Going to the Paint Shop

I was up at 9am. That’s late for me. But no guilt, I can tell you. I was going to stay in bed for the morning, but I didn’t.

I watched Marked Woman. (When is too much Bette Davis too much?) It’s great. It just doesn’t seem like it is 80 years old. And Bette looks gorgeous in it, oh, right up until her face is mutilated by the mob.

I started to watch, Where Love Has Gone, but turned it off pretty quickly after it started, saying to myself, I can’t do this. I can’t watch a marathon of Bette Davis movies. Even I feel as though that is too much.

I ate sardines on toast for lunch, as Sam is having another work lunch. Shut up! I like sardines on toast, in fact, if Sam didn’t come home every day for lunch, sardines on toast would make up a good part of my staple lunch.

I decided to do something in the afternoon, something, anything, I started late, to be sure, not ready until 2pm. The day just ticks away.

I try not to use my car anymore, if I don’t have to. Partly for the good of the planet, partly, as a health thing for myself, and partly as a nod to the generations who came before us. The people who lived in the inner suburbs 100 years ago, they walked places because they had no alternative, but also because they weren’t as lazy as we are. Or as fat, no doubt. They would think nothing of walking to Clifton Hill and then walking to the city, because it really isn’t that far to walk.

Health and history, that is why I walk, or try to walk.

I’m decided to go the paint shop, in Clifton Hill, to find paint for the front gate. Then, once I got that done, I’d walk to the city, and reward myself with some Bette Davis DVDs. Dangerous, Payment On Demand, and Dead Ringer, as I know it is cheap at $12.

I’ll have music to listen to, any music I want, so why wouldn’t I enjoy a good walk. The sun came out on that thought, which I took as a good sign.

I put Santana on.

I started to walk down [name of my street] Street, but as I got only 100 metres, let’s say, from home, a girl came out of her house with her bike. She leant it against the front fence as she put on her bike helmet, as I walked passed, then she rode off. My pace slowed, I really should ride my bike, I thought. It would be much quicker and just as good exercise. I walked a little further. No, really, I should ride my bike, I thought again. I went home and got my bike from the new garden storage unit, for the first time, thinking to myself, with a smile, it is exactly this kind of occasion that I bought the new garden storage unit, getting the bikes out of the dining room for the first time in years. I smiled to myself. Don’t you love it when plans work out so well.

I changed my recycled shopping bag, stuffed in my back pocket, for a back pack. I headed off on my bike, still listening to Santana. (I’m still very pleased with my updated greatest hits package)

I found the paint I needed, at the paint shop in Queens Parade, dark grey with a metal fleck through it, but they only had it in 4 litre tins, at $89 per tin. And I had to transport it home on my bike. Oh well, good thing I changed to the back pack. The nice man behind the counter put the tin into plastic bags and then I slid it into my back pack. It was heavy carrying it home like that and it was digging into my back by the time I got home, but it also worked fine.

I walked into town to the DVD shop. I bought Dangerous, Payment On Demand and Dead Ringer. The guy behind the counter commented, “I can see a common theme here,” he said. “And you have films from the 30’s, I think 1952 and 1964.” He and I said 1964 in unison.

I came home and put Dangerous on. It wouldn’t play. Grrrrrr, I thought. I put on Dead Ringer instead. It was still playing when Sam got home, perhaps an hour later.