grudging respect

 

The story so far: I have had Nancy since 2013, probably the year she was born. Like any good hollywood heartwarmer she was an obligation who burrowed her way into my affections (heartwormer, I suppose) and we have been solid since, I guess, around the time in either late 2013 or early 2014 when she disappeared for a week and then came back for good. It really was a modern day folk tale. As idiotic as it sounds (possibly even to some cat owners/lovers) I feel like she is not an animal presence but just someone I live with. We have our routines, we hang out, we don't always communicate but I suppose I project onto her a kind of cohabitant personality. When I write it down it looks stupid but that's how it feels. She does hassle me for food at certain times of the day but in her defence I bet she wouldn't if she could open the sachets of cat food herself. Also I mean she does grovel to me for affection at times, mainly when other people are here or on zoom (!) which gives a weird impression of things in the outside world but trust me most times she's nearby but not demanding.

So Nancy and I lived a full life at Clifton Hole, then we moved to Albion and for some (the beginning) of that time we had Joni and her cat living with us while Joni got on her feet or whatever the phrase is, found her feet, in Melbourne. I had never seen Nancy with another cat up till that point except her uncle Monty (who she hated and feared, and the feeling was mutual). But in this instance Nancy seemed to have found a genuine friend. Joni was of the opinion beforehand that this would work because her cat was low-status and would just hide, and I thought at the time 'what on earth does Joni know about cats, they don't work like that' but she was completely correct. That didn't last long but it was a good arrangement for the cats, they got on really well - they would play a lot (sometimes it looked like fighting but no-one got upset) and even just sit together. 

So in um I can't remember, I guess it was 2020, we were living in Parkville and I decided Nancy needed a friend (particularly because she would not be able to go outside anymore) and like a fool I decided to force it and find a timid, small, pushover friend. I got Helmi just in time for the pandemic (I specifically remember that the Cat People of Melbourne person Gina insisted we not shake hands but bump elbows - I am pretty sure this was the first time that had actually been enforced on me, though I knew of the concept). Helmi has slowly come round to me and we are very close, I find her completely ridiculous but I adore her and I admire her loyalty. But she and Nancy, nuh-uh. They have tended to attack each other whenever they are near each other, which is usually only when I'm there too (so there is a bit of 'girls, girls, don't fight over me' which of course is flattering) but they also sometimes I just hear them do it in another room. 

In the last let's say month, though, there has been a slight thaw. This is Nancy's doing primarily because she is refusing to retreat (though it is also me taking Laura's wise counsel that the cats should eat in the same place, which they now do, Helmi creeping downstairs in the middle of the night to eat whatever scraps there are left the kitchen). So almost every morning, I wake up with both of them on the bed, not near each other exactly and never in vulnerable positions. You know what it's like being a cat. You have to sometimes look like you're asleep so it's clear you're not in a panic. But a cat is always a hair trigger away from leaping into action. 

So I think the ball is basically in Helmi's court now. I probably told  you about the insane video I saw of Helmi when she had kittens, washing herself blithely in a room of people while her kittens played with a dog, which is just like - I would never have believed it possible but I saw it (writing it down now I am not sure I believe it still). The only connection between that cat in that video and the cat I now know is that it's the same cat. So of course I know that whatever ails Helmi, well, it might be permanent now, but this is not the cat she's always been. 

They did play together once, in my memory, when they briefly investigated a battery-operated toy together. That was a communing moment (at Parkville). I guess maybe I should invest in more things like that but it does seem like an expense because Nancy only ever plays with a toy once. 

It doesn't obsess me or anything, I am fine with it all, I am just watching what happens and observing change and hoping it goes the way I want it to. 

chip nuts

I have nothing to tell you. Very tired. I went looking for a picture on my phone that might have given some entertainment and all I could find was this, which I suppose was a snack I bought in Oslo and presumably ate, at least some of, probably. 

I don't remember this at all. They may not even be Norwegian. 

I loved Norway. I mean it's not Finland (what is?) but it's similarly clean and everyone is polite, more or less, and helpful. Unlike Finland I have Norwegian ancestors. The Knorpps. I'm sure I've told you about the Knorpps. There's every chance they don't exist, really but I'm hanging on to them, partly out of my strong affection for my paternal grandmother who told me about them. There just doesn't seem to be such a name as Knorpp unfortunately. 

Here's another picture from the same week (October 2019) which basically is probably worth about a billion dollars. It's Edinburgh Castle I think. It's a real thing that happened. 

Anyway I really have nothing to tell you. It's been a very full-on day, with a two-hour lecture that went OK but really took the wind out of my sails. Talk to you later. 

garbage truck

Stupid picture of Nancy in the garden just for fun. She goes out there often when I am about to leave the house, presumably because she knows if she is out there I am likely to stay around a little longer, or perhaps there is a more sinister reason. 

God, the garbage truck was so loud this morning and just sat seemingly outside the window just going on and on, there were two of them, at least, a garbage truck and a recycling truck, twenty minutes apart, both massively loud and so extended it was almost like there was some kind of hazing going on.

Last night I started watching the episode of Homicide called 'Vendetta' which I soon discovered (spoilers for 56 year old tv show) is the episode where Bronson gets killed by, I assume (haven't watched it all yet), an escaped criminal. Story goes that Terry McDermott decided he wasn't getting paid enough for the long hours and stunts he had to do, so he left the series, and they made sure he did so with a bang (he was back on series TV in a few years, joining the cast of Bellbird in 1969 and even becoming entrepreneurial about it - he was one of the producers of the film Country Town, which was based on the series, a film I've never seen but would love to see). Anyway his replacement was Les Dayman, who if I remember correctly was thirty years later part of the cast of Richmond Hill, I suppose I should check that and soon will. This is from the Age 21 April 1966 (TV-Radio Guide, p. 5):

It spells a new era for the show, obviously, as Bronson was a big part of it and McDermott probably all things considered the star at least in the first year, though his glow dimmed a little next to Leonard Teale and his (LT's) alluringly bad teeth and always the sexy promise that he (LT) will make some quip at the end of the show about how (for instance) well, mate, your bit on the side was poisoned by her father because her pregnancy threatened his run for local council but golly how you going to explain that to your fiancee? 

Anyway so I started to watch that and was intrigued to see that the show begins - I think this happens even before the opening credits - with Leonard Teale's character gunned down (amazingly, in the street my brother lives in - Rennie St, Coburg - but get this, he wasn't even born then!). I reckon this is an example of cunning publicity, there must have been some kind of attendant press story about how one of the characters would die, and everyone would think it was Mac, since he gets shot three times in the first five minutes and left to die in the gutter. Anyway I was watching that but it had been a fairly demanding evening and I was thinking gee, poor old Bronson and Mrs Bronson, I wonder if he ever got to finish painting the room that he was painting when he was called away to Lorne to solve that poisoning case, and then two eps later he was shot by the deluded criminal. I didn't feel like it was a good way to end my Sunday so I stopped watching, I'll maybe pick it up this evening. By the way though:

Leonard Radic, 'The battle for local ratings', Melbourne Age 24 August 1966 p. 15

Meanwhile, the three Ws: work (gruelling atm), war (kind of puts everything into perspective and anything I say about that appalling situation is going to come out as glib but it's horrendous) and washer, dish. Another thing that, yes, is brought into perspective by the war in Ukraine but it does look like the dishwasher has given up the ghost. The only question is, repair or replace? I suppose I'll give repair a go, in the interests of not putting a huge piece of old equipment into landfill, or whatever the hell happens to old dishwashers, for a little while longer. Sucks! I am pretty sure it's not repairable because it seems to be the electronics, but what do I know, I'm not an expert. Sometimes an expert can just flick it with a fingernail and it goes for another ten years. 

I know I had more to tell you but I'm really just procrastinating here. Later. 

scurr's scroll etc

Sydney Morning Herald 14 December 1954 p. 9. When did you last see a ballpoint pen being advertised anywhere. Hilda Scurr also advertised Horlicks, can you still get Horlicks? I had it occasionally in the early part of this century and it was not a bad concoction. 

I don't know how old Hilda Scurr was. She came to Australia (presumably from the UK) in 1928, she must have been an adult then but surely not very old. Anyway she was still young enough to be called 'young' on the front of a magazine in 1941. 

The internet is such an exotic and exciting place, for instance when you come across this kind of dumbass bullshit from someone who has clearly never tried to search on anyone before. This is a comment from a post on HS on a facebook group with the gripping name 'Old Australian Character Actors That Have Passed Unnoticed.' 

homicide march 1966: 'chain reaction'

On Tuesday 15 March 1966 at 7:30 pm in Melbourne you could have watched The Avengers (the 'Cybernauts' episode); The Dick Van Dyke Show ('Remember the Alimony'); Lost in Space ('My Friend, Mr. Nobody') or the latest episode of Homicide, the last I think in the second series, called 'Chain Reaction'. 

Of course you would want to pick the show with not just a Scarr but also a Scurr in it... what are the odds! Anyway Helen Hopgood is once again centre stage, kicking off with a bunch of flirts with McKay (Leonard Teale was 44 at this time, far too old to play the kind of scallywag playboy McKay, however appealing he is; he replaced Lex Mitchell, who was at least ten years younger but probably more, who was more suited to that kind of thing but was more of a clean skin. There's plainly meant to be some chemistry between Helen and 'Mac' but the characters aren't realised enough to make that stick properly). 

In this instance after knocking off work Helen accidentally encounters a runaway, Judy (Julie Costello), who she had just seen in court the day before. Judy is a schoolgirl who is meant to be back in Seymour, and instead she's wandering around Armidale with a friend. Helen arrests her and calls the Toorak police to tell them she is bringing her in. 

My memory of phone boxes back then is you couldn't really fit two people so easily into them but that's not important. So, Judy runs away with her friend down a back lane and Helen pursues them but is hit and knocked out. The Homicide team investigate murders, not missing persons even if they are policewomen they like to have sexy conversations with, however, in this case they are assigned to try and find the missing Helen. 

Judy's mother comes in to be interviewed - one scene if I remember rightly, with Christine Calcutt as Mrs. Power. There was a small feature on her in the Age on 30 July 1960 (p. 7) which described her as 'building up a reputation... for well handled, small character parts.' That's what this is (it also says she was born and raised in China!). 

Helen is taken out bush somewhere (references made later to 'off the Bendigo road' )and dumped, where she wakes up and stumbles around looking kind of new romantic:

Meanwhile the detectives are pursuing a lead i.e. the boarding house run by Mrs Logan, in St Kilda. Pretty great house:

Mrs Logan is played by the aforementioned Hilda Scurr. Scurr was a stage actress (with the Allan Wilkie Shakespearian Company) then on radio in a soap opera called Mary Livingstone, M.D., and much later in the famous Blue Hills. She was not enamoured of television apparently though she did appear in a few Homicides. Though we never really learn why Mrs Logan is ready to do whatever is required for the evil Eric Morton, she is very obliging. This is her preparing to lie to the detectives about how well she knew Julie and how she didn't know Julie's friend Carol (who is in the other room).  Soon afterwards when Carol reveals she saw Morton knock Helen out, Mrs Logan makes it her business to keep Carol in the living room until Morton gets there to deal with her.

Morton is the proprietor of a cafe, called The Yellow Door. We see the detectives drive up to it very briefly and I think someone has daubed the words 'The Yellow Door' on the front window but it's hard to tell. We don't see any chairs or tables or anything but, note cappuccino machine, which is interesting perhaps. And all the product placement. 

Another bit of flirty behaviour from Mac which gets results in this instance (the cafe girl - Patty, played by Jill McKay - reveals Morton lied when he said he didn't know Judy or Carol). Mac by the way orders a cappuccino but then has to go in a hurry so says he'll have it another time. 

I mean they must have had to say to these actresses, 'when he acts this way you have to go all mushy'. Not that he's an unattractive man but he's just too old to be acting the lothario with young women. Anyway doesn't matter. 

Spoiler: Judy is dead, Morton ran her over. Morton tries to take Carol somewhere presumably to finish her off but the detectives get to the boarding house just in time and save her, notwithstanding that Morton throws a pitchfork at them, as the devil might. Carol puts the finger on Mrs Logan and there is an excellent shot...

Of her just standing there, knowing the jig is up, and ready to be led to the car to take her to the police station (along with Carol and Morton - what kind of conversations went on in the vehicle with them all in it together?). 

Julie Costello would be back in Homicide in November the same year in an episode called 'The Hostage'.  She became a bit of a mainstay in Division 4 later in the decade/into the next. She must have been annoyed when Murder One named a character after her in the mid-90s. Or maybe it was homage.

* In August 1967 viewers of Granada television in Merseyside had the pleasure of watching this show. 

(Liverpool Echo 29 August 1967 p. 2). 

I'd love to know what Where Did That Come From? was like. George Melly was writing Flook by this time. I had formed somewhere in the back of my mind that Cyril Fletcher was one of those horrendous Savile-style pedophiles hiding in plain sight for decades but looking at him on wikipedia I see I have wronged him in that regard. But he was a freemason. 

flook for march, 1952

 

You don't need to care but this is the best quality example I could find of this strip. It's from the Lincoln Star: 

rabbit rabbit

Barry has not been well this week, for reasons unknown, and even on this walk (17 Feb) he was a little shaky. But he is very keen to keep going.