25 august 2019

Looking at my phone photos from five years ago is a bit confusing because obviously like anyone but particularly like hoarders (it's in the genes) I use my phone (as mentioned in previous post) as just a dump for every impression/ thing that happens/thing I do/ thing I see, but at the same time I can't be friggin' bothered to make a note about why this is important or what it means, I just assume that one day I will sit down and notate on it all, which to be fair.... well, what I'm doing now is the closest I will ever get to making any kind of extra commentary on this shit. 

So five years ago, I made a loaf of bread. Yes. The weird thing about this is that I had made a loaf of bread the day before, too. So I am not sure what this was about. This bread was born in the humblest of circumstances, the scungefest that was the kitchen in Albion. I mean my kitchen today is pretty awful but nowhere near as awful. 

I guess I walked Barry and Ferdie that day, although this is the only picture from that moment, so who really knows. 

It doesn't matter in the slightest but why did I go to the 12th Caulfield (St Johns) Memorial Scout Hall five years ago today? I definitely can't tell you. 

I vaguely recall seeing this book in a bookshop in Elsternwick I think. Maybe it was the first time I saw it IRL? Because I have a short chapter in it, so I would have been interested. Maybe I was just pleased to see it out in the wild. 

Fabulous op shops in Elsternwick, so that's probably where the above images are from. 

This was around the time that I was getting ready to go to Europe, and I visited my aunt Maggie a few times with my mother, apart from anything else, I was proposing that Maggie take on Chanticleer as her new cat. Not sure what this would mean for Pompey but maybe I would keep him, I don't know. Maggie was ill with cancer and as it transpired she died in September. 

Pompey (rear) and Chanticleer in the Albion hovel. If you don't know the story of have forgotten (sometime I forget) I rescued these two from the mean streets of Albion, they were street cats with no future or at least the future of being run over by cars. They were flea-bitten, wormy and undesexed. I am guessing that by this stage they were no longer the first two categories and maybe not the third either anymore. 

Nancy hated them (still does). Though fortunately for Nancy, she doesn't have to think about them too often. & vice-versa. 

Once again this is all trivia but the one thing that I am amazed by is how awful things were five years ago and how good they are now (for me, not for anyone else, just me). I put most of the credit for that with Laura, who is a daily tonic. No doubt by this stage she had already agreed to look after these three cats while I was overseas, and as it transpired - she ended up keeping the two boys, together. It's hard now to imagine ever separating them. 

back

I hurt my back this morning in a weird way probably the weird way most backs get hurt/hurt themselves - I think I was bending down for something. I actually thought my liver broke or some other internal organ but now I think it is just strain of some minor otherwise never bothered with muscle, just trying to make itself known.

I thought 'either I can lie down and see if this passes or I can try to crash through' and I decided. possibly stupidly, on the second option. I was just about to take Perry out on our usual perambulation of 2500 steps on a route he knows well and considers to be a satisfactory walk. I started gingerly but picked up pace and ultimately it was fine, though it is still twingey.

What I noticed, which is what I think is the most interesting point here, is that Perry - who I tend to assume is powering along like a demon without really considering that he is on a lead connected to my hand - was actually extremely considerate of my slightly less mobile situation and walked a lot more slowly and sensibly (loose lead, which he sometimes finds difficult to countenance) and was overall just a good boy. People always tell you that your dog is deeply connected to your actions and demeanour but you forget it's the case in the day-to-day. 

Well, the joke's on him because having fully appreciated this I am going to do more disruptions to get him fully attentive to what I want him to do and remind him more in his conscious brain that I am his leader and don't need to be protected from every dog/tall man who comes past. 

While I'm here I'll tell you about yesterday. We went out with Ferdie (I am now ready to officially announce: Barry died a few months ago. Sorry to be brusque about it, I'm not being glib, he was a very, very good boy and he had an incredibly good life, almost to the end) up around the creek almost to the same place we went in the second week of June but not quite. 

We battled some steep creek banks for a while...

and came out where there is a stretch of open, um, stone, sandstone maybe? Anyway it was weird . It was weird because while we have crossed that terrain many times before now it has been covered in, well, it's probably not hessian but if I say hessian you'll get the picture roughly speaking. Or wait, here's an actual picture:

Ferdie, if you're interested, is in good spirits. It's hard to imagine he's old but he is (11 I think) but still the same affectionate and enthusiastic boy though not as naughty and I would say (never say never but...) his escaping days are over. He spends a lot of his time with the cats, which is bizarre but I guess it's like the cessation of enmity in war or something. They seem to get on well together. 

jacana reserve walk

So just for the heck of it, quick deets on a Jacana Reserve walk this morning. This is Barry these days, he is too old to walk a long way, but he still has a good life, I am told.  

Ibises in the park. There were tons of them, a huge flock, but these were a little further north just a small gathering and closer to the path. I have no idea what they were all eating, but they were all eating. 

I just couldn't figure out what this was. Can you tell? 

I am kind of into this weed island, looks like Perry and Ferdie were too. The shopping trolley reminded me of how once (15+ years ago) I called the supermarket in high dudgeon and told them they had to get the shopping trolleys out of the reserve. The idiot who answered the phone said of course they would because they were worth $1000 each. I'm sure. 

Can you say fox on the isthmus six times quickly? 

fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly fox on the isthmus six times quickly gosh you're sly

rabbit rabbit rabbit

 

29 Jan 2023

rabbit rabbit

I saw them yesterday for the first time in months (extension to 15km on Wednesday) and we had some good times.

mid to late jan 2011

25 Jan 2011: I am trying to start the habit of blogging into the future. If I keep this up I will NEVER REALLY DIE, at least not in blogworld, except of course my blog posts into the future will eventually run out and then I WILL REALLY DIE. I wonder what blogger actually 'is' and whether it will outlive me.

I am in the final throes (I hope) of finishing my short book currently known as The Bogan Delusion. I am at the point where I am 4/5 finished but feeling a crisis of confidence, now being so immersed in what I have to say that I feel like it's not worth saying and uncertain whether I believe it or not. I am at the point where I have railed against class hatred, but then go on to talk about why I have every reason to feel class hatred if anyone does. I'm glad I wrote that down, it now seems a lot more easy to deal with.

I am also over where I would expect to be word count wise at this point in the book, so I can start pruning and culling a bit, which is a relief and a pleasure. This morning I have taken Barry and Charlie out, put some washing on the line, put some clothes away, thrown some mouldy things out that were in the fridge, and fussed around on the internet putting up pictures of Barry etc - time wasting.

I wonder what it will be like in 10 years' time and whether every second conversation will be about Facebook. Annabel last week said she was fed up with facebook and it was a great relief to not have it in her life and I thought about this for a couple of days and then emailed her saying however much you hate/blame the messenger you are cut out of people's lives if you don't get involved in things like that. Hopefully in 10 years we won't be talking about it constantly however.

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.