I’ve been on night shifts this whole weekend (working 10pm to 8:30am) and I don’t know why but I tend to get really sad and moochy when I’m on nights…This weighty, sticky inertia just sets in and I need to muster up huge amounts of effort and enthusiasm to do anything – my hair remains unbrushed (why hello Helena Bonham Carter!), food that requires anything more than a one minute pirouette in the microwave is way too difficult, socialising is totally out of the question (unless you like to see my sad sad face and don’t mind receiving grunts to all your questions), and even my toothbrush feels heavier (don’t worry, I can assure you I somehow do find the will to brush my teeth!). I’m a pitiful sight to behold really.

I knew that the Leederville Carnival was coming up on Saturday but knew that I’d be in my catatonic, PJs-or-scrubs-all-day mode, so I’d pretty much written off going. I woke up in the afternoon around 3pm and proceeded to do my usual energy-conserving shuffle around the house, coffee in hand, when Jinn burst into the house so full of verve and zest for life that it almost hurt my bleary eyes, and demanded that I must take photos of him while planting some daisies (I tell you, this blog has made us even weirder than we were before). After much sighing, grimacing, and declaring that every part of my body was sore in a cephalocaudal order (read head to toe) I dragged my sorry pyjama-clad butt outside and very begrudgingly started taking photos of said daisies.

Bit by bit the warm afternoon sun, the quiet cheery calm of our garden, and the sight of Schnooks lolling about the grass showing off his contorting abilities started to work on me. Heck, even Jinn’s initially annoying enthusiasm started to rub off on me. And then (despite my greatest efforts to cling to my inner Grinch) – I was smiling. The Red Sea parted. Berlin Wall fell. We found life on another planet.

So with that we took ourselves off to the inaugural Leederville Carnival which was held along Oxford St, one of my favourite parts of the world, having spent many an afternoon or evening here enjoying a snag, checking out the new cafe (Foam!), or shopping at my favourite stores (Harry & Gretel, Urban Depot AND Atlas Divine – wallet beware!). Aside from the usual shops, there were stalls run by Bluebird Vintage, Miss Brown Vintage, and foodies plying Mexican food, doughnuts, and Japanese dumplings just to name a few! Go here for a closer look at the festival. I only intended to stay a couple of hours but the stalls upon stalls of vintage goodies and locally made craft wouldn’t let me leave and so we remained until the close of the festival around 8pm. But that’s when it got better…

There’d been a party bus parked in the middle of the carnival, DJ perched atop, that had been pumping out funk/reggae/soul tunes to the happy crowd all day. We were wandering past it when a mob of high-vis clad (read fluoro yellow vests) men started clearing people and pushing around bins to collect rubbish, signalling that the festival was over. Then suddenly, in a massive haha-fooled-you move, brass instruments and drums appeared in their hands from their bins, and even a sexy bass-playing girl spectacularly materialised out of a giant wheelie bin! Spontaneous crazy dancing from the crowd ensued, Santa paid a quick visit and caused the kids to go into a lolly-catching frenzy, and a soul-mama sang some fine tunes closing out a fantastic fun-filled day in the perfect fashion!

And then I went to work. But with a smile rather than a scowl, a swag containing my newly acquired vintage tooled leather handbag, and a belly full of burritos, popcorn and good coffee. 🙂 This girl was aMAzing – her dad is an artist who focuses on abstract art and you can see she definitely inherited the talent! She was drawing and colouring with such confidence and what looked like practised ease, I felt I was in the presence of an established artist.