Little thoughts

Yesterday on a long walk we happened past this telegraph pole and, lo and behold, the people of North Fitzroy are making wishes. This makes me so happy! Just three days after I put up my little poster, people had taken home "hope," "a fresh start," and "a belly laugh" in their pockets. I wonder what they'll wish for next. I'll try to get back after a week or so and report back to you. We had such a lovely, gentle weekend: long walks through the city; making fajitas at home with friends; baking cupcakes; cuddling a baby who snores like a tractor; and I finally managed to write some long overdue letters to friends in Belgium and Germany and America, drawing pictures on the envelopes.

As you may have noticed, on Friday I launched my new blog, to absolutely no fanfare. I've made the move from Weebly across to Wordpress, which was a torturous process because I had to cut and paste every one of my blog posts! Yeesh. This means I lost all the wonderful comments that were on the old site, something that gives me not a little sadness because the comments are what this blog is all about: community. You! I miss you! The silver lining is that Wordpress allows for a much better management of comments, so I'll actually be better able to interact with you in the future. The blog you see today is a kind of Stage 1, my content in a basic template. Shortly I'll start working with a very talented friend who will help me customise things to make it look and interact a lot better. Maybe then I'll permit myself a little fanfare (perhaps even a competition or two).

Also, I want to introduce you to an amazing cafe I discovered last week, the Grub Food Van. We headed up there with friends, including Madeleine's little boyfriend, who oddly enough showed a lot more love for his green balloon and his slice of hazelnut gateau than for my princess. Hmm. Thankfully she slept right through the insult. At Grub, there's an indoor cafe area as well as a kitchen inside a silver caravan to serve food to diners in the sunny courtyard. But my favourite space is something nestled in between: a kind of giant greenhouse with cafe tables and a vegetable garden and a ping pong table and a partial kitchen hidden behind a wall of sweet pea. I planned to go back and take some proper photographs for you, but our walk took us in the opposite direction on the weekend, so these iPhone snaps will have to do.

Speaking of greenhouses, did you ever see the movie Greencard? I've had this movie on the mind lately. Partly because I often sing the song from the closing credits to Madeleine when she cries, and partly because this movie is a kind of Utopian vision of inner city life. A glorious, crumbling rooftop greenhouse smack bang in the middle of Manhattan, crying out to be restored. A volunteer army of 'Green Guerillas' creating verdant spaces for play and food in the poorest of districts and the most barren of cityscapes. And a giant of a Frenchman (who a friend once described as "he looks like God held out a lump of clay and then just chucked it onto his face") who is so... elemental... that he is all kinds of attractive. I first saw this movie in my early twenties and oh boy I wanted everything in it!

But back to that closing credit song. I looked everywhere to see where it came from, and turns out it was composed just for this movie. The chorus is perfect to sing to a crying baby:

Keep your eyes On the prize Don't be dismayed Don't be dismayed Deep in your heart You must believe Everything is gonna be alright Everything is gonna be alright Everything is gonna be alright Some day.

Happy Monday.

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