Bumpin' around the town, like when you're driving a Range Rover

I wonder if the cops ever ask these guys to blow into the bag?

(South Street, White Gum Valley)

Off duty

The Hilton Hilton

Wandered up to Hilton for a coffee this mornin', only to find the coffee emporium shut.

Oh well, got to snap this, at the Police and Community Youth Centre at Paget Street, instead.

Check me parrot blog

Any coincidence that, just as the Indian cricket side enters Western Australia, an introduced pest, the Indian Ringneck Parrot is found happily flitting around the Marri trees of Fremantle?

Everybody needs good neighbours

I spied this sign while walking along Hampton Road in friendly old Freo town on Wednesday.

They're just a pack of ...

I expect they sell a good shoe at the Booragoon Home Centre down on Leach Highway, but I can't vouch for their scruples.

ING off!

By way of update on the uninspiring, yet adequate, ING building proposed for the port, some chump running for council at the upcoming elections letter-dropped me over the weekend to say he didn't like it.

Three words to you, lifted from the front of my letter box, Beret Boy.

NO JUNK MAIL.

Freo Star shoots through

Yesterday I wandered into ol' Freo town, as I do on a reasonably regular basis to source blog fodder.

Anything's fair game, and it was a lovely walk in, interrupted but once by a short-lived thunder storm.

On arrival about 2.30pm, I noticed the South Terrace cappuccino strip, as usual on a Sunday, was jam-packed with the kinda people I prefer not to asssociate with.

You know, those peopley-type people.

Hence, I disappeared into Myer to procure two pairs of Y-fronts, and zipped back across the Terrace to High Street for a coffee. There I whiled the afternoon away in my own pleasant company, breaking only for a stroll down and back to Esplanade Reserve – where the corellas were in full voice.

Later, as the shops were closing, and V8-driving Bevans and Charmaines supercharged their ways home along the Terrace to their Coogee McMansions, the thunder (ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!) of a more ominous-looking storm threatened to delay my egress from the now-forlorn port city.

"Quick!" I thought. "To the trusty Freo Star!"

The trusty Freo Star is a free mini-bus service the council is trialling to link Freo's suburbs to its historic heart. However, when I reached the Star's terminus, behind the synagogue near South Fremantle Oval, I found the Star strangely stagnant, locked behind foreboding wire gates.

The Star was not rolling anywhere, not yesterday at any rate. Perhaps never again.

"What ever happened to the trusty Star?" I pondered as the dark clouds began to urinate on my long parade home. "I was only on it a fortnight ago. Is its six-month trial up? At any rate, I was never told of such."

My vote in October's local government elections to the councillor or mayor (c'mon Taggers!) who can bring poor, forgotten, Starry-boy back.

Silent September

Dockers are dead for another season, following their Woewodinful loss against St Kilda this arvo.

The poor portsiders never did seem to get off the ground this year. Whether it was too many beers down at Pav's pub, too many cappuccinos on the strip, or too much fishing down the wharf I dunno.

All I know is they're not much of a footy side at present, and they should axe Chris Tarrant.

ING, ING a song

The beret-wearers down in old Freo town have their knickers in a twist about the proposed ING development at the port.

To all these baby-booming nairsaywellers who used their redundancy packages to buy up big in the port city when real estate was cheap, and have utterly sterilised it with their calls for zero change, I say chill out a bit and recognise the port is an industrial place.

A bit more industrial-looking architecture down there won't kill ya.

And a few decent shops may actually generate a bitta life down there to help kick along such much-needed infrastructure as a commuter ferry service to Perth.

Moreover, beret-wearers, I join ING's patron saint Billy Connolly in saying: "Why don't you go take a f@!% to yourselves?"

So five minutes ago

Now let's see ...

In the half-hour I have left of this weekend until the Dockers game airs, should I practice all that shorthand I'm rapidly falling behind in?

Or should I mop the house?

Or should I blog?

That's a no-brainer, really.

A place of non-sequence

Well, my recent embarassing outing appears to have cleared the decks, with the Dockers this afternoon winning their first game of the 2007 season against an ageing Melbourne side.

Meanwhile, I've just finished watching an ABC dramatisation on Fremantle's most famous citizen (outside Matthew Pavlich) - Western Australia's own wartime prime minister John Curtin.

Only it turns out ol' JC lived not in the fair port city of Freo but instead in toffy-nosed Cottesloe. So if he had've been the member for Fremantle in this day and age he'd probably have been a bloody West Coast Eagles supporter.

No, I take that back. Despite having to deal with his own Eagles-style addiction demons, history has shown Curtin to be a sensible man with Australia's best interests at heart.