Monday

I’m up at 5.45am. I get dressed in the dark. I whisper “goodbye honey,” at the bedroom door and Sam always mumbles goodbye in his sleep. I love that about him.

I eat Vegemite toast and drink coffee in the quiet of the house before the sun rises just Milo to keep me comps and even then when I sit down too close to him on the couch he gets up and herumphs off.

I leave home at 6.20am.

I’m listening to Tina Turner’s Twenty Four Seven.

It all seems much more lit up than usual, this morning, I’m not sure why? Is it that the night is turning to light earlier than it has been, and nothing to do with the artificial lighting in the street?

I don’t know.

A gaggle of tradies in hi viz walk towards me down Brunswick Street, leaving one of their group behind on the footpath further up the street who looks like he is pulling up his pants. (It’s still dark and hard to see properly) My mind reels with possibilities of what the first four had been doing to him. As I get closer to him, he picks up a backpack from the ground slinging it over his shoulder, he looks at me with his handsome face out of which hangs an unlit cigarette. Oh yes, you’re the pretty one, I think, and the other boys like doing things to you, I see.

I chuckle to myself as I head towards Victoria Parade.

6.34am. I’m sitting on the metal seat, which is always cold on my arse, at the tram stop at St Vincent’s Plaza waiting for the number 12 I saw off in the distance coming up Brunswick Street. I could walk to Albert Street, but what’s the point really in the greater scheme of things. One stop where I don’t pay, or two stops, really, what does it matter.

I message David. I tell him where I am. I bet he wishes he was me, I say. I’m trying to humour him. He’s struggling with some mystery pain about which no test he has had has shed any light. He says he can’t go on like this. (He’s always been dramatic)

I tell him it’s only been six weeks.

He says he can’t cope with it.

The tram arrives moments later.

Two middle aged Asian chicks rush off the tram at the last minute, as I get on, moments later they rush back onto the tram, don’t know what that was all about. (Drug drop off, I ponder)

The tram is near on empty, as I lose track of where we are in Collins Street it still being dark outside and brightly lit inside the tram, making it look as though me, and the few people I am sharing the tram with, are the only people in the universe travelling through space in a brightly lit capsule complete with bright yellow safety rails. I think Doctor Who.

I’m at William Street 6.45am.

“Cause absolutely nothing’s changed”, sings Tina, as I get off the tram. Ain’t that the truth, Tina, I think. (Although, you’ve had a pretty significant change I think immediately after that)

I’m in the lift at 6.49am.

I’m the first in, our floor is dark, the lights clank on with every step I take, like I am a super model walking the cat walk, or a death town prisoner walking to the gallows.

Oh! The first thing I see when I open my emails is the Pony Tail’s return from parental leave. Boo hoo. My kind of nemesis? Maybe squeezing a sprog out her snatch may have softened her, I think. I cross my fingers and hope. Surely, she couldn’t be any more intense that she was before? Surely.

I make coffee.

7.21am. I make more coffee.

Muscles is in the kitchen playing with the mornings fruit delivery.

I don’t really have anything to do this morning, partly because I have been working full time for Boris these last few weeks.

I might read the news. What the hell. This is the morning in the highly charged world of legal finance. Ha ha.