five years ago

I genuinely am not self-obsessed, ask anyone, or at least I hide it from myself if I am by finding myself interesting as a phenomenon. But by accident I have a lot of ways to find out what I was doing on any given day in the last, let's say, 9 years because that's how far back my phone photos go, and a little more vaguely twenty years I can refer to this blog and even further back I have appointments diaries that go back to the mid-90s. Ridiculous really, I have no reason to keep those things in particular and will probably chuck them sometime soon.

Anyway I can tell you what I was doing five years ago - I was 'reading' this book, in a language I can't read. 

This was in pursuit of completing the book Community Green, which was published in, um, 2024. I had visited Käpylä, which is a small WWI-era suburb of Tampere, and I went through a lot of hoops to get a copy of this history by an author who was either dead or resistant to being contacted by someone in Australia who only spoke English. But I worked with the information I had. 

I was also in that week reading Peter Blazey's excellent book on Henry Bolte, probably the best political biography published in Australia, at least until Judith Brett came on the scene. 

I suppose I photographed this section of the book because it mentions Bolte's lack of interest in 'the implications of urban development' and the 'country member' joke, of course. No wonder Bolte h-a-t-e-d this book. 

I don't remember exactly when I moved to where I live now, but there are some pictures of the cats from five years ago where the backgrounds suggest that I had recently moved in, certainly it looks massively different and there's furniture etc which I don't even really remember, and certainly isn't around anymore. Here's Nancy looking like a 90s metal video. 

At this time I was also doing the pictures for Shane and Duncan's poetry book. I'm surprised, I thought this was much more than five years ago but there you go. The more or less finished version is here.

Five years ago I guess I was reading Sally Rooney's book before last (?). 

I can't remember why I accepted Tegar's friend request but the friendship didn't last. 

Seems five years ago I was looking at my formative picture books. 

Or at least some picture books I owned, because I completely don't remember this one from childhood:

This one I definitely do

I completely don't recall this but I really feel it could be useful for something. Like maybe some sort of lonely hearts site. Maybe I should tell my friend Tegar. 

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. 

five years ago - talkin' bout your generation

Carmelina and I have been to these studios in Southbank a few times to see Mad as Hell and at least once to see Talkin' Bout Your Generation being made/'taped'. In both cases it was exactly the same studio and of course exactly the same host (and exactly the same warm up guy) but pretty different shows. I have never watched TBYG on tv, whereas I watch MAH pretty religiously, but from memory the experiences were pretty much equally enjoyable, mainly because Shawn Micallef has that charisma. I have no recollection of who the guests were on this episode or much else about the experience, only these photos found recently on my phone, which just goes to prove: write everything down! WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!!! It's important!