Category Archives: Blah blah blah

Pay parking for Yarraville, Seddon, Footscray South

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Maribyrnong council is seriously looking at introducing paid car-parking for parts of the municipality that have thus far gone without having it imposed.

There’s obviously a lot of huffing and puffing and “public consultation” to go on before this becomes a done deal.

But the tenor of the council’s community and services special committee report on Pay Parking In Maribyrnong – which you can read here – leaves little doubt that this will eventually happen.

The pay parking areas being proposed are:

Yarraville:

1. Anderson Street Between Buninyong Street and Willis Street.

2. Ballarat Street between Simpson Street and Canterbury Street.

3. Canterbury Street between Railway station and Willis Street.

4. Canterbury Street car park.

5. Simpson Street off-street car park.

Seddon:

1. Charles Street between Gamon Street and Bourke Street.

2. Gamon Street between Charles Street and Station Road.

3. Victoria Street between Charles Street and Buckley Street.

Footscray South:

1. McNabb Avenue.

2. Nicholson Street between Buckley Street and Irving Street.

3. Albert Street between Buckley Street and Hopkins Street.

4. Albert Street car park.

Joseph Road Precinct:

1. Maribyrnong Street between Hopkins Street and Joseph Road.

2. Joseph Road.

3. Neilson Place.

4. Moreland Street between Hopkins Street and Neilson Place.

5. Warde Street.

6. Wightman Street and Selina Street.

7. Whitehall Street between Hopkins Street and Neilson Place.

I have an open mind about this.

The report is honest in stating that whatever other issues are at stake, revenue-raising is a significant part of these proposals: “The generation of non-rates revenue such as paid parking, is an important element towards achieving a long-term financially sustainable City.”

I can’t help feel a certain sadness that the sleepy village feel of Seddon and Yarraville is to give way to a more regimented form of commerce.

Pay parking for the Jospeh Road area is seen as a forward strike with the push for full-on development there growing: “Whilst Joseph Road precinct is not currently a saturated location, imminent multi-level development up to 32 storeys will create a substantial increase in parking demand.”

“Information and feedback sessions” to discuss these proposals will be held as follows:

Yarraville:

Tuesday, September 2, 4.30-6.30pm,

Sun Theatre, 8 Ballarat Street, Yarraville.

Footscray and Seddon:

Wednesday, September 3, 4.30-6.30pm,

Footscray Town Hall, corner Hyde and Napier Streets, Footscray.

 

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The beauty of western vistas

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The western suburbs have certainly got their hooks into me.

When I am visiting other parts of the city, even those generally deemed as being more aesthetically pleasing than the west, I am frequently beset by an urgency to get home to our “industrial landscapes”.

And in those landscapes, I find beauty and allure.

I revel in the weirdness and the sometimes startling juxtapositions.

I love tooling around western residential areas only to be blindsided by paddocks and old farm houses.

That’s why the work of Tarneit artist Rachel Hanna reverberated with me when I learned of it.

Rachel has been painting for 10 years and has lived with her family in Tarneit for two, and she too reverberates with the west.

“You can breathe over here,” she tells me while installing her exhibition, On The Way From Here To There at the Point Cook Community Learning Centre.

Rachel tells me that, among other things, she adores shipping containers as subjects – although she confesses she finds them difficult to paint.

Looking at the paintings in her exhibition, I find some that I recognise immediately, others that are less obvious – but they all have a genuine western vibe about them.

The paintings are for sale, ranging in price from $150 to $650.

When I venture that such prices seem rather low for exhibition works, Rachel quips: “They’re priced to sell – I need more canvases!”

On The Way From Here To There at the Point Cook Community Learning Centre, 1–21 Cheethamis  Street, Point Cook, until September 19.

For more details, go here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sardines in Seddon?

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Amid all the usual spam and SEO offers this week, Consider The Sauce received an intriguing communication from reader Tenille.

Here’s what she wrote:

“Hi Kenny

This might be a bit of a strange request, but I’m writing an article for a course I am doing and thought you might know someone who I could interview.

I’m planning to write an article on the impact of planning policy on the inner suburbs, with a focus on how new development is threatening neighbourhood character in the inner west, particularly Seddon. It’s nothing political and the angle will probably change depending on who I interview.

I want to steer clear of the whole gentrification discussion and look at whether planning policy is providing sufficient protection to neighbourhood character. In Seddon, the issue is not so much about huge apartment blocks going in, but more about rendered townhouses popping up on every second corner and the impact this is having on property prices, accessibilty and the local culture.

I’m hoping to chat to someone who has lived or worked in Seddon/Yarraville/Kingsville over the past 5-10 years and has seen it change. I’ve been in the area for five years, but I think it might be a bit of a one-sided argument to interview myself!”

After lunch – of course! – and a wide-ranging conversation involving a couple of fave Sunshine food spots, she and I decided the best way to handle this was to put it out there as a blog post.

For myself, I’d have to say that as a food blogger/journalist, I am usually focused on the business activity in any given neighbourhood, including Seddon.

Having said that, on the way back from Sunshine, Tenille and I spent some time cruising the narrow streets and laneways behind both sides of Victoria Street.

And I confess to being quite surprised by the amount of change of the kind she refers to that has taken place in the handful years that have passed since Bennie and I lived in Windsor Street.

In any case, we’re both interested to know what folks think …

Wanted a new beret, got a pork pie

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Smart, Alec Hattery, 235 Gertrude St, Fitzroy. Phone: 9416 4664

We’re a frugal household here at CTS HQ.

We wear towels of both sorts to threadbare so they can no longer be used.

We get the lowest electricity bills of anyone I know – the one in the mail today, which covered multiple 40+ days – clocked in at $246.

Essentials such as books and music – and even non-essentials such as clothing and shoes – tend to be acquired on a drip-feed when-needed basis.

So we don’t have much truck with retail therapy.

But every now and then …

Some good news on the job front and some other comforting news on the broader financial front warrant a visit to Gertrude Street in Fitzroy.

We’re not all-of-a-sudden rich or anything, but …

First up CDs by Guitar Slim, Allen Toussaint, Ike Turner, Chuck Willis and Thurston Harris.

Then a brief stroll takes me to CTS’s favourite bricks-and-mortar book store.

I enter seeking a particular book on the history of curries and another on the history of eating.

They have neither in stock … so I depart happily with four beaut books, mostly of the memoir/road trip variety and all concerned with American food.

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That lot should keep me engrossed for at least, oh, a month. Great writing about food – love it!

Then it’s right next door for me and into the headgear emporium known as Smart Alec.

When Bennie and I last entered these premises a few months back – on the same mission I find myself on today – the place was chockers with customers.

Today – for a while at least – I am the only customer, and I revel in it.

You see, my beret is looking tatty – I’ve had it for years.

Worse, it’s actually too small. So if I pull it firmly on my head, as in the case of strong winds, it leaves an unsightly band across my forehead.

(The one before it was too big, so regularly went flying down in the street in those same winds …)

I dig Smart Alex owner Michael immediately.

Here’s a man fully in thrall to his hattery passion, bubbling with chat and enthusiasm.

He fixes me up in short order.

Firstly, he spruces up my existing beret up with a steam clean. And then he stretches it so it actually fits, using one of three machines he has for precisely that purpose.

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This one is French and a collector’s item. We both “ooohh” and “aahhh” over it like some people I know do over trains and 78s records, among other things.

So it turns out the floppy, lightweight cotton beret I quite like is not a necessary purchase today. Maybe for summer …

In the meantime, while Michael is serving another customer – the one who has rather rudely interrupted my, ahem, “private” consultation – I luck upon the perfect hat.

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Finding a hat that fits, perfectly, first time is such a rarity for me that I sigh with the pleasure of it.

It’s a gorgeous diamond-top pork pie.

The price is right.

I don’t hesitate.

Maybe there will fewer gags thrown my way this winter about Mythbusters?

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Thanks for having me …

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Like, I’m guessing, neophyte bloggers the world over, when starting Consider The Sauce I simply bumbled along, learning as I went and – or so I thought – making things up as I went along.

As it turns out, almost all the bright ideas I came up with are simply routine fare for bloggers and entrepreneurial types everywhere.

(Aside: I can’t tell you how impressed I am that I was able to spell “entrepreneurial” first time and correctly!)

I came to know this from periodically checking out such sites as Problogger and the more foodie-specific Diane Jacob, Will Write For Food – and even taking in a few likeminded books along the way.

Mind you, I have also learnt there are definite limits to how much of this sort of pep-talking I can take in or even respect.

There comes a time when blogging becomes an end rather than a means, or even (it often seems) something of a self-help cult.

At that point, I yawn and switch off or on to something else.

After getting CTS established, one thing I instinctively pursued were collaborations – and collaborators to join hands with.

I’ve had a few misses along the way, but far more hits – and I’m continuing to find it exhilarating!

It’s simply something that dynamic, creative people – and creative, dynamic bloggers – do.

And now another such “something” – public speaking – has come to be.

Although, in this case, it seems so far that this has sought me out rather than the other way around.

I have been hosting the CTS Feasts – but in all cases to date the verbal aspect has been restricted to a few comments before eating.

The Westies reveal and FFB/CTS picnic was more of a public speaking gig, but even then of brief duration.

But it was at that celebration that CTS pal Pastor Cecil asked me: “Would you come and speak to my Rotary Club?”

My answer was immediate and emphatic: “Yes!”

In the meantime, thanks to the wonderful meet-and-greet oyster bar role assigned me during this year’s Rickshaw Run, I had ample opportunity to see how I felt about this sort of activity.

Chatting up a new group of eight people every 20 minutes for an entire weekend?

I loved every minute of it!

And so Bennie and I front Medway Golf Club in Maidstone to be guests (and, in my case, guest speaker) at a regular meeting of the West Footscray Rotary Club.

The golf club and its course is a revelation for Team CTS – so gorgeous! And yet more proof the west will never cease surprising – often with something, some place or somebody that has been right under our very noses all along.

We enjoy meeting the Rotary members, who I’m guessing number about 30.

There are some ceremonial aspects to the gathering – grace, the national anthem and so on.

And then lunch, as provided by the golf club kitchen staff.

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It’s rather good, too. The delicately-crumbed and tender fish is outstanding. I later ask the kitchen staff about it – they tell me they don’t know the English name of the fish concerned but that our lunch specimens had been purchased this very day at Little Saigon Market.

And then it’s my turn, after being introduced by Pastor Cecil with words along the lines of “Kenny is someone different who really likes different things”!

Off I go, covering the whole CTS story – the death knell of newspapers, the need for a whole new world to be created, the multiple joys of food blogging and much more

Referring only a couple of times to the rough notes I had scribbled before leaving home, I easily fill my allocated 20 minutes – so much so that Pastor Cecil is forced to gently intervene and bring my spiel to a halt.

As far as I have been able to tell, no eyes glazed over and no guest or member has slumped to sleep.

I field several great questions as part of the formal gathering, and several more informally as the meeting winds down. Many CTS business cards are distributed.

Bennie and I are the last to leave.

Thanks for having me!

So there you go – Kenny Weir, public speaker, open for business …

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All change at Werribee South

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If change is a given, then change and its ramifications are a way of life in the western suburbs.

For years now, or so it seem, one or more of the streets surrounding our Yarraville home have been in the process of being worked upon.

In the greater west and in a broader sense, the issues of change are the very substance of much of my weekly, regular newspapering gig, be they concerned with politics and culture or economics and infrastructure.

Transport, be it rail or road, is a particularly knotty and sensitive subject.

But for all the growth and upheaval in the west, there is no change going on quite like what is in the process of happening in hitherto sleepy Werribee South.

There, a project involving more than 100 apartments and an “integrated retail precinct” is rapidly taking shape.

You can see the developer’s website here.

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From all that I’ve read, no one seems at all sure what sort of impact this is going to have on Werribee South.

Added to the mix is the surprising news – well, surprising to me anyway – that plans for a Werribee South-to-Melbourne ferry service seem to be gaining very real traction.

The traffic generated by 100 apartments, their residents and service vehicles is one thing.

Throwing in the daily comings and goings of 3000 ferry commuters is quite another.

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The main routes into Werribee South – Duncans and Diggers roads – are fine two-lane thoroughfares for much of their lengths, even if they are invariably stained dirt brown by market-gardening activity.

But in places, both roads take on a distinctly backwoods feel, with potholes, bumps and dodgy edging to the fore.

As for the food portion of the development’s retail precinct, my expectations are at zero.

“Franchise” and “generic” are terms that spring readily to mind.

Degani, anyone?

Not that we’ve got anything against that particular coffee shop chain.

Indeed, I’ve been told that company behind it is also behind this place, which we like just fine.

But I’ll not be holding my breath hoping that Wyndham Harbour bucks the trend of greater Melbourne generally doing a lousy job of seaside eats.

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Twitter: Terminate account?

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After exterminating my RSVP account, it seems I am in the mood for online housecleaning.

So I am thinking of doing the same for my Twitter account.

There is a downside to doing so.

There are a number of people and groups who I’m pretty sure only get wind of Consider The Sauce news and posts through Twitter. They include a couple of MPs, community and lobby groups, and people whose reading of CTS and subsequent comments I genuinely value.

But I find it so ephemeral and the conversations, such as they are, confusing. I just can’t get with it.

Facebook, by contrast, I find – despite its flaws and creepiness – enriches me both as a blogger and human being.

There, I have numerous thought-provoking and often hilarious conversations with folks from all over the planet.

And FB messaging has become a valued conduit for running blog posts by interested friends and exchanging views on all sorts of subjects best not addressed in public.

The obvious solution is to post links to CTS posts on Twitter and then forget about it – and that’s mostly what I do.

But I find there is something inherently unsatisfying about not doing Twitter well that makes me want to be done with it entirely.

As well, there are plenty of people who would consider dropping out of Twitter as self-harm for a blogger.

It’s not a big deal – I have friends who will not have a bar of either Facebook OR Twitter!

But I am really interested in knowing how CTS readers use both services, and how they feel about them – both in terms of their interactions with Consider The Sauce and in their lives in general.

RSVP: Account terminated

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As a result of my “don’t get stuck in a rut” story, a journo mate strongly suggested I register with RSVP.

She had plenty of mates who used it, she told me, and the only problem was a chronic lack of blokes.

Blokes like me? Ha – I found and find that very, very hard to believe.

But I did it anyway.

Interesting exercise – and bit of a creepy one, too.

A few nibbles here and there but nothing of substance.

A few weeks in, I compiled this list of quotes from those with whom RSVP had “matched” me:

“I can think of better things to do with my time than read a book.”

“I enjoy novels and have read Gone with the Wind and the sequel Scarlett and many more.”

“Does reading my Melways and emails count? Time poor for a good read.”

“Don’t read much but do enjoy reading my Woman’s Day, New Idea and Fashion Magazines.”

“Not much time to read novels, but I enjoy magazines.”

“Not a big country & western, jazz or classical fan.”

“Definitely no country music!”

Obviously, when compiling my profile I had not done a very good job of communicating about myself.

So I updated by inserting the following sentences:

“I don’t read women’s magazines.”

and …

“These tastes very much include country music. But only the real old-time wailing, bluesy downhome sounds of the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Not today’s ‘rock with hats’. Yuck!”

And then today, in one of the three “matches” that RSVP seems to automatically spit out every day, I got the following from a person who claimed to be very much in to “music, music, music”:

“Please no country and western.”

Oh dear … account terminated.

Disc, disc, disc …

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It looks as if Bennie’s day of playing team sport are over.

We gave it a good shot.

A couple of seasons of Aussie rules.

He liked it OK, but personally I found such a long game played on such big grounds a dead loss for such young kids.

It no doubt had something to do with “our” team being hammered at every outing, but most of each game seemed to find Bennie and teammates standing around doing nothing and looking extremely bored doing it.

He tried a desultory season or two of cricket. Definitely not his go.

Most recently, we really enjoyed two season with the Footscray Rugby Union Club.

Bennie’s team had some success, he scored some tries and laid on a few beaut tackles, and we all loved the other boys, their parents, the coaches and the club in general.

More to the point, the smaller teams and more tightly structured game meant every player was involved to a far greater degree.

But now the logistics of school travel to and from Hoppers Crossing seem to have doused what was never a brightly burning flame.

That’s OK.

But much to my delight, Bennie has embraced with something approaching fervour one of my favourite pursuits – frisbee tossing.

I bought our current mid-weight blue model when he was about five and tried to get him interested.

No go!

He’s slowly improved his throwing and catching skills in the past year, though, so that he’s almost a match for his dad.

I can’t remember a time when frisbee-ing hasn’t been part of my life.

Is there anything more simple, magical, beautiful, spiritual, uplifting, graceful and satisfying?

It’s simply a tremendous feeling when the various kinds of throws – hard and fast, floating and landing gently for instance – find their target seemingly almost without deliberation.

I recall a story about how North American Indians were introduced to tennis by the white man. According to this story, the native Americans immediately assumed tennis was a game of co-operation instead of being one of competition.

Frisbee is like that.

It’s also a supreme vehicle for chillaxing.

Frisbee is something I rank with what I think of as the “zen” sports – shooting, archery, bowls, snooker and billiards, curling and the like.

If you’re uptight or anxious in the slightest, you will suck big time.

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Take it where you find it …

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Bennie’s new school routine is requiring a new domestic routine from both of us.

A 6am alarm may not sound so different from a 7am alarm, but the effects have been profound.

For starters, we’re both fading away and heading for bed not too long after 9pm.

As well, as my own start times are much later – usually around 10am – I am finding myself with time on my hands at a peculiar time of the day, one during which returning to bed and sleep is unlikely.

Breakfast done and dusted, school/work lunches made and packed, big load of laundry done, dishes washed – and still an hour or so until it’s time to hit the road.

What to do?

Or perhaps the question should be: What not to do?

Perhaps with a little practice, I can learn how to use this space as a gift … an oasis of calm.

In a period of time that has proffered many satisfactions and happiness and love, but also what seems an equal measure of anxiety, fear, anger and loneliness, a few pages of a book and some gorgeous, uplifting music seem like a blessing.

Lives lived in public

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Through long residence in the west, a son who is progressing through the various school levels and Consider The Sauce, I appear to have surrounded myself with a pretty darn good network of family, friends, acquaintances, connections and various mixtures of all of the above.

And for that I am truly grateful.

We enjoy meeting and greeting friends and followers of CTS at our now regular Feasts, other foodie events, pre-arranged smaller, more private gatherings in restaurants or even spontaneous introductions on the streets of the west.

That figures – Bennie and I have hardly been shy about running photos of ourselves; and our T-shirts!

We enjoy these opportunities immensely.

But the truth is, other people’s homes – with a couple of exceptions – are a mystery to me. As is ours to them.

Perhaps this is one of the downsides of having such wonderfully easy access to outstanding cheap eats.

Why bother cooking for a crowd when you can just as easily – actually, much more easily – hit one of the great local noodle or curry joints?

This seems to be not just true of a quick feed on a regular week night when the fridge is empty, but also for myriad celebrations that would’ve once been held in family homes.

Although, in a broader context, there are far more profound forces and factors at play than those merely pertaining to our great westie eats circumstances.

It really is a different world.

Forget my very early days in Dunedin.

Even in my 20s and in Wellington, the pubs (and the music) would finish about 10pm or 11pm, and then it was usually off to somebody’s place for a party!

How often do regular folks hold parties these days?

OK, tick them off – elections, AFL Grand Final, Melbourne Cup, New Year’s Eve.

And that’s about it.

Even kids’ birthday parties are conducted out and about.

So perhaps in many cases it makes sense to think of the places where people sleep as living spaces or some such, rather than as homes.

I think there are both positives and negatives to what really is a seismic shift in how people in metropolitan settings live their lives.

But maybe it’s time to get back into the habit of having guests at our joint for great Indian thali meals – as we so often did at our previous abode.

That’s right – the one right next door!

Buy a BBQ and start a garden?

Hmmm, maybe not so much …

Not all food blogers are the same

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Larissa Dubecki is, as I’m sure almost all of you are aware, the No.1 restaurant reviewer for The Age.

In a comment piece she has let fly in spectacular manner about food bloggers, rampant compromising and basically all the general all-round sleaze she can fit into her magnificent rant.

Here are just a couple of the paragraphs:

“You see them on blogs the next day with really enthusiastic write-ups about how fabulous the venue, the food, the drinks and the owners are (always, mind you, with a little disclaimer at the bottom about how the writer attended as a non-paying guest – their integrity is scrupulous).

I’d love to go (I might even get my face in the social pages!) but, alas, there simply aren’t enough nights in the week. When everyone else is off having their fun, boring old me is off trying to slip into a restaurant unnoticed under a fake name so I might appraise it from an objective point of view to give consumers the best advice about where to spend their hard-earned. How about THAT for a shit sandwich.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Wow …

Actually, I agree with many of her points.

And if the “Melbourne food blogger who is well known for approaching newly opened restaurants for a feed in return for a ‘review'” she refers to is who I suspect, then I share that disdain.

But, oh dear, she’s taken such a broad-brush approach.

It’s simple – not all food bloggers are the same.

Consider The Sauce regularly covers restaurants in the west that are extremely unlikely to ever gain coverage in The Age.

As well, while the writer may grumble about the “shit sandwich” she is so unhappily forced to eat, she works for a commercial organisation that accepts advertising moolah from all and sundry and which no doubt makes all sorts of deals along the way.

The Age and Fairfax are in the marketplace.

Such a high-handed approach would only make perfect, irrefutable sense if Epicure and The Age Good Food Guide carried no advertising whatsoever.

But they do.

And while The Age may be scrupulous about always paying for meals it reviews, is it such a stretch to mention the “media passes” its sports writers utilise to gain non-paying access to AFL games and much, much more?

The Age is also listed as a “partner” on the website of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. The nature of that partnership is not disclosed, but naturally the newspaper can and does run heaps of stories about the festival.

As well, such a sweeping put down fails to acknowledge the good work that many of Melbourne’s food bloggers do.

This fact, by the way, is periodically acknowledged by The Age and its Epicure section themselves.

Indeed, they have helped Consider The Sauce itself on a number of occasions and I remain very grateful for that assistance – including two stories on the fabulous Westies: Dishes of Distinction!

Perhaps if I am to worry, the very real prospects of becoming an unemployed journalist should occupy my mind.

Truth is, though, the idea of becoming considered a flogger is much more troubling!

Job insecurity as the new job security

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Today I went to work … for the simple reason I had a job to go to.

I will do the same on Monday and Tuesday.

And, hopefully, presumably, next Friday, too.

Given the ongoing ructions in the media in general and the newspaper lark in particular, this is not a situation I take for granted – even in a good week.

And this has not been a good week. (But perhaps it hasn’t been ruinously bad one either … read on, dear reader, read on …)

Once again, my colleagues and I have been tossed around by the winds of change.

In this case, it was announced on Thursday that the western suburbs affairs of the MMP group, for which I work, are to be merged with the western suburbs affairs of the Star group, which lives on the other side of the Ring Road from our Airport West HQ.

Details remain a little sketchy, but it seems the new set-up will be a completely separate entity from both parent companies.

Two things have surprised me about this:

1. It’s the first time I can recall in regards to similar announcements that sub-editors and production staff, of which I am one, have not been earmarked as pretty much the first to be given the boot.

2. My own reaction – which has bemused me with its sanguine outlook.

OK, in this case my own immediate work situation remains unaltered … for now.

But I wasn’t to know that when my boss called me on one of my days off to give me the news.

This rather ho-hum response couldn’t be more at odds with my feelings when faced with such potentially dire news on two previous occasions in recent years.

During both, I was teary and felt a wild, thoroughly unpleasant mixture of bleakness, anger and terror.

I know not if this equanimity is attributable to simply being too exhausted by anxiety and stress to summon up any sort of primal emotional response.

Or if it is simply down to a mature acceptance of facing the unknown and what I cannot change with whatever optimism I can summon.

Possibly, it is a combination of both.

For you, the citizens of the west, this will mean that in about three months you will get not three but two suburban papers stuffed into your mailboxes – providing they get delivered to your particular neighbourhood at all!

For myself and my colleagues, there is potential upsides to all this even as, as I have been led to believe, job losses in the MMP group alone number about 30.

Having three companies publishing community newspapers across the west has proven to be unsustainable.

So now it will be something of an old-fashioned head-to-head newspaper war between the Leader group of News Ltd and what I have been told will be called the Weekly Star publications.

It’s perhaps too easy and glib for journalists to proclaim suburban newspapers as the great hope for the future.

But I reckon they do provide some cause for optimism.

After a career mostly undertaken in metropolitan newspapers, I am thoroughly enjoying working on and with stories that have real meaning in local contexts.

Politics and sport are just two of the areas in which we seem to be providing a much-wanted service largely abandoned by the big guys.

I was told today that the circulation of the Herald Sun has slipped below 400,000 and that of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph below 300,000.

I am unsure of the accuracy of those figures, but still …

In the meantime, should Consider The Sauce continue to grow and develop in the next four years in the same manner it has for the past four, maybe by the time the whole newspaper mess goes down, I will be in a position to survive doing something I really, truly love.

PS: I wanted to use the word sanguineness … but I don’t think it IS a word!

Random updates

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So Bennie’s got through his second week of high school.

This has initiated major and not unwelcome changes in our home.

And a growing sense of independence for both son and father.

He’s handling the public transport and all that goes with it with aplomb.

He has his own phone, albeit a basic prepaid model.

And I’m happy for him to beat me home or be there, as was the case this week, while I am out and about on CTS-related business.

With the following ground rules – do your homework, read, chillax, no open flames and no TV until dad gets home.

It’s all going really well … except for the daily start routine.

Our longstanding 7am alarm has given way, for transport reasons, to 6am.

And it’s doing my head in.

By noon, it already seems a very long day indeed! By late afternoon, I’m cactus. I hit the hay the same time as he.

Before we know it, I’ll have him cooking our meals on a regular basis.

At the parent/staff gathering at his new school this week, one of the teachers spoke briefly about the looming challenge of puberty – his not, mine.

The gist of it was empowerment and involvement.

Truth is, I already rely on him very much for support and counsel … so I think we’re going to be fine.

There have been recent occasions on which I wished I had followed his wise advice to the letter.

I’ve mentioned the idea of me starting a sort-of father-of-a-teenage son blog.

He most adamantly thinks this is not a good idea.

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One of the rarely mentioned downsides of us all – very much including myself these days – being connected, what with mobile devices and even our Foxtel remote control and so on: It’s impossible not to know, at any given time, exactly what time it IS.

So the days of “lost track of time” have entered the realms of nostalgia.

How sad!

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Consider The Sauce Feast No.5 will hopefully be unveiled in the coming week.

And there’ll be changes to the routine.

Bigger, better … but equally delicious and enjoyable.

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As a result of my “gotta get out a bit” story, a longtime journo pal convinced me – via Facebook messages – to sign up with RSVP.

I had and have massive misgivings about this

But I did it anyway.

It feels truly weird and uncomfortable.

More than 20 souls have checked out my profile and pics, though I remain mostly clueless as to who or how they may be on account of the site requires me to pay for most such information.

And I am, so far, resisting that.

But yesterday someone who has the right attitude and the right kind of interests expressed definite interest in meeting me.

Oddly, the face and the smile are kind-of familiar.

I think she may live local – as in REALLY local.

Oh my!

****

This weekend?

A Footscray frolic, the Yarraville Festival and sleep.

Lots of sleep.

****

Some time in the next week or so pleasure bombs will arrive.

Namely, what will no doubt be a stupendously mindblowing and lavish box set of 1951-1983 gospel from the Nashboro label and long overdue reacquaintance with Freddie King, Little Milton, Junior Parker and Jimmy Reed.

Oh boy!

Words with baggage

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Feedback and comments are oxygen for bloggers – even when they’re not exactly in “pat on the back” territory.

This assertive comment on matters sartorial in my recent “must not get stuck in a rut” story for instance:

“Good on you Kenny. I don’t mean to sound terrible but i think you need to find yourself as a man in the appearance department. Your sponge bob tshirts and the like are not really a look that women would be attracted to. You would look amazing in a casual shirt and nice pair of pants. At your age a man should look like a respectable gentleman, not like a teenager. As many would scorn what i have just said, i am being honest in my opinion. A woman wants a man who acts and dresses like a man, not a teenage hippy boy. All the best with finding a mate, im sure you will find the perfect one for you.”

Today’s post on the fab Famous Blue Raincoat burgers spurred comments from a friend about the following paragraphs:

“We spy a young mum tucking in to a parmagiana as her partner’s steak sits unmolested.

He’s walking their toddler.

He returns; they swap roles.

Been there, done that … many, many times!”

For her, the word “unmolested” is simply too emotionally charged to be used in such a way and in such a context – especially when the following paragraph mentions a toddler.

What do you think?

I am genuinely interested to know. 

Alien organisms in Newport

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Futurelic Art Studio/Sci Fi Silos, 1 McRobert St, Newport. Phone: 0415 704 520

Head towards Williamstown, pass the Blackshaws Road turnoff , take the next left and … arrive on another planet.

Or so it seems.

Futurelic Art Studio is the mutant baby of Lixa Brandt.

Like her gritty studio/performance space itself, she is a far cry from the studied hipster veneer of inner-city galleries of cliched fame.

The upstairs loft and dungeon-like basement are used for launch parties, ambient music events and rehearsals, while Lixa’s sci-fi sculptures adorn the ground floor.

Think Alien/Bladerunner.

Open on Sundays.

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Back in the game again?

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My life has seen its fair share of romance, ranging from the earth-shakingly glorious to the very much less so.

I’ve never worked at hard at it – just throwing myself into life with all the zeal and the biggest heart I can muster has always been enough.

However, a couple of recent and rather amusing incidents have had me reflecting that it’s about time I started making more of an effort in cultivating this long-neglected part of my life.

Nothing too drastic …

Spend some money on clothes so I am able to step out looking a little sharper than I do wearing my habitual current uniform of T-shirts and baggy cargo pants.

Shave more than once a week.

Be a little more assertive and a whole less ambivalent when an opportunity presents.

Stuff like that …

Some may think a hyperactive food blogger – one who even regularly hosts his own blog dinners, for heaven’s sake! – is presented with ample opportunity to generate romantic potential.

It’s true that through Consider The Sauce I have met and am continuing to meet an astonishing range of fabulous people. And yes, many of them are incredible souls of the appropriate gender.

But overwhelmingly they are much younger than I. Or married. Or both.

They bring a lot of sunshine into my life – but in this context at least, there are different kinds of sunshine.

The age thingie is no issue at all for me and I certainly don’t feel my age (21).

But I suspect it bloody well is for many women!

On the other hand, I simply can’t see myself having any truck with dating websites and the like.

So what am I looking for?

The truth is, the merest whiff of romance would make me giddy with happiness.

And I think it’s important to keep in mind what a friend and I have come to think of as “The Vanakkam Principle” – after a cool slogan above the front door of that very fine West Footscray Indian eatery:

“Cherish yesterday. Dream tomorrow. Live today.”

So, you know, a date is just a date – and not a shacking-up proposal or any other kind of proposal.

It’s time to stop being such a slacker!

Back to bachelor

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So dad’s portion of the school hols is done and dusted.

Bennie’s off on a different kind of adventure with his mum – and I hope they have just as much fun as we had.

As she pointed out yesterday, these four weeks just gone were the longest uninterrupted time father and son had ever had to do nothing but hang together.

We didn’t do much – not so much as a single day trip out of town.

But it was an incredible journey of its own kind.

Sometimes all a boy needs is metaphorically warm home and a happy dad.

Do I miss him?

Not yet – but I will.

The giddy but hugely enjoyable pace of daily posts at CTS is likely to slacken somewhat!

Friendship

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It takes all sorts of friends to make up a life.

A pair of mine, 10 years or so older than me and from my decades-ago past, had a significant mentor-like impact on my late teens and then my early ’20s, at which point the three of us lived together briefly in London.

Much immaturity on my part and unaddressed expectations all round led to estrangement that was never healed.

I’ve searched for you, Phil and Ali of Careys Bay, many, many times online!

It doesn’t help that I expect you’re not the sort of folks likely to leave sizable online footprints – if any at all.

Nor does it help, Phil, that your name is identical to that of a Very Famous Jazz Trombonist.

But I miss you!

Of course, successfully tracking them down need not mean we would have anything to talk about after all these years – or any affinity at all.

Nor can I expect they will be as keen to hear from me again as I am to make contact with them!

For most of my life, journalism has provided the bulk of my friends – and even my family of sorts.

Changes to the industry means those day have gone.

Regardless of the esteem and affection in which I hold my current colleagues – and hopefully they, me! – the transient nature of the industry and my own now chronic role as a casual worker seem unlikely to yield the sort of friendships that last decades and lifetimes.

But I do enjoy staying fully in the loop with several much-loved buddies from my full-time journalism days. Sometimes social media inter-action even yields to your actual real-time face-to-face encounters – but not nearly often enough!

There’s other friends in New Zealand and the US so deeply embedded in my life that the relationships stay strong despite only minimal email or phone contact.

Sometimes that contact, by mutual assent, seems to be geared to be just sufficient enough to maintain contact in friendships that can and do spring back fully to life when opportunities present.

Like so many people today, I have friends I have never met face to face – people I “met” while participating in online forums and, subsequently, on Facebook and the like.

It is the nature of such relationships that they come and go a little more glibly than those forged in the intensity of family, work, school or neighbourhood circumstances.

Still, I count myself lucky to have accrued number of such characters who I am happy to call friends and look forward to the times when I can actually press the flesh with such pals.

Then there’s my son and children in general.

Bennie is now old enough that he need no longer be considered an intensely loved but nevertheless high-maintenance junior human being.

He’s grand company and in recent days has provided surprisingly insightful advice and reflections on a couple of issues affecting his father. And I’ll certainly be getting him to run his eyes over this post before clicking on the “publish” button.

It’s common place for parents to describe a child as their “best friend”.

But no matter how agreeable, loving and life-affirming such relationships may be, I wonder if “friendship” can ever be an accurate description of them.

And how about former partners and lovers?

In the most obvious case, I am blessed to have finally arrived at what seems to a be solid and loving friendship – although we can still have our moments!

In other instances involving other people, such relationships have not been created – perhaps out a lack of any necessity for such to occur.

Although I am again blessed in that there is – AFAIK! – a measure of goodwill and a lack of animosity.

Life, after all, does go on.

And among all the many rewards Consider The Sauce is providing to us, new friends are at the top of the list.

Letting go bit by bit

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When I was Bennie’s age – actually, for quite a few years even before that – me, my sister and our various friends had the run of our city.

We moved freely all over a town of more than 100,00, sometimes by public transport, but more often by walking or bicycle.

During school holiday time that wasn’t taken up by family adventures in the countryside, we’d frequently disappear after breakfast and not return home until just before dinner.

During those wild, adventurous times – or so they seem to be in memory, although I also recall periods of utter boredom and tedium – our parents had little idea where we were, what we were up to and with whom.

But that was in another century and another country.

The environment in which my boy is on the very cusp of teenagedom and high school seems like a very different place.

How different?

Well that, to my mind, is a very interesting question, the answers to which are impossible to calculate as the issue is so very, very subjective.

Bennie is a worldly, savvy young man who is able to cope with and enjoy a wide variety of social settings and circumstances.

But for him, and pretty much every one of his mates AFAIK, out-of-school company has long been regulated by parents doing the phone rounds and delivering and picking up kids.

That seems unlikely to change even as the high school year starts and Bennie learns to get to and from using public transport.

Are the tight reigns on which parents keep their kids based on any reality at all?

I would argue that the colossal increase in road traffic, and in our area the thunderous trucks, warrant a high degree of caution.

But as for the rest – train station violence, Knifepoint, stranger danger, whatever other bogeymen you wish to name – well I just don’t know.

Hard to tell the difference between being an overly controlling parent and one who is simply being prudent.

In the meantime, Bennie’s parents are learning to deliberately, slowly loosen the binds that tie.

Walking a local friend home to his place.

Solo trips to the library.

Rudimentary shopping chores or gelati runs.

Goofing off in our local park with a school mate who is spending the day with us.

Doubtless such gestures may come to seem themselves as restrictive to our soon-to-be-teenager – just a few weeks away, really!

But at least it’s a start.