hot weather

I suppose you're probably sick of these walks. It's started to get hot and we have to start a morning walk regime - Maribyrnong River at Avondale Heights again. Going to have to go out earlier though, by 10 it was hard work. Perry had to get into the water. 

heating up

I had a very interesting talk this morning in Thornbury with a tv production designer whose name I won't mention here but who gave me a lot of great insight into the way tv shows are conceived. I then had a bit of a walk to try and get out of Thornbury and to the SLV. It's heating up. It's that time of the year where I had to keep switching between my sunglasses and my ordinary glasses. Even with the sunglasses sometimes it was too bright to really see. Also, jumper on, jumper off. It's a big hassling drag. But they say it's going to be hotter this summer than anyone now living can recall. So that's not good. 
 

please end summer, you suck

Not only will summer ending be a good thing in itself but it will reduce the number of summers before we see a conclusion, for there must be a conclusion, to the right-wing insanity of much of the world at the moment. IE the end of summer will be a hurdle. Indeed if we see, as we surely must, Trump's power reduced at the US midterms in um 2027, then we really only have one full summer to get through. 

I have made a decent writerly space for myself on my small balcony which actually works well although the wifi is not always brilliant (but still, it gets there more or less). It was a junk space for years and I will most definitely sometime be locked out there you bet but I also find it very good for getting stupid little things done, like today I finessed my first lecture of the year. This is the so-called view from the balcony - pretty ridiculous I suppose, though it is definitely trees (and slightly miserable pot plants which I water lovingly every day). 

Mouldy cat picture rescued from a street in Flemington, plant Laura didn't want anymore and I did. 

The loyal animals nearby: Helms

Nancy - very much in repose

Perry - he stays close

Books for me to read while I wait for someone to come and rescue me when I get locked out on the balcony, which will definitely happen one day before too long. 

sunday morning in helsinki (two weeks ago) - part one

Greetings to you from the Hotel Anna. I think I have actually stayed here twice before, or perhaps only once. Definitely I stayed a few days here on my first ever trip to Finland, which I believe was in 2011. It is old school, I suppose I hate that term as much as I hate any term which has kind of detached from its original wry or hip meaning, so that really people who use it actually just mean 'old' (ok well I guess they mean 'old but valid'?). For instance, my room has this phone in it, and I am pretty sure it's not even ironic:

I don't have a clue about the story of this hotel but when I see the other people staying here, in the breakfast room, I suspect they have been guided here by their valuing of proximity to the city and an eschewing of costly (faux-) luxury. I had a quick look at Tripadvisor expecting a swathe of 'never since I had my wallet stolen in Phoenix in 1981 and had to slum it in a run-down...' reviews - not a reflection on the place as I see it but on its resilient rejection of frippery - but there were none, which I can't interpret. 

I'm on the fifth floor, this is what I see out the window this morning (just before 9 am). Not bad. 

I had to have the window open as the room was quite warm when I got here, it wasn't uncomfortable. I was zonked, as they say, so although there were drunken gronks going past having super loud conversations (the last one just some young men bellowing, I know they were young because I looked out the window to see who was doing this, they had the faces of 80 year olds though) I wasn't that bothered. 

The big dumb thing about today is that whereas I was originally scheduled to get in on Saturday morning, in fact I didn't make it till Saturday evening - whole waste of a day - and things don't get started in a hurry in Finland on Sundays. You guessed it - this is depressing and embarrassing but just true - I can't handle the day without coffee. I had some coffee in the breakfast room but it was the coffee of non-coffee drinkers i.e. insufferably bland, I just had some the way junkies put water in their old needles hoping to get a little of the residue. So my next step is to go out and find an outlet for one of the cafe chains - Espresso House - which apparently is due to open in 8 minutes. Not 7, not 9 but 8. 

More anon.