i knew a girl once, whose wild teenage years were frittered away in the eastern suburbs. a few years ago, she had an appointment in parramatta, but she showed up at an address on the equivalent street in newtown, because she knew that the meeting place was in the western suburbs, and i guess newtown was as far west as she considered civilisation to have reached.

i don’t know what the point of that story is, just that it amuses me to think of it. i lived in surry hills for just over ten years, and now i don’t, and i miss it sometimes. i just had it in my head that the east was a bitch to get to, with the buses and the waiting and the kid… but now that the kid is able to leap capital T in a single bound, and survived the bondi expedition last sunday, i thought that maybe the eastern suburbs would be less painful to tackle. so during the week, we did it twice more!

wednesday, we loaded up on morning tea at zumbo, then caught two buses out clovelly way. halfway on the second bus, ana txted to say that she was going crazy inside her four walls, and could we meet at a cafe instead? um, sure, because after all, she did just have a baby.

we met up at clodeli, with the shelves along the walls packed with italian imports, and the glass case with its bounty of salads, sandwiches and fat cakes. there was a stand of mini cupcakes piled three-high on the counter, so that was the kid sorted. i had a slice of house-made pear and raspberry bread — toasted golden crunchy on the inside, slightly more soggy than necessary on the inside, and served with little dishes of ricotta and honey — and a pot of leaf tea, which at $3.50, was the same price as the cup of teabag that i had in the strand arcade a couple weeks ago: i’d asked the waitress if it was at least a good teabag, and she assured me it was, before serving up the twinings on a string, grumble.

but clodeli, it was pleasant, eating cake surrounded by the maple syrup aura of ana’s hotcakes, and reading the vintage little golden books provided. and because the newborn astrid kept up her end of the bargain and breastfed for a good forty minutes or so, it was soon time for lunch!

at last, the zumbo chorizo and olive baguette emerged from my bag, no longer the soft warm thing i’d bought straight off the delivery van that morning, but still delicious after a spell in the oven back at ana’s. in an amazing feat of bad timing and/or planning, she is laden with two-week-old baby, three-week-old (and counting!) roof repair job, and a host of new kitchen cabinets waiting to be installed in the current loungeroom by her fella (who evidently has a different idea to girls of what paternity leave involves).

the packet of zumbo baci biscotti was well-received, though not opened, but it looks like chocolate ganache sandwiched between hazelnut biscuits, so how could it be bad? the sour cherry and almond biscotti was totally part of my plan for morning tea, but after the cafe interlude, i thought i’d re-assign it after-dinner duties. back home, the intense sweetness of the sturdy biscuit crust and the sticky marzipan was tempered by the whole tart cherry hidden within.

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saturday — beautiful blue sky saturday — we got 'round the two-bus hurdle by catching one bus into the city, and then walking the rest of the way into the shiny heart of paddington. the kid was strapped into her luxury kmart stroller, so she didn't care. but we thought it was wise, me and deborah, because of the cupcakes.

whizzing home on the bus from bondi last sunday, i had caught a fleeting glimpse of a cupcake bakery, and thought we might have to investigate further. happily, the cofa spring fair was on just up the road, lending some respectability to our excursion.

we did our best to ignore the riot of colourful cupcakes by the entrance, and wondered at the amazing cardboard mainframe computer directly opposite, housing an art student, a manual typewriter and a very long strip of paper. i did the same thing i do every time i attend this open day: took a handsome flier for the fine arts course, even though i know i will never go back to school for three years to write long essays on art history just so i can have someone tell me to make some art. sigh.

we got tattooed in the inner courtyard, by which time the sun and free candy had worn a crease into the kid’s cheery demeanor. lunchtime, then.

i have no idea where we lunched. i mean, i know the building, on the corner of the street leading up to cofa, and i have a vague memory of it being gertrude and alice bookshop and cafe, which i only ever read about, and which sounded a little too literary and feminist for me. but my googling this evening has only unearthed gertrude and alice in bondi, and i don’t recall what the sign said, above the door, we were so hungry to get in and get eating.

what i do recall is that the risotto was surprisingly good, not the slushy-mushy mess you might expect from something scooped out of a large bowl in the glass display case: it was still just al dente, and salty with chunks of fetta. wilted spinach and ribbons of roasted capsicum all the way through. we shared this, as well as a greek salad, which was greek only because of what, the olives? the fancy green leaves were almost untouched by dressing. but we were mostly happy, sitting upstairs at a low checkerboard table, surrounded by old books. and then the kid started smearing the avocado from her sandwich over the handsome corduroy stool, and then tipped over said stool and drove it across the room, and we knew it was time to hunt down them cupcakes.

the saturday arvo promenade up oxford street is fraught with fashionistas; more skinny jeans than you can poke a pointy heel at, and all moving at a pace quite detrimental to getting somewhere fast. but we made it, eventually, to this cupcake bakery called the cupcake bakery, and we joined the queue out the door.

the thing is, there are lots of people behind the counter at the cupcake bakery, but most of them seemed focussed on icing the cupcakes. that said, the cakes on display were exceptionally nicely frosted. so it’s good they have at least that working for them, because the counterfolk were unblinking and surly, and the cakes themselves, when we finally sat down with them, were simultaneously dry and dense.

“like sponge,” we agreed. but not that light and airy feel of good sponge cake; really, it might have been useful for a spot of flower arranging. and still, it wasn’t bad cake. it just wasn’t especially good. the frosting was very sugary, in fact had a crunchy granular texture, but i suppose it needed that to hold its magnificent folds in shape.

we chose: a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, and a chocolate chilli cake with chocolate frosting. mine, the chilli one, had a kick to it, a burn rather than a flavour, and i did actually like the bit where cake met frosting, that tantalising chewy crust of chocolate cake. in the end though, the iced teas were declared more of a success. the kid drank most of my iced spiced tea — an inventive concoction of chai mix, orange juice and flat lemonade which tasted a lot better than it sounds — before reaching into the glass with her pink-iced hands for ice cubes. deborah’s strawberry iced tea was a much more delicate affair, with pureed fruit mixed into green tea.

and then we walked way the hell back into the city, stopping only for a gander at the kiehl’s shop, and for the last minutes of the markets, and for a longing gaze into the windows of dinosaur designs, and then again for a pretend picnic on the grassy bit outside the barracks. we were pleased with what paddington had to offer us, and we were equally pleased that it might be months before we returned.