Hey, guess what? Tina Arena has been spotted eating meatballs at IKEA at Rhodes in Sydney. Although I’ve always been a fan of Tina, I’m even more so now since the meatballs there are actually quite good. Not as good as they are in Sweden, and not as good as the frozen ones you can take home with you, but still reasonably tasty. I wonder if she asked for extra lingonberry (like I do) and I wonder if she also also had the lingonberry softdrink they have that always froths too much? And I wonder if she might have picked up some Kalles Kaviar to take home with her?
I’m also left wondering: did she go just for the meatballs? Or was she there for another reason? Is she leaving the UK/France behind and moving to Sydney, thus buying some flatpack furniture? How many Billy book-cases did she buy?
You see, that’s the problem with newspapers these days: there’s not enough depth in their reporting. These are important questions I want to know the answers to. “The Daily Telegraph”, these days, lacks the level of investigative reporting we once had under Col Allen, wouldn’t you agree?
There was a time – maybe five to ten years ago – when I would devour the weekend newspapers. There was always “news” in the weekend papers. You would always learn something from the weekend papers. Sometimes I would line up at the service station or at the newsagency at Taylor Square as the papers came hot off the presses.
But what did I learn today from the newspapers today? Oh yeah, apparently the NSW Labor Party faces certain defeat at the next state election. Wow, that’s a shock. I never expected that. It’s no wonder the first part of the weekend papers I read, these days, is the travel section. And then I go to the “analysis” section of the paper to hopefully make some sense of the news I’ve read throughout the week.
From time to time, I still refer to myself a “news junkie”. I want to know what’s going on in the world. I have an avid interest in the detail of modern public life. But I just don’t rely on newspapers for that detail in the way I used to. Instead, I turn to them for analysis. Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, a lot of the “analysis” is nothing more than fairly predictable, partisan commentary.
And today, it was a case of reading the papers at my local Chinese restaurant as I enjoyed a late lunch. Although I dealt with a couple of calls early in the day, I had a good sleep in today until about lunchtime. Partly it was because I felt like it, and partly it because I needed it, since I ended up having a bit of an unexpected late night.
A late night which saw me wandering through Surry Hills in the early hours of the morning, and discovering someone who had left behind both their jeans and their backpack. I hope they didn’t come to any harm. More likely there was a bit of over-indulgence in what’s become a lengthy Halloween “celebration” in Sydney.
What’s with all the Halloween costumes? They were out last night, and they were out again tonight. This Halloween thing seems to have happened fairly rapidly in Australia. It was a kids thing a couple of years ago, and now it seems it’s an adult thing too. And it’s STILL not Halloween proper.
I noticed it tonight because, once again, unexpectedly, I ended up out on the town. A mate was up from Canberra and he asked if I felt like a drink, so naturally enough we went out for a drink and a dance. We were surrounded by people wearing Halloween costumes.
It was a welcome aside, nonetheless, from an otherwise inactive, boring Saturday night which, until then, had been highlighted only by a trip to Coles. That’s my usual Saturday night routine these days…
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