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. 

ballina

So a couple of days ago my mother and I flew to Ballina to visit her cousin to get some materials for a book I will one day write. But not for a while because I have other projects on the boil before then. Two planes to Ballina. That was actually fairly painless, particularly because we were fully prepped to have problems with inclement weather etc, etc, etc. 

The important grounding exercise on arrival was to visit op shops and this we did immediately. They weren't that amazing but it had to be done. In both the op shops we visited on the first day, hilariously, there were intensely drawn-out conversations between the woman behind the counter and the woman buying stuff. In both cases the women buying things were retired middle class people with a lot to say. In both cases they fussed over the money - the form of it, not the amount, so that in one instance thirty something dollars was paid in $1 coins. It was madness. 

I am sure (am I?) that not all of Ballina is an architectural letdown but I didn't see anything that exciting. 

Really, it could have been any country(-ish) town anywhere in Australia - actually as I said to my mother, it could be Greensborough. 

Nice bird outside the airbnb we stayed in. 

Can you believe this. 

Beach thing. Beach-ish. Actually I think this is a cove or perhaps an inlet. 

Nothing need be said. 

The next day it was back to the op shops. There are many of them. They all had something going for them. 

I really enjoyed this tea towel. All these kids are no doubt approaching 30 and complaining about how they are getting old. 

I can't even remember why I took this photograph (though it includes one of the op shops, a great one) but I do remember why I put it in this post - because it existed. 

I am just non-plussed about what stands in for print media these days. I mean I bet Australians are reading more now - probably 3 or 4 times more - than they were in (say) 2002. But they're not reading magazines. So what nonplusses me is the kinds of things that still do make it into print. Rolling Stone is the one that foxes me the most. 

This is flying out of Sydney. I mean, whatever. 

Very quickly - I don't think we were even out of metropolitan Sydney - it got very cloudy and stayed that way till we got to Melbourne. 

So ultimate feelings about northern NSW? Well, firstly, the trip was very successful I would say, and I think I got what I needed. Secondly, I am sure Ballina has secret pleasures and treasures (aside from the op shops) but these didn't necessarily reveal themselves straight away. Thirdly, my mother is an entirely agreeable travelling companion, though I guess I knew that already. Fourthly, travelling is a palaver and the older I get the more of a hassle it becomes. Yes, yes there are compensations and there are much worse ways to spend your time/money but I'm completely rooted today. But I almost always am on Friday. 

anonymous

One of the good things about having a blog is, well, if it's a diary kind of blog as opposed to one where you get AI to write your posts, and as we all know that is the future of blogging, and with luck soon only AI will read blogs anyway, and will rehash old bloggery into new content for the pleasure of other AIs, but anyway, if it's a diary kind of blog then you can be reminded of things you really could not even believe, much less remember. Like apparently about 15 years ago I was not only watching Doctor Who but watching it like a fan. Admittedly, a fan who might stop watching it at any moment (I guess I did, because now I barely even recall ever watching it, after, you know, 1975) but writing about it like someone who thought that to watch Doctor Who was to be a valuable participant in the zeitgeist. I mean WOW. 

I could link to that post but on the other hand, who cares. 

Laura and I are in Adelaide and we have been doing fieldwork all day, it's been really good. She has been the driver. It was a very productive day. Hot take: Mt Barker (SA) is not a bad town. I just remembered something funny. I was in the Christian op shop and the two ladies running it were talking about someone else. One lady: She just talked and talked. Other lady: Oh well of course she would because [completely ran the sentence into the ground because she realised I was there even though she had no idea who I was of course but she had basically forgotten she was in public I think]. It was funnier the way she did it though unfortunately but I've written it down the best I can and we can move on. 

auckland a week ago

Thursday 24/11 was a fieldwork day trying to get photos of a few things around Auckland for a forthcoming book. It was partially successful. Te Atatu, which is a peninsula suburb somewhere in the west, was further away than I remembered and harder to get to than I imagined - same old principles, one you realise where the information is, it's easy but you have to have known where to look first. I had a decent time in Auckland anyway and I am ready to say it: it's not a terrible place. 

Earlier I showed you the view from the hotel room, which is pretty nice. This is the view inside the hotel room. Actually pretty horrible. 

Myers Park

These ridiculous birds saw my verandah door open and wandered in like they owned the place. Perhaps they do.

Life.

Op Shop on a train station platform. I didn't go in, I had a train to catch (and the escalators were out of order so it was urgent). 

This motorway is one of the abominations of the southern hermisphere. 

Skyline

Symonds St Cemetery

The flats adjoining the K Road end of Myers Park

Myers Park again

greetings from albany (last week)

Hi I am in Albany (Sunday 4/9). I am staying at a strange enough motel in a snug beachy holiday suburb slightly east of main Albany. I am about to go to main Albany and have a look around (it's not daylight yet). The hotel had some weird liquid soap which just seems very oily, and I used it last night and I thought I had got it all off but then this morning it revealed it had been on me all along, and was still hard to get rid of. 

How fabulous is the town hall? It looks like some 15th century belgian shizzle. 

Just, you know, all blue books. 

It's one thing to see old signage advertising CDs and DVDs (they'll be back before too long, don't you worry) but this shop still had a lot of that stock up the back. The front was a lot of cheap junk. It was closed, this was Sunday. 

Also closed. 

I couldn't imagine a worse looking remodel on an old cinema although tbh this might not be that much of a remodel, just a building which was originally intended to have placards and postcards on it, etc, and now it  has these horrible logos on it instead. 

So it was a Sunday morning and I was gasping for a coffee of course apart from anything else and I used google maps naturally and found a bunch of cafes. Kate's Place was obviously going to be ideal for my purposes but fucking hell... 

And it looked so much like my kind of thing, what with the bunting and so on. 

However! I went back to the motel in a razz but then had another look at google maps and realised there was a place I hadn't investigated so I drove there and... 

Flippin' perfect! Albany you ultimately got it right so thank you.