but then we ran into our friend Helen (who works at the Sando but we met at the Townie at about 1am on a weeknight last December) and sat with her group for the rest of the night. I love nights like that, where a chance sighting can alter the course of the rest of the night. Recalling the night with Jane later she was playfully (but probably with some lingering truth) offended that she was left out of the "boy's night" which ended with us hanging out with a female friend at the Townie.

And as I mentioned before, I walked home- because I could.

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