Sunday

What should we do today? It’s not like we can spend our whole life sitting around on the couches staring at our screens, now is it? Or is it? no, no, no.

So what to do? Charlie is at work, he’s working quite a lot at the restaurant, so Sam doesn’t have to get lunch for him. So yes, let’s go out.

We’ll walk to our kitchen on Lyon Street and have lunch there. Of course, when in doubt head to the kitchen in Carlton. It has become our default setting.

So we head upstairs to get ready. I look in the mirror and my hair is all over the place. 

Sam says, "Unless you wanna have a haircut?"

I look back in the mirror. I put water on my hands and try to sort my hair disaster.

"Yes, yes, I could have a haircut," I say.

 "Okay then let’s walk into the city."

 "Let’s walk into the city."

We saddle up the beasts and we walk into the city.

Sam and I have got out of sync with our haircuts. Last time ugly cute hairdresser cut my hair really short, so I didn’t need a haircut when Sam had one. So it’ll just be me having a haircut.

It’s grey and cold outside. Not cold enough that you can’t go into the city and have a haircut and then eat outside of the table with your favourite bulldogs, it's not that cold, but nearly, it’s nearly that cold.

The sky is grey, the day is grey, no sunshine, no sunshine for you today

We get to the hair salon and one of the hairdressers is waiting so I’m straight in the chair @12.10pm starts. 12.15pm he finishes, and I’m done, good, love a quick haircut like that. I'm not one for wanting to sit in the chair for too long staring at myself in the mirror. Nah. It's a horror show.

Then it is off to David’s soup kitchen.

There is a loon in Bourke . A drunk old man. Maybe homeless. Screaming out.

There is a loon in Russell Street, a middle aged woman in a huge white dressing gown, who does a sort of crouch down and squat then what kind resembles a Haka. The she walks off swearing like a sailor.

I have tomato based soups. Sam has the signature soup, he gets cranky when I ask him what that is.

12:35pm. Our soup is ready.

The dogs are restless all through lunch and won't settle, I don't know why.

An older woman with Menopausal red henna hair stops and pats the dogs. She says that are magnificent.

"I bet they get lots of pats?" she says smiling.

The way she is bending over to the dogs, I can see right down her top to her pendulous breasts hanging down in some sort of grey foundation garment. It is off putting.

"Yes, lots of pats," I say.

It is busy in the city. Sam says it is because its Mother's Day. I guess that is about the only benefit of having a dead mother, you don't have to observe Mother's day.

We finish our lunch and walk home.

Then it is screens on the couches for the rest of the afternoon.

Lovely.

David Attenborough

Happy 100th birthday to David Attenborough, a great man, who I wish has a lovely day.

Cold Snap

My day off. I was cold, despite having a bulldog on either side of me on the couch.

There has been a cold change in Melbourne with lots of rain, after a month of unseasonably warm, climate change induced, hotter weather.

Mid morning, I thought, this is ridiculous, I don't have to be cold, suspecting the cold adversely affects my sore shoulder, which seems to have inexplicably flared up again, so I lit only our second open fire for the year.

As I said, it had been raining for the previous 24 hours so, naturally, the wood was wet.

The fire failed spectacularly, managing only to belch smoke out into the lounge room at an alarming rate while it spluttered and nearly died, after which I had to open all the doors and windows to let the great plumes of smoke escape, as the air purifier started to scream hysterically, and the now freaked out Otto escaped outside to his kennel.

I chucked some paper in next to the dying coals and lit it and thought I'd cleared the chimney of cold air, which was stopping the warm air from drawing.

So, I coaxed Otto back inside. I threw another fire lighter at the fire, and more twigs and small pieces of wood, and it kind of spluttered back to life in a very poor way. And when it tentatively caught for a second time, that only seemed to cause another room filling belch of acrid smoke to escape out into the room, filling it again, which necessitated me opening all the windows and doors, yet again.

Someone call the fire brigade. No, don't. You know you have to pay for that.

So, after about half an hour of this fucking about, I was standing in a room open to the poor weather outside, colder than I was when I started out to light a fire, with some blackened sticks and kindling smouldering rather than burning in the fire place.

Good job, Christian. I don't think I have ever had a fire that has been so reluctant to burn. Wet wood? I swear I am usually a really good fire lighter, in fact, it has been said I'd make a great arsonist the way I can get a fire burning. Usually.

I was just waiting for Sam to come down from upstairs to ask me what the fuck I am doing?

Over an hour later, I was probably marginally warmed than I was when I started. And my shoulder still had low level aches.

Sam didn't appear.

I lay on the couch for the rest of the day after our near choking incident with two bulldog hot water bottles.

I re-wrote my blog entries in the morning. I watched YouTube in the afternoon.

The weather was pretty wet and lousy all day.

The World Today

 

I think Baffling is one of my favourite words. I like the way it rolls off the tongue. I always think of Stephen Fry when I think of favourite words. He's a favourite word kind of guy.

Monday In The Office

I was in the office today. Sad Face. 

I woke up late, 6.15am, unusual for me. I never set alarms now, I just wake up.

I had to jump out of bed and get ready, there was nothing else for it.

I was ready in five minutes. I left the house in ten minutes.

I ran for a tram that I nearly caught, but didn't. I ran after it until I was out of breath. I caught the next tram to come along.

I was in the office 6.45am.

Not bad, half an hour from waking up to me sitting at my desk turning my laptop on. Pretty good, I thought.

I still beat Big Ange in, who is normally in after me.

AtAboyMuscles was in after Big Ange.

No one knew I cheated the company out of half an hour, today, when I still left at 3pm. Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

Deep Heat

We ran out of Voltaren cream, so Sam went and bought Deep Heat.

Sam is fine, no permanent damge. There is just some moaning and groaning and swearing to a god neither of us believe in, when he gets up, straightens up, or stands up, but it seems to be getting better each time. So, we're not claiming disability, or destined to live on a widow's pension, just yet.

But Deep Heat? I hate Deep Heat. I hate the smell of it on my hands when I have to rub it on his back. You just can't get that smell off your skin with one wash. I hate the smell of it lingering in the air making the whole place smell like a sports change room.

Funny, because it takes me back to my time as a kid when I used to go with my dad to cricket on Saturdays. I used to sit on the sidelines and score in the big green book.

I used to go back with him to the club rooms afterwards when all the players from the three Bentleigh teams used to meet back at home base to celebrate, or commiserate, and drink beer and shower and get changed before the women came to the club rooms, usually with food to feed their men.

There was me, young, gay, son sitting in the middle of it all those men in those club rooms smelling of Deep Heat and liniment and sweat,  drinking beer and showering and walking around in the nude, uninhibited, dressed only in their undies, laughing and pissing about. It used to cause a bit of deep heat in me, let me tell you, when I got home that night. The Love brothers. Jimmy Glass. Pete Robby. Jeremy Laird.

You'd think I'd like the smell of Deep Heat, because of that. Transported back there into that world of men once again on the memory of a scent. An olfactory turn on. In the budding-gay Tardis of smells.

You'd think? But I don't. I hate it. The stuff stinks.