Anthony Malloy

This is a little bit of Malloy history.

My dad ran a stationery shop for over 20 years, Ted Malloy Office and Art Supplies (55 High St, Shepparton, and bugger, I can’t remember the number; that’s going to annoy me). Anyway, underneath the glass topped counter was a space and this device lived there. It held a large roll of brown paper that was used to wrap goods.

It lived at my sisters for a while and a while ago it moved here. We’ve repurposed it for the kids who can now grab drawing paper whenever they want.

I bet dad never thought that 40+ years after it was first used it would be still going strong.

We thought the boys needed a little help so yesterday we left them out in the summer rain to grow a little.

When Frankie chose us as her new family back in April we were happy as her colourings meant she’d make a perfect outdoor cat. So we brought her home, settled her in and after a while opened the back door so she could explore. Which she point blank refused to do and it didn’t take us long to realise that in Frankie’s mind, she’s very much an indoor cat.

So it was with great excitement today I saw her sitting at the front door, checking out a bird hopping around our drive. I opened the door, expecting her to run back to Moo’s bed but this time, no, she decided she would have a sniff around ouitside. It was only for five minutes, and she never strayed far from the front door but it was quite the adventure for her.

She’s back on Moo’s bed now, and should recover from her exertions in a week or so.

I still can’t run thanks to this damn planter fasciatis. I’ve kept up my cardio by hopping on the bike at the gym and kept up weights but today I decided I shold prep myself for returning to running, whenever that may come. I was going to talk to a trainer about doing a core session ‘cause it’s an area I neglect and one that’s important for runners but then I realised I know enough about the gym and I have other resources.

I remembered seeing a 20 minute core workout for runners on Runners World the other day so I’ve made that in to a Sway and it will be my guide tomorrow.

Here’s what I’ll be doing.

I’m a freelancer, and most of my client base are in Sydney so every time around this year I begin to suffer from FFFW – Freelance Festive Festivity Withdrawal. My social media feeds are full of people attending work do’s and skiving off early for a beer or two with workmates, suppliers or clients.

It gets you down after a bit so today I took myself out to lunch. Okay, it was a working lunch and a quick one at that but at least I got out of the office for a bit.

I went to visit Moo in her classroom today, it’s always fun to be greeted with cries of “Hi Kennedy’s dad” and then have 20 kids yell “Kennedy, your dad is here!”.

Two things gave me pause this afternoon though.

The first was a young boy who was busting to talk. We began chatting and he told me ‘I do drawing at dad’s house. He doesn’t live with us any more, and that’s okay.’. The look on his face told me he thought otherwise.

The second one I couldn’t believe. Moo has a friend in her community, they are both 8. Part of the presentation they did was to list their goals. This friend, a perfect little girl, had the goal ‘to lose weight’. At 8. I was speechless.

I have manila folders sitting in a box, full of tax returns. Some years are a couple of centimetres thick, chock full of receipts, print outs and bits of paper. Each piece of paper would have had some information on it that would have been copied in to a spreadsheet, then those figure moved to other bits of paper.

I’ve just finished my tax for this year. I have three pieces of paper to file, and next year there should be only one. It took me all of five minutes to print off the reports that my accountant needs and email them to him. I don’t even have to make the trip to his office any more. Hours and hours of work have literally been reduced to a few mouse clicks.

And the days it use to take to get my finished return; within an hour I had a phone call back to say everything was done and it looks like it’s my shout tonight.

This year was a year of music for me. I went to more gigs this year than the previous decade combined and found some fantastic new artists.

My favourite gig. Wow, this one was tough. Peter Hook and the Light played an absolute 3 hour blinder at The Corner, just thinking of that version of Perfect Kiss brings a smile to my face. It was an almost religious experience and put the New Order gig of a couple of years ago to shame. My ears were ringing for days afterwards.

Then there was the awesomeness of seeing Public Service Broadcasting in a tiny room with a couple of hundred other fans. I wish that performance could have gone on forever. The only disappointment was they didn’t have any merch so I still don’t have a PSB t-shirt. One day, one day…

But the winner had to be Frank Turner at The Corner. I’ve already blogged about the gig so won’t rehash here. All I will add is that he didn’t disappoint a few days later when I saw him again at The Barwon Club in Geelong. Rae and I have already agreed it’s tickets to every show he does in Melbourne next time he’s here.

My favourite new artist would have to be Hyde and Beast with their laid back 70s inspired sounds. They played an amazing set at 6:00am on BBC 6 Music. Any band that can sound that good at that hour has to be worth listening to, and they certainly are. Stand out track – Keep Moving. Love that groove.

And favourite album? No contest on this one. I loved Frank’s new album, indeed it inspired my first tattoo, but Public Service Service Broadcasting’s Race For Space is a work of art. I must have listened to this album 100s of times this year and it never, ever, gets tired. So many brilliant tracks and there are two I just can’t split as the stand outs.  The Other Side makes me hold my breath every time I hear it (and was beyond words live) and Go is everything I love about this band.

The thing that all three favourites have in common – I was introduced to each by Chris Hawkins on BBC 6 Music. So, Chris, if you read this, thanks for making this a great year.

It’s been a few years now since Mick transformed our back yard from wilderness to a place we actually like to spend time in. One of the things we did back then was to plant some jasmine between the pittosporum and it’s finally grown enough to do what we had hoped. Sitting in our lounge tonight with the windows open the scent is wafting in on the breeze. Nothing says summer more than jasmine.

Ah, there’s a certain mystery person *cough* Mother In Law *cough* who takes out a Bulldogs membership for me every year.

My 2016 pack turned up today, amusingly enough the first (and so far only) Bulldog membership to arrive and it was for a man who bleeds Yellow and Black.

Thanks, and keep on trying Zita…..