Daniel Bowen

Excerpt from DANIEL’S GUIDE TO HOUSE HUNTING (June 1994) Check out the house carefully. Hire someone to check all the structural bits and make sure it’s not going to implode or sink into that river next to it, the one that makes it look so picturesque. Make sure you get it in writing that the  ... [More]

I drive into the station car park. It’s 9am, just after school drop off time. A woman sitting on the platform watches. She must wonder what on earth I’m doing. Everyone knows the car park is full by 8:15. I see my target: the old red car. I stop next to it. I dig around  ... [More]

2pm. Well, I put in an offer for The House. Hopefully not so low that it isn’t taken seriously, but not so high that I’ve got nowhere to move when they inevitably come back to me asking for more. Tell you what, it’s quite a buzz. My fingers remain figuratively crossed (it’s a little hard  ... [More]

Well the bank has come back and said "Yes Daniel, you can borrow a bunch of money to buy a house and pay it back over the next decade or two, earning us a bunch of interest in the process". So, next step is to psyche myself up and make an offer for The House…  ... [More]

At St Kilda Beach Lazing on the pier at St Kilda Beach on a sunny holiday afternoon Music is one of those things which is greatly enhanced when it’s a shared cultural experience. A concert or a dance is much more enjoyable when not only you, but everyone else around you is familiar with the  ... [More]

I picked up the registered letter from the post office, and sure enough it’s a notice to vacate. But it’s 90 days. This is good, as I was expecting 60 days. Under law it’s 60 days if they want to use the property for another purpose (eg renovating it and selling it to yuppies and  ... [More]

Tonight I got home to find a note saying there’s a registered letter waiting for me at the post office. Which, unless something completely and utterly unexpected has arrived for me by registered mail, means I have sixty days to move out. No surprise really – they’ve already started ripping the guts out of the  ... [More]

Today I was out grave digging… uhhh, grave hunting with Danielle, who is down from Sydney for the week hunting down ancestors. We tracked down a house in Malvern where one of them used to live, then went toSt Kilda Cemetery to potter about among the graves. Creepy? No, not really. It was a glorious  ... [More]

Feel much better now, though I didn’t get much sleep last night. I remember going to bed about midnight, and trying to get to sleep, and every so often looking at the clock with increasing frustration… 1:00… 2:30… 3:30… 4:00… and thinking oh, this is getting ridiculous. What caused that? Surely not the few squares  ... [More]

2:05pm. Oh FFS, Mr Speakerphone’s office just got invaded with one of his colleagues and his entire family. Come to admire the view. So, the 28th floor is a fucking tourist attraction now? Am I the only one doing any work here? (Well, apart from stopping in anger to write this, that is.) Time for  ... [More]

Busy busy busy. So, what have I been up to? I’ve been disorganised. A pile of mail grew steadily over the last week or two on a chair in my study/spare room/computer room (whatever I’m calling it this week), and – not for the first time – the pile included a credit card bill that  ... [More]

MX’s Showdown with Saddam page bar. Over on the other end of the bar is a little aeroplane. With the war continuing, I thought it interesting to look at what the various media outlets are calling it. Some have gone for something of a neutral title (mostly the purely geographical "War in Iraq"), and some  ... [More]

Winter must be on its way – for the first time this year I saw some bloke in Lonsdale Street actually wearing a scarf on Friday night. A real scarf that is, not just a footy scarf. I didn’t think it was that cold. But maybe he was on his way to an all-night candlelit  ... [More]

9:45am. You know what’s funny? This morning as I left, three blokes were snooping around the car park, obviously planning what havoc they can wreak during the forthcoming renovations. What walls they can knock down without the whole place falling down, etc. And parked outside? A BMW, of course. 4:08pm. Mr Speakerphone is at it  ... [More]

I got home on Monday afternoon to find wall-to-wall BMWs parked outside. Which could only mean one thing: inspection time. My landlady is bowing out of the real estate game. Evidently at 81 years old she has better things to do with her time and money. A fair bit of money apparently – a word  ... [More]