Nothing but the tooth

I'm having root canal ("endodontic therapy") tomorrow – surely these are words to strike fear into anyone of a certain age (those I've mentioned this to have all shuddered theatrically). My dentist, who appears to be in his late teens, assured me that it no longer hurts as they're better at the drugs now. The dentist visits of my childhood certainly inhabit a bleak place in my memory: agonising pain, endless bad vibrations, a never-ending desert vista of arid desert and jagged rocks. One dentist told me to stop being a silly cow, but only after my mouth was jammed with instruments, fingers, and the wet rubber sheet of a dental dam. The music playing in the background became the soundtrack to horror and the strains of Vivaldi have a sinister effect on me even now (bolt upright like a Brave New World baby subjected to an electric shock).

Perhaps I exaggerate for effect, and the current dentist does have a TV affixed to the roof for distraction purposes, although this is ineffective due to a combination of poor reception and Ellen de Generes; but I lie there, even though it's relatively painless, thinking of the torture scene in Marathon Man and waiting for it to be over.

The Hills of Zara

About 15 years ago, on holiday in Madrid, I saw a pair of shoes in a shop window and fell in love with them. The brand was Spanish and its name was Zara. I bought the shoes (black patent leather, vertiginous heels, t-bar, round toe, 1940s style, with a slender ankle strap that fastened with a button) and wore them till they fell apart. Zara came to London and, when I was in Hong Kong, opened there. It became just another shop to me, albeit somewhere you could always rely on finding cost-effective copies of vastly more expensive catwalk designs, with flair and style and always a little in advance of anyone else on the high street. The clothes were well made for the price (often in China of course) but would start to look shabby fairly quickly.

Apart, perhaps, from the opening of a self-appointed supercool store like Bathing Ape in Queen's Road, Central (they're probably still queuing outside it now), and give-aways of bags of rice or free mah jong sets where some poor old character out for a freebie would always get trampled underfoot by ravening crowds, I never saw anything in Hong Kong quite like the hubbub outside the new Zara in Pitt Street Mall. It's Zara's first store in Australia; even so, the atmosphere, and lines of women queuing outside, were astonishing. As I passed by this morning, on a rather miserable cold day nearly two full weeks after the place opened, there were four people waiting outside at 8.50am.

I know I am perhaps being reactionary, and needless to say I would never dream of joining that queue, but doesn't the very fact that everyone will now be wearing Zara mean that any other brand would in fact be more attractive? Sadly, the other stores were failing to capitalise on this concept; one nearby had resorted, in what looked horribly like desperation, to featuring supersized letters spelling "SEX" and (in much smaller letters) "& fashion" in their window display (pictured above).

Lest anyone think, however, that I've turned my back on fashion and, by implication, am sneering at its acolytes, never fear: I am still as interested in shoes as the next woman, and here are some rather attractive sandals by Zara to prove it. Looks expensive, looks like, maybe, Chloé, but costs less than $100? It must be democracy in action.

A certain slant of light

Wandering home after work through my adopted city today, at a certain moment I looked right up and thought "I live in a beautiful place". I love cities, and have lived in a few (Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Hong Kong and Sydney) but this one still catches me by surprise (double click on the photograph above for the full glory of the vista).

As we are approaching winter here, this view made me think of the first two lines of the Emily Dickinson poem, although none of the rest of it seems to fit:

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons...

Wall-eyed

From a Sydney local newspaper, a tragic, yet also rather comical tale:

Two men and a woman were charged in relation to an alleged break-in at a derelict hotel in Pyrmont early Saturday morning. About 1.30am, police ... found three intoxicated people - two men and a woman. One of the men sustained a minor injury after falling while attempting to climb a small wall.

Second that emotion

The FEAR remote control (which I thought might have a corresponding concrete TV somewhere, which no one can turn on) is not alone: there are more tiny sculptures scattered around Chippendale. My neighbour Michael Mobbs pointed out the first one to me when I met him in Myrtle Street yesterday: ISOLATION at the foot of a paper bark tree in Pine Street. Then there's a NUMB mobile phone next to the Peace Park in Myrtle Street, and another remote control, HATE, close to FEAR in Pine Lane. I'd never even noticed any of them before I spotted FEAR; it now appears they have been there for some time (and there are more, which I haven't spotted yet). Michael said a local sculptor was responsible, but he didn't know any more than that. Another urban mystery.

Urban mysteries

Walking home from lunch in the CBD today, I heard a strange, insistent noise as I came along Balfour Street in Chippendale; it almost sounded like a dentist's drill. Drawn by the sound, I slowed as I passed a terraced house and glanced in the window: this is what I saw.


It felt so intrusive that I didn't want to linger, so the shot isn't great: a man with bright blond hair is lying on his side, in someone's front room, and another man is tattooing his back. There was something strangely graceful and compelling about this scene; the sound carried all the way down the street, but as I stood there, the tattoo artist didn't even look up, so absorbed was he in his work. I felt privileged to have been part of this moment, in my tiny, nosy way.

Faded glamour

Yesterday's Observer published some incredible photos by two French photographers, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from their book, The Ruins of Detroit. Their observation was that in Europe, generally old buildings are picked over for their antique fittings so nothing much remains; in Detroit, the original 1920s art deco chandeliers in the Vanity Ballroom, where Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey one played, remain in place, the ballroom crumbling around them.

I took some photos at Sydney's State Theatre in November. Marchand and Meffre's picture of the United Artists Theater, closed since 1974, is in terrible synchronicity with the State Theatre's gleaming auditorium, of which Sydney is justifiably proud.

Third image ©Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre, 2010

O dear

Yesterday, in one of those moments when you feel lucky to be alive, I steered a crew in an OC6 through the harbour. The sun was shining, the wind was in our hair, and the eggshell of the Opera House was gleaming in the distance. There were ferries and yachts and pleasure craft everywhere, and our little boat boldly made its way though all of the chaos. The wind was behind us, the crew's timing was perfect, and we rode gentle rolling waves in towards the harbour bridge.

Today, I looked out of the window at another beautiful sky, only to be assaulted by this statement. Is it a smoke ring? Is it the second letter of a cry for help? No, it's a sign, desecrating the beautiful blue Sydney sky, that an American mega-celebrity and "world's most influential person" is in town. (Watch out for terrible puns about "the Oprah House".) Apparently they have also, cravenly, allowed a neon "O" to appear on the harbour bridge - I was spared this sight yesterday; it might have taken the sheen off the day. I'm happy that she is female, and black, and ascended from a terribly impoverished background to her current heights, but I don't want her to have the sky too.

Transports of delight

One thing that's very different about Sydney, compared to Hong Kong, is the amazing proliferation of street art. In the area where I live, Chippendale, everywhere I look there seems to be a mural, or graffiti, or a subtle little stencil like the one shown (seen in Pine Lane). Sites like Acid Midget document street art all over Sydney. Some of it can be crass, or vulgar, and occasionally there's heavy-handed political posturing; but then I'll see something like this one, which is a little secret message from the artist to the viewer. (I used to ride a Vespa around London so I have a special fondness for scooters.)

(Thanks to elj, who captures street art around Newtown, for prompting me to photograph this little vision.)

Amazing cakes

From Black Star Pastry in Newtown. In order of appearance: Persian fig, orange and pistachio cake ($6); salted chocolate and caramel tart (seen in a slightly dishevelled, but still beautiful, state after the ravages of a journey back home in the basket of my bicycle) ($4); and elderflower and pistachio cheesecake ($6). They tasted as good as they look. Apparently Black Star Pastry also does extremely good pies - including an award-winning lamb shank pie which I am already dreaming about.

Streets of your town

Sometimes Sydney will unexpectedly remind me of Edinburgh: a certain slant of light, or an old building, or the texture of the stones. I usually think of Melbourne as being more akin to Edinburgh, as Sydney is akin to Glasgow: the former genteel, maybe a little smug; the latter brash, sometimes full of itself. Walking down Bridge Lane in the CBD, the first half of the alley was glistening with plastic bunting as part of the Art & About festival. There was a nightclub, apparently called FAKE, at the corner. And a beautiful archway led to Bridge Road, and the light coming through it, and the fact that Bridge Lane seemed like a secret known only by the people walking through it, made me imagine for a moment that I was in a close in the Old Town of Edinburgh, somewhere near the Royal Mile.

Simple pleasures

A planter box full of lavender on a sunny Sunday morning.

Seeing the light

I wandered around The Rocks in Sydney today, taking photographs until my battery went dead and the light had gone (happily almost simultaneously, although just after the camera went out of action I saw a big-bearded Methuselah with his gigantic-headed, but benign, dog; the latter was lapping happily at a bowl of water the waitress had brought him and would have made an excellent subject). I sat on a bench opposite the old police station with a takeaway English Breakfast tea and oversized wholemeal scone. Before I could spill hot tea all over myself (and as sure as night follows day, I did) I was musing to myself, first, how nice it was to have nothing pressing to do; and secondly, that I still feel an obscure sense of delight and vindication when handing money over to someone, anyone, to pay for something, anything: such as a cup of tea in a tiny little café. It makes me, I think, feel part of the world; and without wanting to sound maudlin, I also remember what it was like not to have money to pay for things. I also felt disinclined to go shopping and was satisfied with buying some small refreshments, so it works at very small quantities.

Track record

I've always loved trains, above all other forms of transportation. One of my earliest memories is of being taken on a steam train journey in Devon and I still remember the excitement and mystery of it. Once I attempted to create some new memories for my little sisters, then aged 6 and 8, by taking them to Glasgow with me on the train; although it's a much more prosaic journey, something about racing along the tracks, looking out of the windows as the landscape flies past, even buying a coffee from the trolley, serves in some small way to deliver a fraction of the experience of Robert Powell in The 39 Steps, all the Agatha Christie novels I tore through, Adlestrop by Edward Thomas, and the beginning of Stardust Memories.


Sydney's trains are double-deckers, with excellent, practical green leather seats kitted out with a middle section that converts from one side to another so you can change the direction you're facing in (an important consideration for me because my travel-sickness is exacerbated by facing backwards) and shiny fittings glinting in the light. The windows are scratched to hell and the interiors are dim; it's not the Trans-Siberian Express, but I'm completely satisfied.

Flowers in the rain

Hiatus

For the first time since my working life began in 1992, I have six weeks off. Six weeks to do nothing, or something. In the middle of the first week, I am still fighting off the urge to be doing something: get up, get out, tick things off, you'll run out of time... the shape of the day with nothing mandatory in it is strange and a little intimidating. I cycle to a cafe where I read the paper outside in Sydney's winter sunshine. I had my hair cut. I go to the gym. I play Scrabble on Facebook. I have felt oddly reluctant to write my blog. I took my camera (an excellent Nikon D80, kindly lent to me by one of my clients) to the park and took hundreds of close-ups of spiky birdlike flowers; I stalked the unwary on street corners to take pictures of the casual grace of pedestrians waiting for the green man. Other than brief conversations with the man who sells me coffee or those people who seem to like to stop and talk to me when I have my camera in front of my face, I hardly speak to anyone all day. It all adds up to not very much, but I think I will get used to it. When I come back, perhaps I won't be able to say what I did with my time, except that, trite though it sounds, I am learning how to relax about not having anything to do.