leisurely livin'....

yay - i'm on holidays for 2 weeks... i tell you what, last friday the working day seemed to take forever to end - it seems like i applied for these holidays so very long ago and they didn't feel like they were ever going to get here... but finally it was time to forget about work and think about relaxing and enjoying the next couple of weeks... leading up to the holidays though i did catch up with larry the librarian on my day off last monday - we spent a lovely couple of hours chatting, smoking, sharing food and a bottle of vino... a very enjoyable time...

saturday i had irene and the malmsbury mob down for a visit - they had to come down to drop off my wee louie who's staying with me for 10 days, so there'll be a lot of strolling the streets in the next week and a bit... i had thought about getting up to malmsbury for a few days but it's just not going to happen - my brother would come and stay with allie and shadow, but it's way too much to expect someone else to clean up after my old incontinent girl - and he just doesn't get the idea of getting her outside as soon as she starts moving about - he's not 'attuned' to her and forgets she's blind and deaf too - and there is a lot of picking up and carrying involved in living with a blind, deaf and incontinent dog - it's just too hard for someone else to deal with (and for me 'kids' to deal with someone else!)... so home is very much my 'holiday destination' for the next fortnight...

having visitors meant i missed the grand final though - having grown up in st kilda i can't help but have a soft spot for the sainters - me mum, me brother and me, we all followed the saints - me dad was the odd one out, with north melbourne being his team...

st kilda formed in 1873 and was originally a  victorian football association team... with widespread player dissatisfaction with the association, they shifted support to the newly formed victorian football league, becoming one of the foundation clubs of the vfl in 1897 (which became the afl in 1990)...

footy was the be-all end-all where sport was concerned for working class folk here in victoria in the 50s and 60s - it definitely took precedence at school - we (the whole school) were all packed off on footy days to watch the boys play - basketball, the 'girls' school sport, came a very poor second (just the teams went to these matches - no cheering fan club for us!) - and NO, it wasn't called netball then - i was a goalie and we played basketball (and it was still basketball up until i left school in 1970!!!) so the name-change didn't happen in victoria (centre of my universe, but i'm not sure about the rest of australia) until some time during the 70s when american national league basketball became popular in 'the colonies' after showcasing the talents of the harlem globetrotters  in exhibition games - i was lucky enough to see them a couple of times - they were amazing - totally mesmerising!!!

in 1911 footy made the move from amateur status to a 'professional sport' with the league setting a limit of 30 'bob' per week to be paid to some players (but few teams actually introduced this remuneration until years later) - this had risen (for some) to around 3 'quid' by the 50s... there was plenty of loyalty and a lot of action on the field - for many there was nothing more exciting than watching a melee (okay, all in brawl - of course that often 'provoked' more brawling amongst the more 'exuberant' spectators) - there was no such thing as the blood rule then (nor any oh&s)!!!!... it's definitely changed over the years - it's better for player health and conditions these days but there's way too much money involved... the culture is really fucked with many players seeing themselves (as do some fans) as demi-gods with entitlement to do as they like, to get away with atrocious - often criminal and often sexually abusive - behaviour... it's a sport for fuck sake - unfortunately really big money became involved and that changes everything...

i'm not a big footy fan now, but i will watch the saints playing when they're on telly - it's a sentimental thing - and because i didn't get to see the game on saturday i don't mind that it was a draw, because now  i'll be able to watch the grand final next weekend - and having won only one grand final in over a century of playing (that win over collingwood in 1966 by 1 point - that's barry breen about to kick the winning point - i was 11 and remember it vividly!) - what would be sweeter than another grand final victory over the much hated 'pies'??? GO SAINTERS!!!!

i've brought heaps of books and dvds home for the holidays - so i've got plenty of leisure activities to fill in my 'leisure time'... i made a start today - me and the gang (louie and allie on either side of me with shadow on the knee!!) watched 4 episodes of the 3rd season of true blood - now that's not a series you can just watch 1 episode of i've found - i'll probably finish that in the next couple of days - and i've got some interesting books to read and talking books to listen to - so my next couple of weeks are looking good - really relaxing...

oooh, i might even get some blogging done...

a rude awakening!

well, it wasn't an 'awakening' as such - but when my buzzer was 'buzzed' at 8.30 this morning i jumped up to answer it expecting it to be australia post with my cd's from chaos that had been despatched on friday - it's been a while since i ordered baby animals and marianne faithfull - they had to wait for their suppliers which means i've been waiting and hanging out to get my copy of 'il grande silenzio' and 'broken english' (yeah, an oldie but a goodie and i haven't haven't heard it for years - and hey, it was cheap!!)

wasn't i extremely disappointed to hear it was someone wanting to 'share' their 'bible passage of the day' with me!!! no thank you!!! hey, for all the years they've been knockin' on doors you would have thought the jehovah's witnesses would have had their 'quota of souls' by now - they believe only 144,000 will be going to 'heaven' - so isn't it time to leave the rest of us folk alone??!!!

to any religious 'door-knockers' - believe what you want, but  don't come unsolicited to my home and try to 'get your foot in my door' (or your doctrine into my life) - i'm not interested in your patriarchal and misogynistic religion nor your male god - it's nothing but a man-made fabrication to justify subjugation...

my morality and ethics come from my belief in the equality and complementarity of all of nature - not in the subversion of people and the destruction of the natural world as practised by powerful and self-serving men in the guise of  'church and state' over the centuries...

in the blink of an eye...

Wow, seems like I blinked and the weekend disappeared!

working all day saturday just seems to get harder and harder... it really eats into the desperately craved for 'homelife' time… and a lot of the evening is spent winding down from the day on desk... and saturday we were one short for the day - by late friday there was just no-one prepared to come in for the shift, so knowing we were going to be shortstaffed sailor lily provided a bottle of howling wolves vegan wine for us to share and help the winding-down process once we'd closed the library (thank you!!) - it wasn't as good as having another body on desk would have been, but at least we had something to look forward to after the hard slog... there were four of us to share the vino so we had a glass, a quick debrief and catch up and then went home - i got a lift so i was pretty much at home in the same time it would have taken waiting for public transport… maybe that's how the day should end every day - well, at least if you have to work at the weekend anyway?!! 

and what a wild and windy night it turned out to be – definitely a night to spend by the heater - but we lost power here in st kilda for a few hours - there went the heater – luckily i'd had dinner because once 'the lights went out' I couldn’t even have a cuppa because the flats are all electric – bummer – thank fuck for candles and laptop batteries – at least I could listen to music - when i could hear it over the storm that is - the whoosh of the wind was incredible!!!

my heart goes out to those in the rural areas where flooding has become a major disaster or where communities are living under threat... so many areas affected - i've lived in bushfire prone areas but never been close to a flood - i can only imagine the anguish, heartbreak and frustration of having to deal with the devastation so much water, mud, and debris would cause... and then there are the animals - voiceless victims of every disaster...

it caught my attention when i heard they were sandbagging in skipton - i once lived near there and seeing this map sent me tumbling down memory lane to 1989 when brann and i 'packed up the family' - the animals that shared our lives and whose lives we were fortunate to be part of - goats (3), dogs (4), cats (10) and numerous chooks (mostly progeny of those we'd saved from battery farms) - said goodbye to our 'shack' and 50 acres of bushland and granite outcrops high up a mountain in tallarook and moved to snake valley...

we lived in a small campervan for the first few months and the annexe became our kitchen... we had a small two-burner camping stove with gas bottle and the fridge was an esky replenished with ice every couple of days... the dunny was either a bucket, or a shovel and roll of toilet paper - now this wasn't too bad in the summer, but for the first few weeks we were there it bucketed down - luckily it was september (and an unseasonal amount of rain) but at least it wasn't bitterly cold too!!!!

once the weather 'fined up' we had a dam dug, and then a western red cedar house built to lock-up... it was only 10 squares - but it was big enough for us to start with - we had 20 acres of beautiful australian bushland to supplement our space and add to our enjoyment... and the house was 500 metres from the front gate - blissful seclusion...

we moved in to the empty shell and started the hard work of doing all the internal stuff ourselves - walls, ceiling, fit-out etc... we put in a large water tank and a gravity feed tank on the roof, had a septic tank installed, fitted a slow-combustion stove in the kitchen and a wood heater in the lounge - we had plenty of old fallen trees on our bush block - we just had to do the sawing and chopping! - and finally we could afford a small solar and battery setup... up til now we'd been living with a generator, 12-volt battery power and candles (mains power was way too expensive to get connected!) but we were forever having to get the racv out to charge up our car batteries!!!!

we added a wide verandah - this was the view from it before we started landscaping (that's caspar wandering around in the yard - his sister suli was probably off being wicked somewhere - we had a 1/2 acre fenced off around the house - plenty of space for everyone to entertain themselves) - it was a wonderful place to watch the resident wallabies, kangaroos and kookaburras - we had a regular visiting fox that came right up to the fence and teased and harassed the dogs terribly once it realised they couldn't get out!!! and there was also a koala (we called him kelly) who took up residence at certain times of the year...

this was home - my country dream - by this time it was 1992 - we'd had our ups and downs over the years but hey, we were still together after 17 years so there was no reason to believe that we weren't going to be here forever - we were even trying to conceive... but then one fateful phone call became the catalyst in turning our lives upside down, and our world started to implode...

in the blink of an eye...


you may notice i don't use photos with brann in them - i have many photographic memories of him but since we split up i don't know that i have the right to 'share them with the world' without his knowledge or approval so consequently i keep those to myself...

enough of memory lane - it's hard to keep the tears at bay - so i'll leave you with janis and a song called 'little girl blue'...