This morning I did my first 5k run for the new year. Normally people are friendly when I run past them, some saying “good morning” or something. And as they see me approaching, they will give me room to run past them.
But this morning I was running along a footpath and two middle-aged women were approaching, walking side by side. The path was wide enough for two people to pass, but not for me to get past two of them walking abreast. I assumed that as I approached they would move slightly and go single file for a few seconds to allow me to run past. I stuck to the far left of the path to make my intended direction clear. But as I approached, they continued walking side by side, and the woman on my side of the path started staring me down, as if she was daring me to run headlong into her. She blocked the path and at the last second I had to divert into the garden on the left side – not even just grass, but an actual garden plot with a flower bed in it and coverage of clivias with their long strap-like leaves. I trampled some of the plants as I twisted sideways to get past them and avoid hitting a tree. And avoid hitting them.
I’ve never seen behaviour like this in five years of running around this neighbourhood. It was really quite shocking. I continued running past them, though I was half tempted to stop and say something.
After showering and changing, my wife and I went on a driving expedition to Rose Bay, a suburb on the south side of the harbour. I went here back in October for a day out by myself, and stumbled across the bakery Li’l Mix. I’d been telling my wife about it and saying we should go check it out together, but they only open Monday to Friday, so we’ve been unable to do it during normal working weeks. But with both of us not working this week, we took the opportunity today to go there.
But when we arrived they didn’t have anything in their shopfront for sale! There were people inside baking stuff, but no completed products at all. We asked, and they said they’d just opened another shop across the street, where all their products were being sold! So we crossed over and went there. This was a significantly bigger premises than the tiny original, and even had a table with seats outside on the footpath for customers. It was occupied, but the people left soon after and we grabbed the table. My wife got a shakshuka which was baked into a bread roll, and I got this beef brisket and mashed potato pie:
Really good! We also got a Jerusalem bagel and three of their delicious cookies to take home. From here we walked over to the main shops at Rose Bay, a couple of blocks away, and browsed around a bit. I found this beautiful little laneway full of shops, reminiscent of somewhere in Italy:
In the afternoon, back at home, we took Scully for a walk down to the Harbour. I spotted this forlorn looking yacht down there (which has never been there before, so it must have happened recently):
On the way back home, we walk past this house which is being rebuilt. It was derelict for two years, and they’re finally rebuilding it, but leaving a lot of the original walls (white) and just adding on to them (new bricks).
A friend of mine said they’re probably doing this so they can class it as a “renovation”, not a new construction, so they can get away with the fact that the house footprint is too close to the property boundaries according to current development laws. If they demolished it and built from scratch they’d have to make the area of the house smaller. Which seems likely, as it’s very close to the neighbouring property.
For dinner tonight I needed to use up some Brussels sprouts. My wife suggested pasta, so I improvised with garlic and chilli and lemon juice.
I also added some shaved Parmigiano Reggiano cheese before serving (not shown in the photo). It was delicious. The bowls seen in the photo are hand-painted ones we got in Italy last year, from Orvieto – which we now use whenever we have pasta.
New content today:
