Night of the round table

I have just cleared off the small round table, and plonked my drawing things on it. Ideally, drawing will now ensue. But first, blogging. I have been rubbish at blogging this year. Bloggable things have been happening but sometimes the thought of putting on my "writing voice" just wearies and disgusts me. But if I never do it then I'll never do it.

Today is Australia Day. The Australian people broadly fall into two camps: flag-worn-as-a-cape Aussie-pridesters, and progressive types who go to the "Invasion Day" march in the morning but quietly enjoy the afternoon with a few Coonawarra red wines and some of the later Nick Cave albums.

I know, I know - you and I don't fit into either of those categories. But I don't think Australia Day has ever been bigger - more polarised, more loudly pumped up by the bogans and more studiously deconstructed by the progressives. Some people are even writing blogs about it.

We felt that we wanted to be out of the house for the day, but somewhere quiet, so we did the Cygnet loop. From Hobart you can drive south over the mountains to Huonville, then east to Cygnet. From there you have a choice of several winding mountain roads to take you over to the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, with lovely views out to Bruny Island. From there the Channel Highway takes you back to Hobart.

Cygnet has just hosted its annual folk music festival, and was pretty much shut down for the public holiday, so we had lunch at Fleurty's Cafe in Birch's Bay, on the Channel. The cafe is on a farm which grows irises, blackcurrants, garlic, hops and mountain pepper berries (which they distill into oil).

The outlook was stunning, the food marvellous, and the service friendly and attentive. Thumbs up all round, except that I didn't like having commercial radio on in the background. You just don't do that in a swank cafe in a beautiful setting. Bush dusted salmon fillet with orange pepper berry glaze and crazy bargains from our very good friends at Muffler World - the combination is not right is it?

But to be positive - Marcus and I had the salmon and brie tart with a magnificent salad - the minted beetroot was so good. Michael enjoyed his toasted ham and cheese panini. Elf had a goat cheese tart and it was also excellent but I liked mine better.

This evening back home Marcus and I went I up to the cricket nets, and I introduced him to the physics of the taped-up tennis ball.