Jason's birthday jaunt

It was Jason's fortieth birthday on Saturday. He booked a holiday house on Phillip Island and invited us all down there for the weekend. After much discussion, it was decided I'd leave Rosie, Fred and Tess to fend for themselves while I headed down there and got really drunk. With a heavy heart, I packed up and hit the road.

I arrived to a familiar scene, albeit in a setting that wasn't the Lord Newry or a skatepark.

I was very happy to find Jenny was in attendance. Predictably, we had a great laugh. We went to the beach but I didn't take this camera there, silly.I took 'real' photos so you'll have to wait for a while before you can bathe in their out-of-focus splendour.

Dion and Tree share a quiet moment over a few hats and glasses.

Phil, an old workmate of Jason's, is my Fuji friend on Flickr. Here he is taking a photo with his phone (!) up on the deck while the sun set. The forums will be alight with this controversy.

Ali, pictured here, drove us to the supermarket in Cowes, which turned out to be a hilarious trip. She loves Coles! Along with our planned purchases, we found all manner of funny things and had a great time driving to and fro. Sam saw a pelican at one point and exclaimed, "I just saw a pelican." as if it was a grim but exciting thing to witness. Jenny and I exploded in fits of laughter in the back like a couple of kids. Sam later explained he was excited because he had seen a clip of a pelican eating a pigeon. I knew the internet would have something to do with it.

The birthday boy. Such a lovely chap! That's Murray lurking in the background, and Lauren also.

The birthday boy consoles Dion. "Don't worry Dion, it will be your birthday soon!"

The birthday boy, Lauren and Kat. I think Jason is drinking a can of Canadian Club with dry ginger ale in this shot - just one of the hilarious gifts we picked up for him from the supermarket.

The sunset was quite incredible. There were weird lines running through it. It was crazy.

And it kept changing. That's the thing about sunsets isn't it.

It was a tough group to wrangle for a group portrait, especially with like four Canon 5ds in the mix. Phil took this for us.

The birthday boy again. He deserves lots of photos because he's the birthday boy!

Chris 'Patrick Bateman' Ackroyd

I told Sam not to use the pelican eating the pigeon story as a conversation starter, but did he listen?

Here he is a bit later having a kip on the roof. I took this just before sunrise when I was tramping around going to the toilet and stuff.

This is what the sunrise looked like. The sky changed colour really quickly. It was a more gentle version of the sunset really. I was hungover and confused.

Here's Sammy again.

And Lauren. They both said they woke up for sunrise too but I didn't see that happen to be honest. We packed up and hightailed it to a cafe for breakfast. Then some of us went to play mini golf, which was really funny, but again, I didn't take any photos with this camera. Then we went and had a skate at Cowes park, which was glorious. Then I drove home.

A sale and a skate

That was quite a weekend. For starters, on Friday I got drunk, then on Saturday I had a jeans sale at The Good Copy shop. It looks like Tess is worried there are no customers in this shot, but it was actually quite busy. She just wanted to run outside, to her probable death.

Quite a few of the usual suspects showed, and I was ready for them with delicious Astra lagers.

Luckily, Rosie was on hand to wrangle Tess, make entertaining quips and help people with their jeans selections while I wondered around bleary-eyed, repeatedly saying hello to people.

The shop was the perfect spot for slack-peddling and we did a steady trade all day, with lots of friendly visitors including Romy, Caroline and Jared.

There's Tess again, standing on Sez's Moroccan rug, staring wistfully outside but having a good time nonetheless.

Three wise men.

Amanda and Corey. Corey started walking on Friday! He was showing off with an interesting sidestep crabwalk thing in the shop.

Jason was pointing at a squinty Andrew

A mid-anecdotal Prior

Wendy and Ben came along for the bargains and stayed for my incredible scattered banter.

Charlie giving us his classic ThreeThousand street gallery pose

Fast forward almost 24 hours and I was having a skate with a group of handsome shirtless men in a schoolyard. This is Yared.

Ivan and a well chiselled back tail. I have to exercise more.

It was the best skate I've had in perhaps years, thanks to no scooters and the fact that I finally learned this trick - the backside smith grind. Tom was so impressed he took this lovely photo.

You want another angle? Alright then. I am incredibly proud of learning this trick and I don't care what you say. It's been haunting me for decades!

Cheers Tom

Nick Yared - an incredible skateboarder and a lovely chap.

Alex is the coolest real estate agent I know. Much cooler than Blake from The Bachelor anyway.

Lachie and I skated the ledge for what seemed like hours after everyone else stopped.

It really was a great time out there.

Fitzroy bowl, you're alright.

A large proportion of my weekend skating time is taken up by organising, picking people up and driving out to skateparks in far-flung suburbs. It can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a massive pain in the ass. Sorry, arse. I prefer ass. Anyway, today was such a lovely day and I didn't even want to think about all that stuff. So I went to Fitzroy bowl.

It's a famous place that has always been just down the road from where I live, in a sweet park. But I hardly go there, and neither does anyone else I know. It's something to do with the 'bowly' vibe, which seems to involve a lot of drinking and yelling and living up to the obnoxious perception a lot of people have of skaters. But today we went there and it was just wonderful.

Dave has been skating there a bit lately and has been working on some very pleasurable lines. One of the locals - Paddy - was also there, skating the bowl in a way that was actually quite remarkable and beautiful. He told me a few tricks to the place and it helped me to enjoy it more too. At one point, all of us were skating around in a big circle, taking turns flying out of the bowl, laughing maniacally, even Sam. I should've taken a photo of Sam skating, actually, but I was too busy skating myself. 

  

Here's Riley doing a lovely frontside grind. It was such a nice vibe. Nice to be in the middle of everything for a change, rather than out somewhere weird and unfamiliar. Nice to be around other people hanging out in the park, enjoying the sunshine. It was nice that Tess could run around and do her own thing, even if she insisted on barking at people when they were in the middle of tricks. And noone was drunk or yelling stuff. It was cool! 

A quick visit to Adelaide

Last weekend, we packed up the Holden Astra and drove over to visit my folks in Adelaide. The drive was pretty long, but not without its merits. You know the kind of stuff that makes a road trip enjoyable: fog drifting over paddocks like The Nothing from The Neverending Story, smalltown bakeries, celebrity heads, podcast after cloyingly clever podcast...

Eventually, we made it to D and Joy's house in Warradale, not far from Marion, in Adelaide. Tess was instantly happier than she could remember being, thanks to lots of sunny spots and a huge, cartoonish bone she received upon arrival.

There he is, my dad, eating some muesli and musing on the quiz.

Joy was also enjoying muesli on the morning of this photo shoot. Thanks for looking after us guys!

We went out with Bub to visit her mum, my grandmother, Jay. She is lovely. I forget sometimes how similar I am to her. I used to love visiting her little house where she lived by herself with lots of lovely lamps, interesting magazines and biscuits. She is perhaps the best op-shopper I know, always dressed stylishly in designer stuff she found for cheap. She even found a stuffed emu in an op-shop once, and set it up in her living room, complete with reading glasses and suede boots.
Jay is very old now and didn't seem to remember me, but just as we were leaving she grabbed my hand and asked me if I had to leave so soon, because she hadn't seen me for so long.

Next stop was my brother Pij's place. He lives in a cherry orchard/vineyard in the Adelaide Hills, which I now realise is not only extremely beautiful, but perfectly placed for road and mountain cycling, a passion of his that I am beginning to understand better. Luckily, it was Pij's day off from working at the zoo, so he made us a cup of coffee and we sat in his front yard and marvelled at him.

Because I don't get to see my family very often, I always try and make the most of every moment when I'm around them. I imagine it's quite tiring for everyone concerned, Rosie in particular. Here I am about to jump over an agapanthus bush, with Tess in pursuit. Mid-air, my left leg caught on a rose branch, pitching me to the ground on the other side, shoulder first. This resulted in some doubled-over laughter, so, you know, job done.

Bub and Anna showed up with their dog Penny (hiding under chair).

Here's Penny again, this time at Anna's new house. Anna showed us around the lush garden, striking characteristic poses for photos along the way:

Here's beautiful Rosie, less squinty and more in focus than Anna.

I put on a purple dressing gown and read out the menu for the pub we were going to for dinner in a funny voice. Job done again. They loved it. The next morning, we drove back to Melbourne.