Monday At The Salt Mines

Monday morning? They should be banned, of course. 

Off to work. Off to “more of the same.” More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. More of the same. OMG more of the same. Where did I go wrong? How did I settle for this? How did I end up doing this? Doing this? OMG how did I end up doing this?

I stopped at the supermarket and bought cigarettes. WTF! Who cares, if you are fat of thin? Who cares, if you live or die?

Smith Street is still pretty much deserted that time of day. It was a little warmer this morning. I stand next to the car and smoke a cigarette before I get back in.

Stopping in Smith Street changes the way I drive to MMP, just by going to Smith Street first. You wouldn’t think, but it does. 

I rocket off back down Smith Street, I cut through the back streets of Collingwood, my own personal race track. I have to feel alive somehow on a grey morning like this. 

Drive fast kids, it is fun. I remember driving my mum’s Saab Turbo at 90 kph down Toorak Road weaving through the traffic, down that hill to the freeway, when I first got my licence. Good times.

Then I’m heading through the back streets of Abbotsford, I can out run nearly every car on the road, connecting back onto my usual route around CUB Brewery. Then it is past the parked, black Vauxhall Cresta in the back streets of Richmond. Past old Shirl the lollipop lady. Slip onto Burnley Street normally in front of all the morning traffic. Left, right and left into MMP carpark. 

I was at work at 8.30am. 

Christine is in, of course. It is a constant theme with the woman I work, those who live the farthest distance away, are always in first. They say it is the only way to keep a one hour drive from turning into a two hour drive.

Of course, no one comes further than Shayleen from Ballarat, but that’s just madness though. 

Jade was in. Kaia came in after me. Jude rushed in late, half dressed. Okay, that is just my dirty mind picturing Jude in the preferable way. He was pulling on his suit coat, saying he slept in. That was when he pulled the apple out of his mouth to speak.

“Breakfast?” I ask. 

“Coffee and fruit, the breakfast of champions,” he says.

Momentarily, I picture him lying on his stomach on a baking tray in his undies, ankles tied behind him, with the apple in his mouth about to go into the oven. 

I shake my head and the image disappears. He is once again standing in front of me in his black suit and white shirt, he bites a huge piece off the apple which makes a crisp cracking sound, and then holds the rest of the apple in the air, and nods and smiles at me. 

It rained. It was cold. It was lucky we bought firewood on Saturday. 

It was a standard issue Monday, shaking off the freedom of the weekend, gathering one’s strength for the tedium of the week to come. 

I lit a fire when I got home.

We ate chicken and bok choi and prawns for dinner.

We watched Teev all night. And life clunks along at a predictable rate.