vaguely specific

Posted by Faith at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2007

Damien Rice

Monday night we popped out to see Damien Rice at the Palais. Folk is not normally my thing but Damien's voice is so amazing and he is soooooo damn good at what he does that it tends to transcend the limitations of any one genre. The place was packed and despite the stifling temperature indoors everyone was really enjoying the concert.

We had booked tickets late and ended up in the second-from-the-back-row of the Dress Circle so we especially happy when a Palais employee approached us and asked would we like to sit a bit closer? He swapped our tickets for two in the stalls, centre and about twenty rows from the front! Can't complain about that! Even so, for my tastes, the graphics are still the best thing about his albums.

In the space of ten days we've gone from The Scissor sisters to Damien Rice via Stravinsky and the Victorian State Opera so excuse us we're feeling a bit giddy!

Again, it's not my own film.

Posted by Faith at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2007

Bucket back

'Bucket-back' is now an official term it seems for what is happening to Melbournians as they cart water from their bathrooms, laundries and kitchens to their gardens each day. Medicare should take note and build in the requisite budget-increments for the chronic bucket-back cases that will haunt the medical system in the future. And if you're looking for a career change then training in remedial massage may turn out to be profitable!

Bucket-back may even surface in the Netherlands as during my in-law's 8-week visit Oma was an indefatigible and sorely-missed member of the bucket brigade. The saddest part is that the mountains of passionfruit under which we are now vanishing are too a large extent due to her efforts. As are the grapes, come to think of it!

Posted by Faith at 01:49 AM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2007

Richard Gill for PM

Thanks to a babysitting-crisis I had to go to the VSO's performances from Stravinsky's Les Noces and Oedipus Rex without Ronnie. Luckily Adrian and Helen were also attending. It was a great performance and invigorating to see people prepared to really be brave and take a few risks.

Personally I think Richard Gill should be Prime Minister.

Posted by Faith at 04:37 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2007

FUN in caps

One of the 'funnest' things we've done recently was pop down to the Vodafone arena a week ago to see The Scissor Sisters. It's a very long time since we've danced so much and despite all the drawbacks of the venue we had one of the most fabulous evenings we've had in a long time. Danced the knots right out of my neck!

This is not my film, just found it on YouTube, live was definitely better!

Posted by Faith at 04:34 AM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2007

Gardener's feast

Too busy to blog. Work, garden, house, life etc etc.

Despite the drought we are managing to keep much of the garden going, and most of the fruit and veg. Jacob's bath water, the shower water and the kitchen water 'do' the front together with some water from the raintanks. Like peasants we spend an hour a day carting water, only we are taking it out of the house, not bringing it in!

We are currently in Phase 3 water restrictions and save the two nights per week we are allowed to water for the vegie patches.

You can see some photos of what we are currently feasting on on from the garden on Flickr. Pesto, passionfruit curd, tabouli, tomato paste and banana and passionfruit ice-cream seem to be all we make these days.

Posted by Faith at 02:57 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2007

Grandpa dropped in yesterday for sausages and potato salad with Jacob, the legacy of last week's BBQ. Jacob explained carefully that Oma and Opa had flown back to IJsselstein (flights are direct it seems....) and that now Jacob has his room back to himself Grandpa can't sleep in it. Luckily Grandpa was feeling flexible and agreed to sleep in the dining room.

Posted by Faith at 01:39 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2007

Oma and Opa have returned to the Netherlands and we're all busy getting back to normal. Jacob has re-claimed his room after very nicely sharing it for eight weeks and is very excited about the prospect of having friends over to play in it now that he has some floor space again.

It's taken a few days but all the strange piles-of-things that accumulate in odd corners when you're squeezing in two extra people have been sorted and everything is back in it's place. Even my work area is tidy again!

It was great having Oma and Opa here but it's nice having the house to ourselves again. We've been making plans for the garden and will be going of to St Erth again this weekend to buy lots of native grasses, echium's and a few more vegies.

We may even get sociable in the near future and start inviting people over!

Posted by Faith at 06:22 AM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2006

Merry Christmas

Posted by Faith at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2006

Can you even see them?

Representing the traditionally wimpy-anglo-australian approach to Christmas decoration in our street .........

Posted by Faith at 05:27 AM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2006

Is this Christmas 2

As you can see from the photo we bought our Christmas tree on the weekend and have taken advantage of the deck outside the living-room doors to place it in a sort of lurking position, just outside the room. At this time of year we have the doors open most of the time anyway as actually enjoy being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

I think as a reaction to all the European Christmasses we've had lately I've really been unable to get into traditional decorations so opted instead for just the plain outdoor lights for the tree and a star left in the shed by the previous owners. Just to confuse things even further I became obsessed with some little paper lanterns from one of the el-cheapo stores in Sydney Rd and have decided to thow them into the mix as well. They are particularly fetching in the Japanese Maple in the back-yard.

Together with the stars Jacob and I painted and grassed there is certainly an air-of-something about the place. Not quite sure what but definitely something......

Posted by Faith at 03:09 AM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2006

Still smokin'

This morning we woke to a brown sky, red sun and the smell of smoke. This photo was taken at 8.30am! The wind is coming from the NE again and the smoke from the burning alps is blanketing Melbourne. The only time I've seen anything like this was 1983, during the Ash Wednesday bushfires. The only time worse than that recorded by Europeans is the infamous Black Friday fires in 1939. But Ash Wednesday didn't happen until February and the end of a long hot summer. Its now December and the summer has only just started. God knows what it will be like by March.

Posted by Faith at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2006

Smokin'

Yesterday we awoke to the smell of smoke and a layer of haze thick enough to make it impossible to see the city- only 5kms away and normally visible from the end of our street. It was forecast to be 37 C so we decided to take Oma and Opa into the hills, the Dandenongs, where amongst the forests and tree ferns it might well be a few degrees cooler.

After much admiration of cockatoos, lorikeets and galahs we set off looking for dinosaurs along the Lyrebird Walk. We didn't find any but as usual, did find plenty of what our resident Dinosaur expert, Jacob, described as dinosaur-poo. After restoring picnic and iced-coffees at a local cafe we headed back down to Melbourne to grandma's house. Jacob enjoyed a swim in the backyard and grandma inadvertently served tea at 5.00pm after misreading Oma's watch. This is when Opa thinks it should be served anyway so no one minded too much.

Today was forecast to be cooler but was actually 42 - so we are just hanging out at home waiting for the cool change and reminding the foreigners to keep the door shut!

Posted by Faith at 04:24 AM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2006

Christmas specials

One of our neighbours has been busy getting into the Christmas spirit. As she put it, "I started off with the candy sticks last year and this year bought everything that was on special in Sydney Rd!". Considering what might be on special in Sydney Rd I think we all got off quite lightly. It has bought out the competitive spirit in at least one other neighbour who was last seen marching off to her mother's to dig out her old Christmas lights so who knows where it will all end?

Posted by Faith at 01:34 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2006

Photo Friday: Not

I had my first chance today to check my email and came across LAST Friday's Photo Friday theme; stillness. I might have been able to dig out something in that vein had I seen the email earlier but it would have had to have been from the archives as at the moment there is absolutely NO stillness around here. Aaaaaah gezelligheid!

Posted by Faith at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2006

Irony Part 3

Unbelievably the yellow wiggle has been forced to retire due to an illness of which the symptoms are worst when wiggling.

While obviously not quite as serious as Steve Irwin's death or that of Peter Brock it does have the same ring-of-irony about it.

Posted by Faith at 05:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2006

From the ground up

I have duck feet. Short and wide. I knew I was also a little pigeon-toed but apparently I underestimated the extent of it. Driven by the refusal of my self-diagnosed sore ligament to heal I decided to talk to someone who knows something about feet. You know it's not good when a professional looks at your feet and says "You have very interesting feet". I've worked in enough professions to know that 'interesting' is a don't-upset-the-client-euphenism for deformed/stuffed/rooted/dead/can-I-write-a-paper-about-this?.

"Interesting website" means its horrible. "Interesting Brand" means no one knows it. "Interesting application" means it doesn't work. "Interesting project" means it will never get off the ground. "Interesting concept" means it sucks.

In my case "interesting feet" means they have 15 degrees less movement than normal feet and my pigeon toedness is pronounced, not "a little". This explains a lot of things. Why I've never been able to jog, no matter how fit I was, without getting agonizing shin splints. Why I catch my toes constantly on things and have broken nearly all of them at some stage. And, perversely, why high-heels feel more comfortable than flat shoes.

And my sore ligament? Well, it's not a sore ligament at all but two inflamed meta-thingies. Two of those long bones in your feet are badly inflamed at the front. The only cure is rest. I laughed so hard I almost fell of the couch.

For someone who managed to avoid going to the doctor for almost forty years this year is turning into a landmark year for physical degeneration. Seven fillings and NOW, orthotics! Could I get any older?

DON'T answer that.

Posted by Faith at 05:44 AM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2006

Failings

Citizenship, as we all know is a grave responsibility, and so it is with some embrassment that I realized on the weekend that my failings as a citizen have only been doubled by globalization and the aquisition of dual citizenship.

Not only did I fail to get organized and back onto the Australian electoral enrolment in time to vote in the election on the weekend I also allowed the Dutch election to slip through my burgerlijke grasp the weekend before.

I'm blaming the chooks.

Posted by Faith at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

Healthier than thou.

For breakfast this morning I had ruhbarb, mulberries and raspberries from the garden. Leaving the house I felt sooo unbearably smug; as smug as only a woman brim full of home-grown anti-oxidants can feel.

Posted by Faith at 02:52 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2006

Rainy day Ninja hero

An extraordinarily unseasonably cold day (Snow in November in Melbourne! -it doesn't even snow here in winter, let alone in spring in the middle of a drought!) found Jacob forced to entertain himself with an apron tied on his head and several coloured strips of wool wrapped around his wrists. He described himself as Super-hero-Jacob but I thought the final effect had a touch of the Ninja about it.

Posted by Faith at 01:22 AM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2006

Almost-free massage

While struggling to run the gamut from Collins St to Flinder's lane without hitting the Credit button on the EFTPOS machine thing too often I came across a wonderful marketing ploy at Australia on Collins. There are two people outside the Sock Shop who give fabulous five minute neck and shoulder massages for "what-you-think-it's-worth". The catch is you will have to weather a wee bit of banter about Australia on Collins and the shopping possibilities within. But it is only a wee bit. The bonus is you leave feeling a good bit taller and lighter despite the extra shopping bags!

Posted by Faith at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2006

Testing the Weber

An gezellig afternoon was had on the weekend with Judy, Kees, Beatrice, Queenie, Charlie Gen, Simon, Felix and Jasper testing the weber. Jacob declined to wear any pants for the occassion.

Posted by Faith at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2006

Don't tease them, they're sensitive

In Australia we make jokes about New Zealanders and in the Netherlands they make the same jokes about the Belgians. And every now and then it seems there is someone hell bent on proving the worst of these true!

Posted by Faith at 04:27 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2006

Football and dirt

They're recruiting for series 2 of Nerds FC.

Ron played his first game of soccer in years the other night and the groans with which he crawled out of bed the next morning combined with his job in IT might just qualify him for a role!

To top it off our long awaited compost and mulch arrived yesterday. I shovelled just over half of the three cubic metres from the footpath to the backyard before collapsing into a jellified heap and ringing Ron to suggest he come home early and loosen up those stiff muscles with some light exercise.

Posted by Faith at 06:34 AM | Comments (0)

Dig

Posted by Faith at 05:17 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2006

How the other half live

We finally have a dining table! No more sitting around Jacob's IKEA kiddy table to eat meals together. Of course in three and a half weeks it will have to go in the garage as Ron's parent's will be arriving and the dining room will become their bedroom for the duration. But until then we're just going to enjoy the luxury of eating at a table and in a seperate room from the TV.

Posted by Faith at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2006

Can't complain

We're in the middle of a drought here in Australia and even in Melbourne we're starting to feel it. Phase 2 water restrictions have been introduced and the last six fountains in the city were turned off yesterday. The garden is drying up and our water tanks are already getting low, despite the fact that it's spring, supposedly the wettest time of the year. I can't remember the last time we had a good soaking rain.

So I can't possibly complain that the one day I arrange for a truckload of compost and mulch to be delivered it has started pouring and looks set to go on doing so for the rest of the day, now can I? Ron is in Sydney for work and it will be up to me to shovel three cubic metres of mulch from the pavement outside into our garden, before the film crew returns tomorrow. Make that three cubic metres of soaking wet mulch.

Posted by Faith at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2006

It get's earlier every year

In a frenzy of Christmas-organisation I'll probably never be able to repeat I managed to get all our parcels for the Netherlands wrapped and in the sea parcel post (that's the cheap way) before the Christmas closing date of October 6th. Parcels by sea take 2-3 months. They say.

Unless, apparently, there's some cheap freight going on a plane. Slightly embarassing when all your Christmas parcels arrive at their destination in the last week of September. There's organised and then there's just plain weirdly-over-efficient.

Posted by Faith at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)

Spring cleaning

Yup, its a template. It's spring cleaning time here in the southern hemisphere and that includes the blog! The design that was never-finished has been falling into greater and greater disrepair. Fixing it is now well beyond normal human powers so I'm starting from scratch.

Whats the bet that in a year's time you'll still be looking at the same template? And, shhhhhhhhhh, but I'm turning comments back on just to see what happens.

Posted by Faith at 04:29 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2006

United Nations

The film crew refer to each of the houses involved in the series by the nationality of the characters living there. Thus we have the Vietnamese house, the Greek house, the Bollywood house, the Russian empire etc etc. It may seem a tad over the top to have a different nationality in every house but then again if I look from our place to the end of the street what do we have in reality? Dutch/Australian-Lebanese-UK/Australian-Greek-Italian. On the other side of the road, Italian-Greek-Italian-Malaysian-Sudanese-Greek-Sri Lankan and then we get to the ones I don't know so well.

It's only a small cul-de-sac but there are more nationalities living here in reality than in the film. As far as I can tell the only continent not represented is North America. Or maybe they're just keeping quiet about it?

Posted by Faith at 04:11 AM | Comments (0)

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 27, 2006

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 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)

September 25, 2006

Cup runneth over and spills on the carpet and floods the kitchen

Was hovering around the-house-thats-almost-ours like some sort of weatherboard-vulture over the weekend, pestering the almost-past-owners with daft questions and comments. I mentioned my plan to plant an olive tree whereupon one of them looked at me oddly and said "But there's ten out the back." Ten olive trees! In OUR backyard! Not to mention the apple, quince, lemon and mulberry trees. Did I mention the mulberry tree? Should I mention it again? Muuuuulberry tree.

I assumed I'd passed out, gone to heaven and imagined it all but Ron assures me he heard it too, (although with considerably less excitement as somehow I ended up married to a non-fruit-eater ....)and yes, apparently, it's all REAL!

One and a half hours to settlement.

Posted by Faith at 05:06 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2006

Can't wait

This morning I went to do the final inspection on our house before settlement on Monday. Unfortunately the owners were still in the process of moving out so the place was pretty much still in a mess. Fortunately it gave me the chance to meet the owners who turned out to be very nice indeed.

The good news is; the very attractive wardrobes in the master bedroom are staying. (I was sure they were going) Whats more they were designed by one of the women currently living there and built by one of her students. I now have both of their phone numbers stashed away for any future furniture-designing-and-building assignments.

They had also had plans done at one stage for a renovation at the back of the house similar to what we plan to be doing one day so are going to hunt out the drawings and pass them on to us. Now thats a bonus! It became apparent we have similar tastes in some ways, (I think the bathroom, which they designed themselves, sealed it) and they are going to pass on to us their extensive list of designers, architects and builders of a slightly-funkier-persuasion.

I eventually left them to finish their packing but we will probably see at least one of them again on Sunday when we go for a last check of the house (hopefully empty) and maybe both of them in the future when they have promised to drop around for a drink.

As for the rest, the spring weather has sent the garden into a growing frenzy and it is looking fabulous! The front of the house, very visible before with no leaves on the trees is now almost hidden behind all the new leaves and branches. This will be great in the summer as it is facing west and all those trees will help keep the bedrooms cool.

In the backyard there is one tree in particular which, now that it has leaves, is looking even more perfect than we imagined as the spot to put a bench to sit on. It has a very wide, low canopy, creating another cool little spot for sitting. Sigh....three whole days to wait.....

Posted by Faith at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2006

Property

We have signed a bundle of contracts soooooo thick I thought we'd never be finished. All those signatures were witnessed by more independent witnesses than you could imagine. Telephone calls, emails, faxes and documents have been whizzing between credit unions, banks, conveyancors, solicitors, settlment facilitators, ourselves and the vendor.

Tomorrow apparently our bank accounts will be emptied as enormous sums of money are poured into especially set up trust accounts. The credit union will also be making over their contribution which I have to admit is significantly bigger than ours. Friday morning I get to do a final inspection of the house which is now vacant. If everything is as I expect it to be, (quite frankly I'm so keen to move I'll be satisfied with a roof and four walls, I'm not going to quibble over details) then at 2.30pm on Monday the I's will be dotted, the T's will be crossed by crack-teams-of-solictors, money will be shuffled from one trust account to the other and we will then get a telephone call advising us that we can now go and pick up the key.

The countdown begins.

Posted by Faith at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2006

Let them eat cake

Its been cake-city around here lately. I may have mentioned this scary-fact before but there are 4 virgos in this house. That means 4 birthdays in the last 19 days.

We're just lurching from one cake to another at the moment. We started out with a simple double-choloate-mud cake, closely followed by a triple before resorting for our health's sake to an absolutely delicious orange-and-almond-meel cake from our local organic food store. The grand finale was off course Grandma's green-eyed-monster below. In between a spurious poppy-seed number snuck in because someone felt we JUST weren't eating enough cake!

Posted by Faith at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

Brunswick

I've had quite a few emails from people asking where Brunswick is; is it near Melbourne, Sydney, Perth? So for those of you from the Northern Hemisphere here is a Brunswick Primer.

Brunswick is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, about 5kms from the city centre. In style you need to think of De Pijp-with-backyards. And a lot warmer. Traditionally it has been a suburb popular with migrants, first Greek and Italian in the 50's and 60's, Turkish and Lebanese in the 70's and 80's. It is now also popular with students, alternative types of various denominations and more recently inner-city-wanker-types. This last one is probably where we fit in. This means that at least at the moment it has a nice mix of inhabitants, like de Pijp.

Brunswick is fairly new to Ron too so I'm thinking we might need to hire the film Death in Brunswick to give him a taste of what it used to be like. I can remember when this film came out and how it nailed the character of the place so well!

A Melbourne gangster recently fled the country leaving several properties and much family in Brunswick. It is with some nervouseness that we have discovered that our neighbours share the same unusual surname. Life in Brunswick is already looking exciting.

Other more benign features of the area are the proximity to Merri Creek, the bicycle paths and CERES, a community environment center including a children's farm. And, of course, Sydney Rd and the Brunswick Music Festival.

So, no, it's NOT near Sydney or Perth.

Posted by Faith at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2006

Raging against the ghost in the machine

There are lots of far more interesting things I COULD be blogging about, and God knows, I've probably only got 15 seconds online to write all this down, but I just wanted to say that if anyone out there is contemplating getting Optus Broad-(hahahahaha)-band then don't be suprised if as you reach for the telephone to make that call I suddenly appear and launch myself across the room self-sacrificingly hurling myself in slow-motion between you and the phone with one of those echo-enhanced "Noooooooooooooo!"s that you hear in the movies.

God knows there were entire days in the Netherlands where KPN and their damned Hoofdorp server-park held the country to ransom with no internet access nationwide at all, and from what I've heard, you might be hard-pressed in Australia to find anyone more reliable than Optus, BUT for what its worth I just want it on record that I have now been using Optus Cable Broadband for 8 months and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone this side of the industrial revolution.

And DON't get me started on what they call broadband in this country........... There are underground eastern european poet societies powered by paper clips with faster internet access than us.

Phew! Now I can stop pedalling and go and pump some water outback from the well.

Posted by Faith at 02:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2006

Deliveries

With only two weeks to go until we move it was time to commit to the hard yakka and do some serious shopping. An exhausting weekend ensued and we are now the proud owners of;
-one 2.5 seater sofa and chaise
-one children's bed with trundle bed and two matresses
-one chest of drawers and side table (for Jacob)
-one refrigerator
-one LCD TV and set top box
-one washing machine
-one vacumn cleaner

That covers the basics, and we already have everything else we absolutely HAVE to have in the short term; kitchen utensils, crockery, cutlery, stereo, manchester, bed for us, and 35 boxes full of books, etc. Everything is being delivered the day we move in so it's going to be a non-stop procession of trucks in our cul-de-sac. I only hope settlement isn't delayed at all........might end up with a bit of a traffic jam!

Posted by Faith at 11:01 AM |