The plight of the urban elephant, the soul-rememberer. This giant was felled by development adjacent to the old Bromwell Hotel in Salt River, now home to a ’boutique mall’ and a deli with an atrocious baguette, puffy and pale.

The pachyderm – unnamed – caught the pity of Mr. Blobz almost a year ago, as she lay, felled beyond the weedy grass that had overtaken this site, a squalid compaction of old plastic and oil fronting a rotten corrugation of assorted materials.  Now, scaffolding ensnares the fading corpse. When Mr Blobz paid a belated visit the puffy Congolesienne security man wanted to call the avarocious owner – No Photo! – even of a dead elephant.

Mr Blobz senses they know what they’re building on. An elephant graveyard.

Aaah, to be at play. To forget. To be honest – for play, reckons Mr Blobz, is a place where we are really ourselves, as we have forgotten to be.

Play is such a blissful state of being – a mindset, a heartset. A tennis set! A cherished state we enter with the forgotten passport of childhood, that we inhabit when we’re free of the muck of daily life, the mood-sediment and undertow of our emotional tides… Yet how often we don’t even think to play, or refuse the idea, feeling like we simply can’t: or worse, that play is stupid, childish, retrogressive.

How good to see these dominoes plastered on the wall in some arbitrary Observatory back street.

They have such texture. While Mr Blobz enjoys the odd spot of online tennis, he prefers the thwock of a tennis ball on the backside in a game of stingers, or the joy of throwing a stone into a bucket. The simpler, the better.
So come and play, where we can leave things behind, where a ball or a card or a bow and arrow sing you back to yourself. Now it’s your turn.

No. 56 Lower Wrensch was formerly inhabited by the regal combination of Kate, Robyn, Stove and Dogs (no relation to the four-footed kind.) Mr Blobz moved in back in the summer of 1990, a mere twenty years ago, buying the carpet Stove left behind, which was soon home to one of the most renowned flea colonies in the southern hemisphere. Dogs also left for better things at this stage, leaving Mr Blobz with Kate and Robyn for company. Even with the addition of Nicky, this proved an unsteady foursome.

One of Mr Blobz’s repressed memories from this time, when his sanity was as erratic as the pinball scores in Mr Fuckit’s corner cafe, was of a sardine lasagne prepared by a housemate who shall remain nameless.

Another memory was of the Dogshit Marathon, a unique event humbly invented by Mr Blobz himself, where, barefoot, the peron who ran around the block in a combination of the fastest time (s), subtracting the mass of dogshit (g) scraped away from his or her naked heels in grams (with g=s in value), was the winner.

Sadly, the event was never held, and, judging by the mother grundy who has forbidden canines to deposit the remnants of their torried diets on this particualr pavement, never shall be.

Entrails. Aren’t they beautiful? Upturned and eviscerated, this rubbish bin spills a story onto the operating table of Polo Road, spattered by a street-surgeon that is a rattled bergie. What do we read, inside the blood, beside the filth? Crinkled stories in a Frito packet, a smile torn Black Label and the endless Savannah, coffeefalls, gushing gallons of Ricoffy, and Mr. and Mrs. Marlboro graining the patient with tiny studs of sticky tar… The surgeons hands recoil from the rubbished allegories that have crumpled here, tossed away, woven in a forgotten heap, decorated with a Jive and Diet Cream Soda…

A lovely lounge suite was kindly donated to Alfred Rd recently – the “Blue Rose.”  Here are some locals, unwinding after a long day.  Note the beautiful plant life in the foreground, so thoughtfully bedecked with some items from modern life: bread wrappers, chip packets, maybe even a nappy if you’re lucky. Relax and sink back into the scenery.

It all came apart at the seamz quite quickly though…

Mr Blobz wondered whether the fabric had not been culled by some amputees, desperate for novel bandages. Mr Blobz himself was of a mind to burn the ample woodwork, but it seemed like he might put his handsome shoulder out trying to extract the timber. There are quicker pavement forests to cull anyway.

Mr Blobz noted with trepidation some legsome neighbour paying two very soused and confident opportunists to haul the Blue Rose away… This is where she ended up, after thousands of farts had rendered her fabric to shreds, hundreds of grubby chicken-fat fingers had her way with her. She’s feeling blue, doesn’t know what to do…

Many have wandered here… not all have returned. Some are swallowed, mysteriously, while they inadvertently amble, leaving only school bags or shoes… Beware the Forests of Zeenat!

These young whippersnappers got away to safety. But staring into the vortex… Taunting the force? Not a safe thing to do…

Shortly after I took this picture, this man disappeared.

Yes well… at Mr Blobz’s recent house party, two friendly artists went head to head on who could draw the rudest pic. Your vote: Con or Frank?