Friday - Chevapkis and a new cafe

We had a slow start to the day today (well, M was up and out to her usual Friday gig) and we decided to try something different for breakfast. We had read about Le Vintage Sandwich Shop, in Highland Park, and wanted to try it out before we suggested it to anyone else. I was looking forward to their $13 Big Breakfast but when we arrived, they told us they didn't serve breakfast on a Friday. Even though they do serve food, they have a very restricted menu most of the time - it's almost takeaway food such as sandwiches and toasties but they have seats where you can eat and very decent coffee (Merlo) ... and they do a High Tea (minimum of four people) ... and there is that breakfast on a Saturday. If it's anything like the Bacon and Egg Toastie ... we're going to like the Breakfast very much.

Maggie

S decided not to come to see The Way Way Back at Australia Fair so I met An there, as planned. I'd like to say that I'm giving the movie a very high rating but that wouldn't be true. I'm still thinking about it, of course, trying to decide whether the resolution worked ... generally speaking, because it hadn't for me. But, then, we all bring our own understandings and histories into a movie, and maybe those had something to do with my interpretation of it.

After the movie, even though An suggested I go back to theirs for a cuppa, I tootled back out to Latimers to collect S so we could go in for Friday Night dinner with Mouse, M, Mi (yes, Mi is finally back!) and Fl, as well as Ne, her husband, Ji, and mother Su. It was an "interesting" conversation and evening ... and it was very odd to be a "newcomer"- I've only known Mouse and the family for just over 20 years; the others have known them for much, much longer.

Mouse excelled herself in the cooking stakes - soup and nibbles to start (the goats' cheese looked amazing), followed by stew, pasta, potatoes and salad; then dessert of rhubarb (not crumble as Mouse's oven is still not working - although ["it's a miracle"] Mouse said that it actually did turn on today), custard and ice cream! Then, as it must be, there was tea - which is my domain.

Although it seems not to have been as bad as it had been for the World Youth Day Group returning from South America the other day - 26 of the group became ill with a gastro bug (with only 10 toilets on board) - both S and Su had been feeling "unwell" earlier today. Su made herself come to dinner out of respect for Mouse. And just as well she did otherwise she would have missed out on some amazing stories and there was no shortage of them at the table.

Ji did an amazing job at keeping his chevapki story going through numerous tangents and interruptions to the point where it came almost as a total surprise to me when, a very long time later - through almost forced conscription into the Greek Military, movie-worthy train escapades, brushes with Border patrols, and being hidden in a cellar - that he told about having a meal at a train station ... "and that was where I first had chevapkis"! Next up in the conversation stakes was a look at Muslim burial rituals and Fl telling us about what would happen come "Judgment Day". I still don't understand why it is that Comparative Religion isn't a required subject in schools. Maybe if they did I would have known, before Fl explained it, that Muslims do believe in Heaven and Hell and that those are not just Christian constructs.

Dinner