weekend of mystery and spookiness

Two things:

1. Both April and Julia Gillard predicted the drawn grand final. I asked April who would win the GF and she said, 'No-one'. It came true. Julia made more of a joke about it being a draw, but spooky anyway.

2. I was talking on the phone with someone about Molly Meldrum's production of The Real Thing, we were trying to figure out what he did in the studio. I said I figured it was probably a case of Molly trying out ideas on the engineer and the engineer advising what was practical. I said I though the engineer was John French (and at the same time I was thinking, or is that Captain Beefheart's drummer's name?). My conversant said 'Yes I've heard that name'. Later I decided it was probably John Sayers not John French. Anyway within hours I was sitting out the back in the same chair as I was when I was on the phone and someone said they'd been reading a book by John French, the drummer in Captain Beefheart's band.

What next! Exciting!!!

bile duct

Millie has not been well, and in fact spent a couple of days under observation at the Broadmeadows vets this week, she probably has a bile duct blockage and this has sent her liver into overdrive yet curiously also underperformance, as I understand it. She hasn't eaten much the last week and a bit and has lost a lot of weight. She doesn't seem to be in pain or feeling ill seemingly though she is quite sooky.
We took the plunge the other day and decided to arrange for delivery of another beagle, to be known as Barry (after our heroes Obama, Jones, Humphries and McKenzie). This is not because we expect Millie to die next week, she has a few good years left in her, but we consider she will be a good stabilising influence on a young dog, as she has been on Charlie.

frustrating!

waiting

This is what's to my left, or rather, what you would see if you were facing me right this instant, well, I suppose you would have to be crouching a bit or sitting down, because it's kind of laptop height and the laptop's on a lap. I am waiting for the 401 and it has not yet come. I don't remember it ever taking this kind of immensely long time (2-3 mins so far) so you can imagine my intense ennui at being made to wait. I am sort of imagining that the one that does come will be so immensely amazing, it will be kind of a business class version, to make up for the extraordinarily long - now 4-minute - wait.
Wish me luck

all after the piano

20 april 1921. Exactly 44 years later I was born. A coincidence? I think not.

north melbourne station

bourke street

Icons of the top of Burke Street include Pellegrini’s, the Paperback and the Spaghetti Tree. I remember all three of these from long, long ago when I was born.



Everyone talks about Pellegrini’s, still. The coffee at 10ish on a Saturday night is, actually, not that great. Certainly I wasn’t hanging out for it, as they say, so maybe I noticed more than usual that coffee often doesn’t taste that good really – it’s a drug you take to stop you wanting it. But still. The guys behind the counter (my age) were talking about a worst album cover competition. One of them was uncertain what such a thing might even be. The explanation was ‘you might have a ten best films, right. Well this isn’t ten best, it’s ten worst. And it’s album covers.’ Anyway I couldn’t glean what the actual worst album cover was, so that was stupid of me. I was amazed that some women came in and asked to see a menu. EVERYONE KNOWS the menu is stuck on a board half way up the joint. Nothing goes on, nothing comes off. What’s the special today? You are.



Over the lane is another institution: The Paperback. This is the kind of shop that, if it wasn’t still there for you to go into any time you wanted, you’d go into it in your sentimental mind, because it has this perfectly simple layout and way cool stock and always really friendly staff who like books. (So, someone will probably tell me it’s run by a nazi or capitalist or a jailed pedophile or something – thanks in advance for that). When I went there the door was locked with a back in 5 note on the front. But someone – a customer, I later gleaned, who had been intentionally or unintentionally locked in – let me in, during which time I noted they had about five locks on the door. I browsed and got some great stuff.



Spaghetti Tree I have to admit I have never been into. But it’s always been there (or at least since the early 70s). I think it started out as a kind of theatre restaurant, but if that’s so it’s not one now, it’s just a spaghetti restaurant (actually, I’m assuming even that, I haven’t looked at the menu). I wonder if it has new regular clientele coming all the time, or if its customers are just depleting year by year as granny from Doncaster stops coming into town cuz she dies. I wonder.

your money's worth

relief

Temporary relief re: PM decision. Cracks already appearing as per T Windsor's surprise mining tax no longer under discussion in discussion with F Kelly on RN this morning. Tony Windsor is the only Australian politician I can think of with same name as popular soap opera character. I would from now on only like to see women as PMs because women are so much better at everything due to their emotional intelligence. Sadie Grant Butler my tip for first female Liberal PM. If not 2013 then 2016.

nila

It’s been a while so I thought I would say hi. I am at Nila, a restaurant/takeaway in Sydney Road Coburg specializing in Malaysian, Singaporean and South Indian Halal Cuisine. It has been zhuzhied up since I was here last, with elegant arrays of plastic flowers, a new baie marie and better lighting. The staff continues to be friendly and polite and the food delightful and tasty. The place smells nice too, like it is a place which sells spicy and interesting food, which it does. It is warm and there is a rather relentless chanty music playing quietly. There are some signs hanging from the ceiling which are also part of the new décor and they advertise ‘Best lunch in the town’, this on a sign where I think part of the plexiglass coversheet has not been removed, as the words ‘Transparency, Performance, Functionality… Plexiglass’ are very visible on the sign. At first I thought this was Nila’s mission statement but now I think it’s Plexiglass’s. You can also buy avocado juice here (at $4.95 a glass – not cheap) but I have to say, while I like avocados and have never drunk avocado juice, I do feel it is a juice option that might well make me sick. Instead I am drinking a can of something I bought called Apple Fruit Drink, a product of Malaysia, made by a company called Treefresh. It is not awful. One of the things I most like about the new look Nila is the extensive collections of cutlery on each table, there are 20-30 knives and forks arranged here in containers covered with aluminium foil. All in all I would recommend Nila either for eating in or taking away.