Down the coast

Had four days off down at beautiful Brunswick Heads with the folks and my dads brother and a heap of his family. It came at just the right time, I'd had a brutal week at work and was starting to feel a bit heavy from the non stop training so a few days of this was just what the doc ordered.






Ian and Allen (my dad) are old school fishos so there was a fair bit of fishing planned. The fish of choice is the blackfish, a good feed but boring as batshit to catch. Give me whiting fishing any day. Allen has brought me down the little tinny for me to have, so I'll be finding out what's good on the Albert River. I'd planned on doing a bit of eating, drinking beer, cooking, reading and writing.




I read two books in the three days. I picked up the first just as we were getting ready for dinner. Straight away I was not hooked, but intriuged. World War Z is, as the title suggests, a zombie book. I'm not really into the old Zed, never seen a Romero movie or read any Zed fiction. This book was something different though, it was a historian going throughout the world, gathering aneccdotes about the war on Zed. The closest thing I've ever read to this was old Tolkien's supplementary books, the Simmilarion and Unfinished Tales, which were like history books for the world Lord of the Rings was set in.


Great read. Once you read a bit you forget that Zed is a figment of the authors mind and concentrate on the stories and the picture that he builds of how the world could go if something when wrong. Doesn't have to be Zed, could be swine flu or bearded nutters the only problem was with the book is that it switched me into rude mode, where I partially ignore guests and just keep reading.

The next book off the pile was blogger/author Sam de Brito's The Lost Boys. Birmo reccomended this to me, maybe they have a club or a union or something. Anyway despite enjoying having a tradional narritive again, this was a hard book to read. Running the pubs, I knew characters like these, fuck ups that they are. It's one of my motivating factors in life, don't end up like one of them. Despite the depressing and bleak material, it's a good read.

I love Brunswick, small, quiet, good coffee and a beautiful setting. We ate well, fresh blackfish in foil with ginger, chilli, garlic, butter and lime. Shin beef slow cooked with Montieths Winter Ale and split peas, beans and pearl barley. Rib fillet in a marinade of garlic, lime juice, soy, honey and chilli. Four days of not training.

And a three day working week to come.

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