Wednesday 8 November 2006

A close shave

So, the place we had pretty much decided to make a serious offer for got sold, all of a sudden, after sitting there ignored for weeks on end. Somebody got in before us. For a half-hour or so I was pretty crestfallen. I really liked the building, it was cheap, in a good spot, on the right scale for us, and it didn't need any fixing. But then I remembered the (until now, repressed) Drawback and suddenly it was like we'd had a very narrow escape. The house is built on a sloping block and the big elevated windows at the back looked across a valley to a stand of hills. And halfway up those hills you can see a tiny Golden Arches. It is small and distant, but unmistakably there. At night, I'm afraid, it would stick out like glowing yellow dogs' balls. You would be standing in the kitchen chopping radishes, or folding sheets in the back bedroom, or writing at the dinner table, and you'd glance up at the view, and you wouldn't be able to resist...you'd look. Every time. AT IT.

The moral of this story is that the mind can't be trusted. It is capable of rationalising anything.

11 comments:

Ampersand Duck said...

Phew. that was close. Especially for people as culturally aware as you & Dorian.

I love the way the landscape in your screenshot of the week looks like a head, neck and shoulders complete with lovely collarbone shadows.

Anonymous said...

The whole househunting thing is vexed, like psyching yourself up into a part for a play or something, because you have to convince yourself you like the place in order to make an offer. Then you have to convince yourself you never really wanted it after all if you don't get it. I think I looked at about 30 places and made offers on two before I got my place, and then it was a matter of making a bid on a deceased estate before no one else got to it.

I guess someone heavily into Cult Studs would appreciate the Golden Arches. So let's hope they've got the place. You are perhaps looking for some sublime, Pemberley-esque vista...

Anonymous said...

A lucky lucky escape indeed. It's true, your mind can't be trusted (I have a slight Homer Simpsonish relationship with my brain at the best of times) but often this a good thing.

I tell you what though I'd be willing to stare at the Golden Arches a lot if we could only have some goddamned flyscreens. If I get Ross River I'm suing our landlady.

lucy tartan said...

Think about it Kate. McDonalds logo staring at you 24/7. M M M M M M M M M
Elsewhere is exactly right, what with all the psyching up and down and back and forth, it's very hard to know where you stand.

Dorian is now stealthily trying to convince me we should buy an owner-built mud-brick firetrap way out on the hippy fringe of zone 3.

When I say "we", I mean the bank, of course.

Tony.T said...

I wonder what the kiddies sitting in Maccas eating their fat snackies would have thought as they peered back across said valley.

David Nichols said...

There will soon be no Zone 3 anyway. Everything will suddenly be much closer together.

Anonymous said...

What are these zone things anyway?

Ampersand Duck said...

There's a rule that says if you owner-build a mudbrick house, you'll be divorced by the time it's finished. Some friends of ours took that to heart and hovered around the NSW south coast looking for the right house being hacked up in a divorce settlement. They found it, too.

lucy tartan said...

Zone 1,2,3 - Greater Melbourne divided into concentric rings for Public Transport designation purposes. You buy different tickets for travel in different zones. This means, unfairly in my opinion, that public transport is cheaper for people making short inner city trips than it is for people doing long commutes.

The Tweedledums and Dees are presently one-upping each other in the state election campaign with various promises to do away with the outer zone or to extend the inner one.

the whole zoning thing specially shits us because we live on the border between zones 1 and 2.

Drewzel said...

Laura, another rationalisation...at least if you don't own a house yet, you can't start renovating it, which means you don't have to live over 6 months without a bath!
As a zone 3-er at the end of the line, it sux.

Just got Bazlotto, yay!

Anonymous said...

I catch myself coming and going on the zone pricing issue. Public transport should be cheap and reliable and attractive to out suburban types (because cars are bad for the environment, and because the outermost suburbs tend to be populated by those who can least afford to run multiple cars). BUT housing is cheaper in the burbs than it is for us in the inner city, which balances out the transport cost, and why shouldn't you pay more for a longer trip? (when you drive it costs more in fuel to go a long way) Since they got rid of short trip tickets (outside of the CBD) I have no incentive to catch a tram at all, except principle, it became cheaper for me to drive to work and lots of my other regular trips. The cost of my daily travel went from less than $4 to $6, because there was free parking where I was working, driving was the cheap option.

So maybe they should just stop talking about how environmental they are, and make the whole public system free.