the ’sham

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.

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.

Instead of the Oxford Tavern, there’s an op-shop on the corner of Crystal and New Canterbury. Standing outside the shop is a cardboard removalist box. It’s full of rejected clothing, that even the op-shop itself doesn’t want. I pull up on my bike. Surely there’s something in here that can be salvaged. Standing casually, smoking a cigarette next to the box is the barber from The Locals Barber Shop. He laughs and says he’s been thinking the same thing about this box. We rummage through it together. It contains old crimplene dresses that are nearly interesting, but with patterns we just don’t quite like. At the bottom of the box is a eighties silk suit, brand new, still on the hanger. “What about this one?” he asks. I consider it. It has a peach and brown design, more brown than peach. It’s almost passable. He lifts it out so we can look more closely. On the back, the pattern changes from an angular abstract motif to a predominantly peach colour scheme, in fake Aboriginal dots and squiggles. We don’t need to say anything. Back it goes in the bottom of the box. Now we understand.

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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One for the fans only: this post is going up on Saturday arvo, whereas it was really written on Friday. I also wrote for Barbara Campbell yesterday, which threw me out a little. Not that I had to do any extra work - I just edited down the second section of this entry to squeeze in under her 1001 word limit. Once I’d done this chopping, it felt like quite a different piece. I wasn’t sure whether it was better or worse. Nor do I really have any criteria for judging. I tried to make it a bit less wordy, so it would be easier to read out aloud (which is what Barbara does, each day, at sunset). But then I thought, hmm, maybe I should use the reduced version in my own blog, so I put off putting it up online to think about it. To cut a long story short, here’s what I’ve done: the original longer wordier version is below. If you want to compare and contrast, check out the brief version in Barbara’s archive.

OK, enough boring admin talk, on with yesterday’s post…

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