Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Okay, so not real ones.

It’s nearly 7.30am on Wed, I don’t start work for quite some time. I sort-of slept for a few hours, not particularly well…

However, had a wonderful evening with my pal T whom I’d not seen for months. We’d talked on the phone a fair bit but because he works and his significant other lives in the country (he visits her on the weekends), catching up was at an all-time low.

It’s unusual for T to be running late: he was to meet me at a fairly notorious bookshop in Melbourne called Polyester Books. Me in a bookshop, alone, waiting…christ, just think of the potential damage to my finances.

Such damages did occur: I ended up with two books, both by Lawrence Ferlinghetti - A Coney Island of the Mind and A Far Rockaway of the Heart. His poetry has been recommended to me and I’ve only ever come across it in anthologies, so I snatched both volumes. Figure it’s better than ordering them in.

Eventually T arrives, he buys some books, I ooh and aah over many more (they had Deborah Curtis’ book on Ian Curtis…sigh. I really wanted that), he buys some books and we get the hell out of there before any more damage occurs.

A hop, skip and a jump across the road…is Polyester Music. Groan. I end up with a Radiohead EP I’ve wanted FOREVER (squee!!!), not one but two Julie Doiron albums, and a Rough Trade compilation. I somehow manage to get a slight discount because I know T (can’t quite remember why that was? May have had something to do with the secondhand music shop we used to both work at?).

We exit a good deal poorer, and T decides that we scrap the Mexican restaurant/pub open mike night idea and just settle down to el-cheapo (but fantastic) pizza and beer at Bimbo Deluxe. It had been a while since I’d been there - or Brunswick Street for that matter (for non-Melbourne/int’l readers it’s a very funky, eclectic street in inner Melbourne). They have flavoured vodka. I tried the vanilla vodka with pink grapefruit juice. Swoon. Pizza was consumed fairly quickly, place filled up so it was back to mine for free beer, woo!

Of which much was consumed. Sad to report that the best extra stout is now finished, so we moved onto the hightail ale. Mmm, so nice. We listened to lots of music, including that Rough Trade compilation I’d bought, talked about who we’d go gay for, hot Scottish accents, love (or lack thereof in my case), and more serious topics which meant parting ways at 2.30am or so.

If it weren’t for work, the beer and conversation could indeed have kept flowing.

Interestingly, I’m again dining on Brunswick St. tonight, and I get to meet my friend DH at yet another fantastic bookshop there. We’re dining at a restaurant called Mario’s because he’s craving the carbonara (the food there is yummy). Please pray for my bank account.