I take way too many snaps of signs. They just always seem to amuse me somehow, and not exclusively when I'm far from home. I've no particular mission to specifically document mistakes and grammatical gaffes, although sometimes they cannot be resisted. But usually there's something else (going on in my head) that compels me to document.
Wrong inn innit?
I love our very Aussieness (by that I mean Australianness) that this is what greets you at the entrance to Erskineville Public School.
The purpose of my visit to Erko - 'piano'.
A triptych of a sign inside the piano. Salient advice, as timely as ever. 'Handsomest' - such a rare word to read in a set of instructions!
'LET WELL ALONE' - Sometimes even the piano technician may prefer to heed this advice!
Wise words for all, although this third 'panel' does get to the nerdy-gurdy nitty-gritty of maintenance and repairs for these unusual-but-notorious Beale-Vader steel wrest plank tuning systems.
The next thing, in Newtown - 'piano'!
I decided to make a little video using yet another newly-purchased camera (a Jaycar Sports Camera). For the fun of the exercise I took all the stills with this same tiny wide-angled device. This on leash area is just before a doggy-Mecca off-leash area. Few obey these signs, doggies rule around these parts. I run the gauntlet at a snail's pace, with my most submissive body language, but I can never entirely relax.
The next thing I spy on my back street ride: a pile of garbage with this book talkin' to me!
Balmain. The afternoon behind-all-the-buildings winter sun (or rather the buildings' resultant shadows) caused a neat tendency towards blue through the sports camera's tiny lens. I had spied this possum crossing the previous day (from the back of a friend's city-style motorbike) and sought to find it. Sydney constantly surprises to me after all these years. It just doesn't seem like a 'city' thing, a possum crossing - but clearly there are influential possums in this electorate!
Insert your own joke!
I suppose I photographed this to show a friend who had just taken custody of his brilliant new campervan. My decoration suggestions... but it also reminded me of my own extensive childhood travels, in a campervan! I wished my father would adorn our van thusly, it was what everybody did (it was the seventies!) but he wouldn't! Too practical (they obscure vision) too stingy (notorious tightarse) - all perfectly reasonable reasons. Check out the Rocky bulls f@*#ing. Rockampton, one of the many bovine-proud towns in this G.C.O.O*.
Here's the very cute way the piano teacher (in a tiny school for tiny children, not Erko) had marked up a recalcitrant note on a recently donated piano. Sadly, this was another 'Beware Of Free Pianos' story.
Another piano and I get to wondering exactly in what era was FEB. and acceptable and understood abbreviation, but JAN was not! I've heard of trumpeting past triumphs, but... nah, they arguably weren't that long ago, not that this piano seemed that old, but it's all relative. There are so many wonderfully ornate decorative details to be spied inside pianos - all this interest and beauty that (especially in the case of uprights) rarely gets seen!
A common sight now at airport newsagents. To me something seems amiss about buying a seriously chunky large book on how to finger your iThing - especially when you're meant to be travelling light. Something to read when you have to switch your iThing to 'flight mode' and switch it off, yes, OFF, people - deal with it!
I'm spending my days with two laptops side-by-side, taking multi-tasking to a new level. The third steam-driven laptop only gets a guernsey when printing is required these days. I very recently Googled how to shut down in Windows 8 on the machine that has Windows 7 on it. What's my point - I could have read it in the Quick Start guide, but less reading of bits of paper seems to be going on when urgent help is required.
Flashback to Singapore. Moderately juvenile, I concede, but I had to find childlike (childish?) joy in this eatery - where we did dine! More Singapore pictures.
A photographer friend snapped this - Vegan St - just after a spontaneous coffee and catch-up. As he said, 'What next, Tofu Lane?'
The obverse of Pie Face, not that I have anything against pies, nor faces! Brent is a real proper photographer (so perhaps it's an insult to say 'snapped').
* Great Country Of Ours (Coodabeens coinage).
