If the Choux Fitz...

The choux fitted well today.

I was hanging around Smith Street, Fitzroy, early as usual, waiting for Ian.

If you're bored here, you'll be bored everywhere.

In this first of Melbourne's suburbs, age is celebrated. And so is youth.

So is all of life, in all its sudden glory.

We got to lunch before too long, to La Niche. But I'll digress, and take you to Heide Museum of Modern Art, where I wandered afterwards,

among the bee hives

and the sculpture.

A good friend, French food, art, gardens...I didn't miss out on much today.

Jeff Thomson's Cow ( yellow ), 1987, with some neighbouring moos.

 Sixties domestic architecture at its best.

Like Fitzroy, Heide is always re-inventing itself. Both, they are, prepared to take on the new, to mesh the new into their identity.

'In the presence of form II', 1993, by Amish Kapoor. I was listening to children shout inside it to hear the echoes.

I've posted this most elegant sculpture before, Andrew Rogers' 'Unfurling'. So beautifully feminine.

Return now, if you will with me, to Smith Street, where amongst the Victorian grandeur, the dingey digs and the newest of architecture, home-owners are creating native gardens.

It's a streetscape begging for inventiveness...

...which it gets in spades, or in carousels.

A piece from the 'Exquisite Palette' exhibition.

After all this running around, before and after lunch, I was delighted to eat my beef burgundy, authentically French. Our waiting staff, one fully clued in her delicious hat, the other extempore, in her evening dress, served us with grace and humour. I prefer to eat my lunch than photograph it, so, below, see a poster on the premises:

If anyone needs to move to a city where the people are nice and the art is happening, where the past is beautiful, not a trouble, come and see us here.

 Everyone is welcome, choux-less or not.