Category: General

Marieclaire my 3rd sister SMS’d me the other day, inviting Kim to a linen party on a Tuesday night in suburban Kingsbury. As a man who loves his Manchester, I called a day later to say we’d both be coming over. I got a followup phonecall from my mother a day later suggesting we go, to “help make up the numbers a bit”. I didn’t realise, but like Tupperware or lingerie parties, the host needs to make a target amount of dollars in sales to get a free gift, or a discount on their own purchases, so Mum was doing some background lobbying. On the night, we took a bottle of cheap red and took our seats amongst about 8 women (including my mum) in the tiny loungeroom, facing in a horseshoe towards a self assured lady in her twenties, whose name I can’t remember. It felt incredibly lower-middle class to hear her make references like “these sheets will feel 100% better than the ones in your glory-box”. Wow. Do girls still have those? She showed off the fabrics – mainly doona covers, towels and pillowcases – and admittedly there were some good prices, though I didn’t think the quality was fantastic. Nothing over 280 threadcount, and most was polycotton of some sort. There were some good tips about how to keep your towels soft and fluffy (only wash in cold water and don’t use fabric softener), and there was much oohing over some soft throw-rugs and strange rug with pockets that you wear in front of the tv. We bought a few bits and pieces and the party made over the quota of $500. I think M.C was buying a not-too-feminine doona cover that Dave could tolerate.

Friday night came around, so after work Kim caught the train into the city and met me for tapas and a couple of great Jim Barry rieslings at Yak. Afterwards, we walked down to the Malthouse and saw a play – it had been ages since we last saw one. Maybe 8 years. The Black Swan of Trespass was based on the real-life Australian literary hoax of 1944. Two incensed, philistine Sydney students created the fictional character of Ern Malley and submitted silly, random poems to a leading literary editor of the time, who proclaimed them as works of genius. The hoaxers, posing as Ern’s sister, when asked to provide more input as to the life and background of Ern, faked a lifetime of unrequited love and a recent death due to Graves disease. I don’t know why I expected the play to be a straight re-enactment of the original story, because it wasn’t at all. The producers tried to imagine what Ern Malley would really have been like if he’d lived, and used a rooster and a cat to portray his inventors. Knowing this, I wish I’d read more about the story beforehand, as without it, you’d be hopelessly lost. The more I think about the show, the more amazing it seems in hindsight. Kim and I had a good old chat about it afterwards – trying to explain the various roles and the obsession with mosquitoes. I think we’ll be going to another play again soon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley

The Tour de France finished this morning, and it was a bit of a relief. All the exciting Alps and Pyrenees stages finished a week ago, and so it was sort of depressing to think that nothing short of a major crash would alter the inevitable Team Discovery victory. Not that I dislike Lance or anything, but the robotic and relentless manner in which they ground their opponents into a pulp was a bit deflating at times. I think it was around this period that I started to consider the more whimsical elements of the Tour. One night it was “Pick your favourite team jersey and see how much it costs on Ebay”. After a good look, I decided it was between the two-tone blue of Gerolsteiner (a mineral water company) and the Blue/Green of LiquiGas. Still haven’t made up my mind on that.

Which jersey? Some more categories:
Worst Jersey: Would have to be the spew green and yellow of Phonac. Most Interesting rider name: A toss up between Levi Leipheimer and Vladimir Karpets Biggest Letdown: Michael Rogers barely making an impact. Best Nickname: Jan Ulrich – said reverentially “The Kaiser”

Sillyest Rider Oufit: Andreas Kloden with his ridiculous white sunglasses and oversized pirate earring. Only swarthy folk should wear those – not pureblood Germans.

Most psychotic rider: Alexandre Vinoukourov – never say die. Get dropped. Catch up. Surge ahead on a breakaway. Get caught. Get dropped. Repeat. Most soured, feel good moment: George Hincapie. 9 tours. Never won a stage. Gets into a breakway. Does zero work. Sits behind Oscar Pereiro and makes him do all the work. Wins the sprint, and the hatred of every Spanish fan.

Most satisfying moment: After dozens of close calls by half nude exhibitionist fans running alongside and in front of the riders, finally one got run over by a motorbike. He was unhurt.

I’ve never considered it before, but I’m right on the verge of phoning 1902-555579 to evict a Big Brother housemate that I think is mentally unstable and deluded. And I’m not talking about Dean, who I’ve despised for the past month or so. And I’m not talking about Vesna. It’s the newcomer Rita. When I watch her mothering “good girl” other people her age and telling them that “you’re not being yourself in the house” and that “I’m only trying to help you”, it makes the bile rise quickly in my throat. So, bring on Sunday, because right now her eviction chances are rising like a bullet. Here’s the likely outcome..

We’ve worked pretty hard on weekends lately, so, due for a relaxing one on Sat. we lobbed down to see the Bukowski documentary at the Lumiere. He was just as drunk, obnoxious, and yet more charming than I suspected. After a particularly filthy tirade of F and C’s early on, I waited for the first person to walk out of the cinema. A surprisingly older crowd in attendance – but no! Afterwards, perhaps influenced by Henry’s unquenchable thirst, we killed 30 minutes waiting for the restaurant booking time and drank Coopers Dark Ale (D) and Bohemian Pilsner (K) at 3 Degrees in QV, and tried to work out how many days we’d need to drive to Darwin and then Perth in September 2006. The always delightful waiter at Lebanese House (est. 1959) made a few quips about which table we were allowed to choose, and a few minutes later, told a newly arrived bunch of young girls that because only 3 had turned up for a booking of 5, that “it is policy that you’ll have to take a table for 2 and share a seat”. An unremarkable day today; a mixture of housework, fitnesswork, socialwork and foodwork. I started off on an initially freezing cold 80k ride to Mordialloc with Alan; struggled to find my old fella in a chilly toilet block in Port Melbourne and was hit by a ferocious coffee craving that started whilst still in the CBD. A cold southwesterly made the going slow and sniffly, and what I couldn’t snort out, I wiped off onto my gloves. A lot of people don’t know that the foamy padded area around the base of the thumb on a cycling glove is designed exactly for that purpose. Trying to pick out a tissue from my back pocket at 30k wearing gloves is laughably impossible. Sore knee duly obtained, I basked in exhaustion at home before painting the last of the hallway, nudging interested dogs away from the paint tin. In a queer fit of social behaviour, we walked the hounds down to Michael and Jenny’s to see their redone kitchen and ogle at new appliances. For environmental reasons they collect all unused tap water in buckets to presumably use on the garden – but they hadn’t done it in a while. There was at least 8 full tubs scattered like Twister circles through the narrow laundry, inviting a midnight spill or bizarre canine drowning. Weed spraying, dog poo collecting and hand washing completed, Kim baked chocolate florentines and rasberry and marmalade biscuits and I made up a batch of pasta from a glue-like mix of flour and egg. What a bloody mess. We made it too eggy and some got stuck in the machine. Eventually got some decent looking fettucine and promptly dropped the lot on the floor due to some bad storage decisions. And worst of all – IT TASTED NO DIFFERENT TO SAFEWAY PASTA. It was a lovely weekend really.

Most people have hobbies or diversions that help them get through winter. For a large part of my life it’s been football, but over the past 3-4 years it’s been the Tour De France and Fantasy Baseball. More about the tour later, but suffice to say, I spent 2 very late nights on the weekend watching some fairly average racing – bring on the Alps! I’ll be the first to admit that I spend too much time on it, but the Preston Tramriders have been THE cinderella story this year. For the unaware, Yahoo runs a free competition each year where hundreds of thousands of people draft squads of baseball players, whose real life statistics determines your “team’s” fate, pretty much on a daily basis. So, you keep an eye on your 11 batters and 10 pitchers, and hope they do wonderfully for their respective real-life teams. The league I’m in rates each squad on the basis of 10 stats and gives the most points for who is the best in that stat. So, the trick is to get a balanced team together of big hitters, miserly pitchers, and guys who can steal bases. A few weeks into the season I was sitting last on 38 points and didn’t think I had a hope, so I traded players like crazy and within a month, things started happening. I like to think it’s because I know very few of the real life players, therefore I’ve made decisions based purely on statistics, but a big chunk of it was luck. So I can look back on this moment, I post today’s standings (nearly 2/3rds of the way through the season).

Whilst still trying to get over a cold from last week, ex-workmate Peter sent me a late night SMS saying we were riding at 7am Sunday. I couldn’t refuse him because it’s his last weekend in Melbourne before the “Perth relocation” and because I piked last weekend. The new heart rate monitor was ticklishly applied and I rugged up for a cool start. In the warm-up ride to his house, I realised I was either less fit than I thought, or had set the alarm too low, because the darn thing started beeping every 5 seconds. I was hitting 165bpm before the start of a 60k ride with the machine that is Alan – Pete’s 27 y.old nephew. Gulp.

The ride progressed smoothly enough – but today we had 6 hot air balloons keeping us company as we caught every set of lights to Altona Pier, where some hardy triathlon folks were ready to start an event – surely they weren’t going to do the swim leg in this sort of weather? Two thirds of the ride done, we dropped in to Williamstown for a customary coffee and snack – today it was a chocolate Florentine. Plenty of other cyclists gulping down the same and lethargically getting back onto their steeds.

It was a straightforward ride home except for the lump of 2×4 pine on Millers Rd. that I apparently “nonchalantly bunny-hopped” like a pro. Wow – I didn’t know I was capable of grace during sporting activity. Usually people say things like “Boy, you can really see the veins in your forehead” etc.. My theory is that I was so tired, I didn’t have time or energy to panic about it.

 Getting home, it was time for chores and the dogs needed their monthly squirt of anti-flea medication on the back of their necks. They don’t like it, so we disguise what we’re going to do and zap them at the last minute. Afterwards Chloe won’t stop moving for 3 hours; she keeps walking in circles to get clean air so she can’t smell the alcohol stink just behind her head. It is powerful stuff. Within half an hour, our freshly washed dog stuck her head in the dirt to bring an end to it all. It didn’t work too well, but we captured the look for her legion of fans. Fergus, who takes double Chloe’s dosage, is oblivious to it all and would probably lick it if he could.

Regular early morning Williamstown diners: “tissues” Darren, “Goretex” Pete, and “leg warmers” Alan.

“They’re not fleas, they’re breadcrumbs!”

Because I hate watching any TV/video on planes (or nearly anytime at all) I found myself drawn to the newspapers when on my last few flights. And there was Sudoku, a puzzle that beckoned from Age (second of a series – medium difficulty). It’s a number game, set in a grid, and is deceptively difficult and time consuming. I’ve only ever done two of them, and both took me 90 minutes (but were of medium difficulty). I’d hate to think how messy my paper would get with scribbling at the hard level. I just found a sudoko website at (surprise) www.sudoku.com which I haven’t looked at properly yet. Maybe they could tell me how to do the puzzle without writing lots of (possible) numbers in blank squares before finally choosing one and scrawling over the top. Must read more…

An example. Don’t try to do this – it might be classified “hard” and do your head in.

I realised there hasn’t been a pet photo for quite some time, so I’m posting a picture of the (temporarily) best behaved boy in the street. He seems to be very at home on fresh linen (as is his master).
Fergus. The rightful heir to the Scotia St. estate.

I rode with Peter and Alan again on Sunday morning along a placid Port Phillip Bay down to Mordialloc and back (90k). I was astounded by the sheer volume of cyclists strutting their stuff down there – regular groups of 20-30 cyclists all decked out and raring to go. Everything from mum and dads on the bike path to small bunches of women all looking very much the part. It was a real eye-opener, learning about hand signals to point out parked cars and holes in the road, whilst trying hard not to get dropped off the back of the pack. At the half way mark, we stopped for a coffee and piece of cake before heading back and trying to keep a good average speed up into a slight headwind. I got home exhilarated just before lunch, and before starting painting in the hallway, went to ice my legs. I could barely fit the icepack around my calf – it having swollen more than an inch bigger than usual. Better not run today – maybe they will pop!