Fixing The Pond

I was awake at 7am, I couldn’t sleep. I been dreaming vivid dreams, none of which I could remember as soon as I woke up. I lay quietly in the dark for a while, but couldn’t get back to sleep. I pulled the doona up to my face and I was warm, but sleep evaded me. So, I got up. I grabbed my clothes and my laptop and headed downstairs.

It was cold. It was grey. I got dressed in the lounge room. 

I had a cigarette. I made coffee and prepared muesli.

Then the rain came down. The wind picked up. Oh, what sort of day was it going to be? Windy, rainy? I’m a genius. Ha, ha. 

Australian Chainsaw Carving Championships: Concluded its inaugural 3-day event (23–25 May 2014) at SkyHigh Mount Dandenong in Victoria, showcasing wood-carving artists from Australia and internationally. 

67th Cannes Film Festival: "Winter Sleep" directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan wins the Palme d'Or. 

Berniece Baker Miracle, American writer (My Sister Marilyn) and half-sister of Marilyn Monroe, dies at 94

Bertha Gilkey, American activist for public housing tenant rights, dies of cancer at 65

Herb Jeffries [Umberto Alejandro Ballentino], American actor and director (The Bronze Buckaroo, Mundo Depravados), dies of heart failure at 100.

We dug out the spa to turn it back into a fish pond. It just had to be done. No more pea & ham soup filled spa with the occasional dead possum floating under the cover. Oh, it seemed to be so easy way back when, but those days are over. Of course, some else used to maintain it. Ha ha. That was the best aspect. Me, oh, not so good at the maintenance. So, we filled it full of white pebbles until it was about 30 centimetres deep. I insisted that we just had gold gold fish, all the same colour, all comets. 

After that, we came in and drank tea and ate chocolate coated Scotch Finger biscuits. The king of biscuits. Actually, the only biscuit worth eating. The only biscuit that comes near to being a perfect biscuit. 

Then I opened up my laptop and let the rest of the day fade away. 

I wrote the following to a post by Lucy Cotter of Russell Brand – the creature that makes my skin crawl – raving on about spirituality and cosmic vibrations and the supreme being in charge… yabber, yabber, yabber, yabber… I could so hear Russell desperately making up for his indulgent, hedonistic past.

Another born again evangelical spiritualist trying to talk his way out of his past transgressions.

Their current life ends for these people and they think they can transition to spirituality. Spares us. Gives us a break.

Wow! I’m amazed by (so called) friends who think they are so open minded and yet when someone says – that would be me – something that is essentially another point of view to what they have posted, they de-friend you – again, that would be me – on Facebook. I thought that is what Facebook was all about? A discussion. An exchange of ideas. A place for a conversation? I guess I was wrong.

I wish I’d known, I would have stuck to reposting banal clichés and pictures of puppies, since I can only assume now that is all they are capable of dealing with. But, I guess, many people are only on Facebook to have smoke blown up their arses.

Still, I guess, it is better to learn who your friends really are… hey? I guess I don’t mean friends exactly, but friends who are worthwhile enough with whom to have a meaningful relationship. 

Rather than living in delusion.

I would suggest to this particular… um… er… (for want of a better word) friend, that instead of railing against The Abbot Liberal Government, that alternatively there would be a role for you amongst the closed minded federal politicians. I would suggest that you are perfectly suited.

We ate in Glenferrie Road. Ah, lovely Glenferrie Road. Back to my childhood, as I’m sure I have already written previously. A place I have spent a lot of time, but now I am grown up, I don’t spend any time there at all. Lives grow, interest shift. 

We went to Bunnings. One of my very favourite shops, something for everyone amongst the myriad of things they carry. I even like the smell of the place. We bought a pond liner to go over the pebbles filling the depths of the old spa. 

We came home and lined the pond. Not as easy as it sounds. We turned it one way. We turned it another way. We fiddled about with it and fiddled about with it. Made adjustments. Then made more adjustments. And eventually, we got it just right.