Degrassi Junior High

Wow. I just deleted a whole post and I don't even know how. And you know what? I could Control Z but I think it's a sign. It's definitely a sign. I'm not in the right state of mind to be blogging, especially about that time I thought I was a werewolf. It's raining, cold, grey as all hell, I'm kind of grumpy and I'm pretty sure I just called Bobby the c word because he didn't peel the garlic properly. It might (but probably doesn't) have something to do with the fact that I'm still a little hungover from Saturday's trio of parties, one of which had a bar tab and another of which was within stair-climbing distance of my place in which sat, eagerly awaiting my frequent visits, a large bottle of vodka and a bag of goon. Side note: Did you know that they don't even say goon in England? They call it 'boxed wine'. Doesn't that just make it sound so much more classy than it actually is? Goon doesn't deserve class. Take down the streamers and show it for what it is: Horrible, egg containing, preservative ridden, acrid tasting goon. And it's WONDERFUL. So much so that it deserves capitals. Much like the third party of my Saturday evening, which was, from what I can remember, pretty bloody awesome. Admittedly, I spent most of my evening speaking to complete strangers (albeit, apart from one odd, incredibly-keen-to-give-out-entirely-unrequested-autographs fellow, absolutely lovely strangers) rambling on to them about the beauty of vintage and retro clothes and encouraging, neigh, insisting that they drop along to my market this weekend because basically, it's going to be one big friendly-on-the-pocket party. I NETWORKED, baby. Not sure how true to the word 'party' the event's actually going to be; we'll be sellin' poppas of the fruity kind not the sniffable kind and it'll be during daylight hours only so, in all honesty, it's probably going to be a lot more low-key/kid friendly than I might have made out. If you do happen to turn up really drunk however, I promise to show you to the toilet where you'll be more than welcome to spew your guts up. Because that's just the kind of person I am: Accommodating.

Of course, last Saturday's party was themed (because all the best ones are), and the theme was Degrassi Junior High. Whilst the actual number of people dressed up was rather low, it was great if only for the simple reason that I had an excuse to go all eighties. Again.

I should add that the night was in celebration of the amazing Miss Marissa Ziesing (above), whose birthday it was. I hope you had a suitably brilliant evening, Marissa. I'm pretty sure I forgot to say 'Happy Birthday' on the night. I'm remarkably talented at things like that. I do hope that announcing it publicly, to the billions of readers of my blog (hah!), makes up for that tiny nugget of forgetfulness.



Fashion Launches Rocket Launches (above) played a set in the early evening. Unfortunately, we missed the better half of it (or what I'd hope, all things considered, was the better half) so I'll reserve my criticism for another time. In their own right, they're each very talented musicians.


See? Networking.

Where Do The Children Play?

Germany has the best playgrounds in the world. Okay, so I haven't exactly researched this fact very well, and being half-German I'm probably more than a little biased but I'll be damned if I didn't have the most fun childishly skipping, swinging and sliding since, well, being a child.

An Asterix and Obelix playground in Bad Vilbel, Frankfurt.

By the Wasserturm in Berlin.

A giant flying fox in Tiergarten, Berlin.

Vintage and Retro Sale at Hibernian House, Part V

Herro Sydney folks (feel free to skip this post if you ain't based in Sydders),

Guess what? Our vintage and retro sales are back! With loads of goodies from countries afar. And we'll be open all weekend! This might possibly be the single most exciting invitation of your month slash life.

I know, it hurt, right? Six months sans our (usually monthly) sale. You guys must be frickin' starving for some retro action. Well, never fear, the first sale's approaching faster than the Enterprise at warp speed. The best part? We brought back so many goodies from Europe to share with you. Paris? Check. London? Check. Berlin? Checkity Check Point Charlie. The first sale will be loads of fun and you can expect even lower prices too, with most pieces being $20 and under. We will have liquid refreshments, Bat For Lashes (on the speakers), one famous cat, a big comfy couch to chill the flip out on, shoes, handbags and belts, bric-a-brac, a little jewellery, books and mountains of hand picked vintage & retro clothes from loads of cool cats including Marissa Ziesing (of fashion label FTW), stand up comic Julia Clark, Bobby Townsend (of Drum Media and Bobbysix.com), Dominique Legrand, Katrina Noorbergen (of Cassette Kids fame) and ME.

Everything on sale will be cash only. Some stuff you’ll be able to pick up for as little as fifty cents, but make sure there are a few notes in your pockets for some of the vintage bits on offer. (Never fear though, there is an ATM just down the street).

We're close to Crown St, Oxford St and pretty much everywhere. You'll be hard pressed to find parking, but be an environmentally friendly one and walk or hop on the train to Central Station from which we are less than a minute's walk. Find us on Level Six of Hibernian House, Surry Hills. Squeeze through the security door, buzz 601 or, if all else fails, just call the number pasted on the front door (don't worry, we won't pick up the phone and use up all your pretty credit. What we WILL do however, is run down and let you in). Zip up in the lift to level 5 (be patient, it does work) and follow the signs.

Oh and did I mention we've been featured all over the joint? No? Well, we have. Not least of all in a recent issue of Elle Girl Korea.

Check out the Facebook event over here for more details. Invite your friends, bring your housemates and grab a MASSIVE BARGAIN!

SATURDAY 12th SEPT: 10am - 5pm

SUNDAY 13th SEPT: 11am - 4pm

Fight For Your Right To Party

I've been back in Sydney for almost a week now. You wanna know what I've spent this past week doing? Sleeping. And blowing my nose. Yep, both Bobby and I have been ill. AND jet lagged. Whilst Bobby has tried more than once to convince me it's Swine Flu that's been plaguing us, I can safely reassure the few friends I have hugged/seen since arriving back in the land of Oz that it is not Swine Flu, merely a harmless, mildly annoying cold. I reckon he just thinks it's the cool thing to have right now. Which, let's be honest, it kind of is. I heard that my friend Jess had swine flu and how she was quarantined for two weeks and all her housemates had to wear swine flu MASKS. Can you imagine? All her housemates in piggy masks? Feeding her soup? I have to admit, it sounds pretty incredible. Alas, this whole lethargy thing has meant that I haven't spent more than five minutes on the computer (total), bar the time spent filling out online forms and doing the most utterly boring and monotonous yet essential administrative work imaginable. So, no blog posts for you, my friends.

One good thing to come out of this little sickness of ours however, is that it's given both Bobs and I a little time to become acquainted with our new housemates. Indeed, the shell of our home has changed little but when I say 'new' housemates, I really do mean brand spanking new. Like, all of them. We stumbled into the living room on Tuesday night to be greeted by four strangers sitting in our living room. Since that experience, I'm quite certain that Bobby and I are entirely qualified to be professional Big Brother intruders. Hello Grace, hello Dave, hello Dom and hello Katrina. Thankfully, they're super duper awesome. Actually, the whole situation is pretty frickin' awesome. I've spent more time hanging out in the living room in the past week than I think I ever have because it's just that good. Seriously, like, if I weren't me, I'd be totally jealous. Actually, even being me I'm still kinda jealous because imagine if I could live with all these incredible folks PLUS myself. Wow. I reckon we'd get along ace. Me and me. Although, I'd have to clean up after myself, which would kind of suck. But then I would still be just as lazy so I totally wouldn't but then I'd probably get annoyed at myself cause there'd be DOUBLE the mess. Double trouble? Cool. Double junk? Not so much. Unless it's the other kind of junk. Before I blow my own mind, I'd better change the subject:

Yes, Sydney is amazing and I missed it terribly and man, my cat? Totally missed her to bits. Though, luckily, she was returned to me not literally in bits, because that would have been really sad. However, I didn't really expect (well I might've a little bit. But not as much as I do) to miss England. The fact that those Eastbourners (and Brightoners) made our leaving do the best leaving do to ever happen to anyone ever didn't exactly help. I thought Eastbourners didn't 'do' dress up parties. How wrong I was. It was frickin' amazing. A M A Z I N G. The theme was the eighties and the nineties and everyone took it as far as they could. You might think that the amount of photos that I've posted here is a lot, but spare a thought to those that were subjected to the entirety of the night's photos. Three hundred? Nope. Try five hundred and something. I'm pretty sure I crashed the Internet trying to put them all on Facebook. And they're ALL brilliant. To be honest though, it's really difficult to take a non-brilliant photo when everybody's dressed so fantastically. Everybody should definitely dress like this all the time.

Looking COOL.

As, hopefully, you might have guessed, I was Madonna from Desperately Seeking Susan.

Patent bow, I made myself. Earrings and necklances from various charity stores.
Glittery top from a pay by the kilo store in Berlin.
Belt, shoes and scarf were both thrifted in Eastbourne.
And the pants are my stay-at-home pants, from Primark.

White Wedding

What a day. I feel completely secure in publicly declaring the wonderful wedding of the fabulous couple, Max and Helen, as an utter, hiccup-free success. Except for that time I slipped down the stairs. That was a bit of a hiccup. But I recovered quickly, with my glass of gin and something or other barely scathed. And that's the main thing, isn't it? Regrettably, I barely got a sober word with the bride and groom throughout the event, and won't do again before I leave back to Australia, as they're now on their honeymoon. Watching them mingle and laugh their way through the day slash evening was a good compromise, however. I don't think I've ever seen two happier people. The thought's crossed my mind that perhaps that was because they got away with only having to converse with me for five minutes tops but let's not go there. Again.

Also, I'm fully aware that I'm going straight to hell for taking photographs in a 'Please no photographs' church but you know what? No. Wait. That's all. Hell. Yep, can't really argue with God can you? Because, you know, last time I checked I couldn't have an argument with a unicorn either. And I did check. He point blank refused to acknowledge me. Waving that horn about, eating grass, flying all around the place. Arsehole (that's directed at the unicorn, not God. God doesn't have an Arsehole. He's HOLY.)



We all positively stuffed our faces at the reception mostly courtesy of Emma (below, with her husband Ford), who made not only brownies but oh-my-honey-cake.



Post-cake, we hopped on a coach to the next village over; a quaint little place with no street lights. Don't ask me how they walk home at night. I suspect they are all anti-vampires (like anti-christs but not), and that they will explode into flames if they go out at night. And when you have anti-vampires flamin' up everywhere, who needs street lights?

We were asked to detail a wish for the couple and hang it on the apple tree which was soon to be planted in their garden. If I'm completely honest, I don't actually remember what I wrote but I do remember distinguishing myself from the other Emma (who is known as Captain), by explaining that I was merely the co-pilot (a position which, in retrospect, has nothing to do with captains or ships), a fact which would have been quite obvious no doubt sans explanation, if only by my overzealous use of 'awesome' and 'like'. I'm pretty sure I broke the world record for the number of times 'awesome' was used in a wish.

Bobby had to do a reading and he was SHITTING his pants. Not literally of course, that would be disgusting. It went down a treat however (the reading, not the shitting) and was followed by the best men's speech (below). Ford, Ben and Ryan - the three best men - charmingly chattered away, humorously following a 'Speeches for Dummies' (or something to that effect) paperback.

Wonderfully feathered hat and patent heels were a few quid from Scope (a charity shop),
the glomesh little bag I found in another cluttered charity shop in Eastbourne,
the dress I made (sans pattern) from some fabric we found in Berlin
and the patent bow I hand made.

Although I feel that it hardly needs to be said, given the photos and the nature of the party, I had the most brilliantly wonderful time at the absolutely amazing event and I wish the now-married couple the world. That's right, THE WORLD.