November 1992 and into December
A Slide Night, Holidays, and NYE
For an introduction to what these Menu Diary posts are about, please click HERE. And for the reasons why you really should read this series, please click HERE.
Monday 2 November. Cardboard sausages. These were left overs from Colin and Julie’s barbecue the day before.
Tuesday 3 November. Once again Tren’s Original Curry, as discussed in previous Menu Diaries.
Saturday 7 November. Muresk is an Agricultural College affiliated with the university at which I was working. It is about an hour and a half drive North East of Perth. I believe it was a team building event. We were allowed to bring our partners and we had an evening barbecue and stayed the night in the residential college. I remember it as quite an enjoyable break.
Sunday 8 November. This time it was Ann’s turn to host the session. I don’t recall anything about it, but we must have eaten enough there. Ann comes from a farming background and you can usually be assured of a good meal when you go and see her.
Thursday 12 November. Not far from where we live is Bentley TAFE (Tertiary and Further Education). Among other trade training it provides courses in hospitality, including for chefs and front of house restaurant staff. They have a small restaurant you can attend, and for a very reasonable price get a three course meal with silver service.
The service, culinary expertise and confidence of staff tends to be better at the end of the semester rather than the start. Fortunately November is near the end. We were there with our friends Clare and John, who I haven’t seen for years, and have lost touch with.
Guests at the restaurant were encouraged to talk to the wait staff about the food and wine choices, which all four of us did with gusto. I remember the bread rolls were excellent, I don’t think I recall the rest of the meal.
That is probably consistent with Trenna’s comment “Good price”.
The college restaurant still exists today, but seems to be booked out many months in advance.
A Slide Night!
Friday 11 November. This was another interesting night. The background is that in May 1983 (more than 9 years earlier) I had gone to Europe for an extended holiday (10 months long) with my friends Bart and Col, and my then girlfriend Sandy. Not long after Sandy and I returned she dropped me. I wasn’t very happy about it at the time, but of course, a while later I met Trenna.
Anyway, on 11 November Colin, Bart and I and our wives got together for a reunion. We also invited Eggs who had had less time off work in 1983 but managed to meet up with us for the Oktoberfest – no one invited Sandy.
We had all taken slides whilst away and, as arranged, we met at Bart and Marie’s house and each had with us our “50 best” slides. Mine and Bart’s spanned the whole trip and were very enjoyable. Almost all of Col’s deliberately included Sandy in them!
It was still a fun night but Trenna was reluctant to do another slide night after that. We each brought some food along to share and as you can see there was quite a variety.
And Holidays
Monday November 16 to the end of the year. Who knows? Trenna didn’t record it. I haven’t checked, but I suspect that is the longest break in these records.
However, as you might guess, Trenna and I had some other records, so I can report the following.
Monday 9 November – Friday 4 December. I had 4 weeks annual Leave from work. During that holiday we did go camping, probably from 20 November to the 25th. We went to the Southern town of Albany and the Stirling Ranges. There were a few notable moments that I will probably incorporate into a future story.
Thursday 10 December. Dinner at Ann’s. Probably another Bachelor Dinner.
Saturday 19 December. Trenna and I attended my work’s end of year dinner at the Hillcrest Restaurant in South Perth. The Hillcrest was a great restaurant and was upstairs in the Hurlingham Hotel – though I think it was a separate business. Lovely view, great service and fabulous food. We went there a number of times. Best of all for Trenna and me was that it was only 5 minutes walk from our house.
Probably 15 or 20 years ago that pub was demolished and replaced by a bunch of apartments – Damn!
Thursday 31 December. We went to a New Year Eve party at Ann’s (again? – she was doing a lot!). It had a 1970s theme -yes, we even had 70s parties in the 90s!
