My Day Off

I was up at 6.30am. It was cold and wet and windy and dark.

I rolled a joint and smoked it outside.

Buddy got up and snuffled around the back door after I had come back inside. So, I had to get up and let him in and he came in and immediately climbed into my lap as I sat on the lounge room floor at my large coffee table.

Sam was up at 7am. He first accused me of smoking joints, which was patently true. Then he said make a fire with sticks and newspaper, which work beautifully.

Sam made coffee and toasted crusty white bread spreading it with thick lashings of cream cheese and vegemite.

Sam headed off to work. 

It rained. The roof leaked. Bugger it. In two places. The same old problem, which I thought we’d fixed, but apparently not. 

I listened to Michael Jackson’s Xscape. I like it. I like it better than his first posthumous album, Michael.

I had a pull. Don’t all guys when they are home alone? Oh, cum on, you do so, don’t lie. It is what we all do. And I ate stale corn chips – not at the same time, you understand, could you imagine? It would be like having sand in your bed. Or doing it in the shallows of the surf. And then it was midday. I lay on the couch.

The sun came out brightly at 1.30pm, as Labelle sang Turn it Out. Kind of appropriate, don’t you think? Turning out the sun. 

I snacked on rice crackers, despite there being an open packet of TimTam Chocolate brownies. I’ve never been keen on TimTams, I guess you are surprised by that with the sweet tooth I have? But no, I have never had the TimTam gene. 

I drank water. How many litres are you supposed to drink each day? 2.6 litres, is what they say. 2.6 litres? Okay. I’d better get started. 

Blood orange Agrum took the stale, one hundred joints smoked, mouth away. Now it is just water for the rest of the day. 

Sam called and messaged to tell me to do something. Do something, you say? Do something, I wonder? Something? but, it’s my day off and days off aren’t made for doing something, I think. Actually, days off are very much geared towards doing something, of course, but that doesn’t help my plan for the day, in any fucken way. 

I’ve got Cold Play’s new album to listen to.

Toasted crusty bread and homemade fig jam and butter, I found much more to my liking, for lunch. What’s wrong with that? Toast and jam for lunch? 

2.12pm. I feel like a little piggy. Massively over toasted and over jammed.

I looked at my mobile phone, sometime in the afternoon and the toy company had called blah, blah, blahing on about some figures they feel aren’t correct. 

Oh well, I ignored that. There is nothing wrong with the figures, I can assure you. They are just speaking from a place of not knowing what they are talking about, I would say. 

Fuck them! I can explain it to them when I am next in the office, because, if you want to employee me for one day a week, you get one day a week’s worth of work, that is how the world works. 

I don’t look at my mobile phone quite as often if I am home on a day off. I don’t think of it, if it is still tucked away in my brief case, that is if I don’t pick it up when I first get out of bed. 

I rolled another joint and soon forgot about that, smoking it outside, gazing out at the garden, as rain fell. Don’t you love that feeling of the rain pouring down, while you sit outside looking out at it, covered and protected from it? I know I do, it gives me chills up my spine, more often than not. 

a severe "winter weather bomb" struck Melbourne and Victoria bringing destructive winds, coastal storm surges, and heavy rain

• Extreme Winds: Gusts exceeded 100 km/h at Melbourne, Avalon, and Essendon airports, with peak state winds reaching up to 122–130 km/h.

• Yarra River Flooding: High tides combined with the storm surge caused the Yarra River to breach its banks in central Melbourne, flooding footpaths, structures, and areas around Southbank, including the Ponyfish Island bar.

• Power Outages: Up to 12,000 to 30,000+ customers across metropolitan Melbourne and surrounding regions (such as the Mornington Peninsula and Frankston South) lost power due to fallen trees and clashing power lines.

• Transport Disruptions: Public transport was heavily affected, with bus replacements on lines like the Glen Waverley and Belgrave/Bayswater lines, alongside flight delays.

• Emergency Response: The State Emergency Service (SES) received thousands of calls for help across Victoria, with roughly 1,600 calls centered in Melbourne, mostly for structural and building damage, fallen trees, and minor injuries from flying debris.