Something at work made my grumpy, which was always going to happen I guess.
And I went to an exhibition opening with Kate.
The exhibition was by a young artist called Peter Nelson, who Kate met through their common involvement at Red Gate Gallery in Beijing.
“It’s like industrial coral”, I observed as we walked around the exhibition which portrays amongst other things, works on paper of massive, chaotic buildings. They’re re-produced in 3CD-form made from cardboard boxes.
A lot of his work is also based in nature, with rural landscapes dominating.
It was a lovely contrast to the rest of the day which I’d found rather frustrating. Ah well.
In other news, my old couch now features in an American television commercial.
I got an email from a bloke a few weeks ago which said…
A google image search for “old couch” pointed me to your blog, and the couch image from the post “Messy Old Couch” (1/19/2009). Wanted to get your permission to use the image as a very small part of a video I am assembling here in the US.
Of course I said yes… and now it’s online. Mine is the old, ripped stripey one, I bought in Wagga about twenty years ago but which now “lives on”….
Riley Street beer with the former brothel in the background
Forresters is definitely one of my favourite pubs in Sydney.
It’s located on Riley Street for a start which is such a lovely, tree-lined street. Thankfully it’s also a street where you don’t find many cars. If you’re on Crown Street and traffic is at a standstill, you can always take a left turn over to Riley Street and get a good run through.
And for many years, the Touch of Class brothel operated across the road. So as you waited for a friend to arrive, you could always pass the time watching men – uncomfortably – making their way in and out of the brothel, hoping to avoid the gaze of those sitting in the pub opposite.
They introduced the first cheap steak in the area, as I recall. The pub, not the brothel. And they have a great comfortable space which is equally good in summer as winter, though I have a preference for summer.
Riley Street Sky
And so when a friend called this afternoon asking if I felt like a beer after work, Forresters seemed like a pretty good choice.
“I’ll just go and ask one of the kids for a lighter”, she said at one point, noting the group of young men sitting next to us. “The kids”, I laughed in recognition.
As we reflected on being amongst the oldest in the pub, we settled down for a couple of hours of chatting, drinking, and eating their rather nice chips.
And we had a terrific table out on the footpath which, aside from the occasional visit by one of the many more colourful folk of Surry Hills, meant we escaped the noise of the pub, and had a great view of the street.
“You’ve gotta take a photo of that”, she said, as we looked up at the lovely sky, the trees, the moon.
I got excited yesterday morning. I heard on the radio there were going to be a bunch of late night parties around Sydney to celebrate the end of the “lock-out”.
The lock-out was introduced six years ago, in response to a series of alcohol-related violent attacks. As I recall, those attacks occured much earlier in the night, but the response was to restrict alcohol and trading hours around the city. Essentially, from 1.30am, you were “locked out” from entering bars in central parts of Sydney.
I won’t go into the pros and cons, and details, but it’s true to say, the general feeling is the response was an “over-response”, and that’s why they’ve decided to re-introduce later trading and to drop many of the restrictions.
With today being a day where I wasn’t working, I was tempted to head out, have a drink and enjoy some of the parties. I headed up to Oxford Street at about 10.30pm.
There was karaoke at Stonewall Hotel.Other venues, like The Oxford (pictured), The Columbian and Universal were pretty empty.
It seemed like a fairly normal night to me.
As @bjornhund pointed out to me on Twitter. Tuesday night is and has always been the dead night in the hotel/club/bar industry no matter what part of Sydney (or Australia for that matter) you are in. It’s also usually the quietest trading day in retail too.
It looks like I peaked too early. Maybe the weekend will be busier?
Nonetheless, there was a news crew from Channel 10, who I spotted doing some vox-pops on the street. Vox-pops are when you go up to random people in the street and ask them what they think about a particular issue, and then you string them together as a news item.
Last weekend, I spotted a crew from Channel 9 covering the light-rail interruption on George Street, beginning with the leading question, “Is this an inconvenience?”.
I didn’t hear the opening question from the Channel 10 crew last night, but I saw the look on their faces when they realised they’d stopped someone to interview, only to discover he was very drunk and highly abusive. “Don’t touch by f…. dog…” he said to one of the journalists. Classic! Having done a lot of vox-pops in my radio career, I felt their pain.
Last Friday Night
Some bikers, hooning it off at Taylor SquareAfter attending Harbour City Bears, I thought I’d check out some other local bars. They were all too busy, with too many impossibly young people, so I ended up watching a 50-something covers guy at The Courty intead.
Something must have gone horribly wrong in the kitchen at Tabou Restaurant in Surry Hills tonight. There was a period of between 30 and 45 minutes where absolutely NOTHING emerged from the kitchen. We imagined for a just a moment a scene reminiscent of “Fawlty Towers”. You know the episode where everything goes horribly wrong and Basil is forced to drive back and forwards in his mini to obtain meals from another nearby restaurant? You could see the signs of frustration on the faces of the waiters, though the patrons (including us) seemed to just take it on board, and we saw no evidence of people getting uptight. Aside from that slight delay, tonght’s “Taste Of Provence” menu was excellent.
The five courses – consisting of Zucchini flowers and salt cod fritters, Coffin Bay mussels, Lamb cutlets, St Marcellin fromage and a cherry clafoutis with honey ice cream – were all excellent. They were also matched extremely well with a variety of French and Australian wines. In some cases the matching was unexpectedly good, such as the combination of the St Marcellin fromage with lavash and grapes with a Grenache-Shiraz from Corbieres. And while a night at Tabou is not exactly in the price range of a McValue Meal, we both thought the summer degustation menu was excellent value.
One of the many things we noticed about the evening was the absence of “street smokers” outside Tabou. Ever since the new smoking laws came into place, espcially with the hotels, Crown Street at night has become awash with people. It can be a real pain the arse trying to walk home from Coles when there seem to be more people on the footpath than actually inside the restaurant. But tonight Tabou was packed and with one or two exceptions, everyone was happy to remain indoors.
As we chatted about a variety of issues, Damo asked me when the new “small bar laws” were coming into force in NSW? Dunno, I replied. He mentioned a friend who works in the industry, who planned to open a small bar as soon as possible, had told him small bar applications were going into the liquor licensing authority at a current rate of about sixty a month. We both concluded, as in Melbourne, many of them would close soon after opening, when their lack of sustainability became evident. However for a brief period of time later this year Sydney will have almost as many small bars as you find people outside on the streets of Surry Hills as night.
Amongst the many people we saw walk past tonight (we had a window seat) was fellow blogger, Monty. It was the second time I’ve seen him out and about in the area in the last month. With visitors to the area like Monty, you know the area has become fashionable! :)
The other sign of Surry Hills fashionability is that Lachlan Murdoch has well and truly found himself a home in the ‘hood. In August 2006, it was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald Lachan had paid $4.3 million for a two-storey Surry Hills warehouse on Nickson Street.
In May. Murdoch’s search for office space ended when he paid $4.3 million for a two-storey Surry Hills warehouse on Nickson Street. The building, between Crown and Bourke streets, is halfway between his present News Ltd office in Holt Street and Aussie Stadium. The premises are destined to become the headquarters for his new company, Illyria Pty Ltd, named after an island off Croatia he once sailed around and not from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, as speculated. There has been talk the 700-odd square metre Surry Hill’s warehouse will soon undergo renovations in preparation for Murdoch’s arrival, but this week the darkened building lay deserted.
That’s my street, I thought to myself at the time. “What’s Lachlan doing in my street in that old warehouse?”, I wondered. In the time since they’ve installed frosted windows and security doors, and aside from the occasional flash car in the street, you would never know I am often never more than 100 metres away from Lachlan Murdoch. And on Saturday and Sunday, you would never know it was where Lachlan Murdoch and Jamie Packer were finalising a multi-billion dollar media deal. As was reported in today’s edition of The Australian…
They spent Saturday and Sunday in Murdoch’s office in Surry Hills, Packer and his advisers with Murdoch and his. A constant stream of sandwiches, bottles of water and cups of coffee came through the door. The deal was only finally clinched about 10pm on Sunday.
When I read the story today, the first thing that came into my mind was “where did they get their sandwiches from”? I’m guessing it was Cafe Nikki, as it’s about the only place that’s open on the weekends who would do take-away sandwiches. And I wondered, too, if they popped down to the servo on Cleveland Steet when they needed water. Or maybe to the turkish pizza place just around the corner, as I often do? And I wondered if Jamie, who now seems more interested in gambling than media, had popped down to the TAB on the corner of Nickson and Cleveland Streets to place a bet sometime on the weekend? You often see a lot of “street smokers” there too, by the way. As far as I could see there were no flash cars, and no evidence of the rich and influential walking up and down my street, when all this was happening, But I guess it was a wet weekend…
If you’re a regular reader to this blog it won’t surprise you to discover that I went to the pub tonight. It’s a Wednesday night tradition after all. Some weeks I don’t go, but most weeks I do, to catch up with friends for a chat over a few bevvies.
But tonight it managed to surprise two people at least. First, my friend Sue who called expecting me to be at home. And second, a colleague who came into the pub and almost fell over backwards when he saw me. “Are you here for the Cuban Night?”, he asked me, referring to the music that was playing in the pub’s back-room. “Nah, just beer and a chat”, I told him.
When I first started this journey as an amputee, almost three years ago, I had a very simple, perhaps naive, mental image of how it would go. I thought I would go to the clinic, get measured for a prosthetic limb, and that would be it. I’d have “my leg,” and we’d walk off into the sunset together for the rest of my life. I saw it as a permanent piece of hardware—like a car or a kitchen appliance. You buy it once, and you’re set.
I soon learned that the reality of life as an amputee is much more fluid. In these first few years, I’ve discovered that a prosthetic limb isn’t a static tool; it’s an ever-evolving interface that has to keep up with a body that refuses to stay the same size. Currently, I am in that familiar state of limbo—awaiting approval for yet another new limb—and it’s given me time to reflect on why I’ve already been through so many.
The Shrinking Reality
The “problem,” if you can call it that, is actually a sign of progress. It’s all about the “stump” (or residual limb). In the beginning, the limb is often swollen from surgery and carries muscle mass that it no longer needs to move a foot or an ankle. As you start walking and becoming active again, that limb begins to change shape and volume with surprising speed. It “matures,” which is a polite way of saying it shrinks.
Getting fitted for my first prosthetic in August 2023.
The “Socks” Game
As the leg gets smaller, the socket that fit perfectly a month ago suddenly feels like a loose boot. To manage this, we use a range of adjustments. We start with liners, and then we move to “socks”—specialised ply-knit covers worn over the liner.
On a cold morning, I might start with a 3-ply sock. By the afternoon, as my volume shifts with activity and temperature, I might need to layer on a 5-ply or even an 8-ply. It’s a constant game of Tetris played with your own anatomy.
There have been times where the fit was so precarious that the comedy of the situation took over. I’ll never forget the day in the office foyer when a colleague asked what I was doing. My deadpan response—“My leg has fallen off”—turned a loose bolt and a failing fit into a “minor surgery” story that left us both laughing.
Walking on my first prosthetic in September 2023.
Albert, Bertha, and the Art of Replacement
Eventually, however, the leg shrinks so much that no amount of socks can fill the gap. The alignment goes off, the stability vanishes, and you find yourself back in the casting chair.
When I finally moved into my “definitive” legs, I decided they needed more than just serial numbers. I named them Albert and Bertha, after my parents, Albert Bernard O’Brien and Bertha Ann Dunn (aka “The Wet Leg”.)
I remember the first outing with the waterproof limb in December 2024. Standing in the pool, I was mesmerised by what I called the “aquarium effect”—watching bubbles rise from the pylon as the water displaced the air inside. It was a strange, beautiful milestone that reminded me that while I lost a limb to sepsis, I gained a new way of interacting with the world.
Wearing my “weg leg” in the swimming pool.
Awaiting the New Step
Right now, we’ve reached the limit of what socks and liners can do, and so I am hoping for NDIS approval of a new socket that better fits my current state of being. The wait for approval can be frustrating. It’s a period of “limbo” where you are physically ready for the next stage, but the bureaucracy has to catch up. Yet, looking back at the photos from 2023 and 2024, I see the progress. I see the transition from the “Enable” temporary leg to the personality of Albert and Bertha.
I’ve made peace with the “multiples.” They aren’t just redundant equipment or a sign of a “broken” process. They are markers of my recovery. Each new socket represents a version of me that has walked further, worked harder, and moved more than the one before it. I might have thought I’d only ever need one leg, but I’ve learned that to keep moving forward, you have to be willing to leave the old versions of yourself behind.
You know how some albums become lifelong companions. You don’t listen to them every day, but every so often, you pull them out and they feel like coming home. For me, one of those albums is Blood Oranges by Melanie Oxley and Chris Abrahams.
I first discovered this album in 2003 and was immediately captivated. Though I knew of Melanie Oxley primarily through her family connections to the band The Sunnyboys, this album was such a revelation. Its songs explore deep emotions with beautiful, often melancholic instrumentals, but they also carry an undercurrent of optimism. It’s a masterful balance of sadness and hope.
For me, the highlight of tonight’s concert was their performance of several tracks from Blood Oranges, including my personal favorite, “If I Let It Go?”
It was a thrill to hear these songs live again. Interestingly, some of their more upbeat tracks, like the pop-oriented “Troublemaker” and the title track “Blood Oranges,” were reimagined with a more laid-back, intimate feel. As well as they songs I first heard twenty years ago, they did songs from their more recent releases, too.
Performing at the Annandale Arts Centre, a beautifully converted former church, the duo — accompanied by a fantastic jazz double bassist, Jonathan Zwartz – created a warm, intimate atmosphere. This was a far cry from the legendary Basement venue where I first saw them perform, but it was perfect for the occasion. The smaller crowd and stunning setting made for a truly special night.
Melanie’s voice is simply beautiful and ethereal, delivering lyrics that are at times dark, yet always seem to hold a glimmer of optimism. Chris’s piano work is wonderfully meandering, often exploring minor keys with a touch of Burt Bacharach-like flair on the more upbeat numbers. The interaction between him and the double bassist was fantastic, at times almost improvisational.
It was wonderful to hear that after 30 years of performing together, Melanie and Chris may be becoming more active again. They’ve even started an email list to keep fans updated on future performances. This concert felt less like a one-off gig and more like a sign of new beginnings. It was a beautiful evening of music and a lovely reunion with an album that has been part of my life for so long.
