Zero Time. (Rough Extract)

"Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep"

- Anon.

Fromelles, France. July 19th, 1916.

We were well nigh exhausted. All day yesterday and again today we had hunched our backs, kept our heads low. Trying not to be seen, trying to suppress the urge to have a dekko over the parapet and see what Fritz was doing. If a bloke stood up straight he ran the risk of having his head cracked. More than fear for your own head, mostly you were concerned with thoughts that it just wouldn’t do to put your mates through that sort of thing.

[...]

In the late afternoon we helped some lads from the 54th Battalion build an ammunition dump. It was a lot of heavy lifting and hard dragging through mud and over sodden duckboards. We didn’t mind lending them a hand. We knew that the 54th had been at it for two days, bringing up general equipment, trench mortars, bombs and tons of ammo…bit by bit, hand over hand. By the time we joined in they were already shattered. If the word came to jump the bags, I hoped that it wouldn’t be from here. The 54th would be protecting our left. I didn’t doubt their resolve but you couldn’t help but worry when your assaulting troops were already spent from laboring. Such thoughts made you feel guilty. There was a lot of that guilt to be had. Like when someone you knew got hit and your immediate thought was ‘it wasn’t me’. You just had to put it aside.

[...]

A massive volley of machine gun fire tore up the top of our position. Two explosions and a host of flares lit up the horizon near where I guessed the 54th would now be copping it. I slumped down against the parapet, my hand touched down on something hot. Pain shot up my arm, I caught sight of Driscoll watching me and I bit-down on the noise. Even above the roar of the fighting I could hear the shell fragment sizzling in the mud next to me. There it glowered, hissing and spitting like a small demon…fragmented from the whole and cursing the world of men. Driscoll crawled over and threw a sodden sand bag over it. He pushed in next to me and said “We’re going in a few minutes aren’t we?”

“Yep”

“Ripper. It couldn’t be any worse than it is down here.”

I noticed Simmo across the trench. He looked asleep. His left hand was crudely bandaged and he clutched it to his stomach. All the way down his sleeve and across his waist was darkened with blood. I nudged Driscoll “They’d probably let Simmo stay out of this you know. Someone should go tell em'...get him back to a dressing station. Driscoll smirked as he lipped a rollie, deftly sealed it, lit it and had it in his mouth seemingly in one motion.

“Ive already told him he was gonna bleed to death, but he reckons he’s not going anywhere till after we’ve knocked over Fritz tonight” We both laughed. Bits of hardened dirt spat down on us like rain. A big bloke I knew, Private Dorsey crouched down in front us. Everyone called him ‘Pub’. I had no idea why. He was breathing heavy and had a pretty good nick off the bottom of his right ear. It bled freely down his neck. He asked Driscoll if he could spare a smoke. Driscoll gave him his tobacco pouch. Paper Hanger and another bloke arrived and squatted in next to Dorsey. They all looked at Driscoll for a moment and he smirked and motioned that they too could help themselves to his tobacco. Another bloke came over and huddled into our smoking circle. He produced a grotty little tobacco pipe and puffed on it earnestly before offering it to me. Dorsey had obviously had his hearing rung. He spoke so loudly I feared he'd bring a barrage down on us.

“One of dressing stations caught a direct hit…I was knocked out I reckon. Just before I got belted I overheard Major Norrish’s adjutant telling another bloke that we were supposed to have already jumped. They’re bloody confused about something. They're trying to get word back from the last wave about what the situation is out there” More shells exploded nearby. This time the concussions were close enough to shake our bodies. Paper Hanger joined in sharply, “I can tell them what the bloody situation is out there…”

Be Free

There are several of these superb paste-ups alive around Melbourne at the moment. I havent been able to find the name of the artist. Maybe it isn't important.

Be Free (Swing) Dummett Crescent, Clifton Hill underpass (Near Clifton Hill train station)

On the wall of the Tin Pot Cafe, corner Scotchmer st & St Georges rd, Nth Fitzroy.

Ghost Car Intersection

Intimacy

Watching a travelling couple sitting in Mumtaz restaurant, Saigon. They sit opposite each other. She asks him quietly to come and sit next to her. He asks why. Her response is inaudible. “Its weird” he replies. She gets up slightly and moves into the chair she beckoned for him. I go back to my caphe-sua-da. I’m thinking he should’ve got up and gone and sat next to her. Its presumptuous I know but I feel like telling him he just lost a beautiful opportunity for intimacy.

Saigon, Jetstar and the meaning of success.

We’ve had nothing short of a bollocking from Jetstar since we left Melbourne. They left us sitting on the ground at Tullamarine for more than an hour, barely said a word about it to us neither, bit short on decency for a stoppage that was going to be “around 10 minutes”. In the air over Singapore they had us in a holding pattern for 30 minutes. On the 15^th we went to Than Sohn Nhat airport in Saigon to fly to Hanoi, they informed us that our flight had been delayed by 10 hours; we got a lunch coupon though ;-) After standing around negotiating, translating, scratching on rocks and making clicking sounds with our mouths and lips we managed to communicate that flying out of Saigon at 1am wasn’t really going to work for us and that we’d like to be put on the next available flight that wasn’t going to put us in Hanoi at 4am. They switched us to a 5pm flight for the next day. I’m probably not capturing for you just how much too-and-fro and universal sign language it took to broker that little deal. So alls well that ends well right?, If it would but only end. The next day comes and we’re rocking some morning tea (that’s elevenses people) on Pham Ngu Lao and we get an email from Jetstar that tells us our 5pm flight has been delayed again, this time by 7 hours. Oh yay we’re back to having to arrive in Hanoi at 4am! So we get on Skype and try the travel insurance company, who initially remind us of just how bad off we really aren’t by pointing out that all non-medical emergencies will not be fielded today owing to Queensland having been submerged like Atlantis. Sheesh its hard to argue with that. So we attempt to get help from Jetstar Australia. We’ve heard that they speak English, but we have our street argot ready (Straight outta Blade Runner). The kindly folk at Jokestar Australia inform us that not only can they do nothing for us but that our midnight flight to Hanoi has been bumped once again and we will now be flying out of Saigon at 1:40am. We struggle, we resist, we prevaricate but that doesn’t achieve anything, largely due to the fact that nobody is sure what it means then finally we accept our fate and take the 1:40am black-eye (That’s the one after a red-eye flight). We lob into Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport at around 4am. The first thing I’m struck by is that it’s a freaking ghost town. Normally you have to elbow your way through a throng of touts trying to get you into their ‘Taxis’, (Den makes elaborate display of inverted commas with his fingers). There are two official taxis waiting outside and the other tourists have started in-fighting about whom is going to take those. So I pass up that malarkey and make my way up the road toward a less crowded part of the terminal. A likely looking Hanoi lad sidles up to me and starts his pitch: He’s got a taxi. He can take us into Hanoi for 300,000 dong. His taxi is better than other taxi’s in that whilst its doesn’t say ‘taxi’ anywhere on it, it is in fact an undercover taxi masquerading as a sports car…and he’s not kidding, it’s some sort of WRX knock-off and short of the neon blue under-chassis lights his car is pimping. Ok my eyes are bleeding right? I’m so tired I actually am asleep and all this happened in a dream last night whilst I yelped and twitched, puppy style, curled up on a Saigon street. So maybe I’m having a moment of weakness right? I nod wearily to the Hanoi lad and he leads us to the boot of his hottie and puts our backpacks in. He opens the back door and gestures that we should climb in. I peer into the darkened interior. There’s two dudes in there already and they aint smiling. Suddenly I wake up and I’m standing in Noi Bai airport at 4 in the morning with f-all people around and I remember the reams of official and anecdotal warnings about Hanoi airport scams and one of the most popular being the one where you get driven to a lonely spot in the city and then the price goes up and if you want to argue about it there’s a cabal of negotiators who have now appeared, out of nowhere, around the outside of the Taxi…and you know what, no offence to Eli, but if I had AB or AC with me I might’ve taken my chances --belligerent digger style, I mean f*#k it right? But I looked at my team and realised that us Vs three Hanoi chavs with possibly more lying in wait wasn’t our best move. So I spun on the bloke and told him what I thought of his ‘not-at-all dodgy’ undercover taxi and I demanded in English and then Vietnamese that he get our bags out of the boot because we weren’t riding with him. He freaks out a bit, starts coming on all tourist-bully with me, but I’m switched on now, channelling my very best impersonation of an “I don’t care mate” digger. “I don’t care mate… I don’t care what you say, you can find someone else…I don’t care mate” I drag our bags back toward the airport. He follows badgering and cursing in Vietnamese. He enlists other cronies and a little group of them get between Eli and I and start close-talking me. I show them my game face and thankfully they dissolve like so much pumped up suds. God bless front hey? An old bloke in Melbourne once said to me ‘I like you Den, you’ll be alright, you’ve got more front than a row of Woolies’. It’s an attitude and technique that have got me out of more than a few potentially sticky situations. The mob moved on to fresh arrivals and whilst they were distracted and distracting we grabbed a new taxi that arrived and skedaddled. When we got to our hotel in the Old Quarter we had to knock on the roller door to wake up the poor blighter whose turn it was to sleep in the foyer. There was no response initially so I peered through the glass and saw the man lying curled up on a couch. I tapped on the window and he seemed to open his eyes to narrow slits and nod, all without moving mind you, suddenly the roller door lurched to life and began to slowly open. We dragged ourselves up to the darkened reception desk and awaited his getting up to take our passports and check us in. He didn’t move. We chuckled quietly and began to look around to see if there was anyone in the dark corners whom we’d missed who might be going to help us. All I could think about was sleep at this point. After a while of standing around, slightly bewildered I told Eli to sidle behind the reception desk and grab a key off the wall (Well she’s smaller and tailor made for stealth ops!) She did so and we made our way up to an awesome two room hotel room that we knew from a previous visit, yes that’s right two rooms!) Sleep glorious sleep….oh except that I lay in bed for 20 minutes feeling guilty about possible scenarios in which the bad-denizens of Old Quarter Hanoi slithered into the now open hotel foyer and looted the place. It was too much for me so finally I got up, got dressed and dragged myself back downstairs with our passports to wake the guy up and remind him to shut the roller door that he had sleep-opened. Did I make that clear? Sleep-opened with his clicker! When I got downstairs everything was still dark and quiet and seemingly intact. The roller door was down. Sleep clicker.

Today I reflected on the effects of sleep deprivation and the tendency of our Vietnamese cousins to burn the candle at both ends. The average Vietnamese person works incredibly long hours. Up at 6am, working till midnight, you do the maths. When I went down stairs this morning to give them our passports and possibly, sheepishly, explain to them how we had come to self-serve our way into their hotel at 5am in the morning I found that they knew nothing, or rather just assumed that the night porter (Read exhausted sleeping man on the couch) had checked us in. They didn’t ask any questions at all so I didn’t tell them any lies. The whole nation is kind of like that and once you realise it you start to see them in a new light. The whole nation is a bit sleep deprived and the lack of sleep does curious things to your behaviour. Jovial, mercurial, erratic, prone to bouts of inspiration followed by scattered plummeting despair, (sounds like our author)…but jovial and mercurial and that’s something I really like about the Vietnamese, whilst we’re doling out generalities. They are a great people and this is a fascinating country to visit.

Descending from the stars...

I try to remember to savour the first few moments of anything good. Descending from the stars last night, through the haze over Ho Chi Minh City. Plane gently hovers in, twinkling lights wink through the gloom, surveying the darkened rooftops, catching occasional signs of life, a xe-om picking its way through some half deserted street, a truck unloading down a lane.
Anticipating my first definitive glimpse of HCMC’s intensity and then it comes as we crossed in front of a large building. Descending lower than the rooftops, surging down, opened up across a main arterial, the lights of a thousand motorbikes, street full to bursting, a pulsing heart… the blood of light. Curtain pulled back, I shield my eyes for a moment, glare adjustment then neon colour washes over my face-- slack-jawed, open-mouthed awe…

Post Cards from the Eternal Child

I know I don’t post here enough. To tell you the truth Ive thought about retiring this blog. For the last few years I’ve been simultaneously contributing to another blog called Fabulist Savannah but alas that too has seemingly waned of late. Mainly due to the originator and senior editor having some personal struggles that have lead to his being non-communicado for months on end.

The problem for the Den Done Did blog is finding the time and inspiration to write about blog-worthy occurrences in my life. What is blog-worthy? If this was a blog about recipes I suppose that would be an easy question…or perhaps if it were a blog about cats I could just fall back on the photos I've snapped of cats around the world (Now there’s an idea). Or if I’d thought of a great blog idea like Monkey Punch Dinosaur before Adam Ford did…I might’ve done that.

Often it’s a case that I don’t know how to frame something that's happened, or one naturally worries whether an anecdote or everyday tale will be interesting enough to anyone other than me...but perhaps that’s the real point for a blog like mine. It is supposed to be a slightly esoteric and random window into my life and thoughts…but only a window. The blog isn’t me so I guess I shouldn’t laden it with such importance and expectation all the time. Ive written things recently and have been advised not to post them to a “mere blog”(not my words)… I dunno, in case they get stolen or something. Good problem to have I suppose. But in the spirit of this ramble here is a slightly esoteric string of events that is in its way indicative of who I am and the sort of random day-to-dayness that I have been known to appreciate. Ok, Disclaimer over.



I was working on a rubbish removal job recently when I found a bundle of old postcards and photographs from the 1940’s. I couldn’t countenance seeing them go in the bin so I saved them for later investigation.
There was a stylish 1946 Christmas card sent from the owners of the Red Hart Inn in Worcester, England. It was still in good condition so one morning I got the idea to type a quick letter and post it to the current owners of The Red Hart Inn. I wrote “I found this card from 1946 while doing a garage clean-up in Melbourne. Alas I have no idea who the card was sent to. I just thought you might get some enjoyment out of seeing it. Maybe put it up in your bar….funny to think of it returning to its place of origin after 60-odd years”

Rubbish removal guys are always waxing the lyrical about their altruistic recycling activities. A friend of mine Amanda was about to take her kids camping to the Grampians. I said to her “I’ve got show-&-tell items for you to share with your kids” I gave her six photos of the Grampians in the 1940’s. To me that is a pure form of lost-object-found recycling.

I guess I’m trying to be the sort of random act of every-day fascination that I want to receive. That’s the way isn’t it? I often act on these sort of quirky impulses. I put a proverbial message in a bottle and toss it out to sea. I hope this invites the world to reply in kind.

The late gentleman whose postcards I rescued was named, funnily enough, Jim Melbourne. I have done a couple of brief Google searches and can’t find anything about him. Based on the old papers I saw I think he may have served as an aeronautical engineer in England during WWII. Extending that further I imagine that after the war ended he went travelling in the UK before returning to Melbourne. The majority of his postcards are from the UK in 1946. He wrote a lot of postcards that never got posted, including this classic:
“Dear Mum, Another couple of postcards that I haven’t sent previously. Love Jim”


Anyway let’s hope Jim would understand my love of sentimentalia or lost-object-found ephemera or whatever the frack it is that I’m doing here.

A Den Done Did first:

FREE GIVE AWAY!

I have 18 random 1940’s postcards. I am going to make a limited edition, first in best dressed offer

If you would like to be a part of the life of this blog, I will Post to you (That's snail mail kiddies) your very own, probably one-of-a-kind, 1946 post card. Just leave a comment or send me an email with your postal details and I’ll flick one your way! Lovely-Jubbly



Listening to: Foals - Red Pugie

Parallel Epoch 1988

The Things You Own...

“Sooner or later we all became what Tyler wanted us to be...” - Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

My heart has been heavy all day with the knowledge that the things that I have collected will not save me. The memorabilia, souvenirs, keepsakes, forget-me-nots, pet rocks, post cards, birthday cards, toy lions, toy T-Rex’s, old bottles, cricket games, books, pictures, CD’s, Band T-shirts, old letters and on and on…all this that I have carted around these many years will not alter the fact that one day I will, in all likelihood, die. I say ‘In all likelihood’ because I still cling to the possibility of a Kurzweilesque technology spike. A singularity event that might give me the option of uploading my consciousness into the digital heavens. Then I could flit around in a virtual reality environment like Second Life or maybe, even better, be downloaded into a new body. I guess that casts grave doubt on whether or not I believe in an afterlife doesn’t it?

Today I tackled the onerous task of unpacking and sorting through the boxes from our most recent house move. It is worse than packing in my opinion. I couldn’t find anywhere to put most things. Assorted random objects flowed out of the boxes like a river of shapes. I tried different drawers but the drawers quickly filled. I moved furniture around but each new move created five smaller moves. It wasn't so much the functional items like tools and stationery that were disturbing me, although I've definitely hoarded too much of that stuff, it was more the personalia: An old love letter, a movie ticket, a little rock I picked up whilst driving across the Nullarbor.

As each new article of personal memorabilia appeared I began to feel worse. I felt the old emotional conflicts rising: Where do you keep them? How do you store them? How do you honour the memories correctly? As the boxes emptied I felt like I was loading weights onto my shoulders. Finally I couldn’t take it any more, I had a long cathartic rant to Eli about how I was feeling strangled by my possessions and then I quit the process for the day.

Overnight I experienced a satori.
I have to let go. What has been upsetting me isn’t only about collecting and hoarding possessions it’s also about accepting that life is passing. It’s a bitter concept for me to digest. I am still coming to terms…think of me as a white belt novice earning his second belt on the long road to mastery.

"Latent form is the master of obvious form" - Heraclitus

My oldest friend died suddenly in August last year. His death has shocked me into acknowledging that our collections will outlive us. I can no longer place the same significance on carrying around collections of sentimental souvenirs. Trying to find cupboards to fill them with, feeling guilty anyway because it might not be the appropriate forum for a piece of genuine Denny memorabilia --then I’m swirling lost again because there's no Show-&-Tell ceremony at which to flag the significance of the items to the world…and even if there was what good would it do for more than a few minutes… maybe an hour?

Lasting change does not live in icons and statues. It might visit. It might cling residual for a few moments to the site of a great victory or linger like smoke around the edges of the podium as we hold aloft the trophy. But then we are all gone home. The game is finished and the time has past. Day's end and trophies gather dust in the night. What good is a memorial if the precious thing we are trying to honour in form doesn't live within us? ---the lights go on and I'm alone in an empty room. The room is stark white and filled with a brilliant light that doesn’t sear my eyes. You might think it’d be lonely. All that empty white space yawning out. But it isn’t. Everything that matters is here. Everything about matter…because It's me, I'm there. I'm the memorial… I am the article of faith.

In the end the things we own are but the worshiping of false icons. If I don’t come to the conception that it's all within me then I am choking, distracted --weighed down…belabouring the idea that If I have the best stamp collection in the world that I wont die. I will become the stamp collection.

I’m far from free of this paradigm. Well short of mastery. I just know that I have to try and let go. I cannot go on filling the attics of our future with stuff. I did a job last month in which I had to clear out the back shed of a deceased gentleman. Half a tonne of marble stone off-cuts that he had duly gathered hobby like from work-sites and hard rubbish piles over the years. I’m not saying that’s wrong. Because he built things with some of the stone and I hope that collecting and neatly arranging the pieces of marble gave him much pleasure. I was just struck by the fact that in the end it was his sons who were left to wonder...what to do with it all. The sense of guilt they felt as they watched us throw it in the back of a truck destined for landfill. So I asked myself: If it’s ok for it to go in the bin when I’m dead maybe some of it should be destined for the bin now?

The memories live in me. I am not my stamp collection or a box of cricket cards…I am no closer to my late Father for having carted around some of his clothes for the last 15 years. I drive past the old houses of our childhoods, the old haunts, the old parks -- We’re not there, it’s not there…It is not the place or the thing is it? It’s you and me. We are the articles of faith.


"And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - TS Eliot




~ Footynotes ~

[1] Ray Kurzweil
http://www.singularity.com/
Theory that one super computer builds a superior super computer which builds a superior super computer and on and on until technology advances exponentially in an unimaginable acceleration or spike. And that then Den can get a fully body transplant if he wants one...
[2] “Ending one minute at a time” – Tyler (Fight Club)
[3] Listening to: Roots - How I Got Up

My Cat Left Me

I meant to post this two years ago. Better late than never I guess.

In 2003 my cat Emery Henry Bird went missing. I tried hard to find him. I went to the lost cat & dog home, posted flyers around the neighborhood and searched high and low. To no avail.

Just prior to his disappearance I had shifted house. He had not taken it well. Things grew worse when my girlfriend at the time introduced a new kitten into the household. Emery freaked out. He started disappearing for a couple of days at a time. Not long after that he simply never came back.

So forward four years to 2007 and I'm not living in Melbourne anymore. But I'm over for a visit and my ex-girlfriend tells me how she thought she caught a glimpse of Emery late one night whilst walking home. She couldn't be certain but she was fairly sure it was him. It quite surprised us because we had both assumed he was long dead. So a short-while later I found myself down on Wellington street Clifton Hill near where she had made her sighting. I saw a cat sitting right near where she told me she'd seen him and as I drew closer I knew that it was him. He walked toward me then shied away and trotted over to the edge of the road. He regarded me with suspicion and what could only be described as awkwardness. It was as if he was saying "oh...its you. What are you doing here?"
I drew closer and crouched down before him. He let me pat him for a moment and then he moved back just out of my reach. I said his name "Emery...Emery?" Then I did our little cat whistle that nobody else does. My Dad used it with all our cats when I was a kid. Emery seemed perplexed, turned to leave and then rolled over in the gutter playfully as he might've done years ago. I got my mobile out and took a photo. He turned and trotted up the street. I called out to him but he ignored me. That's cats for you I guess. I followed up the street a little. He reacted coolly...like there was nothing else to say.
I said goodbye to him. Wished him well and continued on up Wellington street.

So there its is. My cat wasn't run over by a car or poisoned. My cat left me. Found himself a new home.

Listening To: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Boba Fett

And thus ended my drawing career in 1981. I think the Picture Of The Year star was an in-house award ;-)

Listening To: Foals - Spanish Sahara

Corey Haim

I really want to say something about the death of Corey Haim... but I cant think of anything clever to say so I'm just gonna write whatever little homage I can: I always liked him when I was a kid. Other friends of mine thought he was a dick but even knowing in the back of my mind that it was sort of true I remained loyal. I loved the idea that the two Coreys became buddys because they shared the same first name. I saw an interview Corey Haim did in the mid eighties, he referred to Corey Feldman as the "Feldog". The Lost Boys is one of my favorite films ever. I dont care that it was uncool to like him. Corey Haim reminded me of good times from my childhood. He like Feldman represented for me a sort of mythic-nostalgia --An 80's that I probably didnt even really experience...but its the way I like to remember it now.
I watched the dreadful "Two Coreys" reality-tv show a couple of years ago and came away convinced that Haim was in serious trouble with prescription meds. I made a Google news alert for him in my email account. For the last couple of years I'd been reading sporadic news reports about the latest B-grade film he was working on. B-grade films, but working. Hope springs eternal.

Anyway I've got nowhere to go with this. No punchline or neat ending. I just wanted to put his name on my blog and acknowledge that I liked him and that I am sorry that he has died...way too young.


Corey Haim Pictures


"Look at your reflection in the mirror. You're a creature of the night Michael, just like out of a comic book! You're a vampire Michael! My own brother, a goddamn, shit-sucking vampire. Oh You wait 'till mom finds out, buddy!"
- Sam Emerson (Haim) The Lost Boys

Memories of Max

This is the blog my Mum wrote for Max recently:

My first memory of Max goes back to Shenton Park.

I don't remember where, or how, Max and Denny first met, but one day he turned up in our backyard and was a welcome fixture in our Onslow Road home for all the years we lived there.

He was snowy haired and barely eight at the time. A right little "fireball".

Over the next ten years, Max all but moved into Denny's room. Sleeping Over endless nights. Playing cricket for hour after hour in the side street. Summer days spent swimming in the backyard pool. Summer evenings spent putting snags on the BBQ at Shenton Park Lake. Winter brought its own delights. Keeping the fireplace in Denny's bedroom going for days on end while they, and other boyhood friends, played Dungeons and Dragons well into the night.

The fireplace in Denny's bedroom must have had its own special magic because

one memorable winter they managed to feed into it our entire stock of wood in a roughly seven day period!

Max was so much a part of our family that my store of memories is massive.

However some memories are so sharply etched in my heart and mind they will be with me forever.

Max ordering a Hamburger, at the Jolly Friar on Onslow Road, is one such gem:-

"Hamburger please mister -

Hold the lettuce

Hold the tomato

Hold the onion

Hold the pickle"

Max's aversion to anything "green or salad like" stayed with him well into manhood.

But perhaps my most poignant memory of Max was six weeks before he died.

We had caught up for coffee in Subiaco.

We spent a lovely couple of hours together enjoying the reminiscence of times past. Talking about his life and job in Melbourne and just generally "Chewing the Fat".

I remarked later in a phone conversation with Denny, how well I thought Max looked and, even more importantly, how contented he seemed.

How could I possibly have known, that as I dropped Max off at his Mother's home, turned the car around and waved goodbye, that Max would, shortly, "exit stage left" from my life.

God Bless you Max. I pray that your soul has been freed for new adventures.

Sue Carr




There are more comments for Maxie on a previous blog entry from November 2009. Or you can click HERE to jaunt straight there.


For more photos of Max Flory or to contribute a photo please visit this flickr page

Shooting the shooters

Shooting the shooters
Originally uploaded by Diggers Abroad

Ok so this is a fairly crass thing to do in Phnom Penh and I'll take the blame for it. I'd always wanted to fire a machine gun and David was keen too. It would also be fair of me to mention that Eli didn't want to do it at all.

We paid our penitence However. As soon as we'd done shooting we went and visited the Killing Fields. A sobering experience and the perfect contra-distinction to the narcissistic pleasure of firing a gun.

Also quick note: Our stand in camera guy didn't put much stock in composition...you might say he was more of a 'point and shoot' sort of fellow ;-)

*Originally posted on my Flickr page



Listening To: Cambodia Rocks - Various Artists

SAVE LIVE MUSIC

PROTEST RALLY THIS TUESDAY FEBRUARY 23RD

We march in protest. Our small venues and community must be protected, empowered and respected.

Assemble at the State Library, cnr Swanston and Latrobe Sts.

ARRIVE EARLY - MARCH LEAVES AT 4PM

This is a peaceful protest. Families welcome and encouraged to join the march.

STRICTLY NO ALCOHOL. It’s illegal to drink in the street and important to show the broader community that WE ARE NOT HIGH RISK.

S.L.A.M.

is Save Live Australian Music, a non-politically aligned, independent entity made up of musicians and music-lovers.

In a bid to address street violence Liquor Licensing Victoria (LLV) has introduced sweeping changes with unintended consequences for the local music scene.

LLV should admit its mistake and make simple changes immediately, acknowledging that there is no link between live music and high risk. The Tote is gone, who’s next?

On 23 February, coinciding with the 34th anniversary of AC/DC’s famous ‘It’s A Long Way To The Top’ film clip shoot down Swanston Street, S.L.A.M. is protesting in support and celebration of Victoria’s music scene, where new liquor licensing laws threaten to pull the plug on live music.

Meet at 4pm outside the State Library to make your way along Swanston Street and up Bourke Street to Parliament House to hear guest speakers from 6 to 7pm.

The RocKwiz Orchestra with guest performers will lead the rally, repeating the three chords from ‘It’s A Long Way to the Top’ in the back of a flatbed truck as we follow – ALL 10,000 PLUS OF US – holding placards and instruments chanting down these ridiculous laws. Over the famous riff new lyrics will be created, such as ”So the Tote’s been shut down, send Sue MacLellan [LLV Director] on her way”.

Lack of support for this precious industry has gone on for too long! Celebrate the diversity of Victorian music. Be one of the thousands of musicians and music supporters who will make this a day to remember!

Music means many things to many people, but the most important is that it IS passion, creativity, happiness and life for many people. So please come and help support one of the best things that Australia has to offer: live & local music.

Invite everyone and if you can’t attend please sign the petition. If you are reading this you love music. Keep it alive by keeping it live.

- http://www.slamrally.org/

TOTE HOTEL CLOSURE. Contact List

If you are upset about the Tote Hotel closing then register your protest by contacting the following people:

Emailing is good but letter writing and phone calls are best...faxes too!

Please feel free to email me with any alterations or additions.

Richard Wynne MP

State Member For Richmond:

richard.wynne@parliament.vic.gov.au

Postal PO Box 1474 Collingwood 3066
Phone 03 9415 8901
Fax 03 9415 8918

~

Minister for the Arts:

* PLEASE NOTE : it may not be worth writing to Lynne Kosky since she announced her resignation today. A new Arts Minister will be announced soon.

lynne.kosky@parliament.vic.gov.au

Suite 603, level 1, 2 Main St. Point Cook Town Centre, Point Cook 3030

(08)9395 0221

FAX: 9395 3061

~

Victorian Minister for Consumer Affairs and the Minister for Gaming:

tony.robinson@parliament.vic.gov.au

Electorate Office Address

9 Blackburn Road, Blackburn, 3130

Ph: 9878 4113

Fax: 9878 9135

Ministerial Office Address

Level 5, 1 Macarthur Street

East Melbourne 3002

Ph: 8684 1400

Fax: 8684 1444

~

Director of Liquor Licensing:

sue.maclellan@justice.vic.gov.au

Phone (03) 9655 6600

Fax (03) 9655 6978

General inquiries Liquor Licensing:

liquor@justice.vic.gov.au

~

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal General Inquiries:

vcat@vcat.vic.gov.au

The Victorian State Premier John Brumby:

Email: john.brumby@parliament.vic.gov.au

Ministerial office –
Level 1, 1 Treasury Pl, Melbourne 3002
Tel: 9651 5000
Fax: 9651 5054

Electorate office –
145A Wheatsheaf Rd, Glenroy 3046
Tel: 9300 3851
Fax: 9300 3915

Your Voice Victoria "Contact The Premier":

http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/your-voice/contact-the-premier.html

---

The Victorian Deputy Premier &

Attorney General

Rob Hulls :

Email: rob.hulls@parliament.vic.gov. au.

Electorate Office Address:
473 Keilor Road, Niddrie VIC 3042
Ph: 9379 5879

Fax: 9379 4434

Ministerial Office Address:
Level 3, 1 Treasury Place
East Melbourne VIC 3002
Ph: 9651 1222
Fax: 9651 1188

---

Gallaga 1981 Kicks Darkness

Hit my PB (Personal Best kids!) on Gallaga at the Tru-Mould Factory tonight! I Was never much chop at the game when I was a kid. Rich Giliberto loaned a vintage cocktail table edition of the game to the Tru-Mould factory a couple of years ago. Tone tells me that it is a first generation 1981 edition.

For some reason the fire-button and joy stick are back the front so we play with our hands & wrists crossed over and overlapping.

Anyway this is my second retro computer game post. The previous one was from 2007 when I was taking on the Bentley Tavern staff at Bombjack and had also just hit a PB (and finally crushed my main rival's ambitions...teehee thanks Callum!)

Tonight I txtd my high score to Maxie's mobile too...of course his phone number is still in my phone and shall remain for the remainder of my life. I know he wouldve appreciated my 'knock' on Galaga tonight. We played many such games together when we were kids in Shenton Park...(Vale the Jolly Friars and the old Onslow road deli) Alas Max is not even the only dead person in my phone contacts list. My Dad is in there also.

All things must pass: Even the Tote Hotel as it happens, which I have just heard is closing its doors due to the ongoing pressure that Liquor Licensing Victoria has placed on it and the general lack of support from the Victorian state government -- the fucktards at Yarra city council and the various undead yuppie scum-zombies who have invaded this fair city and beguiled it with their tedious white bread desires and horrible mainstream sensibilities. Fuck you all. "When I am king you will be first against the wall" Or as my friend Robbie wrote on Facebook tonight "farewell another rock god on our road to banality"

I will do another post about the demise of the Tote but this ere' bit blogged off in that direction of its own independent free spirit so. Bop Prosody...so be it.

Remember when we were young and Brunswick Street wasn't only for the wealthy? Ahh those heady days of cultural diversity (Vale the Punters Club & the Evelyn indie band room)

But enough of this tangent, heartfelt joy kicks darkness though it maybe, I hit 325,750 on Gallaga tonight and got to stage 37 and saw a Challenging Stage that I'd never seen before and Tommy Rushford witnessed the whole glorious innings, my finest and according to him, one of his favourites.

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest"

- Hamlet - Horatio, scene ii

Den & Eli's

2009

World Tour

AKA

"Diggers Abroad"

~ Photographic Highlights ~

...An ongoing retrospective

Available for your viewing pleasure

at

FLICKR

Peace in 2010 Friends.

Listening to: Jenny Wilson "Like a fading rainbow"

BANKSY

BANKSY
Originally uploaded by paul le chien

Contemplating the jump...

Contemplating the jump...
Originally uploaded by Diggers Abroad

Dalat, Vietnam: My third free jump of the day and the one that gave me the most pause. When you jumped you had to clear some rocks and a secondary ledge before plummeting 11 metres into the waterfall pool below. It tapped into all my fears of heights and was eerily similar to a dream I had a couple of years ago. See my cliff jumping blog post from 2007.

Anyway its not quite the 60 to 80ft jump I failed to make in my dream with Tom Westman, but close to 40ft will do you right? Well, it'll do me for now...I was stoked. :-)

Sideline postscript: I just noticed while doing this post that Survivor Palau's

Tom Westman might be back for Survivor's 20th anniversary series Heroes Vs Villains All Stars

Acronymizable

Tone-A-Tronic's Electronic Muscle Stimulation TM is an advanced acronymizable technique used world wide for toning, reshaping, and firming thighs, buttocks, and for maintaining muscle definition. Tone-A-Tronic has been used for many years by professional athletes, physiotherapists, chiropractors, travelling tinkers and Bruce Lee. Home Ontological Muscle Orgonic Stimulation systems (HOMOSS) allow you to supplement your regular slump into depressive-body dismorphia, without putting stress on your joints, lower back or neck and shoulders. EMS machines are ideal for today's Nordic lifestyle. When time is limited and you can't get it up, you can hook up to your Tone-A-Tronic exerciser in the privacy of your home, classroom, super-market, office-toilet, while catching up on the dirty paper work, talking on the phone, watching TV or surfing porn. Tone-A-Tronic Electronic Muscle Stimulation systems are great for physically disabled people to prevent consumer atrophy. Many of these EMS units include a TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) to re-wire your versatile solution to living. The Tone-A-Tronic system works by sending minute electrical impulse(s) to the chosen muscle(s) and by depositing huge sticky wads of cash in a smashing little bank in Varosha, just south of the Cayman Islands. These impulses copy the message your brain (if you had one) would send to the muscle(s) to make them erect with ectoplasmic gear. Most units come with their own carrying minority hill tribe and larger models have briefcases with a Hemi-donk.

Get Yours Here

A Boys Will is the Winds Will

Toneatron and Carrot did a lot of work with stencils and paste-ups during an adventure on the West Coast in 2005. Mot of the work we did had been obliterated by the Thought Police within a matter of weeks. A couple of pieces such as the one above survive to this day. Kicking on to 5 years old now! ~ That's 36 years in Cat Years!
Dig on the way that this one has had a close encounter with someone with a pneumatic cleaning device. It seems they got half-way through erasure and had second thoughts....or maybe the Digger in them whispered ghostly... "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." - Longfellow

Max Flory Comments & Sympathy/Guestbook

G'day everyone,
For those of you who knew Max Flory and would like to leave a comment on my blog-page about him, this is the place to do it.


How it works is simple:
Select 'Comments' at the bottom of this blog-post leave your comment and details and I will add the comment(s) to this page.


Max Flory Comments & Sympathy book:


Your passing is a singularity in my world...Live in Perpetuity my old friend Florstar!!
- Denny

~*~

If we shadows have offended, think but this; and all is mended that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream. Gentles--do not reprehend if you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck if we have unearned luck. Now to scape the serpents tongue. We will make amends ere long else the Puck a liar call. So--goodnight unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends.
(Puck) - "A Midsummers Night Dream" William Shakespeare.
- M.Louis Darling

~*~

Max, when the world trod on me till i felt less than a maggot on a carcass, you recognized the metaphysician in me and quietly palmed into my hand my first book of philosophy.
You took the deadly serious lightly, our insignificance playfully. This life is no more than a flash of lightning in the night. The reflection of the moon in a puddle.
Journey on brother. See you on the other side.
- Sam Robb

~*~

This star of yours Max, may have been taken from the night sky, but even while vacant, the place that it held still guides this ship of mine.

Love,
Archie Brown

~*~

Hey Denny I'm really sorry to hear about Max. I remember him as a good guy and I'm absolutely amazed he is still not with us. Stay strong and remember you've got lots of support.
- Stewart Hay

~*~

Max was quick with a Simpsons quote, and i always enjoyed trying to find one he might not know. No matter how obscure, max always knew it. And his cat's breath smelt like catfood.

We'll miss ya mate, but your legacy will live on.
- Hugh Ford

~*~

Found this late but the loss of Flory is timeless. He was a gentle man. I always enjoyed talking with him. I had thought I would see him again some time. He's missed. He's missing. The world is missing out. I miss him.

- Adam Ford

~*~

A monkey, ready to be shot up into space, ready to sacrifice himself for Project Mayhem.
- Tyler Durden's words coming out of Simian Hoods mouth.

~*~

I regret that I didn't know Max all that well, but he did make a massive impression on me in high school for the time I was there. I remember him best for being a lovable goof but I know, in my heart & through reading other's comments, that there was so much more to him. I wish I knew you better. You will live on in our memories Max.
- Wanda