Archive Page 2

If you’re ever wandering around Newtown and need a nap, or just want to put your feet up for a bit, or just want to plonk your butt on a nice soft chair you’re in luck! They City of Sydney Council has installed these lounges on Buckland Lane just for you!

Newtown lounge

I note that they’re just around the corner from Newtown library, so you can totally borrow a book and sit on the lounge for hours of free entertainment.


Literate slugs

04Dec09

I really wish slugs and caterpillars could read.

I spend around 10 minutes every day in my garden, looking under the leaves of my herbs and vegies, looking for the little fuckers. They destroyed my basil. They’ve devoured my mint not once, not twice, but THREE times – mint, however, is extremely durable and keeps bouncing back.

But imagine if they could read?

Slug warning sign


You know that dude who’s always trying to sell/give you a copy of The Green Left, like EVERYwhere you go, Redfern Market, Glebe market, Central station, Broadway, like everywhere.

You know him, right? Kinda weedy looking, pretty youngish, I suppose, but has one of those faces that means he could be 14 or 40 and you wouldn’t know. He has a scraggly little beard that he’s been growing since before Kurt Cobain topped himself.

I used to think I must’ve known him in Newcastle cos he just looked so familiar. And then I realised that I just saw him all the fucking time, standing there politely, holding a copy of The Green Left.

So, I walked past him twice this week, both times on Abercrombie Street, but he wasn’t giving/selling The Green Left. He was on his way to or from a rally or something, hurrying along with some bearded old dude who could’ve been his dad or his mentor or his lover. Who am I to speculate?

The first time he was holding a placard in support of Aboriginal rights. The second time the placards were all wrapped up in brown paper. Secret placards.

But both times we walked past each other it was near the Carlton Brewery site. Fuckn dude is EVERYwhere.


The compromise

27Nov09

Running down Wilson Street yesterday afternoon, I passed a man walking his dog while reading a book. They were going along at a nice easy pace, and they both seemed incredibly content. It’s heartening to see two creatures reach a happy compromise for their needs.


Quoted in this week’s Central mag, Roller Derbyist Simone Boudoir expresses surprise that most of the other Roller Derby women are from around Newtown.

I don’t know why that is; maybe the girls from the Eastern Suburbs are a bit princessy.

Yeah.

Ooooo-kay.

Or maybe, despite what Hollywood movies might try to tell you, Roller Derby is the second dykiest sport in the world (behind soccer) and Newtown and surrounds is the dykiest area of Sydney. Just maybe.


The tussle

18Nov09

Battle of the sexes, oh battle of the sexes. Women, men, Venus, Mars, emotional, logical, desire, desired, strength, beauty, brutality, sympathy.

This and that and blah blah blah, what nonsense it all is.

There is no battle of the sexes, only the occasional tussle between various genders.


Two very small boys stopped me as I was walking past the corner store.

‘Hey, have you got 10 cents,’ one asked me.

‘What?’

‘I need 10 cents to give to the shopkeeper.’ He held out his very small hands, in which were icecreams and chocolates.

‘Nah,’ said the other boy. ‘We need $2.’  He was also holding chocolates and icecream.

I took out my earphones. ‘So what do you need?’

‘Ten cents.’

‘Nah! $2.’

‘No!’ said the first boy, turning on the other. ‘We only need 10 cents.’

‘Well,’ I said, taking out my wallet. ‘Here’s 20 cents.’

2 bucks tenThanks,’ said the boy, and he ran into the shop to pay the keeper.

‘Can I have $2?’ said the other boy.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Well, how about a dollar?’

 

‘No,’ I said, and put in my earphones again.

One of those boys will go far, but I wonder which one?


Boozing on the pavement is not just for plebs. It’s not some bogan or homeless thing. I mean, sure, maybe if you’re drinking Hollandia in Blacktown, or sucking on a goon bag in Summer Hill.

But here in Newtown, we do it classy.

Pavement boozers

And nothing says classy like a nice flower arrangement on the table.

Flower arrangement


* Hi love, how are you?

% Good thanks. How about you?

* Great. What can I get you?

% I’ll have a Coopers Pale.

Pour

* That’ll be $4.50.

% Oh!

Pleasant surprise. Looking at watch.

% Is it happy hour?

* No, our beers are always this price. They just get more expensive after 6pm.

Pause

% So it is like happy hour, just a really long one.

Pause

* I suppose so

% Or later on it becomes sad hour.

Pause

* Maybe


In the hope of keeping him quiet for a few hours Freddy & I have bet Randolph [Churchill, son of Winston] 20 pounds that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. It would have been worth it at the price. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud ‘I say, I bet you didn’t know this came in the Bible “bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave”‘ or merely slapping his side & chortling ‘God, isn’t God a shit!’

Extract, letter from Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford, 12 November 1944