Sunday 6 August 2000
Welcome to the deep blue Sea,
Percy
G'day Shaggers, Long time, no write.
First, the news.
In partnership with my patron "long time companion", moral and etiquette guide Miss Maude, I have bought a property.
A very tough auction.
Dummy bidders and ruthless developers made a show. I was advised to play them at there own game. I brought my own. That is, a dummy bidder. During the previous week leading up to the auction, Maude and I had unfortunately made our interest known to the estate agent. A phone call during that same week also let the agent know that we may not have been interested either, thus throwing some confusion his way and putting him off his misleading path. The day of the auction we turned up raising some eyebrows. Quiet words were spoken to the agents off-sider, and the dummy bidder was sent our way. I spotted him immediately, hanging round my brother and I like a bad smell. When the bidding started, we just shut-up. The dummy put in a couple of bids, noticed we were not making any attempt, and stopped. It was then between 2 others. After the agent ceased the auction for "consultation with the vendor" that was then "our" dummy bidder came into action. Wired to a mobile phone plugged into his ear, he was given instructions from us. It got to a little over our ceiling and thank God the heavily bouffonted and sun glassed woman bidding against our dummy stopped. We clinched it !!
Art Deco Chimney
The property
It's gorgeous. Owned by a single middle-aged woman who designs children's clothes. A large Art Deco Building consisting of 3 apartments. Surrounded by swishing palm trees and a slightly overgrown but not unkempt garden, which is all under the canopy of a massive Moreton Bay Fig overhanging from the Mansion next door. The apartment is surrounded by panoramic type windows like the above picture, letting in an abundance of filtered light from the tree tops, (we are on the top level). Fully and tastefully renovated, all we have to do is move in. A lounge and dining room, master and rear bedroom, entrance hall and Euro kitchen. We are situated just across the road from the birth place of Percy Grainger in Brighton. It's a 7 minute walk from the beach !
Percy Grainger, Australian Composer
(amongst other things !)At this time in my life, I was very fortunate to find a place like this. Luck has been sparse in the past 20 years, so I saw this turn-around at age 40 as momentous.
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Last weekend I copped one of the worst gastro-intestinal bugs to hit me in a long time. I was in bed for 5 days and eating nothing for 3. The fever that accompanied it stimulated life questions. At the end of it, I had the answers to a few un-resolved problems that have weighed heavily in my mind for some period. I lost about 5 kilos, (which was needed) and a thorough cleansing of body and mind.
The task now at hand is how to filter out all the incoming shite that now lands in my physical and cerebral in-box.
C O N T A C T