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