Best Shot Monday: To The Beach

How about this for a beach house eh? 2 million Australian Dollars to build! I wonder what they live in during the week?

This weekend saw us down the coast a bit at Carrickalinga with our friends, The Dares. This is not their beach house, although theirs was very pleasant indeed, but we all lusted after it big time.

This one was taken from their balcony and shows how close to the lovely beach they are. I loved the bend in the road here. I was able to go for a walk each morning, which, added to my fantastic walk with the Bestie on Friday, means I have now walked for 4 days in a row!!! I must keep it up.

We headed on down there on Friday night, stopping at the historic Victory Hotel for a fantastic meal including Oysters Kilpatrick (my fave kind) and gourmet dim sims. After some convivial conversation and the promise of BOARD GAMES, we zoomed off for the final 20 min drive to the beach house. Imagine my surprise when we reached the house and the first thing to greet me was a cat! They bring their cat with them to the beach house and she had been patiently waiting in the car as we had relaxed at the hotel!!!!

Now the board games thing was a small victory and here is why. Himself doesn't play board games. Doesn't. Except Scrabble at a reeeeeally big push and Chess with Small Boy although this has dropped off recently. I, on the other hand, come from a family of inveterate board game players. As a child, every Christmas involved the introduction of a new board game to the family's repertoire. There was Cluedo, (Colonel Mustard in the Library with the poison) Battling Tops, Twister of course, Mastermind, Masterpiece....the list goes on. My Dad favoured the games which challenged the mind although he was very quick to commandeer 'Battling Tops' for the adults to play on those wonderful Boxing Day parties when friends came round.

Despite this seemingly endless stream of games, I was always jealous of the Bestie who had Mousetrap! She, being an only child, was always after a playing partner and in our
adult life we discovered many a game together including; Trivial Pursuit, Greed, Risk, Stop Press (one of my faves) and of course Pictionary.

Later, when I lived in the UK, my youngest sister took on the role of gamebringer and part of the Christmas routine involved the latest game she and her husband had purchased. Taboo, Balderdash and Pass the Bomb were some of these. We tend to favour word games nowadays I think. Whatever the game, my family is loud and enthusiastic. There is much shrieking with laughter and, where my father is concerned, cheating!!!! Himself has had no such family tradition.

Now if truth be told, I think it's just that he doesn't like losing. He doesn't get the fact that most of the fun is in the playing. It's all about the time your father draws a rabbit for Pictionary and leaves off the most obvious distinguishing features of a rabbit; ears and tail! Its about creating headlines in Stop Press which reference Bishops and Choirboys for every scenario. Its about making mistakes, being miles behind and good natured gloating. Chiefly it's about family and community. If you win...its a bonus.

So when Rachel announced that she had forgotten to bring her newest game but it was alright because they'd left Pictionary and Articulate up there, from last time....I was ecstatic. I was also sneakily jubilant because I knew He would find it difficult to say 'no' to his hosts :-D

Friday night we played Pictionary. Himself and I won. Saturday night we played Articulate. We won again!!! With a bit of luck, I may be able to get him to play board games in the future. I think we have broken the aversion. Of course, it may all come undone if someone beats us next time.

The other wonderful part about going away for the weekend is food. Saturday morning we didn't quite make breakfast but had a lovely brunch instead at a wild cafe in the neighboring town of Yankalilla. Lilla's Cafe is in an historic cottage with a lovely garden area containing the ivy draped ruins of the original chimney and fireplace, a corrugated iron life sized cow sculpture, many androgynous pottery fairies and a live donkey! The owner is a larger than life red head whose portrait has been painted by not one but two local artists for the Yankalilla Show's 'Yankibald Prize'. (taken from the prestigious Australian Archibald Prize). We feasted on foccacia with chicken and avocado, a steak stack topped with bacon and eggs benedict and other goodies. The display of cakes was superb but we resisted temptation.

On Saturday night we were treated to the southern American version of oysters. Rachel is from North Carolina and she was telling us about their tradition of 'Oyster Roasts' which involve steaming a bushel of oysters on an outdoor BBQ or fire in the freezing cold. In tribute to this we bought 2 dozen fresh Smokey Bay oysters and steamed them, indoors. We then sat in the warm dining room and shucked them, dipped them in garlic butter and ate them on crackers with Tabasco. Fantastic! The flavour and texture of natural oysters is retained without the nasty cold slimy sensation and, let's face it, everything tastes great when dipped in garlic butter in good company. It was a pity there were only 2 dozen!

We also went down to the beach at dusk on Saturday night and played boccie (spelt?) until it got too dim to see the jack. Wonderful.

So that was our lovely weekend. It was all topped off by the Grand Final on Sunday and, at the risk of eliciting more gloating from the Gawlerites, we shall say NO MORE about that!!!!







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