division 4: 'man's only a battler'

Obscure name for a very excellent episode of D4 from 22 March 1972. My worlds collided in this one where the crooks are chased onto the 'Westgate Bridge Freeway' which at that point is incomplete. 

In a way the actual pictures of the empty freeway aren't all that amazingly exciting. You heard it from me (if you hadn't already realised). 

But it gets a bit thrilling when John Stanton (who plays a criminal) breaks away and is chased by Gerard Kennedy to what might well be the Aerodrome and therefore the future Westgate Park. 

Yeah it is just one more case of I wish I could reach into the screen and turn the camera around a bit but you can't have everything, or really anything. 

fishermans bend

The weather on my phone said it was not going to rain this morning (also the Bureau of Meteorology's website showed precisely not any rainclouds at all) so Perry and I went to Fishermans Bend mainly with the intention of visiting Westgate Park but it rained heavily on the way there and when it stopped we were just passing Salmon St so I thought whatever let's have a little moment here and we walked around not just Salmon St but by accident we found ourselves in a massive open space.

It's funny to think all this is just existing there, isn't it. When I was born this terrain was easternmost point of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation runways - the western half of which is now Westgate Park. But between when I was born and now it has also been the site of a cluster of large buildings, I am not sure what they were. 

Anyway so, Perry and I were heading back to the car (along the way I insisted he have his photo taken) when it started raining heavily again, and I just thought, fuck it, we'll cut our losses so we came back. That's my/our story. 

In the car I was listening to a podcast in the Discord and Rhyme series, about the Wire album Pink Flag. As you know, podcasts are just distractions for me and I tend not to want to learn anything from them though in this case I sort of did. Nothing I needed much less wanted to know - mainly the ways in which Pink Flag tracks sound a bit like REM (who of course completely postdate it) or the Minutemen (ditto). Anyway, I was fine with it.  

perry is two

I hope you don't mind me busting in to these fortnight-old reminiscences (a couple of weeks of Flook are scheduled shortly anyway, they're seventy years old) to commemorate Perry's second birthday today, we have been out and about, we took the train to Spotswood, the ferry to Westgate Park and then walked back from there. Last week or recently anyway I read the adage 'a tired dog is a happy dog' in at least a couple of places and I figured I'd do what I could to make a happy dog today. Tomorrow too if possible. 

 

He is definitely growing up - less grizzling, more attentiveness, can stop himself from barking furiously when reminded it is a good idea, etc. Still work to be done but you could say the same about me really couldn't you. 

altercation

 

So yesterday Perry had his first real full-on fight, with a dog bigger than him and of a breed I'm not entirely clear on, whose owner seemed entirely unable to control him, I think his name was Trigger.

Could be that this was a certain kind of irony, because the day before (Friday) Perry and I had a long consult with an obedience trainer who was adamant that Perry was in a power struggle with me to be dominant which was why he was so uncontrollable with other dogs - though mainly verbal. We had been on a chain-and-lead arrangement when outdoors for 24 hours by this time and Perry seemed content to take it as indicating that I was in charge and he had to stay to my left side and not deviate. That said, when we encountered this woman and her large dog in Westgate Park on a Saturday afternoon, Perry did do a bit of whining, but no barking - which is unusually good behaviour for him. But perhaps the other dog took this to mean Perry was a pushover? He certainly did push him over, and had him on his back within seconds, while the owner seemed entirely unable to do anything. She had asked me whether Perry was desexed and how old he was, which seems to me now to suggest there were a few triggers for Trigger but I felt that Perry had passed the test i.e. there wasn't going to be any kind of pissing contest here. Yet there was something somewhat worse. That said, Perry doesn't seem to be hurt and indeed nor does he seem to have decided that after this no dog can ever be trusted to refrain from pinning him down. 

The picture above is Perry taking some water therapy.

The trainer was good, I thought. Sometimes you just need someone to give you a clarifying structure to what you already suspect is true (eg that dog park 'socialising' can be negative, and that positive reinforcement alone is an untextured encouragement to the dog to do whatever s/he wants). I think we are on a better path now, at least, I certainly hope so.

Westgate park this morning

In an attempt to beat the heat, Perry and I made a quick excursion to Westgate Park this morning. The only other people there that I saw were two young people, a boy and a girl I think, who were canoodling (I think - didn't look closely - well I mean what is canoodling anyway - really anything other than reading scripture together and even that probably counts in some people's lives) on a bench by a path (i.e. a fairly public place but as I said, there was no-one else around so whatever). 

This is a picture I took but actually I took it just because I wanted pictures of the park edges. So this is not representative of anything except that, I shouldn't even put it here. 

For the first time that I can remember I actually had a destination in mind. I wanted Perry and I to both sit on this bench and view the lake. As you can see (zoom in! zoom in!) there is an empty tonic water bottle on the bench, evidence I suppose that someone, probably in Rye or Whittlesea or somewhere like that, drank some tonic water and then thought 'I had better take this empty bottle to Westgate Park and put it on a high point there'. Anyway, Perry and I did both sit on the bench for a time (I had to lift him up because I think he probably didn't understand the point/ didn't think it was wide enough for his fat arse) but to be honest...

it was already too hot there, even at 7ish AM, so he started whining then I started grizzling so we went home and I put it in my grizzle book (i.e. this blog). 

struggle

I have never seen this ridiculous barbecue on Moonee Ponds Creek near Docklands being used, but it does spark the imagination, doesn't it, about how it might be used and by whom. 

This morning Perry and I went for a walk to Docklands then we thought 'hmm, it's less than an hour from here to Westgate Park and then we could get the ferry to Spotswood and train home,' but what we weren't taking into account (or didn't know) was the fact that the ferry only runs in the mornings and the afternoons on weekdays - on weekends, it's doing a constant back-and-forth. Weekdays, it's out of commission entirely between around 10 and 3. So we had to basically walk back from Westgate Park which was a bit of a hike, I have to tell you. But we lived and are probably better people for the experience.