New Year's Day

I woke at 8am. I grabbed my laptop, my shorts and the mull box. I turn the coffee machine on and roll a joint in the laundry. Sam is up and awake and catches me with the joint in my hand.

I tell him later that the dope is crap, he tells me, “You are just building up a resistance to it, slow down.”

We sit in the sun on the deck and drink our coffee and smoke the joint.

Jane gets up not long after. We see her walking around the lounge room as though she is looking for something. She comes out onto the deck with the bird and her handbag.

“This may sound weird, but I just have to go to the gym,” she says. “I feel all bloated and horrible.”

“I guess all those gymed up Torquay boys wouldn’t be going to the gym,” I say. “They’d have done all of that before they came down here.”

“I doubt they’d be there now,” says Jane.

I mentally check what day it is. New Year’s Day. “No, I guess not.”

“I guess I am under .05,” says Jane. “I didn’t have that much to drink last night.”

I think my ‘not a lot to drink’ and Jane’s idea of ‘not a lot to drink’ are clearly different. “What is it they say, you sober up one drink per hour?” I say. “Is that it?” I wonder if I have any idea what it is? “What time did you go to bed?”

“1am?”

“8 hours.” I think to myself, No, that’s not right.”

“They’d be pretty mean to be out this morning,” says Jane.

I wonder if this is exactly the day they’d be out breath-testing people.

She takes Jay and heads to the car.

I roll another joint and sit on the deck and write my journal. Sam takes to the couch due to the head spins associated with smoking. I wonder if I am not treating him, my most precious thing, as well as I could, by making him smoke at the rate I do?

9.30am.

The gentle breeze rustles the leaves in the trees. The birds cheap and whistle from trees near and far. The sun sparkles.

I have ringing in my ears. It rings against the whistle of the wind around me.

I take a half smoked cigarette out of the ashtray from last night and smoke it.

Sam and I do our morning walk to the bitumen. I tap the hard, grey road with my foot and headed back. No hurry. Saunter along.

It was the coldest day of the holiday, overcast and the sun kept disappearing.

Bonnie and her friend and her friend’s son, Nico, arrived in the morning in their Mazda CX-3 Maxx.

They headed off to the beach.

Shane, Tulli and Sebastain headed off to the beach.

I wanted to go to the beach, I really did, but really today is just too cold, half of the time there was no sun. There was a cool breeze. Fancy going to the beach and not setting foot on the beach, that must be a first? The beginning of the week was too hot and after the cool change came it has been too cold.

Julien went shopping.

I read my book. It was a lazy day.

We watched TV in the afternoon.

Shane asked if he could still come and stay.

“Of course you can.” There goes my week off to myself, dam, I thought. I hope it didn’t show because, of course, I want Shane and Tulli to stay, but I am sure he said he was going back on the 15th. Maybe he means the weekend. Next weekend.

Shane cooked Devilled Eggs. Apparently, Tulli’s favourite. I told them how I’d made them a couple of times, paprika and something and mayonnaise and spring onion, but I always ate them as I made them and I never ended up with enough to serve to anyone.

Shane did paprika and anchovy.

Sebastain cooked hamburgers for dinner. Yum, yum. And he made coleslaw. We watched the movie Julie and Julia sitting on the couches in the lounge room.

We sat around. I rolled joints continually because that is what I felt like doing.

We went to bed at midnight. Sam said that he couldn’t wait to go home, he thinks we are wasting our time sitting around at the beach house now.