life during wartime

I dreamed I taught David Byrne how to dance.

sunshine-y days

Beers in Edinborough Gardens. Tried to start a battle between a fixie gang, some low-rider punks and a bunch of hula-hooping hippies. No luck. But I did have a vigorous game of boules.

get me one of those warm things

We recently got a subscription to The New Yorker*. Which is pretty much wasted on me as I really only read the cartoons. (Sam Shepard has a short story in there? Whatevs - check out this sketch about a man buying an dachshund. HILARIOUS!)

However, within its pages I have discovered a whole new genre of reading: New Yorker ads! These 4cm x 3cm B&W proclamations are probably some of the most entertaining and curious reading I have ever come across.** The latest issue attempts lure me into buying a 'Warm Thing', a fairly shapeless robe on which I can save 20% off right now. I have also learned that the Saratoga Lamp Co. (a kind of tea light holder manufacturer) is now taking orders for Christmas, and that 'the perfect gift' this year is 'the original brass Blo-Poke - THE essential fireplace tool'.

Reading them is like travelling back to a time when women clipped their fancy clothes from the pages of a mail order catalogue and chimney sweeps were 8 year old kids in charmingly patched baker boy caps. They just make me want to take to town with a diamond topped cane and monocle and make wry jokes about chambermaids to my fellow elite.

*Ooh, look at us and our intellectual posturing.
**As indicated by the first paragraph I really don't read that much.

hiss...

As we rode through North Melbourne today, Lankwood almost fell off his bike when he saw a guy picking up a long, long, long snake from the grass of a small median strip.

'Pish!' I said. 'You were imagining it. He was just holding a long stick ... or a hose.'

'Posh!' Lankwood said. 'I will prove it.'

And he did. As we cycled back we saw the man had not one, but two long, long, long snakes that he appeared to be 'walking' (or sliding?). Turns out he does so twice a week. He lets them get some sun, lets them have a little slither in the grass and lets them scare the crap out of passing inner-city cyclists.

this just makes me feel good

Created by Tom DesLonchamp

spied

Our street just keeps giving this week. On my way to the op shop I spied an old man, dressed neatly in shades of brown, carrying a very large chess set into the community centre.

why?

Left the house this morning in time to see a schoolgirl pick her way from the front door of her house, to the middle of the street to retrieve a single shoe. Did her little brother, watching from the door, throw it there? Did she throw it out in a raging protest against the prospect of another miserable day in a classroom? Does she just keep her shoes on the road? My questions go unanswered.