Author Archives: shortleftleg

Jelly Wrestling on the Radio

A message from Lisa del Nord, for anyone who has been following the plans for another visit to the Oxford Tavern for Jelly Wrestling this Wednesday night…

She writes:

there will be a spot about this Sydney Ladies Artists Club/Bilateral Petersham excursion on community radio 2SER‘s Overdrive program today, Monday the 8th of May around 4pm, with a special playing of interviews with the Sex Bomb jelly wrestlers from a radio documentary on the topic made by host Daz Chandler… tune on in!

For those outside Sydney, you can listen to 2ser online. To stream the radio through your internet, visit
http://www.2ser.com/radio2ser/stream

front porch

Mick and I are sitting on the front porch, drinking coffee in the sun. A man with long brown hair passes by. We say hello. He stops momentarily and hovers at the letterboxes.

“Hey, are you the guys who live around the back?”
“Yeah, around the back of this place, that’s right.”
“You didn’t leave a DVD player out on Chester Street on that old suitcase, did you?”
“Nah, that wasn’t us.”
“Oh. Never mind then.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Oh, I was just going to ask, if it was you that left it out…I was going to ask if you had the remote.”

Petersham, Thursday May 4th, 2006

Two ginger cats in the house now. We keep trying to get them to meet and work out their differences. But whenever Drazic comes inside, Ruben hides under the bed. And on the odd occasion when Ruben ventures out into the kitchen, Drazic gracefully absents himself to the garden. This has been going on for four days.

*

After seven, Roberta called me up. Was I still coming over? The Petersham Bowling and Community Club had been shortlisted to host an ABC radio show with James O’Louglin. Along with the other contestants, Roberta was booked in to do a live pitch on air. James was then going to announce the winner immediately. Some club people were gathering at Roberta and John’s to drink a drop of champagne and lend support. I got out of the bath where I’d been languishing, and made my way over to Brighton Street, stopping for some hot and very salty chips from Silvas to line my stomach in preparation for the booze.
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food

I turned right onto Hordern Street. Presumably, the famous Anthony Hordern, who ran a huge department store in Sydney, lived around here. I figured I’d be able to weave through to Parramatta Road. But half way down, I could see it was a “no through road”. In a garage at the end of the cul-de-sac, a woman was fussing over piles of cardboard boxes. I waved and walked up to her. She was packing vegetables. Organic vegies in Petersham!
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in the archives

Every Tuesday, the Marrickville Council archives, upstairs in the Petersham Town Hall, are open to the public. I arrived just after eleven. A ballroom dancing class was in progress in the Hall itself. Graceful Chinese couples spinning and twirling. It was just as Vanessa had described:

Ballroom dancers seen through doorways. Makes the heart hot air balloon.

I was seized with a sudden craving to join them on the dancefloor. Perhaps I could convince Vanessa to be my dancing pardner next Tuesday morn. Then I could show off some of the scorchin’ moves I learned in highschool…
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more jelly fun

The following is lifted from the SLAC (Sydney Ladies Artists Club) website. For those of you who missed last week’s Jelly Wrestling Extravaganza, we offer you a second chance!

The idea, cooked up by Lisa, was to try and get as many ladies into the pub as possible. We reckon this will change the entire dynamic of the event. It’s a valiant demonstration of the power of audience participation! So keep next Wednesday night in yer diary, ladies! (Of course, men welcome too…)

It’s wet, it’s wild, it’s the contentious gender spectacle of live jelly wrestling!

SLAC joins forces with Bilateral Petersham for a second round of soft-porn sightseeing at the infamous Oxford Tavern. Soak up the view (& flying jelly) from front row in the back room. Enjoy strip shows between rounds by consummate performers with truly impressive command of their hamstrings. But best of all, be there as we collectively effect a subtle intervention in the event dynamics and displace the primacy of the heterosexual male gaze… we’re going to stack the joint with Sydney Ladies, Artists or otherwise!

where: The Oxford Tavern, corner New Canterbury Rd & Crystal St Petersham
when: Wednesday 10th May 9pm
$7 door charge

bring your lady friends!

the snails ate my mail

vanessa's secret list

Exciting items in my mailbox this morning! A two page handwritten letter, and a list of “some secrets that may help you”.

This must be the reconstructed version of the note that Vanessa delivered two weeks ago, and which mysteriously disappeared. Inserted in the letter was a rabbit shape cut out of floral contact (the sticky stuff we used to cover books with at school). I stuck the rabbit on my mailbox, around the corner from my new “no junk mail” plaque.

Read the full letter over at my Flickr.

it moved with stealth…

Believe it or not. Around this time last year, a UFO was sighted in the ‘sham:

UFOINFO Sighting Form Report
Name: Chris Flynn
Location: Petersham, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sunday, 10/04/05, 19.55hrs (Local)
Approach Direction: East
Departure Direction: West
Witness Direction: North
Date: Sunday, 10/04/05, 19.55hrs (Local)

I reclined on my garden bench to get a better look at the constellation of Orion, which lay directly above me, periodically using my binoculars to get a more detailed view. After a while I noticed what can only be described as a large shadow moving in a controlled fashion across the sky. It could only be seen as its contrasted very slightly with the not yet dark nightscape. I quickly raised my binoculars to check the ghostly image only to see a very dark (Black) boomerang or ‘V’ shaped object silhouetted against the evening sky. It moved with stealth and was completely silent. I found it impossible to gauge how big the craft was but the lights which were visible (only with binoculars) around its circumference gave me the instinctive feeling that I was looking at something significant […] This experience left me both excited and shaken.

And not only that! It seems that the other ‘shams attract these unidentified thingies too!

THREE DAYLIGHT DISCS CAVORT OVER MASSACHUSETTS
On Saturday, April 27, 1996, at approximately 6 p.m., a man standing on the eastern shore of the Quabbin Reservoir, just west of Petersham, Massachusetts, spotted three UFOs in the sky over the huge man-made lake.

“I saw them moving in a circular, sweeping sort of motion,” the man said. “They made no noise and produced only a brightening light that seemed to silhouette them against the sky.” At first “the UFOs appeared as lines in the sky,” he added, “but by their appearance I judged them to be flat or concave in shape. The area (of flight) was west of my position looking over the Quabbin. The objects were moving at what I would say was 30 miles per hour in a north-south rotation, switching directions in the air. I watched them for about five minutes until the objects zipped over the (Berkshire) hills to the west.”

I love these descriptions. Since it’s clearly impossible to show photographs, the UFO reports must rely on words alone. The verbatim accounts give an authentic, “eyewitness” feel to something entirely unsubstantial.