Eating Cake and Drinking Tea... Second Last Day of Freedom

It was grey and overcast morning, such a contrast to yesterday. The rain came down in waves, stop start from early in the day. Staying indoors is too easy, it is my default position. I had to buy milk and butter at the supermarket to make cake, as my bananas had turned black. (It sounds like an episode of Embarrassing Bodies. "Can I show you, Dr Christian?") I headed down the street in between showers, but it was raining again when I emerged from the super market. What to do? If I have a few moments to waste, I like to go to Cash Converters to peruse the $1 cds. I often pick up those albums I have missed along the way, or those cds I once had that have ended up in the same place with all the odd socks, glasses, pens, remote control, or which I leant to friends who said they would return them, which I, and they, forgot about eventually. I got the last two Pink Floyd cds, one Cold Play and a couple by Clare Bowditch, who’s voice I have always liked. 5 bucks, not bad.

The rain fell steadily, like a constantly falling veil over the world in front of me, as I thanked the universe for shop verandas, feeling that chill, of being safe and dry while the rest of the world walked zig zig in a vain attempt to dodge water drops, run up my spine. All the shop keepers said it was a shame about the weather. Their mouths fell open when I told them I preferred it. “I’m going to retire to some place cold,” I told them. “Maybe Hobart.”

“Oh,” said the sweet lady in the tattsLotto shop, looking at me as if I was just a little bit mad.

“Don’t get me wrong, if Phuket, or Super Paradise are in front of me, I’m fine with the heat,” I said. “But failing that, it’s Tasmania for me.”

She seemed to like that, well, her face broke into a smile and she nodded as though I had just uttered some kind of wisdom.

Friday is generally Cryday for David, he works hard, long hours, puts in 100%, is at all of his sycophant’s beck and call and it is, generally, his only day off, where he takes to his bed in tears with a tub of ice cream, but not today, he came over and we drank tea and ate the banana cake I had made (he has a sixth sense, read she’s a pig) and watched YouTube clips about how the bible is a work of fiction. He’s spiritual, I’m an atheist.

We spoke of objects of masturbatory fantasy and if anything is off limits. I say nothing is off limits, (I think in this day and age, I need to specify that I mean adult human beings in consensual acts, just so we are clear) with two provisos. Firstly, as long as you don’t suffer self-loathing, or want to cut yourself after you have cum due to the nature of your thoughts. Secondly, you know that it is just fantasy and that that has little, or no relationship, to reality, then everything is on the table, nothing is off limits. David’s fantasy was mild, in my opinion, he had some client who told him what she fantasized about and David got off on it. He suspected it was unprofessional. Nyr. Shrug. I told him that if Sam was still with me, and could still look me in the eye, brush my fringe out of my eyes, and gaze at me lovingly, after some of the fantasies I had told him about when we were both high on drugs... big eyes, nervous smile.

“More tea?”

After that, David went home for an afternoon nap to sleep off the banana cake he’d eaten.

I was advised that my p0licecheck has gone into review and now it is going to take approx. ten days. Yay. That makes me nervous.

You see, there is that time I was caught shop lifting when I was 18. Oh, yes, too stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking? What was I thinking? Oh, roll of the eyes, not a lot. It was dumb. I think I was bored, and wanted to test myself. It was a challenge, not stealing, I know that doesn’t make sense. I wanted to see if I could get away with it, never really thinking it through to what might, actually, happen if I didn’t. Naturally, I just thought I would. I didn’t. The store security woman was right onto me.

Or, there was that time 5 years after the unfortunate shop lifting incident when I was, apparently, a suspect in a major bank robbery. That is too stupid for completely different reasons. The p0lice thought it was an inside job, apparently, there was an unusually large amount of money in the bank. There were four of us who worked for the corporate bank after we’d finished uni, the four of us were friends. Two of us left just before the robbery and two of us left after the robbery. And as it just so happened, the four of us flew to London not all that long after, three of us on extended, year away, type vacations, and one of us on his annual 4 weeks holiday. Apparently, the p0lice thought he was the mastermind, which was just laughable. He’s a lovely guy but, how do I put this nicely, not a mastermind of anything. No.

The p0lice followed us overseas, do you believe it. The amount of time they, apparently, wasted investigating the four of us, it is no surprise to me that they never, actually, caught the real robbers.

So, if my p0licecheck has gone into review because of either of these reasons, which it probably hasn’t, apparently, 25% of applications go into review, I hope it is the 350K bank robbery as I am, obviously, innocent of that, and not the $1.50 shop lifting thing, as I’m not innocent of that. But I got a good behaviour bond, and I thought that meant it never showed up on things like p0licechecks. The stupid things you do when you are young. I’m not proud of it, but, fuck it, I’m not really so ashamed of it either. It happened so long ago now it feels like a different life time. I have never nicked anything else ever in my life. Just that one time. How many of you can say that? I never have. Well, if you don’t count Shane’s pot, but even that, I’m totally confident that Shane wouldn’t care, if I told him.

Sam says I am over thinking it, as in my line of work I have had a number of p0licechecks in the past. I have never had to apply for my own before, however, that is a new thing. I can be a little bit worst-case-scenario-Christian, I know that.

I took my antique satchel to the lovely lady at the shoe repair shop to have it sewn up in time for my new job. The leather is still great, but all the stitching has disintegrated. I could buy a new one, certainly, but it belonged to my uncle, who died one year before I was born, the husband of my beloved aunt, it has his initials in gold on the outside, and I have a certain attachment to it. It’ll be ready Monday.

And a bag for work, in my opinion, is a must. Phone, wallet, headphones, laptop (once there would have been cigarettes) lunchbox, the Adventures of Peter Rabbit, plant clippings, sunglasses, headache pills, change of shoes, Superman outfit, fresh undies, whatever I want to carry to work is all so easy to carry to the office with a leather satchel. No bulging pockets, and hands free for whatever you want to do with free hands… touch that accounting grads arse in the lift, whatever.

The sun came out in the afternoon and I went for a walk listening to Marcia Hines, Time Of Our Lives. She’s a goddess.