the ’sham

In this episode, I liase with my neighbour Luciana about our real estate agents, sit on the front porch like a vechietto (that’s Italian for (”little old man”), and go for a walk along the Petersham/Lewisham border with Lisa Kelly. You can download it here. [7mb, 7 min, mp3]

In a serendipitous turn of events, Lisa Kelly got in touch recently, wanting to hang out over the Easter weekend. We met up on Sunday (April 8th 2007). She said she wanted to “go for a walk”. Neither of us mentioned our border walk of one year ago. She said she wanted to go to Lewisham, she’d never been there before. So we headed in that direction.

There was no anxiety about leaving the ’sham this time, instead we hooked around the back of Petersham primary school and plunged down into Lewisham. It was quieter than Petersham. Certainly, there are fewer planes going overhead. We stopped and spoke to a gorgeous old Portuguese woman after spying her excellent pumpkin patch. Her husband, she told us, is the farmer. He had trained his pumpkins to climb up old floorboard planks onto the roof of his garage, after which they trailed along this overhead trellis thing and drooped their orange-fleshy fruits below. One was so huge it had to be held up with a kind of sling made from an old hessian bag. It’s shape was like a teardrop, and I wondered whether the gravity had done that.

On the far side of Lewisham, we encountered the silo apartments, which are a re-development not dissimilar to the Newtown ones, hollowed out old wheat silos with flats inside. There seemed to be a sort of common room thing provided for the flats which was cool, we thought, although it looked empty and unused. We tut-tutted about the big expanse of land alongside the silos which was not being used to grow vegies. Just some decorative expensive looking plants.

On the way home we stopped to check out the secret future site of our Petersham community gardens. Oh yes, it’s gonna be fun.

The original blog entry upon which this podcast is based is located here.

In which I take Wolfie the dog for a walk for the first time, visit the Crystal Street Community Shop, and whine about the landlords again.

In the opp-shop, there’s some DIY personality testing going on, as well as a reflection on chance and serendipity.

Download the episode here. [13 min, 12mb, mp3]

You can read the original blog post over here.

The podcast for the entry from April 6th, 2006.

I read this in my living room on April 6th, 2007, which happened to be Good Friday this year. In this episode, I go to the Marrickville Council Heritage Week awards presentations, and hear about a plane which crashed into Petersham during the second world war. I also work up the courage to email my next door neighbour Rachelle so I can borrow her dog Wolfie to go for walks around the Sham. This podcast contains excerpts from the emails between Rachelle and I. I’m not sure how well they work when read out aloud.

Get the podcast here. [10mb, 11min, mp3]

Read the original entry over here.

Here’s your radio broadcast from yesterday a year ago:
April 5th 2006 [6mb mp3]

In which I grapple with the noise from the construction site three houses away, meet Marie, who is renovating the flat of my neighbour Barbara, and go for a walk on the north side of Petersham. My first unformed thoughts about the Petersham Bowling Club too! This is interesting. I note that I think the greens look in pretty good shape. What a laugh. It turns out through my extensive involvement with the club subsequent to the sham project that the greens were in terrible shape, something which contributed to the demise of competitive bowling here.

The original entry for April 5, 2006, in text, is here.

Here’s the second installment in the great Petersham podcast project. I have no idea if the quality of the audio is listenable, so please let me know:
April 4th, 2006 [4mb mp3]
…And here is a short audio commentary on what i just read. It’s pretty off the cuff…
April 4th Commentary [4 mins 5mb mp3]

Today (2007) I wandered over to Vanessa’s place to have a cup of tea. On the way I bumped into Glenn, the friendly fellow from the archives. He had a bundle of laminated colour photocopies in his hands and was bustling across Crystal Street to make a presentation to students from Petersham Public School.

Unusually, Vanessa had no cake to offer. In fact, her larder was quite bare, so we decided to head over to south Petersham so I could make us some lunch. On the way back to my place, we bumped into Sarah Sauce, who was riding from her house in Marrickville over to the hospital she works at in Rozelle. We stood on the side of Crystal Street, pretty much in the same place where I’d said hi to Glenn. Sarah said she rides her bike past my house every day, and why did she never see me on my balcony?

At this moment, Anna from the council crossed the street and hollered “Hello Lucas!”

I felt very popular.

(If you want to read the original blog posting in type-written format, it’s here.)

Happy anniversary, darlings!

During the run of Bilateral Petersham last year, Mike Leggett and Andrew Best, two of my avid fans, each commented that there was just too much material to read on the screen, his eyes were going square. They suggested that I do audio recordings of each day, and podcast em. That way, they could listen to them on the train or as they pottered around the house.

I thought this sounded like a good idea at the time, but I had no technical ability (nor extra time) to carry out his plan.

However, now I am a bit more savvy about such things, I have decided to do it. Of course, it’s a year late and all, but this could be kinda interesting.

Here’s the plan:
I read aloud each day’s blog entry from the corresponding date last year. That way, I relive/re-create/re-enact my own activities from exactly 12 months ago. It’s kinda spooky, but could be fun.

Each day, I add some comments (in audio) at the end of the podcast. These might update something that arose in the blog entry from last year, or might be something that happened to me today.

In the course of doing this daily process, who knows what might happen!

First cab off the rank:

Beginning Bilateral Petersham (4 April, 2006) [8 min, 9mb mp3 file]

If you want to read the original post in text, it’s here.