Winter fare, signs, stuffed animals

Luke and I had lunch at Borsch, Vodka and Tears on Chapel Street today. I had the Hungarian Lamb Stew, which was perfect fare for a chilly winter day, and Luke had the pierogi (Polish dumplings).Yum. We sat outside under the gas heater and it was very toasty.

While on Chapel Street, we poked about in the new Salvos op-shop. I love the way the Salvation Army is turning its stores into visually pleasing, cool places to shop, no doubt driven by the popularity of retro and vintage gear. We bought three classic Australian novels - The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Such is Life and Robbery Under Arms, all for total of $1.50.  This imprint of Such is Life dates back to 1943 and it has what looks like the original price written in pencil inside the cover - 30 cents!

We also dropped into Tarlo & Graham, a shop crammed full of an eclectic array of industrial, religious and science stuff. It's a bit like Wunderkammer, particularly the  eye-popping (and slightly disturbing) taxidermy. (I doubt taxidermy can ever not be disturbing.)

Please, sir, can I have some more? 

This is/was an eland. It's hard to tell in this picture, but it is HUGE. According to Wikipedia, they can grow up to 2.9 metres long and 1.75 metres high at the shoulder, and weigh up to 900 kilograms. Crikey!

   

Aw, poor ducklings

What say you, Mr Zebra?

Halleluja! 

They had an old sign in the window. 

I also spotted this sign on Chapel Street, which I must have walked by many times before. 

Anyone for billiards?

After that we drove to Armadale to visit the Silver K Gallery, which specialises in animation art and rock n roll photography. Some cool stuff, but way out of our price range. And yes, for any Melburnians reading, the old dude with the long silver hair who does the Silver K Gallery TV ads was there. 

I spotted a couple of great old signs on High Street. 

One side...

 The other side (stupid power pole)

This rather lovely old building is now home to a bookshop called Berkelouw Books, which we had to enter because bookshop and it had a display of Dr Seuss in the window. The Dr Seuss collection was disappointingly small, but I did buy a book called The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth, whose bio in the front of the books described him thusly: 

Mark Forsyth is a writer, journalist, proofreader, ghostwriter and pedant. 

Ha! He sounds like my people. I love reading about the origin of words, and I'm also partial to a book bound in a pleasingly old-fashioned style, such as this one. 

The shop has an open fireplace down the back with a couple of leather couches to sit on, but the fire wasn't burning today. What a pity. It was a perfect day for an open fire. That would have been ace (but maybe not so good for the books).


PS Blogger is very cantankerous tonight, and I've had enough of wrestling with the formatting, so this is as good as it gets.