the kid goes to ballet now, in pink: leotard, wrap skirt, socks, shoes, hair band, pink. her ballet bag, a hello kitty tote, is also pink. i am happy to play along, partly because i actually like pink, but mainly because the classes are on saturday mornings in haberfield.

it’s not too far away i suppose, only three suburbs and two buses with efficient, pain-free connections, but i’d never felt like we had to go, and consequently, we rarely did. now we’re there every weekend, taking full advantage of the cannoli, or the panini filled with all manner of cured meats. or both.

after class this past saturday we met cousin sharon for cannoli at pasticceria papa. that was the plan, anyway. the original idea had been to pop in for a quick cannoli, and then move on to a neighbouring suburb for dumplings or duck soup. but our table was right next to the hot food counter, and said counter had never appeared so bursting with bounty. heat-lamped, gold-tinted beauty.

we took our place at the end of the queue, and inched our way down the line. golly gee whizz, the italians here are that much surlier than the ones at a&p sulfaro half a block up the road. over the last few weeks we had become accustomed to the friendly and smiley — though slowish — service at sulfaro. at papa’s, we wavered a little under the glare of our stern countergirl, but we pretended as if our ordering food was not actually imposing upon her, and asked for sour cherry gelato, and ricotta cannoli, and a miniature custard tart topped with a strawberry, a wedge of kiwifruit, a slice of nectarine, a sliver of plum, and half a dewy little fig. at this point the thought of dumplings lingered only the shortest moment before jumping out the window, and we ordered a couple of slices of pizza for the table.

one, a quite straightforward prosciutto and rocket pizza, and the other, a monstrous beast covered in crumbled-up minced meat, spinach, whole button mushrooms roasted succulent, slices of hard boiled eggs — yolks strewn about with gay gold abandon, eggplant, capsicum and tomatoes…

you read all this stuff about pizza purists, and how toppings should be sparse and restrained, but this specimen of crazy ass overblowness is clearly proof of how the other end of the spectrum can be just as wonderful.

we ate the pizza, and then the sweets (except for the kid, who started off with the gelato), and then i cast my head towards the gelato counter with its tubs of milo gelato, and a mystery flavour that involved ribbons of caramel and broken-up cookies. and i thought that maybe, just maybe i could be bothered joining the queue again.

but nah, maybe next week.