Day 1 - The "mbwngtm" challenge: Foley Park

Hello! Yes I have created an acronym. Exciting isn't it?

I start the mbwngtm (my brain will not go to mush) challenge in Foley Park, Glebe. A few of my mother's group friends decided to catch up this morning and this was the venue. Our Mother's group first started meeting there when we were all off work with our first babies. The Sydney City Council had just finished a huge amount of improvement works on the park and its now a really great green space on the corner of two of Glebe's busiest roads, Glebe Point Rd and Bridge Rd.  

It's Foley Park that is to blame for Arran and I buying our current house on Bridge Rd, which is directly opposite this park. There I was, 2 years ago, sitting with other mums and their babies in the Park on a summery November day. I happened to glance across the road and see a big Terrace House for sale. I love Terrace Houses. Have I mentioned that before?

I made a mental note to look it up on the internet, when I got home. You see I suffer from a condition called RES. Not heard of that before? It stands for Real Estate Slutism. It's usually not a serious ailment. Most of the time it manifests itself in perusing properties on the internet,  checking out "For Sale" signs on walks around the suburb and every now and then going to "open houses" just for a sticky beak. This is why if you are ever selling your house you should not have an "open house". You mainly get people with RES in your house!

Anyway, I got home that day and checked out the property on the internet. It looked pretty amazing. I emailed the link to Arran. He liked it too. It was "open" the next day, a Saturday. I was going out with a friend but suggested that Arran should take Aiden and go check it out. He did and I got a stream of SMS's all afternoon like: "Its really nice", "You would like it", "I can't stop thinking about that house" and "You have to go see it"

I went to see the house Monday morning before work. Tuesday night we made an offer. Wednesday morning the offer was accepted. Shit. We weren't looking to buy a house. We had one. A perfectly good one that we had been renovating. That we still owned. Shit.

So after a stressful couple of months of selling our smaller Terrace house in Glebe St, we moved into our new house on Bridge Rd. And I blame Foley Park.

Apart from the park being responsible for enabling RES it really is a lovely park. It has huge old trees and lots of lush green planting.

 There is timber seating throughout, a childrens playground and a big open grassy area. It is also a historical part of Glebe.

This little brick building is called "The Wireless House". It housed a wireless radio in the 1930's which was free, to enable Glebe residents to come together and listen. I love that today the Council transmit free wireless internet from this building. Its not unusual to see people sitting in the park on these steps using their laptops. The modern day version of the radio! When we first moved to Bridge Rd and didn't have our internet connected we could use the park's internet from the front rooms of the house. Very handy!