To misquote Arlo Guthrie, you can get anything you want, at the Lemon Tree Grocer store. Unless you want thyme, that is. Bottle after bottle of herbs and spices over five shelves, and not one of them containing thyme. Astounding, I thought. And we’d just been thinking that, were we to move back to the Blue Mountains, I could do all my shopping in Wentworth Falls. Such a pity.
Something else I thought we could do was visit with Danielle, a close friend and colleague from our theatre days. You see, I thought she lived in Wentworth Falls. I was wrong. Close, but not correct. She lives further down the mountain a bit. I know this because we met up today for lunch.
Mirinda was worried we wouldn’t all recognise each other. I assured her that we would, given I’ve been following Danielle on Instagram for years. Besides, she hasn’t really changed much in the 20 years since we last saw her irl. She’s obviously timeless.
We ate in the Blue Mist Cafe, where we discovered that a big family group of Indians sitting outside in the cold were royalists. “Remarkable,” remarked the man in the café. “After years of colonial rule, they still love their abusers.”
Over lunch, Danielle and Mirinda chatted about the intervening years. Danielle has achieved so much, though she is no longer in theatre. For a while she was involved backstage, in the Lights, Camera, Chaos show at the Fox Studio backlot in Sydney, which sounded very exciting.
Obviously, we discussed a lot of theatre but, also there was a lot of chat about Danielle and Mirinda’s current employment. It was all very different. Danielle also promised to cook us a meal the next time we visited the mountains. Mirinda volunteered me as sous chef.
It was a lovely couple of hours but Danielle had to head off for a meeting and we had to buy a couple of Portuguese tarts before standing in the rain for a bit, waiting for Fi to pick us up.
Fi and Mirinda were off to see a rom com which Archie and I chose to ignore, preferring a bit of Mexican TV instead. And rum. Obviously. Not that Archie had any rum. He turned his nose up after a sniff. That was okay. I drank his.
I have a couple of updates that I forgot to include yesterday.
Update 1: We had a text message from ‘calm’ Craig, the skip guy demanding payment. Fi called him and sorted it out with the legendary pink card. Sadly, there was no mention of the beacon.
Update 2: Simon sent us photos and a video of the house, both of which are now online. The house and grounds look amazing.
Update 3: Regarding the Queen’s death, the Blue Mountains Gazette included a wraparound on this week’s edition, which was thrown into our front garden. Upon opening the paper, I discovered that the printer had given Her Maj a Hitler moustache.
I appeared a number of times in the BMG over the years, but never had a printer’s error on my face before. An interesting discovery. Unlike the discovery that the Lemon Tree Grocer doesn’t stock thyme.
