how was your july?

Perry and a dog whose name I think is Toast. 

Ours wasn't terrible, though it was very very busy. I suppose some of it was terrible. It was also very very busy. 

Anyway, looking forward to August I suppose, at least, I never, ever want to experience a 32nd of July. 

I say I'm looking forward to August but I'm kicking it off with major root canal so... how much is that something to look forward to? 

samuel hatty inquest

Let this not be the way we remember Samuel Hatty, a man whose actions in life seem mainly pretty ordinary aside from a healthy disregard for a flag. Let us also meditate on him bleating at a policeman in 1922, which might have been fun or even funny:

Melbourne Herald 8 April 1922 p. 12

more flaws in the portal

Someone actually has a design credit for this cover ffs.

In 1996 I had a disgusting job writing computer manuals (I never got as far as doing any such thing, btw, just flailed around trying to look busy and interested) for a couple of months and I guess I had either a discman or a walkman or both but in any case I strongly recall listening quite extensively while 'working' to the live (-ish) Fall album The Twenty-Seven Points. The Fall had been a great favourite of mine for the previous ten, almost fifteen probably, years, consolidated firmly with their 1982 tour, just after Hex Enduction Hour came out and just before Room to Live. I saw two shows then, including the one after which Marc Riley was sacked. I thought Mark E. Smith was a real iconoclast and if not a hero exactly certainly someone whose pronouncements were worth chuckling over (even when he said he voted for Thatcher which may or may not have been true). 

I was having a bad time, without a doubt. But I came to the sneaking suspicion that perhaps The Twenty-Seven Points actually sucked. I remember the track in particular which sent me to this opinion, but I can't figure out which one it is from looking at the track listing, which by the way make this album in itself look like the world's biggest b-side (or worse. For instance, it has an almost 2-minute track wikipedia describes as 'a dictaphone recording of Smith chatting with a friend - likely Mike "The Haircut" Hill'). The track I singled out for hatred was basically a poem about fireworks, I think, which was disillusioning - it was finally clear that Smith could go a long way with half-arsed writing if he allowed it to be garbled and mishearable, but in this case he was fully hearable and it just didn't work. He more commonly advantaged his work using the brilliant musicians around him putting together amazing tunes, often, but he also often wasted their good work in the service of making his crummy lyrics and ramshackle vision more important. 

Anyway that was the beginning of a thirty year process where I think I can now safely say, I don't like The Fall anymore and I would rather not listen to them again, certainly not for pleasure. Throw them on the pile with XTC who I had completely grown out of by 1990 and [I'll insert the other group I can't remember right now who also go in that category, later, it's not Gary Numan because I never liked him although I did once own a couple of his records, but I do really despise Gary Numan... obviously as a child I liked Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac etc and all of that stuff makes me sick now, but that's different].

House of All make me realise that, well, Smith might have been the candle we all flocked to initially but seriously one of the greatest things he did was attract and showcase talented people, or bring out the best in them, but he also fucked them up and fucked things up for them, and this was ongoing. In fact it got worse and worse in the last twenty (thirty?) years of the group/his life. Ultimately did we need it? 

Perhaps it'd be smarter to divide The Fall into at least two eras - so up till about Bend Sinister they were remarkable, with a few missteps (The Twenty Seven Points comes a little after this time) and then it was slim pickings. But of course as previously mentioned here in one of the most-visited entries on this blog, Smith had already crossed the line at least once, to a place no-one should have gone, particularly not someone smart enough to know better. You can fall in love with your own capacity to push the envelope and push it in entirely the wrong direction, IMO. 

So let's just confirm: Smith was an iconoclast, but one of those iconoclasts who dabbled in domestic abuse, racial abuse, and he also voted Tory (or claimed to, I can't believe I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt on that one). I know that Anna Funder's recent problematic* work on Orwell makes quoting Orwell bad in some people's minds but he does spring to mind for me here: 'If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear.'** Everyone though, even people who he treated extremely badly and people who he would have treated badly if he'd met them, is ready to give Smith the benefit of the doubt. I am sure if he was still alive he'd be a Trump supporter. (This thoughtful and interesting article makes me less sure.) 

So, I looked within my soul and I thought, should I listen to This Nation's Saving Grace one more time and just be clear on this? I might. But at the same time I just got my copy of the vinyl version of At Home With You and that's got all the dynamics and power of The Fall at their best without the scattergun fascism, so that'll do me for the moment. 

* Problematic if only because I think she hasn't really uncovered anything anyone didn't already know, and I think there's something about the way men presented themselves in the 1930s-40s that yes, was kind of cowardly and in many ways even cruel, but it's not like Orwell was the only one doing it. They (almost) all did it. It's important, and Eileen Blair should get her due, but the Orwell side of it is simply not news. 

** In the Trump Mk II era of course you could say, well, a convicted rapist is in office in the USA and many who voted for him knew what he was/is. I'm sure in Orwell's day many of the people in power were similarly rapists, just not convicted ones. I think this says a lot about people who want to dominate and people who want to cheer on a dominator. But unless you want to draw a line between the kind of Stockholm syndrome ex-Fall members seem to still be suffering from, and the losers who go on to justify stuff like 'The Classical', I think this footnote has already gone too far in an irrelevant direction. Stop reading it. 

perry's op - two years ago

I decided to get Perry desexed at the age of 11 months or thereabouts, I didn't see any advantages in waiting longer (and got some advice from good sources that waiting longer might result in him becoming aggressive). Now I'm about two days from taking the cone off (I think - currently on hold with Lort Smith at this point, two callers ahead of me in the queue, the automated message gives you the option of a callback but I'm like nah because they never do call back lol) so I feel I'm almost ready to deal with the bruising experience. He had a bruising experience of actual bruising, it's been emotionally bruising for me. 

When I first got him from the vets after the surgery he kept pulling the cone off his head and I thought this won't do so I hastened to Habitat and got him another 'buster collar' as they call them, but after a couple of days he wasn't looking good and was obviously very distressed and uncomfortable, so I took him back to the vet, and they said the other collar was too soft/short so he'd probably been worrying at his scar, and he might even need further surgery. I didn't care about the money so much as what I'd landed him in, but I think ultimately it transpired it wasn't that he had done that much damage to himself - he was sitting in the garden a lot and he had dirt on him which they interpreted as dead skin or bruising. I don't know really the extent of the damage, if any, but ultimately what happened was he got another big plastic collar to put on. Here he is, with it on. He actually doesn't seem to notice it anymore which is strange but I am happy about that. He is completely fine now - it's 12 days since he had the actual surgery - and I am probably projecting but I think he might even be a little better temperamentally. I guess the real proof of that will be when I take him to the dog park and see if he gets in any fights. He may. 

samuel hatty r.i.p.

I mentioned around three and a half years ago that I'd give you details on the death of Samuel Hatty when the anniversary came up. But first a couple more things about Hatty. As we discovered last year, Hatty was a married father of two (I was confused for a while thinking that he had another child, poor little Victor Baden-Powell Hatty who died aged 2 years 2 months - his death recorded in the Age 9 July 1902 p. 1- but I now think that as per the war memorial's website, Samuel Hatty Jr was born in 1890 and more likely Victor was Samuel Hatty Sr's son).* Anyway that's not important to the story of the death of Samuel Hatty, Basically, F. N. Campbell, a driver employed by Haddy and Co and living at 12 Little Curzon St North Melbourne (now the site of a big warehouse), offered Hatty (who at this time was living in Spotswood) a lift in his motor lorry which he was driving to the Port Phillip Stevedores' Association rooms. The road was wet and as it turned from Flinders St under the viaduct to cross Queen's Bridge it 'swung' and Hatty fell, the rear wheel of the truck passing over his head. He died a few minutes after being admitted to Melbourne Hospital. (Melbourne Age 22 July 1925 p. 15).** 

*Victor had lived at 127 Jeffcott St West Melbourne (where the prison is now), as had Samuel Hatty Sr's wife Elizabeth who died four months before he did (her funeral notice is in the Age for 27 February 1902, p.10) I don't understand what was going on there. 

** Samuel Hatty Sr (I'm assuming - same name, had a son called Samuel) had died in the same hospital on 26 August 1906 (Age 28 August 1906 p. 1). 

Picture of Melbourne Hospital 1910 from the SLV. 

He's in Fawkner Memorial Park apparently. 

outside toilet in Parkville

I suppose some people don't mind having an outside toilet, or should I say, want one. Perry and I were walking down a laneway in Parkville yesterday when I spied what seemed pretty obviously to me to be an outside toilet rebuilt in, I'm going to guess by the bricks, the 1960s to the footprint of a much older one. I'm sure that's what it is (certainly it's post-nightsoil). 

I mean Picasso yeah nah but that 1960s outside toilet is a much more intriguing piece of art. 
 

mystery

 

I thought for a split second this afternoon I saw a person I used to know (or know?) in town, then realised, firstly that it wasn't them and secondly if it was, it would be awkward because that particular person had effectively disappeared out of my life completely a couple of years ago without explanation or warning. I have literally no idea what happened.

Being ghosted is something that I'm pretty sure never really happened to me until about five years ago. There were times when people got the shits with me and, you know, unfriended me on fb or something, but they usually came back (or I didn't notice). But more recently I have had a few people completely absent themselves from my world. Three cases spring to mind. One is a woman who I eventually realised wanted a romance with me, I was unaware, until a mutual friend started talking with me about her using the assumption that we were having a romance - so - I don't know what was going on there. That woman was a bit juvenile I think, the last conversation (?) we had was when she said 'someone just told me something about you', like, what? She wouldn't tell me and we haven't spoken since. I thought we were good friends, but whatever, it's not really that important to me or something I think about a lot.

The other two (intertwined and actually more than just two people) are actually hurtful, though I'm open to imagining it's not anything to do with me, really, but more likely other stuff going on. Chief amongst them is someone I have known since the 1980s, on and off, and who I always felt very close to. Complete as they say 'radio silence' since 2023, possibly a little earlier, we weren't in frequent contact but we could always pick up where we left off. I am baffled, but finally, what can you do? If someone doesn't want to talk to you, they don't. I am not even really imagining that somewhere down the line I will get an explanation, even from a third party. This person is apparently not dead, at least, it just occurred to me to google them and they are still listed in a position in their workplace. 

I think one reason I am bothered is the other connected people. The person mentioned above has a partner and a child who I also liked very much. Put that to one side. They also had a friend, who I was also friendly with, most recently we had a good time in 2019, I think, and once again while we weren't in constant contact, we could be, anytime, I thought. But nah. So with none of them talking to me, I guess I am wondering if it's me... or just circumstances. So yeah I guess it's a double edged sword of not knowing, but that is probably secondary to: I'm worried about all those people insofar as, are they OK?! There's also the distinct possibility that I have deeply offended one or some of them, in a way that meant none of them wanted a bar of me, but I really don't know how that could have happened. 

This is a stupid post because I am going so far away from giving any interesting detail because I don't think they would want to be even slightly identified. Look, it's not an obsession for me but it is bothersome sometimes. A lot of people come and go in your life. A few weeks ago I got inveigled into a conversation with friends about another friend who had apparently dissed me considerably, the conversation assumed I knew this but I didn't at all, but I examined my feelings and realised I didn't care much either - you know - that's someone else's trip. But the people I'm talking about above were, I thought, sympathique. I guess not though. Or something went terribly wrong. What do you think? 

It's probably something that happens amongst people in their 50s-60s. I suppose I better get used to it. People of my generation will cut me off or, they'll start dying.*

*Again. I knew a few people who died from heroin 30+ years ago, but no-one of my age in the last few decades. 

oh, thunder! 110 years ago today

 

Los Angeles Evening Post-Record  5 July 1915 ·p. 7

noom

 
I have thrown away my Noom subscription again. I was grappling with it for a while but ultimately I cannot stand they way they measure things (often imperial measurement, but also, ridiculous cupfuls and half-bowls for things that don't belong in cups or bowls, and many, many perverse-sounding fast food products offered and also constant imprecations that I should eat things I would never ever eat, like chicken). Possibly I got something out of it but in the end I think it has got too much. 

Also I hate that when you write down that you ate pickles Noom insists on 'dill pickles' and then wants to measure them in spears. Spears. Fuck off with your 'spears'. 

Also I have had an annoying cough for two and a half weeks now, and also, my foot still hurts often. What a time to be alive. 

it's good to have a blog

If I didn't have a blog, neither you nor I would ever know that I saw David Kilgour and Yo La Tengo play a show in 2007 (and I didn't enjoy it, but that doesn't really mean anything in itself). Amazing. I literally do not remember this at all, I don't know where it happened and my description of the experience is so oblique I am not sure why I had a bad time. Crazy! I suspect the bad time probably had less to do with the actual show, than I appreciated at the time. I am also surprised to read that I've seen Yo La Tengo six times. Six??? I really like them, but I can only vaguely recollect seeing them once, and it wasn't this 2007 show. Madness!!!

This is a picture of Perry and Nancy yesterday. Perry is at one of his doggy day care hangs today. I would be happy to have him stay at home all week but he really seems to need to expend the energy and he loves going to those places so much I can't deny him. But I miss him. I am fairly sure Nancy doesn't. 

Walking at the moment is not easy because while I am (I'm pretty sure) coming to the end of my four or five-month bout of plantar fasciitis I am still hobbling a bit and every time I stand up I don't know whether it's going to hurt or not. I am also often really, really tired which can't just be the fact that I am 60 now but has to be more than that. Well, I guess I'll find out over time. But it doesn't make me the ideal companion all the time for a sometimes boisterous three year old (dog). 

I got back on Netflix recently, I forget why but to watch something in particular, possibly the Sarah Silverman special which I actually didn't enjoy that much but perhaps it was too close to the bone. Anyway, what I have since discovered is that a lot of Netflix shows have a Finnish captions option, which means I can justify watching any old pap on that basis, as a way to keep treading water on my Finnish. Most recently it was a five-part British crime show called Missing You. The above reads, 'Didn't it bother you that he had a family?' (I didn't translate that all by myself, by the way, though I know some of the words). 

'Did s/he make a mistake?'

This relates to a website called, unconvincingly, 'Honest Aspect': 'I reviewed all Honest Aspect-related documents for errors'. 

I don't know how useful this all is in learning Finnish (my ten-year plan, to be fluent by 2035!) but it can't hurt - can it?