Friday 27/12/13 - Christmas Week, More Bond Stuff & This Week's Watches

Friday, 6:20pm AEST

 

Yes, it's been a slow one this week. And yet, it was a blur. Can't remember what wristwatch I was wearing last weekend. I think it was the Sinn 103. It's my go-to watch when I'm beginning to forget what day it is. This normally happens around the time of public holidays where the days begin to get slightly askew.

 

Monday

Still had the Sinn on my wrist;

 

 

Tuesday

I had a few errands to run. Don't ask me what they were because I can't remember. I found a great website about a year ago, called www.everyday-carry.com.

Basically, people submit photos of the stuff that they, you guessed it, carry around every day. Some of the photos are fantastic. I'm surprised by how many folks carry a knife and torch on a regular basis.

Feeling a tad inspired, I set up a shot of what I had planned to carry that day. It ain't much, but it's all mine;

 

*Leather credit card holder

*Lamy Logo ballpoint pen

*Persol 2679-S sunglasses

*Moleskine pocket-sized notebook

*Sinn 103 St Sa automatic chronograph

Thursday

Switched over to the Omega Seamaster AquaTerra Co-Axial on Christmas Day (Wednesday). Still had it on when I mixed up a gin & tonic to combat the heat here in Melbourne. And yes, I added a slice of lime instead of lemon.

Today
Nipped out to do some banking this morning and stepped into a store called Big W to get a notepad. And I also found this Vintage 007 Collection boxed set.

I've flicked through a couple of these versions over the past six months, debating whether or not to buy them. I have at least three different cover-art versions of every Bond paperback. The thing about these editions was that they had an introduction in each of them written by a modern author.

These Vintage editions would cost me $12.oo each if I were to buy them individually. This set was in amongst a bunch of Tolkien Hobbit/Ring Trilogy and "Game of Thrones" boxed sets. The price above this display said $75.00.

"Hmm, not bad. Fourteen books for seventy-five bucks. What's that, about five bucks each, give or take? Maybe I can put it on lay-by (lay-away)", I thought to myself.

Just to be certain, I grabbed a box and took it over to a nearby price scanner. I waved the barcode underneath the scanner and the little screen lit up with;

 

837XXX

BK JAMES BND SLPCS

$50.00

 

SOLD!!! For fifty bucks, it worked out to approximately $3.57 per book. I grabbed it and got the hell out of there. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus.

When I got home, I flipped the box over and next to the barcode, the original price sticker in British Pounds said 111.86. Ouch!

 

 

 

Being Friday, tonight is pizza night in our house. I just bought some mushrooms, rocket lettuce and salami.

Time to get started.

 

Have a great weekend, all!

 

 

Oh, and have a Happy New Year!!!





What Santa Brought Me...With Some Help From My Family.

EDIT: 3/1/2014- Actually, David O. Russell's new film is called "American Hustle", not just "Hustle". Cant believe it took me a week to realise.

Here's my haul. The watch is what I was wearing today. Might as well kill two birds with one stone by taking one of the weekly watch photos.

Here's a close-up of Miss Poindexter's certificate for typing excellence. The signature in red has bled through to the rear of the paper. It looks like a ballpoint on the front, but that can't be right for 1926, can it? The typewritten words have left no imprint on the back of the paper. That means one of two things to me. Either it was (naturally) typed on a machine that had a newish platen OR this certificate is fake. Or maybe somebody found a bunch of blank certificates and filled them in...last year. Suspicious, ain't I? Doesn't matter either way. It still looks neat. A quick Googling shows that Strayer's did indeed exist as a business college.

Here's an example of my daughter's handiwork with the felting kit. Those needles are pretty sharp.

And that's Boxing Day. The family started watching the BluRay of "The Great Gatsby" about 20 minutes ago. My daughter's going through her Leonardo Di Caprio crush. I blame that damn sinking ship movie. 

"Gatsby's" a great film, even though the screenplay didn't use narrator Nick Carraway's beautiful first line from the book. Gorgeous cinematography and lighting. The modern music score bugs me, but that's Baz Lurhmann for you. Can't accuse his films of being predictable.

Have a good one, folks!

Getting On The Stapler Bandwagon - The Velos 'Slector'.

I wonder if we'll all look back on this period in The Typosphere, around Christmas 2013, and ask ourselves what we were all thinking?

Will Internet Historians (now there's a future career path!) look at this little corner of the web and be dumbfounded by this sudden burst of enthusiasm over this relic of the past, the humble stapler? No home should be without one. A stapler is one of those handy little contraptions that people don't give a second thought to but, if they are anything like me, will walk around the house cursing when they can't find one to attach a couple of sheets of paper together.

I think we have two modern staplers in the house. One is a cheap black plastic-handled thing that we got from an office supply chain-store about two years ago, and the other is a steel model that my brother 'liberated' from his workplace sometime in the Eighties. When he moved out of home around 1988, he forgot to take it with him. And since I was doing a little writing back then, I figured I could make better use of it than he. 

However, some of you may think the same as I do, in that, once you start regularly using typewriters, you begin to feel that you need other home-office items from the same era of the 20th Century. 

Given that it's a dream of mine to wind up with a study that resembles the Writer's Building at the Warner's Lot, circa 1947 (See "Sunset Boulevard", Dir: Billy Wilder, 1950 for some form of clarification), I figured I would require some office items to help replicate that look. 

So, I needed a vintage stapler.

A quick trawl through eBay a couple of years ago brought me to this nice Velos "Selector' stapler, which I'm guessing dates back to the mid-to-late 1950s.

It's all-steel, which would explain why it's still intact after decades of use, and it's got a nice, pleasant metallic green paint-job with some raised stripe detailing on the sides for those times when you need to staple paper fast!

It has the model name engraved on the front;

And it even came packaged in its original box;

Perhaps its one drawback would be that, being so narrow, you need to push down directly from above to avoid it slipping sideways, but I have to say this hasn't happened to me yet. Despite the stripes, I've never been in that much of a hurry to secure two sheets of paper together.

It works very nicely. I may have given it a dab of oil here and there when I first got it, but aside from that, it's still sturdy and works securely. With a coolness factor that's through the roof.

Well, gang, that's my addition to the Stapler Craze of 2013. Bound to drive the historians nuts!

Historian 1 - "Hey Bertrand, what are those long cylindrical things on the table next to the stapler?"

Historian 2 - "I believe they were called 'pens' back then, Myrtle. What you did was, you'd hold it in your hand and drag one end of it across something called paper. I'm told it was used as a communication tool. People used them at home, at work, even children used them in schools, which I think sounds extremely dangerous and irresponsible."

Historian 1 - "That's absolute madness!"

Historian 2 - "Indeed, Myrtle, indeed."


********************************

Thanks for reading, all, and have a great time off!

Fri 20/12/13 - RIP Mr. O'Toole and Ms. Fontaine, Merry Xmas Scott K & This Week's Watches.

Friday 12:58pm AEST.

What a friggin' week. Started off well enough, I suppose. Then it gradually turned to slight crap. Still, it's called 'life', isn't it? And if I stop and think about it (as I sometimes do), I wouldn't have it any other way. My wife has sometimes said (and she's not a religious type); "God makes the back for the burden."

That about sums it up.

Monday
Here's what I picked up from the Designing 007 exhibition;

No, no, I already had the Omega watch. These Royal Doulton bulldogs have climbed up in price on eBay since that damned Bond movie last year. When I saw it at the exhibition selling for eighty bucks, I snapped one up. Better than paying $100 to $140 on the 'bay. Now all I need is an office at MI6 headquarters in London. And a short, grey pixie hairstyle.

And, sadly, I learned that morning that Peter O'Toole had passed away. I got a copy of "Lawrence of Arabia" on DVD only last week. Did that do it? 

Back in 1998, I bought the CD of Frank Sinatra's "In The Wee Small Hours". Later that day, I heard the news that he had died. It was a Thursday and I was just about to begin my shift at a Bistro in Carlton.

The day after O'Toole's death, I read that Joan Fontaine had passed away. Now, I realise that the old stars of Hollywood can't live forever, but man! A little more spaced apart would have been nice.

Tuesday

Went back to the watch store I used to work at to catch up with some old colleagues. Place has been renovated and looks very nice. Grabbed a few catalogues to keep abreast of new models. Had my Railmaster on. That gold ballpoint pen is an Aurora. It was sent to me from relatives in Italy in 1974 and sat in its box for the next 25 years before I dug it out and started using it. A pen afficionado told me it's a fairly collectible pen, but it writes nicely enough, so it ain't going anywhere.

And later that evening, it was the end of year concert at my daughter's school.  I still had on the Railmaster;

Wednesday

Worked. Only two shifts left to go. And what a day it was. The owner of this store is one of the nicest bosses I've ever worked for. A canny business mind and a realistic approach to the highs and lows of retail. The assistant manager, however, is one of the rudest people I have ever worked with. Definitely in my Top Three. Congratulations.

I just had to work two more shifts with this person. And, when I got home, I made myself a drink;

45ml Finlandia Vodka

Two dashes of Angostura Bitters

One slice of lime

Build in a large tumbler over ice and top up with lemonade

And, in a moment of naughty weakness, I fished out that stale pack of Kent and lit one up;

Thursday

Worked. I switched over to my Tissot Visodate. I wanted to wear a watch that had both a day and date display to remind me that I had one more day at this job. The day went okay, except for another remark made  by the assistant manager. 

I got to the end of the day and gave the boss a bottle of wine as a way of saying 'thank-you' for the opportunity of working at his store. I also gave him a letter that I wrote on Monday night outlining his assistant manager's appalling behaviour during my six weeks of working there. I'm not sure if I'll hear back from him or not. He did say to me that he would be in touch sometime in the new year about more work, but I have no desire to return. I'm too old for this kind of treatment and I've done my time working with nasty people. I have to say, however, that the customers were a joy to serve. Not one rude person among them. 

Of course, the assistant manager made up for all the politeness that I got from the customers;

[ EDIT, 2:37pm- I wanted to add that the review that I wrote on this Tissot Visodate and posted up on a watch forum in October 2010 clocked up 300,061 pageviews on Tuesday morning. Which was nice. Of course, you can also find it here on this blog of mine. ]

I got home from my last day at work and my wife looked at me and said; "That's it, T. You don't have to go back there. The kids are on holidays and you've got time at home with your family."

By the time she finished those three sentences, the job was already receding into my mind's vault of distant memories. 

Onwards and upwards, teeritz.

After the kids went to bed, she and I sat down to watch a little of "The Bletchley Circle", a three-part British mini-series about four ladies who worked as code-breakers during World War II. Set in the early 1950s, one of the ladies reads about the third victim of a serial killer and begins to see a pattern in the crimes. She enlists the help of her former colleagues and they set about finding the murderer. Naturally, the male-dominated police force of Scotland Yard don't take their theories seriously. Beautifully filmed, and the acting, needless to say for a British production, is wonderful. And, of course, there are glimpses of typewriters here and there.

Today

I got a Christmas card from Scott K earlier this week. I was going to send him one in reply, but I know that he's heading to Melbourne this week and figured that my card might just sit in his letterbox till he gets back home. 

So;

I don't know if you had trouble feeding the card into your typewriter, Scott, but I had a devil of a time with mine. Must be the little diamond thingy on the cover. I think the platen and rollers had to wrestle with it a little. But I got there in the end, sir.

Okay, the garbo has just pulled up to take the rubbish. 'Scuse me while I run out and give him a six-pack of beer for his efforts throughout the year. Gotta look after the working man.

Finally, these arrived from eBay;

They are like the totem that Leonardo Di Caprio used in "Inception" (Dir: Christopher Nolan, 2010).

Personally, I think that he wasn't dreaming at the end, but my wife thinks he was. I base my view on the fact that the top quivers slightly. If you haven't seen this brilliant film, then do yourself a favour. You'll be thinking about it for weeks, if not months.

In the film, Leo Di C wears some very sharp suits and a TAG Heuer Carrera automatic;

 

picture courtesy of  http://coolspotters.com/watches/tag-heuer-carrera-automatic-mens-watch

It's a great watch. I sold a lot of them in my time.  And it suits Leo's character of Dom Cobb, without a doubt. Di Caprio was an ambassador for the TAG Heuer brand (still is?) and this may have had something to do with him wearing it in the film. But I always thought he would have looked a little more badass if he had worn a chronograph, since the concept of time slowing down permeates throughout this film. Which is why I have the Sinn 103 St Sa chronograph on today. I can't slow time down, but I want to make sure I make the most of it, especially while my kids are on holidays from school. There's much to be done at Teeritz HQ over the next month or so.

Anyway, gang, that's my week. A few lows, but nothing catastrophic. I've been trying to be a glass-half-full kind of guy for the past decade or so and I choose to see the good instead of the bad wherever possible because life's too short. And there endeth the cliche festival.

Have yourselves a wonderful Christmas (and/or whatever you celebrate at this time of year) and I'll see you next week after the presents/gifts have been unwrapped. Have a good one and stay safe.

Thanks for reading, all!

Sat 14/12/13 - Christmas Trees, Back To The Bond Exhibition, Work, Work, Work & This Week's Watches.

Saturday 2:17pm (AEST)

Well, gang, I missed posting this yesterday evening because I got home from work, had dinner (home-made pizza), and then crashed on the couch. The last thing on my mind was getting onto the internet.

Anyway, back to our scheduled program.

Last Saturday

A spot of gardening with the Seiko SKX031.

Sunday
Hammering out a post on the 1966 Olympia SM9. Crappy photo of the Omega Seamaster AquaTerra.

Monday

It rained all day, but I had some "unfinished business to attend to". I had to go back to the Designing 007 exhibition to visit the gift shop and take a few more pics of the Aston Martin DB5 with a better camera.

And a more Bond-like wristwatch. The Omega Seamaster 300 on a Bond-like NATO strap. "Shplendid."

Near the exit was the Aston Martin DBS. Bond's wedding car.

Got home, had some lunch, and then raced out to get a Christmas tree. I drove past the nursery that was selling trees for $55 and wound up at the market garden where my wife bought last year's tree. I drove down a pot-holed muddy dirt track and parked in a small clearing. About fifty feet away stood a large guy with a shaved head. He was wearing a transparent blue plastic raincoat as the rain pelted down.

Oh yeah, he was holding a chainsaw. He looked like the kind of guy that disposes of bodies for Tony Soprano.

"You're gonna get whacked here, Teeritz. Double-tap to the back of the head, then this dude's gonna carve you up and bury you here, less than 1k from home. Cops'll never find the body", I thought to myself as I switched off the engine and put on my hat.

He turned out to be a cheerful fellow. All the trees were about four feet high, except for one. So I chose that one.

"That one's sixty", he said to me as he pulled the cord on the chainsaw. Six seconds later, I was lugging the tree to my car.

Tuesday
Worked. Still had the SM300 on.

Wednesday

Worked, but switched over to a the '68 Omega Seamaster Chronometre because I needed a watch that had a date on it. Finally started reading "Journey Into Fear" by Eric Ambler. I love his writing. I've only read two of his other books and so the hunt begins for some of his other work. Should have bought more it back in the Eighties when it was more readily available. Here's my Penguin Classic Crime edition, along with another unfashionably wide tie. Like I care.

 

This story concerns an English engineer, named Graham,  who works for a British armaments firm during the early months of World War II. He has just concluded some business with the Turkish government and is about to return to England. On his last night in Istanbul, he meets a ballroom dancer at a cabaret nightclub and an attempt is made on his life a few hours later when he returns to his hotel. Wounded, he goes to the police where he is told it's better if he leaves Istanbul immediately, rather than make an official report of his attempted assassination, since there's no description of his attacker (beyond a strong odour of rose-scented after-shave) and it is of national importance to both Turkey and England that he arrive back in London safely to give his company the specifications of what he discussed with Turkish officials. 

That's as far as I got. Beautifully written. Spare, clear, and authentic. Reading Ambler makes you realise that Ian Fleming owes a great debt to this predecessor of his.

 

Thursday

Worked, and still had the '68 Seamaster on. This job of mine is temporary in the lead-up to Christmas. I work today and tomorrow, then a couple of shifts next week and that's it. So far, it's been pretty good in many respects. The owner is a terribly nice guy and I like his business-sense. He has a pragmatic approach to things. The products are nice and well-made, and the customers have been great, making it a pleasure to serve them.

But there's one aspect of the job that doesn't sit well with me. I'll say more about it next week.

When I got home from work, off came my tie. I grabbed a large tumbler from the kitchen, three ice cubes, a double-shot of Dewar's 12 Year Old Special Reserve (relax, it doesn't taste as flashy as it sounds) and topped it off with Coke. It was that kind of day. Thanks to that one aspect of the job that doesn't sit well with me.

 

 

Friday (Yesterday)

I was beginning to lose slight track of what day it was, because they all felt the same to me this week. So I switched over to something that had both date AND day. The Camy Club-Star. It sported a NATO strap with a stripe pattern. These straps often use the colours of British regimental forces, but I'll admit I'm not up on the exact colours used by specific military forces and regiments.

 

 

 

 

This strap seemed to suit this watch perfectly at the moment as I continued reading the Ambler book. Our hero, Graham, has eluded any further attempts on his life and has quickly been placed on board and Italian steam-ship destined for Genoa. The ship is a cargo vessel, but it does have room for up to ten passengers, although this is not, strictly speaking, what the boat was designed for. Graham is aboard with a small mix of other passengers including an old French couple and an elderly German doctor. This, of course, leads to friction. This is wartime, after all, monsieur.

And, also aboard this ship is the ballroom dancer that he met in Istanbul. Her name is Josette and I have to say that she's a nicely drawn character. Very alluring. But Graham has a wife back in England.

After the ship docks in Athens for a day, Graham goes ashore to take in the sights and buy English cigarettes and books and when he returns to his cabin on board, he detects a scent of roses in the air, and is later informed by other passengers that another traveller has come aboard.

The story unfolds nicely and you begin to get a sense of the walls closing in on our hero, a man not equipped to deal with professional killers out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

 

And that's my week, folks. I hope yours has been smooth and that you're all up-to-date with your Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) shopping 'cos it just gets more hectic as it gets closer to December 25th.
 

And have a great weekend!

Kentucky Typer Needs Our Help(!), Jazzing Up A Typewriter (or not), Using Up Paper, And What The Hell Is Vampirestat and Jetsli?

 

 

Hey, I just realised that I'd have to get back on the internet to put up this post, so here's the link to Kentucky Typer's post about his SM9 hiccup;

 

Margin Release On My Olympia Typewriter

 

 

Here's how the SM3 turned out. Looks alright and makes these buttons a little better to grip if you're in a hurry.

 

And the SM9. Seems to be a better colour combo.

Lately, say, over the past two weeks, I've been getting a lot of traffic from a couple of websites called Vampirestat and Jetsli.de. I think these are domain name websites and they don't seem to hold any relevance to my blog. Scratch that last sentence. They definitely don't hold any relevance to my blog.
I looked at Jetsli and couldn't make any sense of it. It contained links to Jet Skis and Jet Li! What the what? (as Liz Lemon would say).
Vampirestat appears to be directing a lot of traffic to my blog, but I don't want page-views based on wrong turns.
I'd rather rack up numbers based on people who actually come to my blog on purpose, the poor, misguided fools.
Anyway, just a short, quick rant, and I'm wondering if any of you have experienced the same traffic sources on your own blogs.

Thanks for reading!

Fri 6/12/13- Revisiting The Boss, Painted Garage Doors, Bond Exhibitions & This Week's Watches.

Friday 10:24pm (AEST)

Last Friday

I watched a 2009 Bruce Springsteen (and The E Street Band) concert on DVD a week ago and (by chance) caught a screening of a documentary called "Springsteen And I" on TV a couple of nights later. This documentary was a compilation of videos made by fans of The Boss. It was a pretty cool film. Afterwards, I began thinking about the Springsteen concert that I went along to back in 1985. I was originally going to start this week's watch wrap-up with more about the concert DVD and TV documentary that I saw, and how it tied in with my recollection of the concert I went to, but this became a long post. The more I wrote, the more I remembered.

And I hadn't even gotten around to talking about watches.

I continued writing that post and filed it away to post it up sometime in the next week or so.

So, my apologies for the misleading title of this post.

For now, it's back to the watches.

Saturday

Well, the garage door wasn't gonna paint itself. I had already given it one undercoat, but wasn't happy with the result, so off came the Railmaster and on went the Seiko SKX031 on the black ZULU strap. An hour or so later, I was done;

Dang, I don't know how to rotate this picture, but you get the drift.

Sunday

Thought I'd finish writing the letter to Keith Sharon in Santa Ana. Decided to take the Smith-Corona Galaxie II to some nearby factories and write while the kids hit some tennis balls around;



Good idea in theory, but the slope of my car's bonnet and the strong winds made it a futile endeavour.
Finished writing it at home later that evening. The Omega Railmaster was back on my wrist;

Monday
There were a tonne of dishes to be done from the night before and that morning's breakfast. Beyond that, I don't remember much else. Oh yeah, I switched over to the Omega Planet Ocean;

Tuesday



Got my results back for the final Cataloguing assignment that I handed in last week. I wasn't overly impressed with my work on it because I kept thinking I hadn't answered the questions adequately. My lecturer thought otherwise. I got 25/25. There were some minor errors, but the written responses were what got me over the line. I can live with that.

Wednesday
Worked. Switched over to the hand-wound Camy Club Star on a preppy NATO strap in the morning;

Thursday

Worked. Same watch, different tie., Yes, it's wider than current fashions dictate, but I don't give a rat's.

While on my lunch break, I saw two nuns seated at a table just inside the entrance to an arcade. They were collecting donations for The Little Sisters of The Poor. This was the nursing home where my Dad spent his final years. I had to say hello and thank-you to these nuns. One of them looked about thirty-five and the other was in her seventies. I explained that my Father had been a resident at Little Sisters and the older nun asked me his name. I told her.

"Oh, I remember him! He was a lovely man."

Was she feeding me a line, like fortune tellers who tell you what you want to hear? Was this something that she says to everyone with a similar story to mine? "Good God, Teeritz, cancha' even trust a nun!!??"

And then she continued; "I remember your Mother used to bring him these wonderful tiramisu desserts every week."

And my eyes got a little moist right about then.

As we chatted about my parents, I slotted all of my loose change into the donation tin.

We spoke a little more, but I was aware that I had to get back to work. The nun told me she'd be back there next week. Good, because I'll bring notes next week for the donation tin.

When I got home, I got out my fountain pens and cleaned the nibs. I had five pens on the go and thought this was a little excessive, so I emptied two of them and just kept three in rotation- The Visconti Wall Street (medium nib), the circa 1946 Parker Vacumatic (fine nib, I think), and the Pelikan M450 Vermiel (medium nib);

Meanwhile, Madame stared at the flames;

'Scuse the mess. Sewing basket gets out of hand.

Today

Busy day. My daughter would be starring in a promotional video for my wife's place of employment. We had to be there by ten a.m. T'was a cold morning and I rugged up with a hat and scarf. Filming didn't take too long. I had on the Omega AquaTerra while we waited;

The video filming wrapped up sooner than we thought. We were scheduled to go visit my old next-door neighbour at 1:00pm, so we had some time up our sleeves. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about how they wanted us to bring the kids 'round because they hadn't seen them since my Mother's funeral early last year.

However, it was only eleven-thirty or so. My wife and I decided to kill some time by heading over to The Old Colonist's Home in Clifton Hill, not far from my Mother's old house. And who cared what the kids thought of that idea.

The Old Colonist's Home is a retirement village. It was a goodwill project from a time when society was a little more philanthropic and community-minded, first built in the mid 1800s and mapped out with streets in an effort to provide a home for the original settlers in Victoria in their twilight years. Here's what the homes in this village look like;

The sun had come out and the morning was warming up. We walked around the place for about 30 minutes before we saw one of the residents. She greeted us by saying; "Are you here visiting or are you sussing us out?" Funny, but "sussing out" doesn't sound like a phrase that I would expect from a lady of her generation.

We chatted to her for about twenty minutes. I've always liked talking to the elderly. For the most part, they have beautiful manners.

How or (you're wondering) WHY(!) did we go there to begin with? My Mother-in-law's great aunt was a resident there in the early Nineties. One day, my wife (girlfriend back then) came over to pick me up to go visit her. Her name was Amy*. She was bed-ridden and totally sight-impaired.

She was 104 years old.

She spoke slowly, but she was still pretty sharp.

It wasn't a long visit, but I was honoured and humbled to have met someone who was born in 1891. Life is good. Simple as that. Sometimes, though, life can be a drag, so I have to commend anybody that lives to a ripe old age. And that's why I got a lot of time for the elderly if they want to have a chat.

Amy lived to 106. Wow! The things she must have seen and done in her lifetime.

We walked around the village for a few more minutes and I began to wonder if any of the residents here owned any typewriters. I listened out for the clackety, clack sound, but heard nothing.

I looked at my watch. It was time to go. About ten minutes later, we arrived at my old neighbour's house and sat outside in the shade drinking Greek coffee (never had it!) and eating Greek biscuits, the name of which escapes me right now. It was good to catch up with them and they were very happy to see the kids; "He look like you!"

We were there for just over an hour before wishing them a Merry Christmas and bidding farewell. Back in the car, I checked the time and then suggested a detour to my wife. I had pencilled this in for today, but it would depend on the time. It was now around 2:30pm.
'We can do this', I thought to myself.
And so, we headed for the Museum of Victoria. I wanted to go before the kids finished the school year. It would be pretty crowded at the Museum once schoolkids were on holiday.

Yes, I had been waiting for this exhibition since it was announced back in March. Once inside, I made a bee-line for the DB5, which was displayed in the foyer;

Obviously, you're not permitted to take photos once you get inside the exhibit area. So I stood in the doorway because I just had to get this shot.

Technically, I wasn't inside the exhibit area. But hell, after all I've done for (and spent on) Mr. Bond, I figured I was allowed this little liberty.

Besides, I'll be going back next week to spend some cash in the gift shop.

It was a great exhibition. Long-time Bond Production Designer Ken Adam's drawings were sublime. They had the scale models of the Aston Martin DB5 from "Skyfall", Ursula Andress's bikini from "Dr. No", Scaramanga's pistol from "The Man With The Golden Gun", Oddjob's deadly hat from "Goldfinger",  the list of stuff went on and on. A lot of costumes too. It was great. No doubt I'll go back to see it all again once more before it ends.

We got home around 4:45pm. I had the beginnings of a headache due to overdressing for the day's weather, lack of sunglasses once it got bright and sunny outside, and I did all the driving. Not complaining about the last part because I like driving. Just wish I'd brought sunglasses along.

Anyway, it's now almost 10:30pm. I started writing this post at six.

Time for a cup of Earl Grey before I hit the sack. Actually, I think I'll have peppermint instead.

If you made it to this line, then thanks for reading and have a great weekend!




EDIT- R.I.P, Mr. Mandela. Thanks for reminding us that decency works.

*Amy was not her real name.