More Room

The Remington Portable. I'm not sure why anyone ever thought this was portable- it weighs a ton, and the case (not in the photo) is made of wood. This one was also lovingly restored by Drummoyne man. (Who probably didn't actually live in Drummoyne).

The keys fold out, for to bash the paper with.

The other typewriter, larger.

The Deathk Fan. (Delicious pun)

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Being that this is Australia, and thus it gets very hot in the summer time, I thought I'd best buy myself a fan for the room. Floor standing fans are universally ugly, so I decided on a desk fan. Then, as I do, I was wandering around an antique store when I saw a very dusty, very heavy looking desk fan way up on the top of a cupboard. Ignoring the practical details, such as might have put anyone else off- the price tag ($190- I got it down to 150), the lack of any cage for the fan blades- and the fact that it was made some time around 1910, at which point the making of desk fans was anything but a perfected art, I brought it home with me. Then, trusting in the rewired plug, I put it into the wall to see what would happen.

It made a slightly worrying buzzing sound, but the street hadn't lost all power, so things were going well. It got faster, and a little faster, and was producing a nice breeze. Then it got faster. And faster again. Looking at the side, I realised that there was no longer any way to control the speed. At this point, I hid behind a wall, believing the blades about to fly off and cut me in half at any moment. A minute later, I realised a more practical (and less cowardly) approach would be to unplug it. Unfortunately, the clamps holding the head up within the frame had come loose, and the blades dropped down and began chipping away paint with a noise something like that of a circular saw. It did turn off, eventually, but I felt rather foolish... I have learnt my lesson- NEVER plug an antique into anything without a real assurance that an electrician has approved it. Because, apart from anything else, you might damage it.

Redecorations

No longer white.

Indeed, colourful.

Dark oak kneehole desk, 1920's (by my reckoning), 9 drawers. It is a racist desk. On the inside of the central drawer is a sticker that claims it was "European labour only". Australian unions and cabinet makers tended to do that in the early 20th century, out of concern over cheaper Chinese made imports. It was a widespread practice, I believe other nations also did.

1920's Dark oak office chair, leather upholstered. Apparently it came from a board room.

More to come...

The White Room

A very odd day

I've always been jealous of people who have lives full of fantastic experiences that they just wander into. I've been reading Rousseau's Confessions recently. Actually, I was reading it, and then somehow lost my book, possibly at Uni. Which is symptomatic of my absent mindedness. But I've borrowed another copy from the library.

His life, it seems, was a constant series of these sorts of events. It's an excellent book.. very timeless, you almost forget that he is writing about his life in the 1730s, except for the constant romance of it all.

Anyway, to get to the point, I had a day rather like that today, in my own small way. I had a six hour break between classes, and was waiting about in a courtyard near one of the uni's cafes, attempting to write a sort of awful poetry without any concern for metre or rhyme. Which is to say, words in lines, not poetry at all. After a while I noticed that I could hear a piano, so I stood up and wandered in that direction, wondering if it was a recording. As it turned out, in the hall full of tables attached to the cafe there was a man playing in the corner.

He was rather small, with grey hair, completely hidden until you looked around for him. He didn't seem to notice me, and I thought it best to be inconspicuous and sit there, writing away. For the next hour and a half we were the only two people around, except for cafe staff trundling trolleys across, and a few cleaners who stopped in and looked momentarily capitivated. It was a very nice piece that he was playing- sweetly melancholy. It was just about the first cold day of the year outside, but sunny, and the hall opened onto the courtyard.

I've been at the uni for more than two years now, and parts of it are quite old (by Australian standards), which- being so precious, as very few buildings here date from 1856- aren't often used by undergraduate students. I had a lot of time, and it would be a pity were I to leave in a year or two without exploring them. So I spent another hour waiting for my class in an empty hallway, upstairs in the cloisters, underneath this magnificent carved stone ceiling that sucked up noise like a tomb. There's an enormous stained glass window there which, despite its mundane subject matter, looks amazing in the early evening. Those were my accidental moments today. They don't compare with Rousseau, but I enjoyed them.