Ghost sign hunting, decluttering, muddling and sipping

There was a story in The Age yesterday about the Ghost Sign Hunters seminar I'm going to tomorrow. I've never really thought too much about why I'm a ghost sign fanatic, but Stefan Schutt's comments in the story resonated with me, particularly the bit about it being a response to rapid urban renewal.  

As you probably know, I love the aesthetics of urban decay. I get excited about rusting roofs, weathered wood, crumbling houses, peeling paint and old brickwork. They have so much more character than modern gleaming glass towers and boxy buildings. My obsession with ghost signs sprang from that, but I also like that old signs are a link to the past. They're survivors!  It's almost a minor miracle so many old signs are still around.  

And of course there's the thrill of the discovery, which is probably akin to a collector finding a fantastic new addition to their collection while poking about in a second hand shop - only you can't take old signs home with you.  

On the hunt

I went to the Camberwell Market yesterday, but it was too hot and too crowded so I spent the rest of the day wandering about hunting for ghost signs.  Burke Road in Camberwell was quite a disappointment, but I found a few gems along Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn. I also spotted this one: 

This isn't a great example of an old sign - the building isn't a health food shop anymore, but the sign isn't that old and it's still in pretty good nick. I'm only mentioning it because the Staff of Life was owned by Julie Stafford, who was my art teacher in my first years of primary school. She also published a book of the same name. I think she was one of the pioneers of the health food movement in Australia. (Stay tuned for my next post with photos of all my recent sign finds.)

Look! Up in the sky! 

I saw another circumhorizontal arc (rainbow clouds) on Saturday, only a few hundred metres from where I first saw one two years ago. I was sitting outside at my friend Lauren's engagement party at a Docklands bar when I looked up and saw it. "Oh, look! A circumhorizontal arc!" What a nerd.

Declutter

I spent this afternoon cleaning out my wardrobes. Yep, I know how to make the most of a public holiday. I do love a good declutter though. It's not that long since I last did it, but there were lots of clothes I hadn't worn since my last declutter (or the one before that or the one before that etc), so I decided it was time to get brutal. In the end I wasn't quite brutal - I couldn't bear to part with a couple of things - but I was certainly harsh. My underwear and socks/hosiery drawers are so neat and organised! I'm particularly pleased with my efforts at categorising my socks, tights and stock--- yeah, I should probably stop there. Moving right along...

Homegrown

We're in the midst of a heatwave (Autumn? What autumn?). I've been coping by sipping on tonic with fresh muddled* lime juice and mint leaves, picked fresh from our little herb garden. Deliciously refreshing.  * smooshed with the pestle from my mortar and pestle.  

I made yummy pizzas for dinner topped with tomato, bocconcini and basil also from our garden. Apart from the coriander, our herbs are thriving. 

We had raspberries, strawberries and whipped cream for dessert. Nothing homegrown in that, but also delicious.

Another long weekend, kinda fun, home grown

Look how leggy I am! 

And how tiny my head is!

I have another four-day weekend coming up. I was going to arrange to leave early next Tuesday for the Ghost Sign Hunter event, but then I realised Monday is a public holiday for Labour Day so I'm taking the whole day off. A four-day weekend and a three-day week. Wooh. 

I started a new program at the gym tonight. It wasn't quite as hard as I expected and it's even sort of fun. There's one exercise where I throw a ball at a wall and another one that's like climbing a rope, only I'm sitting down and the rope's on a loop.  I climbed 100 metres. 

I used some basil from our herb garden in my lunchtime salad today. 

Warrandyte adventure

We went on an adventure to the outer suburb of Warrandyte today.  It's more like a small town in the bush than a 'normal' suburb. It's the place where gold was first found in Victoria (in 1851), setting off the  gold rush. I didn't know that, but I did know that it was a nice spot to visit - I'd been twice before, but ages ago.

An old house-cum-shop on the main street

The Yarra, the river I walk along on my way to work, also runs through Warrandyte, but it looks a lot different. It's bushy, there's no paved paths and you can easily get to the water's edge. It was a warm day and a few kids were having a paddle. There's also gentle rapids in places.

Quack

We had lunch and meandered about a few shops and a gallery before taking a stroll along the river. We saw a lone duck zoom past, riding the rapids. I imagine it was thinking, "Wheeeeee!" as it went down river. It was very funny, but too fast to catch on camera. 

After leaving Warrandyte we headed towards Kangaroo Ground - we didn't really have a plan, we just got in the car and drove. We stopped to take in the view from the memorial tower. 

The city in the hazy distance

17 miles away

Then we visited Sugarloaf Reservoir, which is one of the dams that supplies water to Melbourne. 

I was surprised we could actually walk down to the water's edge in some places. Uh, sorry, Melbourne water drinkers, but I dipped my toe in it. The banks are quite rocky. 

I found a stone shaped like a stone-age dagger. I bought it home as a souvenir.

There's some nice little golden elms at the reserve. I love the way it looks when the sun shines through elm leaves.

On the way back we stopped again in Kangaroo Ground to take some photos of a rural vista of rolling hills, dams, a few sheep and cows and rusty old buildings. 

It would be really pretty when the grass is green. (Related: it's officially autumn! Yay!)

Old buildings

Lucky I didn't take this shot a few seconds later 

(cow pat alert)

Ghost sign hunting, White Night, welcome rain

I got a comment on an old Girl in Melbourne post yesterday that has me a little excited. It was left by a fellow fan of old signs, and alerted me to an upcoming event in Melbourne called Ghost Sign Hunting ('ghost signs' is a much more evocative name for fading old signs. I shall steal it). The commenter, Stefan Schutt is one of the presenters and maintains a blog on ghost signs, which I'm keen to explore (along with the blog Ghost Signs Melbourne, which I found via Stefan's). 

The seminar will explore "what ghost signs can tell us about how we live with and experience diverse cultures and histories of place and image".   

It starts at 4.00pm on a week day (March 12th), but I think it will be worth arranging to finish work early to rub shoulders with a bunch of other people who are obsessed with ghost signs. It's pleasing to discover there are plenty of other people into something you like that you thought was a little bit obscure - like being part of a little community. 

If you're interested, click the 'upcoming event' link above for details.

That reminds me, I have photos of a bunch of old signs from the past few weeks, but I've been too lazy to post them. I'll get to it soon.

White Night

Luke and I went to White Night - an all-night festival of light shows, music and performance art  - last Saturday (no, we didn't stay until stumps at 7.00am). It's the first time Melbourne has held the event and it was a huge success, if the hordes of people who descended on the CBD are any indication. It was a perfect balmy summer's night for being out and about and the vibe was buzzy. 

Among other things, we visited the State Library, which a hosted a number of musical performances under the dome of the wonderful La Trobe reading room. To be honest, the performance we saw was a bit of a snooze, but I got a kick out of lining up at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night to go to the library, and the dome looked pretty. 

Sir Redmond remains impassive amid the light show 

out the front of the library

 Inside the dome

 The steps of Flinders Street Station became a concert stage, 

entertaining the masses

The Forum Theatre

Also Flinders Street

You can check out some good videos here and here, which show it off better than my photos. 

Rain, rain, glorious rain!

We've had a lengthy run of hot, dry weather in Melbourne the last few weeks - a record- breaking spell of 15 days over 30 degrees C in fact. Even the nights have been uncomfortably warm, with temperatures in the low 20s. But it's rained the last few days. Yay!  Some proper rain, too; not just that depressingly useless drizzle we often get. How wonderful it was to go to sleep listening to the rain and wake up to rain.  It wasn't raining when I walked  home last night, but everything was still damp and I could smell the eucalyptus trees beside the river when I passed. Aaah...lovely!

Other good stuff: 

Our herbs and lettuce are still alive! 

We got a new TV - a digital one. We've finally entered the 21st century! Our SBS reception is still poor, however, which is disappointing. We also bought a new entertainment unit to replace our rickety old one. It's nice having new stuff. Our new furniture - entertainment unit, dining table and bookcase  - all match too, even though we bought them at different places. 

I found a cool word Tumblr blog called Otherwordly via Pinterest. Continuing the theme of words ending in 'bund' (as in 'pudibund'), 'aspectabund' is an adjective meaning 'letting or being able to let expressive emotions show easily through one's face and eyes'. I think I'm going to need to take a day off work to churn through all these new blogs...

Sunset, rainbow, good timing

 The sunset reflecting on a South Yarra building

I'm back again! Already! I took these photos on my way home tonight. The sky was slate grey and stormy, and the sun was setting. 

 A pink tinge in the east

 A rainbow! Or part thereof

 Taken from our bedroom window (yes, it needs a clean)

Not only is tomorrow Friday, but I managed to nab a spot for a free massage at work. Another perk of the job. It's good timing because my back has been sore this week. 

Garden, wonderful words, too magnificent

Sunset over Bridge Road, Richmond last Friday 

I've been slack again. I have been keeping a mental list of stuff to blog, but if I leave it any longer to write them down I'll forget them completely. 

Luke and I have a herb garden! We've been buying a lot of fresh herbs lately, but not always using them all before they're past their best (which doesn't take long). So we bought some pots and seedlings and made a wee garden on the fire escape outside our kitchen. There's basil, sage, coriander, mint and some baby lettuce. Some pesky creature has had a snack on the mint leaves, but apart from that, they're doing OK. (We did only plant them on Sunday, so that's not saying much.)

Pudibund. That's a word! It means bashful or modest. I learned this from the Inky Fool (the author, you might recall, of The Etymologicon).

Another wordy bit of glee - the Japanese term mono no aware. It refers to an awareness of the transience of things and wistfulness at their passing. Its literal translation is "the pathos of things" but, as aware is similar to our "ah" or "oh", it's also translated as the "ahh-ness of things". I'm not sure why, but I like this. Maybe because it's one of those foreign terms  that doesn't really have an English equivalent. 

I've been getting a few spam comments on my blogs lately and today's was amusing. Apparently I am "just too magnificent". Sorry. I'll try less hard from now on. 

The other day, I saw Mr and Mrs Plover standing right at the river's edge when a flock of seagulls flew in to land in the same area. One flew so close that Mr/Mrs Plover had to duck! 

Check out these amazing and disturbingly life-like octopus cakes.

Snippets of glee

I've been a very lazy blogger the last couple of weeks. Gleeful things have happened - here's some snippets: 

 The trees in the City Square have been 

yarn-bombed

The plane trees along the Swanston

 Street frontage have trunkwarmers too

 On the road to Sorrento last Friday night for my friend

 Bertie's hens' weekend (which was fun)

I spotted this old sign in Sorrento. Nicholson's something? 

Dairy maybe? 

 Large driftwood elephant at a shop in Sorrento

Wee cottage in the gardens at Sorrento 

 Boats at Blairgowrie

Luke's parents gave him tickets to Jersey Boys for his birthday a few weeks ago, which meant I got to go too. Woo! It's showing at Princess Theatre - I've seen shows there before, but I've never been upstairs. It's quite lovely.   

The ceiling of the upstairs foyer 

We enjoyed the show. We aren't fans of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, but we knew most of the songs, although we didn't realise some - like Can't Take My Eyes Off You and Oh, What a Night! - were originally Four Seasons' songs. I especially liked the robotic walking dance moves the four guys did while performing Walk Like a Man. I hope they dance like that when they go to parties.