BLAZES

A confession this morning. It is true I lived through the Swinging Sixties in New York. Lived through Timothy Leary days of "tune in, turn on and drop out". And even though a friend was a friend of Judy Collins and we sometimes had together and even though another friend owned the Bitter End in Greenwich Village I did not join the Flower Pot generation. Did not wear flowers in my hair when I went to San Francisco. Did not even smoke Pot.

So the confession? I love candles. Always have. I find them not only aesthetically pleasing but therapeutic. And when I was going through my Grizzly Adams period living alone at the farm at Mt Macedon my pride and joy was a huge candle mountain made of hours of dedicated dripping over a raffia-covered Italian wine flagon.

And in my current apartment, amidst all the modern furniture and artwork (and the heat cabin in the living room) there is a bizarre display of a dripping candle mountain. Streams of red and yellow and green and white cascading down the side of a huge glass vase.

And now it has an added adornment - straight out of the Sixties. A colourful poster of a beautiful, bare-breasted water nymph with an earthenware jug pouring aqua water over her sylph-like body.

It is a painting depicting my star sign, The Age of Aquarius. And it was painted by Melbourne artist Blaze Warrender.

So what the heck has this got to do with food - apart from food for thought?

Well, as you may know, I am now in Week Ten of the Hinch Soup and Wine Diet and Eric the Red was insistent that we go out for dinner. Now it can be done when you only have soup for dinner but he insisted he had made a major culinary find: a restaurant in Melbourne, in Glenhuntly Road in Caulfield to be exact, that serves only soup.

It is called Blazes and features art work by Blaze on all walls and it is what these days we call "alternative". A flashback to hippiedom where the only wine served is organic and all the soups are vegetarian. As the menu says, it is an arts space and a licenced soup kitchen. And it is fun. And more importantly the soups are fantastic.

I say this not only because soup is all I can have at night. At Blaze's they loved exotic spices. They loved the spices of India and Africa and the Middle East and South America.

And those exotic and pungent smells and tastes permeate the restaurant and the soup bowls.

In true hippie fashion they aren't open every day - only Wednesday through Sunday and only from 6.