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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

A trip to the country.

When James and I arrived in town X* for a three day holiday last week, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The main street was empty but for a few senior citizens, and the bakery offered little more than yesterday’s bread and a few apple cakes. When you ask for a cappuccino somewhere, nothing says ‘absence of a sufficient crema’ more than when the lady says “our cappuccino machine is in the dishwasher. You’ll have to wait ten minutes”. Suffice to say, sufficient crema was indeed absent from the bakery coffee, and each subsequent coffee during the trip.

But James and I are no showbiz assholes. We were happy to be staying in a ghost town with no one under the age of 72. These kids these days with their hippin’ and a hoppin’ and a bippin’ and a boppin’ – we were after some peace, quiet and violent fish slaughter for the purposes of food and sport, god dammit, and we weren’t leaving until we got it.

On our second night in town it was decided that we would have to hunt for our own dinner after an attempt to ‘dine’ at a local ‘restaurant’ on the first night failed us. After looking at a selection of menus from local eateries at our B&B, we choose somewhere based on a menu that had the requisite amount of star anise, compote, spatchcock and jus to render it a classy establishment. So when we arrived at what looked like a cross between a hunting lodge and a retirement village, we swiftly lost our optimism. This was going to be molto craptuacular, and it was too late to escape - we had already been locked within the gaze of the single waitress working that night. We were going to have to eat there, or face being chased out of town by locals with pitchforks on the back of pick ups for cancelling a restaurant booking at short notice.

Of the five hundred or so tables available, only two others were occupied, mostly by holidaying octogenarians who were just finishing up at 7pm, probably after a 5.30pm kick off. By the time our entrees arrived at 7.30pm, all other tables had cleared off to bed. So there we were, alone in room that looked like this.



Things weren’t looking promising for the start. Not knowing what to do with our inexplicable bread plate that was just a few ‘heat and eat’ dinner rolls and those tasteless dried bread stick things that nobody likes, we decided on a little pantomime before waiting for our mains to arrive.




I don’t even need to tell you how crap our mains were – lets just say that we’ve established two dining rules for the Yarra Valley.

1) Never order $30 salmon a restaurant where complementary coffee and tea from an urn on the table next to you is available.
2) Under no circumstances do you turn a spatchcock over to reveal its internal architecture before you have finished eating it.

So faced with another night of Town X’s cuisine, we spent much of Thursday at the trout farm just out of town. I love the fact that James is by far the keener angler, yet despite dangling his artificial fish pheromone-laden worm (I’m referring to his fishing tackle, of course) in the water for longer than me, I landed two enormous trout in fast succession, one of which we took home for dinner. I spent the next hour or so watching the trout farm lady shouting fishing tips at James, just so he could catch one large enough to cook up. That woman was a classic - I’ve never seen someone holding up such delightful pleasantries with two strangers whilst violently smashing a trout’s skull in with a steel rod in a kitchen sink.

So anyhoo, the trip was quite relaxing, and plenty of trout we did eat for dinner that night. Overall we had a lovely time, but I would have to say that the whole trip was worth the effort for this gorgeous photo of James and I – dreamboats that we are.



* Name of country town deleted to protect our delightful bed and breakfast hosts.

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