The Great Bauer Garage Clean-up of 2012 lasted three days. I was lucky to get out of there alive. It certainly would have killed a lesser man.

I did however unearth a few interesting artefacts along the way.

Things such as …

1. Various body parts. I just assumed they were all props from some of my son Joe’s films otherwise somebody could be in a lot of trouble. And see that first photo? Well I took that with my digital camera. Boom! Tish! Thanks for coming. You’ve been a great audience!

2. Lots and lots of my daughter Meg’s old paint tubes. Amazingly, she’d even remembered to put the lids back on some. But obviously not the red one.

 3. This big banner from one of my visits to the lovely folk at the Jakarta International School. Believe it or not I have two more the same size. They’re lovely but the question is, what do you do with them? I suggested to my wife Adriana that we could hang them on the walls of our bedroom. They are now packed securely away in a box somewhere never to be seen again.

4. These two Chinese Abacuses. Abaci? Abacrux? Abacrumble? These two beady things what you count with.

5. Something Joe made at school in metal work. I think it’s supposed to be a pen holder, although I’m pretty sure that the gun wasn’t part of the teacher’s original design.

 6. This old typewriter. The person who sold it to me said Ernest Hemingway had written all his books on it. It could be true too because I went carefully through all of Hemingway’s novels and guess what? Every word he ever wrote can be formed using different combinations of those little round key things. Coincidence? Make up your own mind, but if you ask me I’m sitting on a fortune!

7. This .. umm … stuff. “There must be some kinda mistake Officer. I swear I never seen ’em before in me life. Honest!”

8. A box with assorted glasses in it. Note that the photograph is out of focus. I think that’s an example of what they call ‘irony’.

9. A box containing the remnants of Joe’s once millions of Lego pieces. This picture is also out of focus. I think that’s an example of what they call ‘bad photography’.

10. A container filled with hundreds of old keys. I searched everywhere to see if I could find a container filled with hundreds of old doors, but had no luck. What are the keys for? It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle.

11. A slide rule. These came into vogue somewhere between the abacus and the calculator. Never once in my entire school life was I able to do a single calculation using one of these things. For me the slide rule will always remain a mystery wrapped in a riddle and coated with an impenetrable layer of confusion. I did however, after much practice,  master the skill of drawing straight lines with them. Sometimes.

12. Just one of the dozens of boxes I opened. After a while it was quite a surprise to open a box and not find a severed head inside.

13. Twenty-one Snoopys from around the world! Meg won these in one of the many colouring competition she entered and won when she was little. My favourite Snoopys are the Jamaican one and the NZ All Black one at the front. They are all standing on top of a beautiful handmade display case purpose-built by Adrie’s late father Ben.

14. Adrie’s University degrees. I like to keep them buried in the garage otherwise people might start to get the crazy idea that she’s actually smarter than me! No seriously, there are people out there like that.

 15. A framed drawing by Meg on the theme of Reconciliation. As well as expressing a lovely sentiment, it was part of a state-wide primary school competition, and it won us a family weekend at a Stradbroke Island Resort. Well done Meggles! We decided to keep her indefinitely after that. 

Finally at the end of three days of cleaning, culling, shifting, repacking, rearranging and throwing stuff out, I went completely mad and took the beaten up Batman mask off the headless torso and photographed myself wearing it.

That’s me on the right.

Cheers & Merry Christmas
Michael