Catchup 2nd installment

We are loving the new place with it's gorgeous city view. I hadn't seen a Melbourne sunset before moving here but now I see a spectacular one almost daily.

Barb and Dick, whose house is just round the corner, were visiting from Auckland for a few days and popped in.

We are all enjoying the new kitchen, especially me of course, but it was really put to the test when we had an unexpected visit from a celebrity chef one night. School holidays had started so Jessye was home too. I had invited a few people over for dinner including the MSO's other concertmaster, Markus Tomasi from Salzburg, and Elaine Clark, a Scottish lady who was on trial for Associate Concertmaster along with the Curro sisters, Monica and Sarah, two violinists from the MSO. Monica accepted the invitation but due to a slight miscommunication, Sarah had accepted an invitation for the same night for their friend, Greg Malouf, a well-known Melbourne chef and author of several cookbooks, to go over to their place and cook for them. To cut a long story short, they came up with the creative solution that Greg should come over to our place instead and cook for us all. This was of course brilliant for us. We could have a (very rare) dinner party without even having to cook! Greg prepared the best salmon I have ever tasted with a tahini, yoghurt, crushed roated walnuts, lemon, olive oil and chopped parsley concoction on top. Luckily we had one knife he quite liked and although we didn't have a serving platter big enough, I creatively thought of the spare glass shelf we hadn't needed for one of our Ikea units and he was very pleased with that as a presentation innovation.

A couple of days later, Chris and Grant came to stay for a week at the end of their adventures traveling around NSW. Will and Eleanor came over for dinner that night and we had the leftover salmon cold for an entree. Later in the week we went over to Will's place for a delicious chicken curry. It was good that Chris and Grant were able to check out our new digs so soon after our move and also see Will in his newish place too.

While Chris and Grant had better things to do one morning I took the girls to the Melbourne Show where we focused on our favourite things, the animals and the cake decorating display. This year's cakes were spectacular and most bore hardly any resemblance to an actual cake.

A chance for a nice reunion came that same weekend when Jo and Faith, two dear friends from way back (we were all on the famous 1975 NZ National Youth Orchestra tour together) were in town playing for a show at the Rod Laver Arena and came over for lunch. Joining us was Griff who had dropped off Greer to hang out with the girls. It was warm enough to open the doors to the deck.