Santa Monica

Santa Monica is a town in California, a saint named Monica, and a block of flats in Carnegie on a street that runs alongside the train line, not far from Carnegie station. If you lived on the second floor of Santa Monica you could see your 9.49 to Cranbourne arrive 8 minutes late while eating your toast. These flats have no front fence, clipped pines and grass mown tight, although the shrub on the right is quite choked. I don't know what Monica is patron saint of, but she was a character in Friends which I have watched episodes of.

Mogador

MOGADOR - obscured by pine

Mogador is a town in Hungary (I think) and a two-tone brown block of flats on Dandenong Rd in North Caulfield. Mogador sounds like Mogadon which was a sedative from the seventies. Mogador the block of flats was built in the seventies too. The town in Hungary is probably very old. In recent years someone has planted a vigourous pine tree close to the building's front, and you can no longer see the name from the street.

A thousand and one blahs you must blah before you blah

Taking some time in the library to choose a book or two from its ever diminishing stacks, I flicked through 1001 Zs to Y before you die, where Z = book, Y = read. I think, thankfully, that this series has died its natural, miserable death. But not before there was a proliferation, of possibly 1001 ...before you die directories*. Why that figure, 1001? It's the 1001 Arabian Nights of stories to tell your psychopathic betrothed before he beheads you. Only here the threats come from the publisher. Buy this so you don't miss out.

1001's a good sounding number - the rhythm's pleasant when said out loud - plus it's a palindrome. And the goal it sets is pleasantly impossible. You can't possibly read all these books, see all these movies, skin all those goats, dig all those holes to the other side of the world. Not starting from deep middle age. A hundred and one is much more achievable, hence 101 places to get fucked up b.y.d. - that's more like it. Sensible too - you would probably die before reaching a 1001 mark. 

So as I flicked through at the library, looking to see if I've got any prior credits (none really), I flipped to the end, to the contemporary books and chose something to read - The Road Home by Rose Tremain, I found it on the shelves, borrowed it, read it. One down. However, if this series was revived in ten years' time, the content revised and a new edition published, I not sure The Road Home would appear. So it probably doesn't count - unless I die before then.

*The list format + fear of death was infectious in the 2000s: listed on Amazon are 2,208 reference titles suggesting activities you can do b.y.d.