Well, what's more exciting? The Knights winning seven games in a row(with a chance of more to come), or buying and subsequently driving and enjoying a slick, brand new car?
We've been enjoying these experiences in the last couple of months: the Knights have yet to falter and the car is yet to crack a thousand kilometres so we'll continue to enjoy them both for some time to come. I suspect the gloss might wear from the Knights before the car loses its lustre, however! We've been enjoying other activities as well along the way, including nights of classical music magic and comedy royalty from our teenage years, lunches and dinners for various family members, catch ups with friends and long walks along coastal promenades and deserted beaches.
In Taipei we scootered around for a number of years going full Asian, before "investing" in a half share of a bomb of a car (Ross and Ains owning the other half), affectionately known as "The Aubergino" due to its unusual purple colouring! It was variously battered, dinted and keyed and barely running, but it did the trick and got us to the beach and back for years. We upgraded to the "Silver Bullet", a 1991 Honda Accord, that while well appointed, was also quite old and "feeling its years"(!) by the time we left in 2020. We'd always planned to upgrade our car when we got home and had budgeted for it; in fact, we'd worked an extra year largely to be able to lash out for something that we really wanted. The Jag back home stylishly did its job for three more years, but it too was beginning to creak and groan and had suffered a terrible hammering from the recent hailstorm: it was false economy to get it fixed.
Enter the 2023 Mercedes Benz A250 4matic, metallic black, leather-upholstered pocket rocket straight off the production line in Rastatt, Germany and into our hot, little hands withing days of arriving in Australia in late July. The entire experience from initial interest to driving it away was very special and amazingly seamless. They even transferred Cassy's rego and CAS55Y plates while we waited. They "red-bowed" it and backdropped it for photos, and gave us a through run-through of the electronic wizardry. We are, however, still discovering new tricks every day, and suspect that secrets will reveal themselves for some time to come yet. It's dreamy to drive, and we're finding it's like an entirely new experience, something closely related to "driving" but some new wonder that uses common patterns of behaviour and action yet engenders some kind of ethereal magic. Suffice to say, we're loving it!
We've had dinners out with Mark and Mihoko, who are very excited about the recent nuptials of their son, David, as well as the news they are about to be grandparents! I had an excellent lunch with Mark W. where we once again managed to solve all the problems of the world and had fun besides! Cass has been lunching with the "Big 4", her group of old friends from Grammar, and with her mum on occasions as well as the 3 of us joining with Kristin to celebrate Val's and Kristin's birthdays at Punjab Pavilion. We had a huge outing to celebrate Mum's 88th birthday with a high tea at the cute venue of Ducks in the Field. It was a bit of an operation involving wheelchairs, walkers and driving but we (mainly Sue) managed to provide mum with a memorable experience that she had requested. Mum, despite it being her own birthday, insisted on shouting everyone to thank them for all the help they have given her lately as she transitioned into life at Mayfield Aged Care. Cass and I gave the car its first decent outing when we had a decadent lunch at the superb "8 at Trinity". It was a sublime experience on a beautiful day and we promised each other that we would return to sample the mouth-watering dishes, the perfect service and the lakeside views and ambiance.
The top photo shows the gleaming shine of the car ruined by a splatter of wet grass from some fool with a whipper snipper outside Mum's facility. Suffice to say, I was not amused, as it had just been washed. Oh well, first world problems don't come much bigger than that! I'm reading the 15th instalment of the "Parker" series by Richard Stark: I just can't seem to get enough of this nihilistic neanderthal despite a gap between this novel and the last of 25 years! Cass was gobsmacked to find that the inimitable and erudite John Banville had written a sequel to Henry James's "Portrait of a Lady", Cassy's favourite Henry James novel and the subject of her comparative Masters thesis at uni. Apparently, Banville is "Jamesesque" in his sentence construction, and faithful to the famous characters' nuances and personalities. Cass is savouring "Mrs. Osmond" and is dreading it finishing...apparently she is rating it an A++ already!