travancore walk

Today I was completely exhausted, it has been a big week - one of those weeks where you don't even really realise how big it's been until you get through it and you're like wow. So anyway Perry and I took a shortish walk through Travancore this evening. 

The Travancore estate came into being in the mid-1920s as a 'model garden subdivision' (usual nonsense from real estate agents) which means that much of it was built at roughly the same time and many of the houses are pretty spesh. I'm starting here with a couple of oddities though that I can't quite get a handle on vis-a-vis their integrity:

This impressive window above, look I'd have to say that if I was on a game show with Eddie McGuire prompting me to answer whether this huge window was original or installed in 1978, I'd probably ultimately say it's original although it's also quite possible that it's an old window from somewhere else that has been stuck on the front of this house. The overall effect is really pleasing though. 

Then there's this one. Geez. I think it's probably original. But It might also have been constructed in 1981. The glass bricks really confuse. Ok onto some just inarguably nice things...

Really nice porch. 

Fab 

How could you not. 

I totally admire this, to the point that I want to come back one morning when the sun is shining on its face rather than behind it, so I can really, you know, really see it. 

This is sumptuous. This made me think that rather than get Lachlan to make a deck in my courtyard, I should just grow every freakin' plant I can. 

I mean sure, it's possible someone died in there 14 years ago. But it's still marvellous out here. 

Great looking block of flats (obviously not from 1925). The upstairs would have quite a view, the downstairs a view of a wooden fence and a driveway to a carpark. That's what the tenant in the middle picture is enjoying observing. 

brush with fame

So continuing my ginger reimmersion in the gym world, cautious because of danger of further back problem, I went to Anytime Fitness again this morning and was mildly active. They have new treadmills (or whatever those things are called) or at least different ones to what you got at Anytime Sunshine in 2019. These ones allow you to choose a walk through a pastoral scene during which slow vehicles pass you going in the opposite direction and people - apparently people from all over the world, christ only knows how this works or what it is meant to mean - are also walking with you, more or less. It is my tendency wherever possible to learn by doing rather than by trying to comprehend a manual or an instruction so I am just letting this wash over me taking baby steps in the first instance, I mean almost literally. Anyway you can choose a walking place, and I chose Ireland, because it was the first on the list. It looked a lot like, I don't know, the road between Coldstream and Healesville. The interesting thing was you walk behind people (some come towards you, there was even one weirdo just standing I guess on an embankment on the side of the road looking at the road and not moving) and when you get close to them...

They become transparent, and you see their arms, which are of course in front of them, through their bodies, then you kind of walk through them I guess. Actually the most disturbing example of this is people (women, presumably) with ponytails, whose ponytails become head holes. 

But this is still pretty creepy. Also, I was in Ireland with a celebrity! Alright, I wasn't in Ireland. And I am almost certain that this is not the celebrity but someone else with her name. Also, I am not even really sure May Pang is a celebrity. Though I did read about her on wikipedia last week. 

So, out of 10 I would say, 7 not a bad gymsperience this morning and I will go again soon. I would also mention that unsurprisingly I suppose the Travancore Anytime Fitness is less intimidating than the Sunshine one, where some man who might have been really into steroids or really into ice or both always seemed to suddenly appear out of nowhere from the back of the room (I would only ever go before 7am, and it often seemed empty when I got there). I walked back through Royal Park it was raining lightly and that was a pleasant experience.