I'm sure it was Cathy who recently mentioned having porridge for breakfast. I decided the next morning I would have porridge. I knew we had some but Houston, we have a problem.
I bought a new box and I have eaten porridge only twice in a couple of months. I expect the new box will go the way of the old.
It is too early to get excited but with just two new cases in Victoria yesterday and six the day before, we can be very hopeful, along with a couple of single digit new numbers last week. But this COVID is nasty. After weeks of no infections yesterday New South Wales had about twelve new infections, three or four of them isolated returning travellers.
Otherwise aside from quarantined returning overseas travellers, as far as I know there aren't any infections in other Australian states.
Our State Premier will make announcements about easing of restrictions on Sunday. It is not expected that retail services will reopen nor being able to sit down in or outside a food outlet. It sounds like our five kilometre travel limit will be extended to twenty kilometres, but that is media speculation.
It doesn't sound like personal services will reopen. It has been a very long time since my hair has been so long and I hate all the horrible hair on the back of my neck. It is interesting to see people become very shaggy haired, although so many young people seem to know someone who can cut hair. Our Hairdresser Friend would of course cut our hair if we asked, but we wear our bad looking hair as a badge of pride at following the rules. Young men look particularly interesting without a stylish hair cut.
We are still car driving everywhere we go, although R had a medical appointment at a large private hospital and chose to catch the tram. There were maybe six people on the tram in each direction as passengers boarded and left.
River made a comment that she didn't quite feel safe about getting out about yet, although there hasn't been any infections in her state South Australia for a very long time. I feel the same. If the numbers stay in single digits for a week or so, we may return return to public transport and I might just start to roam the city again.
But COVID can get out of control so quickly as we saw in my state with one July day with 700 new infections The rest of Australia who had controlled COVID watched on in horror and in my opinion, European, British and United States governments have been very negligent and their citizens are paying the price. Pacific island governments who locked down their countries have done well. Third world Asian countries have done well. Compare the population of India to the United States and in spite of a huge difference, a poverty stricken country like India has done better on raw numbers with death rates and infection rates. I feel quite distressed for you if you live in some of the aforesaid countries, especially if you are in a big city in the US and UK. Mask up, sanitise your hands constantly and don't mix with people and you will have a good chance of being a survivor.
The photos didn't come out so well. I think they were taken some time ago, perhaps with my last camera. I think I have kept the coins, probably along with tens of thousands of other people. Don't I think so many things. I should make notes.
A jackeroo is somewhat like an American cowboy. Jillaroo is the female equivalent. I don't know the origins of the names. Of course as we have been dropping the nouns waitress and actress unless it is particularly relevant, so should jillaroo be dropped, but it's a nice bit of history.
A jackeroo worked on a cattle or sheep station, normally huge properties but with low stocking rates as the food was poor and droughts frequent. Many of our Aboriginal people were jackeroos and in early days worked for accommodation, 'tucker' and 'baccy'. Do your research about Wave Hill, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and our late friend David Pollock. Aboriginal stockmen and jackeroos began to be paid proper wages.
Something just occurred to me. The suave Jaguar driving family accountant of my youth had a daughter who went into inland Australia to work as a jillaroo. Remembering, she was most certainly a wearer of sensible shoes.
While where we live is called Melbourne and it is our postal address for all cheques you may wish to send me as reward for my most excellent blogging efforts, it is increasingly becoming known as St Kilda Road Central. That's a bit of side story.
We don't live in the municipal local government area of City of Melbourne but in the City or Port Phillip. The other side of the boulevard is City of Melbourne.
While we can't vote for her, I was very cynical about Melbourne's current Lord Mayor Sally Capp when she took office. And I think I was wrong. She has done a good job in very trying times and deserves another term. She is very passionate about Melbourne.
City of Port Phillip sent out ballot papers for a mail only election between the 6th and 8th of October. R received his a few days ago. I haven't received mine. I heard the deadline for the receipt of ballot papers back to the electoral office was late October and I was concerned that my vote might be too late given the disaster that is our current postal service. It wasn't because I would be fined for not voting as I can hardly do that if I hadn't received the papers in time. I just wanted my vote to count.
I looked at R's ballot paper information and as long as you have posted your vote in by the evening of the 23rd of October, it will be valid, so I still have time and I am not panicking Captain Mainwaring.
Each day to preserve our sanity we go to one of three place in rotation, Prahran, South Melbourne and Port Melbourne, all within our five kilometre travel limit. A couple of times we did go half a kilometre further than allowed to visit the bakery in Elwood, well Google maps told me that, but the car odometer said five km.
There is a nice little area with benches to sit in at Port Melbourne. Here are a few photos.
The nearby old fire station before trucks became too big to fit through the door.
Our neighbour on this floor moved out to a house, much more suitable for a young family. They had a really hard time during lockdown with toddlers. The daddy was so hot, but now the replacement daddy in the same apartment is even hotter, as far as I can tell when he is masked but only with a baby.
As he told me while waiting for a lift today his father was a fit and exercised man the same age as me, 63 and I am not so well exercised nor fit. He was chief executive at a large corporation. He was living the good life but after contracting COVID and a six week stay in hospital, the neighbour's father died three weeks ago.
A vital man killed by COVID. R would be horrified, but I slipped a note under his door tonight, So sorry to hear about your father. You must be grieving. My very best wishes, Andrew @ 1**
Only at a bookshop in Prahran. Mrs Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse will be turning in their graves.
This photo of Bourke Street in Melbourne was taken about two months after I was born. For Melburnians familiar with our city there is quite a lot of interesting detail.
This video was recently taken by a tram driver when he had the opportunity. It is sad to see our once vibrant city so deserted.
While Australian Cardinal George Pell was found guilty by our courts of sexually molesting a boy, on appeal the guilty verdict was dropped. In his latter years he was a resident of The Vatican brought in to sort out the financial mess and corruption within the Vatican. He returned to Australia to face our legal system and is now a free man.
How sickening to see him try to kiss the Pope's ring upon his recent return to the Vatican. More sickening is that Pope Francis welcomed him.
Sue me if you wish Catholic Church but if Pell wasn't guilty of child abuse, he was certainly guilty of covering up child abuse by other priests. Both Cardinal Pell and Pope Francis make me sick. I suppose 'duty of care' was not a phrase bandied about back then.
Merde, don't you just hate when people mix in foreign words with English!
Entrecote is a fine dining (read expensive) French restaurant in Domain Road, South Yarra. For nearly 30 years it was known as Lynch's and was somewhat controversial as it did not allow people to bring babies and I think young children.
I think, only think the blog Separated by a Common Language blog is written by an American woman who has lived in England. Was it Churchill who said two countries separated by a common language in reference to the difference between American English and English English?
Little Aussie Down Under gets confused and takes some bits of English from Britain and some from the Americas as well as having our own language too.
I've been gobsmacked twice in a couple of days by northern American English. Funny that while I dislike in the extreme what #45 says, and his bumbling speech, his actual speech does not trouble me. He doesn't pronounce things strangely.
Tonight on tv an American woman said the word trauma. Wow! That is nothing like how we pronounce the word. We pronounce the word as trorma. I can't even work out how to spell how she said the word. Perhaps trarmer but I am not sure that is right.
Jackie of Toronto usually gives us a round up of her invariably interesting week and she recounted one day when she made filo pastry. Except she wrote phyllo pastry. Jackie is no fool, so straight away I knew it was a spelling difference. Before I got around to Googling it, Jackie as ignorant as I was of an alternative spelling Googled and discovered the different spellings.
Which spelling surprises you to learn? Or are you smart and knew already there were two spellings? US, UK and people in France tell me how you spell the word? Did you know there were two spellings?
PS I don't want to know about you making phyllo/filo pastry. Not my job.
Sami in Perth is the one who really keeps Monday Mural going. Have a look at what she has posted today.
I could just say this is a nice enough mural I came across in South Melbourne, but that doesn't make for much outrage, discomfort or interest.
This City of Port Phillip approved the cheap and nasty fairly ordinary flat development is at a prime location on the corner of Cecil and Dorcas Streets n South Melbourne. Is that flammable cladding on the exterior?
No doubt CoPP told the developer that it must spend 0.001% of the cost of the development on public art displayed to the street to receive approval. Maybe CoPP did not approve the development and the developer appealed to the developer's evil friend, the higher body VCAT.
Nevertheless, I quite like the mural. Facing Cecil Street depicted is the Park Street public housing tower and it looks like the grand former house Finn Barr. More on that building later.
Some of you, well maybe one of you seemed interested in the Royce Hotel when I posted a couple of photos. Here are a few more. It is worth having a look at the hotel's website to see one really nice interior photo. Well, don't bother. It is a nice hotel and I am sure they won't mind me using the interior photo.
It was designed and built in the 1920s as a prestige motor car Kellow Falkiner showroom and I remember it as that. It was the car sales place to visit if you were seriously rich. I also remember it being used by the Australian Army after it ceased to be a car showroom but Google is not being helpful
I expect I've posted photos of the hotel before but people come and go. How good is this weather vane!
Of course with wealth comes scandal, and this was a little interesting.
