helmi reborn

I wish I understood what had changed about Helmi's life that she went one day from being the kind of cat who hides in small spaces for 24 hours at a time, to the kind of cat who lives her life entirely in public, as far as I'm aware never hiding from anyone or anything and being completely visible. I am reminded of an elderly man (well he seemed elderly thirty years ago, perhaps he was the age I am now) who seemed entirely delightful to all and sundry but I had it on good authority from a few sources that before his stroke he was an aggressive, hostile jerk. Helmi is still that to Nancy and Perry, but even then, she is perfectly happy to be in their presence and only lashes out (not literally) when one of them gets in her face or sniffs her back,* something by the way she is always doing to them. What does it mean? What if one day she just gets sick of fame and goes back under the bed forever more? 

She also will quite often sit next to me and purr for no reason (aside from what I assume is the reason, that she is sitting next to me). 

*I mean, sniffs her back. I mean, sniffs the back of her. 

tree bag

north coburg sojourn

Perry and I went to the record player fixing place and the rug wash place yesterday. The rug wash place is in North Coburg and a few minutes' drive further north is where Back Creek hits Merri Creek. But there are factories all around, almost completely backing up to the creek valley edge, but with a little bit of open space where people have put in unofficial tables and benches, like this:

and this:

Also these two nicely placed chairs:

Walking along the creek:

I think this is under construction not destruction or delapidation but not sure:

More unofficial benches - this is out the back of someone's house. 

This too:

Then we hung out at the creek, which was really nice. 

korkeissa kinoksissa suunnat harhautuvat

 

Not sure about the crow echo bit. Must mean something that's not immediately obvious. 

lumpipatsaat pihassa

 

I'm not confident I really understood what the text means here although it's pretty obvious what happened except for the reason why Piggy wanted to be alongside the snow roosters (the original text says something about him wanting to be photographed but I don't see anyone doing that). 

I don't understand the title either. 

k'foops, kafoops, kerfoops

Alright so I am less excited about K'foops now that I dug a little more and found that it's just a minor esoteric variation on Kerfoops (my first thought, you'll remember) and a lot of people have thought about it over time. I found this in the Age few years ago:

though I think it is inaccurate to say that Green 'offers Kafoops... as [a variant]' or at least he doesn't mention K'foops at all. No reason why he should be inspired to dive any deeper than he already did, of course. 

So, Kerfoops: 

This is not precisely that, but it is from a (n actually not unamusing in parts) parody of rheumatism cures from of all places the Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette from 29 March 1876 p. 3:

Next mention I can find (by the very easy means of searching newspapers.com) is in an Adelaide paper called The Sport, which seems to be mainly about sport but has some humorous items that might never have made any sense and certainly don't now. This is from 21 December 1923 p. 7:

'Those are all words', yes, and one of the words is 'Kerfoops'. By the way, I have to say hats off to whoever drew this banner, I love it:

Anyway back to Kerfoops. Another mock wedding, this time in Wagga (Daily Advertiser 23 September 1926 p. 5)

And on it goes, actually sporadically up to the present day though as mentioned above more recently just as an observation, like my original one, on how it's a name people once used to mean something and now no-one remembers precisely what (perhaps because it never had a precise meaning). I am not going to go into Kuffoops. Sorry I'm not. 

ashley paske

So a few years ago I had things to say about Ashley Paske, who was a TV soap actor in the 80s, mainly good things. I think at one point I said I'd gleaned that although (or because?) he no longer acted, he was 'in a good place'. Well I messed up with that because I have recently learned that he died in 2022. Sad. 

I include the above only because it's the one explanation I can find of how he died, but I have no verification on that.

 

I did a little search in recent legacy media but could only find this from Ben Pobije in the Age 15 March 2015: 'After all, for every Kylie Minogue there's an Annie Jones, for every Guy Pearce there's an Ashley Paske.' Unpleasant. 

more k'foops

I mentioned recently I was quite interested in K'foops. Mainly because this was a name my grandmother Mavis who grew up, I suppose, in the 1920s occasionally brought forth as a sort of silly name for a random person. I mentioned that 'Fred Nerk' parallel. I am not sure what it was all about. There are surely similar names but I can't think of any right now. Anyway, I did a quick search on K'foops just to see what else showed up. Nothing too special, I have to say. 

Here he is in Smiths Weekly for 5 August 1922 (p. 25).* Here's a use of his name in a mysterious item from the Broken Hill Barrier Miner 25 August 1923 p. 7. What on earth did people do for fun then:

And I have to say I don't really know what this (below from Smith's Weekly once again, this time 6 March 1926 p. 9) is about, I mean I know what it's about but I don't know why there has to be a 'Justice K'foops', but once again I imagine it's a kind of... rando silly name? Or maybe it's more than that? 

Trove says there are 5,614 mentions of 'K'foops' in Australian newspapers, surely most of those are misreadings of old newsprint by OCR (see below) but nevertheless it was obviously something of a phenomenon. The below is from the Mackay Mercury 4 March 1953 p. 2 and the one following from the same paper, 5 October 1953 p. 2. 

This is the most recent reference I can find to Mr. K'foops, from the Melbourne Age 4 September 1973 p, 28:

As for the earliest, I don't know, because when you do a search in Trove on 'k'foops' you get suggetions like: 'Ao equal aavin^ wm!,) be 'kvj uhrtndiuioc tho wortia ' Yeura f«; ? ant to 3jie«k of rigm^roUa mch u ... nei|tht---'irh V.* ^ tiutt tb«t thta will you, mh! n-t ^ 1 )?«» ? to o.^rl-».»k th? incideot. in *vw ' ^ ?till'. 

I did find this, which is from a speech(?) by Mr. Aikens the member for Mundingburra told the Qld Legislative Assembly on 25 October 1945:

Well it's hard to read that for the K'foopsness and not concentrate on the other elements of the hypothetical but, focus. 

Here's my current feel: the name K'foops was if not started by Smith's Weekly around 1922 certainly popularised by it at that time (SW itself began in 1919) and seemed to live on much longer in Queensland than anywhere else, the 1973 existence of Mr. K'foops in Ivanhoe notwithstanding. 

More news as it comes to hand.**

*BTW Alek Sass, who drew this cartoon, was dead within six months. I don't think there's a kurse of k'foops though. 

** I have more news. It will be with you soon enough. Clue: it has to do with 'Kerfoops'. 

kieun leikillinen yllätys

avulias autonkuljettaja

Please explain to me how the driver of the car is in the driver's seat in the third frame and yet looking out the back window. 

Also, I have to say I don't really understand some of the text. 

Anteeksi! 

creatures - pt 3 or a coda

The place where we parked in Avondale Heights, Annette Court (all the streets round there have 1950s girls names) has a bunch of big guard dogs in the various homes, making a range of unusual noises between them and bouncing off each other. When I went back I saw these guys, very handsome and also quite barky. Beautiful gate too.

creatures of leisure pt 2

Fewer pictures. So we got back to the car and I realised I had lost the car key. It's amazing what tiny little bits of machinery exist between your freedom to do what you intended to do, and your inability to do that, and my whole morning fell away. Luckily I still had my phone so I could figure out the nearest railway station (the tram stop was half an hour away but that would be no good for Perry, in fact he'd probably hate a tram, don't know, we'll never know). The nearest railway station was Tottenham, an hour's walk away in almost a direct line south, except for the bit where we had to get across the river, which was finicky. So we did that. It was really fine, though Perry was thirsty. Had I known we would be walking so far I would have brought his water bottle but that was the whole point, I hadn't known. So we were on the lookout for taps, there weren't many but ultimately we crept into a front yard and he drank from a tap. I hope that person wasn't there and/or didn't mind. 

A few other things:

I've noticed a lot of rubbish strewn around lately, have you? It happened at our place a few weeks ago, someone went into the bin area and emptied bins. Much like what's happened here. Now, there is someone who likes to empty bins for its own sake, in our area, but I can't imagine they've come as far as Maidstone to do it. There's also, I believe ('believe' is too strong a word but it's not unbelievable) people who empty bins looking for cans to recycle for money. Who knows. 

Beautiful front garden:

Fabulous hedge treatment on classic early 50s HCV home:

Nice:

Ultimately yesterday I walked 27 000+ steps. Whatever. 

Oh, and later when I went back to the car via tram-walk, I found the keys in close proximity to it. So, all good ultimately. 

perry and i are creatures of leisure - pt 1

Yesterday was a fuck up but it was a funny fuck up with no lasting implications. Perry and I drove to Avondale Heights to walk by the Maribyrnong there. It's very pleasant. 

At one point Perry thought he saw something, I don't know what, and he thought he needed to be on his back legs to see it better, I really don't know what it was and he won't remember. He was looking towards the river. 

This dog behind a fence got involved in the conversation and like the dog at the Merri Boulevard (or whatever it's called) this dog and Perry were very convivial.

Perry and I then walked on a bit further, and just like the Merri Blvd dog, Perry wanted to visit this one again, but when we passed by again they had gone. 

We marvelled a little at this sign because - who would ever think this was a road, through or otherwise? You could put up a sign like this at most places and it would be true, I suspect. 

I guess my thought initially was maybe it's the path of an old road from a stupid subdivision or something... might be, but maps-on-my-phone doesn't think so. 

Grapefruit. 

There really are great looking houses here. I know you will know what I mean when I say 'wog mansions' I don't think it's an offensive term anymore but it's not a pleasant one but it'll have to do. I remember as I child I would pass houses like this - rarely entered one - and think they looked like they'd be really cool in summer. I am not sure why, looking at it now, but I did. 

And how amazeballs are these eagles. I don't think they have any symbolism, but I don't know why I don't think that. 

Another great one.

So the reason I said we are creatures of leisure is that I have been listening a lot to side two of Creatures of Leisure lately, along with Laura Imbruglia's self-titled album. Both incredible records of enormous depth. Anyway, that house above reminds me of the cover of Creatures of Leisure. 

Such a fun, talented, radical band and with so many high quality songwriters the album tracks are as amazing as the singles - anything off this record could have been a single, with the exception I suppose of the hidden track at the end of side 2 which I believe sometimes went under the name of 'Business & Pleasure'. 

There is a US version of this album which fucks around with it - for some reason I have that too, and may play it soon. Of course I'll let you know.

Anyway to get back to our Avondale Heights adventure, things got weird, but it was all fine, but I'll tell you about that later on OK.