Party Down
Apr. 7th, 2025 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeSchool returned as it always seems to do no matter how much we dislike the habit, but at least Term One gives us a fresh batch of Year 7 names to laugh at.
Pye wins hands down this year with not one, but TWO Elvises (Elvi? Elvode? Elviseseses?). As if that’s not amazing enough, their family names were also exquisite. When you look them up it goes last name first, so we get…. Black Elvis (a tribute act?!). The other one is Elvis Brain, which is like when you shift into Elvis mode (ENGAGE ELVIS BRAIN… SET HIPS TO GYRATE… WOAH MAMMA, FETCH ME YOUR UNHEALTHIEST SNACKS….UH HUN HUH).
Under a particularly pleasing sky, the party term was thence underway.
A fun fact for people who work in co-ed schools is that these days every second boy is named Harry. One such Harry – a lil Ginger Meggs type – was listening carefully in class as Pye explained the fake-money reward system of Bupiah. She’d got to the bit about how you can cash in your Bupiah for prizes, but if you’ve been a pill in class, you have to wait for a day where you haven’t been painful before she’ll sell to you. Young Harry immediately clutched his head and shouted, “BUT I’M ALWAYS A PILL!!” Points for self-awareness, I guess, but it’s going to be a long year.
Meanwhile, Byron had heard that we’d got half a weather station each for our imminent birthday and was genuinely excited to help put it up. We were very grateful, as we lack the height and strength to stand on a ladder, hold a top-heavy antenna pole with one hand and drill in the other. Here we see Pye helping the best she could – the plan was to cushion his fall if he came off the ladder!
Not pictured is the bit where we took him out the back through the laundry, quite forgetting that we had clothes hanging off the airer. We just walked under the bras without even noticing, but Byron took ‘em to the face, lol whoops!
The Hall Birthday Season begins in October and goes all the way through to March, concluding with a birthday of our very own. It heated up something fierce in February, with Nonna turning 96, and Belrog entering her Ruth Phase (47?! 47! 47 years!). These warmed us up nicely for the Festival of Chuckles, a days-long extravaganza of birthday-ness. We showed up with a dozen oysters, only to discover D’admiral had already thought of that. OH WELL, WE COPED.
A delightful lunch at the local French restaurant hit the spot, even if Stinky did get distracted bone-heading in the mirror when she was supposed to be taking pictures.
Moose carefully supervised the cakes, even though he is a bit scared of his fur catching on fire, and he wouldn’t join in singing happy birthday…
A lot of Chuckles’ gifts this year were garden-themed, including this blue kangaroo paw…
Not to be a cheapskate, but Pye had actually got it for free! She’d gone to Wombat Gully Nursery to pick up and order some completely different plants, and by the end of it was such good friends with the women helping her that she got to go home with two magic plants for free (the nice lady had ordered two and received five, they weren’t even part of the nursery stock!).
Gardening obviously is a great way to make friends, and Lil Iggy the school mascot wolf was particularly keen to make friends with a couple of buttercup pumpkins that Stinky had grown from seeds a lady walking her dog past the house had given her – look, they’re just the right size!
While we were impressed at the pear crop we got this year, we would have been more impressed if Lil Iggy’s furry little friends hadn’t got their nibble on first…
We discovered the culprits not long after, when Stinky spotted a ringtail on the bird feeder. What else were we supposed to do, if not try and make friends?
Foolishly, the furry beast returned, which really got up Moose’s nose. He resolved forthwith to make a gotcha video to demand answers about why they were eating the bird food!
Moose waited for AGES to get an answer, but the little bugger just huddled there, desperately avoiding eye contact.
This encounter with Moose should have been enough to teach the possums that this is not the yard for them, but ‘twas not to be – but more on that later.
When inside the Spinster Pad not harassing marsupials, Stinky was hard at work crocheting bottle holders that look like yip yips. Feelings about being brought to life varied amongst subjects…
Meanwhile, Moose and Pye were off on Year 12 Retreat (which has been rebranded ‘Renewal’… Pye was very disappointed not to come home with a jade egg or some other wellness kerfuffle). This year this included enjoying sunsets and making Moose some very special new bling, on account of how Pye saw some unguarded craft supplies and everything else just kind of faded away…
A very wise person on the interwebs says that you need to have four hobbies that have different purposes – i.e., create, consume, cavort, commune.
Hey, guess what – some hobbies can pull double or even triple duty! But when it comes to “Pinot & Picasso”, it might even be all four!! [Full disclosure: experience does not come with being abused by a Spanish artist]
We had inflicted experiential vouchers on Jenski and Belrog for Christmas, and the time had come to cash in. There was a picture up the front, an enthusiastic young person [who’d never make it in a real classroom] to tell you what to do. At first it was pretty bad for the old self-esteem…
… but as the paint-encrusted snacks and day-drinking progressed, confidence increased!
Too bad the subject of the painting isn’t all that good, cos we fricken crushed it!
We’re probably going to have to come back for a Paint Your Pet session and make them let us paint Moose hee hee hoo hoo.
We were flinging vouchers left right and centre with abandon this past festive season, and soon enough the Cabin Girl and Powder Monkey came to Gtown to cash in their own Christmas presents. One look at the Powder Monkey being all tall and shit had us setting him to work with garden clippers, first thing!
Stinky had come off a full day of Year 7s and Pye had just come off camp and the Cabin Girl had just gone back to uni and the Powder Monkey had come from a week of school, but we were all super brave and geared up and ready for Fun Boot Camp!
After a refreshing sleep, we were up early the next morning, ready to cram in all the Gtown Funtimes. In honour of the last time the Powder Monkey had come to visit (when we only ate flat things), breakfast/ brunch was pancakes. As far as toppings go, we already knew that ham, cheese and maple syrup was amazing, as is butter, cinnamon and sugar, and of course Nutella and raspberries is top notch. Research continued apace and now it is our duty to inform you that Nutella and crushed salt and vinegar chips on a pancake is actually fricken amazing.
[no photo available, as we cronched it down and made a second before anyone could capture the beauty].
Both the young crew members also had grandparental birthday gift vouchers to spend on Pakington St, so when we were able to waddle forth, we heroically headed out. The Powder Monkey was able to find everything he wanted in a bookshop (even if it wasn’t the book his auntie suggested)…
… and even though her physical voucher had been (accidentally) recycled, the Cabin Girl’s voucher was honoured (partially due to our superpower of Being Recognised As Locals And Also People Who Keep Buying Shitloads of Stuff From The Store).
Please enjoy Stinky and Co bone-heading in the back of 50% of the previous four photos.
Despite being not the least hungry after our pancake shenanigans, we simply had to go to Splatters, not least because the Cabin Girl had never been to the cheese train. Stinky put the Lacteeze on the train and we all had a jolly laugh…
… and then we realised what cheese 18 was… a camel cheese (which is, of course, lactose free). Whoooo!
The main vouchers to be spent were for an escape room – let’s get ourselves to Puddington’s Toy Shop!
The problem-solving happened straight away, when Pye popped to the loo to find no one had replaced the toilet paper – but she was ready for it! She looked around the room for clues and found a new roll!
Somewhat belatedly we discovered we’d actually booked the hardest escape room they had to offer. No worries, we thought, we’ve got this! Then the single brain cell we apparently share slid out and glided around the room, occasionally landing in one of our brains at a time…
There’s a guy whose job it is to watch and wait to be asked for a clue. He was spellbound!
“Ooh, they’ve found all the right clues, and they know what to do with it, they’ll get this in no time! … hang on… they’ve missed a crucial point… they’re not getting it…? AGAIN??”
To our credit, once he gave us the final piece(s) of the puzzles, we were able to solve each clue. We didn't manage it in the hour (having spent, like 45 minutes in the first half of the room), but he gave us some extra time, and four extra minutes later, we'd brought home the prize!
Instead of going straight home, we popped into a $2 Shop to pick up a birthday costume for Florence. Everything was great and we all felt super-safe!
We even found D’admiral’s next birthday present!
I mean, as if a 2011-2013 tide chart won’t be handy any time soon?! The question is not just why this object is available for sale in 2025, but rather why there are so many on sale????
As a bit of a wind down, we thought we’d play a game or two. We combed the shelf out in the loft and selected a couple of choice morsels. Once upon 2018 we had accidently invested in ‘What do you Meme?’ – a Cards Against Humanity-adjacent game that at the time was definitely not safe for Grade 5s or Year 7s. Cautiously we drew it out again, and what do you know! We’re all now mature (and immature) enough to find it a hoot!
We also dusted off a Goonies board game, and after evicting several years (decades?) of evidence of insect-related neglect, we really got into it… note to self, play more than once every 15 to 20 years….
While still not exactly what you’d call hungry, off we went for Filipino seafood-boil – said restaurant coincidentally being on the same site as the restaurant we’d frequented in 2018 when we traumatised the children with the inappropriate game!
They no longer dump the bag of delicious seafood directly onto the table, which was a bit disappointing, but didn’t detract too much from stuffing prawns and other seafood into your face like someone’s about to take it away from you if you pause. We polished everything off toot sweet, and don’t think we were particularly tidy - but when the waitress came to clean up, she stared at it and said, “… this is the cleanest table I’ve ever cleared…”
We were like, “Mate, if you want to see empty, check out 3/4 of our brains when we do an escape room!!”
As a restful reward (and a tribute to Puddington’s Toy Shop), we decided to retire with a viewing of Paddington 2. Little did we know, Moose’s furry little nemesis would be back on the fence! We hastened forth to harass it away again!
Hang on…. Is that a nutsack??
We genuinely couldn't tell whether it was ball sack or flippety-floppety pouch, and believe you me, we stalked that little bugger as closely as we could!
Given all this excitement it was amazing that we were able to sleep, but before you could say, ‘respect that marsupial’s gender identity’ the next day Fun Boot Camp was in full swing. Having failed to take the Powder Monkey to visit Barwon Park Mansion on his last visit, we had some making up to do…
HEY GUESS WHAT we did it!
We were greeted on the lawn by Rosemary, an older volunteer who was immediately annoyed that we wanted to go and take a photo instead of stand in the sun and listen to her. When we did get up to that bit, we were quickly joined by a couple, the male half of which loudly introduced themselves as “Marcus and Veronica” without any expectation or interest in who anyone else was. How splendid, we’d found the main character straight off the bat!
The last time we’d been in awe of the extraordinary confidence with which the volunteer guide spewed forth his objectively incorrect interpretation of the past. What were we up for this time?
Well, Rosemary began by sorrowfully waxing lyrical about how poor Thomas Austin gets unfairly blamed for releasing rabbits into Australia WHEN ACTUALLY lots of other people did too. Stinky couldn’t help herself and said, “Um, pretty sure there’s some DNA evidence to support the claim??”
Rosemary (and the later guide) had a strange affliction where it was like they didn’t want to look at anyone they perceived as a young trouble maker, but she made an exception here to be all like, “Well of COURSE we’re not arguing that he didn’t, but!” whereupon Marcus helpfully shouted, “If HE didn’t, someone else WOULD HAVE!”
Great logic Marcus. If I don’t run you over in my car, then someone else will, so it’s okay if I do? And HEAVEN FORBID poor Thomas be unfairly blamed for something he did.
We all decided that, although distinctly humourless, it was too early to judge Rosemary unfairly. Let her behaviour henceforth guide your judgement. Hang on, what’s that…?
Jesus Christ Marcus, you’re in a public place, put the dogs away!!
Anyway, it’s a very lovely house to look around, and though the experience may be enhanced without having to stand still and listen to a guide. Moose had a good play, and we listened carefully…
Things we heard:
We also learned that in an episode of Eat the Invaders they’d eaten off the precious serving ware before us, and the volunteers were not happy about it being used!
Moose was listening, but we were too busy being distracted by reflections to feel anxious for serving ware in his vicinity…
… oh yeah, and we were also MAKING FUN of the art or something degenerate (like the young folk are prone to do).
Although to be fair, we were super-interested when we spotted furniture of the same shape that D’admiral and Chuckles have in their house!
Rosemary seemed to be settled in to boring her audience when suddenly, at the stairs, the game changed.
“JOHN!” she shouted. “JOHN!”
Turns out, she and her husband split the tours to save their poor voices!
“Right-o!” said John (at least 20 times, by our count), and took us on from there. Quite quickly we realised that John was our historical nemesis from last time!! Oh, Rosemary and John, a match made in ignorance!
John ignored us harder than Rosemary ever managed, which gave us a bit more space to play. Moose enjoyed climbing into the little pram…
… which another visitor also took a photo of – we’re not sure if she realised Moose was there or not, but either way he’s now haunting some random person’s camera roll.
One time Stinky and the Powder Monkey looked out to the hallway and saw Moose chilling by himself…
… Pye was taking a photo from a different door, but they were like, “Hey, I know that guy!” Further on the tour, Pye managed to get the children* to climb into the trunk room but didn’t have the heart to shut the door on them…
*Rosemary strongly resented us referring to them as The Children, as there was obviously trickery afoot.
Sadly, they seem to have changed up the children’s playroom, so we didn't get to discover what we would have done if John had have got back on his racist shit about dressing all babies in dresses because brown people wanted to kidnap white baby boys so you had to disguise them. But don’t feel sad, there were plenty of haunted dolls…
…. and at least three cursed objects in this photo
Moose was mad that he wasn’t allowed to Moose-up previous photos (see left photo), so took care to remedy the oversight…
… with a bonus of letting him harass this rabbit which was hanging around on a toilet for reasons we couldn’t fathom.
The wine cellar was open for cavorting this time around, even though you can’t close the door and pretend to lock people in…
Arguably the most haunted section of the mansion is the stables, but Moose didn’t care, he was busy playing coachman…
They’ve put a creepy mannequin at the top of the stable stairs and to be honest, it’d be a good day out just to hang around up there and watch every single person shit themselves when they emerged into a darkened room to find it standing behind them.
The Cabin Girl was wearing some bling that Stinky had scored from her most recent Tangkahan visit – we’d all but forgotten that it glows in the dark… or was it a warning of inimical spirits???
Rosemary and John had crapped on so long about random stuff that the hour-long tour had gone considerably over time, and we were suddenly in danger of being late for Andru and Robyn taking us out for early birthday lunch! Everyone sighed with relief when we made it to a German restaurant we had no idea existed – it was the wurst!
Litres of beer and piles of German meats later, Fun Boot Camp was almost over. We took a moment to dress Florence in her birthday finery….
… and waved farewell to the Crew.
The stupid March heatwave that had day after day above 33 degrees continued, but on the plus side our brand-new external blinds got installed, so we are now able to enjoy the deck without the afternoon sun boiling our eyeballs…
We were able to make the most of it almost immediately, when lovely people happened to pop by on our birthday weekend.
But before we got to that we had a gregarious evening out in the city with Belrog and Jenski. We decided to go to the Munich Brauhaus on South Wharf, having quite completely and totally forgotten that it would involve interactive entertainment. Outside, Melbourne was looking quite fetching…
… but inside, it was top tier kitsch German fun! Pye had declined to book the oompa band to play happy birthday at us and we thought we were getting away with being there for an Occasion – until Belrog devilishly dobbed us in! Before we knew it, we were up on stage with a handful of other Occasion-havers, being compelled to yodel into a microphone. We asked a young man if he could burp on command and dared him to do it when it was his turn (and he did – twice!). It got him disqualified from the competition that we were all in (against our will), so when we got runner-up schnapps, Stinky decided to donate hers to him. His father apologised for his son’s uncouth behaviour, so we had to assure him that it was our idea, and he's actually a fine young lad.
Jenski gave us cleverly small and adorable books, mirroring the Terry Pratchett, Robin Hobbs, Diana Wynne Jones and even Enid Blyton books we have on our big shelves. Our little bookshelf couldn’t handle them all!
Then we realised that we have shitloads of miniature stuff from our phase of posing Stinky’s lil crochet Ghosts characters, including a second shelf! Huzzah!
By then it was our actual, real birthday. It’s super-fun explaining the Ruth Phase to people - Fredrick (a young man Ruth has been grooming) finds out that she’s not beautiful and well at all, but is actually FORTY SEVEN YEARS OLD and therefore disgusting and horrifying. Then he goes and sexually harasses a bunch of girls, asking if any of them are fugly and desperate enough to settle for him. Hooray, we’re too old and disgusting to be harassed by Frederick now! Florence really popped off for the occasion...
… and since D’admiral and Chuckles were on hand to witness it, we harvested the crop of the 26-year-old olive tree that had languished in a pot forever and had celebrated its 15-month anniversary of being in the ground with a crop considerably bigger than the measly three olives it managed last year.
This drew attention to its wild and unkempt nature, but luckily Chuckles was on hand to use her pruning super-powers to bully it back into resembling a tree that people take care of. Yay!
Then there was all you can eat Japanese, and presents, and lots of fun. Mind you, we think that Okami needs to invest in some blinds…
In fact, we were having so much fun that we didn’t think through the implications of a weather forecast that has an overnight low of 21 and a next day max of 22. The resulting cool change had us sitting at brunch in damp 15 degrees weather wearing the shortest of shorts and the flimsiest of cardigans – being in one’s Ruth Phase does not seem to be an intelligent period of time…
Nonetheless, we survived, and Term One marched on apace. Pye was delighted to finally have a Daily Landmark ala The Undies et al. Behold, the Banana!
This unwrapped masterpiece lay majestically in the walkway joining an old(er) building to the new one. Perhaps this has become a no man’s land of sorts for the cleaners, for the Banana – sans skin – lay unmolested for 10 ½ days
One might ask why Pye did nothing but walk past and take photos of said banana, in lieu of cleaning it up – to that, I ask you this: why pick up the exposed fruit when instead one might hope that it make it to a full two weeks? She will henceforth have to place her hopes on the next play-time snack carelessly discarded by a teen.
In the meantime, other important things occurred. Stinky finally got to go to Costco under her own steam…
…and we made the most of it, buying more cheese than you would think a reasonable human being could consume. Well, ha ha ha, we’re not reasonable human beings, we’re in our Ruth Phase!
We saw this unattended magnet board at the private garage we still somehow call a gym…
… then Moose accused us of cultural appropriation for what we did to the magnet board and we had to explain that if he doesn’t keep nice he won’t get any more nice things.
We were super-brave while we had to keep going to work during an unseasonably warm March that had the nerve to combine summer temperatures with early-autumn sunrise times (disgraceful behaviour), alongside clouds that showed us they could rain and water our garden but they just didn’t feel like it (more disgraceful behaviour)…
Basking in the glow that only stupidity could provide, at the end of the term we found ourselves in the position of having got tickets to see Crash Test Dummies play their classic album God Shuffled His Feet…the night before jetting off to Sulawesi.
“But hey,” you reassure us, “It can’t be that bad! If it’s in the city, it’s easy to get to and you can shoot off on the train at the end of the evening!”
Yeah, cool but it was in Northcote.
We could tell when we were in the vicinity when we were surrounded by people of a certain age, weight and denim to flannel ratio. We were certain we were in the right place when they were all smoking actual cigarettes – vapes are a young person’s game. Further evidence was supplied when we got in and they started filming the show – much more horizontal video recording than at a zoomer concert! Also, nobody else needed ear plugs cos they were already deaf. Given this was their key demographic, it was ridiculous that they performed at a standing room only venue and the band went on at 9 – we should all have had comfy seats and be done by 8.30pm! Moose was convinced that nobody would be this dumb and it was a trick to stop him coming to Sulawesi. But they're Canadian so they revere his people, so he was inclined to allow it.
The first thing that happened when we walked in was that we ran into a second cousin in the bathroom. She recognised us instantly, which was great. We still have no idea who she is, anyone who recognises the woman in this picture, please let us know (not really, Chuckles knows who she is).
Coincidences aside, we were looking forward to Crash Test Dummies playing all the songs from one of the three albums we owned when we were teenagers. This they did, but they didn’t bother to talk to us/do any crowd work and they also also a bunch of random songs that we’d never heard before WHICH WASN’T PART OF THE DEAL.
The main singer used to have iconically long hair, and it was terribly rude of him to have cut it in the last 30 years. In fact, the man has got so old his hair has grown in as a flat cap and he looks like a skinny ventriloquist dummy with an inappropriately deep voice.
Now of course, the problem with being short in a standing venue is that you have to work to look over the person in front…
… which really obscures the view when you’re trying to watch a fat old guy rocking out on the keytar…
We all had a better time than the older lady in front of us – she either felt unwell or uninterested (por que no los dos?) and just sat on a stair, raw dogging this whole concert - no phone, no watching, just sitting and staring at arses while her partner enjoyed the show. It’s rude to take photos of strangers, so here’s Moose also having a better time than her:
With that the term was over and our Sulawesi adventure was ready to begin. It’s been way too long since we’ve been somewhere new, why not start with one of Indonesia’s biggest islands that no one in Australia seems to have heard of – away, away!
Pye wins hands down this year with not one, but TWO Elvises (Elvi? Elvode? Elviseseses?). As if that’s not amazing enough, their family names were also exquisite. When you look them up it goes last name first, so we get…. Black Elvis (a tribute act?!). The other one is Elvis Brain, which is like when you shift into Elvis mode (ENGAGE ELVIS BRAIN… SET HIPS TO GYRATE… WOAH MAMMA, FETCH ME YOUR UNHEALTHIEST SNACKS….UH HUN HUH).
Under a particularly pleasing sky, the party term was thence underway.
A fun fact for people who work in co-ed schools is that these days every second boy is named Harry. One such Harry – a lil Ginger Meggs type – was listening carefully in class as Pye explained the fake-money reward system of Bupiah. She’d got to the bit about how you can cash in your Bupiah for prizes, but if you’ve been a pill in class, you have to wait for a day where you haven’t been painful before she’ll sell to you. Young Harry immediately clutched his head and shouted, “BUT I’M ALWAYS A PILL!!” Points for self-awareness, I guess, but it’s going to be a long year.
Meanwhile, Byron had heard that we’d got half a weather station each for our imminent birthday and was genuinely excited to help put it up. We were very grateful, as we lack the height and strength to stand on a ladder, hold a top-heavy antenna pole with one hand and drill in the other. Here we see Pye helping the best she could – the plan was to cushion his fall if he came off the ladder!
Not pictured is the bit where we took him out the back through the laundry, quite forgetting that we had clothes hanging off the airer. We just walked under the bras without even noticing, but Byron took ‘em to the face, lol whoops!
The Hall Birthday Season begins in October and goes all the way through to March, concluding with a birthday of our very own. It heated up something fierce in February, with Nonna turning 96, and Belrog entering her Ruth Phase (47?! 47! 47 years!). These warmed us up nicely for the Festival of Chuckles, a days-long extravaganza of birthday-ness. We showed up with a dozen oysters, only to discover D’admiral had already thought of that. OH WELL, WE COPED.
A delightful lunch at the local French restaurant hit the spot, even if Stinky did get distracted bone-heading in the mirror when she was supposed to be taking pictures.
Moose carefully supervised the cakes, even though he is a bit scared of his fur catching on fire, and he wouldn’t join in singing happy birthday…
A lot of Chuckles’ gifts this year were garden-themed, including this blue kangaroo paw…
Not to be a cheapskate, but Pye had actually got it for free! She’d gone to Wombat Gully Nursery to pick up and order some completely different plants, and by the end of it was such good friends with the women helping her that she got to go home with two magic plants for free (the nice lady had ordered two and received five, they weren’t even part of the nursery stock!).
Gardening obviously is a great way to make friends, and Lil Iggy the school mascot wolf was particularly keen to make friends with a couple of buttercup pumpkins that Stinky had grown from seeds a lady walking her dog past the house had given her – look, they’re just the right size!
While we were impressed at the pear crop we got this year, we would have been more impressed if Lil Iggy’s furry little friends hadn’t got their nibble on first…
We discovered the culprits not long after, when Stinky spotted a ringtail on the bird feeder. What else were we supposed to do, if not try and make friends?
Foolishly, the furry beast returned, which really got up Moose’s nose. He resolved forthwith to make a gotcha video to demand answers about why they were eating the bird food!
Moose waited for AGES to get an answer, but the little bugger just huddled there, desperately avoiding eye contact.
This encounter with Moose should have been enough to teach the possums that this is not the yard for them, but ‘twas not to be – but more on that later.
When inside the Spinster Pad not harassing marsupials, Stinky was hard at work crocheting bottle holders that look like yip yips. Feelings about being brought to life varied amongst subjects…
Meanwhile, Moose and Pye were off on Year 12 Retreat (which has been rebranded ‘Renewal’… Pye was very disappointed not to come home with a jade egg or some other wellness kerfuffle). This year this included enjoying sunsets and making Moose some very special new bling, on account of how Pye saw some unguarded craft supplies and everything else just kind of faded away…
A very wise person on the interwebs says that you need to have four hobbies that have different purposes – i.e., create, consume, cavort, commune.
- Create = bring something to life (check!)
- Consume = appreciate the art of another (on it, boss!)
- Cavort = move your body daily (roger that, these possums aren't getting bothered from the couch!)
- Commune = have a community to socialise with.
Hey, guess what – some hobbies can pull double or even triple duty! But when it comes to “Pinot & Picasso”, it might even be all four!! [Full disclosure: experience does not come with being abused by a Spanish artist]
We had inflicted experiential vouchers on Jenski and Belrog for Christmas, and the time had come to cash in. There was a picture up the front, an enthusiastic young person [who’d never make it in a real classroom] to tell you what to do. At first it was pretty bad for the old self-esteem…
… but as the paint-encrusted snacks and day-drinking progressed, confidence increased!
Too bad the subject of the painting isn’t all that good, cos we fricken crushed it!
We’re probably going to have to come back for a Paint Your Pet session and make them let us paint Moose hee hee hoo hoo.
We were flinging vouchers left right and centre with abandon this past festive season, and soon enough the Cabin Girl and Powder Monkey came to Gtown to cash in their own Christmas presents. One look at the Powder Monkey being all tall and shit had us setting him to work with garden clippers, first thing!
Stinky had come off a full day of Year 7s and Pye had just come off camp and the Cabin Girl had just gone back to uni and the Powder Monkey had come from a week of school, but we were all super brave and geared up and ready for Fun Boot Camp!
After a refreshing sleep, we were up early the next morning, ready to cram in all the Gtown Funtimes. In honour of the last time the Powder Monkey had come to visit (when we only ate flat things), breakfast/ brunch was pancakes. As far as toppings go, we already knew that ham, cheese and maple syrup was amazing, as is butter, cinnamon and sugar, and of course Nutella and raspberries is top notch. Research continued apace and now it is our duty to inform you that Nutella and crushed salt and vinegar chips on a pancake is actually fricken amazing.
[no photo available, as we cronched it down and made a second before anyone could capture the beauty].
Both the young crew members also had grandparental birthday gift vouchers to spend on Pakington St, so when we were able to waddle forth, we heroically headed out. The Powder Monkey was able to find everything he wanted in a bookshop (even if it wasn’t the book his auntie suggested)…
… and even though her physical voucher had been (accidentally) recycled, the Cabin Girl’s voucher was honoured (partially due to our superpower of Being Recognised As Locals And Also People Who Keep Buying Shitloads of Stuff From The Store).
Please enjoy Stinky and Co bone-heading in the back of 50% of the previous four photos.
Despite being not the least hungry after our pancake shenanigans, we simply had to go to Splatters, not least because the Cabin Girl had never been to the cheese train. Stinky put the Lacteeze on the train and we all had a jolly laugh…
… and then we realised what cheese 18 was… a camel cheese (which is, of course, lactose free). Whoooo!
The main vouchers to be spent were for an escape room – let’s get ourselves to Puddington’s Toy Shop!
The problem-solving happened straight away, when Pye popped to the loo to find no one had replaced the toilet paper – but she was ready for it! She looked around the room for clues and found a new roll!
Somewhat belatedly we discovered we’d actually booked the hardest escape room they had to offer. No worries, we thought, we’ve got this! Then the single brain cell we apparently share slid out and glided around the room, occasionally landing in one of our brains at a time…
There’s a guy whose job it is to watch and wait to be asked for a clue. He was spellbound!
“Ooh, they’ve found all the right clues, and they know what to do with it, they’ll get this in no time! … hang on… they’ve missed a crucial point… they’re not getting it…? AGAIN??”
To our credit, once he gave us the final piece(s) of the puzzles, we were able to solve each clue. We didn't manage it in the hour (having spent, like 45 minutes in the first half of the room), but he gave us some extra time, and four extra minutes later, we'd brought home the prize!
Instead of going straight home, we popped into a $2 Shop to pick up a birthday costume for Florence. Everything was great and we all felt super-safe!
We even found D’admiral’s next birthday present!
I mean, as if a 2011-2013 tide chart won’t be handy any time soon?! The question is not just why this object is available for sale in 2025, but rather why there are so many on sale????
As a bit of a wind down, we thought we’d play a game or two. We combed the shelf out in the loft and selected a couple of choice morsels. Once upon 2018 we had accidently invested in ‘What do you Meme?’ – a Cards Against Humanity-adjacent game that at the time was definitely not safe for Grade 5s or Year 7s. Cautiously we drew it out again, and what do you know! We’re all now mature (and immature) enough to find it a hoot!
We also dusted off a Goonies board game, and after evicting several years (decades?) of evidence of insect-related neglect, we really got into it… note to self, play more than once every 15 to 20 years….
While still not exactly what you’d call hungry, off we went for Filipino seafood-boil – said restaurant coincidentally being on the same site as the restaurant we’d frequented in 2018 when we traumatised the children with the inappropriate game!
They no longer dump the bag of delicious seafood directly onto the table, which was a bit disappointing, but didn’t detract too much from stuffing prawns and other seafood into your face like someone’s about to take it away from you if you pause. We polished everything off toot sweet, and don’t think we were particularly tidy - but when the waitress came to clean up, she stared at it and said, “… this is the cleanest table I’ve ever cleared…”
We were like, “Mate, if you want to see empty, check out 3/4 of our brains when we do an escape room!!”
As a restful reward (and a tribute to Puddington’s Toy Shop), we decided to retire with a viewing of Paddington 2. Little did we know, Moose’s furry little nemesis would be back on the fence! We hastened forth to harass it away again!
Hang on…. Is that a nutsack??
We genuinely couldn't tell whether it was ball sack or flippety-floppety pouch, and believe you me, we stalked that little bugger as closely as we could!
Given all this excitement it was amazing that we were able to sleep, but before you could say, ‘respect that marsupial’s gender identity’ the next day Fun Boot Camp was in full swing. Having failed to take the Powder Monkey to visit Barwon Park Mansion on his last visit, we had some making up to do…
HEY GUESS WHAT we did it!
We were greeted on the lawn by Rosemary, an older volunteer who was immediately annoyed that we wanted to go and take a photo instead of stand in the sun and listen to her. When we did get up to that bit, we were quickly joined by a couple, the male half of which loudly introduced themselves as “Marcus and Veronica” without any expectation or interest in who anyone else was. How splendid, we’d found the main character straight off the bat!
The last time we’d been in awe of the extraordinary confidence with which the volunteer guide spewed forth his objectively incorrect interpretation of the past. What were we up for this time?
Well, Rosemary began by sorrowfully waxing lyrical about how poor Thomas Austin gets unfairly blamed for releasing rabbits into Australia WHEN ACTUALLY lots of other people did too. Stinky couldn’t help herself and said, “Um, pretty sure there’s some DNA evidence to support the claim??”
Rosemary (and the later guide) had a strange affliction where it was like they didn’t want to look at anyone they perceived as a young trouble maker, but she made an exception here to be all like, “Well of COURSE we’re not arguing that he didn’t, but!” whereupon Marcus helpfully shouted, “If HE didn’t, someone else WOULD HAVE!”
Great logic Marcus. If I don’t run you over in my car, then someone else will, so it’s okay if I do? And HEAVEN FORBID poor Thomas be unfairly blamed for something he did.
We all decided that, although distinctly humourless, it was too early to judge Rosemary unfairly. Let her behaviour henceforth guide your judgement. Hang on, what’s that…?
Jesus Christ Marcus, you’re in a public place, put the dogs away!!
Anyway, it’s a very lovely house to look around, and though the experience may be enhanced without having to stand still and listen to a guide. Moose had a good play, and we listened carefully…
Things we heard:
- “In 1845 Elizabeth and Thomas got married in Melbourne because Geelong *headshake* ‘wasn’t’” WASN’T what, Rosemary? Wasn’t what??
- Elizabeth was 21 when her father died and she wasn’t married GASP, what a gross old spinster
- They came here because this land was up for grabs [no need to acknowledge Native Title, there was a very small sign on the National Trust sign out the front]
- The second owners put this carpet down to be warmer *eyeroll cos today is 30 degrees* [um hello, Colac winter?!]
- When Thomas died, she wasn't a merry widow like you might expect [Do we expect our widows to be merry? We shall check in with you anon, Rosemary]
- The Austin family had people in it who deliberately got caught stealing so that they would get a trip out to Australia [?????????]
- A lot of the furniture came from a Melbourne antiques collector who was good at snapping up bargains like from when the British had to leave India in a hurry (implied Bad Thing)
- Rosemary sorrows that we throw our history away, other countries have old things going back 400 years, but not us [although we can’t account for their 400-year-old history, we humbly offer 60,000 years as an alternative]
- Verandas are a unique Australian architectural feature, UK houses don't have them, so it’s special to us [laughs in every other warm country in the world]
- The two spinster daughters of the second owners didn’t get married because all the men had died in the war [all. the.men.]
We also learned that in an episode of Eat the Invaders they’d eaten off the precious serving ware before us, and the volunteers were not happy about it being used!
Moose was listening, but we were too busy being distracted by reflections to feel anxious for serving ware in his vicinity…
… oh yeah, and we were also MAKING FUN of the art or something degenerate (like the young folk are prone to do).
Although to be fair, we were super-interested when we spotted furniture of the same shape that D’admiral and Chuckles have in their house!
Rosemary seemed to be settled in to boring her audience when suddenly, at the stairs, the game changed.
“JOHN!” she shouted. “JOHN!”
Turns out, she and her husband split the tours to save their poor voices!
“Right-o!” said John (at least 20 times, by our count), and took us on from there. Quite quickly we realised that John was our historical nemesis from last time!! Oh, Rosemary and John, a match made in ignorance!
John ignored us harder than Rosemary ever managed, which gave us a bit more space to play. Moose enjoyed climbing into the little pram…
… which another visitor also took a photo of – we’re not sure if she realised Moose was there or not, but either way he’s now haunting some random person’s camera roll.
One time Stinky and the Powder Monkey looked out to the hallway and saw Moose chilling by himself…
… Pye was taking a photo from a different door, but they were like, “Hey, I know that guy!” Further on the tour, Pye managed to get the children* to climb into the trunk room but didn’t have the heart to shut the door on them…
*Rosemary strongly resented us referring to them as The Children, as there was obviously trickery afoot.
Sadly, they seem to have changed up the children’s playroom, so we didn't get to discover what we would have done if John had have got back on his racist shit about dressing all babies in dresses because brown people wanted to kidnap white baby boys so you had to disguise them. But don’t feel sad, there were plenty of haunted dolls…
…. and at least three cursed objects in this photo
Moose was mad that he wasn’t allowed to Moose-up previous photos (see left photo), so took care to remedy the oversight…
… with a bonus of letting him harass this rabbit which was hanging around on a toilet for reasons we couldn’t fathom.
The wine cellar was open for cavorting this time around, even though you can’t close the door and pretend to lock people in…
Arguably the most haunted section of the mansion is the stables, but Moose didn’t care, he was busy playing coachman…
They’ve put a creepy mannequin at the top of the stable stairs and to be honest, it’d be a good day out just to hang around up there and watch every single person shit themselves when they emerged into a darkened room to find it standing behind them.
The Cabin Girl was wearing some bling that Stinky had scored from her most recent Tangkahan visit – we’d all but forgotten that it glows in the dark… or was it a warning of inimical spirits???
Rosemary and John had crapped on so long about random stuff that the hour-long tour had gone considerably over time, and we were suddenly in danger of being late for Andru and Robyn taking us out for early birthday lunch! Everyone sighed with relief when we made it to a German restaurant we had no idea existed – it was the wurst!
Litres of beer and piles of German meats later, Fun Boot Camp was almost over. We took a moment to dress Florence in her birthday finery….
… and waved farewell to the Crew.
The stupid March heatwave that had day after day above 33 degrees continued, but on the plus side our brand-new external blinds got installed, so we are now able to enjoy the deck without the afternoon sun boiling our eyeballs…
We were able to make the most of it almost immediately, when lovely people happened to pop by on our birthday weekend.
But before we got to that we had a gregarious evening out in the city with Belrog and Jenski. We decided to go to the Munich Brauhaus on South Wharf, having quite completely and totally forgotten that it would involve interactive entertainment. Outside, Melbourne was looking quite fetching…
… but inside, it was top tier kitsch German fun! Pye had declined to book the oompa band to play happy birthday at us and we thought we were getting away with being there for an Occasion – until Belrog devilishly dobbed us in! Before we knew it, we were up on stage with a handful of other Occasion-havers, being compelled to yodel into a microphone. We asked a young man if he could burp on command and dared him to do it when it was his turn (and he did – twice!). It got him disqualified from the competition that we were all in (against our will), so when we got runner-up schnapps, Stinky decided to donate hers to him. His father apologised for his son’s uncouth behaviour, so we had to assure him that it was our idea, and he's actually a fine young lad.
Jenski gave us cleverly small and adorable books, mirroring the Terry Pratchett, Robin Hobbs, Diana Wynne Jones and even Enid Blyton books we have on our big shelves. Our little bookshelf couldn’t handle them all!
Then we realised that we have shitloads of miniature stuff from our phase of posing Stinky’s lil crochet Ghosts characters, including a second shelf! Huzzah!
By then it was our actual, real birthday. It’s super-fun explaining the Ruth Phase to people - Fredrick (a young man Ruth has been grooming) finds out that she’s not beautiful and well at all, but is actually FORTY SEVEN YEARS OLD and therefore disgusting and horrifying. Then he goes and sexually harasses a bunch of girls, asking if any of them are fugly and desperate enough to settle for him. Hooray, we’re too old and disgusting to be harassed by Frederick now! Florence really popped off for the occasion...
… and since D’admiral and Chuckles were on hand to witness it, we harvested the crop of the 26-year-old olive tree that had languished in a pot forever and had celebrated its 15-month anniversary of being in the ground with a crop considerably bigger than the measly three olives it managed last year.
This drew attention to its wild and unkempt nature, but luckily Chuckles was on hand to use her pruning super-powers to bully it back into resembling a tree that people take care of. Yay!
Then there was all you can eat Japanese, and presents, and lots of fun. Mind you, we think that Okami needs to invest in some blinds…
In fact, we were having so much fun that we didn’t think through the implications of a weather forecast that has an overnight low of 21 and a next day max of 22. The resulting cool change had us sitting at brunch in damp 15 degrees weather wearing the shortest of shorts and the flimsiest of cardigans – being in one’s Ruth Phase does not seem to be an intelligent period of time…
Nonetheless, we survived, and Term One marched on apace. Pye was delighted to finally have a Daily Landmark ala The Undies et al. Behold, the Banana!
This unwrapped masterpiece lay majestically in the walkway joining an old(er) building to the new one. Perhaps this has become a no man’s land of sorts for the cleaners, for the Banana – sans skin – lay unmolested for 10 ½ days
One might ask why Pye did nothing but walk past and take photos of said banana, in lieu of cleaning it up – to that, I ask you this: why pick up the exposed fruit when instead one might hope that it make it to a full two weeks? She will henceforth have to place her hopes on the next play-time snack carelessly discarded by a teen.
In the meantime, other important things occurred. Stinky finally got to go to Costco under her own steam…
…and we made the most of it, buying more cheese than you would think a reasonable human being could consume. Well, ha ha ha, we’re not reasonable human beings, we’re in our Ruth Phase!
We saw this unattended magnet board at the private garage we still somehow call a gym…
… then Moose accused us of cultural appropriation for what we did to the magnet board and we had to explain that if he doesn’t keep nice he won’t get any more nice things.
We were super-brave while we had to keep going to work during an unseasonably warm March that had the nerve to combine summer temperatures with early-autumn sunrise times (disgraceful behaviour), alongside clouds that showed us they could rain and water our garden but they just didn’t feel like it (more disgraceful behaviour)…
Basking in the glow that only stupidity could provide, at the end of the term we found ourselves in the position of having got tickets to see Crash Test Dummies play their classic album God Shuffled His Feet…the night before jetting off to Sulawesi.
“But hey,” you reassure us, “It can’t be that bad! If it’s in the city, it’s easy to get to and you can shoot off on the train at the end of the evening!”
Yeah, cool but it was in Northcote.
We could tell when we were in the vicinity when we were surrounded by people of a certain age, weight and denim to flannel ratio. We were certain we were in the right place when they were all smoking actual cigarettes – vapes are a young person’s game. Further evidence was supplied when we got in and they started filming the show – much more horizontal video recording than at a zoomer concert! Also, nobody else needed ear plugs cos they were already deaf. Given this was their key demographic, it was ridiculous that they performed at a standing room only venue and the band went on at 9 – we should all have had comfy seats and be done by 8.30pm! Moose was convinced that nobody would be this dumb and it was a trick to stop him coming to Sulawesi. But they're Canadian so they revere his people, so he was inclined to allow it.
The first thing that happened when we walked in was that we ran into a second cousin in the bathroom. She recognised us instantly, which was great. We still have no idea who she is, anyone who recognises the woman in this picture, please let us know (not really, Chuckles knows who she is).
Coincidences aside, we were looking forward to Crash Test Dummies playing all the songs from one of the three albums we owned when we were teenagers. This they did, but they didn’t bother to talk to us/do any crowd work and they also also a bunch of random songs that we’d never heard before WHICH WASN’T PART OF THE DEAL.
The main singer used to have iconically long hair, and it was terribly rude of him to have cut it in the last 30 years. In fact, the man has got so old his hair has grown in as a flat cap and he looks like a skinny ventriloquist dummy with an inappropriately deep voice.
Now of course, the problem with being short in a standing venue is that you have to work to look over the person in front…
… which really obscures the view when you’re trying to watch a fat old guy rocking out on the keytar…
We all had a better time than the older lady in front of us – she either felt unwell or uninterested (por que no los dos?) and just sat on a stair, raw dogging this whole concert - no phone, no watching, just sitting and staring at arses while her partner enjoyed the show. It’s rude to take photos of strangers, so here’s Moose also having a better time than her:
With that the term was over and our Sulawesi adventure was ready to begin. It’s been way too long since we’ve been somewhere new, why not start with one of Indonesia’s biggest islands that no one in Australia seems to have heard of – away, away!
