Yesterday at the tram stop at lunchtime was a woman with the most incredible hair.

It went straight up, about 20cm off her scalp, and was dark red. A kind of big burgundy mohawk.

She looked about 60, and was pushing a pram with (I assume) her grandson in it. As she walked along the stop, heads turned to look, then away again before she saw them staring.

Almost one of those “wish I had my camera” moments.

On a completely unrelated note, I got sent a computer program called The Aussie English CD to review. Check it out here.

I had a dream on Friday night. For someone who doesn’t often remember dreams, it was quite startling in the amount of detail (and plot, for want of a better word).

Staying overnight with Isaac, Jeremy and I at my house were my lovely Marita, my friends Tony and Rae, their daughter Phoebe, my sister Susannah, her husband Adrian, and Zoe (who is not a blood relative but probably qualifies as a pseudo-second-cousin).

On the bus driver’s radio was Kevin Rudd, ALP foreign affairs spokesman. But he wasn’t talking about foreign affairs, he was talking about transport, saying something about getting to Werribee at 15:00 the day before. Then he started talking about foreign affairs, something about a withdrawl from somewhere called Herrion Island (or similar).

Then I woke up.

Here is my coffee mug at work. Theoretically it’s a coffee mug, but I don’t drink coffee.

Post a picture of your mug! Link in the Trackbacks or comments.

• As usual, move your mouse over the picture for descriptions of various bits (note Firefox may abbreviate)
• Past photos in this series
• Notes on creating the image map/hot spots with text

I got one of those lifestyle surveys in the mail a while back. Rather than just throw it in the bin, I pondered who would be the most unusable respondent they could possibly get a reply back from? Why it would be Ron and Jeff, the two layabouts I wrote about several years ago.

So I decided they could answer the survey instead of me.

Note: this should explain the phone numbers used.

Okay, I may get accused of being an inner-suburbs zone 1 snob because of the suburb I’ve used… it’s all in fun though. Here’s the first section of answers…

(more…)

Ten points to the train driver the other night who announced something along the lines of:

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Tonight we’ll be remembering the Thunderbirds. Shortly we’ll be touching down at the planet South Yarra, where voyagers for Sandringham galaxy can change. Then we’ll be travelling at warp speed, express to Caulfield, before visiting all star systems to far the distant planet of Cranbourne. FAB Virgil, and Thunderbirds are go!”

It had everyone smiling and laughing for a few minutes.

Speaking of the Thunderbirds, was amused to see the picture used on the front cover of The Age Agenda section last Sunday to promote the Melbourne Show, given the proximity to the Thunderbirds picture above. It’s David Bolton and his prize cow Paige Carmina.

I wonder if he realised how much he looks like a Thunderbird?

Sometimes I look at the big pile of dishes in the sink, and wish I had a dishwasher.

But then, half the work of washing the dishes is to stack them up neatly, and clear the dish rack of previous loads. Even with a dishwasher, you still need to do this.

And for the sake of water consumption, you need to wait until it’s full. Which might mean having multiples of things I use frequently. Or washing those by hand. Not really an issue.

Perhaps not a top priority, but something to be considered for a kitchen in a house of my own, somewhere in the deep dark distant future.

Geelong beat the Bombers by ten points on Saturday night in a rain-soaked MCG. Next comes the Preliminary Finals, and it’s the Brisbane Lions, which isn’t going to be an easy one to win.

I’m not the world’s biggest footy fan, but I do like to keep an eye on Geelong. It’s been a while since they got this close to a Grand Final. I’m ashamed to say I have no club clothing or merchandise (bar a key tag). I might have to invest in a scarf or a jumper or something to show my support.

So how did I become a Geelong supporter? With a dad from Queensland and a mother from England, there’s no great football tradition in my family. No, it was all by chance.

When I was a young’un, a school friend of mine, Mark, was a Kangaroos supporter. One day I said to my mum that I’d like to get a football jumper. So we went into Myers in the city and looked. Lacking any other affiliation, I decided I’d align myself with Mark’s team and get a Kangaroos jumper.

The shop was out of Kangaroos jumpers. What teams did they have that I could adopt? Looking around, I thought about a school holiday day trip to Geelong I’d taken, and noted the colours were similar (okay so they’re horizontal instead of vertical, and it’s navy blue instead of royal blue, but this is little kid logic we’re talking about). So I said Geelong.

Presto, one Geelong supporter. And as is specified deep down somewhere in the AFL’s bylaws, as well as in Melburnian race memory, once one has a team, it cannot be changed for any reason whatsoever. It’s part of your identity, part of who you are. So I’m still a Geelong supporter.

My sister (for reasons I don’t recall) became a South Melbourne Swans supporter. Over the following few years my dad would take my sister and I to games, some at grounds no longer used… a cold and windy VFL Park… down to Moorabbin to play St Kilda… Arden Street to play the Roos… Western Oval to play Footscray. One time he even got us grand final tickets, and we went along to the MCG, only to find they were in the (now gone) standing section, and we were rather too short to see anything. We decided to go home and watch it on telly, but at least I could say I’d been in the ‘G on Grand Final day.

It’s been several years since I last went to the footy. It’s probably time I started taking the kids, who have somehow picked up a mix of Tigers, Bombers and Cats affiliations — maybe now is the time to get THAT sorted out!

I won’t be going, but I will try to keep tabs on the Cats next Saturday night. Here’s hoping for victory over the Lions. GO CATS!

How did your team get your support?

On this day 150 years ago, at 12:20pm, Australia’s first train service departed Flinders Street Station bound for Port Melbourne.

With that in mind, here is my local railway station.

This picture was taken on Friday morning. I actually use various stations around here depending on precisely where I’m going that day, but this is the closest one to my house. The railway line here opened in 1879, and was electrified in 1922.

Want to post a picture of your local train/tram/bus stop? (Or your parking space perhaps?) Link in the Trackbacks or comments.

• Past photos in this series
• Notes on creating the image map/hot spots with text

To commemorate this anniversary, there were steam train rides between Caulfield and Sunshine today. At $2 a pop, it was standing room only, but everyone seemed to have a good time.

PS. Museum of Victoria has a great 150 years of railways web site.