Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Back In Town

Elf and I had a great time down on the Tasman Peninsula. The weather has been and still is great for April. We stayed at a place called Osprey Lodge that had lovely water views and steps to the beach. I had a pre-breakfast swim that I enjoyed but left me with an earache and frozen feet until nearly lunch time.

We walked all over the convict site at Port Arthur, and took a boat over to the Isle of the Dead which was the cemetery for the settlement. We walked for a long time until we were footsore and our brains had absorbed too much historic (and some not-so historic) brutality, lunacy and mayhem. Its a lovely setting for such dreadful suffering to have occured.

I would recommend Osprey Lodge except that you are required to chat constantly with the hosts, and I found that a bit tiring. People who are looking for a good long chat - this could be the B & B for you.

We escaped their clutches yesterday morning and drove around the peninsula pretty much at random until we reached Slopen Main, which is a dreamy beach with fine white sand dappled with shade by pine trees. Sorry, I turned into Charlotte Peterswald for a moment there.

I was going to link to her site for those unfamiliar with this real estate poet, but I just found this one which epitomises her work.

"A terraced garden entices the eye upward to this smoothly robust 3 bedroom family home embraces with an airy grace. As glorious sunlight deluges in through large windows into the open plan living an innate sense of generousness and capaciousness envelops this home. With lush carpets, velvety walls and graceful arcs the modern interior contrast softly with the lovely front timber deck inspirational for contemplating the expansive views of the gentle river and rolling hills. Change the focus and survey these rich views from any of the front rooms in quiet comfort. House size 127sqm and land size 703sqm approximately."

Is it generated by some kind of algorithm? Is she on drugs? Does she have 1000 monkeys and 1000 typewriters? What does "smoothly robust" mean? We await a learned commentary on her work to make it accessible to the average reader.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have also been suitably stunned by the language of real estate agents ... there's a nice place going up at Roger River (Smithton!) if you feel like relocating.

I have two irrelevant things to relay: Firstly Miah's newfound fear of "pydas" which involve being fixed to the floor, pointing, and crying through tears "pyda pyda pyda" until the offensive thing (leaf, fly, stain, spider etc) is removed or she is picked up. She is also waking in the middle of the night crying "pyda pyda". what to do??

The second thing is that I have been going to a couple of Weight Watcher meetings ... alas not losing any weight, but the discussions are so funny we all just laugh til we cry. Perhaps you have to be there ... no, I think it's really pretty funny. Remind me to relay some details some time.

Chris Rees said...

Ah - you need a weight-watching blog, Imp. Our neighbours did WW too and they are now svelting about annoyingly.

As to the pydas - hmmm. I would buy a big plush cuddly spider for myself. I would bring it home and say - this is dad's new friend, its a spider. No, you can't have a cuddle, its dad's. No. No, you can't have the spider. Oh, OK. Here - cuddle the spider.

Of course, I don't know where you would find a big plush cuddly spider. Maybe there is a Plush Arachnid Bureau where you are.