Friday

6.15am. I was up. There were green poo bags on my bedside table, which reminded me of some vague memory of a glimpse of something going on last night. I opened my eyes, momentarily, and there were lights on and Sam was walking through the bedroom door, but I must have fallen instantly back to sleep instantly. I am a good sleeper.

I took Otto our for a wee. Bruno came downstairs with us. The birds were loud in the trees. Otto did a wee and then had diarrhoea.

I put Otto in his crate. 

I took the pizza boxes from last night and put them in the bin on the corner. I tip toed out there in the early morning light. Ha ha. I didn’t tip toe, I marched right out to the bin. I get rid of a lot of rubbish in the bin on the corner. That will teach the Yarra Council for separating our rubbish charge from our rates charge so as to circumventing the rates cap. Fuck them.

I got my laptop. I made coffee.

Bruno got up on one side of the couch. I got Otto out of his crate and put him on the other side of the couch. I had a bulldog head resting on each arm as I typed.

7am. Sam was up.

7.30am. I make Vegemite toast and coffee.

Sam feeds the dogs

8.30am. I make more coffee and head out into the sunshine in the back yard with Otto.

I re-write Irish Darren, one of my short stories from my fiction blog. It’s not very good. I am trying to improve it keeping what I already have, rather than scrapping the whole thing and starting again, which I have done with a few of them, or they are so extensively re-written they bear little resemblance to the original. But, that is what you do, that is a part of the writing process, you re-write, and you re-write and then you re-write again.

Irish Darren is still not great, it will need more work.

9.12am. The sun is shining. I go have a shower. Time to take Bruno for a walk. Our house guest Toby is pissing around in the bathroom, so I head out without a shower. Between him and Charlie, what the fuck do they do in there?

9.30am. I take Bruno for a walk.

Toby is coughing up his pot smoking lungs as we leave the house. He smokes pot in his room with the window open. We wonder if he thinks he is getting away with having sneaky joints in his room, when the reality is that he stinks the house out every night. We haven’t said anything because, well, we don’t really care. You think it would be triggering for me having stopped the pot, but it’s not, because, you know, there is no such thing as marijuana addiction, no matter what people like to tell you. 

The sun is shining.

Three tradie types walk towards me and Bruno at Archie’s, the first one and the second one are wearing (yellow/cream leather) cum fuck me boots, with the third one following them in Blunstones. I pictured the guy coming in 3rd fucking the other two, alternating from one to the other, with them on their knees side by side. Tra la la. As you do.

We met a guy from NZ outside the milk bar. He asks me about bulldogs. He says he’s always been interested in them. I tell him all about Bruno and Otto. He says he is staying somewhere close by and that he’d just walked his older married daughter to uni. I suggested RMIT and he thought that was it. His phone rang and we parted company.

We meet up with my neighbour and his Chow, we chat all the way to Nicholson Street. He says he would have owned two Chows if it hadn’t been for what to do with them when he travels. I agree, that is as yet the unsolved problem of having two bulldogs.

10am. We hit the Carlton Gardens. My neighbour heads towards Victoria Parade, Bruno and I head the other way. I get 20 poo bags, well, the roll is full, and I am nearly out. Fuck it. My rates are... of course, I have, actually, stepped into the next suburb, but so what, who cares.

We head down Moor Street.

10.12am. We hit Brunswick Street. It is a lovely morning. The sun is shining.

10.16am. We got to Chemistwarehouse to get eye drops. The chicks behind the counter admire Bruno.

10.20am. The brown and black striped dog with a white chest on a rope that barks at Bruno whenever it sees Bruno comes towards us up Brunswick Street. The dope on the end of the rope drags it across Brunswick Street away from us. I think it has on a muzzle and multiple leads. I’m never that happy when that poor untrained beast is anywhere near Bruno.

10.35am. We pass Faraday Cafe. If Bruno lay down under the shade of the umbrellas outside again, like he did last time we passed by, I was considering just getting a coffee and being done with it, but a guy comes out from inside and takes the last table right in front of us and Bruno didn’t lie down anyway. So we keep walking. Of course, by then, the thought of coffee was in my head, but it wasn't to be.

10.40am. We chat to another neighbour in her front yard whose dog I haven’t seen for some time, and she confirms her dog has died. She feeds Bruno. She says she keeps food in the front yard to feed the dogs passing by. She has put out hints to her family that she wants a new dog, but they say she is too old. So, she says she is just going to have to write to Santa.

10.48am. We meet Barney the Scotty Dog cnr my street. And while it starts off well, Barney soon bares his teeth and has a go at Bruno

10.52am. We’re home.

We ate luxo instant noodles with prawns and sea food for lunch.

2.30pm. I wasn’t going to go looking for CD/DVDs today, especially after doing it yesterday, but I thought, why not, what the fuck else is there to do? Life is short. Ha ha. And I rode my bike to The Salvos. To be quick. Sam had gone for a lie down, after being up last night doing puppy duty and Otto was asleep in his crate

3pm. I buy 3 CDs, Michael Bublé Xmas album, I couldn’t resist. I will never listen to it, but it’s for The Salvos, so who cares. I get Michael Bublé’s ‘It’s Time’ album with two bonus tracks Mack the Knife and Dream a little Dream of Me, and the Dirt Music sound track.

3.10pm. I am back from The Salvos. Sam is awake. Otto has pissed in his crate.

4pm Sam feeds the dogs.

I lay back on the couch to listen to Dirt Music sound track and fall asleep.

We ate leftover pork belly for dinner.

We watched Gardening Australia. Sam likes it, I kind of half tune out, funnily enough as I’m the one who grows the plants.

We watched Jack Whitehall in Italy. I can’t decide if he is funny, or if he is a twat? I like him none the less, twat, or not.

9.30pm. Sam went to bed with Bruno. He arrives back downstairs sometime later. Bruno, not Sam.

I gazed at YouTube.

I watched Mae West on Mr Ed. Oh Jesus, they can’t be serious, but, apparently, they were. There is Mae West being Mae West, it is almost too much to believe. I just don’t think we get her at all, like blacksmiths and wagon train mechanics, her time has well and truly past. She is really just bizarre, and once she was the biggest star in the world, well, America.

I took Bruno out for a wee at midnight.

I went to bed at 12.15am.

I think of things for a couple of the short stories I am working on, as I am falling asleep. I don’t write them down, as I had already turned out the light. I don’t remember them in the morning, surprise, surprise.