Author: awmalloyadmin

Sorry Danny the Champion Of The World, I fully intended to revisit you last night but I had to move City Of Cities, The Birth Of Modern London to get to you. Even though I’ve never been there it’s a really interesting read, short little snapshots of life in a huge city undergoing massive sudden change. I’ll get back to you soon Danny, I promise.

I think I read too much over Christmas/New Year. I took a couple of weeks off when Rae was home and we both spent a lot of that time with our noses buried in books. Sure, one of mine was a Stephen King epic (which was a lot of fun) but I think I exhausted myself. It’s been a couple of weeks and despite picking up a couple of books from the beside pile I haven’t been able to get in to anything. I’ve ordered a newy from Book Depository but I’ve decided I’ll go back and re-read one of my childhood favourites to get me back in the swing. Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion Of The World is now resting on top of the clock radio, I think it’s just the tonic I’m after.

I’ve just discovered my second superpower. My first is that I can tell exactly how long an item will take to defrost in the microwave just by looking at it. (Okay, sometimes I may be off a bit, but generally it’s not too bad). My new superpower is making cars disappear.

For ages now there’s been a little black car parked up the end of the street, sometimes when we’re coming and going in the family mobile I’ll move the red car up to the parking lots we have at the end of the street. I always parked by this car. One day Rae noticed there were cobwebs on the wheels, then I noticed what looked like weeds growing out of it. A further check of the rego showed it had expired in 2008 and the back seat was stuffed with bags. It obviously hadn’t moved in a very long time.

One phone call to the council, a yellow sticker on the windscreen for a week and then wallah – it’s disappeared. The house next to it has been empty for a while and is now up for rent, I wonder if the tenants did a runner and left their car behind?

And now I see that Survivors has also started its second series on BBC. At least I can watch that one when the kids are napping ’cause Rae didn’t watch the first season.

For the last month, like everyone else, we’ve been moaning about the lack of anything to watch on television. It truly is a wasteland, and if you’re not in to tennis it seems particularly bad over the next week and a half. We have a fair bit on our PC waiting to be watched so we’ve made an effort to catch up. So far we’ve knocked over season one of Dexter and are half way through the first season of True Blood (and loving it!).

The problem is that Rae has now gone back to work so day time telly is out and by the time we get everyone to bed and sorted out we can only fit in one episode a night. That’s not so bad but international stations have caused us grief. Big Love season 4 has jut begun and today I discovered Being Human is two episodes in to season 2 on the BBC. Now we have to fit those in to our schedule as well as keeping up True Blood and a couple of movies. Is it any wonder I’m contemplating a larger hard drive for the media PC.

When you’re on a roll, stick with it. We took the twins to their first movie today so that also made it the first time all six of us have gone to the movies (or “sinumuh” as Bert prefers) together. My clever wife won a family, well four person, pass to Princess and The Frog so we all headed off to the local Village and watched it. Not a fantastic film but it did it’s job – all of them were perfect for the whole film, barely a peep, even in the slightly scary parts. Of course Moo had popcorn so she was happy. They’ve all been to the movies now and all of them loved it. It’s been a great weekend.

We take our movies pretty seriously in the Malloy household, if you need any proof just consider that we were married in a cinema, so today was a pretty big day – Bert went to the movies for the first time. I’ve been wanting to take him for a while now, he’s old enough to manage a kids film uniterrupted at home, and with Rae on her last day of holidays today was M-day.

I told him I wanted him to come for a drive with me and we headed off to The Sun Theatre in Yarraville ‘cause if you’re going to the movies for the first time you’ve got to do it right. There was a huge smile when I told him we weren’t actually going to Officeworks, we were going to see a film. We loaded up with popcorn, lollies and a lemonade and off we went to see Fantastic Mr Fox, and what a cool film to see as your first film at a cinema. He was great.. He chose the back row, centre seats without being prompted (must be in the genes) and sat riveted to the screen for the duration. As the credits rolled he looked up and said with a tinge of disappointment “Is that the end Dad?”.

It was a great afternoon and Bert has already asked when next I’m taking him. I hoping just as much as he is that it won’t be too far away.

I tried to buy a DVD today, the remastered edition of Gone With The Wind. As we were at the local shopping centre I thought I’d try the two department stores there, both part of the massive Coles empire. You’d think they’d know a thing or two about retailing and it would pretty simple to walk in, exchange my money for their DVD and everyone would be happy. Let’s just say we’re not watching Gone With The Wind tonight.

First off K-Mart. A fairly large DVD section, lots of categories such as Drama, Kids, Television. Okay, let’s try Drama. Hmmm. Lots of kids DVDs, some Teliv, that one looks like action. No rhyme nor reason, I scanned the covers of those facing outwards but it was like looking for a DVD in a haystack. Five minutes and I gave up.,

On to Target and it was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen – they arrange them by price bracket! So, assuming you know how much the DVD you want will cost you have a starting point. I wonder who on earth came up with that idea and how it was adopted. Five minutes more of looking at covers of movies in no coherent order and it was time to head home.

Here’s a hint Coles. People tend to know the name of the movie they want to buy AND most people know the letter it starts with. Call me crazy but maybe if you arranged your DVDs in the order of the letters (let’s call it ‘alphabetical order’ shall we?) people may be able to find the movie they are after and then be able to pay you money for it. Go on, if you want to try this revolutionary idea it’s all yours for free It’s just so crazy it may work.

Mum and Peter have gone now, and with it the last bit of Christmas/New Year time off. Back to trying to earn a living now.

Still, we farewelled them, and my holiday, with a walk around Altona Beach followed by lunch at The Famous Blue Raincoat. Not a bad way to end the start of the year.