Anthony Malloy

Right.

First there was the horse racing last November. Then the cricket with a slight distraction by yachts for a few days. Then came the tennis. Horses stopped racing months ago, the tennis last Sunday (although all Australians lost interest as soon as Leyton was eliminated) and now there’s only a couple of meaningless one day games until the flanneled fools can be forgotten.

That just leaves the Grand Prix to go until the footy season.

Already football stories are beginning to appear more frequently and prominently in the sports sections. No longer do you have to do the summer search for one paragraph on a player you’ve probably never heard of. Today there was a whole page of news in The Age and a similar amount in The Herald Sun.

Come on cars, get out and do you thing so we can move on to the one true sport that matters.

Life really is a balance isn’t it? There’s always good and bad. We found out the problem where the neighbour had, apparently, built on our land by 4.5cm isn’t a problem any more and the house can be built as we wanted. I’m still not sure if he is over our the boundary or not, we find that out tomorrow. Of course now we get the go ahead we also get the bad news. The tender document arrived last night and the projected cost is 10% above what we expected thanks to site issues (primarily rock removal, levelling and deeper foundations).

Arrrgghhhh!

So we are faced with the question – can we afford to build now? At the same time, given the crazy prices in the property market, can we afford not to?

It was a day for bells yesterday. We live near a train line and are within hearing distance of a level crossing. Yesterday the gates were stuck down and we were treated to the ding-ding-ding of the bells for an hour or so. I wandered around and watched the cars dice with death driving around the boom gates and had a look for a faults number. There was none but I eventually found it – listed under railway pedestrian crossing faults.

The ringing had faded from ears by the time we hopped in to bed only to be replaced by the distant sound of an alarm screaming. It was a quiet and still night so it carried from a long way away but it went all night. Each time we were woken by one of the kids having a grizzle I could hear it going and it was still sounding as I left for work this morning at 6:45. I feel sorry for anyone within a couple of blocks of where ever it was – there is no way anyone would have been sleeping through that.

Well, seems I’ve taken a two week unscheduled holiday from the blogging world. No dramas or particular reason to blame, just that returning to work seems to drastically reduce the amount of time you have available to sit and write about what you’re doing. Even then, if you had the time, writing ‘got up, went to work, came home’ is a bit boring – even for this blog.

One problem we’re having though is probably worth mentioning. For those joining us late Rae and I recently purchased a block of land and are planning on building. This week we got a call from Henley, our building company, and what should have been a pretty straight forward start has turned in to a bit of a nightmare – it appears the owner/builder on the next block has built 4.5cm on to our land.

45 small millimetres. Not much in the scheme of things but, thanks to council regulations, when it comes to positioning our house it may as well have been a metre or two. I went out to see the builder. He was very contrite (“I sign anything. Just tell me, I sign.”) but I’m sure once we start asking him to pay for the extra costs we are now incurring (already about $800) that mood may change.

I’ve also had it pointed out that if we do nothing then after 12 years the land he is on becomes his. Arggghhhh. The best  solution for us would be to sell him 4.5cm of our land and have the titles adjusted accordingly, but that’s going to cost him even more so I’m not sure how he’ll react to it. I think the first thing we’re going to have to do is break the he said/she said stalemate that will eventuate and get the lots independently surveyed to make sure Henley have it right. From there on out I can only see lawyers.

Any one have any advice?

Rae and I love our movies, we could quite happily spend our life in a cinema. We were married in The Sun Theatre and our wedding consisted of the briefest vows we could get away with before we all sat down and watched High Society. However since Bert, and now Henry & Kennedy, arrived our movie watching has been restricted pretty much to DVD and downloads.

Given the restrictions we’ve done pretty well with the few films we’ve seen on the big screen, we’ve managed to catch the last couple of Oscar Best Picture winners and we think we may have lucked in to this year’s as well. Zita gave us cinema vouchers so yesterday we trotted off to The Rivoli in the lovely 37 degree furnace of a day to watch No Country For Old Men.

We’ve had a long chat about the film and the way that it ends and I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, the Sheriff was a replicant.

We’ve had no mail this week, not one single envelope in the box.

I guess in one way this is good – no bills – but in another way it’s bad – no cheques. Ah, modern life, such conflicts.

I like taking photos of old signs around town. Sometimes they’re on the outside of buildings, sometimes they’re on the inside. You can see the photos on my ‘Old Signs’ Flickr page or see the old signs laid out on a map of Melbourne. I think the fascination came from an article I read as a teenage that called on people to take photos of signs before they disappeared for good. Isn’t it amazing the things that stick?

I always wonder if the person who painted the sign, as most of them pre-date modern sign writing practices, realised how long their work would last. If, as they put down the final brush, they thought that someone would take an interest in their efforts in 2008. Never did I actually imagine I’d hear from one of these mystery people.

Today this email arrived in my inbox.

Hi Anthony,

I stumbled across your photo of the Palcolor sign in Yarraville. I actually painted that one in 1980 when I was 18 and still an apprentice. Back then we didn’t consider old signs as special as we all do today. I think there are about 4 or 5 layers of signs in that photo, I painted out an earlier film processing sign and replaced it with that Palcolor one.

That one remains the oldest evidence of my work in Melbourne.

Glad to see your interest in the old signs!

Cheers Tony

When I was growing up the highlight of summer would be the two weeks each January that we’d spend here in Melbourne. Mum and Dad would rent a place right on the beach (out the door, two metre of lawn, jump the small fence and you were on the sand) at Edithvale. It was a great time, the beach, train rides, a trip in to the city and a couple of times each holiday we’d have the luxury of dinner out or take away. Ah, high times for a kid from the country.

I’m on the second week of my holidays now with work beginning to loom on the horizon. It’s been a glorious time spent with Rae and the kids. I’ve been staying up to help with the night time bottle, sitting on the floor talking to the twins and each day Bert and I go for a walk to get the paper. Together we’ve decided that there is a friendly tiger living in the long grass next to the milk bar but we’re yet to see him, maybe tomorrow morning.

Today, in the spirit of holidays past, we took the family to The Coat for lunch. Perfect day, perfect lunch.

See you 2007, it’s been quite a year. Dominated by the waiting for and the arrival of two new babies there really wasn’t much time for any other major events but we managed to fit in buying a block of land and beginning the building process. It was a long year, but a good year.

Happy new year everyone and to those whose blogs I read, thanks for all you’ve written this year. See you all tomorrow in a bright, new and shiny 2008.

So, the temperature hits 41.1. It’s going to be 32 at midnight (that’s in proper degrees, Americans will have to look it up) and NOW the Soda Stream runs out of gas so no more soda water. Of course all the shops have run out of refills.

Sigh.