Milton House, Flinders Lane, Melbourne

Milton House has a point of difference from most of Melbourne's inner city heritage buildings - it's Art Nouveau style.

Milton House frontage in Flinders Lane, Melbourne

External fanlight and detail

Fanlight in portico

Frieze detail
Front doors in portico

Wall detail

Light shade in portico - one of a pair

A Latin lover?

Last night, Herself put before Miss Eagle a little translation problem. She had seen some young fellas with mohawks in a clapped out Torana and a sticker on the car which said in Latin:

Ego subdolus consilium habeo

Miss Eagle dragged her Grade 10 Latin up from the hidden dungeons of her memory and managed to translate ego and consilium and habeo. But that subdolus had her stumped. So then Miss Eagle got out a Latin dictionary on the 'net but still it did not seem to make sense. So Miss Eagle - at this stage she needed a sort of Latin thesaurus - went looking for an alternative word for her own translation of consilium. Herself was standing at Miss Eagle's right shoulder and we were puzzling over how to put "subdolus consilium" together when - and this was within 30 seconds, dear Reader - Herself's face lit up. She not only had the phrase, she knew the source and the connection.

Now Miss Eagle has googled the Latin phrase without a result. So she thinks there may be some small degree of difficulty here for some people. The phrase, in English, is on the 'net - of course from its source. So Miss Eagle is offering a packet of Tim Tams as the prize for the first blogger with the correct translation and its source posted in the comments. If you come from outside Australia, Miss Eagle has to advise that this is a much coveted prize.

FootFoot: a dog among dogs

Miss Eagle thinks that this photo of FootFoot demands a wider audience.

How gorgeous is he!

Warning! A whinge on wind

Please be warned this is a rant. Miss Eagle is ranting about the weather - Melbourne weather. Now, for those outside Australia, you need to know that Melbourne is notorious for its weather. Four seasons in one day. Conversation about the weather - because there is so much of it to talk about.

But Monday has been a piercingly cold day and then came increasing wind. And it is the wind, dear Reader, that drives Miss Eagle to distraction, towards madness, into grumpiness and now a rant. It is not only the force of the wind, not only the penetration of the wind, it is the noise of the wind.

Miss Eagle has lived through a few tropical cyclones in her lifetime and that is the only time - other than with Melbourne wind - that she has heard such noise associated with wind. And at 6.10pm out went the lights at Upper Gully not to come on until 7pm. So candles were lit, the camping fluoro came out for the kitchen, and meal preparation went ahead because we have a gas stove. And still the wind came, the noise came.

And so to bed with a book - Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver - and the electric blanket: shut-eye to shut out the wind. Miss Eagle is now awake in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The wind is subsiding along with the noise and the rain commences. Perhaps if your correspondent cared or dared to look out into the blackness she would find that the full moon is nowhere to be seen, hidden by bank upon bank of cloud.

And it is not just the wind of winter, it is the gloom of winter. Midday yesterday Miss Eagle looked at the lemony sunlight sitting on Melbourne's mountains beyond the northern suburbs under thick layers of grey cloud. It occurred to her that this lemony sunlight was familiar - it was the sort of colour that precedes sunrise in northern Australia yet this was noonish!

When this goes on for days, Miss Eagle is overtaken by S.A.D. - seasonal affective disorder. Not enought sunlight - certainly nowhere near enough for a girl from the tropics. Now Miss Eagle is not suggesting she has the deep melancholia of Finland (for Finnish insights see Anni Heino's blog, Mayday) but it is the blahs - only more so. To counter this Miss Eagle lights up the lights. The office where she blogs is well lit but on the desk is a fluorescent lamp and there is also a very bright standard lamp. Overlit the room may be, but it is an attempt to alleviate the symptoms.

There is a beautiful winter: the clearness of the Whitsundays; the view from Townsville's Melton Hill on a crisp tropical winter's day with air so clear you can almost see the people walking on the jetty at Picnic Bay on Magnetic Island; the stillness of the waters off Port Douglas. Oh, my beloved Capricornia, why can't I be with you!

Miss Eagle - the fair go feminist

Over at Dragon Girl, Jules has posted about the F word. No, not that F word. It's the other one, Feminism. She has asked us to post on what Feminism means to us. Well, to Miss Eagle it means the F phrase - a fair go. Without Feminism women do NOT, and I repeat NOT get a fair go.

Without Feminism some do all right. They always have. They use their feminine wiles and sleep their way to the top. (In fact, Miss Eagle knows of some who would own the feminist tag who still do.) They find the time honoured negative feminine skills of manipulation designed to deceive the gullible MOTS (male of the species). And there have always been the power-behind-the-throne types.

But for a lot of us who want to be able to earn a living without harassment and get a fair day's pay for it; to have access to a decent and worthwhile education again without harassment; to be treated as intelligent human beings and consumers within a health system which has a powerful male dominated medical profession then feminism has been the way to express our view points and demand an equal footing. This does not automatically make us man-haters, neglecters of children, and self-centered creatures.

Lest we forget, a century ago women were chattels of the MOTS without ANY fertility control. Women were passed from the control of their fathers to the control of their husbands and that was the way their money and their children went too.

Feminists come in all sorts of shades from lesbian separatists to Marxist feminists and post-modernists. Just like any other school of thought in the whole wide world there is diversity. But to get done what women have done over the last 3.5 decades, women have co-alesced and co-operated on major issues such as domestic violence; rape; childcare; equal pay; and access to education and healthcare.

And Miss Eagle wishes it to be known that her marching shoes have never gathered dust whether in the cause of peace, racism, working conditions, or feminism.

The demands of a whizzing calendar...

The calendar has whizzed by and Miss Eagle has been missing in action for too long. July is not half way over and it has been full and busy and does not show any sign of letting up until the beginning of August. The new full time job - although a contract role - is making quite a few demands on time and energy. However, bed time has been extended beyond 8.30 pm as Miss Eagle gets used to the demands of work. The position has been advertised as a permanent position. Miss Eagle has applied but she is sure there will be substantial competition so may the best woman - not trying to be gender biassed but females predominate in this sector - win.

Avec Amour is closing its doors at the end of this month and I have been assisting Herself by working Saturdays and selling off the shop fittings on Ebay. On Friday night your Miss E. had a marvellous time at the footy watching The Storm defeat The Broncos. Pop over to The Eagle's Nest and catch the excitement with a slide show of the event.

And, while your correspondent has been only posting intermittently she has also not had time to read her Feed and catch up with her favourite blogs. This week-end she has managed to catch up a little to find that, over at Loobylu, Claire has given birth to beautiful Lily and Ms Robyn has set up a new blog. Life goes on with Lazy Cow amid a haircut for The Boy, at Patra's Place handiwork is still being discovered, shared, admired and stored; Sharon's handiwork and lust for stitching books continues, Jane is knitting away and showing off summery toe-nails at Yarnstorm, and Suse at Peasoup is up to all her usual wonderful things as well as a new job at a nameless but eucalypt strewn university.

So this week Miss Eagle promises, dear Reader, to try a little harder to build a routine that will cope with life, work, and regular posting.