flagstaff gardens this evening

 

hautalehto: kylmä syli (freezing embrace)

You know, I really am not sure it's possible to fire a gun underwater. I suppose I don't know enough to know if you can or not. 

SBS On Demand is somewhat up shit creek and I'm not sure whether it's my TV or the service but I suspect it's the service. Often it will forget where you're at in a show, and also, it will play the show simultaneously with the soundtrack to an ad or something else. 

This particular crime procedural is one of those shows that starts out with an intriguing premise (a series of drownings) wrapped in an appealing concept (father and son work as policemen together, trying to improve their relationship). I won't say what happens in the end but I will say that the last episode in particular brings an explanation for the whole situation which really challenges all credibility. Which is OK in one sense, we don't need stuff to be completely realistic (it'd be boring if it was) but there's a pretty elaborate scaffold erected here and it's not completely satisfying. 

The show is set in Porvoo, one of the oldest of Finnish cities and not that far from Helsinki (less than 30km from Helsinki's border) but definitely its own city.  We get quite a few nice shots of the turn-of-the-last-century houses and streets of, I assume, Porvoo (I've never been there) including a very attractive small square which occasionally has little market and/or celebration events in it. There's also a lot of pleasing aerial shots of the town. 

I will say, and I think this is generally a positive feature of these Finnish police shows which are probably on the whole a little bit generic, the women in the show - who are not really the main characters - are often quite well-rounded characters with attitudes and opinions. In that sense there's a certain realism to the whole. This show has one policewoman in particular who is a bit juvenile (in a raunchy way) but not capricious. 

The main character of the show is Antti Hautalehto - he is neither the father nor the son of the main story, but I gather an ongoing flawed hero character of a series of books by Christian Rönnbacka, none of which have been translated into English. 'Hatualehto' is, apparently, a word meaning cemetery or I think literally 'grave grove'; there is even a reference made to this fact in the show. He's only a flawed hero as far as I can tell because he cares too much about being a policeman and it's destroyed his marriage (a sub-plot herein is his cultivation of a new relationship while he deals with his anger/distress about the ruination of the old). But he is an appealing character, and Mikko Leppilampi plays him well. I'd like access to more of these stories but currently that's not possible. 

armageddon

Ricky Gervais’ Armageddon is one more example of a phenomenon there is probably not really a word for – someone who once did something astonishingly good (in Gervais’ case, two things: The Office and Extras, and I know a lot of people talk highly of After Life so I’ll give him that too though I cbf) (oh, also those Golden Globes monologues – also fairly spectacular) who has, unbelievably, outweighed those with a huge pile of turgid shit, like this Netflix special Armageddon.

 

In this show, he uses the trope of wondering how humanity will end, and meanders from that into various culs-de-sac where he tells the audience how comfortable or uncomfortable they are and laughs at himself overly frequently in his weaselly way. 

 

Something Gervais does in his stand-up which I think doesn’t really have a name, although a word like ‘plagiarism’ comes close: everything in his standup shows how much he enjoys Stewart Lee, but also, how much his adaptation of Stewart Lee is a dumbing down/punching down version of Stewart Lee, hopefully because he’s clever or humble (seems unlikely) enough to not want to directly copy SL, but almost certainly because he is unable to be as smart as SL, and can’t channel his own self-hatred the way SL does his (or his character's). Gervais’ riff in Armageddon about the couple with AIDS whose baby has AIDS who discuss themselves being discussed in the show and then discuss how they themselves are fictional – very meta – sings from a certain AI-generated Stewart Lee style songbook, though Lee himself wouldn’t touch it. Mainly because it’s not actually funny. 

 

The reason Gervais can’t admit he’s Stewart Lee-lite is actually pretty simple: Gervais got where he did by luck, and he knows it. He was a failed pop star, and then he accidentally happened to make a tv series with Stephen Merchant that was almost completely ignored but slowly gathered a following in a preposterous timeslot and almost despite itself ended a huge hit. He was brilliant in that show and I’m going to say that Extras might actually be a better show than The Office but that because it is approximately the same kind of humour albeit in a very different setting, it lacks the impact. The impact of The Office (not just through that shitful US version) changed comedy, including the comedy that sought to not be that kind of comedy.

 

None of this really has a lot to do with Ricky Gervais, stand-up comedian, except it’s still him, and looks and sounds like him, of course. This guy is a piece of work. He’s got the entire moral value of those US Republicans who curry favour with Trump thinking that they can benefit from Trump. Gervais thinks (or claims) he’s speaking truth to power and that he’s somehow contributing to society with a dose of reality. Perhaps Gervais’ reality is that fearing difference and anything ‘other’ is the way people really are, but all he’s actually saying to his audience is, if you fear the other, that’s entirely understandable – and perhaps even positive. He thinks he’s being nihilistic, I think, but actually, he’s just being a creepy, lazy prick. In one little routine towards the end he pretends he’s God creating humanity (I suppose Gervais as one of the world’s most famous atheists figures he can say anything in the voice of God because God doesn’t exist). ‘How many sexes are there?’ God’s wife asks God. ‘Two’ he says – to which the audience cheers. 

 

That’s the kind of shit Gervais, and his fans are. They know the world is changing and they know (or at least Gervais tells them) that they are somewhat programmed, as privileged middle-aged people, to hate the fact that the world is changing, but-and the comedy stylings of Ricky Gervais allow them to out-and-out resent the change and boil it down to a few idiotic railings against ‘woke’ and ‘fear of words’. 

I’ve seen some criticisms of this special online where Gervaisophiles weigh in by saying critics shouldn’t critic because they couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do it, it’s true: I couldn’t make up a bunch of delusional fears to then flap my arms fearfully about them and then knock them down. But why would anyone want to? Certainly he doesn’t need the money, but he does seemingly need the notoriety/fame/naughty boy rep. Easy get, and easy to sustain, once you’re in the space. 

barbra

I'm over half way through this remarkable work. I don't know what it's like to just read it but I'm letting Barbra herself do the reading, and not regretting this decision for a moment. She is a remarkable person, that's always been clear, but she comes out of this so well (of course, if she didn't there'd be something seriously wrong, but still...). I will report more comprehensively when I get to the end of it, in a month or so. Her reading of it is so marvellous though. 

more dryburgh st - 1860s-70s

You don't think much, or I don't anyway, about how hard it must have been for people to get in touch with each other if they fell a bit out of touch in the time before the telephone, literacy, street numbers, etc. Also it was a lot easier for people to disappear from other people's lives. This is from the Age, 12 November 1861. I wonder where Duntiblae Cottage is and whether it still stands. I also wonder whether Mrs Stone had gone back to Adelaide from England, found Fred had left for Melbourne, and went there hoping to reestablish contact. She had enough money to place this ad ten times in the paper in the first half of November. 

The other ads also no doubt have rich and amazeballs stories to tell. Here's one of mild interest from the Age 17 June 1862, p.2 :

This is Arden St in the Sands and McDougall for 1860. You're not going to get much information except confusing information, because Dryburgh street is not actually listed in there, but it appears frequently as a cross-street, and there's Alexander Grant, living near it but not in it. 

Everything was happening in Dryburgh St in 1862. Not only was Alexander Grant (sorry, Alexander Grant Esq) moving out, but there was a prosecution for illegal operation of a still, viz:

There's so much great detail in this story (from the Age 7 August 1862 p. 6). I don't know where Cambria Terrace (presumably a row or a couple of houses) was though. 

The Sands and McDougall for 1870 only details Dryburgh from Victoria St to Arden St, which leads me to believe, that was its extent then. A few of the houses have street numbers but by no means all. 

Flash forward to 1879 and now we're using street numbers pretty extensively, which is a relief, though of course there's no guarantee that the numbers are the same now as they were 150 years ago. 

Age 24 May 1879 p. 1

Whatever 13 Dryburgh was, the site is now combined into a few occupied by large modern apartments. 

Age 23 January 1880 p. 1

There's quite a bit of activity in the Dryburgh area at this time. A lot of places to let, for instance. Judging by the dates on houses, the 1880s was when Dryburgh really came into its own, was completely built out. I would say it was never an entirely respectable street (well, maybe the Royal Park end was) but it was solid. I think I will return to this topic later, if you don't mind. 

dryburgh st

There's not much to say about Dryburgh Street (you'll be sorry to hear, as you presumably relished this as a topic). I have found lately that, of the local area, it is the only street that for some strange reason does not bore me to tears as a prospect when I come to consider where to wander with Perry. I mean I am much more likely to want to drive somewhere, or take a train, and walk than to just set off out the door. I know that's a bit pathetic but I also know my own tolerance to the relentlessly familiar, and also, how much I enjoy the unfamiliar. 

I do sort of like this building, J. Howie Farrier, though I am more interested in the very faded Briquettes ad on the building. This ad from the Age for 16 August 1894 (p. 2) is interesting mainly because of the listed address:

I mean was this building once in Flemington Road? Because now it's here:

By the way, if Howie (as opposed to his estate or a relative or a company with his name) built this building in 1889, he didn't have long to enjoy it - he was dead by 1900 when his wife Mary's funeral notice was published in the Age (7 December, p. 1). She was 72. 

What are these side windows on verandahs in two-storey terraces called? What interests me particularly about them is they seem only to be installed only when there is no chance of another two storey terrace adding to the row being built next door, i.e. no-one ever made an ambit claim that the single-storey cottage next door would always be a single-storey cottage. So, they're almost only ever seen on corners. 

Even then, sometimes people change their minds:

Exception: this, which I think is a rebuilt or perhaps an entirely newly (eg 1980s) built terrace house with a single-storey, set back house next door. Not in Dryburgh btw - it's in Canning. 

future years may end with a "dateless day"

SMH 20 Dec 1953 p2

East Kew Primary School

At the same time Perry and I walked the Outer Circle, four days ago, we also took a little deviation at Kew to have a look at my old Primary School, which Perry was very keen to see. He probably imagined it as a bit like Doggy Day Care and he couldn't have been more accurate. 

On the way we went past the East Kew Baby Health Centre which was not my Baby Health Centre thank you very much* but it is a nice building extremely similar to the Heidelberg one. I note it was opened by the Countess of Stradbroke whoever she the hell was, a newspaper check reveals that she was forever opening baby health centres in the 1920s in the company of the Governor which suggests either that they were married or that she was, well, hanging around with him a lot. But by the time it got to opening the East Kew one the press were no longer interested and it was not reported. Shame, because I can't read the date on that foundation stone. 

I wonder what they did (do) when they have a very nice foundation stone all ready and then the person dies or takes a mental health day and the stone doesn't actually accurately record the event. Surely they just use it. 

This is St Anne's, the church opposite my school from 1969-72, there is also a school attached. But it's the catholic school not the government school. 

You may wonder what I am doing photographing this stupid building below. Well, it's a thing that has long interested me. When I was attending East Kew primary there was some kind of building which 'the caretaker and his wife' (I mean, I'm pretty sure they were both caretakers) used to spend their days in, with an incinerator or something. This is a child's memory and no doubt terribly inaccurate. I remember this couple as very, very old (they were probably IRL younger than I am now, though who knows) and I seem to remember that there was some kind of impression amongst the stupid kids in the schoolyard (of which I was one) that they lived in this building, but that of course is impossible. Anyway, I wanted to see this building and decide for myself, and this is where I thought it was, but if it was, this is now there instead. 

I actually think (going by the chimney) that if there was any kind of place with an incinerator in it, it was this (largely obscured by trees, as you can see) which is part of the actual junior school building. I mean my memory is of a standalone, very shabby structure but this has a chimney on it and it's also the right orientation towards the school building, so... 

I was thinking later, do I actually have any positive memories of this school? The only thing I remember enjoying was when Miss Chivers put a smiley face on our pies with sauce. That would happen when we were sitting at tables out the back of this building, which is the junior school. I would really like to see inside sometime not so much for nostalgia but because it's an intriguing design, schools like this, of which no doubt there are thousands around Victoria. Anyway, I don't overall remember East Kew as being a miserable place to be, although, christ, that warm school milk... so horrible. But I think I just remember the injustices/grievances. I could be wrong but I don't even think that's a quirk of mine, surely most people only remember things like that. 

This is the front of the building, which in my memory fifty years ago was a very formal area that no child would ever go to, but now it seems to be a play area. Which is the way it should be. 

And this? This is nothing. It's the back of an apartment building seen from a small park nearby. 

I just liked its sun room with a row of shabby chairs (you probably can't see those) and a picture on the wall and its very dwarfish hills hoist.

Bye East Kew, you're nothing special! You like it that way! 

outer circle walk

Perry and I parked in Canterbury a few days ago and went for a walk to Kew along the Outer Circle trail. You may recall I blogged about this almost a decade ago, well, time for a refresh.

This is a mural in the Deepdene Primary School grounds. I want to know what's on the left. Are they three bricked-in tunnels? Because that would be weird. 

I'm not one to get awfully sentimental about my father's father, but I do like the idea that, as a young boy straight out of school and working his first job, he used to take the train along some part of this line.  I don't know what the job was. 

This is the Deepdene street library, not particularly inspiring...

Particularly once I had taken the most interesting looking book out of it...

I'll report back. If it's good. Or, if I actually read any of it. 

Here's the old briquette dispensary. You know this is now a cafe right? I have never frequented them because they're always closed when I visit, although the fact that they reputedly provided a publicity photo location for Josh Frydenburg at the last election makes me less keen to than I might otherwise be. 

This photograph is placed wrongly, next to Mont Albert Rd rather than Canterbury Road - so if you're not paying attention you think you could just stand back and imagine this was where that station was. But nah. It's about three minutes' walk south. 

Still the Outer Circle rail trail is pretty freakin' nice. I favour it.