Friday Morning

My eyes cracked open and gazed at the clock next to my bedside table and the numbers said 9.24 and I was pleased. I thought about the world whirring away beyond my walls and wondered how it would view the people who, like me, still lay with their heads on the pillow, with one arm hanging down beside the mattress with their fingers strumming the carpet, absentmindedly.

Did I care? I mean, what else should any reasonable person be doing on a Friday morning?

Truthfully, I'd already been up at 7am to take a leak, the whole 9 to 5 brainwashing runs deep, bing awake, but somehow that morning-off-leak is made even more glorious by the fact that I can slip myself back between the sheets when I had shaken the last drips off.

It was cold and my feet were feeling the chill, winter is here for sure. That now seemed an age ago.

Radio National were talking about the value of work and how Australia used to be the land of the long weekend but in the last twenty years we have morphed into the land of the lost weekend with Australians now working longer hours and putting in more unpaid overtime than just about any other western country.

I adjusted my pillow and rolled over and snuggled down into the warmth.

Tick, tick, tick. I knew it was nearly time to get up, but who could blame me for wanting to luxuriate for just a little longer. Mean hearted politicians, I guess, whose re-election prospects somehow now hinged on getting even the sick off welfare to get the budget back into surplus. I thanked the universe I wasn't on welfare, I thanked it again that I could fund my own days off, in this increasingly mean and conservative society we now live in. Somehow I don't believe our new-mean society could have sunk to those new depths. Personally, I choose to believe the politicians have read the polling wrong on that one.

However... the roller door man was coming between 10am and 11am, to view the carcass off my roller door and to somehow perform a modern day miracle by raising the dead once more. Jesus in a tray ute, no doubt.

At 9.55, I slid out of bed, pulled on my black hoodie and my black track pants and headed to the bathroom mirror where I heard an almost involuntary inhale of air as I viewed the apparition staring back and immediately wonder about the "matchy matchy" outfit, as they say, (maybe I have been watching too much Project Runway) that I was wearing. Maybe, I should think about my brown track pants with my new black top in future. Apparently, you shouldn't wear the same colour track pants and track top, you should break it up.

At exactly 10am, the roller door man called to say he was running late and that he’d be here sometime around midday.

Was that okay?

Yes, of course.

Has anyone ever had a tradesman turn up on time?

I poured the coffee beans into the grinder and watched them disintegrate through the clear lid, as the motor whirred and the whole thing vibrated in my hands.

I poured the milk over my muesli and wondered if the roller door man would take one look at me and think, Now about that outfit?