Health warning

Spotted in a North Perth greengrocer's by my best friend Shelley's French friend, Stephane.

The hots for pink

I was watching Nigella cook something the other night, and in the background I caught a glimpse of a hot pink sofa against a white wall.

And ever since, whenever I'm designing rooms in my imagination, or in that dreamy state twixt waking and sleeping, I cannot help but dream in hot pink.

Not your marshmallow pastel, but the shocking, h-o-t stuff.

All these fabulous images, from various sumptuous magazines, are from one of my newly discovered and seriously treasured blogs, An Indian Summer, which is the most perfect eye candy if you're into hot interiors from hot countries.

And, interestingly, now that I am au naturel of hair (an end to 20 years of colouring), I do believe I could even wear this colour. In small doses. Though that may be a slower journey of discovery ...

Onya, Lee!

The dear boy won it!

Just a few months ago, he was a clerk in a paint store in the suburbs of Chicago.

Last night he was on stage with Joe Cocker (and a heap of startling old has-beens who didn't do half as well as our Joe, but we won't go there - though we will just say that it made a mockery of the judges' constant advice to the contestants to 'be contemporary' and 'try to avoid sounding like someone singing karaoke in a seedy cabaret').

Ahem.

Just seconds before Ryan announced the winner, Lee went red and doubled over, and we thought he was going to throw up! Same straight after the announcement (pictured above) - the teary-eyed, disbelieving stunned mullet!

I have been a complete sucker for this show.

The thought that I could watch it when I got home late on Wednesday nights jokingly sustained me through a few hours of laying out the paper: I knew David, my trusty old Jason recliner and a hot cup of tea would be at home waiting for me. And there could be no more perfect program to unwind to after work so I could actually get to sleep on Wednesday nights!

Now it's all done. Oh well - telly will provide!

Rainy

It's been chucking it down all day - wonderful.

I finished my stint as arts writer at the paper today, though I'll need to go in to work tomorrow just to tidy up the desk, ditch all the dead emails, tag all the good ones, write up a couple of stories I have still in note form and generally have things sorted for when my colleague returns.

:: I made a quilt last weekend, for a baby of one of Lily's old school friends.

:: Off to see Waiting for Godot tomorrow night. And I'm excited to see that the movie of The G with the DT is on for a return season at a local cinema, so I'll have to see that. Going to the movies on Sunday with my best friend Shelley, to see Mother and Child.

:: Right now I'm in my tracky-daks, getting ready for the final countdown on American Idol. We had the grand finale last night and my favourite, Lee, with the sparkly eyes, didn't do so well as Crystal, the lovely, dreadlocked indie singer with the superb voice. I think she'll win.

Have a great weekend!

Booky stuff

I'm light years behind the rest of the world when it comes to Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Series (I just started book two, The Girl Who Played with Fire).

How wonderful it is to come across a book that you just can't put down — that you really consider taking to work in case there are a few moments to read a few lines during the day — that you notice on the bedside table and simply long for the other events of the day to pass quickly so you can go to bed early and get back into it!

Between volumes one and two, I read Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin, which is the book we'll be talking about when The Shipping News Book Club meets next.

Luckily, it was similarly engrossing, simply and beautifully told, all the more poignant for its subtlety. Fantastic — lots to talk about with the club.

Now I'm starting The Girl Who Played with Fire, and am encouraged to see the blurb says it's even better than the first one, which is just what the young lad in the bookshop said. Yee-ha!

Anyway, click here to read an intriguing NY Time article about poor old Stieg and his legacy.

Must say, I'm with the Poms on the third book title's apostrophe ...

And have you ever though, ever ever, that Ikea represents a "design-loving Socialist paradise"? Socialism (just like we have here in evil old Australia, with our nationalised health-care system) is a terrifying, sickening, noir concept to America ... you gotta love 'em! Or feel sorry for 'em ...

Finished

Binding finished during a few nail-biting Docker games.

Now on to the next ...

The drive to work

Getting to work in the morning takes me about eight tracks of Katie Noonan's wonderful, brilliant new album.

(I interviewed her yesterday and she was lovely.)

Everything looks good in the low gold of winter sunshine (look beyond the dirty cars waiting for a good night's rain).

Whatever the time I leave home, I always get stuck at these traffic lights, corner of Loftus and Vincent. There's a lovely median-strip garden, though, and these old peppermints and grass-trees love this light.

There's a whiz through Leederville and under the freeway, and then (below) one of my favourite rows of little old houses in West Leederville, opposite Subiaco Oval on Railway Road.

I'm in Subi here, with the entrance to Subi Oval, The Home of Football, on my left at this intersection (below). But I love the old house on the opposite corner. For years and years it was wasting away into a ruinous mess, but it looks as though someone's restoring it at last.

A lot of really old Subi houses have pairs of these huge old palm trees in the front gardens. Apparently, it was something of a tradition, around the turn of the last century, for a husband and wife to plant a tree each when they moved into their first house together. They're called wedding palms.

Today, I took a pic every time I stopped at a red light.

This next one is the corner of Townshend Road and Hay Street. See that low concrete wall on other side of the car on the left?

It's a building site, but just a few weeks ago, a big old Victorian two-storey house stood here, which was one of Subi's best-known shared hippy-student houses in the early 1970s.

I lived there with Simon's dad in the summer of '73-'74, at the end of my second year at uni, before I set off for a year's hitch-hiking through Europe.

It's sad to see the old house has gone.

Subi is just minutes from the University of Western Australia, and in the '70s it was a poor, run-down, grotty suburb full of fantastic student houses that we'd rent for $9 a week after the landlord dealt with the fleas.

You can't buy here for less than $1 million today. Students have left!

This next pic is of a row of shops on Hay Street in Subiaco. I have a few pics of these buildings - I always imagine I'll work them into a painting or a drawing one day. Or I'll get Will to get out the Big Black Nikon and get me a really good shot.

Some mornings I leave what in the US we'd call the "surface roads" and take the freeway.

This takes me quickly through the city and then on to the road between King's Park and the river, which is even more beautiful in the morning light.

Might show yo that another day!

Have a great weekend. Go Dockers. See you soon.