words on walls

You have to love blogging. It is community building at its best. From these words on digital pages I have met so many interesting people. Made great friends. Experienced a diversity of virtual connections. But the latest has got to take the cake.

Ever taken much notice of the graffiti I use as an identifier? I took it on an instamatic camera (ah life before digital) when I was a teenager spending six months living in Sydney. I’d been catapulted from Wellington (population under 300,000) to a city of more than 3 million. It was 1982. Despite this era being the dizzy intersection of punk and post-punk, I put on my best frock and got a proper job, in an office doing the most menial work on a big government health study.

My time in Sydney cemented my love of graffiti. BUGA UP was at its height. Writings on walls, pre-tagging, were witty, political and an emerging art form. One sunny day in Paddington, the following spray made me laugh.



Oh the irony.

Fast forward 25 years and I am living in Australia again. As I flipped through some old photos, the words seemed just a relevant now I find myself amidst the whole food blog/foodie pretension/food porn thing. It seemed the perfect bridge between my disparate blogs. Ironic? Moi!

Then a short while ago, while bringing yet another blog to life, I got a comment from one of the people responsible for the words on the wall. I’ve got Andra’s (coincidentally another outspoken kiwi) permission to share the story. Here it, as she told me via email.

…if you remember the period and the area. Darlinghurst was full of arty squats. Kings Cross was squalid. Paddington was the height of pretension south of the bridge.

My friends and I lived (and died) in the coffee shops of Darlo, Victoria Rd and Oxford St. We fancied ourselves as real punks, feminists, artists and voyagers but we were complete wankers.

That was when the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" had become popular. I think the Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend (which we read) did a big feature on the 'arty punks of paddington.. or darlo.. and the coffee shop scene'. We stayed up all night (as we did) and decided that my 'real punks can't spell cappoc cuppa.. coffee' was clever.

We were so artschool! The trouble we had organising the logistics. Who had access to a car! What sort of paint. Who was going to be lookout. Where were we going to paint. I think we ended up with 5 lookouts, 1 driver and 1 painter. I think we sprayed in 3 locations, Darlo, Ultimo and Paddington. The Paddo location stayed up for a while. I can't remember exactly where cause it's all changed and I've moved but the bottom end of Glenmore Rd near Oxford St on the borders of Kings Cross/Rushcutters/Darlo is where I remember that one.

We really were ahead of the graffiti curve in Australia! I think that spray also got featured shortly after in a coffee table type book on public art or punk art.

I love stories that come full circle.

Words on walls, tags, public art, whatever – is by nature temporary. I'm glad this story has had its moment in the sun again, even if it is in yet another transient medium.

Cross-posted at Health, Philosophy, Politics and Other Rants

time to take a break with a meme

While many lovely food related posts sit in the wings (or in this case knocking around my head), it is a long weekend here in Melbourne, rather grey and wintery. Over at Other Rants I've have wasted a precious hour doing a meme. As much of it is about food, excuse the laziness but I though you'd enjoy it here as well.

All about me!

What was I doing 10 years ago?

A stunned, hard working, newly single, numb kind of year. It began with having to relocate my business at short notice at Christmas, segued into a serious relationship ending (we’d bought the house, planned the kids and learnt as best we could how to co-exist) and left me moving into the communally owned house temporarily. It took a year to resolve the property issue, leaving me feeling vulnerable and rootless through those twelve months. In the meantime I was working in my business and had my teaching load doubled. I remember enjoying the solitude of the house and garden, the friendship of my cat waiting for me at the end of the day and working bloody hard. Oh and celibacy!

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. My mum’s chocolate mousse.
2. French pastries, especially Filou’s apple slice.
3. Black & Green’s peppermint chocolate.
4. Perfectly crispy, hot potato chips with mayonnaise.
5. Rich, fruity cocktails.

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world:

1. Lindt 85% chocolate.
2. Raw almonds
3. Fresh fruit, feijoas at the moment but I’m craving mango season already.
4. Smoky babaganoush from Tiba’s with plain rice crackers.
5. Kalamata olives.


Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Finish my house and pay it off.
2. Travel more, at the moment New York (have just turned down a trip later in the year due to being sensible about finances), Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Mexico are whispering my name.
3. Get a writing coach, pilates instructor, massage therapist and tailor.
4. Continue working in my business 2-3 days a week, take on an apprentice – basically do what I do but with greater flexibility.
5. The clincher is I’ve always dreamed of setting up a philanthropic trust. My vision is to provide seeding grants for small projects that encourage wellbeing and personal empowerment, plus some study grants. Actually I’m looking at doing this on a smaller scale with my sister in our post-mortgage-pre-death years as we are the last branches on our family tree.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. Data inputting Swedish childrens’ dental records, 1986 on a home PC (you had to do a back up every 5 minutes or you lost the lot).
2. Actor/entertainer in summer festival – I don’t remember much except it was hinted very loudly that taking drugs at the big public party that opened the festival was encouraged in order to look like we were all having a good time.
3. Creating online communities for a sadly short lived site for women at the height of the dot.com boom. Basically creative writing as different characters on the forums we were setting up. I’d wished for a job that paid me to play on the internet and I got exactly that.
4. The above new media also paid me approximately $2 per word to write articles relevant to my real day job as a resident expert (life has never been so good!)
5. Cleaned a private hospital as a summer job at high school. The percentage of old men who used the hand basin in their room as a urinal, instead of going to the en suite bathroom, was remarkably high.


Three of my habits:

1. Nitpicking. Awful I know but I have a pedant streak that the Significant Eater is seriously trying to liberate me from.
2. Talking to cats, not just mine but any feline that crosses my path.
3. Spending too much time on the internet and not enough on the pursuit of exercise.

Five places I have lived:

1. Wellington, New Zealand.
2. Stoke Newington, London, UK.
3. Cremorne, Sydney, Australia
4. Out of my backpack in Europe – beaches, hostels, hitch hiking.
5. Melbourne, Australia.

Feel free to share the meme.

not quite Feb Fast

I’m raising a glass of sparkling mineral water to all those embarking on a grog-free month, with a special shout out to the odd bloggers who have gone public about joining Feb Fast.

I heard about it first through RRR and a little delving into the organization has shown it to be sound and worthy – using the idea of going alcohol free for a month to increase awareness about substance abuse issues and fundraising for the cause.

The site points out a few factoids like:

In Australia, the annual cost to the community of alcohol-related social problems was estimated to be $7.6 billion in 1998-99.

It is estimated that 459,400 Australians consume alcohol at levels considered to be high risk to health in the long-term (AIHW 2005)

The impact of alcohol problems upon workplaces in Australia is significant, costing business at least $1.9 billion per year.

The Significant Eater and I have contracted to avoid alcohol this month with our own prearranged exceptions – interstate/overseas visitors (it’s OK Pixie I’ve got a leave pass for our time together in Melbourne!) and a birthday. I’ve also sponsored a couple of people who are going the whole hog.

So I’ll just have to wait a few weeks before posting about the lovely raspberry infused vodka I’ve made and darn it, no mojitos with the duty free tequila I bought back from New Zealand.

Here’s to a healthy and happy month.