Laundry (or Llaundry, for welsh readers)

I've been living in my apartment for a year (from tomorrow) and I go through phases where I don't like it. There's something strange about the building; I think it was originally a hotel of some kind and the apartments do have a vaguely hotelish character to them (there's a vestigal slot on the wall as you come in to my apartment where, I assume, you'd put your keytag to operate the lights and whatnot). About half the apartments in the building are in fact let out as serviced apartments, and so the inhabitants of the building fall neatly into either of two categories: permanents (like me) and transients. The transients are usually european (there seems to be a bit of a skew towards eastern and southern europe), we never get north americans. I don't mind the vaguely hotelish character of the place - it makes it seem a bit more like something out of a novel, and besides, I've had some of the great experiences of my life in hotel rooms.

The place does have an aural quirk - as you get out of the elevator on my floor and stand in the hallway, you can hear quite clearly what's going on in each apartment. It's very disconcerting. Once I'm in my apartment I can't hear anything, it's just when you're in the hallway. This used to worry me quite a bit.


My apartment's on the top floor, overlooking a little park. It's very light and fairly quiet. That's why I like it. I lived once in a very dark apartment and it nearly drove me around the twist. At the bottom of the building is a coffee shop which people who live around here usually call 'the lesbian coffee shop' but it's not. It was at some point in the past, and the name's stuck. Everyone knows it's not, but we still call it that. I think it appeals to our longing to live in a raffish demimonde sort of place. There's a reason we're here, not Mosman. When I first moved here the guy who then ran the lesbian coffee shop took an instant dislike to me (maybe just to save time?) I still don't know what I did wrong. But I've outlasted him now, he's gone somewhere else - prison, i hope, in New Zealand - and the new people are quite agreeable.

The building has a shared laundry in the basement, student-style. I don't have a particular problem with that as a concept, but some people don't seem to get it. There are two washing machines and three dryers. The washing machines take 30 minutes, and it's written very clearly in great big letters. (You can see where this is going, I know.) So people put their stuff in, leave and.... don't come back!

Here's the quandry. I go down to do my laundry. I have a very busy life and I don't need extra complications. Sometimes I get down there, the machines are busy.. fine. I wait, come back later (or just go and buy new underwear, it's easier). But sometimes the machines are cold and idle.. then when you lift up the lid, they're full of clothes! I overthink things, so I start to wonder. Has the machine just finished like a second ago, in which case for me to huffily take it all out and put it somewhere would seem unreasonable, prissy... weird? I notice as I think this through that it's women's underwear and stuff and I don't want some angry bint coming in and accusing me of being a pervert (which I'm not, or at least not in that way).

So I leave it.. then I come back 15 or 20 minutes later. It's still there! I start imagining the conversation that will occur when I start to put the clothes somewhere else and the woman comes in:

her: oi.. what are you doing?
me (defensivey): i'm emptying the washing machine.. there was stuff in it.. i wasn't sure...
her: but i was just about to come down and do that, how dare you..
me: well how was i to know you were 'just about to come down'? what if you were another hour? is there some point at which you'd consider it ok for me to do this? or is it an ironlcad rule that noone can mess with your stuff even if you leave it there all afternoon?

Luckily I've never had to have this conversation, I suspect I'd play it very badly. Must go....dryer time!

Salt

I read somewhere recently that Princess Margaret used to call cocaine "Naughty salt". As I write this I'm almost hysterical with tiredness, I really must sleep sometime. (And no, it's nothing to do with the salt.)

Roots

I'm from Melbourne but live in Sydney. I'm in Sydney most of the time but I do spend quite a bit of time in Mebourne, at least every second weekend. Someone quite recently was asking me which of the two cities I felt most at home in, and I gave some vague answer mostly to the effect that I'm happier in Sydney.

He then asked whether I had more roots in Sydney than in Melbourne now. I said with a straight face "definitely Sydney". I very nearly lost it, but you'll be pleased to hear I managed to keep (most of) my composure. I expect that non-Australian readers will be scratching their heads now. Don't worry, it's a localism.

Call me 'General'

I just overheard a colleague talking on the phone and using the expression 'general consensus'. I wince, it's a tautology. As is 'mass exodus'. You have been warned!

Along these lines, I heard something described as 'a panacea for all our problems'. Same. Am I too delicate for this world? I told someone recently that I majored in Pedantics at Berkeley (a line from a Woody Allen movie, if I'm not mistaken). They believed me.

I'm feeling vaguely seedy today and very tired. I had a 'breakfast martini' with my friend V last night and no, before you ask, it's not a euphemism. Then up at 0525 to get the 0645 to Melbourne. It's going to be a long day. Nothing a stuffed roti wouldn't fix (again, not a euphemism).

Lady

I see someone stumbled across my blog as a result of tying in google (and I notice it's google uk): my lovely older lady

I'm not sure why, but this really tickles me. I do have some issues with the word 'lady' anyway (see a much earlier posing about adult dating sites) and one has a bit of pathos too. My friend E once released a record which he was going to call "Music is my special lady" but he was persuded by some pinhead to change the name. D'oh!

Rehab

At the suggestion of my friend E I bought Amy Winehouse's CD. It's great, as he said. And what I like about it is that it's shamelessly derivative and at the same time, strikingly original.

new iPod

I had a lucky break today, my old ipod mini finally gave up! A lot of people have never even seen an iPod mini so I felt like I was carrying around something that was steam-powered, but it's served me very well over the last 3 or so years. I was listening to it this morning at the station when I ran into someone I know (avid readers - are there any? - will remember my 4-cocktail bender with 4 women a week or so ago). I couldn't resist showing her that the very song I was listening to was, in fact, by me.

Anyway, just after lunch it decided to stop working. So I immediately went to the shop to buy a new one. It's a lovely blue Ipod nano, pretty much the same blue as my old mini. Back then I got matching his'n'hers, my wife's (I was married then) was pink. I sometimes used to sneak stuff onto her ipod to see if she reacted. I put Anthony and the Johnsons' "Fistful of love" on it, and after about a month she asked me if there was some message behind me doing that. I also gave my 9yo son a good collection of Brian Jonestown Massacre, Leonard Cohen and Thelonius Monk. He lost his ipod shortly thereafter.

Mmmmmm! I'm now loading it up, with what a charming young lady who recently visited described as "one third hard-core country, one third David Bowie and one third just plain weird stuff". Which is pretty accurate.