Z is for Zilche Zakouska

We went off to the local Greek place last night called Jim's Greek Tavern and it should surprise you not at all that we ate ZILCH ZAKOUSKA, cos it was a Greek place not Russian so no vodka or caviar and actually no chance to even place an order cos you just get what you get given.

It is a wonderful cavernous place that at least on this Friday night was completely heaving with loud pissed people who arrive carrying in cartons of wine...yep not a bottle, but a fucking carton! I reckon it's clear they had been there before cos they knew just how high they needed to hoist those cartons so to avoid knocking the shit out of anyone's heads as they strode towards their table.

So we waited for our table to be cleared in some strange bar across the road and downed a pint until it was our turn to join the circus.

We were seated by not-so-mr-smiley, let's call him George, who quickly noticed we arrived sans carton and so offered us a house wine as they aren't licensed. What the very fuck? No Beers? So we chose white wine and then thought we might have a lively look through the menu.

Yeh ...No ....No menu! So George asked us if we wanted dips. 'Yes Please!'

Then he asked us if we wanted .... ??????? can't hear you ???? calamari frittes...Missed that bit...??? Nope Missed it again. So I said slowly that yes some calamari frittes would be good, and maybe some Kleftiko and sauted potatoes, he nodded and said no potatoes you can have salad. Righto then!

The dips were delicious and the bread plentiful and then there was Greek salad and lashings of Calamari and the biggest wedge of lemon I have ever seen. Must have been some fucking lemon I reckon.

And then we waited. All manner of food was being delivered to tables. Noone had seen a menu but all manner of stuff was being chomped. Flat fish and sardines and more calamaris and salad and more bread and that's just nearby us.

We waited and Stevie struggled through the carafe of house white.

It seemed pretty clear that everyone else knew the rules except us.

And they had all arrived at the start of a session and we had lobbed in in the middle of a session.

The programme called for dips and bread, then salad, then fish, then I guess finally meat.

But we didn't know this cos we forgot to buy a programme.

Anyway, well after the last of the frittes had been flung down our throats, and the wine had been drained and we were both bleeding from the ears cos of the noise, we asked George for the bill cos honestly we were full up to pussy's bow and didn't need the meat which may or may not have been forthcoming, anyway.

The bill was impressive in it's brevity, and obscurity.

I don't know how George did the add ups and maybe the total included a surcharge for the dinner theatre, but it was cheap and dear at the same time.

We left full of food and merriment.

We'd definitely go back but next time we'd ask more questions, get there at the right time, and remember to take our own carton.

Y is for YIPPEE!

Yippee Ki Yay mother fucker! Bruce Willis would be so proud!

We have crawled and plunged and slammed and shoved our noses into places you are just never meant to shove your snorkel and this morning we finally found it! And now the offending item has been wrapped in plastic and popped out on the balcony and we hope that the appalling stench has gone away with it.

I have been figuring that the Leukemia was making me sensitive to all things stinky, instead of just being my usual fussy self. I have stopped wearing perfume and have been slapping on oat meal and coconut moisturizer and anytime some stinker shares space on the trams I am aware that it is probably my problem not theirs.

In Adelaide there was the mildew stink that finally drove us, well maybe only me, from the flat into anothery which whilst it had a slight pong, it was more than livable.

And so when we moved in here for another week and there was this really strong odour, I was hoping against hope that it was the just cleaned cleaning product smell and that it would dissipate in short order.

But 4 days in and poor old Stevie got up this morning and said the smell was making him sick, so yippee! it wasn't just me after all. We began the hunt. There must be one of those electric stink dispensers somewhere and the flat is not all that big and still we couldn't find it. I buried my nose into the ever disgusting rag mop head and it wasn't the culprit. We shifted furniture and I even wondered about removing light bulbs cos I thought one of the down lights looked odd. The rubbish bin was searched and the appliances opened and the store cupboard given a thorough going over.

And suddenly, mid bite of his marmite toast, Stevie leapt up and shoveled a piece of furniture near the front door sideways and eyespied the fucker. He grabbed it out of it's hidden home and relegated it to the little balcony. I stuck my nose in there for one final whiff of that shitful smell to make sure that was the thing, and have now opened everything I can to blow that shit right out and away.

We are very proud of ourselves.

It was clearly never meant to be disturbed.

We hope it wasn't used to cover up some even more diabolical smell.

Back in the day, way back back back, when I was preggie with Belly, I was suffering more than a little morning sickness. This was also the era of those solid little rocks of smell coverer-upperers that we all plopped into our loos. They made the water blue or green or yellow. Do you remember them? Maybe they still make 'em I don't know, cos when you have had you face stuck into the bowel for more hours than you fancy ever recalling and it stank of that synthetic cover up, well I am pretty sure that like me you will never have bought one again.

Smell is a very strong memory trigger and if I ever am unlucky enough to smell the shit that is out on the balcony again, I am certain that I will instantly be transported back to this flat in Melbourne.

X is for XAT

Melbourne flat XATS

Yeh it's a stretch, but it was either a story about carved memorial totems, XATS- or maybe the rather bland candle sticks in this flat, or a description of the xray facilities in St Vincent's Hospital, and as I only ventured in to the Pathology area yesterday, the totems have it.

I have not kept it a secret that the preliminaries to securing this flat were long and more than a little painful, but once done and once we got hold of the keys out of the letterbox out of the key safe using the code provided and then we let ourselves in and found the fob for the garage and Stevie got a little lost but did finally find it by NOT using the neighbour's directions, we took a few seconds to pull a hanky over our mouths to avoid the stinking fumes of cleaning product, and check the place out.

There are all sorts of weird shit shoveled in here, not least being the timber candle sticks on the dining table. There are House Rules on little stickers all over the place but none to do with the the lighting of candles and the consequent dripping of wax onto the glass table...Maybe this is the loop hole to the whole cleaning issue. Maybe a little hillock of spilled wax on glass is ok but a clean glass left in the drainer is cause for invoking a $40 additional cleaning fee - $60 has already been paid up front. That seems a pretty steep cleaning bill, but I suppose that stinky shit, which 3 days in still really really pongs, might just cost a motza. I am pretty sure that no one has used the bloody candle sticks - My CSI investigations indicates no wax anywhere on 'em or scratch marks where wax was pried off 'em either. I reckon they just take up space on the bloody table, or maybe it's for 'decoration'.

Like some of these other bits of tat. I mean who hangs a wooden monkey up in a rental holiday place and who would come to Melbourne and book into a flat in Fitzroy so they can practice their Japanese Tea service ritual?

The pantry is full of left over other people's stuff, which I do not want to touch, but imagine is well passed the use by, and there is a condiments pull out which is similarly stacked with shit of dubious vintage. Seriously this all just suggests to the next people in that it's OK for old leftovers NOT to hit the bin, just leave it there to fester, but that clean glass on the dish rack, well that's a big NO NO.

We are off to roam around Fitzroy today and after last nights meander we expect to eyespy the stores from whence all this stuff sprang. Last night we saw, not a stag, but an elephant so I reckon if I were to go in when the shop is open I could find a matching pair for this fella.

Now I am not saying that all this tat is hideous, it's just really odd for a short term holiday rental. It all needs to be dusted - not very well to date, and it is very personal taste.

She has access to a $500 bond in case we bust up the place, so I am pleased to have taken photos of the already less than pristine plumbing and bathroom fixtures and the kitchen bench, oh and I have a fine one of Stevie vacumming up the dust lumps that fell off one of the door edges. Maybe what she is really concerned about is that someone is gonna take off with her Stag, or the Sticks or the Swinging Monkey, cos damage enough has already been done to the actual flat itself.

500 bucks for XATS of dubious authenticity seems pretty steep.

W is for WASHING.

Even when you are on holidays, the old bullshit domestic chores rear their ugly heads, and as we have been gypsies for more than 2 weeks now, and brought with us limited outfits and undies, washing definitely needed.

The trouble is that at home washing is done on remote control. I don't give it a thought....and my laundry is set up so that our clothes fit on the washing line and it's done in heart beat and left to dry, away from anywhere where I have to see it or trip over it, but that just ain't the case in other people's places.

The women who own the flat we are staying in Melbourne really do have tickets on themselves. They think this place is so very flash that we and anyone lucky enough to have parted with cash to stay here, really should be leaving them a gilt edged thank-you note and a little parcel. It's meant to be a 2 bedder, but one bedroom is internal and no light or external window and I thought there was 2 bathrooms mentioned in the ad, but there must have been fine print saying that the second bathroom is only a loo, and so only a bathroom for midgets or small children who don't mind the idea of showering under the flush. So it's an odd little place and there is certainly no place to hang wet washing.

But all up it's not a bad head rest for a few days.

It has a washing machine and so I threw in a load and then went looking for somewhere I might hang some stuff that really shouldn't go through the drier, which is a lot of stuff I reckon. I only use my drier for towels, cos I don't like the way clothes smell when they come out of the machine.

I improvised. I emptied out the clothes hanging in the wardrobe and opened the window and hung our wet clothes in the cupboard, leaving the doors open and now I hope that the air-drying method might just work, at least we are not tripping over wet washing and looking at the sag of it all in the lounge room.

This holiday thing is hard work.

The CML keeps rearing it's ugly head, or maybe it's the meds, or maybe it's all the good food and the booze and the sight seeing and the packing and the unpacking, and the acclimatising to different beds and pillows, but whatever it is my eyes decided that my face needed a bit of a wash too.

So we have clean clothes and my face is gleaming and we are off again tonight to follow up on Stevie's reccie today, in the hunt for more food and drink, and maybe some vegetables, or maybe not...who knows, cos it's all part of the adventure.

V is for Visual feast.

We drove around the Mornington Peninsula on our way from Victorian Sorrento, (as apposed to our little Goldie  Sorrento), to the big smoke of Melbourne and it really is just picture perfect. You can zig zag across the peninsula and pop into little lookouts and bigger touristy places all in very quick order. Most of it is sort of slow poke farming type of places but soon, if you head out to Arthurs Seat ( no punctuation so I guess that's not Arthur's seat, but a bunch of blokes called Arthur playing musical chairs with only one seat), you'll be able to get a chair lift from the beach up the 330m hill to the top and I reckon this is gonna be quite a ride and a fabbo view. Stevie said, ' I don't fucking think so,' and that was before we saw that it was still under construction. Chair lifts are clearly not his thing, but I'd have a go in a heart beat. Look out for this bit of fabulous if you are there in the next little while.

No I don't have any photos, but I do have some wonderful images in my brain so you will just have to check it out for yourself and fill that bit of your head with beach and headland and cows and fields and golf courses and canopy trees over the roads. All very AHHHH.

Neither of us have driven around Melbourne, instead always opting for public transport or Shanks's ponies, so it was useful to be doing it in 2016 cos I managed to navigate between the many paper maps we had gathered and the google maps on my phone, with the moving icon which was us. These phone maps are just bloody brilliant, and we only went wrong once and only a little bit and only because I just couldn't see a big enough bit of the map all at once.

So land in Young Street we did, and move in we have, and out onto Brunswick street for a long mooch, we've been.

It's a pretty gritty end of town although the further north you go up Brunswick street the looser can be your grasp on your handie.

The contrast between the rural idyll and the urban grit is palpable and even though I have thoroughly enjoyed the bush pace, I am pleased to be back in town.

U is for UNUSUAL

Living on the Goldie as I do, I am very used to the long stretches of white white squeaky sand beach, and people wandering around in bugger all clothes most of the year and then on the 2 days of winter they don their full cold clobber including long boots and all manner of furry coats and gloves and hats. I have spent time wondering where exactly they keep all this shit cos it's not oft used and there is not usually any loft space in homes, to chuck it into, so I guess it hangs in cupboards surrounded by summer singlets and thongs and just feels very out of place.

But the Great Southern Ocean is far removed from the Pacific Ocean and the Goldie. It is wonderful in it's unusualness.

The beaches are mostly brown cold sand, edged by very dramatic rock wall cliffs, and the water is cold. Not chill-blain leg cramping cold like in the UK in Newquay in the winter where Belly and I almost lost all use of our legs, but still it's pretty cold, so the crazy swimmers are all wearing their wet suits even if they are just dipping in a toe or 2. The really unusual thing I have discovered here on the southern coast, is that wet suits do in deed come in a variety of sizes, even big enough to accommodate bodies which are frowned upon in public on the all too often pretentious, skinny Goldie. These must almost certainly must be housed in the garage as they could well smell of piss and salt cos I have heard that everyone wees in 'em to keep themselves warm. How very unusual.

The Great Ocean Road has been built to give tourists full view of the wonderful diverse landscape. It is bloody brilliant and if you fancy going for quite a bit of a drive, then make sure you give yourself enough time to call in at all the lookout points, or at least most of 'em, cos they are worth a look. Please leave the selfie sticks and the fucking moronic need to climb in with the snakes amid the unstable cliff tops, in your car, and just take a moment to smell the salt and listen to the crash of the waves.

Seriously the number of people who grabbed a selfie and took off, just ticking another destination off the list, was staggering and ultimately I was looking for a shovel to smack 'em with. All too often walking 4 abreast and expecting everyone else to move, or wait til they had taken their stupid pictures - yep, I have had enough of tourists. The good thing about the list tickers is that they are not too long at any destination so if you wait a few seconds they move away and you have a wonderful view all to yourself until the next wave of selfie obsessed loons arrive.

I have thoroughly loved every part of the coast down here.

Of course it's the ANZAC Day Long weekend and today started with a service at the memorial at Lorne. I was lazy in the extreme and watched from the balcony of my place while I warmed my hands on my mug of tea. My fortune, by comparison to our Diggers was not lost on me.

Lest We Forget.

T is for Tourist Information Centres

When you roll into a brand new place and have no fucking idea where you are or what to do or where to stay, and you eye spy one of those Big Yellow I signs, you can breathe a sigh of relief cos help of all sorts is at hand.

When I was younger I just refused to go into these places cos I figured arrogantly that they were staffed by banjo playing yokels who would get off by sending you 100s of kilometres out of your way to a place that still wouldn't have a loo, but age has its perks and wisdom might have to be one of the biggies.

It was a big drive yesterday from Robe to Port Campbell.

We had found the Robe accommodation as we drove in and even though we immediately disliked LOIS with the 'I'm Responsible' badge we checked in and parted with too much cash because we were keen to get out and about and have a look at this lovely wee place, and lovely and wee it truly is.

The Big Yellow I gave us a map and told us everywhere was wonderful, the accomm was all wonderful and the food everywhere, yep, everywhere, even that manky smelling takeaway place was wonderful. Sometimes the Big Yellow I people are just a little too parochial, but they always have good maps.

So where we stayed in Robe I would not recommend, but more of that in a later post.

The point was, that we were under prepared so I chewed into my Mobile data while we bumped along towards the Great Ocean Road, to find somewhere to stay in Port Campbell for a couple of nights. I had already done quite a lot of research before we left the Goldie so I had a list of places and phone numbers, but I did a bit of checking first. I rang a few people and bugger me it seemed that the whole of this village was booked out - of course it's a long weekend - great to remember the ANZACs of course, but not so wonderful if you are trying to find somewhere clean and tidy to rest your head.

I ended up ringing one of the places I had found online, only to be told by SUE, that I would have to book it online cos she didn't take bookings over the phone....SHIT. It's a bit tricky punching in info and card numbers while you bounce along, but punch I did and we were all sorted.

The Big Yellow I beckoned us as we got to town and we popped in to get a map and some directions to our little home away from home. I clocked that our guide did a bit of a double take as she handed us the map and circled stuff and then found a brochure and told us everywhere was wonderful, but I wondered if she might have just had a little palsy.

Off we trotted to our hand built A frame place. It was a little out of town, not great, it didn't seem too far on the map, but what was really not too great was that it was up an almost vertical dirt goat track and when we got there we really were looking out for the banjos.

There was a little parking but it had mostly been taken up by vehicles that looked as if they had not seen action since perhaps some of our oldest Anzacs parked up many moons ago. It was oddly silent. There was a hand written sign saying to call SUE. She said to let ourselves into the cabin down the the hill aways, so we did.

Well fuck me!! I thought I was not all that fussy, well ok actually I am aware that I am pretty fussy, but I thought I was at least reasonably shock proof! This place was truly fucking awful! I mean I suppose if I had built every bit of it by the sweat of my own brow I might have looked on it fondly, but as a stranger wandering in from the big smoke, well I wanted at least for it to be clean and the bedding to be clean! One of the beds was still unmade and the mattress protector, well let's just say it had done it's job, and then some, about 100 years ago and had earned a long a prosperous retirement, just not on any bed I planned to rest my head. OOOh Yukky. There was newspaper stuffed into the roof boards and Steve couldn't work out what it was there for cos it couldn't have been water proof. Anyway to say we were underwhelmed might well be the understatement of the holiday! But SUE had our 350 bucks and I was beside myself in not wanting to stay, so Stevie took a deep breath and put on his very best polite English and managed to talk her into giving us our cash back, but he did truly have to suck it up as she told him she didn't think we sounded like the sort of people who should stay at her place, and she thought that was a insult!! We took it as high praise, and tootled off back into town where we found a clean tidy place across form the pub. Bliss!

So now we are off to Lorne today via the 12 Apostles which I can hardly wait to see.

We haven't got anywhere to sleep sorted and our methods to date have been unsuccessful, but onward and upward and we'll keep a little look out for the Big Yellow I and maybe ask specific questions, like, 'Is this place fit for human habitation?'