1 year today!

this week, marks my 1 year anniversary of being in London. And to celebrate, London has gifted me with a week of sunshine and lollypops. win.

So as not to appear ungrateful, yesterday I left work early and went bike riding along the canals with my friend Angie. We ate meringues and drank fizzy water in the sun. Angie even wore shorts! big guns indeed.

There's nothing better than a sunny day in London, when it doesn't get dark until 9pm, the raspberries cost £2 a packet and you can drink beers on the street.

If it were like this all year round, i'd stay forever (except for the fact you can't buy chocolate covered liquorice here... and, most of the time it rains. oh.)

yes. that is a plastic bag floating in the canals. yes. i think it adds charm, no? oh.

Well played London summer... i hope there are a few more 'short-wearing' days coming...

xoxo

happy thursday!

hello baby panda.

i hope you get out of your cot in time for the weekend.

you're awesome.

xx

Cinema Club

What started as an argument in the desert over which one of our dad’s favourite movie was actually Lawrence of Arabia (spoiler alert: it was Elissa), has turned into our newest fad: Cinema Club.

The plan was simple: Get together each month and work our way through all our dad’s favourite movies... it sounds quite cute and sweet, but really it’s just a thinly veiled excuse to get together for wine and popcorn.

So far we’ve watched Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia (which, for the record, was soooo long that when it actually finished we were all chatting, reading magazines or playing on our phones so barely noticed the credits role... sorry Liss’ dad) and have another 6 on the ‘to watch list’. Our dad’s would be so stoked to know that they’re the focus of our new club. Ha.

The best part about Cinema Club has been the dad’s descriptive reasons for their favourite film choices. Without prompting, each of the dads have sent back a detailed email describing their rationale...  One awesome dad started his VERY lengthy response (where he detailed the plots and his thoughts of 4 separate films before settling on Annie Hall..) with the brilliant ‘What a dilemma! Choosing my favourite film is harder than choosing my favourite daughter!’

My dad chose a film called ‘Jesus of Montreal’ as his favourite (?)... and gave a ‘highly commended’ award to a YouTube clip he’d once seen on the making-of a documentary...  If another movie turns out to be as long as Lawrence of Arabia... i’m going to suggest the youtube clip is watched instead.

The other nominations so far have been:

“A stunning French-Canadian film called Barbarian Invasions which is not as the title suggests a Sci-Fi film but rather about a man dying of cancer.”

“Midnight Cowboy followed closely by The Last Picture Show - I like the music by Hayy Nillson and i like the cast, especially Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. the story is quite sad.”

“It was neck and neck with The Graduate, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest wins based on number of times watched (3:1 for those interested).”

“Casablanca...the ultimate romance”

“Local hero. It’s quirky, has good characters, great scenery and fantastic music.'

“Best comedy that still makes me laugh each time would be ‘Van Wilder - party liaison officer’. Despite how sick that may sound - based on laugh value not quality of humour or film production. This would have to be the top.” Rad.

And my favourite: “The appeal of Annie Hall is that in addition to bravely attempting to look at some of the serious issues associated with love and relationships it is devastatingly funny. The comedy is multi-layered with many fabulous one-liners but also visual gags such as captions to show what people were really thinking when they were saying something and the split screen sequence when Woody Allen’s and Diane Keaton’s characters were talking to their respective therapists about how frequently they had sex is a classic.”

Dads are pretty kewl it seems.

xx

Fifty People, One Question

i love this.



so much.

morocco: a lesson in nakedness

At the end of February i went to Marrakech in Morocco with Alex and Elissa. We saw snakes dancing, got wonderfully lost in the souks hunting for spices and carpets, traipsed over the atlas mountains, went to Moroccan baths (hammams) and basically lived out my Aladdin fantasies. 
(side note: turns out Aladdin is not set there. Crushing discovery. Crushing)
It was beautiful and fun and new and exciting and i loved it all (except the part that saw me get violently ill on the way home and throw up on the train... but let's never speak about that again.)


Things I learnt about appropriate dressing:
1. Nothing, absolutely nothing, i own is covered up enough for walking the streets
2. My tshirts are all tragically see through
3. Things are easier when you're near men- to the point that we sort of siddled up to a Moroccan carpet selling teenager who escorted us through the souks. When he was around, people seemingly wanted to throw stuff at us less.

Things I didn't expect about Morocco.
1. We got naked. a lot. Those hammams are a crazy new world. Our first foray into Moroccan bath houses was at the fancy pants 'Les Bains Marrakesh', recommended in Vogue and by Liss' favourite London Liberty Girl. It was ah-mazing. We arrived and were taken to a steamy room with dim, flattering lighting, stripped naked, covered in oil by a Moroccan lady and then told to lie down. Slight issue was that there were only two benches, made of slippery plastic stuff... Which meant that Alex and Liss had to share a bench, naked, covered in oil. It really bonded us all. Woah. 
After a day of luxury where we were scrubbed down, covered in mud, massaged and drank tea (all of it naked... Weird) we thought it might be fun to be 'more traditional', so found a hammam for locals... This may have been a bit too adventurous: we arrived, paid our 25c entry and were given a bucket each and ushered towards a plastic sheet curtain.... We sort of wandered around lost and confused for a while (at least by this point we were used to being naked around each other- but frankly the lighting in this hammam was less forgiving than the one for fancy ladies... Oh.)
Then began the weirdest 30mins of my life as we stumbled into a steam room full of about 50 Moroccan ladies of all shapes, sizes and ages who did not seem to appreciate our presence. There was a definite heirarchy of tap use/bucket sharing/who stands where... and we broke every rule. I splashed someone, was bullied out of the line for the tap and we weren't allowed to stand near the wall. oh.
These ladies knew the rules: they all had little mats or stools to sit on and scrub themselves down. We did not, so sort of hovered awkwardly like the odd ones out we were. It seems Le Bains had not taught us the skills to survive in the real world. But we persevered, turned over one of our buckets and took turns sitting down and washing our hair. Then, it became apparent that people were shaving themselves...and it was sort of just floating past... Yep. Shit got real.
Again, we persevered a little longer and then made a dignified* exit, only to discover a flaw in our plan: we hadn't brought towels. So we put out clothes on, wet through and sort of ran back to our riad. Bad news. I don't think we'll be asked back.
 
But... We went again (to a different one, but another one nonetheless) the next day. We were hooked. 
I sort of wish London had hammams.


*this is a lie.

2. Over the atlas mountains, is a gigantic movie studio town, full of palm trees, giant sandstone studios and the promise of 'Hollywood in the desert' awesome. This is also where the three of us fought over whose dad likes 'Lawrence of Arabia' more (yea, we really covered the big issues). We settled the feud by texting all our dads. Elissa won. Turns out my dad's favourite movie is actually Jesus of Montreal. Alex's dad favours Casablanca... Shattered dreams in the desert. Well played Elissa's dad.


3. There are actually more camels in Australia than in Morocco. To be fair, Alex told me this... so am not 100% sure it's factually accurate, but i was interested nonetheless.

Top insults we attracted
1. A nice man on the road told me to "why don't you go kill yourself" after we'd walked past which was prob a bit unnecessary.
2. Liss was bullied by a street vendor for wearing glasses and called Harry Potter (the scar we'd drawn on her head while she was asleep didn't help matters...)
3. Alex was being followed by a nice man who told her how pretty she was, then when she resisted marriage he yelled "You're Ugly". definite low point.
4. A man in a street restaurant asked me how many camels i wanted for marriage. Liss suggested 30. He counter offered 5 chickens. oh.



All in all, an epic trip and a place i HIGHLY recommend you all go. asap
x

I'll see you soon marrakech xoxo