Keri Smith from Wishjar Journal has written a piece about boxes and living spaces. Timely indeed.
Petite and I also had a box we were fond of - a fridge box that, with the help of some friends, we turned into a state of the art space ship. We somehow managed to get into it and then wiggle it up against the wall. And then, of course, discovered that we couldn't get out.
I opened a few boxes last night but didn't clear out the contents. Once I know what's inside, they no longer interest me.
I should be using these tv-free nights to work on my MA but sadly, this seems to be of less interest to me at the moment than an opened box.
Today will be my fifth day without a tv. I moved into our flat on the weekend but most of our belongings are still in storage.
Interesting.
The first few days I didn't miss it at all because I was out, but last night I came home to an empty flat to cook dinner and instinctively reached out to turn it on, just to have some background noise. But instead, I cooked and ate in silence. And read a book.
It won't be for long - there are tvs that I will be able to claim as my own, probably as soon as the weekend. But it's interesting to see just how used to it I am, especially as I've never really thought of myself as a huge tv follower.
The flat is full of boxes. After dinner I fashioned some of them into rudimentary furniture - a desk, a bedside table (I chose the box that was labelled contents of bedside table for that). Then I fired up the laptop and did some writing, in silence, in my boxy flat.
Thieu has been back for a couple of days now, arriving on Saturday, the coldest Melbourne day for forty years, apparently. Yesterday morning, somewhere between first coffee and second, I got a call at work. At first I thought it was someone trying to sell me software, but just as I was about to politely extricate myself he mentioned Thieu's name. Followed by "minor ticketing violation."
It seems that Thieu's long and blissful period of fare evading had come to an end. The man asked me to describe him and confirm his address. I am not an evader myself, being far too law-abiding and prefering to just by the ticket and read my book without worrying about it, but for Thieu, I think, fare-evading adds an element of excitement to the otherwise uninspiring #64 tram route.
I knew that it was only a matter of time before he was caught, but what bothered me was that Thieu and I had not worked out a contingency plan for such a scenario. We have a code phrase for if we see inspectors getting on ("Storm clouds approaching") and I know that if he is ever on Death Row I am to smuggle him in the means by which he can top himself, but we'd never discussed the ramifications of being caught by the ticket man. Was I meant to give a false address? How would I know what address he'd given?
So there was nothing for it but to give the right information. Did I want to speak to Thieu? the inspector asked? Sure. "Hello!" said Thieu, cheerfully. "They got me." We had a chat for a while about why it was we'd never thought of a plan for this situation and then chatted a bit about the weather. "Hang on" said Thieu, "He wants his phone back." So the ticket inspector got back on to double-check the address and to let me know that a $150 fine will be shortly arriving in our letterbox.
The most recent round of Four Minute Wonders film clips are online at the ABC, complete with photos of the people involved. I haven't seen them all yet, but I particularly like of Sugar High, with its cute ,glass-headed character. Sweet. Another great piece to add to Johnathan Nix's folio.
And I'm not even bitter that our application got rejected. Well, not very bitter.
