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capn_n_pyeAt the end of last year, we were ridiculously excited to be able to send the mini-Mike-from-Ghosts to the actor who plays him in the TV show. We had instantly packaged him carefully and excitedly dropped him in the mail in the first week of January…
…taunted Kiell Smith-Bynoe for his character’s inability to see the ghosts of Button House…
…and then sat back to watch Australia Post do its magic…
Little did we know that by ‘magic’ we meant ‘leave it sitting at the airport for the best part of the month’, bah! I suppose they’ll blame COVID, but now is not the time for delayed gratification! What’s more, our target went and got all busy with lots of work so when it finally did arrive, it took him ages to go visit his agent and pick it up. Outrageous! Still, it’s not like we had anything better to do than wait, and then finally one day:
Lil Mike finally made it to his new home, and he even had a new brother! The other one is his character from Stath Lets Flats and is clearly nowhere near as cute, but it’s nice he has some company.
Meantime, as January progressed, D’admiral grabbed some snorkelling gear and went off to see if he could find the big wobbegong shark that Andru saw. He was peering under a ledge when something very big came up from behind him - it was one of a pod of five dolphins! They checked him out at close quarters (half a metre away) and he recognised one as the mother with the multi-nicked dorsal fin that brought her calf to show off some years ago. Apparently, there were some people on the beach who watched them approach and were wondering what his reaction would be – they were vaguely disappointed that he didn’t frantically panic!
While not getting inspected by sea mammals or waiting for celebrities to gratify our need for attention, there was always work to keep us busy. Stinky kept noticing interesting signs on her walks to work, such as this graffiti demanding that we ‘UNMASK OUR KIDS’.
The kids in question didn’t seem to find it all that difficult to wear a piece of material over their faces, and the polite invitation for the original artist to FRICK OFF is much more polite than we would have been.
The church down the road (St Paul's, which once displayed a sign ‘Proudly serving seamen for over 150 years’) was ringing its bells one day. The next day there was a crudely written note on the door:
FUCK OFF WITH YOUR BELLS
SEE YOU IN HELL
- SATAN
Clearly not the same author as the Chalk Bandit, but it gets the point across. Then on her way home, Stinky’s eye was caught by a suspicious movement in this other church.
This was an excellent opportunity to test out the zoom on her new phone…
Hmmm, not close enough, let’s try again!
Bonjour! Cheeky pigeon, peeking out at her like the moon through the crack in the bathroom window.
Return to work came with the directive for students and staff to do a rapid antigen test (RAT) twice a week so that when the spicy cough appears we could at least know not to share it. Homeroom teachers were tasked with handing them out, and Pye decided it would be hecking hilarious if students received theirs from our old friend Filth the rat.
“Welcome to Year 12, I’m your homeroom teacher, now intereact with this puppet to receive your box of medical tests!” Sure, some of the kids were a bit salty when the RAT ratted them out, but at least they had a face to put to the enemy. Filth had a great time and by the end of term got very good at collecting RATs.
Pye was astonished that Year 12 Retreat (a three-day camp, but with more God and navel gazing than usual) went ahead near Dromana and didn’t turn out to be a massive super-spreader event. She also didn't see it coming that she’d get to go for a ride in an ambulance when a kid dislocated her knee.
If you rock up in an ambulance the waiting time is cut way back, and our timing was so good that by the time they let the kid go, the patient and her patient teacher only waited about three minutes before the mum showed up at Frankston Hospital (having driven around from Ocean Grove). It’s a good thing that we have spent so much time shopping in Franga and exploring Mornington Peninsula wineries, otherwise Pye would have found getting herself back to Safety Beach a lot more stressful. As it was, the taxi driver had no idea where he was going (although he did have wide-ranging and terribly wrong opinions on governments and also the future of energy ha ha ha oh great).
Going on Retreat also seems to trigger the arrival of things we’ve been waiting for a long time – for example, a few years ago, Pye’s new car arrived while she was living the God Life. This time it was even better – our building permit for the very long-awaited extension finally came through! Whoo hooo! Pretty soon this view out the back will be different… and not just because these balloons that hatched all over the place won’t always be there.
Meanwhile, it came to our attention that people on the interwebs have been having fun photoshopping animals without necks. Google it, it’s great!
Of course, Stinky had to join in with a couple made especially for the Powder Monkey and Cabin Girl:
Princess Jasmine just looks like she’s being coy, but the camel is upsetting! A better-looking animal is definitely this button-hoarding dragon that Stinky embroidered using a kit she got for Christmas:
Term One includes a parade of birthdays that we were able to celebrate in person. We were happily out and about celebrating the birth of Belrog when some certain rascals brought Viber’s new camera filters to our attention in the worst possible way:
The Bald Douche Bag filter was a favourite - Chuckles looks uncannily like her brother and Stinky looks like a sex-offender – whereas Belrog just reached the age where you turn into an alien.
Chuckles’ birthday was just around the corner, but first there was something we’ve been waiting for, for more than just one year…
TWO’S DAY! It was finally here!! Stinky immediately changed the bell music at her school, and also stitched together ‘Ruby Tuesday’ and ‘Groovy Tuesday’ and Pye bullied the overworked IT guys into making it the bell music for the day too (even though not many people noticed, booo). Everyone in our classes had to stop what they were doing so we could appreciate the time at 2:22, and the temperature came so close to being 22 degrees during the day, and was very cooperative in the evening!
The class of ‘22 was very prepared for the event, as were the students in one of Stinky’s Year 7 classes. And so what if the principal was trying to wrap up her class when Stinky galloped in shouting “IT’S TWOSDAY GET IN FRONT OF THE TV!!”?
2:22 was pretty good, but there was also 22:22 to enjoy in the privacy of one’s own home later:
Whoooo, party time! Now to set a reminder for Thursday 3 March 2033 – or shall we call it… Thirdsday?!
Chuckles’ birthday was arguably more exciting, and we were looking forward to spending the weekend celebrating.
On Friday, at the end the lesson one of Pye’s Year 11s said, “Have fun enjoying your mum’s 70th birthday!” Pye said, “Thank you! Wait, when did I tell you that…?” and he said, “YOU DIDN’T!” and slipped out the door giggling while Pye shouted, “HOW DO YOU KNOW??” at thin air. Turns out that rascally Stinky had found out one of her students was this kid’s friend and they had plotted to send a message that would confuzle poor Pye’s brain. Well played, weirdos!
Anyway, the Festival of Chuckles Jubilee kicked off with balloons, champagne, and petit fours…
… continued the next day with walking to Balnarring for a slap-up Japanese lunch…
… and went even further the following day with more family coming for lunch!
Imagine being 70 and still needing your mum to help you cut the cake lol
A couple of weeks later we had our own ongoing celebrations for our (palindromic) birthday. Stage one was hanging out in Werribee’s tourist precinct with a winery lunch followed by infesting a stately home.
Moose had been very cross with us for not taking him with us to Barwon Park Mansion, so we did our best to make it up to him this time. He really liked the kitchen (up to a point) …
… and he definitely enjoyed displaying dominance over bits of ungulates who are even more stuffed than him.
He was less thrilled about creepy priests lurking around corners (look right down the end of the corridor)…
The mansion was used as a seminary, and once you have a Jesuit infestation we suppose it must be terribly difficult to get rid of all of them.
Our birthday continued with D’admiral and Chuckles coming to visit us in Gtown. The demolition of the garage was imminent, so they were also co-opted into helping with the clear out and pack up. This was very educational, especially when it came to the TV from the early 80s that we intend to do something crafty with one day. D’admiral helped remove the tube…
…while also cautioning against dropping it. Who knew that old TV tubes can explode when the shell is breached?? Well, D’admiral, obviously. It was terribly tempting to go and yeet it off the railway bridge after dark, but fortunately for public safety we were too lazy to follow through (we had dinner plans, don’t judge us).
We had already made a big start on clearing and packing the shed (only two dead rats and no live ones, which was better than we expected) …
… so then there was plenty of time for cake!
One each, yay!! Chuckles is a baking machine!
We couldn’t eat all of it, though, we needed room for another Japanese meal (not as good as for Chuckles’ birthday, but it is all you can eat, so it makes up for it in quantity) and a moonlit stroll…
The next day we enjoyed the outdoor furniture before it went into storage (nothing like eating next to a bin!) with the cheese course being delivered by Splatters.
Well, if you’re going to open a cheese train, of course we’re going to go there repeatedly!!
A week later was the final event in our birthday festival, which was a historic walking tour of Geelong, provided by the lovely Norma and Donna. Mr History was very knowledgeable and interesting, although he wasn’t able to tell us what a cone has to do to be allowed to join a band.
It was a delightful change to have things to look forward to, especially when they don’t end up being cancelled. The Beer Festival had been rescheduled from January, and colour us astonished when it actually went ahead.
Hanging out in Johnston Park with Merrin and Damo, drinking beer and enjoying live music? Oh okay, if we must.
Back in the day, 17-year-old Pye had been very disappointed not to be able to go to and see The Badloves at a pub gig, so was very much looking forward to seeing them play. Turns out they’re now just self-indulgent old dudes who avoided playing most of their well-known tunes, bah! Pye’s colleague Izzy was much better.
We enjoyed the day time session which ended at 4pm, so we obviously had to hang around in town a bit longer to have dinner. We can’t remember the last time we were out and about in Gtown after dark, but it’s nice to see some illuminations – and even if it won’t exactly fix the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s nice that they’re trying.
Staying at home started to get pretty exciting too. They needed to dig up the backyard to get the sewer connection sorted, and in order to get the digger in, the shed needed to go. Thanks to D’admiral and Chuckles (and some removalists), we’d emptied it out and it was ready to go. The sky put on some interesting light as we prepared to bid it farewell:
The builders swarmed in, and before we knew it, it wasn’t just the garage that was gone, but also the garden shed, the shadecloth’d areas and Stinky’s giant cactus babies. Wow!!
We had carefully cleared the side of the yard where the new garage is going to go, gathering all the pot plants on the opposite side of the yard. This turned out to be very naïve, as we soon learned the builders would need a lot of space to store things like the frames that were being delivered ASAP. So, then we had to cut sick on relocating everything we could to hang out in the front yard instead – a process that was closely supervised by our magpie landlords.
At least the magpies can flap off and leave if they feel like it – with us, the burned out flat across the back finally getting fixed and the next house over doing their own epic renovations, our neighbours to the east now have three contiguous building sites! Ha ha ha, whoops!
Now that the path was clear, the plumbing crew showed up with the biggest digger we’ve seen for a while (turns out the plumbing is almost 3 meters deeps, which seems a bit unnecessary). We were both heading out for work when they arrived and the lad in charge said, “Oh hi, it’s Bu H!!” Although he looked a bit familiar, it took some memory wracking and some deep searching, before eventually Pye figured out he was from her Year 11 VCAL class back in 2012!
They did the digging on a Thursday, and come Sunday, the digger was still there – how long do you have to wait before you can claim it as your own? We may not know the answer to that, but we do know that if you’re going to leave it there when we’ve been to a beer festival, we are 100% going to play on it.
So now the view from the back door is rather different from back in 2009…
… but was about to get even more so! All of those old brick pavers needed to bit brought up and carefully stacked out of the builders’ way. Before you could say, “Oh look, it’s the school holidays after the longest Term 1 that ever was!”, D’admiral and Chuckles were back and ready to work (notwithstanding a required break to watch the Grand Prix).
Somehow the gods decided that April needed to provide a 28-degree day for just such a task, and it was a real joy to discover how much sweat, dust and dirt you can accumulate in a short time…
With an unstoppable workforce, the paving got smaller and smaller…
… and by day two (when Chuckles was up and out there before 8am!) it was practically done!
After moving the rubbish pile provided after the digger did its job, we were finally done! Some 2000 bricks, neatly stacked, waiting for the time when they can be re-laid by a professional.
Now what do you give someone to say thank you for such assistance? Oh yeah!
Our timing was amazing, for the very next morning, the builder delivered a whole lot more stuff ready for when the actual building starts.
Of course the builder lads then started tossing bricks to each other to weigh down the waterproofing, (“HEY, we just finished putting all those there!!”), but at least we didn’t have to find a way to finish the job with the new stack of stuff in the way!
Easter was tucked away in there with a nice chance to catch up with relatives who have been stuck in the UK and Italy for years, unable to visit. The children had all swelled and multiplied (not unlike mogwais and gremlins) but (somehow) they were all made to stand still long enough to prove that this many people were all in the same place at the same time. Whoo!
Cousin Hannah and her partner John had been waiting patiently for the time they were allowed to have lots of people in the same place too, and it finally happened - they got hitched! (We were asked to minimise phone use, so we don’t have any classy photos to share.)
Her friend, Pirate-Jesus paid appropriate homage to Grandmama on her throne as they tied the knot in John’s gloriously hipster Prahran studio…
… and there were lots of sweet vintage touches, like a polaroid wall…
… and it was all really lovely and retro (and awesomely catered) and well worth the wait!
And according to The History of Prahran Vol 2 p150, the studio used to make pasta!
"Another grain-processing industry in Prahran was macaroni making. T. C. Reynolds founded Rinoldi Products in 1894, when he began making macaroni pasta in a factory off Williams Road. Later, the business transferred to premises on Aberdeen Road in Prahran. In 1955 it employed sixty staff and was the largest macaroni manufacturer in Australia."
It was definitely a tidier and classy affair that what was going on back at the Spinster Pad, because when Easter stopped getting in the way, the boys were sent around to start pulling the back of the house down. So of course it spent the entire day raining and they went home, lest they sink into the mud and get lost forever.
But plumbers aren’t afraid to work in the wet (and…you know…inside). They gave us more bench space!
That’s looking on the bright side, of course. Oh, and they also confiscated our toilet!
This would leave most people with just one toilet, but people like that would be classified as cowards who don’t see the potential of the newly-exposed gully trap ah ha ha ha ha.
That’s not true, of course, but when our neighbour was concerned that we were down to no toilet at all, Stinky did tell him that our plan was just to use the public toilet down the road at Woolies, and if he were ever to spot us walking down there with a newspaper under our arm it meant we were going to put in some work. *cough*
But anyway, having the guts stripped out really changed the acoustics of the space out the back, and we certainly know what to do with echoes!
Then we got up the next morning to find that someone came and stole the back deck! Scoundrels!
Just in case they moved inside while we weren’t around, Pye left a note in the back loo, saying what we would like saved. She didn’t look at the back when she wrote it, but luckily Stinky was on hand to suggest that perhaps her choice of paper needed reconsidering.
Anyway, the lads were good and only broke half of the things we were looking to save. At least this window came out in one piece…
…and we finally some got some ventilation into the back dunny!
We are a bit concerned that Nanna is getting more aggressive and that there may be some other ghosts who want out of the walls.
We hope that the demo crew had a good chuckle at how we hacked the space next to the trough up to fit the washing machine in, although nobody seemed to notice that the slidey-door was stuck in the wall space, they just bashed it out and freed it.
Still, it was a bit of a disgrace that they didn’t lock up when they left, security first, please.
I mean anyone could just wander in and keep playing with the toilet! Poor thing, it was never meant to be the outdoor type!
Stinky had planned to sit on the back steps and do her toenails, but the lads were ahead of schedule. But who would she be if she let a little thing like demolition get in the way of her plans?!
And here’s where we ended up by the time they knocked off for the ANZAC Day long weekend/end of the holidays. No going back now!
Unless you mean “going back to work” that is! Ah ha ha ha ha. Ha. Ha. Booooo.
…taunted Kiell Smith-Bynoe for his character’s inability to see the ghosts of Button House…
…and then sat back to watch Australia Post do its magic…
Little did we know that by ‘magic’ we meant ‘leave it sitting at the airport for the best part of the month’, bah! I suppose they’ll blame COVID, but now is not the time for delayed gratification! What’s more, our target went and got all busy with lots of work so when it finally did arrive, it took him ages to go visit his agent and pick it up. Outrageous! Still, it’s not like we had anything better to do than wait, and then finally one day:
Lil Mike finally made it to his new home, and he even had a new brother! The other one is his character from Stath Lets Flats and is clearly nowhere near as cute, but it’s nice he has some company.
Meantime, as January progressed, D’admiral grabbed some snorkelling gear and went off to see if he could find the big wobbegong shark that Andru saw. He was peering under a ledge when something very big came up from behind him - it was one of a pod of five dolphins! They checked him out at close quarters (half a metre away) and he recognised one as the mother with the multi-nicked dorsal fin that brought her calf to show off some years ago. Apparently, there were some people on the beach who watched them approach and were wondering what his reaction would be – they were vaguely disappointed that he didn’t frantically panic!
While not getting inspected by sea mammals or waiting for celebrities to gratify our need for attention, there was always work to keep us busy. Stinky kept noticing interesting signs on her walks to work, such as this graffiti demanding that we ‘UNMASK OUR KIDS’.
The kids in question didn’t seem to find it all that difficult to wear a piece of material over their faces, and the polite invitation for the original artist to FRICK OFF is much more polite than we would have been.
The church down the road (St Paul's, which once displayed a sign ‘Proudly serving seamen for over 150 years’) was ringing its bells one day. The next day there was a crudely written note on the door:
FUCK OFF WITH YOUR BELLS
SEE YOU IN HELL
- SATAN
Clearly not the same author as the Chalk Bandit, but it gets the point across. Then on her way home, Stinky’s eye was caught by a suspicious movement in this other church.
This was an excellent opportunity to test out the zoom on her new phone…
Hmmm, not close enough, let’s try again!
Bonjour! Cheeky pigeon, peeking out at her like the moon through the crack in the bathroom window.
Return to work came with the directive for students and staff to do a rapid antigen test (RAT) twice a week so that when the spicy cough appears we could at least know not to share it. Homeroom teachers were tasked with handing them out, and Pye decided it would be hecking hilarious if students received theirs from our old friend Filth the rat.
“Welcome to Year 12, I’m your homeroom teacher, now intereact with this puppet to receive your box of medical tests!” Sure, some of the kids were a bit salty when the RAT ratted them out, but at least they had a face to put to the enemy. Filth had a great time and by the end of term got very good at collecting RATs.
Pye was astonished that Year 12 Retreat (a three-day camp, but with more God and navel gazing than usual) went ahead near Dromana and didn’t turn out to be a massive super-spreader event. She also didn't see it coming that she’d get to go for a ride in an ambulance when a kid dislocated her knee.
If you rock up in an ambulance the waiting time is cut way back, and our timing was so good that by the time they let the kid go, the patient and her patient teacher only waited about three minutes before the mum showed up at Frankston Hospital (having driven around from Ocean Grove). It’s a good thing that we have spent so much time shopping in Franga and exploring Mornington Peninsula wineries, otherwise Pye would have found getting herself back to Safety Beach a lot more stressful. As it was, the taxi driver had no idea where he was going (although he did have wide-ranging and terribly wrong opinions on governments and also the future of energy ha ha ha oh great).
Going on Retreat also seems to trigger the arrival of things we’ve been waiting for a long time – for example, a few years ago, Pye’s new car arrived while she was living the God Life. This time it was even better – our building permit for the very long-awaited extension finally came through! Whoo hooo! Pretty soon this view out the back will be different… and not just because these balloons that hatched all over the place won’t always be there.
Meanwhile, it came to our attention that people on the interwebs have been having fun photoshopping animals without necks. Google it, it’s great!
Of course, Stinky had to join in with a couple made especially for the Powder Monkey and Cabin Girl:
Princess Jasmine just looks like she’s being coy, but the camel is upsetting! A better-looking animal is definitely this button-hoarding dragon that Stinky embroidered using a kit she got for Christmas:
Term One includes a parade of birthdays that we were able to celebrate in person. We were happily out and about celebrating the birth of Belrog when some certain rascals brought Viber’s new camera filters to our attention in the worst possible way:
The Bald Douche Bag filter was a favourite - Chuckles looks uncannily like her brother and Stinky looks like a sex-offender – whereas Belrog just reached the age where you turn into an alien.
Chuckles’ birthday was just around the corner, but first there was something we’ve been waiting for, for more than just one year…
TWO’S DAY! It was finally here!! Stinky immediately changed the bell music at her school, and also stitched together ‘Ruby Tuesday’ and ‘Groovy Tuesday’ and Pye bullied the overworked IT guys into making it the bell music for the day too (even though not many people noticed, booo). Everyone in our classes had to stop what they were doing so we could appreciate the time at 2:22, and the temperature came so close to being 22 degrees during the day, and was very cooperative in the evening!
The class of ‘22 was very prepared for the event, as were the students in one of Stinky’s Year 7 classes. And so what if the principal was trying to wrap up her class when Stinky galloped in shouting “IT’S TWOSDAY GET IN FRONT OF THE TV!!”?
2:22 was pretty good, but there was also 22:22 to enjoy in the privacy of one’s own home later:
Whoooo, party time! Now to set a reminder for Thursday 3 March 2033 – or shall we call it… Thirdsday?!
Chuckles’ birthday was arguably more exciting, and we were looking forward to spending the weekend celebrating.
On Friday, at the end the lesson one of Pye’s Year 11s said, “Have fun enjoying your mum’s 70th birthday!” Pye said, “Thank you! Wait, when did I tell you that…?” and he said, “YOU DIDN’T!” and slipped out the door giggling while Pye shouted, “HOW DO YOU KNOW??” at thin air. Turns out that rascally Stinky had found out one of her students was this kid’s friend and they had plotted to send a message that would confuzle poor Pye’s brain. Well played, weirdos!
Anyway, the Festival of Chuckles Jubilee kicked off with balloons, champagne, and petit fours…
… continued the next day with walking to Balnarring for a slap-up Japanese lunch…
… and went even further the following day with more family coming for lunch!
Imagine being 70 and still needing your mum to help you cut the cake lol
A couple of weeks later we had our own ongoing celebrations for our (palindromic) birthday. Stage one was hanging out in Werribee’s tourist precinct with a winery lunch followed by infesting a stately home.
Moose had been very cross with us for not taking him with us to Barwon Park Mansion, so we did our best to make it up to him this time. He really liked the kitchen (up to a point) …
… and he definitely enjoyed displaying dominance over bits of ungulates who are even more stuffed than him.
He was less thrilled about creepy priests lurking around corners (look right down the end of the corridor)…
The mansion was used as a seminary, and once you have a Jesuit infestation we suppose it must be terribly difficult to get rid of all of them.
Our birthday continued with D’admiral and Chuckles coming to visit us in Gtown. The demolition of the garage was imminent, so they were also co-opted into helping with the clear out and pack up. This was very educational, especially when it came to the TV from the early 80s that we intend to do something crafty with one day. D’admiral helped remove the tube…
…while also cautioning against dropping it. Who knew that old TV tubes can explode when the shell is breached?? Well, D’admiral, obviously. It was terribly tempting to go and yeet it off the railway bridge after dark, but fortunately for public safety we were too lazy to follow through (we had dinner plans, don’t judge us).
We had already made a big start on clearing and packing the shed (only two dead rats and no live ones, which was better than we expected) …
… so then there was plenty of time for cake!
One each, yay!! Chuckles is a baking machine!
We couldn’t eat all of it, though, we needed room for another Japanese meal (not as good as for Chuckles’ birthday, but it is all you can eat, so it makes up for it in quantity) and a moonlit stroll…
The next day we enjoyed the outdoor furniture before it went into storage (nothing like eating next to a bin!) with the cheese course being delivered by Splatters.
Well, if you’re going to open a cheese train, of course we’re going to go there repeatedly!!
A week later was the final event in our birthday festival, which was a historic walking tour of Geelong, provided by the lovely Norma and Donna. Mr History was very knowledgeable and interesting, although he wasn’t able to tell us what a cone has to do to be allowed to join a band.
It was a delightful change to have things to look forward to, especially when they don’t end up being cancelled. The Beer Festival had been rescheduled from January, and colour us astonished when it actually went ahead.
Hanging out in Johnston Park with Merrin and Damo, drinking beer and enjoying live music? Oh okay, if we must.
Back in the day, 17-year-old Pye had been very disappointed not to be able to go to and see The Badloves at a pub gig, so was very much looking forward to seeing them play. Turns out they’re now just self-indulgent old dudes who avoided playing most of their well-known tunes, bah! Pye’s colleague Izzy was much better.
We enjoyed the day time session which ended at 4pm, so we obviously had to hang around in town a bit longer to have dinner. We can’t remember the last time we were out and about in Gtown after dark, but it’s nice to see some illuminations – and even if it won’t exactly fix the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s nice that they’re trying.
Staying at home started to get pretty exciting too. They needed to dig up the backyard to get the sewer connection sorted, and in order to get the digger in, the shed needed to go. Thanks to D’admiral and Chuckles (and some removalists), we’d emptied it out and it was ready to go. The sky put on some interesting light as we prepared to bid it farewell:
The builders swarmed in, and before we knew it, it wasn’t just the garage that was gone, but also the garden shed, the shadecloth’d areas and Stinky’s giant cactus babies. Wow!!
We had carefully cleared the side of the yard where the new garage is going to go, gathering all the pot plants on the opposite side of the yard. This turned out to be very naïve, as we soon learned the builders would need a lot of space to store things like the frames that were being delivered ASAP. So, then we had to cut sick on relocating everything we could to hang out in the front yard instead – a process that was closely supervised by our magpie landlords.
At least the magpies can flap off and leave if they feel like it – with us, the burned out flat across the back finally getting fixed and the next house over doing their own epic renovations, our neighbours to the east now have three contiguous building sites! Ha ha ha, whoops!
Now that the path was clear, the plumbing crew showed up with the biggest digger we’ve seen for a while (turns out the plumbing is almost 3 meters deeps, which seems a bit unnecessary). We were both heading out for work when they arrived and the lad in charge said, “Oh hi, it’s Bu H!!” Although he looked a bit familiar, it took some memory wracking and some deep searching, before eventually Pye figured out he was from her Year 11 VCAL class back in 2012!
They did the digging on a Thursday, and come Sunday, the digger was still there – how long do you have to wait before you can claim it as your own? We may not know the answer to that, but we do know that if you’re going to leave it there when we’ve been to a beer festival, we are 100% going to play on it.
So now the view from the back door is rather different from back in 2009…
… but was about to get even more so! All of those old brick pavers needed to bit brought up and carefully stacked out of the builders’ way. Before you could say, “Oh look, it’s the school holidays after the longest Term 1 that ever was!”, D’admiral and Chuckles were back and ready to work (notwithstanding a required break to watch the Grand Prix).
Somehow the gods decided that April needed to provide a 28-degree day for just such a task, and it was a real joy to discover how much sweat, dust and dirt you can accumulate in a short time…
With an unstoppable workforce, the paving got smaller and smaller…
… and by day two (when Chuckles was up and out there before 8am!) it was practically done!
After moving the rubbish pile provided after the digger did its job, we were finally done! Some 2000 bricks, neatly stacked, waiting for the time when they can be re-laid by a professional.
Now what do you give someone to say thank you for such assistance? Oh yeah!
Our timing was amazing, for the very next morning, the builder delivered a whole lot more stuff ready for when the actual building starts.
Of course the builder lads then started tossing bricks to each other to weigh down the waterproofing, (“HEY, we just finished putting all those there!!”), but at least we didn’t have to find a way to finish the job with the new stack of stuff in the way!
Easter was tucked away in there with a nice chance to catch up with relatives who have been stuck in the UK and Italy for years, unable to visit. The children had all swelled and multiplied (not unlike mogwais and gremlins) but (somehow) they were all made to stand still long enough to prove that this many people were all in the same place at the same time. Whoo!
Cousin Hannah and her partner John had been waiting patiently for the time they were allowed to have lots of people in the same place too, and it finally happened - they got hitched! (We were asked to minimise phone use, so we don’t have any classy photos to share.)
Her friend, Pirate-Jesus paid appropriate homage to Grandmama on her throne as they tied the knot in John’s gloriously hipster Prahran studio…
… and there were lots of sweet vintage touches, like a polaroid wall…
… and it was all really lovely and retro (and awesomely catered) and well worth the wait!
And according to The History of Prahran Vol 2 p150, the studio used to make pasta!
"Another grain-processing industry in Prahran was macaroni making. T. C. Reynolds founded Rinoldi Products in 1894, when he began making macaroni pasta in a factory off Williams Road. Later, the business transferred to premises on Aberdeen Road in Prahran. In 1955 it employed sixty staff and was the largest macaroni manufacturer in Australia."
It was definitely a tidier and classy affair that what was going on back at the Spinster Pad, because when Easter stopped getting in the way, the boys were sent around to start pulling the back of the house down. So of course it spent the entire day raining and they went home, lest they sink into the mud and get lost forever.
But plumbers aren’t afraid to work in the wet (and…you know…inside). They gave us more bench space!
That’s looking on the bright side, of course. Oh, and they also confiscated our toilet!
This would leave most people with just one toilet, but people like that would be classified as cowards who don’t see the potential of the newly-exposed gully trap ah ha ha ha ha.
That’s not true, of course, but when our neighbour was concerned that we were down to no toilet at all, Stinky did tell him that our plan was just to use the public toilet down the road at Woolies, and if he were ever to spot us walking down there with a newspaper under our arm it meant we were going to put in some work. *cough*
But anyway, having the guts stripped out really changed the acoustics of the space out the back, and we certainly know what to do with echoes!
Then we got up the next morning to find that someone came and stole the back deck! Scoundrels!
Just in case they moved inside while we weren’t around, Pye left a note in the back loo, saying what we would like saved. She didn’t look at the back when she wrote it, but luckily Stinky was on hand to suggest that perhaps her choice of paper needed reconsidering.
Anyway, the lads were good and only broke half of the things we were looking to save. At least this window came out in one piece…
…and we finally some got some ventilation into the back dunny!
We are a bit concerned that Nanna is getting more aggressive and that there may be some other ghosts who want out of the walls.
We hope that the demo crew had a good chuckle at how we hacked the space next to the trough up to fit the washing machine in, although nobody seemed to notice that the slidey-door was stuck in the wall space, they just bashed it out and freed it.
Still, it was a bit of a disgrace that they didn’t lock up when they left, security first, please.
I mean anyone could just wander in and keep playing with the toilet! Poor thing, it was never meant to be the outdoor type!
Stinky had planned to sit on the back steps and do her toenails, but the lads were ahead of schedule. But who would she be if she let a little thing like demolition get in the way of her plans?!
And here’s where we ended up by the time they knocked off for the ANZAC Day long weekend/end of the holidays. No going back now!
Unless you mean “going back to work” that is! Ah ha ha ha ha. Ha. Ha. Booooo.
