Portrait with food 2 – Dave.

Dave picked me up in his Jeep.
He likes his Jeep, and I like his Jeep.

We drove past where we used to work in South Melbourne. He mentioned how a developer friend talked him out of buying real estate in the CBD. The friend was sure the market was doomed to crash. That was probably 10 years ago.

We saw an old ship.  I said he looks like Captain Haddock from Tintin. He ran to get his jacket to complete the look.
I didn’t have the heart to say that we were still missing the hat and pipe.

He said the reason he decided to keep the beard was to restrain him from dating women. Correction, from dating
unnecessary women.

We stopped underneath West Gate Bridge after driving past an aircraft assembly factory where he used to work.

We also drove past a tree he really liked, with many names carved on the trunk, expanded all these years, like tattoos.

He took a photo of a rusty broken hippopotamus statue.

He drove me to his favourite part of town. Basically Dave likes old English houses. I asked him how he could stand working in Australia after Europe. From shooting TVCs in France, London to presenting iStocks in Melbourne.
He never really answered my question.
I have a feeling most Melburnians have absolutely no idea what they’re doing in Melbourne either.

Dave once told me he has no interest in food. He sees them simply as fuel.
Maybe that’s why he is a creative director in a multinational agency and I’m not.

I suggested a place that does really good scrambled eggs on toast. He said he could accept that.

We drove past a bakery where he had his very first job as an apprentice.
Apparently he quit after throwing a slab of dough to the wall.
He yelled to his then-boss, ‘You have no idea what you are doing!’ and left.
“ Looking back,” Dave said, “he definitely knew what he was doing.”

He said the best thing about having a beard, is that you never have double chins.

On our way out we saw the queue for Auction Room. Dave laughed out loud.
I pointed to another hipster cafe on the way back and we shook our heads together.

He said this was a fun way to catch up.

He dropped me off and later texted me that he shaved his beard off the same day.