31 July 2007 - From Havana to a tearoom for lunch – a chromed lemon morsel in the deep south.
One year you can be sipping an espresson in Havana, the next sipping tea for two at
your home town's tearoom institution.
Birthdays are like that.
Some years you do one thing, another year you do something else.
This year it was Bell's Tearooms.
Quite an establishment. In fact it's so tiny, and easy to miss from the landscape you can blink your eye and miss it.
Yet step inside, and the lemon formica tables, and mustard vinyl-backed chairs and shiny chrome take you back
to a bygone era.
Small tables poke out from side walls, just like in the old buffet car that used to run the length of this beautiful southern corner of coastline.
It was familiar, yet only now have I figured that out. The old buffet car tables can still be seen somewhere – right here at Bell's.
The wooden trays, the chrome tea pot, and dusted off pottery cups and saucers are sandwiched between a sausage roll, and cheese rolls.
What else would you have for birthday lunch in the deep south?
Net curtains cover the bottom of the window pane that overlooks the street, where people walk by in their fleece, and jacket.
The small round tables and chairs decorate the tiny tearooms.
Nothing has changed in thirty years, except the sign out the front.
It's gorgeous, and the best place to spend my birthday lunch.

A Bonspiel of a day
A 3 hr drive, and I'm surrounded by hoar frosts in the Ida Valley, and a bunch of fellas sweeping their curling balls
down the ice of the Ida dam.
The first bonspiel since 2001 was called this week, and wow what a sight.
It wasn't just the absolutely unbelievable snow and hoar frosts clinging to everything in the Ida valley, walking out
onto the iced-over dam, avoiding the large cracks running down the ice (consequently at the same time thinking you
were in the ICEAGE movie), this was a spectacular treat.
The noise of the fellas curling on the ice was loud and boistrous, over 270 there to enjoy themselves.
The canteen brewing with a secret coffee concoction, and the helpers who are making their own version of pea, pie and pud without the pie made for a real hell of a sight.
The cameras were out, and we bumped into a friend from one of the networks.
A video will go up onto YOUTube, and I will advise where to look.
Except the real reason we ventured inland today was for the passing away of a distant relative. She was 91, and
so she would have liked the hoar frost, and to know old fellas were out in force on the dam.
Afternoon tea was pikelets with cream and a drop of raspberry jam or strawberry jam, club sandwiches, loaf, and more pikelets.
Cups of tea prepared by the ladies on hand was worth the wait.
It was certainly a sight I have never seen in my lifetime, the snow, the frosts, and the curlers.

Pea, Pie and Pud meets Da Vinci Code
We took a stroll in the garden after devouring a local winter special - pea, pie and pud for $5.50.
Mashed potatoes, pie, and peas all ready be squashed together mixed in gravy, and gobbled back with glee.
It reminds me of the type of food my Gran used to make for Sunday dinner, except that usually was more
of a mutton roast, with roast potatoes cooked in the coal range.
It's getting very dark here rather early, in fact a bit too early for my liking.
I've poured over Richard Dawkins books, read Jane Austen cover to cover, and spent the entire weekend gripped by
Dan Brown.
Well not quite true.
But spending a weekend scouring for a moment to read another page of the Da Vinci Code was surprising
in the least. I didn't want to do anything else but read the damn thing.
Two packets of Scotch Fingerbread biscuits (the ones with chocolate on them), big fat jaffas, and Caramello, and lots and lots of cups of tea resulted in finishing the book within 72 hours.
And now it's Dawkins. The Selfish Gene.
Is anyone not selfish?