Chitra’s Closet Winter 2012 show

A fab little black dress takes a twirl

I love Chitra’s Closet.

Most days my outfit consists of Chitra’s Closet with a little Bento; or Bento with a little Chitra’s Closet. Except last night when I was in Bento with ECA approved Cue, and got in trouble from Chitra… whoops.

I’ve been shopping at Chitra’s for many years. Before everyone was on about shopping ‘experiences’ she was delivering them. The designer herself piling outfits into sympathetically lit change rooms, making adjustments and invariably, a chink in my bank account. If I don’t come in for a while I get a follow up call. If a sample collection is in sometimes I get to take a browse – it’s part of the experience of being one of Chitra’s regulars. And it’s lovely (albeit dangerous).

What’s fantastic about Chitra is that women of all ages and sizes enjoy her collections. In fact, probably ladies with a curvier chassis set off her silhouettes better, which is a huge relief to many I’m sure, when for seasons on end skinny this and low rider that threatened to swallow our pride.

I try not to covet model’s bodies usually, but Chitra’s ladies are always healthy sized and last night I found myself whispering, “I want her butt.” I’ve a great respect for all my pals (yes, some of my best friends are skinny people), but it is so lovely to see a range of sizes.

Years after their first wear my Chitra’s pieces are in good nic and regularly complimented. Here’s an iPhone’d peek at the collection… Now noone go and buy that shirt below, because I neeed it.

Designer Chitra Mangma and Lou Pardi

Lou and Cheryl Lin (Business Chic)

Friendly flight attendants for the ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ themed show

My future shirt

Back detail of my future shirt

Something Marilyn about this lass

Feather in your cap?

What women (well this one) want.

So you may have read I’ve been gifted with the wonder of a blank slate, and that recently, I jotted down 50 things I’d like to do this lifetime, in no particular order. They’re not required reading in the least. In fact they’re little more than boxes I stood on to get to this post (well this head space; it may surprise you to learn my life is not a series of blog posts).

I was a little surprised by my top 50 in that rather than describe exact events, it felt to me to indicate a certain way of living.

Having let my subconscious boil it down for a bit, four key points tumbled out whilst I was trying to write to-do lists.

Turns out this is what I want:

Pardi modus operandi

If you don’t read scribble, translated, that says:

1. Location independence

2. $ independence

3. Great work

4. The time to enjoy it. [Love]

Although these look terribly general, they’re actually an awesome structure for decision making. If any given option doesn’t add to achieving these things, I can discard it. Superb!

Drink of choice

The West Winds Gin and tonic at The Aylesbury, by candlelight

It’s hard to find a drink of choice. There are so many to choose from and it depends on your mood and a million other what-nots.

But at some stages in life there’s that drink you go to and it feels alright every time. Sometimes it’s a favourite bottle of wine to share with girlfriends, a special red you and a partner love, a go-to-celebratory sparkle for milestones.

I found a favourite tipple not so long ago and although I loved it I was a little sad it was in short supply. Times are changing though and now, when I scan the spirit bottles rising high behind the bar, I’ll settle upon a couple of towering bottles of Gin. West Winds they call it, and it’s divine.

Savoury without getting too involved, potent enough to make a point without pushing you over and flavoursome enough to cut through tonic and a slither of something (cucumber, if the bargods are generous), it’s my go-to tipple. If you’ve got an effusive palette you might pick up lemon myrtle, Wattle seed, coriander or native bush tomato too.

The handsome taller and younger playmate of my other pal, a squat and serious Hendricks, this gin, is remarkable.

I interviewed a bloke behind it not so long ago, Jeremy (Jezz to his mates). He’s a gin fan through and through, give him a minute and he’ll talk about it for hours.

Together with his compatriots, who he describes as “Doctor Paul White, Jackie Chan and Mayo Clarke,” (a fiction) he makes the good stuff in Western Australia’s Margaret River, but resides here in Melbourne.

The mission? “We want to show Australia and the world that we can distill and produce great spirits. We have been making great beer and wine in this country for over 200 years; it is time for hard liquor to stand up.” Indeed.

“We wanted to make a contemporary yet locally-flavoured gin. It is important for us to utilise as much local product as possible, whilst retaining a global feel. The coriander is from Margaret River and we only import a small amount of juniper. We used cinnamon myrtle and lemon myrtle for spice and Wattle seed for texture and mouthfeel, in our English dry style, The Sabre. For The Cutlass recipe we increased the coriander: both root and seed and then added our native bush tomato. This little berry-like matter delivers a savoury, vegetal tone unlike anything seen before. To compliment this we have used Margaret River water as most of us spent our teenage years kicking around the clean surf and rolling green hills down south.”

Try the two but for my vote, it’s The Cutlass (the green bottle), a good book and some sunshine.

 

Fifty things I would like to do this lifetime, in no particular order

View from my current thinking perch - awesome apartment for rent, Melbourne CBD

I hope your Easter is going hopping ace! I am in the process of considering what decisions to make and hopes to hold in light of a rapidly approaching crossroads. I thought I’d pen (keyboard) fifty things I would like to do this lifetime, then sort out a few life phases, then get into it. Easy, right?

Worth a go.

so,

1. write a book
2. write another book (and another etc)
3. be companion to a hound
4. be companion to a cat
5. be companion to a human (hey – turns out this is in order!)
6. travel – Africa
7. travel – Luxembourg
8. travel – somewhere random (okay, maybe not in order)
9. live out of a suitcase
10. live in the same place for five years
11. start and run a successful business
12. take six months off
13. holiday with my bros
14. live in the same city as my London bestie (hopefully she moves, huh?)
15. make new friends
16. seek out inspirational folk and experiences
17. help make animal’s lives better
18. read books (and more and more)
19. learn French (mostly just the food words)
20. do more video stuff
21. make a difference
22. retain integrity
23. travel – Broome/camel trek
24. live somewhere rural
25. stay in a shack by the beach
26. travel – Hong Kong/China
27. travel – India
28. travel – New York
29. work and live overseas (HK, NYNY, Luxembourg, anywhere really)
30. play a part in helping my friends achieve their goals
31. convince humans to be kinder
32. live someplace I’m allowed to wallpaper a wall
33. have a parlour and host excellent gatherings of intelligent types
34. write for a fantastic food mag
35. connect excellent people
36. keep writing for a living
37. empower passionate people
38. have enough runway to exhale ($, time, energy)
39. find exercise which I enjoy
40. always wonder, always grow, always learn
41. hold my bestie’s babies
42. spend time with people who I can let my guard down around
43. fall in love
44. plant a garden and share the fruits
45. live above a shop
46. have great human connections
47. forgive mediocre humans
48. plan incredible funeral with marching band
49. die with dignity
50. start again

Right, so that doesn’t so much give me a map for the next few months but it is interesting. You can do it too if you like. In the comments, or on that serviette, or wherever. I’d love to see it. Or it can be your secret.

Spoonbill at The Olsen Hotel

The Olsen, part of the arts series hotels is a special place. Imbued (a word I use when groggily content) with the art and soul (ditto last parenthesis but for puns) of artist John Olsen, it is a special sophisticated space with feeling*.

I do have images on my real camera, but for now, an iPhone pictorial journey…

*here I mean ‘soul’ but I used it last sentence.

Albert Street Food & Wine

Peeking into the kitchen from the food store

I’ve been to Albert Street Food & Wine on Sydney Road in Brunswick a few times and I’m a fan. In summary: haloumi, lemon tart, and whatever you’d like in between.

The produce at Albert Street is stand out, and now you can buy the incredible pickles, relish and other produce used in the dishes, in the food store. Not to mention a fantastic array of wine.

I was thrilled to check out the finished food store, especially when I found some of my favourite produce there. Old favourites like Monsuir Truffe and Melbourne City Rooftop bees together with new faves.

Camilo Olive Oil was there with samples of incredible olive salts including a lime salt number which I’d happily eat daily. I hovered next to Pyengana Dairy’s cheddar, and the incredible Camembert they import. Wash it down with a Brunswick bitter – excellent.

Camembert at room temperature. Deeelicious.

cookies!

A wall of wine with library ladder.

Melbourne City Rooftop Bees Honey - from Brunswick of course

Refillable Olive Oil - love love this

Fridge of opportunity

Si, Senoritas

Tonight I  had a lovely dinner at Senoritas, a new Mexican place on the quickly-populating Meyers Lane in Melbourne.

There has been a bit of an outbreak of Mexican in Melbourne of late, and much discussion about authenticity. Senoritas has it in spades.

Not just in the cuisine sense either.

Creator Ricardo Amare spoke (with a striking Aussie/Mexican combination accent) about what led him to open Senoritas (together with business partner Linda Temani). He spoke about how his first Mexican import to Australia was fashion – and he was wearing a sleekly cut black jacket over a pop pink shirt to illustrate it. He said he wanted to bring authentic Mexican culture to Australia.  The first step was the beautiful clothes, and the second embodiment is Senoritas. He mentioned that the idea Australians get of Mexico isn’t the contemporary Mexico he knows. I couldn’t help but think of how many times I’ve had that conversation.

First with people from overseas who ask me what the Aussie outback is like (I’ve never seen it). Then with Indian friends who get frantic calls from relatives to stay safe in Australia. What media and popular culture in each country choose to report, represent and dramatise has a huge effect on perceptions.

Ricardo spoke about finding a Mexican Chef, a lovely gent who looked seriously chuffed to be there. He highlighted particular staff and how much he appreciated their contributions. And it was authentic.

Truth be told, the menu is finding its way, experimenting with traditional and contemporary Mexican – and in a few months I imagine it will be an entirely different thing.

I’ll be back. Not just because of the Bunue Los a La Mexicana (Sweet tortilla Mexican style with cinnamon sugar, guava, cream cheese and piloncillo syrup). Or for the incredible tequila, but because Ricardo says he thinks a restaurant should feel like a second home. And he meant it.

 

The moves

Current world view

I’m in tracksuit pants and an oversized sailor blue jumper (complete with screenprint of jaunty striped sash). I’m under the covers in a friend’s spare bed, with a hacking cough and a toilet roll for tissues. I’ve seen enough rom-coms to know that after the past few days I’ve had, at any moment Matthew McConaughey (or, if I have a vote, Simon Baker please) will enter as an emergency plumber and change my life forever. At least that’s the worst case scenario.

A clean slate is a beautiful gift. It’s something you only get a few times in a lifetime (usually) and you’ve gotta grab it when you can. Thing is, when it comes, you’re usually so exhausted you feel you don’t have the energy to grasp it. Although you’ve spent so much time yearning for freedom, when you get it, all you want to do is retreat to your room, dive under your doona and perhaps have someone hold you and stroke your hair. But those are the prizes of security (and the enemies of freedom (not in an American war context, in a lifestyle context)).

Besides, if you’ve got a clean slate, chances are your room is gone, your hair stroker is gone, and you’ve no idea which box your doona is in.

It’s been a week. I’m sure in hindsight it will be a momentous, important, tight-hairpin-turn-ahead exciting week. In the living though. It’s been… surreal.

I wasn’t going to write about this week. Although I think it is a little hilarious, people often find my sense of humour a little dark, and I was afraid it would come across all woe-is-me when in fact what I’m saying is, ‘well played, life, jolly good fun. tallyho’. Because I’d like to be on a stead when I say it.

Anyway, a good writer pal of mine asked if I would be. So that got me thinking. Also, although I detest self-serving therapy as public performance/writing, it’s good therapy. One of my besties thinks I have to write stuff down to process it and she’s been around long enough to know. Besides, I missed the live journal phase. Anyway… let’s call that [therapy] a side-product rather than an aim so it all sits shall we?

I’ve been trying to decide where this story starts. In some ways it started last Friday (not yesterday, the one before) and in some ways it started in 2005 and in some ways in 2003.

So a brief background… In early 2003 I moved from Sydney to Perth on my own it was awesome and I knew no one and I loved it. In late 2003 my Mum died and it sucked. I moved to Melbourne to be in the same time zone as my family (but not too close, you can’t be too careful). Later my father remarried and my youngest brother (then 15) moved in with me in 2005. I loved living with him, and my other brother who arrived later, but once they were fully grown and old enough to drive and drink and have stand up sibling fights in the hallway I was pretty stoked to move into my own apartment.

By ‘my own’ I mean rented because I am a writer and that is the joke we tell about (generally) ridiculous rates of pay in Australia (except for those of many of my clients/titles who I am genuinely thrilled and honoured and relatively well paid to be involved with).

Anyway, I loved my apartment from the moment I moved in. There wasn’t a day I didn’t arrive home and feel grateful for living there. I spent the first 12 months waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell me there had been a terrible mistake and I must leave immediately. Anyway, the apartment, contrary to my ideas of how I feel about material things, and being a gypsy nomad, meant a lot. It was secure, I could go where I wanted when I wanted, have people over when I wanted, dance naked when I wanted and generally answer to no-one.

I hooned around the city with my girlfriends and dated boys for a couple of years and then met a someone. Someone I knew could potentially change everything and truth be told, I freaking loved everything as it was. Nonetheless there was all of the love stuff and he moved in. Then the apartment was too small and so we were moving to The Most Beautiful and Homely Apartment of All. And maybe getting a dog.

This sat well with one part of me, the doona girl, and the dog-lover, but awfully with the rest of me, the freedom lover. And also we had successfully ignored that the relationship wasn’t working because we thought if we had a bit more space it would be ok. I gave notice on my lovely, lovely apartment (which anyone at all will tell you isn’t that special, but I adored because it was miiiine).

We were set to move on Tuesday. On the Friday before I went to Sydney for a party, which many characters of my family attended. I considered the move, and realised I wasn’t going. It wasn’t so much that it was a decision, just that if I tried to imagine moving to The Most Beautiful and Homely Apartment of All my mind skidded, my gut seized and I imagined a cartoon dog on a leash being dragged, digging in its paws whilst jerking its head side to side like they do. You might say it didn’t sit well with me.

So I came back Sunday night, told the man I wasn’t moving to the new place, broke up, and quicker than you can say ‘hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat’  I was single and homeless. At least that’s how you’d put it for effect. In fact, I love love love being single, and I’d arranged to move back with my brothers for a bit. He moved into The Most Beautiful and Homely Apartment of All (and is currently seeking flatmates I believe).

The day of the move was much like a movie. Prettymuch everything is going ‘wrong’ (or perfect for a rom com, as I like to see it) right now. The examples are many, but the one I am most looking forward to writing into a feature film is where I packed two possessions to take with me in the cab to my brothers, an orchid and a crystal vase. Crossing Bourke Street, with The Grand Hotel and Spencer Street Station towering over me, and traffic every which way, the bottom of the bag broke and the vase smashed on the tram tracks. You hear that Matthew (or Tourism Vic – lovely shot that)? Hello?

Then when I moved to my brothers the landlord kindly sent over tilers to wake me up and traipse through my room, oh, Every Day. I lost the box with my make up in it. My landlord wants to come and sit with the tilers every day to keep an eye on them. Hiccups. Hiccups perfect for building drama in film, I tell myself.

The exciting part of this story is the next bit. Because (oops forgot to mention) I don’t need to be in Australia after 1 June. So effectively, I can go anywhere, and do anything (within the reach of my/a wealthy backer’s funds/Visas/etc etc). How often do you get that kind of blank slate? Neat huh?

Right now I’m thinking International Housesitter of Mystery. The mystery is why anyone would ask me to housesit for free now AirB’n’B exists, unless they have a particularly rabid dog. OR AirB’n’B could hire me as their official blogger and I could visit properties and write them into pithy (hello 1,158^th word) rom com blogs. Or something… By the by, doesn’t this sound like a great outline for a book or film, random publisher who is reading this?

I do have a couple of plans. But they are hatching and don’t want to be disturbed right now…

Hope your week has been as err… full of opportunity, as mine.

Home

Today I moved house.

Due to a bit of a timing juggle I moved out of my beloved one bedroom rental in the city back to my brother’s place.

I’m not into material things so I’m surprised by how many I have, and also my reaction to leaving my unit. It was my first solo place in Melbourne after living with my brothers (they’re a lot younger and I was the youngest’s guardian for a bit).

Having my ‘own’ home was an absolute delight. It was full of sunshine, central and when I came home it was… just as I left it. I played my own music, sang offensively and pants were always… optional.

As much as I’d like to deny it, it also got caught up in my idea of myself. I felt like living in the city was a bit spesh. And I feel like moving back to my bros makes me a bit of a loser. Of course which lease I sign makes no difference to me as a person, so it’s an intriguing situation.

On the other hand, the financial freedom of having less overheads is fantastic. The possibilities of contracts finishing up in the near future, and no too firm ties to Melbourne are immense. I could choose to live… anywhere.

I’m a gypsy type. I struggle with the idea of home, because although I am restless when settled, I’m a little uncomfortable with no fixed address.

It’s one of those days. Sad goodbyes, but so much possibility!

Photo diary

This weekend I spent in Sydney, with family.

I briefly escaped to Austinmer beach. She’s a beauty.