the ’sham

Having just returned from a trip to Melbourne, I’m catching up on my recordings. The latest development (which emerged from reading aloud together with Lizzie during the trip) is that the recordings are a bit more interesting when they have a live audience. Lizzie was a good audience because she had never read the original stories before.

Today, sitting with Vanessa and Tim in my loungeroom, I recorded “The Lost Vignettes” which was posted last year on the 19th of April. Both V and T are familiar with the stories, so there is some reflection and chatting about the events and places depicted. We share the reading of comments contributed by blog readers - Vanessa does the female voices, and Tim does Alex Bruen, which is kind of fun.

In “The Lost Vignettes” we hear about Marie and Chris, punks, “tag” graffiti, the Palace Pantry, and we sit in the sun with Bruce watching the dogs in Petersham Park.

Listen in to the story here [15min, 15mb, mp3]
Read the original posting here.

In which the power goes out in the neighbourhood. I hit the streets looking for answers, and instead I find a fellow called Bruce at the Crystal Street Op Shop. I found, re-reading this one year later, that I enjoyed this story very much.

Listen in here. [8min, 8mb, mp3]

Read the original story here.

It’s come to my attention that I am writing too much. I need to cut down, see if I can say what I need to say, but in fewer words. Because of my excessively verbose accounts of some recent events, a lot of great stuff has dropped through the net. Here are a few brief “vignettes” to get us all up to speed…
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I was a-bloggin’ away on Wednesday morning when the screen went dark and all was quiet. No more faint high pitched whizzing of the hard drive, and no more low whir of the fridge from the kitchen. I blinked. The power had cut out. Aha, I thought. This has happened before. I hot-footed it around to the front porch to see if the guy from the electricity company had switched us off and left a mean note about not paying the bill. But the switch was still on. I figured that the construction site down the road had tripped something. There was nothing to be done but to get out of the house.

Rachelle was talking to Therese, two doors up, to see if her power was out too. It was. Up the street, shop-keepers were standing around in doorways with their hands on their hips, looking up and down as if the answer was going to be delivered in a taxi speeding down Canterbury Road. The traffic lights were out, motorists were left to their own devices. It was a genuine neighbourhood event.
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