Jim's daughter Jeanette and her husband Matt were in town last week. Matt was here for work reasons. Jeanette had come along Just Because. They were staying in a hotel by the Flagstaff Gardens, not far from my place.
I met her after lunch on Friday and we wandered up to the Carlton Gardens and through to the museum. A nice cup of tea and a potter around the ground floor and then we wandered back to my place for a bit of a sit down, before heading to Moon Dog Doglands for dinner.
Moon Dog Doglands' main space is only available for private functions or when there are events at the stadium. The Jungle Room is available at other times but I had completely failed to take into account that it was a Friday night and that the Work Christmas Party Season is now underway. Fortunately we managed to snag a table for two and equally fortunately the limited menu that was available to walk-ins had vegetarian/vegan options available for Jeanette.
At some point, earlier this year, Freyja pointed out that upon reaching both our 2025 birthdays we would jointly have attained the Grand Old Age of 110 years old. We should have a party to celebrate.
So we did.
We hired one of the meeting/event rooms at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre, where Freyja works. We invited friends and relations. We organised catering through the Asylum Centre Resource Centre. I organised cakes through Smith and Deli in Collingwood. Lindsey went and collected them. She and I visited Dan Murphy and the supermarkets. I bought Flowers. Visitors came, including Jeanette and Matt who had reorganised their weekend so they could stay in Melbourne for the party.
The food was lovely. We had ordered the ASRC canapés from lots of different countries' cuisines so there was food from Palestine, Syria, Kenya, Eritrea, Afghanistan amongst other places. Lindsey brought party pies and pastries. I brought sushi. We had lots of alcoholic, non-alcoholic and soft drinks, plus tea and coffee.
It was a lovely afternoon.
It was unfortunate that we had chosen the Saturday of the Black Friday weekend, but that is not an event that interests either Freyja or me so it hadn't crossed our minds. It didn't really matter, except that Chris, who had come from Macedon by car, ran up against lots of traffic, pedestrians and delivery drivers behaving wildly. And the trams were very busy. It was also unfortunate that it rained on and off during the day, so we couldn't use the top floor room that we had intended to use, with the wrap around balcony. We moved down one level and used the larger meeting room instead. But apart from that, everything seemed to go well.
Freyja, Simon and me, on the top level after everyone else had gone home:
There will be more partying next weekend. Saturday will see the RMG Christmas party and Sunday is my actual birthday.
🚋🚊🚉🚅🚎🚂🚃🚄🚇🚆🚂🚃🚉🚈🚋
Public Transport is free across Victoria at weekends, starting yesterday when the new metro tunnel opened, until the end of January. Lots and lots of people, including Freyja and Simon, took the opportunity to go and admire the new stations. Lots of other people took advantage of the free trams, trains and buses to go out and about. I took the train to Alphington to go to the Sunday market but I do that on many Sundays - public transport is free at weekends in Melbourne anyway, for people with a senior's Myki card. The trains were busier than they usually are on Sunday mornings. I met Freyja and Simon at the market, before they went off on their Metro Tunnel adventure. I now have lots of delicious late spring / early summer vegetables ready for the week ahead.
Today is the first day of Official Summer in my part of the world. It is, of course, cold, wet and very windy
