Happy birthday to you. From the best songs 🎶 . . . Best lover … And from good friends and true, from old friends and new, may good luck go with you and happiness too!
When a man has a birthday, he takes a day off. When a woman has a birthday, she takes at least three years off.
– Joan Rivers
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.
— Robert Browning
The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
— Lucille Ball
You won't be at a loss for romantic dining options when in eastern suburbs. There are many legendary art lovers haunts in Sydney, but none loom larger than Wet Paint, the Bohemian Antipodean restaurant that’s been feeding Bronte’s locals for more than 20 years.
It’s not high-end or cutting edge ― it’s Bronte’s version of comfort food. Inexpensive, consistent and fast. It also makes the list of places to go after a bad day when the only cure is a good size yet affordable chicken, beef or fish dish.
Known for offering generous portion sizes and robust flavours, the menu at Wet Paint changes frequently to offer a host of tasty dishes that are of a Modern Australian, Mediterranean, North African and Creole fusion, at an affordable price.
Owner & Chef Scott Luland has run Wet Paint since 1999 and continues to passionately create a menu that uses the highest quality cuts and freshest produce sourced daily as well as the freshest local seafood delivered daily. (We were served by the daughter Sonia and Londoner Andy)
Philip K Dick: the writer who witnessed the futureBBC
Are There Lost Civilizations in Earth’s Past?
The Return of Primitive Technology
Maria Prymachenko is one of Ukraine’s best-known artists. Known for her colorful, expressive, and “primitive” style, Prymachenko won a gold medal for her work at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris and Pablo Picasso is said to have remarked “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian” after seeing her work. Prymachenko’s paintings featured animals (both real & fantastical), everyday Ukrainian people, food & agriculture, and themes of war & peace.
WELL, MAYBE, BUT COVIDIOCY HAS DISCREDITED MEDICAL RESEARCH: The secret to stopping Alzheimer’s is in your gut, not brain, experts say.
It is a fragment of London as it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions. Here flourish in great preservation many of the holiday games and customs of yore. The inhabitants most religiously eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, hot-cross-buns on Good Friday, and roast goose at Michaelmas; they send love-letters on Valentine’s Day, burn the pope on the fifth of November, and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at Christmas. Roast beef and plum pudding are also held in superstitious veneration, and port and sherry maintain their grounds as the only true English wines; all others being considered vile, outlandish beverages.
~ Gentrification is cleaving the community in two:
All empires, however, says some philosopher or historian, are doomed to changes and revolutions. Luxury and innovation creep in; factions arise; and families now and then spring up, whose ambition and intrigues throw the whole system into confusion. Thus in latter days has the tranquillity of Little Britain been grievously disturbed, and its golden simplicity of manners threatened with total subversion by the aspiring family of a retired butcher.
The family of the Lambs had long been among the most thriving and popular in the neighbourhood; the Miss Lambs were the belles of Little Britain, and everybody was pleased when Old Lamb had made money enough to shut up shop, and put his name on a brass plate on his door. In an evil hour, however, one of the Miss Lambs had the honour of being a lady in attendance on the Lady Mayoress, at her grand annual ball, on which occasion she wore three towering ostrich feathers on her head. The family never got over it; they were immediately smitten with a passion for high life; set up a one-horse carriage, put a bit of gold lace round the errand boy’s hat, and have been the talk and detestation of the whole neighbourhood ever since. They could no longer be induced to play at Pope-Joan or blindman’s-buff; they could endure no dances but quadrilles, which nobody had ever heard of in Little Britain; and they took to reading novels, talking bad French, and playing upon the piano. Their brother, too, who had been articled to an attorney, set up for a dandy and a critic, characters hitherto unknown in these parts; and he confounded the worthy folks exceedingly by talking about Kean, the opera, and the “Edinburgh Review.”
What was still worse, the Lambs gave a grand ball, to which they neglected to invite any of their old neighbours; but they had a great deal of genteel company from Theobald’s Road, Red-Lion Square, and other parts towards the west. There were several beaux of their brother’s acquaintance from Gray’s Inn Lane and Hatton Garden; and not less than three Aldermen’s ladies with their daughters. This was not to be forgotten or forgiven. All Little Britain was in an uproar with the smacking of whips, the lashing of miserable horses, and the rattling and the jingling of hackney coaches. The gossips of the neighbourhood might be seen popping their nightcaps out at every window, watching the crazy vehicles rumble by; and there was a knot of virulent old cronies, that kept a lookout from a house just opposite the retired butcher’s, and scanned and criticised every one that knocked at the door.
This dance was a cause of almost open war, and the whole neighbourhood declared they would have nothing more to say to the Lambs.
Irving’s dismay made him hope that this folly would gradually die away; that the Lambs might move out of the neighbourhood; might die, or might run away with attorneys’ apprentices; and that quiet and simplicity might be again restored to the community.
But unluckily a rival power arose. An opulent oilman died, and left a widow with a large jointure and a family of buxom daughters. The young ladies had long been repining in secret at the parsimony of a prudent father, which kept down all their elegant aspirings. Their ambition, being now no longer restrained, broke out into a blaze, and they openly took the field against the family of the butcher. It is true that the Lambs, having had the first start, had naturally an advantage of them in the fashionable career. They could speak a little bad French, play the piano, dance quadrilles, and had formed high acquaintances; but the Trotters were not to be distanced. When the Lambs appeared with two feathers in their hats, the Miss Trotters mounted four, and of twice as fine colours. If the Lambs gave a dance, the Trotters were sure not to be behindhand: and though they might not boast of as good company, yet they had double the number, and were twice as merry.
The whole community has at length divided itself into fashionable factions, under the banners of these two families. The old games of Pope-Joan and Tom-come-tickle-me are entirely discarded; there is no such thing as getting up an honest country dance; and on my attempting to kiss a young lady under the mistletoe last Christmas, I was indignantly repulsed; the Miss Lambs having pronounced it “shocking vulgar.” Bitter rivalry has also broken out as to the most fashionable part of Little Britain; the Lambs standing up for the dignity of the Cross-Keys Square, and the Trotters for the vicinity of St. Bartholomew’s.
Thus is this little territory torn by factions and internal dissensions, like the great empire who name it bears.
My grasp of the history that Irving is referring to is weak, but I think these ‘internal dissensions’ may refer to the War of 1812, when the US and its indigenous allies declared war against Great Britain and its allies in British North America. But no doubt that in an Empire the size of Britain’s, there would have been rebellions all over the place from time to time. There was Indigenous resistance to colonial expansion here in Australia, but I don’t suppose Irving would have had a clue about that.