Hunter
On Friday MC and I drove to the Hunter Valley for a family wedding. I've spent lots of time in Newcastle but never been to the Hunter - probably because the Newcastle visits were all for family reasons, it's my ex-wife's hometown, and so I was always too busy taking the kids to visit people.
It's a funny place, with the contrast between an old mining town like Cessnock and the chi-chi pretentiousness of the actual vineyards. Cessnock looked like a depressed hole when we drove through it on Friday when it was overcast, but it was improved considerably on Saturday when the weather was nicer.
There seems to be a special school of mental Hunter Valley winery architecture, which involves taking some Glenn Murcutt corrugated iron vernacular and putting it in a big blender with some green and purple paint.
I hired a Corolla for the trip so I could test drive it. It seemed fine, but then I realised that any new car would seem great compared to faithful, creaky old Lucy, my 1986 Corona.
In other news: my The Day Today DVD arrived - more on that when I've watched it all, but I've noticed that it's having the same effect on me as it did when I first saw it in the mid 90s. I'm finding it impossible to take any news seriously, real headlines like "Road execs blasted over platypus hold up" and "Stop building 'egg crate' flats: Keating" are so close to "Branson's clockwork dog crosses Atlantic floor" and "Portillo's teeth removed to boost pound" that I hear them in Chris Morris' voice...
It's a funny place, with the contrast between an old mining town like Cessnock and the chi-chi pretentiousness of the actual vineyards. Cessnock looked like a depressed hole when we drove through it on Friday when it was overcast, but it was improved considerably on Saturday when the weather was nicer.
There seems to be a special school of mental Hunter Valley winery architecture, which involves taking some Glenn Murcutt corrugated iron vernacular and putting it in a big blender with some green and purple paint.
I hired a Corolla for the trip so I could test drive it. It seemed fine, but then I realised that any new car would seem great compared to faithful, creaky old Lucy, my 1986 Corona.
In other news: my The Day Today DVD arrived - more on that when I've watched it all, but I've noticed that it's having the same effect on me as it did when I first saw it in the mid 90s. I'm finding it impossible to take any news seriously, real headlines like "Road execs blasted over platypus hold up" and "Stop building 'egg crate' flats: Keating" are so close to "Branson's clockwork dog crosses Atlantic floor" and "Portillo's teeth removed to boost pound" that I hear them in Chris Morris' voice...