Is this still not my house?

Last night, the doorbell rang. Buddy ran to the door, of course. Shane was in the kitchen preparing some food, dinner of some sort.

“Oh, I don’t think I told you that Jane is coming? Did I tell you Jane was coming?”

“No.”

“Well, she is at the door.”

So Jane is coming to stay and I am the last to know. Okay, so she is my stepdaughter – for those of you who don’t remember, Jane and I are roughly only ten years apart in age, and with that in mind, plus the fact that Mark and I are now split up for how long? …it is now becoming kind of ridiculous to call her my step daughter and I her stepfather – but even if she was coming to stay with me, and not, essentially, Shane, I would still expect her to ask me. I mean, it is still my house the last time I checked.

My friends and he dad’s friends have long since become friends, of course, the result of the parent/child relationship being broken down just a little too far, says Mark, now thinking about it in retrospect, however we are way past that point now.

Pretty soon Shane asked Jane if she wanted to go out for a drink, with he and Tulli, just the three of them. Did Shane seem kind of insistent, or was it my imagination?


“Do you think Shane told you at the last minute so he didn’t have to involve you?” asked Sam.

“Oh probably. Yes. That’s what he does now a days.”

“Do you think it is because of me being boring?”

It nearly broke my heart hearing him say that. My beautiful Sam. “No, not at all. It is me he doesn’t seem to like. Everyone loves you.”

Shane left chicken cacciatore on the stove cooking for them when they got back.

Sam and I started watching “Must love dogs.”

With their dinner cooking on the stove, I knew they would come back and they would talk over the movie, if history was anything to go by.

“I tell you what,” I said to Sam. “Let’s turn it up in preparation?”

Oh I don’t know what Sam must think of me when I do such things?

“I tell you what…” and I turned it up again and then again, just to be sure.


They came home before the end of the movie. Shane served up the chicken concoction and proceeded to eat it around the coffee table, he Tulli and Jane. I had the TV turned up pretty loud by this point. And you know what, true to form, Shane proceeded to shout over the movie none the less.

So, there we were, the movie blaring and Shane and Jane screaming at each other over the movie from one end of the coffee table to the other. It was ridiculous. Really funny, if I allowed myself to be amused.

I didn’t even mute the ads, which, if they had been any sort of inquiring minds present, it would have been a sure fire give away, as it is one of my pet hates.

Sam reached over and took the remote and muted them once. However, I leant over, pretty smartly, and hissed in his ear, “traitor!” He didn’t do it again.


Jane headed off to The Exhibition Buildings to meet Jay and Andy for a Lego exhibition, this morning.

After my bitching from last night, it was nice to see her, and a delight to have her around. That is one of the things I object to most with Shane’s skuldugerous, secretive, they are my friends, they are here to see me, me, me me, me selfishness, is that he poisons me against my own friends with his antics.

Jane was having “family” time with Jay and Andy. She has let Andy move in with her, as his debts have got too much for him and he was in danger of going under financially and she wants Jay to have a father. Apparently, he is in the spare room. I wonder if Jay sees that as having his mum and dad back together, as he has always wanted, or if he sees it as confusing?


It was a lazy, sunny, do nothing, kind of day, where we just floated about doing little.

Sam asked if I wanted to go with him to buy a game of some sort second hand from some guy in Sunbury? I think he expected me to say no, I am not sure. Why not, I thought. It’s an adventure, if nothing else.

“Sure, let’s go.”

We caught the train to Sunbury, as my car is still in the shop. We went to buy Sam a PSVita something or other, from a guy who had to sell it to buy a new piece of machinery for his toy making business. We were to meet in the carpark.

So, there we were, sitting on a wall, in the sun in the car park with the guy selling for all he is worth? Of course, it was Sam who was listening to him, and I had time to look around and think about where we were and what we were doing. In a car park in Sunbury train station buying something from some guy out of the back of his four wheel drive. You know, I kind of hoped it was “hot” that he did rob houses at night in a black balaclava with a truncheon torch. Suddenly I wanted that to be true, just to complete the picture. It gave me a thrill.

We had barely made it back to Watergardens, when Sam said, “Okay, that’s it, I’m done with it.” He laughed.

I’m trying to work it out. The best I can come up with, is that he just wants to absorb all of the facts and features of all of these electrical gysmos/gadgets and the best way to do it, is to buy them to see for himself. He often buys them, absorbs all of the facts and features that he can and then he is done, then he gives them to one of his four nephews.

I like trains, I like train travel, it is just the general, moronic public you have to worry about. It is just a joy, rushing through the sprawling suburbs, zipping across the countryside, clack ity clack, clack ity clack, watching the scenery disappear. That movement, that whoosh, that not-having-to-take-hold-of-the-controls, I love it. Trains rock! No, they really do. The sun melted onto the landscape beyond the windows and the earth seemed at peace with itself.

We went to Footscray on the way home for dinner. There was a festival on, which was great, which we didn’t know was on, we just kind of stumble upon it. It was packed full of people, really packed. The streets were closed off, and the footpaths were lined with food stalls and exhibits and entertainment. I like Foostcray, it is interesting and honest, where Fitzroy if now pretentious and up itself.


Hi I am having one of those days when nobody will talk to me . So please answer . Have you taken Sam to Myer today for his return to work Clarke shoes.

if the two of you are in a dazed state let me know if there is any more and i may come and frighten you both after dinner with my now enormous stomach. love Anthony