Cleaning

I lay in bed unable to sleep from 3am to 4am, worrying about the mistake I think we have made regarding Yarrbat Avenue and worrying about the future.

I woke Sam up and asked him if he wanted to talk. He didn’t think it was funny.


The next thing I knew Sam was kissing me good-bye as he headed off to work. And my doona felt lovely, comfy, but I had things to do.

Monday morning.


I called Nick the plumber first thing to see where he’d got to on Friday. He got caught up, he said, with one thing and another. Sorry. Now in Mornington, of course. He said he will call tomorrow.

Shall I hold my breath? I’d already wasted a week on this guy.


I decided to blog a couple of things I’d already written, I didn’t have any thoughts about something new. You know, something I’d prepared earlier, kind of idea, about politics in the current period. How they used spin and fear and the media to control the masses. The great political tool, especially of the right and now increasingly of the left, is fear. Fear removes radicalisation and encourages compliance.

It’s not politically correct to be in favour of legalising drugs, or supporting unions, or cheating on welfare, for instance, as they are essentially non compliant with the status quo. We’ve all become so politically beige, the equivalent of school children. “Yes sir, no sir.” The threat of terrorists has given us permission to be dobbers and the notion that we are all “time poor” greases the whole sad and sorry story.


Luke gave me a box of videos from Bolago, now lying on my study. I regretted ever taking them, why didn’t I just say, “toss them.” I glanced through it – old floppy disks, videos, just rubbish really. All except my old Bette Davis collection. I tossed the videos which I now have on dvd. The other rare ones I kept, I am glad I didn’t say toss them. Connecting Rooms. Dead Ringer. Front Page Woman. The Great Lie.

I taped them as a kid. What straight teenage boy has a Bette Davis collection?


There seemed to be debris everywhere I looked, in every room. All these months off and my house is still a mess. “What a dump.”


I decided it was a day to do things, so I got to cleaning my room. I took “Beyond the Forest” with me to watch upstairs as I cleaned. Let’s see how Rosa Moline holds up. Her worst movie, so “they” say.

I finally threw out all of my precious jeans, I finally broke down and did it. But, when it is getting to ten years that you haven’t worn most of them, I ask you, it is borderline ridiculous, read psycho. It’s even more ridiculous when all of my “current” clothes live in two washing baskets in front of my wardrobe, as they won’t, actually, fit in my wardrobe. My clothes in the wardrobe never move out of it.

Shrug. All my favourite 501s, none of which fit me any more, all gone. Of course, I played dress ups, slipping into things, quickly and efficiently, as the decider to toss or to keep.

I ate the remains of the pumpkin soup. It was lovely too, a good batch. I laughed as I caught sight of myself in a pair of grey jersey shorts and an orange polo with black and white horizontal stripes in the mirror as I headed into the lounge.

Then I headed back and I cleaned up my video porn collection, with the intention of throwing them all out, all of them, get rid of them, videos are so yesterday. But, I couldn’t bring myself, there are classics amongst them, so I just threw out all the empty covers and the ones I recognised that I didn’t like. I mean, what do you do with a large collection of gay pornographic videos? You can hardly just dump them in any old rubbish bin, now can you?

Then I went out and repointed the garden wall in the lane. I was amazed to see that a whole bunch of bricks had no mortar left around them, or mortar that was crumbling so badly it only took a few rubs of the trowel for it all to fall away.

I made scrambled eggs in the middle of it all when I got hungry, late in the afternoon. Well, one bowl of soup is hardly substantial, now is it?

I was still remortaring when Shane got home. I’d ventured out to the sidewall and was really feeling the pain in my arms and back, but was still determined to get it finished, which I did.

Shane made pumpkin salad and green salad and sausages, as I collapsed on the couch.

David came over because he still wants Shane to make him that dvd, like a dog with a bone. Apparently, it didn’t get done last Saturday, it was going to take hours and was then impinging on other things David had to do. Me, me, me baby. Me, me, me. He never let’s go of something that he wants, which I know sounds like a criticism, but really, I guess, it is a virtue.

We watched the bodyguard in honour of Whitney dying. David couldn’t have really cared less about her, but really he’d got what he wanted so he was off.

I got to scanning Mark old slides. I found them at the back of my hall cupboard that I cleaned out last week. I stayed up until 5 am scanning. I don’t know why, well, I do, nothing to get up for. I love old photos, I find them thrilling, a record of time passed. It must have been something important to me in a previous life. History coming back to life. I love cleaning them, taking out the imperfections, turning them into a work of art.

Mark and Luke called at 2.30am asking why I was still up? We chatted for quite a while, they are all go go go in Hanoi.

The time slipped away so easily, but I didn’t care, about staying up until morning, I like vampire hours, after all. All I had to do was take the call from the plumber in the morning. When he calls? If he calls? I can wake up and answer the phone and then fall back to sleep.