Author: MR

You ready for this ? [grin]

/ MR / 14 Comments

Yeah, the move is done. And so am I, but only pro tem – and that’s largely due to last Friday morning, when the whole development was officially … ahh … opened, I guess, by the Federal and the State Ministers for Housing and a couple of Members to back ’em up. That’s not forgetting the staff, the dozens and dozens of people whose companies and departments are associated. In other words, it was a shitfight, but a most delightful one.   🙂

434 newly built homes ready for residents to move in Prahran

I have still to do a camera interview for Housing Victoria the week after next. As to why in the name of any god you can think up that is to happen, it’s because, believe it or not, ’twas I who featured all throughout this official do. The two Ministers – terrific women both ! – hung on to me throughout the morning; and the only time I wasn’t in their company was when each was speaking at a press conference … but I had been kind of fed along the line to stand very close, even then; and it turned out that the reason for my being kept nearby was that I HAD TO SPEAK, TOO.    [gasp !]

I feel as if there wasn’t a single moment when someone was saying “M-R, when did you move in ?” / “M-R, what d’you think of it ?” / “M-R, which level are you on ?” / “M-R !”— you get the picture. I was so exhausted that I had a moment of weirdness in the middle and had to go out onto a garden deck and just sit for five minutes while everyone was inspecting an empty apartment to see what one was like. But that was fine, because a most yummy bloke (Mark, his name is) kept me company in a very kind and sweet way, to ensure I was OK. All the men were luverly,  btw: there was John and Richard and Grant and Al, not forgetting the afore-mentioned Mark, and they were all high up in either some corporation or some department or some off-shoot of a department or an elected person ! I don’t waste my time with nobodies !!! [grin]

And then about a dozen of the uppermost came to inspect MY apartment ! Harriet, the State Minister, promised to send me a framed photo of she, Julie – the Federal Minister – and me. She has said whichever frame is chosen will be the nicest one. Ve shell zee … 🙂 The Boodster was seen briefly as he checked out the crowd coming in and disappeared into the bedroom wardrobe; and it turns out that both Harriet and Julie are cat people and I should’ve known because they are so nice ! I did tell everyone that if any of ’em have a spot in their garden/s that gets morning sun, they’re mad if they don’t get a cactus orchid to put there, and they were all impressed by Phyllis. Harriet knew enough to ask if this isn’t the night bloomer with the scent ?

The press conference followed, on a rooftop garden in the next building, and then it was all over. I sat down again on the edge of a garden, and those two gorgeous women came to sit by me. I asked if they’d be trained to speak as they did – meaning that each was able to speak for 5-7 minutes without repeating herself or saying “Umm …” once ! They said no, it was something you just picked up, and both claimed to have made vile addresses when they began. I don’t believe them.

Oh … I forgot to say that not only – at the start of the whole shebang, when people were still turning up and the numbers were growing exponentially (!) but it seemed that everyone knew who I was ! – I had turned to my left to find standing next to me a most beautiful young woman with a wonderful smile and a quiet manner and voice. “And”, says I, “who are you ?” “I’m … ahh … the Federal Minister”, Julie replied, entirely unoffended and in fact delighted to have been “incognito”. A short time later, when I was as ever being addressed by several people at once and another good-looking young woman joined us, I was telling this appalling story; and this one smiled widely, causing me to ask her name, too. Yep, you guessed it: Harriet is the Victorian Minister. Only I could do this not once but twice, and within the space of minutes.   😦

I do have some photos, and I also have some photos of my WONDERFUL apartment. But I’m waiting for my dresser to arrive so that the bedroom can be properly furnished before I put them online.

As for the photos of the opening, I think I might spend some more time sorting through the limited selection I have, in case any better ones turn up (which I’m hoping will happen). So for now, just accept that this is by far the best rental I have ever been in, run by the nicest group of people.

Phyllis and I are as one !

/ MR / 12 Comments

Look carefully and you will see how Phyllis is bursting with buds. I counted 15 ten minutes ago, and I’ll bet I missed some. She’s already had two blossoms.

This is amazing because before I came here (February 13th) and was finally able to position her with morning sun, she had sad, wrinkled leaves that looked as tired as I did. Not even a suggestion of a bloom: I was worried that all energy was spent.

But now … well, she’s showing you how I feel about being here;  because if I could have blossoms on me in the right environment, they would be putting their beautiful heads out just like Phyllis’.

She’s a cactus orchid: an epiphyllum oxypetalum; and this is what she’s going to look like (only better, of course !):

Not only are her night-time blooms divine, they also smell divine !!!

Frankly, anyone who has any spot that gets morning sun and who hasn’t yet added a cactus orchid to it … well, yer bonkers. I have spoken.

And btw: this post is to stave off more whinges about my lack of The New Place info. I’ve been REALLY busy with setting it up; and on Friday morning both the Federal and the State Ministers for Housing are visiting us with entourage, and I shall be kind of pushed in their direction to welcome them and rabbit on about how terrific this place is. There will be media.

Can I do it ? – of course I can. Do I want to do it ? – I want to do anything at all that will be a gesture of thanks to the people here, who helped me in so many ways.

It is truly special. Just like Phyllis !

It pays to be tenacious !

/ MR / 27 Comments

This-morning, having bitten the bullet savagely, I wrote a polite email of cancellation to Community Housing and Horizon Housing Realty (in truth the one company) regarding their having awarded me a studio to live in.

This I did because I had to admit that the studio was simply too small to spend any amount of time living in: as Paula said, the plan makes it look more like a bedsit than a studio. Besides, I would’ve had to get rid of all my larger belongings; and I reckon I’m pared already down to the minimum.

Just after I’d begun advising various companies about cancelling arrangements I’d made, CHL came back to me with

AN OFFER I COULDN’T POSSIBLY REFUSE AND WOULDN’T IN A MILLION YEARS

which is ..

a 1-bedroom apartment facing east, on probably the 4th level, as a Victorian Housing applicant !!!!

This means paying 25% of any income, plus the rent assistance items of my pension.

They hadn’t known me to be on the Victorian Housing Register: I hadn’t told them as I had no idea it was relevant to anything. I’d just gone on sending many MR-type emails and making myself .. erhmm .. known to them; so that they didn’t have to be reminded of me when the whole VHR aspect was raised.

I’ve been doing some real thinking

/ MR / 13 Comments

It’s vital in this time leading to moving in to my final rental.

I really, really don’t want to live in a studio again. In spite of the fact that I spend most of my life on my own (interspersed with joyful but brief times spent with the beloved ‘new’ friend of whom I wrote https://wp.me/p6zYMn-5n7 a good long while ago – and with the other friend from that time), living with my bed in the living-room just isn’t me. And that’s in spite of any enthusiasm I may’ve produced on the topic. I lied.

I just don’t like it. I mean I HATE it.

I did that over a year ago when I moved in to the flat at 1218 in this building, where I lived for about six months before coming down here to 307 and being here for eight months now. I said it was fine. That was a porky.

Even Boodie didn’t like it: it gave him nowhere to go to be on his own, which all moggies want from time to time. And I can tell you that 1218 had a bigger footprint than does the studio above.

I’m packing death now. My younger sister will be speechless with rage if|when I tell her; and as she and her husband are making it possible for me to make this move, I dunno how it will end.     😦

The wonderful audiobook I’m currently listening to while crocheting a stroller rug for the forthcoming infant of my new and superb Care Manager, Maria – Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. JK Rowling) featuring Cormoran Strike in The Silkworm – has a chapter wherein the protagonist and his offsider are discussing the case and she tells him one of the suspects has a blog: “Why do people DO that ?” he asks; and she says “I just don’t know.”

Fuck me – why am I telling you this ? Because I see you as my friends. But by all the gods you are a group of very long-suffering friends ..

 

Yeah .. there’s been a hitch :/

/ MR / 24 Comments

On the day I went to Prahran to set eyes on the studios, I found out that they’re ALL facing directly west.

No can do. Or, should I say, no will do. Never again.

Fortunately, there are, it now turns out, a few in Building D that face south. Only remaining problem is that Building D isn’t finished yet.

It’s a good thing, to put it mildly, that in my ancient years I’ve lost most of the impatience that characterized my youthful ones.

This you ain’t gonna believe !

/ MR / 17 Comments

I GOT IT !!! – I’m IN !!!

It’s not exactly what I went for, but it’s still bloody good !!!

OK, back to the start ..

I applied to this brand-new development in Prahran for a 1-bedroom apartment. Here’s a nimage – artwork only, but more than merely sufficient for the porpoise:

Pretty neat, huh ?

Having donned shoes correct for viewing, I viewed one of those – somewhat different layout but much the same area – and fell instantly in love. Not only with the apartment, but with the gardens, the area and the team of people doing the showing (who’d be the contacts).

It all took much longer than I’d hoped; but ten minutes ago I was informed that my application has been approved – for a studio !

Whaddya reckon ??? – not your usual studio !

I’m in an NRAS place right now, and the rent is only $260pw; its owner will be able to charge more or less what he wants in June – I’m told it will be $430pw.

The rent on a 2nd floor 1-bedroom is $430, and most definitely worth it in today’s terms: split system, dishwasher, everything brand new .. Oh, you should see the landscaped gardens ..!

But the team was anxious about my move from $260 to $430 – and I will admit that they were being both thoughtful and sensible (one of the reasons I want to be where they all are !). The offer is thusly: I’m approved for a studio and expected to last in it for six months; and if I find that I’ve saved some more and still want a 1-bedroom, then I’ll be offered the first one that becomes available and that I like !

No complaints from this old broad !!

I have TENURE !!! – and for $380pw !!!

I am HAPPY !!!

Vale dear Diana

/ MR / 26 Comments

Once I had a friend. A real, real friend.

We had worked together for 4 or 5 years, during which time we were merely colleagues. But after we had both left Higher Ed Systems – at different times – we became friends.

I think it was that she had recognized in me a soulmate: an intolerant and impatient bitch, basically – because that’s what we had in common, to start with.

But our friendship grew and lasted, so there must have been more to it than our peccadilloes. I came to rely on Diana for sensible input on anything I was unsure of; and she to rely on me for solutions to her knitting and/or crochet problems.

While I was still living in Sydney, she would come down from Brisbane to visit – i.e., check out and look after – her mother, who lived in a house sort of next-door to Diana’s brother Victor and his wife, out in Richmond. Bloody miles away ! Diana was a good and dutiful daughter, and bore the entire load of her mum’s care, organizing and arranging and .. well, everything. I benefited from this, because she would always come and spend a few days with me when in NSW.

She was a control freak, admitting it but stating that most of the people in her life needed controlling.  🙂   For reasons I never understood, I let her control me, too: it was necessary to her functioning and it never hurt or offended me. We got along really well.

She was a dedicated .. erhmm .. walker ? I was tempted to say bushwalker, but that she travelled all over the world – sometimes alone, mostly with a friend – to undertake walks. By far her best and most loved companion on these travels was Eril, who  was able to put up with being organized/controlled mostly happily – and probably for the same reason as mine. When Diana was away she would email me photographs almost every day: her travels were mine, vicariously, and she never failed me.

She would sometimes come down to visit me after I’d moved to Victoria, on more than one occasion arriving on one of my many moving days; and these times were when I appreciated her most – for she would unpack me. Oh, it was wonderful: all that stuff wrapped in butchers’ paper – neatly folded in a pile and the contents arranged as she thought best .. mostly remained there, too.

We used to talk on the phone a lot, exchanging opinions and whingeing.  🙂  We both liked a good whinge and shared many and many an opinion on the status quo – the tradie of today and his absolute unreliability being a favourite, along with the attitude to their jobs of today’s youth.

She loved the theatre and went often – movies, too. I valued her opinions enormously: I recall being frightfully disappointed when she said I shouldn’t see “The Lost King” because I would find it superficial and irritating. I’m quite sure she was correct; Richard III is my historical hero, and I wouldn’t want the discovery of his remains made into a kind of light-hearted romp.

I’m bereft without Diana. Why would someone who didn’t smoke come down with lung cancer ?! Familial, I suppose. She was diagnosed in June, Eril said; but she didn’t tell me until July, by email, saying how much she hated having to tell me. By then the various annoying little problems she had been experiencing were rapidly coalescing into one: still she had hope, and undertook to do everything they advised.

She had five and a half months to live. She was 67.

I find it impossible to write about her truly, as the interesting, intelligent, good-looking, thinking woman she was, who never forgot to call me on January 29th every year. I find it impossible to believe she’s not still up there in Brisbane ..

I miss her though, most dreadfully.

Is me woe ? Is woe me ?

/ MR / 19 Comments

There must be a correct interrogative version of ‘woe is me’, mustn’t there ? I mean, surely we can turn any statement into a question ..?    😉 (Sometimes I amaze even myself with my wittiness. Heh heh.)

But anyway, the answer is a firm ‘NO !’. I have bronchitis, and have been building up to it for more than a week till this point, when I’m coughing incessantly (and it’s – as they say, somewhat disgustingly – ‘productive’). But really that’s all: just the coughing and the product and the endlessness of it all: my throat isn’t sore and a headache comes and goes, and I’m not feverish. Yet I think it has to be bronchitis rather than a cold or certainly the ‘flu.

So what is my post about ?!

I believe it’s about my late-in-life willingness to admit that really, things are pretty bloody good; that in spite of the decrepitude (and currently the phlegm ..) and the inability to get my hair bleaching right, I don’t have a lot to complain about.

I’m almost sure that I’m on the verge of my final move, and it looks like I’ll know on Tuesday when the staff of Community Housing Ltd come back to work. While they’ve been holidaying riotously the staff of Horizon Housing Realty have had their noses to the grindstone – well, one of ’em has, anyway – and calling me often to follow up various aspects of my application. I am decidedly sanguine about my chances.

I and my younger sister, who were not always on the best of terms (largely to do with political issues, but not solely), have buried every difference and are fast friends. Which is Just As Well, seeing as how we was bofe raised the same and tend to quote from the same sources – Lewis Carroll, A.A. Milne and Norman Lindsay, e.g. – and is also something for which to be heartily grateful ! Not to overlook a recent discovery of cousins, down there in Brighton East; children of a brother of my father’s – the eldest female and the youngest male (and his lady) – who are absolutely lovely. (Note to self: remember your editor’s admonishments regarding adverbs, M-R !!)

I know I am a regular whinger – and I have no comprehension of how anyone tolerates it ! – but try as I might I’m unable to find anything to whinge about at this time.

[pause while she scratches her head ..]

Nup. Even though xmas was spent coughing and it kept waking up Da Boodsta sleeping in his NEW VERSION of cat-tree-with-round-thingy-on-the-top, we both managed to get through it without a cross word. I did several times wonder how insane I would’ve driven Stringer with the coughing, had he been here. I can only think he would’ve been obliged to take to me with a ball pein hammer after several days .. WOT a good thing, then, that he isn’t. See ? – positives abound !!

So, my dears, this is your horribly ancient blogger signing off for 2023 in a sunny mood and with one last fusillade of coughs.

May you not over-celebrate on Sunday night. May your chickens remain their normal size so as to find it impossible to do any kicking down of dunny doors. May you be sensible and not make a single resolution for 2024. May the times become as dull as ditchwater overnight.

I love yous all.

Season’s greetings, y’all ! [grin]

/ MR / 12 Comments

Well, Colorado would probably say it like that; and seeing as how she is A Noteworthy Person with a Noteworthy Blog, I’m doing the same.  🙂

I’m in a pretty good mood, owing to having almost viewed a new place yesterday. One almost views a potential abode by turning up wearing The Wrong Shoes. They actually did tell me in a note that as the place is still under construction – ready middle of January – one must wear ‘enclosed shoes’.

Will runners cut it, d’you think ? – if they don’t, I’m stuffed (there’s another viewing arvo tomorrow). But yesterday I had to slink away weeping from mortification and disappointment.

The buildings look great, and I REALLY like the area of Prahran they’re in. Tons of shops within spitting distance – always a big plus with me, especially when they’re not in the actual street !  I’m going for the cheapest lot, which are ground floor and 1st floor: if they’re properly built there won’t be noise. These are supposedly affordable housing, but seeing that the lowest price is $415 pw, you can judge that claim for yourselves. Still, to get into a brand-new development that has both caretaker and building manager .. I shall be (as our surfers seem to like to say) STOKED. [grin]

And on it goes, the business of finding a place for MR to kark in. Oops ! – I’m not supposed to say that .. OK then: a place in which MR can spend her final days. Yuck ! – I find that much more offensive ! Anyway, you get the idea. It is to be somewhere whence I make no further forays into rented real estate.

EAT MINCE PIES ! DRINK CHAMPAGNE ! LIVE IT UP, CHILDREN !