Last night we were sitting on the couch, The Silverback and I, and I was saying that I want to see that new movie with all the nominations. Someone had seen it and said that I would love it. Let’s be clear: this is not a movie review site. I found the movie to be disturbing (why so many guns, America?), superficial (why don’t we actually get to know even one character properly?) and *spoiler alert* it had a shitty cop-out of an ending. I tried to like it, really I did, what with Woody Harrelson and Napoleon Dynamite’s Nanna, but it was insipid. Too sad and too bleak in a pathetic, relentless way. Two wrung-out stars.

But that’s not the point of this blog. The point is something different. Of doing something different.

On Tuesdays when I finish work, dinner is cooked and the kids are in bed. We eat, then sit on the couch together and scroll through the book of faces (that’s true love, right there, no?) and I watch that show with the doctor who does Asperger’s. His voice prickles me like blowing across the top of a pen lid (arghhh), but I do like the dramatic medical events that unfold. It’s good to know that hospital admissions aren’t all strung out meth-heads and people with complications from the stupid amounts of medications they are mixing in their cells. This is proper emergencies from causes other than the stupid.

The medical drama was about to get going, and I was settling in for some good old blood letting, when Nath said, “Why don’t you go then?”

What?

An unplanned movie trip on a school night that starts in six minutes and I haven’t even made popcorn? Surely that can’t work? Or is the plan so simple that it just might?

So before anyone had a chance to call it off, I grabbed a Stella from the fridge, dug out a coat that would be suitable for Antarctica, and ran out.

And I cannot tell you how good it felt. I think twenty years flew off and out onto Sunshine Beach Road between home and the cinema, and when I took my seat (far enough from the weird old guy on the far left wing so that I couldn’t see what he was up to. Nothing, I’m sure he was up to nothing), and close enough to the screen so that I could be encased in the vista without getting a neck extension injury, I’m pretty sure another six years fell into the aisle and rolled to the front like Jaffas. I lost another two when I surreptitiously opened the Stella and it made a little sigh as the house lights went down, when for some reason I was convinced that the man-child usher would come and scold me in front of the pod of teenagers in the back row. (Funny how, even at this advanced age, I wanted to hold up my stubby of bootleg beer and show them I was cooler than them.)

It was nice losing all those years. Nice feeling the responsibility of a school night, and the heaviness of the incomplete To-Do List, shrink to a pinprick as the curtains drew back, and I got lost in someone else’s world.

Going to the movies is better than going on holidays. It’s far easier, it’s more comfortable and if I don’t like it I can leave at any time. Or fall asleep in a hug of red velvet. As long as that weird guy doesn’t come too close.

When the shitty movie ended and the lights came on, everyone hurried to evacuate, but I stayed a moment more. Savouring the smell of freedom that was masquerading as popped corn and fake butter, and the perfume of the last person whose arms rested underneath mine. I breathed in that smell and I breathed in that feeling. And I tried not to breathe it out.

…From The Ashers

I love Surfers Paradise.

I love the buildings that are trying to reach the clouds, and keep the beach a secret.  I love the lurid pink neon, and the noise of traffic and tension.  I love the seedy bars, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not? and the smell of salt and carbon monoxide mixed together.  I love the tattoos, and the bustling energy, and the women who look twenty-two from behind and sixty-five in the face.

But I don’t love the cafes.  And that’s okay, because I don’t come to the Goldy for fine food and wine, I come for fun, and a taste of something a little wilder, and little bit more edgy than my perfectly arranged seaside town.  I come for a little bit of naughty.

Today I found a little gem that I didn’t expect.  Nestled between restaurants in the Soul Sea Temple complex is a special slice of Melbourne-Up-North.  Complete with a roof of tiles that could be from Flinders Street Station and walls of concrete that could be from the City Square, is Cafe Elston.

Cafe Elston

Industry lights

The staff are so pretty they could have been ripped out of an ad for Beat Magazine, with their carefully coiffed hair and beards and freshly inked forearms.  I could have spent most of the afternoon trying to read their cutely colourful body art, but there were Bennys and cheese boards to be eaten, Espresso Martinis to drink, and cupcakes to gorge on.  Even the beer list was something to savour, with ice cold White Rabbit and My Wife’s Bitter to slake a karaoke croaky throat.

Botanical Benny

It was love at first sight when I saw Cafe Elston, which bloomed into true love when I was presented with the delicate blossoms of dishes created by some arty chef in the kitchen.  I suspected they were constructed by a mincy little pixie but when I glimpsed him a couple of times during my extended stay, the incongruous was almost jarring: tattooed and blokey and more at home at a Nirvana concert than making fiddly floral food art.

Cheese Board

Butterscotch Cupcakes

Thanks Cafe Elston.  You have managed walk a fine line between urban and garden, with surprising prettiness and cheeky Surfers fun.  A playful slice of Paradise that has an attitude I want to hang around with.

Perhaps the Gold Coast is shedding some of her slightly tattered glittery clothes and acting her age.  I like it.

Have you been to the Gold Coast lately?

Where is your fave place to hang out on the Goldy?

…From The Ashers xx

Just a quickie today, because I don’t want y’all to think I’m neglecting you, or have forgotten you, but I’m KNACKERED after my weekend away.  This country mouse just can’t do the big city any more.  Or perhaps that’s just the Espresso Martinis talking.

Anyway, blogs will be forthcoming about our adventures I’m sure, but for the moment, let me tell you that Sydders (as I like to call her) is a different beast from Newsa, and I know this because I caught taxis everywhere.  And taxis tell you a lot about a town.

Up here cabbies tell you about; the weather, Toned Abs and the fact that he’d better not bring in Daylight Savings, or when the surf festival/food and wine festival/triathalon festival, or any other festival, starts.  And if you leave your $7.50 bestbargainintheknownworld high heels in their car, they drop them back at your front door.

In Sydders they’d rather not have a chat really, unless you count talking quietly to their mates on their earphone-microphone mobile phones.

However, if another cabbie slights them, they will bring on Armageddon. Shouty amageddon.

Our driver: What are you doing you idiot, why did you block me in?

Other driver: (Gesturing to front side panel) You didn’t have your light thing on that flashes me, how did I know you wanted outs?

Ours: Well you blocked me now you are costing my clients money.  Lots of monies.

Other: You should go back to school, you know the school where they teach you about driving, and about the little light thingy.

Ours: You are an idiotman and yous should go back to school.

Other:  No you should.  You don’t even know how to do the drives. You have to turn the big wheel for steering and also put on the light for me and the other drivers to see.

Ours:  You are mormon.

Other:  You are mormon more.

I suspect no one was actually a Mormon.  I suspect no one had been to that special school with lessons of blinky things, or possibly any school at all.

But at least no one talked about Tony Abbot and made my mind’s eye ill with the thought of him in his Speedos.  (Sorry, you can’t not think of it now can you?)

Seeya all tomorrow…. From The Ashers xx

We Grisashers have been making our way back up North, stopping at various famous and infamous places along the way.  I have a post regarding one of our stops (which has been excellent by the way), plus my Hitwave Alison from the week just gone, ready for you, but alas and alack, there is no wifi here to speak of.  Seriously.  No free wifi.  Otherwise known as the scourge of the First World.

I could probably go and find an internet cafe somewhere, but I fear that would take more effort than I’m willing to invest.  Plus, I’m here on the couch with beer and footy, to be drunk and watched.  And I have a new stubby holder.  From the Big Banana.  With my name on it.  So these beers all have my name on them.  (I predict that is a joke that will be trotted out with alarming regularity.)

I have made my phone into a ‘mobile hotspot’ for the purposes of this post, but uploading photos and other media (like website info) IS TAKING MORE TIME THAN I HAVE PATIENCE.

So you will have to deal with this as your Monday post.

By the time you are reading this, we will be preparing to exit Angourie and brave the last-day-of-the-school-holidays-and-last-day-of-a-long-weekend traffic.  We Grisashers are nothing if not fearless.

So wish us well.

See you once civilisation engulfs us once more.

I leave you with these words from JRR Tolkein, it’s from “There and Back Again” (aka The Hobbit), so I find it fitting:

The road goes ever on and on,

Out from the door where it began,

Now far ahead the road has gone,

And I must follow if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet,

And whither then? I cannot say.”

I think it has a whole lot more, but I can’t remember it, and let’s face it, you really don’t give a shit…  Later.

How was your long weekend?

Where was your ‘There”?  Did you make it back?

The Griswald-Ashers arrived in Newy, safe and sound.

We left before sunrise and arrived just before sunset.  Coffees were drunk, chips and lollies were eaten, bladders were extended. Children teased each other and were yelled at by parents*.  Seats were kicked and small people asked, “Are we there yet?” and “Why didn’t we catch a plane?” seventeen million times.

We answered, “Not yet” and “Because” seventeen million and one times.

Forget the Big Banana, the Giant Clam,  the Big Prawn and the Big Rock, they may be of passing interest to the novice traveller, but the Grisashers found the tourist spot to rival all others.  We found the place where Bogans are made.

And if that isn’t enough, it is also the home of the Worst Cafe in the Known World.  We toddled into town, saw the Worst Cafe in the Known World, and made a beeline for it.  It had a cute wraparound verandah, and the place was positively pumping when we arrived.  So we took our seats expectantly.

We soon noticed a pungent odour, a fragrant mix of stale urine and skanky four-day-old lettuce.  Of course we should have left right then, but: children.  Hungry children.  And not a golden arch in sight.

We soon saw why the joint was packed.  The local retirement village was having an outing.  That explained at least some of the urine smell.  I think patrons preferred to relieve themselves like Ruprect in their seats, because whilst we were there, two old dears got locked in the toilet.  The one and only waitress had to jimmy them free them with a butter knife.  Clearly it was safer to  just piss in your seat.

The remainder of the clientele were in the 18-25 age bracket, accompanied by their numerous offspring.  They were striking in their uniformity, in that all of the males had a style of haircut we used to call “tails” in the 80s,  and all of the women had tattoos of their partner’s names, in a florid script, on the nape of their necks.  The only distinguishing features were whether the tails were plaited or not, and the variation in name.  (None of the names had traditional spellings. So I guess it could be confusing.)

I was going to say something a bit rude about why a woman would want to have a tatt on the back of her neck of her mate’s name, perhaps as a form of  identification useful in the throes of passion, by said mate, from the rear vantage point.  But I won’t.

I took photos of the Worst Cafe in the Known World, as well as the swill we were served,  (and dutifully ate, mind you) but I just can’t post them.  I’ve had a fit of conscience, as the Worst Cafe is clearly identifiable.  And that’s really not very nice.

Plus a Bogan might punch me or Nath in the face.

And who knows what one of the men might do.

*Okay, not parents. Me.  I did the yelling.  But they were really shitting me. It was 7.04am.

Do you eat in crappy places on road trips?

Tell me your worst meal…

Tomorrow, we be the Griswalds, and we are going on a road trip.

By the time you are reading this, we will be far from home, hopefully on the other side of the Gold Coast, maybe somewhere around Byron Bay.

We have a fridge in the back and surfboards on the roof.  Miss Xtrailia 2013 has never looked so sporty.

We are travelling down South to a funeral, to say our goodbyes to a chick who lived and laughed like a boss.

So I don’t know when I’ll be posting.  If I can get wifi and a charged computer, I’ll tell you all about it.  Maybe on Thursday I will write you my words from the day.

But for now, think of us, rolling along, Willie Nelson in the background.