yet another sentimental journey

So for actual work reasons (book chapter I'm writing, I get paid for this) I watched quite a bit of the first season of Aunty Jack this weekend. I watched the whole of the first ('pilot') episode and bits and pieces of all the others. I was actually really impressed by it, on the whole, and the weirdest part of that is I remember watching most of these a couple of decades ago - or whenever the DVDs came out, it was a while ago - and finding them a bit tortuous. But no. It's actually pretty good. I have previously told you  the amazing news that Aunty Jack debuted on the ABC the same night that Monty Python was first shown (but earlier) and I still find that incredible (also, possibly I watched them both - I certainly remember watching Monty Python when we lived in Kew and that was 1972). 

One of the important things about Aunty Jack is that it is definitely Australian but the jokes are not jokes about Australia per se, or things Australians do. That's interesting. Also, another interesting thing, I heard Tony Martin say on Sizzletown a few weeks ago that he was inspired to do The Olden Days and Bargearse from watching What's Up Tigerlily? which makes sense but what I didn't know, but surely he does now because he knows a lot, is that there is a lo-o-ong sketch in Aunty Jack - I think it might be the last episode of season 1? which is an old roman (?) war epic completely dubbed the same way. 

This weekend was not bad, particularly because it was not superfucking hot, though it's going to get hot again towards the end of the week which sucks IMO. But overall, not unhappy. Laura and I watched Starstruck which is always good to see. Perry and I went for a longish walk. 

He made a friend. How jolly!

big day out

 

My story begins at the Broadmeadows Shopping Centre though of course like all stories there is a preface of I guess not only millions of years of life on Earth but also God's infinite existence, but let's start where my story begins, at the Broadmeadows Shopping Centre. Faffing around like an old fool at JB trying to get the cheapest easiest earbuds (ugh I hate that term) for my phone, which means actually buying an adaptor and then getting cheap 'n' nasty old-school product. I didn't want bluetooth nothing (yes I do have bluetooth things somewhere, but where are they? Answer me that and then we don't have to have a terse exchange). I knew I would be doing a fair bit of walking today and I wanted to listen to podcasts or whatever. (I say whatever, but all I ended up listening to was podcasts.) So here I am wandering through the BSC after buying something for that purpose, also, some dog biscuits. I had about 25c in 5c pieces jangling away in my pocket for the guide dog dog into whose head you put money. It's good luck I know 25c isn't much but it adds up if you do it every time for fear of having bad luck. Next slide please.

This is the argument I was having at the same time. I always try to have an argument with some drone from Optus every day, it keeps them on their toes and keeps my bile up. 

I took Barry and Ferdie out for a little walk, and as is now my wont I let them go into the water. It was quite a warm day (it got warmer, this is only midday) but Barry did not want to go into the water, just potter around the edge. They were panting quickly though and they both drank deep from their water bowl when they got back. 

I decided after this to walk to Glenroy which means first of all crossing Jacana Reserve (this picture is a bit of an illusion, there's a big drop between the green grass and the yellowed bit which is much further away, I saw that and can't unsee it but I am not sure how it looks to you, just imagine the second tree from the right is absolutely on the edge of a steep hill, and when I say imagine, it's not a lie. 

Emu Parade shops, a late 1950s Housing Commission construction which has never really been a jumpin' joint in my experience, though someone there was smart enough to register the name Broady Pizza and that was, well, smart. Hard to conceive of this now but whereas Jacana is the very southernmost tip of the City of Hume today and for many Hume is really two major centres - Sunbury and Broadmeadows - the old Broadmeadows council went much further south. It unnecessarily irritates me that the true fact is often stated that, until Hume set up the Broadmeadows library there was no library at Broadmeadows. And there wasn't! But Broadmeadows CC ran at least two libraries - at Fawkner and Glenroy - because Broadmeadows wasn't really where the population was. OK enough defending Broadmeadows CC for now. Don't really know what this landscaping etc is about (in the top picture) but seriously, that vacant land on the right which I think was once a petrol station (never in my Jacana experience, so more than 15 years) has been vacant too long. It should be a groovy vegan cafe and record shop, shouldn't it. 

So many great brick HCV houses in Jacana, it was probably one of the last bastions of brick HCV before they went concrete (as they did over the railway line within years). This one has a name, 'Jallen'. 

This is not a house but a tree with a really nice view. I have probably mentioned this before, I don't know what happened here, it was a weatherboard house probably from the 1920s that burned down about a decade ago. Surely foul play of some sort. I met a man there, when the house was still standing, who claimed to be the owner, he told me that there was an old saying in Greek that you needed three things in life, friends, cunt and money, which was not as far as I'm concerned the sort of thing you say to a stranger, probably not even a friend, and certainly not the kind of thing you write on a blog for anyone to see. He was complaining that he was not being enabled by council to pull down the house and build something else on it, and now the house is not there, but I don't see anyone trying to build anything on it, so what's that about? 

As you probably know when the Bolte government considered ways to get people to and from the new Tullamarine Jetport, dedicated 1959, a significant amount of land was reserved from the Broadmeadows line just south of Jacana station (which actually opened that year) to the airport. Presumably most of it was sold yonks ago, but this little patch was only developed a few years ago and currently looks like this. It is called something ridiculous like Coupling Lane which sounds a bit, hmm, not heteronormative but at least relationshiponormative. It should have been called Friends, Cunt and Money Avenue. Why? Well, it has a tree in it, that makes it an avenue. Avenue been told that's what makes an avenue? 

So I crossed the railway line. This is in the yard of the house in Glenroy where these people live: 

Glenroy has a lot of good weatherboard houses like for instance this one:

I know what you're going to say but I kind of like the idea of these flats, too, in Pascoe Vale Road:

Then I went to the two Glenroy op shops. I hope never to see this film. I only photographed it in case I was ever challenged at a dinner party to provide an example to counter the claim that 'everyone who ever wrote the text on the front of a DVD never made a mistake in punctuation'. 

I didn't buy this either though I probably should have. 

What the hell was being implied by the shapes formed by the song titles? Also, who is more objectified by this, the woman or the mop? Assuming neither of them is actually Ken Griffin. OK, next slide please. 

Look I now can't remember what this cafe used to be called, I have remarked about it en blog in temps passe and it will probably come to me. But calling it "21 Days Later" seems zany, I mean why not just go the whole hog and name it after a real dystopian horror film? 'Meet you at Night of the Living Dead!' I didn't go in, it looked a little sad in there but I think that's covid trading, not any reflection on the current owners. 

Glenroy underpass, which everyone loves. I suspect its days are numbered however as there is presently a skyrail solution to the very real shithouseness of the Glenroy level crossing. What worries me more is what this means for... 

The Rotary Centre, a pretty decent op shop for a long time now, is no longer trading. I have a sense that this building is actually pretty old, though I concede it doesn't necessarily look it. I have a feeling it hasn't got long. I wish I could remember something I got there when it was an op shop that sparked joy but to be honest, nah. It had a certain something though. 

Behind you! 

So we shall see where this ends up. Meanwhile, over the road from this sign/site, the weird phenomenon of the other big Glenroy supermarket that was a kind of bizarro world 'how does it make money' place, presently I suspect fixing to die (it's certainly not trading any more):

Kept walking down towards Oak Park, stopping in at the beach for a relax. 

Travelled all the way to Kensington on the train, during which time I heard from a lovely girl who just wants to be friends: 

Apparently she lives in Bendigo now but she was originally from Narrogin in WA, which is about an hour's drive north of Katanning, where I have been, but I don't think I've been to Narrogin. I wonder why she wants to be my friend and what she has just for me. Sadly I have too many friends so I had to decline. 

I wish this story had a good solid ending, maybe you're just happy it has any kind of ending whatever it is. I went to Cheaper Buy Miles and KFL Kensington (no relation at all, as far as I'm aware, to KFL Glenroy) and then I got the tram back because my feet hurt and my shopping bag was heavy. Curiously, just as I got back to Parkville I saw an instagram post from the national archives showing the cast of Aunty Jack, which I recently found out something interesting about (and put on the Aunty Jack wikipedia page). Did you know that the first Aunty Jack outing on Australian (naturally) TV was on the same night that Monty Python was first shown on Australian TV? Well, anyway... 

That's not a good ending to my story of my day out, but it'll have to do you. 

at least you can say you've seen it

I actually did not see this show. I have seen Barry Humphries live at least once though, possibly twice, but in the 90s, not June 1974. 

'The other week, in the Spectator, Mr Harold Nicolson was consoling himself as best he could for having reached the age of sixty. As he perceived, the only positive satisfaction in growing older is that after a certain point you can begin boasting of having seen things that no one will ever have the chance to see again.' So wrote George Orwell in a column published in the Tribune on 24 January 1947. He goes on to talk about some celebrities he saw in his life: Marie Lloyd, Little Tich, and 'a string of crowned heads and other celebrities from Edward VII onwards'. He then focuses on two important moments: seeing Pétain at Foch's funeral in 1929 and a decade before Queen Mary at Windsor Castle, although at that time he says he was more entranced by one of her grooms, a 'strange archaic figure... immobile as a waxwork.'*

I have to put aside the weirdness I feel at someone consoling themselves at reaching 60 as though it were some kind of grand old seniority, although since the way stats are headed in Victoria it seems likely I will die from coronavirus sometime next week, I guess I will never really know what 60 feels like. But of course like almost anyone who's read that column or reprints of it in the last 73 years, I have been moved to wonder about the things I've seen, that no-one will ever have the chance to see again. Like Orwell, I initially think less of things and more of people, that is, people who in many instances stayed alive long enough for me to have seen them living, and I feel like I have quite a few strings to my bow there, although I also am reminded of the show title At Least You Can Say You've Seen It, a Barry Humphries joke that I still think is funny every time I think of it. 

OK, so if existing in the same place/time as someone is valuable or important, which it isn't, except if a bomb hit that place and time everyone would remember the famous person dying and occasionally there'd be a completist list somewhere of the other people who died and my name would be on it, I have:

Met Ernie Bourne at a party or some kind of social function where I was too young to distinguish fact from fiction

Seen Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy

Had a coin taken out of my ear by Norman Hunter

Shaken hands with Roald Dahl

Seen the Aunty Jack show at Dallas Brookes Hall

Shaken hands with Daryl Somers 

Saw Prince Charles at Robert Menzies' funeral procession down Collins St, 1978

Those are pretty good, aren't they, although really all except Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy were currently active and famous when I saw them. Then in adult life, I've:

Seen Snakefinger's legendary show the night he had his legendary heart attack.

Look at all the man bands, May 1981. I don't regret my choice.

Seen The Human League (three times, but most importantly the legendarily terrible 1983 era when they were barely knew their own songs, let alone how to play them); The Birthday Party; The Gun Club; New Order in their legendarily terrible etc etc see above description of the Human League; Camper Van Beethoven; Beat Happening; The Smiths; The Fall four or five times between 1982-1990 and of course met and spoke with Mark E Smith in 1982 and had a brief correspondence with him; Jesus and Mary Chain, apparently, though I don't remember that at all (I reviewed it for a British music magazine, and I'd remember if I faked it). I saw PiL after they started to go downhill (1986 maybe?). I saw, you know, Australian Crawl. Obviously I was an active participant in the 'scene' including the Go-Betweens, Triffids, Laughing Clowns, three groups I see as so radically distinct from each other I can barely put them in one sentence but time-wise it's doable. This list devolves into people I met when I worked for Smash Hits so it starts to get meaningless - I've 'met' Kylie Minogue, twice, but that's day job stuff that means little, ditto the weirdness of being part of a 'group interview' with Mel Gibson in, of all places, a hotel in Albury. To be honest, and sorry George, most of the above doesn't mean that much to me but as mentioned, I was participating in the culture, not observing relics. On the other hand I'd much rather have seen Little Tich, d. 1928. 

I have also had an argument with Barry Humphries about the rarity value of one of his early LPs (at a book signing), and I have held momentary eye contact with Germane Greer, I don't know why that happened, perhaps more excitingly it was at the Russell Cinemas, now sadly gone but very important in my memory. I did see Gough Whitlam, launching one of his late period books at the Atheneum, and come to think of it he's probably the only PM I've seen in person, unless you count Robert Menzies in his coffin (where he belongs). Relatedly, though, I once saw Nico stuffing corn chips in her mouth in the foyer of the Bondi Cosmopolitan. 

I think this post has to be an active repository. Things will come to me that qualify as 'things that no one will ever have the chance to see again'. Here's one that just occurred to me: people smoking in restaurants, cinemas and on aeroplanes. I don't think I'll see that again. But in the main such things are probably less likely to be people (even people now dead) and more likely to be places, but at present I can only think of the three houses I grew up in, all long since demolished. Oh, I have been on a Ballarat tram, so that means before 1971: my father took me to Ballarat specially to travel on one, as they were weeks away from being decommissioned. I think we went around Lake Wendouree, but that might be a false memory, but it's also fairly likely. 

*George Orwell (ed. Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970 p. 317