SWAG

One of the great and truly communitarian things about living in the suburbs is the anonymous exchange and free circulation of junk among neighbors. Whatever you have that you don't want anymore is dumped on the further verge of the footpath outside your house, ostensibly so the council truck can come and remove it for you, but really so that the people from three doors up can adopt your clutter for a while, anything up to a decade really, before putting it out for the next neighbour to surreptitiously smuggle home.

So the people over the road decided to chuck out quite a lot of stuff, but by the time the truck came to get it the next morning not a lot was still there. This is what ended up in our backyard:



These two large black boxes. Kewl, huh! One is just a suitcase (old suitcases are interesting but not really very useful) but the other is some kind of ancient tool box made of wood with little wood shelf / drawer thingies. I think it's quite impressive really. It actually had tools and upholstery tacks and such floating around inside. But again, without any obvious function.



Then there are these two gorgeous little folding chairs made of dusty green wrought iron topped with red painted slats. They're for kids with tiny little kid backsides. They even have little chipped aluminium discs with "BEST TOYS MELBOURNE" attached, which says something about how old they must be because I would bet a large black wooden box that there are very few manufacturers of kiddie outdoor furniture operational in Melbourne any more. Dorian (who knows about Australian Standards etc zzzz) also says they have 'fingertrap hazards' & the same killjoys who don't like fireworks etc wouldn't allow them today.
But the real score was.......drum roll please.........




A MALVERN STAR pushbike !!!!!!!



The tyres are totally flat and there's foot brakes and no gears (so it's not the best bike for the hilly Yarra Valley.) Indeed, I already have a very good bike. But oh my goodness, how badly did I want one of these when I was a kid? It's even got the white quilted plastic seat that Lisa Pedretti's bike had in 1978 that I thought was just the most ace thing, ever. (Needless to say a MS bike was not something i ever did possess.) Even under all the dirt and muck the bike looks pretty appealing to my eyes. Maybe we should fix up this orphan & donate her to some bikeless kid in the area.

So even though it is possibly not a terrifically good idea to add to the already hazardous volume of useless possessions accumulating round the house, which will have to be dealt with en masse when moving-out time comes around, I'm feeling like we scored pretty good this week. yeh!