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October 31, 2006
Trapped in video hell
Lucky I'm not planning on going anywhere as I can't actually get outside the front gate at the moment because of that huge white sheet/trampoline looking thing thats used to reflect light. Its been parked there for a couple of hours.
Of course if I did really want to go out they would stop filming so that I could. They are very good about that sort of thing and the inconvenience the filming is causing residents. It's just that then I'd have to walk fifty meters through a column of film crew, and apparently, celebrities, muttering thank you, Thanks, that's great, thanks again, really appreciate it guys. I think the house would have to be on fire before I'd bother!
Posted by Faith at 04:57 AM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2006
Tiger, tiger burning bright
Posted by Faith at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2006
Photo Friday: Accidental
Posted by Faith at 07:37 AM | Comments (0)
Bits and Pieces
Today it seems, filming is focusing on lots of smaller peripheral moments to the larger scenes. Car drives up and someone gets out, someone walks down the street, someone crosses the road, that sort of thing. Usually scenes with no dialogue and generally only one actor involved. It makes for busy filming though.
Yesterday they spent hours on a scene outside the house over the road, which meant I got to watch Raji, (as we call him here now, of course), walking around in a white Bonds singlet that wasn't-doing-him-any-damage for the duration of the afternoon. Good for the soul, not so good for productivity.
It's also interesting to see just how much of our local streetscape will be a part of the film. The lanes we use for navigating our way around Brunswick have worked their way into the series in a big way, I suppose this adds to the 'authenticity'. While our house is not featured, being in-between-owners at the time that these things were arranged, it's proximity to the ones that are means that both the house and and our car are in the background of a lot of scenes. This makes walking out the front door pretty nerve-wracking at times. Will I ruin a take that has taken hours to set up and rehearse? Or will I end up as an inadvertent-extra in some particularly fetching tracky-daks and curlers? Dare I check the mailbox yet?
With all the external filming it means that it is sometimes important to remain silent when navigating the street. Try telling this to Jacob. The only certain method it seems is to stuff his mouth with cookies and run for it hoping he doesn't choke in the process, or if he does that at least he will do so quietly.
And a rather mundane but increasingly pressing consideration, will the garbage trucks ever be allowed back in?
Posted by Faith at 02:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2006
Street traffic
We can't move in our street for production crew, celebrities and the neighbours. meanwhile in Amsterdam my ex-colleague, Jaap, found himself trapped inside the oranjekerk where he works for different reasons.
Squatters were being evicted in the subtle way they do these things in the Netherlands. Jaap managed to get some photos. This was a couple of blocks from our flat and on my morning route to Jacob's creche and then work.
While living in Amsterdam I was always slightly unerved by the way they dealt with squatters once it was decided to move them out of the building they were inhabiting. It didn't involve the normal police but the other ones, the serious ones, the ones they also use for football hooligans, who look more like a SWAT team than anything else. Rows of armoured black vehicles and huge burly black-clad body-armoured teams were sent in, usually to deal with some very underfed-looking vegetarians. Not only were the police able to use enormous truncheons on people who were running away from them but they were happy to be filmed doing so by television crews.
Posted by Faith at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)
Gefeliciteerd
Today is the one month anniversary of our new home! Gefelicteerd!
Posted by Faith at 07:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
Who's who
It may be something to do with the 5.30am starts but when the location manager of the production crew working in our street introduced us to Raji James I was more interested in what Jacob was planning on doing with the big stick, the neighbour's dog and the approaching car than registering the presence of a celebrity.
This is probably also the reason that I failed to notice him sitting a meter away in a plastic chair on the next door neighbour's front lawn for a week as I shuffled past deep in conversation with the three year old about just how big he is now and how big he will be tomorrow and what he plans to do when he has reached this next milestone of bigness.
Or I could just admit that I wouldn't know a celebrity these days if I fell over them. Thank god I haven't done that yet.
Filming continues today and I got to watch Raji get in and out of a car fifteen times in between shushing Jacob. The glamour of a film set!
Posted by Faith at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2006
The Rising Son
Dawn is dawning fairly early these days. I'm not sure just how early but suffice to say that Jacob has abandoned winter-waking hours of 7.00am and is now on a 5.30am ETA in our bedroom. Through the slats in the shutters I can say that it IS light then. This then is notice that my brain is officially on 'befuddled' status from now until some time after the summer solstice. And that's still two months away!
Posted by Faith at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2006
Amster-gnomes
Another milestone has been reached with the planting this weekend of our two amsterdammetjes. These were wedding presents from friends in the Netherlands and have been languishing in storage ever since their arrival in Melbourne, waiting for their day in the sun. Well that day has arrived! Not to be outdone by the plethora of cement lions in the gardens around us we decided to plant one alongside the path leading to the front door. The second one is gracing the spot by the back door that will soon be my herb/kitchen garden.
If you look closely you may notice that the one in the front garden is, just as an amsterdammetje should be, leaning slightly to one side. Unlike Amsterdam, Brunswick, has a very clay-ey soil, thus making the digging of the holes for these two a task from which Ron may never recover. Don't worry though, I made him feel better by repeatedly assuring him that it was nothing compared to the soil in Abbotsford.
Posted by Faith at 06:48 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2006
Spitting the Dummy
For about a month now Jacob has been using his dummy, or 'speen' as we call it at home, only at night time and for extra-serious falls or the bit in Barbar where the snake bites Madame. Last week his current dummy woke up one morning with a hole bitten in it and we were faced with the dilema of buying a new one or biting the bullet and moving into a dummy-free phase of life. Inspired by Jacob's sudden burst of maturity these last couple of weeks we decided to bite-the-bullet and try a dummy-free existence.
We've been a bit suprised at just how easy it has been. The first few nights Jacob asked for his dummy and we explained that it was broken and he couldn't have it. He accepted this very easily and went off to sleep without any great difficulty. Now he has been six nights and six days without it and has had only one difficult night when he was especially tired and loudly proclaimed, "I need something in my mouth" before falling asleep with only his tongue and teeth in the afore-said mouth.
We are now officially a dummy-free household!
Posted by Faith at 05:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2006
Almost family
The television crew are starting to almost feel like family. They film from 7.30am until 7.30pm and start arriving and leaving maybe an hour before and an hour after that. I see more of them than I do my husband! These first three days they have been filming almost continously in the house next to ours. While I'm working I'm facing a window which in turn faces a window of a room in which most of the action occurs. So my day is punctuated with 'Action' and 'Cut' and people scurrying down the path between the two houses to adjust lights.
Everytime I leave the house I have to walk past the make-up station (on the next door neighbour's lawn), an impromptu 'cafe', (also on their lawn), the wardrobe van, the ironing board (on the pavement outside no. 16), the location manager and various cables, and bits and pieces which vary depending on filming that day. There is also the poshest looking port-a-loo I've ever seen!
Each morning the contents of the neighbour's house are piled in the adjacent laneway and then returned each evening after which the neighbour's return for the night. This morning they were very excited to discover a tiny piece of their backyard in a photo in one of the local papers which had a small article about the upcoming series.
The location manager and his assistant even made sure that all our wheelie bins were returned to our houses after the weekly rubbish collection. What will we do without them when they leave?
Posted by Faith at 04:33 AM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2006
Fame
For a cul-de-sac our street isn't all that quiet at the best of times. It's a nice sort of busy-ness, generated mostly by the very-extended families of many of the neighbours. This week though busy-ness has cranked up several degrees as a crew from Storm Productions has moved in for the next few weeks to film Kick.
Apparently we're going to be the next Ramsay Street, the home of a television series that is a cross between Neighbours and The Secret Life of Us. The next door neighbour and several other houses have been selected as the homes of the main characters. Our house didn't have the appropriate number of cement lions or corinthian columns to be a contender. As we were 'new' we've been saved a lot of the fuss but the Location Manager pops by regularly to keep everyone up to date on what's happenning. Thats how we found out we're being referred to as 'the new danish neighbours'. Herdedybergenjurgen!
Posted by Faith at 01:50 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
Reaping what others have sown
I moved into our new home armed with seeds and plants from Diggers and Ideas. Ideas about olive trees, plums, maybe an apple, etc etc etc. Discovering the garden has been a fabulous process because it seems the previous owners had spookily similar ideas. Hence I have been eating rhubarb for breakfast for the past two weeks and Jacob is growing hearty on home-grown potatoes. Yup, a wee bit of Holland in the backyard, a potato patch!
In the meantime I have sown my tomatoe seeds, capsicum, basil and lettuce. Our greek neighbour, George, has confided that he already has his tomatoe seedlings in. A heresy in Melbourne where Cup weekend is the official planting time. Our lebanese neighbour shakes his head in horror and mutters that it's far too soon. My Dragon fruit tree and vietnamese mint arrived today from Diggers together with two strawberry plants. There's a lemon from the front yard spritzing up my glass of water and learner-mulberries decking the tree outside our bedroom. And thats only the beginning!
Posted by Faith at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2006
Getting there
As you can see we're slowly getting there. But as usual it does seem to be one of those processes where the more you get done the more you discover there is to do. One day of course we will renovate but for now we're just happy to be here.
Posted by Faith at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)
Going, going, gone
We had a favourite cafe at our new house before we had even moved in. Exploring the area during viewings we discovered and fell in love with Cafe Banter in Lygon St. Comfy couches, a box of toys down the back, nice coffee, laid back enough for me to be able to work during the day, a great breakfast for the weekends and a fabulous red fire engine in the toy box that left Jacob asking continually when we'd be going to the cafe again?
Shame then that one week after we moved in it closed down. The sign on the window says that it will be re-opening soon as a bar, and probably from the looks of it, quite a nice one, but I'm not sure the fire engine will survive the transformation. They are selling off bits and pieces from the cafe, maybe I should call and see if the fire engine is up for grabs?
Posted by Faith at 03:11 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2006
The glitch
There's always a settlement story isn't there?
Settlment for us was scheduled at 2.30pm Monday and I had optimistically arranged for the removalists and the deliveries of the furniture and appliances we'd bought to arrive from 8.30am the next morning in the firm belief that optimism WILL prevail even if brute force is required.
At about 3.00pm Ron and I set off towards Brunswick anticipating the the agent's imminent call to announce that we could go and pick up the key for the house. We decided to take a few things with us in readiness for the move the next day and so found ourselves heading up Hoddle St with a car laden to the rooftop with boxes and bags full of absolutely-essential things we have quite happily lived without for the past six years.
The only thing spoiling the anticipation was the nagging thought that things until now had gone very smoothly and where was the glitch? There is always a glitch and neither of us had seen even a hint of one yet so WHERE was it and what would it be? The Law-of-Glitches does say that the longer the glitch takes to surface the bigger it usually is, doesn't it?
At about 3.25 I thought the agent was taking rather a long time to call and left a message on his mobile. At about 4.00 our conveyancer rang to say that there had been some huge mistake with our money and that more-money-than-we-care-to-think-about had vanished into cyber space and settlement had been cancelled. This was patently ridiculous and I burst out laughing, said "Yeah, right Nick" and thought I bet he does this to all his clients. What a wag!
It took a while but he finally managed to convince me that he wasn't joking. Due to some computer crash our credit union had made the money over to the solicitors trust account but it had never arrived, leaving the solicitor's unable to disburse funds and finalise settlement. Don't worry though, Nick said, I've rescheduled it for tomorrow afternoon and as soon as the credit union's systems are back online and the funds go through we'll settle and it will all be okey-dokey.
Except, I said, EXCEPT, I have seven large trucks arriving in a cul-de-sac tomorrow morning all of whom will be wanting to unload things into a house that not only will I not have a key for but that I won't even technically own! We spent the next half hour circling Brunsick in ever-declining circles amid a mountain of boxes and a flurry of phone calls while the credit union, the agent, Nick, the vendor's coneyancer and the vendor got together and arranged to release the keys to the house to us anyway so that we could still move in as planned.
And so it was that we finally arrived at our new home armed with the key, warm champagne and the glitch, safely tucked away.
Posted by Faith at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2006
aaaaahhhhh!
Ok, ..... two weeks later, the dust has settled and we are finally experiencing something like what will hopefully be normal transmission. Because it's pretty damn nice living here.
Now where shall I start.......
Posted by Faith at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)