8) Joss
sticks some Choclatté chocolates in my face |
A
week or more of culture has Mike reeling..
15.3.12 - Maria Gravias, whom I've described
rather coyly as my cultural attaché, has been in Melbourne
for the past week or so recovering from a severe bout of ACT-itis,
which has been very much Canberra's loss and my gain. So busy
has been our cultural schedule I shall be hard put to remember
every detail, but I shall give you the gist of the
many goings-on.
Chris had a holiday on Monday, so he, Maria and I drove out
to visit the Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, right next to the Cranbourne
race track. From a distance it looks like a small-ish open-cut
mine, but you can't help but be very impressed as soon as you
begin the walk around - it's a triumph of artistic landscaping
of almost exclusively native |
flora. The couple of bandicoots
we spied were the cute bonus Aussie fauna.
On Tuesday I met Maria at the Arts Centre for the Australian
Ballet's 50th Anniversary Infinity show, featuring
three ballets with specially commisioned music and choreography.
I was particularly taken with Graeme Murphy's piece, (Brett
Dean's score was striking and inventive) and I liked the whimsy
and humour of Gideon Obarzanek's annotated Swan Lake, (music
by Stefan Gregory after Tchaikovsky), but the Bangarra piece
was a disappointment, the mind-numbing banality of both the
music and the choreography leaving me quite angry.
On Wednesday we went to see A Separation, the movie
that David and Margaret, in almost unprecedented unanimity,
each gave five out of five stars. While we agreed the film
was near perfect in execution, we left the theatre dubious
of any resolution to the Middle East problems as a result
of this brief exposure to an Iranian domestic crisis, where
the medieval presence of the Koran as a third player just
served to complicate an already precariously nuanced situation.
Still, highly recommended if you're looking for something
quite different.
We ate at the Carlton
Wine Room afterwards and had a truly memorable meal topped
off with a half-bottle (!) of Mt Difficulty (Otago) pinot
noir. All beyond reproach and more than highly recommended.
On Thursday I had a long-awaited visit from James Feldman,
(the Shepparton PC Doctor), to help install my new monitors,
which required a new graphics card for the pair (!) on the
music computer so it was just as well he was around.
On Saturday I met Maria at the Victorian State Library in
town, mainly to take in the Persian Love & Devotion
exhibition at the Keith Murdoch gallery, (pic 4)
but I was also looking forward to seeing the rest of the library
as I'd not visited it before. The exhibition was good value,
(it was free), replete with exquisite manuscripts illuminated
in such detail as to utterly defeat the naked eye - well,
my naked eye, anyway. We looked with some awe at
the reading room, (pic 6) (I would actually travel
there to read a book I think), and sniffed around the historical
paintings in the gallery, (which gave me a real sense of Victorian
history), before lunching (adequately) in the bistro (pic
5) and going our separate ways.
Monday was Labour Day and Chris Kay had invited me out to
Croydon to help celebrate his latest bottling, which this
year for the first time includes a pinot noir. I brought Maria
along with me plus a box of Choclatté chocolates, (pic
8) which generated a great deal of comment. I had a roaring
time with young Coby (pic 7) and we all spent a very
congenial evening eating, drinking and chatting - as y' do.
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