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March 30, 2007
Still harvesting
With the nice bit of rain we've been having recently the tomatoes, which I was almost ready to pull out of the ground, are putting in a last-ditch effort before winter really sets in. The basil is doing an encore too, so it's tomatoe salad for lunch, tomatoe salad with dinner and tomatoe salad for lunch again the next day.
Posted by Faith at 05:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2007
Posted by Faith at 04:25 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2007
Bluey the chook is now leader of the pack
She's conniving, scheming, daring and now; she's leader of the pack. Bluey the chook has usurped Willemijn as boss-lady of this little quartet and now rules the roost, the veggie patch and the outdoor furniture.
Posted by Faith at 03:47 AM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2007
Exigencies
Last week started off well but rapidly descended into a series of bathroom-sprints as Tuesday saw me succumb to a particularly nasty gastro-something. By the time I emerged, dazed and confused and with aching stomach muscles it was Friday afternoon and the week was practically over.
The weekend then, saw us all exhausted and washed out. Ron and Jacob from the exigencies of having to do everything themselves with no bossing from me and me from, well, just exigencies. This and a sudden plummet into autumn temperatures was enough to dictate a slow weekend for us all. Today though, it's lovely and sunny again and we're all feeling much better!
Posted by Faith at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)
Posted by Faith at 04:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2007
Chook booty
Posted by Faith at 03:50 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2007
Action
Jacob and I have a new project.
Because, obviously, the never-ending-list-of-things-to-do that runs through my head every night while I'm trying to fall asleep just isn't long enough! Anyway, my-re-discovery of the horrible Minolta Dimage has somehow prompted the making of an epic. Jacob and I are making a film about his daily ride to creche. It started out simple enough, (we have no sound and only a 16MB memory card so it was never going to be a complicated affair) but I have now started adding in all sorts of 'detail' shots and am experimenting with various ways to allow for the lack of continuity. (Or maybe I should just send him to creche in the same clothes everyday?)
And then I saw this. The Sydney Road Short Film Competition and realised I was going to have to re-shoot the whole thing so that it takes place on Sydney Rd. By July.
All I need now is a soundtrack, a concept and a parallel life in which to find the time.
Posted by Faith at 04:39 AM | Comments (0)
It's all downhill from here
Jacob's 3-year-old obsession with dinosaurs and diggers (animals and transport, as someone succinctly summed it up)is still firmly in place but getting a run for it's money lately from a new leaning towards long conversations centred around bottoms, penises and boobies. Farts and burps have been known to figure prominently also.
As we only speak Dutch to him and this new obsession manifests itself almost purely in English I am assuming it has been picked up from the four-year-olds at creche. (Or could Grandma and aunty Alix be responsible......?)
I've been wondering lately about the wisdom of leaving the vast majority of Jacob's english-language education in the hands of pre-schoolers. At least we needn't be concerned that it isn't a broad education.
Posted by Faith at 03:55 AM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
Beware of the knitting dragon
A boy can never have too many dragons.
See what I mean? Which is why I couldn't resist Morehouse Farm's Puff Dragon Scarf when I saw it. Puff bears an astonishing resemblance to at least one of the dragon's Jacob already has and he does need a new scarf. The knitting kit arrived this week so I can start straight-away. One thing I will be changing though is those white firey-things emanating from the dragon's nostrils. Call me old fashioned but to my mind they should be red, or as Fluffyasacat suggested, red, orange and yellow.
Right then, all I have to do is finish the jumper I started last winter, (it will soon be too small) and the jumper for which I bought wool at a summer sale, and I can get started!
Posted by Faith at 04:42 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2007
What we did on Wednesday
Wednesdays, Jacob and I get to stay at home together and just relax. This week we made our usual shopping trip down to Lygon St, dragging our 'brunswick buggy' through the bluestone laneways. If you can't get their via a laneway it just ain't worth going to!
After filling up the buggy we have a coffee and babycino and share a cake-of-Jacob's choice. He seems to be on some sort of chocolate thing at the moment.
After we got home we hung out two loads of washing, picked the last of the basil and made some pesto, picked and washed some apples for Fluffyasacat and the Tiny Man, stewed some for ourselves, fed the chooks, baked a chocolate cake and terrorised some trees with our beginner pruning skills. The we cleaned up Jacob's room and the loungeroom so that he and the Tiny Man could mess them up again while discussing the possibility of giving the Tiny Man one of our apple trees.
A quick call to dad to tell him that we had burped in the street (twice) and farted consistently all day and next thing we knew the Tiny Man himself had arrived. (Thank god!)
Jacob and the Tiny Man discussed farts and burps and bottoms while Fluffyasacat and I discussed cow poo, apple trees, pruning, floor insulation and other weighty, and mostly organic, matters.
Once the Tiny Man had left we retired to the couch to read 37 books before finally falling asleep two hours past our normal bedtime.
Posted by Faith at 04:53 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2007
Waiting for Greece with my editor
One of the best things about the work I am doing at the moment is being able to suddenly and mysteriously throw "my editor" into the conversation. (Not literally, you understand.)
Meetings can be arranged after I've seen 'my editor', coffees drunk after I've met with 'my editor', phone calls interrupted because of 'my editor's' imminent arrival.
So I was rather pleased this morning to discover that I can now add "waiting on permission from Greece" to my repertoire. A second teensy-weensy project in which I am almost completely peripheral has popped up and then almost immediately been put 'on hold'. But what a fabulous outcome!
If I can work 'waiting on permission from Greece with my editor' into the mix I might just be overcome with delight.
Posted by Faith at 02:09 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2007
Autumn tomatoes
Posted by Faith at 03:55 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2007
Jacob digs gardening
We had plans to do LOTS of gardening this weekend. As it was we got lazy and did very little but Jacob ensured that at least some digging was done. Another eerily silent production.
Posted by Faith at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)
Counting the days Johnny boy
I'm not a big Kevin Rudd fan or anything but we do have one thing in common and that is a burning desire to see John Howard well and truly shafted by the electorate.
So, this, makes me very happy.
Maybe it's Kevin Rudd's own uncanny resemblance to a younger version of John Howard that everyone finds so inspiring? No obvious statesmanlike qualities, no scary visionary characteristics, just another bean-cruncher, a National Administrator to take-over the role of chief accountant. Whatever. It makes me very happy.
Posted by Faith at 02:22 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2007
Gotan Project
We had tickets to see the Gotan Project on Sunday evening. I was ambigous about this concert which is just as well, since Jacob scuttled our plans, and we ended up instead drinking a glass of very average pinot noir in a very average local bar.
Not that I don't like the Gotan Project. Love them. Saw them three times while we were living in Amsterdam. My only complaint would be that every perfromance was almost identical. And Ok, it was a sensational perfomance well worth repeating and it did bear seeing twice, (three times was a bit much) but I was a bit nervous that the melbourne performance would also have a 'sameness' about it.
The've released some new material recently so I was hoping this would also mean a new feel for their show but the other source of my discontent was the venue. I've only ever seen the Gotan Project in a smoke-filled venue full of people wriggling their way to-and-from the bar in time to the music . Cheap red in one hand, cigarette in the other, is their any other way to be drawn into their amazing show?
A concert hall atmosphere just seems a bit too 'clean', too constrained for the best of what they do. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who went what they thought of them. Of course I won't since comments are still turned off. If you did see them you could always email me at dougiedehondAThotmail.com
Here is a review by Jeanti St Clair who saw them perfom in Sydney.
And here is a little something to look at;
Posted by Faith at 01:23 AM | Comments (0)
House Spider
Our resident huntsman moved in just shortly after us. Ronnie's first instinct was to move it straight out again but I've never had a house in Melbourne that didn't have a huntsman so I can't really see the point. He or she will just come back. Or an even bigger one.
Even for an older spider this one doesn't move around much. Well, at all, really. And, for an adult, it's not terribly big. It just sits in the hall above our bedroom door. (giving that extra frisson to entering the bedroom....) For the first time, the spider unfurled it's legs this week and revealed the secret of it's lethargy. There are only six of them. Legs, that is.
We couldn't possibly throw it out now, could we?
Posted by Faith at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2007
Saudade
In general I wouldn't say I feel homesick for Amsterdam. Overall, life here is easier to enjoy, has a greater sense of freedom, a more spontaneous sense of fun. But there are odd elements that once removed from the grim, grey, damp context of everyday-Dutch life do provoke a touch of what the Portuguese call saudade.
It's the sight of little yellow flickering candles in a window, memories of riding home from work through the dark and snow, the sensation on coming inside from the cold. And at the moment, it's the CD, "So Frenchy So Chic 2007", which of course, has nothing to do with Amsterdam at all, but with it's proximity to France.
The album isn't even all that 'rench' so it must be the sound of french being sung. Listening to the tracks it suddenly occured to me that we will probably never sit in the Cafe des Arts in Montmartre with Jacob, listening to Murat while sipping an Adelshoffen and teaching him how to play "spontaneously-translate-the-lyrics-into-dutch", as we used to do.
While unlikely, the chances of it happenning are just slim enough, to provoke an attack of saudade.
Posted by Faith at 01:47 AM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2007
Brunswick
If I told you that our next door neighbours belong to one of the most infamous crime families in Australia, that the other inhabitants of our street come from Lebanese, Italian, Greek, Somalian, English, Turkish and Vietnamese backgrounds, that the flashest car in the street belongs to the local heroin dealer and that the previous owners of our house, a lesbian couple, broke up after one was bewitched by a local witch casting her spell on her would you have guessed I live in Brunswick?
I'm starting a new category, called B'wick. Like the Pijpblog from our years in Amsterdam, it will mainly be photos and there's a new set on my Flickr account to house them.
Posted by Faith at 06:13 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2007
Sydney Rd
The annual Sydney Road street party was held last Sunday. We did manage to get down there long enough to enjoy some of the festivities. Didn't comission any poems though.
Posted by Faith at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2007
Firetrucks, Tiny Man and pizza
Jacob had just about the perfect Friday.
One of the Dads at creche is a fireman and today brought along a real-live-firetruck-with-firemen for the kids to admire and scramble over. Jacob has been pestering me all week with the one question, "Will I be able to get in it?". This was answered today with a resounding "Yes!" and he spent the whole afternoon basking in the after-glow of fire-truck-happiness. A practically perfect day was topped of by a visit to best friend Tiny Man's house where pizza was eaten while wearing spiderman masks and suits.
Could it possibly get any better than this? Well yeeeeeeeeees! How about falling asleep in the car on the way home clutching a banana. Wild!
Below, is a photo we prepared earlier. January, I believe. (Notice how Jacob reserves the right of the host to wear the towel on his head).
Posted by Faith at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2007
Rupert Everett d-i-v-a
Last night I went to the Athenaeum to see Rupert Everett talking about his new book, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. Rupert was...well, ..... Rupert. We arrived a minute or two after the start and I did wonder what on earth Richard Watts could possibly have done in so little time to have annoyed Rupert quite so much. But annoyed Rupert most definetely was.
It didn't get better. Annoyed was at one point replaced by downright narky, after which just plain irritation prevailed. Audience questions gave Rupert the opportunity to add to Richard's discomfort by showing just how charming, warm and responsive he could be when he wanted. Even when confronted by someone who reminded him that they'd shared a pint twenty-five years ago.
If nothing else it was certainly a masterly demonstration of a diva in action. And apparently, not an isolated incident.
Posted by Faith at 05:09 AM | Comments (0)