Good boy!

• 

This is a picture issued by NSW police. The man being led away by detectives is said to have been involved harbouring “stolen cars used in illegal activities.” The police claim the man rented a garage in Cammeray, where the cars were kept, and that police adventitiously foiled an underworld killing when one of the cars was stopped by traffic police in North Sydney. It is amazing how many crimes seem to be entirely coincidentally detected.

The man was arrested in Wentworthville, a suburb two train stops west of Parramatta. The picture doesn’t suggest he was living in any particular luxury.

The dog watching from behind the fence in the driveway caught my eye.

Lockdown 10

On Tuesday afternoon at about sunset I heard the first channel-billed cuckoo.

That’s about 11 days after the first koel.

You never hear so much from the female koels, who have a different cry but are generally more discreet, and I’ve not so far heard one. [Update 6/10: first female heard today.]

I’ve been amusing myself thinking what it must be like to be a male koel who has arrived ahead of any other koel. It made me think of my late friend Md and the time he arrived far too early at the Katana Club.

I’m not sure about gender-responsibility for channel-billed cuckoo’s raucous squawk.

Lockdown 9

Yesterday, not long before dawn, I heard the first cuckoo.

Or, more precisely, a male koel.

How far behind can the channel-billed cuckoos be?

False flag?

At the “anti-lockdown” demonstration in Victoria Park back in July.

Now there is great alarm as the virus has skipped over the divide into vulnerable indigenous communities in the west of the state. It’s not as if that vulnerability was ever a secret.

Lockdown 7

Plenty to obsess on here. There’s a kind of skip to get out of the cross-rhythm which is a particular challenge.

Fortunately or not, my piano remains intact and not chopped-up by the kerbside.

Lockdown 6

This unprepossessing white-man’s midden spotted on the curb during a lockdown walk. Someone’s been doing a household cleanup.

There is more to it than initially meets the eye:

No sign, oddly, of either the keyboard or, less surprisingly, the frame.

Lockdown 5

So I washed the socks. There were more than I had pegs for.

Take it from one who now knows, unless you want to spend time sorting approximately 80 black socks into pairs (including, inevitably, a few pseudo pairs at the end) it’s probably a better idea to just wash your socks as you go along.

Sorted.

I have also been playing some Schumann – Op 12, Op 21 – and, following on from listening to op 21, listening to his Op 56 for Pedalflugel.

Lockdown 4

The idea was to wear all my winter socks. To make sure I wore them all I would save them up for one enormous sock wash.

Fugitive and compromised socks were re-united and darned as applicable.

To speed things up, I took to wearing double socks. Not too bad at this time of the year.

“The excitement’s mounting,” I announced.

“Corona, set him free!” cried D, as if to the heavens above.

Lockdown 3

General mood (not just me): Cranky.

Where to start?

Forget the specifics of the pandemic.  Too depressing.

Better far a remoaner grudge against the forced amalgamation in 2016 of Canterbury with Bankstown to form the mega Canterbury-Bankstown “LGA” (Local Government Area, if you haven’t mastered the lingo).  This has been revived by the NSW Health Officer’s habit of imposing restrictions based on LGAs.

From today’s SMH:

Suburbs such as Hurlstone Park, Earlwood, Croydon Park and Canterbury have barely a case between them and are a 28-kilometre drive from virus-ridden Fairfield.

They appear to have been caught in tougher restrictions due to 2016 council amalgamations, when Canterbury and Bankstown merged to form the most populous local government area in Sydney.

‘‘We at the ‘Paris end’ of Canterbury should not be lumped in with Bankstown, Fairfield,’’ commented [Hurlstone Park] local Jeff Swain.

What about Ashbury? Is this how the SMH rewards Con Vaitsas?

Lockdown 2