better call saul penultimate episode and hot chocolate and a reastaurant

So Better Call Saul is drawing to a close and I am finding it freaky to try and watch the second last episode which was made available on Tuesday (I am looking forward to cancelling my Stan subscription though as soon as that happens - talk about a streaming service with absolutely nothing that appeals to me aside from one thing that appeals very much). I finally steeled myself to watch half the episode this morning (up to where JimmySaul breaks into the cancer man's house). At this point the show is no longer in any sense a prequel but totally a sequel. Which is understandable but does kind of fuck up the overall continuity (until a few episodes ago you could have said, you can watch this whole thing like those faked up Star Wars prequel movies that made the real first and second films the 9th and 23rd or whatever). 

Anyway I guess I will get through to the end of that episode sometime today. Then I will no doubt be on edge for a while. 

I didn't get round to showing you the rest of my Bendigo trip from the other day, you probably feel on edge yourself. Well, I didn't go to this reastaurant: 

Not did I go to this cafe which I only photographed because of the Minna Leunig:

Oh, on the way back from Bendi I went past my old Albion stomping ground where I haven't set foot since I left in 2019 but I was adequately interested to photograph it going past:

^ No change here

^ Change - the car park - big deal right

^ Change - my townhouse block there and some building shizzle in front of it (ie in the foreground), don't know what that's about but it looks residential, and there's been some grotesque new buildings put in next to it. 

^ 'My' block again. 

^ Not a Bendigo picture - it's just that handsome Chanticleer looking dreamily at me* because like many cats (and dogs) he thinks I rock. 

^ I don't know why I own this or how long I have owned it but last night I realised it was the only album I own that I had never played and I did and, like all my other records, it's really very good. It's a lot more sparse than I expected, which possibly just means that the bulk of it (aside from the hit single which in this case was 'Heaven's in the Back Seat of My Cadillac') was recorded fast 'n' cheap with no particular frills (a few disco-y violins, that's it). But it's really solid. Mind you that's only side 1,  I will turn it over sometime in the next 25 years.  

*Alright he's not looking at me but that's only because I interposed a phone between my eyes and his. He went back to looking dreamily at me right after. 

one hour's work took a day

I shit you not. Although I got a lot of other things done too, including reading an excruciating Enid Blyton book (look, I had my reasons) and correcting a lot of pages of another book, and doing my emails etc on the train when the train condescended to go through places where there was coverage. But all good y'know?

So I had to look at the Borough of Swan Hill's minutes for 1939+ to see what they were saying at the time about the Frank Heath plan for Swan Hill which was launched (such as it was) in the early 1940s. TLDR, I mean, cut to the chase, long story short, whatever: there seems to be almost no interest or concern at borough council level regarding the Heath plan, which was pretty swish, but there you go. They don't talk about it, except once, which suggests to me that it's being funded from another source, though I don't know what that source might be. So anyway rather than settle an issue, a bigger question has been raised. However, there was a lot of other interesting things in those minutes, so I'm not sad. The minute book was, in any case, held at the Bendigo branch of the Public Record Office's reading room. 

It did only take an hour though. Then I had time to kill till the train (more than I realised, or rather, maybe less than I realised, well that's confusing what I mean is... I looked on the PTV app to see when the train coming back was, and what I didn't realise was the app wasn't telling me when the train left the station but rather when I would have to wait at a nearby bus stop (I was, like, three or four blocks away - 15 minutes' walk max) to get a bus to the train station. So I walked to the train station and had another 40 minutes to kill. For all I know, I could have got an earlier train. Anyway... doesn't matter. 

I went to a couple of op shops but nothing jumped out at me, which is perhaps for the best all things considered. I had a good coffee and a weird sandwich, and I bought an oven mitt that seems to have been made out of those rubbery sucker things we used to throw at windows and watch them crawl down. Also I bought a copy of Mojo, a magazine that really has nothing going for it anymore, but it had an article on Magazine and I guess I just wanted to see what they'd say, because I like Magazine. 

Been awake since 4am though (for no reason I can glean) so I guess I'm a bit fuckin' shagged now. Will stay up for Mad as Hell but that's IT. 

lunch in the country

What could be more pleasant than lunch in 'the country' (actually a regional city) with a select collection of some of my favourite people: Fran, Hairy, Kylie, Bren, James, Miranda, Felix, Shane. I was going to alphabetise them but instead I kind of went round the table of my mind. The food was delightful, the cake my goodness, the coffee sublime, the music remarkable (hmm... Kings of Leon sound more like U2 than I had anticipated, then in the same song they kind of morph into some kind of odd post-punk thing rather funky, and that new royalchord album christ! And all that mazung Bob Welch music...) I wasn't taking notes so until Hercules Poirot comes and tells me a terrible thing happened that night and wart deed yew tock abeaut, great Belgian accent Hercules if that is your real name, I can only remember the definition of 'piss fit' and discussion of a certain individual and a certain other individual and how one is apparently obsessed with the other, and discussions regarding retirement (good lord!), the concept of how a chocolate cake might 'shit all over' another cake and what form such shit might take and japanese bowing competitions, but I daresay there was a large amount of even quite erudite discussion like what about Felix's drawing a big F for Fran and the like?
One odd thing no doubt the first indication of my impending appalling nervous system disease that will rapidly spread and claim my life in two weeks for now ('look he even joked about it, little imagining the pain') was that at the end of the evening I rose from my seat tripped on a chair leg and fell flat on the ground. I did put a hand out to stop myself I think but essentially I just went down. It was one of those odd things that you think about as it is happening, though not much (come to think of it I had a similar experience on the Calder going up when I saw, too late to do anything about it, that I was about to drive over a pillow; the effect was, actually, minimal). I scraped my knee and that was about it, my beautiful face was untouched. But it was a most interesting experience. I was not at all drunk (one beer all day). Anyway, that was mentioned only as a point of interest it did not at all mar the day (for me at any rate) which was marvellous. What a good idea, let's do it again next weekend.

the gallery of memories - 2

It seems like only Saturday, because it was, when we went to Bendigo to see Lucinda/ Surrender Monkeys/ Cannanes in an upmarket Bendigo-O hotel. Then afterwards, at 2am, there was an all-star jam in the Wipplegong Dancehall. Pics are of the Surrender Monkeys and the All Stars.