I was soooooooo comfortable this morning, warm and contented in bed, when the alarm went off. Oh? Do I have to get up? Do I have to get out of my warm bed? Do I really? Have to go to work? Really? Oh? I do? Do I have to? I have to. I have to. Oh, I have to. I really have to.
Oh? The salt mines beckon. Chip, chip chipping at the walls of the cave to extract the salt, for 12 hours a day. Okay, so it only feels like 12 hours.
The mornings are still really cold. Chilled. Outer Mongolia, as David would say. So cold that I felt the chill at the thought of heading out into it just in my suit, as I got dressed in my room.
I’ve got my gorgeous quilted leather jacket, which is so often too hot to wear because of how thick the quilting is. It seems to be especially made for very cold weather, colder than Melbourne usually has to offer, but especially made for the weather we are having at the moment, it would seem. Today was the day made just for it?
I pulled it from the wardrobe. I remembered it to be missing one of its buttons, but today it was missing two. I was surprised! But then I remembered that the last time I wore it, whenever that was, I threw it onto the Otterman at the end of the day and the button hit fire surround and broke in half, just like that. The only bit of the jacket to make contact with anything. Of course.
The first button to break, broke in half in my hand for no apparent reason. Damn buttons!
Should I wear it missing buttons? Is that too “warby” as Mark would say? Should I not wear it? Oh, wear it, nobody is going to look at what I am wearing. We all think we are the centre of well, everyone else’s, attention. I don’t normally. I shook my head and slipped the jacket on.
I stepped out onto the front veranda before Shane was out of bed. He gets out of bed at the time most people are getting to work.
You know, that sometimes I think Shane just doesn’t realise how good he has it here. He criticises me and the house and really, he has it so good. 5 minutes from work, to name just one advantage. Maybe it needs me to kick him out to prove it to him. Maybe?
But, as Sam says, oh calm down, he’s got an interstate boyfriend who he’ll be spending many weekends away with.
Good point.
Today, I had to catch the Brunswick Street tram. I live in the best area, I have trams that take me anywhere, right at my door step.
The other day it was the Victoria Street tram. And not long before that it was the Nicholson Street tram. All of them taking me to the clients I had to go to all over the inner suburbs.
I’m lucky. I live in the best place. I don’t have to drive very often. Yay.
A woman got on and sat opposite me and called on her phone immediately having sat down. She started talking with an obvious bad cold, Can you tell mummy if she has left her glasses on the kitchen table?
Ah! I thought as I grabbed my bag and made a retreat to a seat I could see at the front of the tram. I sooooooooo don’t want your bloody cold, lady.
I text Jill from the front the tram, away from snotty woman, about the jacket. I asked her if she knew where I could get my buttons sewn back on. One of those buttons has been broken since just after I bought the coat. I need to get onto it and get the, now, two broken buttons replaced before next winter comes around.
She replied with, A tailor or anyone who does alterations. Alternatively, call a good leather shop like Siricco.
Really Jill, I had, actually, worked that much out for myself. Do my friends think I am stupid? Or am I just grumpy?
I wondered if I could reply without being rude? Do you know of a particular establishment of which you speak? I saved it into drafts rather than send it. I’ll work it out for myself.
I quietly suspected I’d be thinking the same thoughts next winter.
Well, I’d tried. Maybe next year?
I text Beck as I was heading down Collins Street towards her office. I must keep in contact, it takes so little effort, really. I must learn from the friends I have already lost.
OMG! Some women never stop talking, I’m sitting next to one on the tram. Yabber, yabber fucking yabber. OMG! She just got off and some guy just sat next to me talking loudly on his phone. Bugger! Anyway, I’m just ridding passed your building and I thought I’d say good morning.
I text Sam on the tram, just as a girl with an ipod replaced the man talking loudly into his phone.
Ah!
I want to retire.
Yes, yes, now move your arse and get to work so you can support me as I retire - Sam.
I’m at Spencer Street already. I’ve sat next to a woman who never stopped talking to her friend. Then an Indian man who talked loudly into his phone, with that high pitched kind of accent Indians have. Then a girl with a clearly turned-up-full chicka chicka ipod. And when that annoying little bitch got off an old woman came and sat next to me and she pulled her phone out and started talking to her friend with the words, I couldn’t talk on the train for fear of getting cut off, SO how are you? People are just annoying.
You’d think I’d like the iPod to shut out the world, but you’d be wrong. I hate them. We’re all turning into automatons making irritating chicka chicka noises. No, I like to hear the sounds of the world around me as I move from place to place, despite the annoying people.
Or is it Christian’s chi still unbalanced? I believe this theory - Sam.
I got to (name of street) Street in no time. Everything is half an hour away by tram. Lovely, I thought. I contemplated a pineapple muffin, but decided against it. Actually, that isn’t true – my god, I’m lying to you, as well as to myself – the bakery didn’t have pineapple. It’s my favourite thing at the moment, pineapple muffins.
The company with the funny name was an advertising agency. Nice building. Old. Victorian. Quite sushy inside. I’m going to like it here, I just knew. You know, when first impressions just wrap you up in velvet and gold and massage you tender spots.
Do I need to wear a tie here, I mouthed to the receptionist as she called my contact to announce my arrival.
She shook her head. No.
Yay. The noose can stay in my brief case. Actually, there are so few workplaces where ties are worn now.
“Up the stairs to the top.”
Advertising boys are cute and smiley. Sexy and friendly. Is that where the cute boys are hiding out these days, in advertising agencies? They all seemed to have pretty faces, nice arses and something padding out the fronts of their trousers. Nice. Just how all guys should present.
Oh, groan, it wasn’t so simple. They had the wrong version of the software, despite the instructions they are always given to check it before I get there. People are so slack. Really. The technological era and people are ignoring it. We had to down load the new updates. Lovely.
Then he said he wasn’t so sure about some of his figures and could I check some of his redundancy calculations? Really? That’s a little outside the scope of what I’m here to do, I thought, your work. However, I was obviously feeling a sport about it all, the pretty boys and the nice décor clearly had had a positive effect on me. I had to fix one entry of figures and tidy up some other calcs he’d done.
He was nice enough though. He said I should have rounded my time to the nearest hour. Okay, fine by me.
I left at 13.30. The sun was shining brightly, even if it had no warmth in it. That cold chill was in the air, to be sure. But it was nice to be out in the fresh air, none the less.
I had coffee with Beck at Guy Grossi’s restaurant at the Rialto. She laughed about my morning text. She told me about the man who is in the next office to her. He continually clears his throat and coughs and wheezes and gags and spits and clears his throat.
She says it is driving her insane.
I told her that we should stop pissing about. We should start looking after ourselves, the nice people. I said, Just go and put some poison in his coffee and kill the bastard. Get rid off him. The world isn’t short of annoying people after all. I can assure you.
Beck says she misses working with me. She said something about how boring everyone was.
I walked up Collins street. I went to the discount bookshop and looked for Sal Mineo’s biography. I resisted buying any more novels to not read, despite there being some I could have easily added to the pile of novels I already have which I am not reading. Still, it’s nice moseying around bookshops in the middle of the day.
I bought a raspberry muffin. I’m weak, I know. I was only going to buy a pineapple muffin, but I caved in. Bad me. Bad FAT me.
I went to Collins Place to look for Sal Mineo movies. They didn’t have any. The guy said I was the second person to ask him in as many weeks. As I walked away, I thought that I was probably the first person also. Was it only two weeks ago? I guess it was.
I bought a tuna salad from Nashi for dinner. I knew I was going to retire to my bedroom, escape from the world, and I was just preparing for the exit.
I was home by 4pm. I walked all the way home from King Street. I figured that was good exercise. That was enough to justify lying down for the rest of the day.
I made coffee and went to bed.
I watched Millionaire Hot Seat. I got most of the questions. Sam still thinks I should go on it. I’m cap with the sports questions, but.
I made dinner; tuna salad, baked beans, toast, a cup of tea and an orange.
I was out of cat food, which was threatening to scuttle my escape to my bedroom plan. Shit! I could dash around to the milk bar and buy a can of cat food. Crap! I could go to the supermarket, really. Damn! But, at the last minute I saw that I had a tin of sardines, which saved the moment. Missy scoffed them down like the pig that she is.
Shane came home sometime after 6.30pm.
I watched Friends, Big Bang Theory and MasterChef. I watched the lovely Andy win the elimination test. Ben would be pleased. He’d have ripped off Andy’s undies and slapped his arse later. I want to see the two of them make out. Sam and I think Ben and Andy are lovers.
Missy came to bed and slept as I watched Modern Family.
I love my bed. I love my bed more than anything else in the whole wide world!
Crash, sounds the front door. Shane left the house about 20.30. Looking for company, no doubt.
I was so comfortable. My pillows were arranged just right. That heavy body resting feeling was washing through me. I was sinking into the bed more and more every minute.
Crash, sounds the front door. It was Shane returning around 21.50.
I must have dozed off.
I watched Stephen Fry’s 100 best gadgets.
Maybe it isn’t a better mousetrap that we are looking for. Maybe, we are searching for a better corkscrew, after all from corkscrews comes wine. Indeed.
And the best gadget?
He told the story of a friend of his in PNG and how the Papa New Guineas were very impressed with all of the gadgets the white guys had. So, on the last day, Stephen’s friend thought they would be very impressed when the aeroplane came to take them home. So, he watched the Papa New Guineas reaction as the aeroplane landed and they seemed to be very under whelmed. So, he asked them,
“You don’t seem to be very impressed with the aeroplane.”
“Well, of course you can fly, you can make fire come out of the ends of your fingers.”
So, it is fire, the lighter, giving the ability to have fire at your fingertips, which is the greatest invention, especially if you think of the alternative. Rubbing sticks and all.
Around 11pm, just as I was dozing in front of the Teev, just as my eyes were closing gently on each other, Shane was suddenly in the bathroom bashing and crashing and smashing things around. It sounded like he’d dropped bowling balls onto the tiled floor. There is nobody on this planet but Shane, of course. Then he was clippering… for ages. He must be seeing Tulli, I thought. Maybe, he is going to Sydney, I hoped. It gave me a thrill of pleasure. Yay! Make as much noise as you like.
Mark, “why don’t you ever call me.”
Call started 12:22 PM
Call ended – no answer12:22 PM
Call started 12:24 PM
Call ended – no answer12:24 PM
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