Day out

We set off to Mt Lawley in search of some lunch today. Ended up at The Queen’s on Beaufort Street, where we shared a chicken caesar salad and the dish called “The Plate”, which came with grilled cacciatore sausage, Danish style fetta, smoked salmon dip, dukkah, kalamatta olives, extra virgin olive oil and toasted Turkish bread. M had a glass of shiraz merlot, while I had a middy of Beez Neez. Very nice, even if one or two of the waiters seemed to be swanning around trying to look cool instead of actually serving people.

After lunch we wandered over to Leederville, in search of a movie to watch. Unfortunately there was nothing either of us felt like watching at The Luna, so we wandered down the street to Oxford Street Books where I browsed the birthday cards – they always have interesting non-Hallmark selections. Meanwhile M got his hands on a copy of the local rag and we decided we’d go see The Constant Gardener.

Because there was a bit of time to kill before the movie we decided to see if we could find a new secondhand bookshop – I’d found its advertising flier in Oxford St Books – The Booktrail Secondhand Bookshop at 226 Carr Place, Leederville. If you’ve visited Eminem (recently mentioned in a New York Times travelogue of Western Australia, no less!) before, Booktrail is just a couple of doors up from the restaurant.

It’s always good to find a new bookshop, and Booktrail is promising. A small shop (say 24m2), but filled with lots of interesting titles across a range of areas. There’s a good coverage of current stuff in the fiction section, a reasonable science fiction selection and interesting titles in all the areas you’d expect – craft, collectibles, philosophy, religion, history, current affairs, and languages. M found a copy of Elizabeth Moon‘s Hunting Party, which he’s been wanting to read for a while, and I got a copy of a 1966 Chinese-English dictionary 通用漢英辭典 General Chinese English Dictionary, published by 中華書局 Chung Hwa Book Company in Hong Kong (another one for the collection). M had a chat with the owner (I got shy and concentrated on looking at the stuff on the shelves), and found out that the shop’s been going for some 14 months. I hope the business does well – there were four or five others browsing while we were there, and I can certainly see us going back there next time we’re in Leederville!

The Constant Gardener was showing at The Paradiso in Northbridge. I enjoyed it, even if the topic was depressing (the attempt to reveal a cover up by government officials of shonky drug experiments on poor African people) and might even have to read the book sometime. And Israd, if Ralph Fiennes had’ve been in King Kong… (Just kidding! Mr Fiennes would have been completely mis-cast and wasted in that sort of Hollywood blockbuster.)

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2 Comments

Miss L 3 January 2006

OOOOOOOOH…. and EVENING post!

CW 5 January 2006

Hi Miss L,

Happy New Year 🙂

Yah an evening post (a few evening posts, even) – will wonders never cease???

🙂