Friday 25 April 2014

Friday 25/4/14 - More Library Visits, Impromptu Chicken-Sitting & This Week's Wristwatches

 Friday 6:53pm AEST

Ate a lot of chocolate during Easter. Swiss watch, Swiss chocolate, Swiss-born Bond Girl;




I thought I would travel light for the excursion into the city to the Bureau of Meteorology. I switched over to the Camy Club-Star on NATO strap with a preppy vibe...

 ...and wore it for about an hour at home before I changed my mind and switched over to the Omega Speedmaster Professional. I still had it on when I wrote the 'Sunday' entry on the Royal Portable;


Here's a page from a log-book at the Bureau of Meteorology, which had weather information hand-written into it. A few entries were written by William John Wills, who perished along with Robert O'Hara Burke during an ill-fated expedition to travel over 3000 kilometres across Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1860-1861.


Entries written by Wills were initialed with a 'W'.  People had better handwriting back then.


The Bureau had other ephemera on display as well as these logbooks from a ship whose crew tracked the weather patterns during their voyages. I took a snap because I was more interested in the typewriter font, ha, ha!


On Thursday morning, I saw one of these in the local shopping centre car-park. Back in the '80s, and even the early '90s, I used to see a lot more of them. They're a fairly rare sight these days. This is was a 'L' model (meaning 'last') from 1973. Perhaps one of the final models assembled in Germany. Production continued in Mexico until 1977, I think, don't quote me.
This model has been nicely restored. Picture taken with phone camera.



Thursday afternoon while waiting for my daughter to finish school...

INT: TEERITZ'S CAR--AFTERNOON

Teeritz and his son sit in the Toyota. Teeritz's daughter approaches the car. She's about a hundred yards away when she calls out.


                           TEERITZ'S DAUGHTER
                   Dad, Mr G******** wants me to take 
                   the baby chickens home for the 
                   weekend to look after them.

                             TEERITZ
                   Well...okay, but they'll be your
                   responsibility. I'll have enough
                   on my hands, keeping Madam away
                   from them. Hurry up, then.




I hadn't planned on taking baby chickens home for the long weekend. Once I got used to the idea, I was expecting a little shoe-box with some tiny, fluffy, yellow chicks like the ones I used to see in Kleenex ads on TV, where some little blonde girl would hold one in her hand while she wiped its beak with a soft, paper tissue. 
But no, these were a little older and larger. With long necks. 
I though they were vultures or ostriches! 
And man, did they make a mess of their box! It was filthy, so I went out and got another box and spent half an hour cutting it down and reinforcing it with tape and lining the bottom of it with replaceable cardboard and newspaper. I even cut a little window in the top of it to allow for easy viewing of deez liddle boids.

Anyway, they've been in the house for 24 hours. They had some fresh air outside a couple of times today, the cat hasn't eaten any of them, their box has been cleaned out (by me, how'd I get roped into that caper?) and they have now been relocated to the very small laundry overnight so that my daughter's room can be aired out. Despite the fact that this house isn't designed to double as a chicken coop, it hasn't been too bad. 

Have a great weekend, all. 

And Lest We Forget.


4 comments:

  1. Nice pictures as always!

    As for the VW, they continued making it here (Mexico) until 2003; the last edition model was sold as a 2004. The very, very last Beetle to come off the assembly line was sent to the Volkswagen Museum in Wolfsburg; I hear that's a very interesting place to see if you're into cars.

    Have a great weekend!

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  2. Good to hear you're blazing through your studies!

    Them chickies are in their ugly stage, just getting their real feathers. They were fluffy & cute a week ago. A friend of mine has a trio of chicks about the same age and they're getting pretty ugly too. :D

    Ahh, Volksen wagens, I had my share in the 80's - 4 of 'em, all pre-69. Gotta say they were fun and dead simple to work on. I'd have one again if I lived someplace where A/C wasn't a necessity.

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  3. @ Miguel, thanks, I had a feeling that I'd gotten the last production year wrong. Maybe I'll have to come to Mexico to buy a 2003 Beetle.

    @ Ted, yes, these chickens are cute, but they are making a mess of the box that they're in. Reminds me of those prison movies where there's a riot going on and you see burning toilet paper being thrown from the cells on the upper levels. And I can't recall how many times I contemplated getting a Volkswagen Beetle back in the 80s. I was seriously considering a split-window late 1950s model at one point, but would have been happy with a circa 1967 model, since they changed the shape and design of them after that.
    Never did get one, though.

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  4. AH! Miguel already beat me to that info. Never mind. Love those photos of the BOM records. Wills! Probably means more to most of your Australian readers than the American ones. Good to see your study is going so well. You may be a study free man in no time!

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