I’m Still On Holidays

I waved Sam good bye first thing in the morning. 8am. He went back to work last Monday. Buddy and I, paw and hand oscillating gently in the air as Sam walked along the footpath and disappeared out of view.

I wasn’t going to watch YouTube again, as I have spent two complete days absorbed by Youtube. I was going to write my journal/blog, I promised myself. However… perhaps just a little Youtube. I can’t just go cold turkey, I'm sure that is bad for one's psyche, or some internal organ.

I watched Q&A with, David Marr, Barry Humphries, Jackie Weaver, Miriam Margolyes and John Hewson. Has there ever been a more left leaning panel? Who cares, really? I cried laughing for an hour, mostly because of Barry Humphries, but not completely. They all derided Gina Rinehart, which was great. You’ve got to love somebody who suggests idiotic things – let’s pay the workers $2 an hour to work – getting justifiably derided by people who are infinitely more interested in the world than themselves.

But, it was a day to leave the house, smell the air, feel the sun on my skin, feel the breeze in my hair.

I met Jill at the dog park at midday. I got there first and there was no sign of Jill or Bear. Jill called me soon after and said she’d be there in five minutes. I shook my head and replied,

“You didn’t have to call me.”

I see it as one of the great wastes of our times, calling someone up when you are, literally, a minute late to tell them you will be there in five minutes. It is ridiculous. I guess it is yet another product of our “fearful” society.

The dogs played. The owners stood still, as is usually the case. The sun shone down. It was hot.
A man with a Shar pei said to me that he had to watch his dog as his dog and my dog were both still "intact" and that his dog may hurt another "intact" dog.
Shrug. I don't know what some people think. If your dog has, even the remotest, tendency to "hurt" another dog, then take your dog home and don't bring it to the dog park.
I didn't say anything. By not saying anything was I being disloyal to Buddy? What if the Shar pei then bit him and Buddy was hurt? I don't know? I tried to keep Buddy away from the Shar pei, though.

We walked around to Bridge Road and ate lunch, all four of us; Buddy, Bear, Jill and I. We ate tortillas sitting out on the footpath. Jill suggested them, of course, the tortillas. Fat people are always the best people to suggest the food. Well, Jill always is.

Many good sorts walked by. No, really, they did. I have to conclude that if you want to see sexy boys head down to Bridge Road for lunch.

A couple stopped to say they’d been trying to buy a bulldog and they asked all about Buddy. Yes, I would recommend a bulldog very highly. Even the waitress knelt down on the footpath and cuddled armfuls of Buddy and Bear saying, “Aren’t they beautiful.” And they are beautiful.

Jill’s having a lovely time spending her money with justification, now that her father is dead. She now has free rein to spend whatever she likes, no father any longer acting as a pseudo-conscious. It feeds right into her shopping addiction. She is just lucky that she has a large amount of money to her name. I said to her that she didn’t buy the Sunshine Coast house, recently, simply to have a holiday house, she bought it to facilitate her on-line spending addiction. She now has the perfect justification to keep buying “stuff” that she has absolutely no need for because she now has a new house to furnish.

She shrugged and agreed.

Still, I guess, it is compensation for a life time spent on her own. It fills the empty space of never having had a partner, I guess.

Money? Or love? Which would you rather?

I was back on YouTube when I got home, despite promising myself that I wouldn’t. (It is my addiction) I’ve got to write something. I haven’t written anything for ages. The week has drifted by almost unnoticed, as I have been distracted by the small screen.

I watched Joan Crawford being interviewed by David Frost, who seemed to be flirting with her. She seemed drunk, was drunk. She seemed full of shit, too. She had little interesting to say other than essentially “look at me.”

I watched and Janis Joplin sing on Dick Cavett. The great Janis Joplin. A key member of the 27 Club. She was great, she was a great singer. I guess Amy Winehouse was almost the equivalent to Janis dying? Huge fame. Death. Then Gloria Swanston came on. Could you get two different artists, I thought. I think Dick Cavett is kind of cute, I’d flirt with him. He has the most endearing smile.

I spoke to (neighbour) Gordon on the way down to Smith Street for dinner. He has bought a new house in Richmond, a modern townhouse in (blah) Street, which is actually near my work. he's retired. He’s selling his house, which he has owner for forty three years. Forty three years? Imagine leaving after all that time? He bought the house in 1970 when Fitzroy was a slum, when banks wouldn’t even lend money to buy houses in Fitzroy. He said, "When Gertrude Street was a dangerous place to walk along."

I’ve lived in Fitzroy for a long time now myself. I am heading to half the years Gordon has lived here, frighteningly quickly. It has gone so quickly. I can kind of understand how he must feel.

We went to Masak Masak with our coupon for dinner. The place was full and we were supposed to have booked. Oops. We should have read the coupon. It looked like everyone there was on a coupon… and gay. Lots of gay boys on coupons. There was a muscly cute dark-haired boy who sat facing me with his back to the door, who eyed off all the men as they entered or left. He didn’t miss any, well, any men under forty. He had good taste.

We went to Woollies afterwards. It was quiet. They have hot cross buns on sale already. I complain about Xmas starting in November, but Easter in January? I think that must be the earliest I have ever seen a seasonal product in the shops. When is easter? Two months away? Three months away? Talk about marketing changing the celebratory seasons, global warming of sales where the seasons are changing. Who can know when it is Xmas or Easter any more?

It was a warm night. Buddy loves a warm night, as we leave the back door open and he can wander in and out of the house as he pleases.

I love the carefree nights of holidays, the seemingly endless days of being off work. Sara Beeny was saving Rise Hall. I’ve seen it before, but it bears watching again. Can you imagine having a 90 something room house? All that space? The size and the grandeur. It must be amazing for children to play hide and seek in. Rise Hall is incredibly lucky, I’m sure saved from ruin by the skin of its teeth, by the paint on it’s decaying window frames, by one person. If it wasn’t for Sara, and her (cute) husband the house would be joining the ranks of grand British homes in ruins, I am sure.

It is fascinating to look at the derelict homes of England. Those amazing monuments to grand wealth of which that the wealthy have let go and which are now slowly crumbling to the ground. I always think that if the owners from the houses hey day could see the places now what on earth would they think? It would almost be inconceivable to them that such a grand structure could be allowed to decay.

Sam went to bed as I watched The Straits for the first time. Nana S, off to bed at nana time 10.40pm sharp. There was a program on car accidents that sounded interesting, after the Straits, so I lay back on the couch and waited for it to come on.

Then I was in my old neighbourhood, walking through the old laneways. At the first street intersection, (or street T-intersection as they are) one of the old houses up the lane from my parents house had been trucked away and another, much more elaborate, house had been trucked in, and the new owner was standing out the front telling anybody about it who would listen. I walked up the laneway a bit further to the next junction and that house had been turned into a kind of kiosk that opened directly on to the roadway, in which the only one of my cousins who I haven’t seen since childhood, was working. They were listening to some sort of woman’s football. My cousin spoke as if she was the commentator. Everybody seemed to be interested in this broadcast match. I wasn’t at all interested in it, of course, and I was somewhat perplexed why everybody was? It was announced that it was half time in the proceedings, just as I turned to walk back to my parent’s house. There were two women walking in front of me, who also seemed to have the games commentary coming out of their mouths. The woman with the new house at the first intersection seemed to have the commentary coming out of her mouth. When I got to my house my parents seemed to be speaking in that infernal sports commentary. They all spoke in that monotone commentary speak. Ah! I thought I was going insane. Why is the whole world speaking that way? If they all had to speak in the same way there were much better styles of talking in which they could talk. Stop it! Why wont they stop it? Stop! Stop! Stop!

I woke up. It was 4.30am. I’d fallen asleep on the couch. There was woman’s football on the TV. That commentary droned on and on. I found the remote and switched it off and, of course, it stopped. Glorious silence. Who cares about woman’s football? I went to bed.