Calling My Big Brother

4.30am. I get up and have a wee. I always seem to get up around 4am for a wee now a days.

Good thing I go right back to sleep.

I was just thinking about travelling around America, and going to a Stones concert in New York City, sinking into that twilight feeling of existing, when…

4.50am. Bruno’s furry face appears next to me in the dark. He stands very still gazing at me. He is nothing, if he is not patient. 

I take him out for a wee. (if I don’t get up and take him to the back yard, he will jump up onto the bed with his front paws and sniff in my ear, but it didn’t get to that stage this morning)

I get back into bed and listen to Sam snoring.

The heaviness returns very quickly, I sink into my memory foam mattress. I hope I fall back to sleep very…

7.05am. I wake up. Sam is already up. Bruno is still in bed. Bruno and I head downstairs.

7.15am. I make coffee.

7.45am. I make vegemite toast and more coffee.

The Tote Hotel Collingwood has been saved as a live music venue by a community campaign to buy it. I’m so pleased.

Danny Masterson gets 30 years for rape. Wow! 30 years for 2 rapes? Isn’t that more than for murder?

Greece, which burned with bush fires recently, now has four days of cataclysmic rain having lashed the central Greek region of Thessaly, triggering landslides, flooding, road and bridge collapses and severing water supplies.

10.32am. Charlie is up. He’s wearing a black top and he looks more developed in the chest than normal? Is he doing weight lifting, I wonder? he makes coffee and goes back to his room.

I continue to re-write my April 2020 blog.

12.30pm. David calls. I hang up on him and send him this message.

Christian

“Oh no, it’s her!”

Lately, he has continually asked me if this is what I think when I see his name come up on my phone when it rings.

“No, I don’t,” I tell him.

He calls back.

He’s up! He tells me bi-polar Barbie is back. A friend of his told him some time ago that her preferred him when he was depressed rather than manic.

“I’d have to agree with him,” I said.

“You’d both prefer me to be depressed?” questioned David.

I laughed. “Yes.”

Ever since he said he has missed her, his ‘up’ state, which he calls Bipolar Barbie.

Today he announced she was back. The flying high Bipolar Barbie.

“Fasten your seatbelts and check that your tray table is in the upright position, as it is going to be a bumpy ride.”

There was the time when David and Shane and I lived together that sometimes I would hear Shane calling from the other room.

“Help! No! That’s abuse! Stop touching me!”

And, you know, Shane would let anyone touch him, seriously.

1.15pm. We ate fried rice for lunch.

I call my brother Will for his birthday. I tell him we’ve had the hottest winter on record. He replies, “Which is stupid because they have only been taking statistics or such a short time.”

I ignore, what I assume is his climate change denying comment.

I tell him that I might just quit work if they insist on me going back into the office and he tells me he thinks that would be a good idea, in a big brother kind of way. Funny when my big brother acts like a big brother confirming to me that I have a big brother.

I continue re-writing my April 2020 journal for most of the day.

2.35pm. I take Bruno for a walk.

2.38pm. We leave the house. It is cold, grey and bleak to tell you the truth. We walk up Gertrude Street like it is a normal walk. I message Sam and ask what the weather forecast was. Rain was predicted in 28 minutes, with it raining for 19 minutes. Hmm? We’re not going to get right round a 45 to 50 minute walk without getting wet.

2.51pm. We’re at Brunswick Street.

We walked back to Smith Street along the south side of Gertrude Street just because it was a different side of the street to walk along. Then we could walk up and down Smith Street under shelter.

At 3.29pm. It’s raining as we leave St Marks. We head back down Smith Street. Bruno stops and stops and stops and stops, until I yell at him. I don’t mind him stopping to sniff, but not after every step I take.

Don’t you hate people who float out of shops into you path and then proceed to walk at a glacial pace right in front of you? I know I do. Jasus! Get out of my way.

3.40pm. We’re home again.

I make more coffee much to Sam’s chagrin.

4.10pm. I am watching my favourite car YouTube channel, Coldwarmotors' mid week video, with them visiting two car junk yards.

I watched WatchJRGo – cute American car YouTuber who reminds me of my, um, not exactly ex, cute Jeff Titan – His new shop windows were completely rotten so they have all been replaced

Sam went to the supermarket. I watched What’s My Line. Guy Randolph Churchill, Guy Lombardo, Tallulah Bankhead, Kim Novak. (Oh kids you can google them, they are nearly all before my time too, but you know, do some historical research, like I did – well, mines in the form of watching old movies – and you might learn something)

Sam retuned a few minutes after 6pm demanding I stopped watching What’s My line and to put on the misery hour.

We ate roast lamb and broccoli for dinner.

We watched Gardening Australia, actually, Sam watched it, I watched my favouirte Aussie car YouTubers, MightyCarMods put a turbo in a Toyota Camry.

I watched the end of Mighty Car Mods as Sam watched the beginning of Wheel of Time.

We watched some other strange 3 wishes from a genie movie, Three Thousand Years of Longing with Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. It seemed to be very wordy, which normally I don’t mind, but again, there was the feeling of nothing new to see here. So much content is now needed for all the streaming services that they are now making anything, clearly.

10.50pm. We went to bed.

I watched my favourite American political commentator, David Packman, and some Trump stuff. It’s like a car crash, Trump. What a self-serving pustulant piece of shit he is. 

Then some I watched some Karen’s, oh, just to have a laugh at other people’s misfortune.

Lights out 11.53pm.