another one bites the dust...Nora reports that her rented house is to be demolished, sometime in the near future. The old timber house, circa 1880, has always had good vibes to use that strange expression. The relatively generous back yard has been an oasis for hemmed in Boynton and hounds, who like nothing better than sitting idly in the sun near the apple trees, and soaking up the classic suburban stillness. Best thing about Boynton's outer suburban childhood? The big blocks of land, that baby boomer gangs colonised with games of cricket and cubbies and chasey...Now all the blocks have been carved up, the gardens terraced with chic tiles, for the kids to pace about cleanly in postage stamp physical activitiy. Nora's house will be replaced by something like this. Boynton is seriously thinking about moving to the country...

Apparently it’s possible to celebrate the new year perpetually (via Presurfer)
but Boynton's thoughts have turned increasingly to Tea.
And John Curtin. He was fond of the beverage wasn’t he?
Searching for proof she found some splendid sites about JC
and his times... His briefcase... His Hills Hoist. And Elsie.
But the closest she got to the Tea thing was the memory of Mrs Frances Shea:

I only speak as I find. All the time, I'd be nearly seventeen when I went to the Worker, so the two years, or two-and-half-years that I was there and he was editor, Miss Prickett always made the tea. She would look at the time and we'd have a cup of tea and she'd take one into ... Always took him in a cup of tea, always
RS And you never saw him drinking alcohol?
SHEA Never saw him, no, no, and he never drank at my brother's wedding. I never saw him drink. Even in that booklet on him where they said he was at Buckingham Palace - I forget the name (it's in the book) offered him a drink, and he said, "No." Princess Elizabeth asked him was there anything he'd like and he said he would like a cup of tea She sent a silver service and silver teapot and cup and saucer and he had a cup of tea. So he didn't even drink then. As far as I'm concerned if he had a drinking problem, which I hear so much about, I just speak as I find. I never saw him drink at any time. All the time I was working at the Worker he had a cup of tea. We took it into his office. He always, no matter how busy he was, Flo used to knock on the door, "Oh thank you, thank you Miss Prickett " He always enjoyed that cup of tea. ...

Hey Mac, don't mess with the brand. As a Beatlenut of old, Boynton is peturbed by Macca's latest revisionist gesture, and agrees with Geoff Boucher the name switch he proposes is "jarring to the ear, like some semantic pothole on memory lane" After reading today of a project where you can talk to an "artificial intelligence" John Lennon, Boynton thought she'd ask the horse...
Boynton: Does McCartney-Lennon grate with you?
JL: Probably
Which sounds better?
Czechoslovakia
Can I pin you down on this?
If I can change it to a peace event.
Who wrote Yesterday?
The Peatles.
Who wrote In My Life?
Mary Shelley.
Is alphabetical order important to you?
Is alphabetical order important to I? Boynton, what are you doing in my kitchen…I hope you’re not disappointed
Are you disappointed?
Like George is always quoting Ghandi: ”Make and preserve the image of your choice” We’re just wriggling about.
How do you stop Paul from messing with the brand?
I don’t know
Why not
Boynton, sometimes life’s no bowl of leeches.

Boynton wishes she had sat down to tea with the Adelaide friends of Temperance at the May 1841 soiree.
"Mr Charles Bonnar next amused the meeting with a detail of the circumstances which had led him to abandon the drinking usages of society and adopt the cold water regime as infinitely preferable. His watch had gone better since he was a Total Abstainer – his pockets had fewer drains upon them – and his sight had been wonderfully improved. In describing those who were fond of their glass, the people fixed upon some very appropriate titles. For instance such a person was said to be a “mop” – and they all knew to what very degrading purposes “mops” were applied. Roars of laughter attended the whole of Mr Bonnar’s extraordinary address"
(as reported in The South Australian Temperance Advocate 1841)

In 2003 Boynton will heed this and drink her cocoa.

A friend recently sent this link which documents Andreas Petzoldt's personal flying suit project. My friend says he understands the techie stuff that alas flies over my head, but the inherent passion of the project fascinates. What fuels the obsession? Is it the childhood space memory of super heroes like Commando Cody, as Jeffrey Shaffer noted He went airborne using a rocket-powered backpack, and flew horizontally with his hands extended like Superman. I wanted it all - the flight suit, the goofy helmet, everything
The childhood ...space ...memory of super heroes
Boynton remembers John Robinson flying round Lost in Space in his version, but was never tempted to DIY, or even build the Robot Had she been a trekkie, she could probably just about handle the origami...
My friend also sent this Arthur C Clarke brainy quote... Perhaps it's the power of memory, the thermodynamic force, that advances the magic.

Just getting over boxing boxing day - and now it's New Year's eve eve. This is heralded by the appearance of discarded baby pine trees on suburban nature strips, optimistically placed next to the "green bin". Christmas decorations are already on the turn, but Davezilla posted an important collection.
The horrible weather is about to break with that distinct "risk of a thunderstorm" feeling. This augurs well for New year's eve. As usual Boynton is belatedly planning, and took heart from this headline in The Age "Not too late for fun on the Cheap" At the other end of the spectrum, there's the Yarrawonga Bachelor and Spinster Ball at the Weygoods Truck Depot, in Yarrawonga.
Maybe a fresh northerly journey is just the ticket.

Fresh gusty northerly wind...Last night was so hot we broke out the boule before a long barbecue that lasted way past midnight until we realised the weather just wasn't going to break. The inaugural petanque went well, despite the Jack Russell immediately seizing the Jack and running with it under the shed, returning later alone. Boynton had to soberly forage in the dust and detect the missing element, then fish it out before play could resume...When it was a.m. and still warm outside our party all fell off their chairs onto the green and watched the cloud formations. Boynton soon realised that cloud games could be a bit like a Rorschach test, so largely kept her images to herself...(as Hamlet said to Polonius)
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Methinks it is like a weasel.
It is backed like a weasel.
Or like a whale?
Very like a whale.
This morning in the hot gusty northerly, Nora said that she heard a scampering across the lawn. Wild pigs? asked Boynton. After the barbecue fat?
"No it was the plastic garden furniture, scuttling round the garden...
Next time we can play petanque by tossing the plastic chairs in teams suggested Boynton, before Nora reported that as she spoke on the phone, the umbrella was also upset by the strong gusty northerly and was flying off...
This afternoon in the horrible thick white heat Boynton escaped into a cinema to watch some overrated Magic Realism... Still hot.

everyone has gone to the beach.
Boynton recently bought Boswell's London Journal at the op shop.
"He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised. He said it would be a very good exercise, and would yield me infinite satisfaction when the ideas were faded from my rememberance...I told Mr Johnson that I put down all sorts of little incidents in it. "Sir," said he,"there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible" 16 July 1763
Famous Diarists as proto-bloggers has been explored (by blog - where else) - but Interconnected points to a new project that puts Pepys on line as blog.

Another light Summer link is this Guardian quiz. (via Plep)
This is the level of Trivia Boynton would like to see happening at the local tournament... There's a darker tale of pub trivia at bluejoh

Through the gap...bit under the weather today. It's that Boxing-Boxing Day feeling. Boynton has long believed that Boxing Day runs well into three days. Longer than the average Australia-England Test match. Such a beautiful day in Melbourne, she's half tempted to stroll down the road to catch the cricket gratis, through the gap. According to the Age , yesterday
By early afternoon, about 50 people had gathered on the footbridge between the MCG and Melbourne Park to watch the game through a gap in the ground where a stand once stood, complete with binoculars and transistor radios.
"It's the best seat in the house," said Darren Bond, of East St Kilda. "You can see absolutely clearly, and you get the video replay and the scoreboard as well."
This is not the first time cricketers and patrons will experience a large gap in the stadium's structure More gap info for patrons here

All the small pine trees next to the trailors and gas cylinders for hire had gone, but waiting in the car by the bowsers at the caltex on Christmas night, Boynton spotted santa. Behind the counter. Jolly. Smiling to himself between transactions. At ten pm after a long day, this generous-girthed geniality made weary punters smile and do a double take. Maybe he was like this bloke whose life turned around when he let his beard grow out white and wavy. In fact, after he started looking like Santa Claus, John said, his whole personality began to change. He became friendlier, more outgoing. Life became full of small, amusing incidents...Or maybe it was just the nearness of the coke machine

Like trotting out last year's xmas decorations, here is some perennial advice from 2001 about a natural treatment for Christmas depression. Of course, Organs.
Before Boynton moves into serious antidote mode, she should remember:
"Listeners experienced significant reductions in tension, depression, anger and fatigue," Professor Marley says. "However, we didn't find any significant changes in listeners' levels of vigour, or confusion."
Looks like pretty good therapy to me.

Decorating for Christmas 1950's style (via PopCulture Junk Mail via Quiddity) Also featuring on David Claudon's site is the excellent Decorating 40's style, "a visual source-book of ideas...". Quiddity links to 1950's childrens' records, one in the Christmas genre, and one general -some records of which Boynton recognised from the storehouses of memory or imagination.

Boynton went to the Boulevard Christmas lights last night – this is a (grand) street in Ivanhoe that was the original themed street in what has now become a rather overheated market. Even Boynton’s own flat street has houses with hose lights and the odd reindeer. But the big old Ivanhoe houses on the hill are better suited to the sport. The road is generous in its contours and dimensions and socio-eco profile, and can handle the throng of the thousand strong pilgrimage even if the nature-strips are worn bare by soles and strollers. On the low side you get the city skyline framed by lemon-scented gums, on the high side you get the sweeping vistas of grand old decorated Deco houses. Last night was a perfect warm evening, with a big yellow moon that looked exactly like the classic art nouveau sheet-music variety.
To best view the lights, you should really borrow a child. Boynton volunteered, and her inner child gasped and whooped and jumped up and down excitedly, and stood awe-struck at some mystery in the electricity invisible to adults. Not as good as one little girl who went into joyous overdrive at the sight of a plastic elf. Children were adorned with pink and green “glow lights’ that were being hocked by scouts on corners, the most desirable being the round collars, that glowed on in the back seat of dark wagons driving slowly past. One hapless toddler put in a request. His mother snapped. “We can’t always get what we want…If I were you I’d be very worried because Santa can hear everything you’re saying, and he’d be disgusted. And he’d be going into his workshop and taking all the toys out of your sack and putting them into some other child’s sack!…”.
There was the usual mixed iconography of Jesus and Santa, desert and snow. One house had the trinity of Santas, next door had the snowman under a palm tree. There were asbseiling santas, creepy miniature-doll santas, a nativity group in a gazebo moving at tai-chi speed, and a Joseph who looked like more like Josephine, in his mock Tudor style frock. On the low side of the street, Boynton was interested in the shadow play of hapless owners caught inside their homes, moving around like un-lit figures in the annual Christmas fish bowl.
No link found to Ivanhoe, but here is a South Australian page. And a thread from a US forum indicates some of the pressures involved.

How to be cool. Get out of the inner-city... Boynton's street has emptied, shifted to the coast I guess, leaving us non-holiday resort decampers walking down hot asphalt echo chambers of the idle-factory "neighbourhood" ( actually the big factory at the back has just been sold off - presumably for warehouse apartments). Both neighbours have gone, so Boynton can break out and warble soulful ballads into the wee hours. Meanwhile Nora found cool relief inside a church this morning, rehearsing with trumpet for the annual carol service. "Yes I'm the rhythm section in The Virgin Mary again" she reports, a tad wearily.
Which links quite nicely to this Sir Cliff game (via b3ta)

A 1959 pamphlet on how to decorate a " tree made mostly of non-tarnishing long-lasting aluminium foil" Proper decoration will make your aluminium tree more beautiful (via Anil's daily links)

"I just love what (the aluminum tree) represents, the hope and naiveté of the era," (says one collector). "It was the beginning of the atomic age..."

"The reality of my daily life is that I'm juggling lots of balls in the air" says a defensive Santa (via Plep)

Some Karaoke out-takes . A new machine that not only adjusts the pitch and tempo to suit the punter's voice, but will also "grade" the performance.The grading karaoke machine currently available only compares singers' performance against standardised tunes of the selected songs. But this new machine would recognise the singer's use of vibrato, tremolos and other techniques for grading singers."
And yesterday's Odd Spot reported that China's gridlocked drivers will be able to sing their blues away next year after the country's only privately owned car maker rolls out a car equipped with a karaoke machine.

The fact that kitsch kulture has become status quo is also a reason that karaoke is gaining younger, hipper, and even famous followers, but karaoke existed before the current retro wave and will certainly outlive the fickle fancies of ironic young people
Discussing Karaoke last night with a younger, hipper writer, Boynton let it slip that she too has secretly indulged in this vice.
And where else but a karaoke bar will you hear someone utter, "I'd like to do a Bread song someday, but I don't think I'm emotionally ready."
That strolling guitarist at a certain Kobe snack bar has a lot to answer for. Here is another fan who confesses: I sometimes get distracted by trying to make the words of the song last exactly as long as they take to change color on the video screen, and that means I'm not giving full voice..
More (serious 'scene') singing tips "Mastering fast songs" here.
and the more basic:"Enhancing Audience Appeal" Avoid sitting down while you sing, unless it really matches the song. But this is the tip that best resonates with Boynton:
If there’s a monitor in front of you, don’t hide behind it. Stand far back behind it (where you can still read it), or to the side

On the theme of random dog poetry, the Magnetic poetry on-line game - see "Dog Lover"

Of course, within the random scattering of the apples as described below, there may be deeper meaning. Some recent projects along these lines employ sheep...cows...and an earlier local grazing dairy herd. Also recommended is random sheep poetry

Balmy evenings. In the backyard over at Peel street , the Summer twilight pet-anque or elderly labrador crazy bowls pennant is about to begin again. The green shall be a rectangle, providing a level surface not injurious to bowls
On the edge of the green are two old apple trees, the windfall fruit of which shall be the bowls. Play begins as Douglas forages beneath the trees until he finds a bowl that he fancies. He then excitedly runs back to the mat, but will shortly spit out the invariably under-ripe specimen, thus delivering it to the green. It is now live. Abby (who is even more senile than Doug) will then slowly wander haphazardly across, swoop on the bowl, walk with it for a few metres before she in turn discards it. Tart. Doug then returns to trees, to find a second bowl and the process is repeated, until the green is filled with a free-form pattern of apples that are moved from time time during the evening. Bronte (Jack Russell) has neither the greed nor the neccessary degree of dementia to play, but she may inspect the bowls from time to time but not move them. She prefers skinks.