The Lounge of the Ladies at Legs Eleven

 

Many, many, many moons ago (when I was a sophisticated young lady of 24) I lived a lovely life in a cute little cottage in the middle of Sydney town.

My flatmate (2 years my senior and in each other's friendship - and indeed flatmate - circle for most of our adult years) and I spent about $100 (do you know I cannot accurately remember) each a week to live there.

Parking was difficult (although not as bad as another place I lived in not long after with her) and it was surrounded by industry - although there were other dwellings too.

The front wall fronted the footpath and was a dark green, The door red and every portal barred but plain.

(This is the house 13 years later than this tale is set - the stripes were not there when I lived there)

Inside some renovation had occurred. The floors were board and upstairs had two tiny bedrooms, one with a Shoji door and a secret balcony.

But not all.

The bathroom and kitchen were original, with exposed (but not in a cool, steampunk way) pipes.

The back "veranda" the sink where the back yard drained and slugs gathered - and that you had to traverse in torrential Sydney downpours to get to the loo.

This was 1993.

A lot happened that year. A lot happened in the world that I was unaware of - for this was pre-internet and we didn't have a television.

We were young. We went to movies and coffee shops and poetry readings and markets and worked and sewed clothes and saw bands and went to parties. 

We wrote letters and played records and cooked feasts and drank wine and played cards and backgammon and talked on telephone (but this was also pre-mobile phones so if you were out you were out and you maybe had an answering machine and you did you had to remember to turn it on) :(

And I wrote and friends would gather for feasts and wine and board games and music and talking - and I would read them the next instalment of the fairy tale that I was writing. Some of them even appreciated me doing so.

Ah.

But then I got a boyfriend and - well, and some other stuff happened and we moved on.

But there was a time...

Another 13 years between the first pic and this - in its most recent Google Maps portrait - 2000