9.25am. We head off to The Hive (shopping centre) in the rain. The streets are deserted, nobody is around, it is a ghost town outside. Lockdown and heavy winter are taking their toll. It is bleak, grey, the day is colourless. The rain hasn’t stopped since yesterday, since Friday. We mask up before we go, of course, strange times indeed. It is cold, uninviting, and the morning is silver with moisture.
We get a park right out the front. I love it when Jill is with me, you always get a park out the front, she says. It almost seems to be a waste to get a park right out the front if no one is there to appreciate it. Sam doesn’t care, he doesn’t drive, so he doesn’t understand.
We walk around Aldi. Sam is taking his sweet time, I try to hurry him up.
“A quick shop is a good shop,” I say. He doesn’t react.
“Let’s get what we need and go.” He keeps browsing the shelves unhurried.
“I’m going to look at the junk bins in the middle of the shop.” I’m hungry.
Why do some guys look so good in tracksuit pants? I ask you? Tall and blond and athletic, I suppose, has a lot to do with it. Damn, that is a fine piece of mea… er, man.
I take stuff to the car, as Sam goes to Woollies for juice, which Aldi didn’t have. “Aldi doesn’t have juice?” I question. He heads off to Woollies without answering. (I’ve never liked Aldi)
I stand in the centre’s doorway, like I normally would when I have Buddy and Bruno with me and start writing some journal notes in my phone. Some aboriginal girl asks me for money, which I try to ignore, but she is insistent, asking louder and louder until I have to react. “No, sorry,” I say. She doesn’t look underfed, I think. Oh, I’m just cranky, remember, I haven’t had breakfast yet.
Things still hurt, my chest and my back. My feet are still hum, at times. David said the other day he didn’t expect middle age ailments to hit quite so hard, or so early. I shudder at the suggestion. Ah life? What is there to say about it now?
10.15am and still shopping. I sit on the seat at the front of Woollies and wait for Sam, and write some more of my journal. When I see him come into the self-service checkout, I text him. “Look over your right shoulder.” He gazes around like Stevie Wonder until he sees me, then he smiles.
I ferry more bags out to the car, running in the rain. (Going back to check if I locked the car in an OCD fashion in the rain)
We go to Saigon Village and get fruit. Mandarins and bananas for me. My snack food, now I can’t eat sugar. (I guess I must go to the doctor and get my next blood test to see what my sugar levels are, actually, doing?”)
Sam goes to Minh Phat supermarket and wanders about leisurely. I stand out the front and write some more of my journal. I watch the people passing by.
The rain still falls. The rain hasn’t stopped. It is even colder, and wetter, and greyer. Good thing I like the rain.
I’m even hungrier.
I remember the white bowls I want to buy from Minh Phat, some large white bowls, we seem to have had a Greek wedding with ours lately. They, of course, have every size but the size I want. The size I want is just an empty spot on the shelf. Naturally.
Sam is finally done shopping. We run to the car in the rain. We perform hopscotch in the puddles, or maybe that was just me.
We are home by 10.30am, with the milk for the porridge I was going to make us both, the reason for going early in the first place, but we have ginger and sesame ball soup for breakfast instead, which Sam makes. I could eat the crotch out of a low flying whatever by this stage.
10.50am. I light a fire. A fire in the morning warms the room for the day, and because of lockdown where going to be here for a while.
The rain is still falling. I pull on my track pants and my explorer socks.
I put the old yucca, we chopped down from next door last year, on the fire and it burns well, even if it does smell just a touch, still it is better in flames in the fire place than dropping its leaves in my gutters to block them up when it rains.
We put The Grand Tour on. I cuddle up on the couch with Buddy and Bruno.
Midday, the weather clears up a bit, the sun comes out momentarily. Just a touch, just a hint, just a idea of what else it could be.
We watch the Grand Tour all day. Binge watching, that is the sort of weekend that it was, that is the sort of weather we had.
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