Vivid

Sydney in Autumn is a sight to behold. We walked around to drama, dodging trucks and construction of the light installations for Vivid, which starts this weekend. There were buskers and tour groups taking in the history of The Rocks. My daughter has a ritual before her class. I give her money and she buys a strawberry donut from a takeaway shop at Circular Quay. The elderly Vietnamese man sees her approach, and has the donut in the bag before she asks. My daughter says they are the best donuts in the world. We weave our way through wedding parties and photographers, my daughter entranced by the gowns, but grossed out by the romance and smooching. I call our day in the city my caffeine day. When you have such extraordinary coffee and barista’s at your disposal, why wouldn’t you indulge? To redeem myself, I order the best salad in Sydney. Spoilt for choice, it is hard to settle on one, and they are a triumph of assembly. The sort that you wouldn’t bother making yourself at home, unless you had a spare hour or so.

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Scenes such as the one above take my mind off my physical pain. Thank heavens my daughter’s balance is better than mine! On this particular day, I decided to travel over the Harbour Bridge on the train, to see friends. I insisted we try the quirky Hello Kitty Café at Chatswood.

My friend and I are under the care of an endocrinologist. Both of us are sugar-impaired, shall we say, and we try to behave. This was something of our last hurrah on that front, which is just as well.

Yes, I drank/ate the Freak Milkshake above, and was suitably buzzing and silly afterward! To my delight, they had a tofu burger on the menu.

It was a sweet little café, and we enjoyed our outing. It has taken me two days to get over our big day out, but you gotta live, right? I had seen this place had opened over a year ago, and determined to go one day and check it out. It niggles at you, doesn’t it? The events you miss and promise to get to the next year, the things you want to do and people you want to see. Sometimes you just have to do it. We are looking forward to the next adventure! Sydney is brimming with them!

So, my friend and I went to Vivid last Saturday night at Circular Quay. She is hysterically funny in that dry, laconic Australian way. I texted that my daughter and I were in the loos and wouldn’t be long. She said she would meet us there. I waited and waited and when she didn’t show, it dawned on me that perhaps she was at the facilities at the other end of the Quay. She was! We hugged, comfortable in our embrace as we are both under 5 feet tall. I gave her a birthday gift, which included size 5 (tiny), sparkly slippers. We walked around to the Opera House whilst it was still light and plonked down on the steps. Her daughter and mine got restless, so her husband offered to take them for a walk. We began a two hour chat full of enlightened dribble about my making a fortune off an upcoming YouTube channel featuring my guinea pigs, my filming her Tina Turner impersonation, and becoming her manager, and bursting into musicals whenever we heard key words.

Dusk was coming and the children and her husband still hadn’t returned. “I hope he hasn’t had a hypo,” she remarked. “Shit!” He is a diabetic and could well be disorientated. Fortunately, he sauntered over with the kids, and we went in search of food. We walked to The Rocks, and selected good, nutritious food from the market stalls, whilst the girls demanded pretzels. Us ladies all went to the loo, and took selfie’s (as you do).

My friend laughed, “we are here to see Vivid, this light festival… We haven’t seen a thing in three hours!” I laughed too, and said that when we get together, we have so much fun talking rubbish, laughing and taking bathroom selfie’s that we forget what we are there for.

She showed me these mints and I am now hankering after the tin.

We saw the MCA and Opera House Lights, and walked around to Customs House, where I captured this.

Our two IVF miracles adore each other, and were happy climbing trees and being together.

Thousands of people were trying to get through Circular Quay by 8pm. Someone sneezed and one of our tribe called out “bless you!” “Thankyou!” came the response alongside thousands of people laughing and smiling at the exchange. My friend’s husband needed something sweet to raise his blood sugar, and so he and the kids had ice cream. We saw hardly anything, but a festival is about the bringing together of people. That is what a ‘happening’ is. This is what Saturday night was.