Settling into the new heartland

And so with some sadness, the transformation is complete and the Albion Love Den has been wiped from all but the history books. It's spirit will remain, but now conveniently located in Coburg.

Up until the 71 items were delivered and the boxes were unpacked at our new digs, the whole move still seemed a little surreal. At first it was like an extended holiday, with our temporary North Melbourne abode seemingly like one of the best do-it-yourself B and Bs around. I revelled in walking into the city heart a few nights a week to go the gym; the Tiger became the Queen Vic Market queen; we loved being the surrogate big brother and big sister to 2 absolutely adorable German Shephards.



It wasn't to remain, however, with our short time masquerading as trendy inner-urbanites coming to an end and we had to settle for being trendy-fringe outer-urbanites. Comparing the two realities, it’d be easy to be dismissive of where we’ve decided to settle. The truth is, however, I’ve absolutely fallen head-over-heels in love with this part of town.

The suburb’s got a character a lot like Albion, really. She’s a bit downtrodden, in need of a fresh lick of paint and a bit of tender loving care, and yet it offers up some sweet gems which warm your cockles and makes a place great. In Albion, it was not just the cosy nook I’d created in the Den, but also the little beauties like the cheap eats at Thaiways, Saturday morning boiled bagels from Brewbakers, and late night munchy-runs up the hill to the shops. Here, we’re a stone’s throw from all the amenities (including 2 Coles stores facing the very same carpark... weird), the great Italian coffee shops, fruit and veg markets and a bonza butcher. Nestled amongst it all are the usual array of bits and bobs shops you find in lower socio-economic and migrant-heavy ‘burbs, and the ubiquitous conglomerate of kebab shops.

There’s an unpretentiousness about it - you can almost see the exact line where over-eager local councillors just simply gave up trying to make the place more “family friendly” - and there’s a delightful feel of gentrification being valiantly resisted for just a little while longer. A lot like Albion, really... before the polished concrete and stainless steel brigade barged there way in with their bulging cheque-books. I wonder how long this little gem can outlast the threatening hoards?

What I Got, You Gotta Get It.

It’s funny what sticks in your head while watching a band sometimes. Most of the time, if the music’s right, you’re floating a little bit off the floor as the waves of emotion sweep you up and along. Other times, it’s more earthly and realistic - like the dull ache in your lower back, or wanting to drill a hole in the back of the head of the six-foot-tall knuckle dragger in front of you.

On occasion, however, the band itself provides a shake-of-the-head, what-were-they-thinking type moments which you just know is fast-tracked on to the cringe file in a few years time. Tonight while enjoying news.com’s live coverage of The Temper Trap from Splendour In The Grass, I was struck by bassist Jonathon Aherne’s awkward playing style. At first it was entertaining and quite a thrill, but it soon became irritating as his arms-akimbo schtick and hail-flailing antics proved themselves to be nothing more than window dressing. Blech, check it out.



I got to thinking about how a band’s presence leads a lot to how they’re interpreted. Augie March, for example, are a band who compliments their intricate style with their gentlemanly couture, and it wouldn’t be Metallica without some form of hair-fling (that said, their current collective receding hairline has got to detrimental to a good head-bang). It got me wondering which musician’s behavious lends most to helping to solidify what’s going on with the music. Keeping with the bass player theme, and I think you’d be hard pressed to go past RHCP’s Flea in terms of someone who not only plays what he feels, but let’s that be abundantly known through his expressive movement.



So whatdya reckon? Whose on-stage antics bug the shit out of you? And whose gets your juices flowing the most?

Our beautiful matriarch

The word matriarch is such a fitting misnomer for me when talking about my family. The Greek word speaks of a fiery, silver-haired maven who commands all those before her into quivering servitude. It suggests a matron used to getting her own way and making that fact known to all around.

For the Surridge family, our matriarch was the polar opposite of the poetic imagery, but her impact was just as forceful. Audrey (aka Mum, Grandma and Great-Grandma), while silver-haired and occasionally imposing with her unshakable simple, homely faith and open-hearted kindness, was a beacon of gentle calm. In the face of some very considerable adversity, Mum (as I confusingly came to call her early in life) fought hard to maintain a stable shelter. For most in my family who didn’t venture far from the nest, this may have been overlooked and possibly taken for granted, but for those of us who’ve been imbued with the perpetual itchy-feet, the vision of that modest, gorgeous home on the main highway in Albury was a beautiful touch-stone and battery recharger.

Matriarch the word, however, does fit when considering what it was that Audrey was able to achieve in her life. A simple farm girl, she nabbed the handsomely chiseled town-boy and set about making a family and a home. Through some of the world’s greatest societal upheavals, Audrey and Roy brought five head-strong, very determined children into the world. With fierce determination, they fought through the catastrophic murder-suicide of my Uncle and picked up the pieces of their family left behind to provide a temporary home for their three boys. She sailed through the continual upsets and disappointments from challenging family members and continued to welcome all with open arms. And with steely determination, she fought through the loss of her life partner and maintained a proud home through thick and thin.

Our matriarch passed away tonight and it’s left quite a hole. As far as I know, it’s last of the grandparent generation for my family and it’s shifted everyone up a notch in the family tree. For me, Mum’s passing has brought back how important the family unit can be, regardless of its foibles. And it’s given me a great appreciation for what Audrey was able to provide - it sounds simple, but it’s infinitely far from it.

Rhythm of life

Was it a rut? Some people thought my living at the Love Den was a sure sign of ruttage, as I set about doing as little as possible and just staying put for as long as I could. And I guess it was a self-imposed rut in that sense, but with a clearly defined theory: I needed to know what it felt like to sit in a comfy chair and watch the world turn for a bit.

You see, as the step-child of a soldier and the son of a rather gypsy-ish woman, my only memories in childhood revolved around the rigmarole of finding new friends, fitting into schools, working out the pecking order... and getting the shit kicked out of me from time to time for not getting that pecking order right. Basically all the joys of being, as the term goes, an Army brat. Even after being removed from that lifestyle, the itchy-footed wanderings still regularly overtook the family, until my early twenties when I realised I’d lived in almost as many houses as years I’d lived. Soon after that realisation, I had a full-body urge just to sit the fuck down somewhere nice and catch my breath for a bit. Albion Love Den was the place, and took more than a decade for me to feel it necessary to move on.

The moving around may not have been all beer and skittles and happy roaming families, but it also wasn’t a depressing tale of being the constant awkward new kid and getting lost on the way to the shops, either. One of the benefits, in hindsight, was the ability to re-invent yourself without the burden of a collective memory - the other was the almost immediate injection to the rhythm of your day-to-day life.

Living in the one spot, I found, my natural daily routine tended to seek the path of less resistance. Like muscles against a force, or birds on the wing, my travels were more about efficiency and finding the easiest, simplest way to get shit done. It became more about maximising the time doing the things I loved and less about exploration and seeking new things. Not that I was fully embracing the suburban hermit dream, but I did find the work-gym-home triangle, with the occasional Valley gig a bit of a yawn-fest towards the end. And as a result, the cycle naturally slowed until a near-crippling boredom of Brisbane started to set in.



A change of scenery, however, naturally injected a wad of extra digits to my energy levels. Everything is new and exciting and wonderful and enchanting and full of life. The new surroundings thrust subtle nuances at my senses which excite and turn me on, and I can think of nothing more enjoyable than cruising around her artery-like streets for hours on end: achieving nothing, but soaking it all in and trying to gauge the mood of it all to eck out my own niche amongst it.

Even the mundane tasks of day to day life have gotten a nitrous-oxide injection, with Melbourne noticeably a quicker and more urgent city than Brisbane. Getting to work in Bris used to be a leisurely hour or so on public transport: train, then a short wait in the city, then a bus chugging through the inner-eastern suburbs. In hindsight, it seems positively sluggish compared to my daily commute these days: within an hour of waking, I’m saddled up on the white mountain bike and am hurtling myself through the misty, dark streets of North Melbourne, heading for the train station. I dodge trams and weave in and out of the traffic and delivery vans, before a 20-minute public transport commute to the northern suburbs. The trains themselves are jet-powered compared to QR’s silver bullets, with shorter dwell times at stations and absolutely no mercy should you be running even 5 seconds late.

The weekly shopping trip to Toombul Coles has been replaced by regular visits to the Queen Vic Market, just around the corner. It’s cheaper and much better quality, with the atmosphere enlivened by the vendor’s cries of “$2 bag, $2 bag” and the jostling with Italian grandmas to get the juiciest, plumpest mandarins. The gym trips, now down to just two visits a week thanks to the daily cycle commute, see me strapped to the iPod and lightly jogging or quick-stepping from home down to Melbourne Central. There’s something purely indulgent about calling the inner-city gym as my local, even if it’s just temporary until we find a place of our own.

It’s true, I’m completely keyed up with this new phase of life and I’m so energised by the power of this place. Sure, things are a little tough at the moment (money-wise, house-wise, etc), but the energy and tempo of Melbourne is doing things to me which I’m really excited about. Yes, I’m smitten by this sexy bitch of a city.

Leaving the Love Den

Leaving the Love Den was always going to be painful. What, after 11 years in its warmly glowing warming glow, I could confidently say I knew it's each and every crack and creak. I knew those creaks in a way in which I'd never known a house before - my tenure at the Love Den was the longest I'd ever lived in any one place my entire life. Those cracks were my constant from way back when I finished uni; through my stint as a working journo; through a fairly monumental career change where I gave up on the life I'd strived for since I was a teen; through heartbreaks (both caused and felt) and through countless episodes of the most defining shit-talking, drinking and smoking fests. The pain of leaving those creaks and cracks was most acute, however, when confronted with cleaning them for the first time in 11 years.

First cab off the rank was getting rid of the mountains of shit which had spontaneously appeared within her fours walls over the years. Chief amongst these was the ancient fridge which was initially included in the lease for the "partly furnished" deal. This thing was an absolute monstrosity of 1970s electrical engineering. The interior spawned a life of its own, with its internal freezer only being usable for about 3 days after the frustration-driven manual defrost cycle (with the use of numerous tools through years, including hammers, kitchen appliances and hair-dryers). The white exterior had long been pock-marked and stained, and then ceremoniously covered in an array of stickers, magnets and other Useless Junk.


I remember the Wiseacre sticker taking pride of place on the bottom third of the front door, despite no-one ever admitting to liking them enough to defile my fridge with their name. In to the mini skip she went, along with my ancient double bed (which could spawn a whole other blog of its own memories, if you know what I mean. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Say no more, say no more. A bit of the ole 'workbench' action, eh? A bit o' rumpy pumpy on the Love Lorry, yeah? A bit of ee-eeee, aw-awww on the Caravan of Luuurve, see?... Yeah, I'm talking about wanking), a fine selection of chip-board 'furniture', a couple of old bike frames (one of which had to be broken away from the house with an angle grinder thanks to me losing the key many years ago), the back-breaking cloth-covered dining chairs and the 2-seater couch donated from Jinna all those years ago, but had long since lost its arse. Like many of us, I suppose.

With the shit gone, the next task was the 'music room'. For those who never set foot within her, the Love Den boasted an open scrapbook of musical memories in the form of a wide, short hallway linking the front of the house with the lounge area at the back, whose walls were adorned with band posters, gig tickets, postcards, wrist-straps and torn out pages from magazines and street press. It was a tradition to end a great night out seeing a band by Blu-Taking the evidence on the walls and you could trace the various inhabitants through the years in a clock-wise direction around the room. There was so much history on those walls, even pre-dating my time there, that it's hard to pin-point the stand-out memories from the hundreds, possibly even thousands, contained. There was, however, one poster representing a gig which I sadly missed, twice, but at the time consoled myself with the "I'll catch them next tour" thinking - only to have them disband soon afterwards. I'd interviewed Irish band The Frames right when they were trying to crack into the Australian market and was naturally taken by their smooth, emotional guitar-driven anthemic style. They toured Australia for the first time soon after I'd interviewed them, but I'd decided to take a little break at that point and headed to Melbourne for a week... right when they were playing at The Zoo. Nevermind, was my thinking, they'll come back. And they did about a year and a half later, when I was going through a relatively rough patch and was unemployed. Being in a constant state of poverty, I'd decided to stop reading the music press so I didn't get tortured by the shit I was be missing out on. I had no idea they were touring, until I was out in the Queen Street Mall one afternoon, wandering around with my new girlfriend trying to think of cheap things to do. We walked into HMV and I instantly spied a poster bearing The Frames' name - and it stated they were playing a free gig on the top Mall stage at 1pm that day! Halle-fucken-lujah, I cheered to myself as I checked the time... "Oh, you're fucking joking? It's 2.2opm?!?!". I'd fucking missed them, again. The pinched poster was a fair consolation prize, I figured.

Yeah, this room, more than the Love Den itself, personified my growth through the years and was a very tangible link to what I've devoted my adult life to - being an unabashed, die-hard, true-blue believer in great music. Taking this down and deciding what to cast aside and what to take with us was easily the toughest thing I had to do when kissing this old girl goodbye. The wheels of progress we chugging away, however, and so with all our stuff packed and shipped out, the shit dumped, the load-bearing Blu-Tak and picture nails removed, it was time to don the sugar-soap and try in vain to scrub away every note of our existence from those faded VJ walls and polished wooden floors.


Where the fuck did this stain come from?

I never knew my feet were that dirty. I mean, being constantly bare-footed and proud of it, it's pretty obvious they'd be grubby, but the stains on the wall underneath my computer desk were fucking ridiculous! Without a footrest, I'd unconsciously rest my feet on the pale-blue wall while frittering away the hours at my keyboard, which led to a mess of brown and black feet stains spanning a 1m wide radius. Of course, it wasn't all just mindless frittering at the computer screen - there were those 8-months or so when Satomi was back in Japan just after we got engaged, and our only tangible link to each other were our nightly webcam chat sessions and the occasional 'on-line date'. Ahh memories... are no match for sugar soap and a scourer.


Who was the dirty fucker who did this?


Oh that's right, it was me - throwing a tea-bag up under the small wall overhanging the stove in a bizarre attempt at one-upmanship after Steve-O had hoisted a slice of peanut butter toast across the lounge at me one wintery eve. This little game of house-hold brandy would kick in every now and then (generally in response to poverty-induced extreme boredom), with one of us setting up a fortress of sorts on the old lounge or papasan and hurling relatively soft household items at the other. Generally off our trees, this game could go on for ages and would only end when my subliminally implanted idea for munchies (well, not so much subliminal, more obvious... along the lines of "Go get me some ice-cream, bitch") would take hold in his mind and he'd be off up the hill for some sugary goodness.


Nicotine ain't just bad for your lungs, kids

It was a proud smoke-friendly household, the old Love Den. From the moment I took up residence, my pack-a-day habit moved in too. There were brief moments of outside smoking only, generally around the time new flatmates moved in and not wanting to freak them out. That resolve would last until either the first good movie was on telly which I didn't want to miss a second of to get a hit of cancer, or said new flatmate decided it was high time to take up an evening of green and amber fuelled shit-talking around the kitchen table with me. The result was off-white walls which slowly but surely took on an orange-brown hue, noticed clearly when pictures or posters were taken off the wall only to have their outlines marked on the VJs. Sugar soap and a number scourers tried, but failed, to remove evidence of this excess... and let's hope a couple of years of smoke-free clean living since has done a better job on my lungs.


Oven cleaner is not just for ovens


There was a time when I fancied myself as a bit of a budget-special cook, just a slight nudge up the scale from hopeless experimenter (I'm looking at you here, Jensy). Monday nights were always a specialty, with Secret Life Of Us usually accompanied by a house-guest and some interesting, if pedestrian, take on a pasta-based staple. Or there were the days when the Emma and Joey show would roll around just for the sake of it, bringing with them their own organic goods to whip up some of the most fantastic sustenance I'd ever eaten (preceded by some of their own organic 'produce' which probably heightened my love for their dinners, if you catch my drift). All of this excess coupled with the day-to-day grime of living under a flight path, a block away from a train line and on a main-road combined with an almost pathological hatred for unnecessary cleanliness (my thinking was that if it wasn't attracting vermin, then it was probably clean enough), meant this part of the house was a sticky putrid mess. Sugar soap and scourers weren't cutting it, so Mr Muscle oven cleaner did wonders in bidding goodbye to this evidence.


Who the fuck scratched this fucken floor?

The papasan took pride of place in the various incarnations of the Love Den lounge. It's a big double-sized mofo who grumbles and protests the minute you fall into it, but never fails to engulf you in it's charms. For the first few minutes, you attempt to get yourself comfortable, but realise it's nearly impossible to do so gracefully and so you adopt a lying position akin to a palsied cat passed out in a litter tray. It felt luxurious and wrong initially, then alluringly snuggly, but it soon turned to back-achingly annoying and thoughts of escape started to creep in at about the half-hour mark. But, it entraped you with its deceptively hard exit procedure requiring gymnatic-like poise and feline-like reflexes - but which invariably shifted the entire mechanism a few centimetres back against the wall, and in the process scarred the beautiful polished wooden floorboards. It was this papasan which was the prime position in the household brandy wars, it was also the place where Jen, Brendan and I would sit wilfully every evening when we were underemployed to conduct live over-dubs on episodes of Neighbours, turning them into the most sickeningly depraved porno movies you could imagine. Let's just say Bouncer the dog was a shining star in these alternative realities, which didn't just cross the line of good taste, but gave it a fully-fledged frontal wedgie as it zoomed past at warp speed.

And that was that - 2 days of flurrying activity wiped away the physical evidence of more than a decade of my life, and chunks of many others, from this rented property's walls. When I moved to Brisbane from North Queensland all those years ago, I was craving some stability and made a promise to myself to set down some roots and try to experience what it meant to feel connected to a place. I did that, and then some, and in addition to that, I had somehow created a place which many also had a strong connection. Which is, I guess, is the crux of that stability - it's not about not changing, it's not about stagnating; it's about providing a warm resting place for you and yours and ensuring it does all it can to enrich your world. To me, it's this, from my good mate Brendan in response to a recent late-night emotional email rant:

the Den was always there.. it provided reassurance and stability during some tough times.. equally, it was a place where I have rarely laughed harder and felt more joy.. those walls are caked with memories (you don't want to know what I've caked the papasan in...) but most of all it was the people within those walls that have been among the true foundations in my life and that's infinitely more important than any single piece of real estate