Anthony Malloy

That’s right. Shepparton.

I’ve spent the last three days in my home town. There’s nothing like a warm summers day in Shepp to take me back to my childhood. The sounds, the scents, the heat; nothing like it at all. Wide open spaces, bright blue skys and scorching sun. Heaven.

Though it was memories other than these that saw back there. Memories and my Ipod.

My dad is an amazing man, 82 and sharp as a tack. He has a great memory and I’ve listened to his tales for years. I have my favourites and always wanted to get them down on paper, a project dad started a couple of years ago but put aside a few pages in. Enter me and my Ipod. The addition of iTalk to the pod means it can record a lazy 1000 or so hours of speech making it a fantastic tool for recording family histories.

I spent the days in Shepp recording dad talking about his life. I have a great outline, round about 6 hours of him talking about his life. I managed to get my favourite tales and many I had never heard before. I learnt how he met and courted my mother, stories of my older sisters I had never heard, hilarious tales of his times living in Melbourne during World War 2 and at last I have the history of the Malloy family and dad’s early years. We even took a trip and found, still standing, a friends house from 80 years ago. He swears the shack hasn’t changed. His childhood house that once stood in the middle of an orchard is now a warehouse. We drove around the block and from the side you can see a fruit tree out the back. A tree that may have been there since dad was kid.

We also spent a little time walking around Shepparton recording dad’s recollections of how the city has changed. We’ve only just touched on a couple of blocks so there will be more trips with the pod in hand to cover as much of Shepp as we can. Each time I head up home now I’ll be taking the iPod and adding more to the library.

It was the most time I think I’ve spent with dad. All I had to do was listen and prompt him with a word or two here and there.

And now I will have his stories, his memories, in his words, in his voice, forever.

To say that I won’t be here for a few days.

I’m off to the country to attend to some business and I should be back later in the week.

See you all then.

Some one needs to have a chat to the greeting card industry as a whole. I went looking for a condolence card today and every one had a verse inside. They all seemed to have flowers too, except for one that had a cartoon of a bird with an umbrella. No, I don’t get it either.

I don’t want people to write my cards for me. I want a nice understated image, preferably not of a flower and I want the inside to be blank. The lack of this sort of card, though, made me do something I hadn’t done in years. I sent a letter. I had to buy the letter pad and envelopes (Basildon Bond, white) but it let me say what I wanted to in a very non-floral way.

And it got me wondering when I wrote my last letter.

Sadly, I have no idea.

Even though our wonderful agent still uses a fax to receive maintenance requests (Hint guys, there’s this thing called the internet. I’m willing to wager many more people have access to the net than a fax machine.) it doesn’t stop me from using my tech to help them and us.

A fence post that supports the gates to our garage and carport has rotted through, the rains we had recently apparently being the final straw. Now one gate is hanging by a single bottom hinge and they are heavy doors capable of doing a good deal of damage to person or car.

I filled out the sheet, faxed it off and then, remembering that a picture is worth a thousand words, took some pics and threw up a fence page so they could see exactly what I’m talking about.

I wonder if they’ll look?

“I’ll just say it’s a mess of noise because I can’t spell cacophony.”

Well said Phil-not-the-Jupitus-one from 6 Music after the first airing of the new version of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’.

And then they read out my emailed reaction.

“Nope.”

As much as I admire Bob Geldof this one’s a mess. Hope it sells bucket loads though.

I was talking to Rae about how difficult it was using the Ipod when driving. Having it tucked away meant you couldn’t safely flick to the next song, adjust the volume for the transmitter or look at the name of the song when you have no idea what it is. Of course, the smart cookie that she is she came up with an idea in two seconds.

Velcro.

Now, with the application of a small tab of Velcro my Pod sits to the right of the steering wheel. It’s easier to access than the CD player (oh, how 2003 of me to still have one of them in the car!), I can see the screen clearly and it is closer to the aerial so it sounds magnificent. Sure it’s not as cool as the Ipod adaptor for BMWs but it’s cheap, secure and makes Ipodding and driving safe.

She has a solution for everything that gal.

Daniel’s latest ‘Here is my’ is on beds.

Before I run off and take a photo of ours I have one question to ask all of you.

Standing at the base of the bed, looking towards the head, do you sleep on the left or the right? Has this caused any problems with partners?

I, for one, can not sleep on the wrong side of the bed; it’s unnatural and just plain wrong. Oh yeah, my side is the right.

Listening to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’ on the computer tonight Rae commented on how much she enjoyed CrashBurn, the television show that used a Mark Seymour cover of this song as its theme.

It was a great little show tracing the life of several relationships from the initial stages through to the ‘crash/burn’ phase. Cleverly told using a his view/her view style it was intelligent, funny, touching and beautifully shot right here in Melbourne. Of course with all this going for it no body watched it and it was shunted from time slot to slot until it petered out in some god foresaken time after only 13 episodes.

We thought we’d never get the chance to see it again until tonight when Rae, looking for the sound track, stumbled across the DVDs for sale. We never thought to look, just assumed as it was unpopular there wouldn’t be any DVDs released. It’s great that DVD now gives us a chance to watch, and own, gems such as these where in years gone by series such as this would have been lost forever. Another candidate for DVD should be Good Guys/Bad Guys, especially the first season.

Any way, there’s now two happy little critters here counting their dollar coins so we can get the two volumes and do the series justice once again.

Just want to say bye to Rae’s blog.

I know why you’ve done it hon but I just want to say how much I enjoyed what you wrote and how you wrote it. You gave a lot of yourself in those words and many others will be as grateful as I am that you did. Count me as one of your fans who will miss Where The Wild Thoughts were.

I cashed in some karma points yesterday.

I went to have my haircut (number 2 at the sides, short and spiky on tops thanks very much). I had to wait a while and by the time Doug had worked his magic I’d been in there an hour. As I crossed the road to my car I happened to look up.

Hmmm, what’s that sign?

Oh, it’s a no standing side and I’m parked on the wrong side of it.

All those years of sticking to the speed limit and not buying a four wheel drive must have paid off, or the good grey ghosts of Yarraville must have already knocked off for the day ’cause my windscreen was thankfully free of any small bits of pink paper.