Pancakes!

24/02/09

Having arrived in Coogee fairly late last night, I decide I have earned a lie-in and a fairly easy day… Possibly a beach day…
Hazel takes me to Coogee Bay. It’s relatively busy, though we soon find a spot on the beach to stake out in the sun on the hot, silver sand and head for the water. It is warm and shallow. I paddle and wade out towards the bigger waves and we stand and natter in the water. I watch the other bronzed swimmers as they bounce over waves and frolic and tumble in the water like dolphins… I look ruefully at my glowing whiteness (despite several weeks in the sun!) and wonder if a spray tan is the way forward…
A wave interrupts my reverie and smacks me full on with its playful white spray!
It surprises me a little but I keep upright, though another girl is knocked flat and vanishes momentarily… It is rather like being a pen with a group of enormous playful puppies, who just want to lick your ears out of friendliness, but who haven’t realised how light you are… Especially when I realise that the patch in which I am standing, on the golden sand, in the limpid blue sea, is actually the exact band where wave and undertow meet. I am shortly walloped on both sides by the energetic waves meeting and flinging their spray high over my head.
At least this way I am supported by one whilst being pushed over by the other!
Hazel and I soon decide to retire to the beach; fighting the exuberant waves, even with feet on sand, is hard work for pansies such as we, who don’t really swim in the sea!
I will just have to reconcile myself to the fact that I will never be an elegant, graceful, seal-like creature… Maybe more of a sea-slug, lolloping gently in the shallows in the sun on the sand…
;)
The sun in Sydney is hot and fierce, and the air beautifully warm… We sit and natter on the beach a bit longer, me covered in sand where it’s welded itself to my sunscreen (this might be the source of the paleness problem – I’m Goth-coloured and practically transparent at home, so I used factor 50+… Maybe I ought to have gone for 30 on reflection, ah well, guess a tan lasts a season but healthy skin a lifetime). However, hunger kicks in around 2, so we decide to wander back up Coogee Bay Road and find some lunch. We stop at a little pavement restaurant and I decide on a barramundi burger… I expect a mushy round white thing nestling forlornly in a soggy sesame bun, but am rewarded with a chunk of breaded, fried fish, piled high with nice lettuce and other interesting salad, packed so full into a lovely, toasted, floury bun that it will barely balance, let alone shut.
Yum.

We head back to base for a shower to make ourselves human again, and walk out along the coast to Gordon’s Bay. It is a pleasant walk, in the late afternoon, and the sun is lower in the sky and gentler, tinting everything a little more golden in its still-warm rays. My hair goes a bit crazy in the salt spray.
We arrive at Gordon’s Bay, after a nice stroll along from Coogee, watching the sea lap the jagged, water-worn rocks on the way. There are a lot of joggers here; apparently some of them even jog all along here up to Bondi. That’s a not inconsiderable distance; it would probably take a couple of hours to walk… Crazies!
We paddle again – the water is so still, warm and inviting, it would be rude not to – and I find shells and a small fish darts past my toes, which are pale blue in the ripples.
On the shore I step on something which makes a loud pop. I later realise that I was VERY lucky… Often on the beaches you find little transparent blue balloons, little air pouches, with a frond of deep royal blue trailing next to it.
These are baby jellyfish. They sting. I stood on one.
But escaped!
I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty that I’d squashed one though, it wasn’t its fault it was beached…

As it’s Shrove Tuesday, we head for the shops for ingredients for dinner! Hooray! Pancake day!
Having acquired components for a good dinner and fudge, we head back to the flat. We experiment with various combinations of cheese, spinach and pancakes. It seems to work best when the spinach and cheese are wilted and melted together in the microwave, then spooned over the cooked pancake before it is flipped together like a Spanish omelette, sealing in the tasty goo… We also do lemon and sugar (of course!).
Very full now.
But still have sufficient energy to make some fudge!
I have a horrible feeling I’m leaving a little trail of hyperactive, latent diabetic, fudge addicts around Australia…
He he.

A nice easy day, much needed after lots of running around in Tasmania last week. I’m looking forward to doing some scampering about over Sydney in the next week though – Bring it on!

;)