leaving stkilda

wow. its been sometime between drinks. apart from being off - line, moving house, packing, and trying to find the time to enjoy the small amount of time between all this, i have been thinking about this blog. i last wrote on australia day. its seems an eternity ago. now i sit in a new house in a new lounge room in a new neighborhood. it was a tough slog. moving my whole life, driving the truck and reloading in a new house, same day. 35 degree heat. tough stuff. probably the toughest day physically and emotionally than i can remember. and now we are here. livvy loves it, more rooms to crawl around in, and well, we love it too. everything except that its not in st kilda. we are both really struggling being away from st kilda. we miss our neighbours, we miss the street, we miss the cafe down the road, we miss that everywhere we went we were around people our age. we console ourselves that at least we are a 10 minute drive from stkilda. we will be back every weekend anyway. every sunday all the dads from the mothers group meet at stkilda sea baths for swim class with the bubs. its a great hour. all the babys love or hate it. plenty are balling, i know i would have at that age. Livvy loved it. kicking and splashing and squealing. great fun. and a really relaxing sunday morning for me.
i went to laneway festival the week before. it was a huge day in the footscray surrounds. never thought id find myself in footscray, or enjoying myself for that matter. we watched a totally insane Daniel Johnston bare his soul to the crowd. man if he could sing he would sell a million records. if you're not familiar with this guy, download the documentary "the devil and daniel Johnston". the festival's organisers planned it well. by scheduling him the same time as the mainstream Mumford and Sons, it meant the Daniel Johnston's crowd was purely those who knew and understood him. because in reality if you didnt know about him you would have to mock the guy. for me, watching him play, brought moist lids, and i wasn't alone.

i watched Eddie Current suppression ring for what was the show of the day. in blazing heat, i thanked myself for remembering my cap, i lost myself momentarily in some seriously rocking tunes. some guy posted a minute of this show on youtube. always going to be better actually being there of course. i left the show early to watch the XX to be nothing but disappointed by their drab performance. and i knew i could have still been at ECSR.
it was a great day, we finished at some wee hour eating thai in victoria st. beer ended up on jeans, food somewhere else, i assume the bill was paid correctly.

Liv and i went to the stkilda festival yesterday. she was on my chest on the baby bjorn. she loved the crowds, and they loved her. there's two kinds of people out there. the kinds that sees a 12 month old and gets all excited, and the kind that doesn't care less. i hope im the former, i never used to be.

yesterday i learnt that my cousin died in ireland. he wasnt actually my cousin, but my uncles nephew. when his family immigrated in the 80s we were both kids and i took him under my wing i guess. in our teen years he become one of those guys who drank heaps at every party. like he had a drinking problem at 15. and i suppose now that he did. a love of shakespeare and the theatre, after school we disconnected. i heard he started hitting the junk in his 20's. he then served time for an armed robbery in which his brother died. full details were never learned. he contacted me on face-book some time ago. he died of an overdose last week.