Spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere and I fully expect to see plenty of lamb PADs over the next couple of months. I wasn't necessarily expecting to see one today, but you know, in theory and all that.

However since it's autumn here and it's at least an hour or two's drive from the nearest sheep farm, I had to do some urban improvisation.

In the immediate post-war years, this area of south-west Sydney saw an influx of Greek migrants. Indeed there's a major Greek Orthodox church only a kilometre or so from here that I'll have to get around to shooting at some point. Although the concentration has been thinned out by shifts in migration patterns, there's still a significant if diminishing Greek presence in the area.

This explains not only the Greek writing on the right and the stencil of the Doric column on the left, but also the presence of a future plate of Kleftiko to the left of the happy butcher.

The butcher may well be happy because at this ungodsly hour he was tucked up in bed rather than making his way to the station to catch a train which would arrive at its destination, for the second time in two days, five minutes late. Five minutes may not seem like much until you consider that in a wonderful exercise in scheduling there are only three minutes to make the connecting bus, so twice this week I got to spend a glorious 25 minutes (in the pouring rain yesterday) at the bus stop waiting for the next bus. (Actually I went into the nearby Maccas and bought a coffee. Thank heavens for notebooks, though my one's battery needs replacing since it can only just /just not (depending on my luck) manage the extra 25 minutes between power points.)

Last Year