The only shoe shop in the world

We flew from Coffs Harbour to Sydney in an airplane that had propellers. This is not my idea of a good plane – especially when I am sitting next to the propeller. 

I don’t trust them from my days reading Biggles books and I remember a nasty incident when a mechanic was badly injured because a lazy pilot did not have the choke fully in or out or something. Biggles remonstrated with the pilot and grounded him - but that did not bring back the mechanic’s fingers did it?

Turns out Cate is an ‘Ambassador’ at Intercontinental Hotels so we were given a harbour view room (photo), a bottle of wine, a bowl of fruit and significant amount of bowing and scraping.

Unfortunately the service did not extend to ironing Cate’s clothes so I still had to do this as we had to go out almost immediately. The pressure was on me to do this and there was an instant catastrophe as I could not get Cate’s suitcase open.

We had bought new Rimowa suitcases and I had set the combinations – and checked them multiple times – and Cate’s simply did not work.

It was 4:00 PM. We had to go to dinner at 6:00 PM. Prior to this Cate HAD to go shoe shopping. I was staring at a locked suit case – fiddling with the combinations. Cate was glaring at me and was just about to move into Death Stare mode and vapourise me.

 I was preparing to ring room service to get bolt cutters when a miracle happened. The Fuckup Fairy sneezed – lost focus - and I escaped death by seconds. I moved the combination one notch and the locked popped open.

So I ironed Cate’s clothes so she could hurtle down to her favourite shoe shop in Sydney before we went to dinner. She says this is the only shoe shop in the world in which she can buy shoes.

This makes me wonder why I spend countless hours in shoe shops in Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Stockholm, etc. – but still.

Anyway she rushed in there and gave the sales assistant strict instructions that she was to be provided with as many pairs of shoes as possible in half an hour and she duly emerged with four pairs just as I arrived panting after running from the hotel (having ironed my owned clothes) and we leapt into a taxi and roared off to the restaurant to meet my children and grand-children.

This was at 6:00 PM. This is a very fashionable restaurant booked by my son Lenny and the early time was the only time they could guarantee to squeeze us in. It is called Porteno and is Argentinian – so is very meaty.

You can have lamp chops and beef ribs that have been cooked for eight hours. Fortunately they do this before you arrive.

The hostess (photo) is a minor celebrity by virtue of being married to the one of the owners and dresses like a Hollywood actress from the 50s and flounces around looking like a – well – Hollywood actress from the 50s.

But the food was really wonderful and some of the waiters wear braces (on their trousers not their teeth) and sport bushy beards so there is quite an interesting atmosphere. The music is Jackrabbit Slimmish.

It was quite an entertaining evening – although I am not locking the suitcases again – and I will see the kids again next weekend.

Cate is back in Vienna and the cats are well. Next – back to the Blue Mountains.

Never cease to wonder

Bellingen is a delightful little town on the Bellinger river. At some stage in the distant past a clerk in an office got the spelling of the town or the river wrong and it has stuck – I am not sure which spelling is correct.

It is a town of contrasts. City slickers who have come to buy fancy houses and alternative life-stylers with beards and beads who munch on beans and soy milk.

The house we stayed in is a few kilometres out of town and is completely isolated so that one wakes up to the delightful sounds of the Australian bush. I had forgotten how wonderful this was and awoke to this splendour at dawn each day.

The reason we do this is so that Cate’s mother Joan – who is 91 years of age – can be with her two daughters – Cate and Liz. This is an annual ritual for Joan’s birthday.

Because of Joan’s age nothing happens very quickly - so we move through our days in slow motion.

We take Joan for drives and she enjoys these immensely. We do not actually need to do the drive as she falls asleep as soon as she gets into the car – and we could just put her in there and then go and get her out two hours later and ask her how she enjoyed the drive – and she would say  ‘that was lovely thanks darling’ and mean it. 

We take Joan to The Old Butter Factory for lunch and she munches inexorably through a BLT at roughly the same pace as the recovery of the US economy.

As dusk falls we take her home and prop her up in front of a roaring fire with a glass of champagne - with a blanket over her knees - while we rustle up dinner.

If Joan gets lucky there will be a football match on TV and she can watch two teams of thugs belting the daylights out of each other. She will do this in between mini-naps.

After dinner she will sit for hours as her family talks. Saying nothing – just happy to be with her children while they shoot the breeze in the middle of the Australian bush – and where – if you step outside the back door – you are standing in the middle of the milky way and can stare in awe at a billion stars and never cease to wonder at your own existence.  

Back in the wide brown land

Well of course to be able to blog you have to get onto the internet and I had forgotten that in this wide brown land - internet access is not at all universal and in fact vanishes as soon as you leave towns and cities.

But  - as we stayed this time in the very same house that we stayed in last year I should have remembered that it has no connection to the outside world.

Not that it is far from anywhere – indeed it is only about 3 kilometres from Bellingen – which by Australian standards is quite a large town – and which itself is only about 30 kilometres from Coffs Harbour - which is actually an Australian ‘city’.

But – by Australian standards – we may as well have been on the moon – and could not even get mobile (cell) telephone reception unless we went to the ‘communications room’ which was the patch of garden down by the garden shed – overlooking the creek in the distance. (The photo is of Cate in the Comms Room).

However – I am getting ahead of myself – and should start at the beginning.

It never ceases to amaze me that however many times I get caught – I never learn. The seat allocation was done for us by the people who did the booking and I did not check it.

Turns out it was the bulkhead seats behind the toilets – with the aisle seat the one that is half way into the aisle. It is designed this way so that everyone who goes to the toilet can bump into you on the way there and the way back.

Now bulkhead seats are great if you are in road kill class - as I usually am - but on the very rare occasion that I am in business class – I hate it. You have no storage space and you have those shitty fold out screens.

Things went from worse to worser. Cate’s seat did not work – and as the only reason we were flying Emirates was to get flat beds this was not good.

Cate’s cold stare prompted the flight attendant to remember from her training that the seat could be possibly manually adjusted to the flattish position.

This fairly lackluster response prompted Cate to move into her Death Stare mode – known throughout the airline industry – which can stun cabin attendants at a range of 50 metres.

This prompted a flurry of activity which had two cabin attendants sweating, grunting and heaving for 10 minutes to get the seat into a sort of flattish position.

Cate watched this performance much as a python would watch a mouse that it was contemplating eating for dinner.

There was much apologising and grovelling and offering of wine – which much to my surprise I accepted with some alacrity as I never ever drink on planes - but I was somewhat stressed by the entire incident and Cate’s Death Stare always has some collateral effects on me.

But – as things go – they went. The bed was not – as we expected it to be – flat. OK let’s be honest – we never expected it to be flat – but we were hoping for flat-ish.

It was sort of S shaped and rather short. Once again I should have checked the website that tells you about these sort of things but honestly my days are so full that it slipped my mind. Actually – that is not quite true – it is just that I am a fool.

So Cate scrunched up like a pretzel with her feet hanging over the end of her seat – next to the toilet door. She in fact took it rather well and insisted that I sit next to the window.

The male flight attendant who – with the female flight attendant – wrangled the seat into a semi-flat position – told Cate that he was going to write a long report about the problem.

I am not sure that was necessary ‘8J FUBAR’ should do the trick. I am sure they would not use language like that. Just jargon – like 8JF.

The female flight attendant was most attentive and kept bringing me wine. At one stage I proposed to her but she said she could not accept because it was obvious that I was married and that Cate would simply kill us both with a single withering  glance if she found out about our relationship.

We were in the same seats – on a different plane - on the next leg from Dubai to Sydney – which was 15 hours – but once again Cate let me have the window seat and I made a fine nest. This time the beds were in fact really flat so we slept most of the time.

Cate was able to reach the toilet door with her left foot so could kick it shut if people did not close it properly.

My video screen was on the bulkhead wall about three metres away so it was like being at the drive-in – although it was too far away for me to actually watch anything.

Cate does this sort of thing every week but for me it is quite exciting.

Next – back in the Australian bush. We saw Kookaburras.