What's the Point To All Of This?

I got all my work done yesterday, not too many people annoying me, bugging me, interrupting me, or wanting something done. IT finally got their act together and updated my system. Not too much pain there. Deadline for everything to be finished is tomorrow, so, I pretty much, have the day free. Yay.

Gotta love working from home.

I should get on to my novel. I should. I should want to get it finished, to get it out there, to have something for eternity, but, nyr? What do I care? Eternity, smernity?

Lazy? Maybe? Insecure? Can I really do it? I think I am more lazy that afraid. Writing is hard work. I’m making excuses, sure.

We spend our lives thinking we matter, but really... dead for 50 years – is that two generations? – and nobody will remember you. It's the truth. No matter how special you think you are.

Do I care about anything? Not really? Not like I did once, not like I did when I was young. When I’m dead, I’ll care even less. We're conned into caring about all sorts of fucken things by the news services because it is in the news services best interest to get us hooked on the shit they spew up to us. Don’t be conned, let it go.

There is so little to care about. But we fill our lives with it.

Of course, I care about my close and personal love. Of course, I care about Sam. Of course, I care about the things I can touch with my fingertips, that goes without saying. But, do I care about anything else, no, not really. What's the point? Really?

Why would I care about you? (Give me a reason, I guess?)

It is too easy to get distracted. Suddenly, I’m invested in Melania having a body double. Or how bad domestic violence is. Or how Peta Cretin is wearing her mask wrong. Sheesh!

What’s real gets lost so easily in what’s trending. Is that fashion? That’s fashion, forgotten tomorrow.

Shake of my head.

I just need to get inspired in writing, not all the other stuff, then I write like I'll never tire. It comes in bursts, it comes in waves, it is totally unpredictable. (Well, not totally, if I make myself start it generally flows)

Close the news websites and pick up a novel and read, that’s a start, that's what I say. I say to myself. Tell myself. I've just got to learn to listen better... to myself. I guess we all do.

So much time to waste otherwise.

Monday Morning Blues

Ah, Monday morning, plug back into work. Yay! Crack open the eyes. Stretch. Yawn. Switch on, me & the computer. Now, where was I? The weekend went fast, now didn't it. (Actually, I don't work Thursdays and Fridays, so my extended 4 day weekend went super fast. Blink. Blip. Here we go again. I can’t complain too much, my job is as easy as taking a shit.)

Get going. Work, work, work. Do, do, do. Achieve, achieve, achieve. Ahhh! Woo Hoo! (Did I say woo hoo? I meant, woo, er, oo) Head down, arse up.

Then, hit a wall. Splat! Updates are needed. Grrrrr! (And I was doing so well)

Then, IT are up dating my system, remotely, yawn. (How long is this going to take, he thinks, gazing at his watch?)

When will it be done? 

Can’t say, will let you know.

Strum my fingers on my desk. (Actually, it is an antique dining room table, but I am sure you get my point) IT are taking their sweet fucking time. Grrrrr. Twiddling my thumbs now. Tra la la. I'd whistle, if I could.

How long do I have to wait before I send them a WTF email?

Ah, Monday morning. I might go make another coffee. (I miss the IT guys, they are a sexy, blokey bunch at my office)

Haircuts

Sam and I went and got haircuts yesterday, the first Saturday since hairdressers reopened after lockdown.

The queue was long, we had to wait an hour, but we hadn't had haircuts since, um, months. I don't know how long.

So, we sat on the chairs provided and the queue moved along.

Sam wanted his favourite hairdresser but didn’t feel like he could ask, the situation being what it was. Then we were at the front of the queue, and the guy in the number one chair was waiting for a specific hairdresser, which inspired Sam to hold out for his favourite hairdresser, so I went from number 3 in the queue, to the next to be asked.

The hairdresser asked me how I wanted my hair and I told her. But, she looked like she was going to give me a weird part, kind of way down the side of my head, so I corrected it and she put my part where I indicated, higher up on my head.

She had it laid out like it should be, you know, squirt of the water bottle, run a comb through it, then she took the clippers and ploughed into the ear-side of the part, clipping it all down to pretty much nothing at all.

She saw the look on my face and she made some comment about me not expecting it to be that short.

"Um... no," I said. Nervous smile.

Then she asked me how short I wanted the top, indicating where she was going to cut, holding up the hair with a comb. I told her she could cut it shorter, well, I mean it all had to be evened up just a bit, surely. But, she seemed reluctant to cut the top as short as I asked. I'm guessing she was trying to make up for how short she cut the rest of it. 

So, I have ended up with a part high up on my head, emphasised by the fact by the side of my hair being shaved off and the top being left inordinately long.

Good thing about hair, it grows, I thought, as I got up from the chair.

I was finished first so I waited outside… rubbing the bits of hair out, trying to wipe them from the collar of my shirt. There is always microscopic hair around the collar of your shirt. Then, I was off to get some lunch for the two of us, but Sam text to say he was finished too and to wait. So, I did.

He came out onto the street. "What do you think?" I asked hesitantly.

He looked at me and thought. He opened and closed his mouth. Then he said, "It is a bit lesbian haircut, if I was truthful."

Yeah, great, I thought.

We got Korean chicken schnitzels and walked home.

Abrupt and Irreversible Climate Change

 

Rose

 

Breakfast in Paris

I went out to my front garden and the morning sparkled and the air smelt warm like spring. Fresh. I'd just made coffee and when I came back it smelt like breakfast whilst travelling in Europe and those heady steps one makes towards the dining room all a quiver with what might be offered to eat, and what adventure awaits, in the mornings.

Do you think it is the lockdown? Urges to travel, it has been so long. Is it my subconscious taking me places? I don’t know, but I love those moments. It is what travel is all about, I guess. It is expansive. It makes you a greater person, more rounded, more developed, gives you a greater understanding on life and how people live. All those other lives that get to touch you in such a lovely way. There is nothing else quite like it.

Ah, coffee in Paris. The sweet sugar of cooked raspberries on my lips. The delight of butter spread thick. Freshly baked wheat soft in my mouth. The anticipation of all the delights that await.

Wanderlust. Chewy crust. The bank’s a bust. In travel we trust. Stand still and rust.

Social Media

Social media is a cesspit of abuse and ill feeling, so they say.

Oh no, they don’t have to tell me, I’ve seen that myself.

It is easy to see why, though. I had occasion, recently, where I was unfriended on Facebook because, um, I’m not exactly sure why? I didn’t agree with what my friend believed.

This friend is/was rabidly against Daniel Andrews and consistently posted about that fact. I couldn’t have disagreed with her more, and what she had to say. Daniel Andrews has done a good job, I think. He is one of the only political leaders to bring a second wave under control. But, I never posted anything on my friend’s posts to challenge her ravings, although it was tempting. I simply continued to post my own opinions on my own feed. 

And she came to my feed and challenged me on what I’d posted. Her comment made no sense, it was pretty stupid to be honest. I simply restated my position to her, which amounted to me disagreeing with her. A day, or so later, I found she had unfriended me.

I sooooo want to go to her last comment on my post and tell her she is an idiot. I wasn’t sure she’d even see it, now that we weren’t friends, but her comments were still visible, so maybe, it was worth a shot. I had the urge to put her down, to make her feel like a fool with her illogical ideas. I wanted to be cross with her, a part (small part) of me still wants to. 

However, you know, when I feel like that, I simple defer to that doyen of social commentary Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons who said, “Never explain, never complain.” A (I’ve read where it was called odious) life motto to follow when you are out in the wild west of social media. (not really sure why someone would say it is odious?)

But, you know, I still want to tell my, now ex, friend, I assume, she is a fool. (Where do we go from here?) So, I can imagine how easy it must be for someone who, for want of a better expression, isn’t as smart as me, or is less evolved, or feels more put upon by the world, or has less to nourish them. It is hard to resist.

Ah, big breath. Relax. Disengage. Walk away.

The Past Reaching Out

One of my best friends from school, Andrew, has tried to contact me for the second time.

The first time was initiated by me, a couple of years back, as Andrew is now the president of the old boy’s association and I wanted to know what happened to my school boyfriend, Alex, who died unexpectedly some years back. (I have written about him before) But, I’d never known what happened to Alex and I’d always wondered.

So, Andrew’s email address was on one of the old boy’s newsletters, so I sent him an email asking him what happened to Alex.

Well, Andrew said he was so pleased I’d emailed, and that he’d always felt sorry about the two of us not keeping in contact and that he wanted to speak to me, and he wasn’t going to tell me what happened to Alex unless I called him and spoke to him in person.

I have to say that there was a part of me that was touched by that sentiment. But, there was another part of me too that thought if you’d always felt sorry about not keeping in contact why didn’t you do something about it. But, you know, whatever, that is what happens for whatever reason. It still made me smile.

But… it had been so many years; did I really want to catch up all those years? What were we going to do all these years later, have a dinner party, catch up our whole lives over an evening? Play couples? 

Really?

He’s an accountant, I’m an accountant, seriously, it makes me cringe. I know he isn’t responsible for my (beige) life choices, but it has never been something to which I have ever wanted to admit. I did things when I was young because I didn’t know shit. Oh, fucken universe, how I wish I’d made other choices. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I was ashamed, but I ran away from it for years, being a barman, living in London, then running cinemas, then working Mark’s family business, which turned out to be a bigger mistake. Do you know what the politics is in a family run business, and how powerless your truly are when you are only “the inlaw.” Then I studied creative writing at uni at night, which is when it became crystal clear how I’d fucked up my life, and what I should have been studying when I first left school. That, and learning the piano, that’s what I should have done with my life, and ever since I have lived under a somewhat murky veil of regret. It wasn’t until just before I started this blog that I came back to acc, ou… choke… account, choke… antcy, choke… for the first time, how many years after uni? Well, Mark and I split up and I had to get a mortgage and buy his half of the house… and I thought I’d work and I’d write… but somehow life just gets in the way and suddenly you are just working and pissing the rest of your life away.

Anyway…

Andrew and I had gone the good part of our lives never seeking each other out. Doesn’t they say something in itself?

So, I decided no. It was too late for all of that. I had my life, he had his, for whatever reasons we had decided the course of our friendship years ago. So, I didn’t call.

He sent me a couple more emails. I answered saying how remiss I was about not calling, promising that I would, but I didn’t.

Eventually, Andrew said that since I hadn’t called he’d tell me what happened to Alex, and he told me that Alex had a heart attack and dropped dead on the eighteenth hole of a charity golf match that was raising money for heart disease. Everybody was shocked as Alex was still only 30 years old.

That was a couple of years ago, Andrew and my last communication.

He sent me another email this morning. How was I? Was I coping through this covid19 pandemic?

I wrote him back a very funny email about snorting Hydroxychloroquine of hooker’s stomachs at Mar-A-Largo. Actually, I changed hooker’s stomachs to gogo boys, (slight hint) and wrote I’d been doing dexamethasone down Bethesda way, confirming hooker’s piss really does turn one’s skin orange, blah, blah, blah,

And…?

As much as I’d wished we’d stayed mates all our lives, we didn’t.

I dumped all my school mates after I left school because I wasn’t like all the other boys, if the truth be known. One of the (self-imposed, maybe) discriminations of growing up gay. You lose your mates… I lost my mates.

Alex went on to have three sons which he sent to our alma mater and he became a popular member of the old boy’s association turning up to all the functions and events.

I have a pretty good idea why he dropped dead of heart disease at 30 years of age, that kind of denial will probably do that to you. He sort me out in year 11, his gaydar was keen, as I wasn’t a particularly gay boy. He and I did everything to each other over the following 2 years of school. He was as gay as me. He and I had sex multiple times per week at school and at each other’s houses.

So, you know, there is a part of me that wants to tell Andrew that I am gay, and there is the other part of me that in equal parts doesn’t really want to go through another coming out event. There is part of me who wants to enlighten him, and see the look on his face, as well as here (I kind of like this spelling mistake, so I left it, here, it is like placing it) his reaction, and there is another part of me who seriously doesn’t want to go through that again. Part of me is exhilarated, another part is bored with it already.

However, rightly, or wrongly, all of me wants to out Alex. I’m not exactly sure of the reasons for this, but I know I want to. I wonder if it is the fact that I have never been able to tell anyone about he and I. I never have told anyone.

What about his sons, I hear you say? Yeah, sure, maybe that wouldn’t be kind when Alex isn’t here to defend himself? But, they are grown up now, they are not children. You know, apart from the tickets it sounds like I have on myself, like anything I might say would have that much of a life to get back to them. I’d sure like to see them though, 3 twenty something Alex’s, what’s not to like.

Andrew replied saying I still made him laugh exactly the same way I used to back in school. He told me a bit about himself. His kids, three early twenties have moved back home due to the Covid19 virus.

He asked a question, which I could answer in a reply email, but I’m not going to.

Shrug.

I’m not saying this doesn’t make some part of me feel sad. As I write this, the day outside is wild and windy and dim and there is no sunshine, the day is sad with me.

It’s all gone so fast. When they say you only get one chance at life, they are seriously not wrong.

Take Your Freedom Away

 

A friend unfriended me on Facebook for this post. Seriously. She and her gym fanatic cheer squad have been particularly critical of our Premier and his lock down strategy, as the only life they have is grunting in a room with exercise machines (you know the type?) and they have been particularly aggrieved about that having been taken away from them.

I never went to her mindless posts and challenged her, but I didn't stop posting my own thoughts.

She came to my posts and challenged me.

Sharon Taylor – So there is no virus in other states states 💁💁💁💁💁

Christian Fletcher – There are no other states that had nearly 800 cases of community transmissions per day

Sharon Taylor – Christian, but that comment means no where else has virus (Grammar aside…)

Christian Fletcher – Sharon Taylor no other state had nearly 800 cases of community transmissions in a second wave, which is what took your freedom away

And then I got de-friended. Some people are happy with their own narrow, logically unsound world view, and I'd never go to her and tell her she is wrong, I don't have that much goodness to give to some narrow minded, unthinking fool.

Special Kind Of Loser

 

What People Say

We were walking back across the Yarra yesterday on the Gipps Street Bridge, Buddy trotting along off his lead as usual, with Bruno leading the way on his lead, still too young to be unclipped, we passed an old couple holding up the traffic somewhat by their glacial pace, as we passed the woman of the couple looked at the bulldogs and exclaimed, 

"Oh look, too fat to walk," as Buddy and Bruno walked away from her at twice the speed she was managing.

I have to admit I bristled and thought, seriously lady? Person, woman, man, camera, TV, repeat them back to me. Quick!

It always amazes me what people think they can say to me. 

Still, she was probably a Liberal Voter and she'll be dead soon, so that will be good.

It Was A Lovely Day

The day sparkled, it was a glorious afternoon. A lovely spring day. A lovely Sunday, just how Sundays should be, aught to be, should always be, we want them to be, relaxed, sunny and gentle. The perfect bookend to the working week, the perfect entre. If we have to, you know, do Mondays. I love Sundays like that. It makes the rest of the week worthwhile.

Can You Hear The Fat Lady Warming up? Because I Sure Can

And what do I think? I am at a loss to understand our inaction on climate change.

Really, I don't understand it?

The best I can come up with, is that I think collectively consciously, or subconsciously, we have elected terrible conservative governments, really the worst governments, that have had no policies on climate change, that have somehow made us feel safe in our denial.

Do I think we are going to survive? No, I don't. It's now too late. The arctic is melting. The Siberian tundra is melting. Recently, in Norway when it should have been 10 degrees below zero it was an unprecedented 20 degrees. There are floods in Europe. There are wild bush fires in Australia and California, there are islands going under the surface of the sea, catastrophic climate change is happening now. It is already happening.

And, any policy we now put in place has something like a 10 year lag to when it becomes effective, we have left it too late.

The current conservative governments around the world will potentially one day be charged with crimes against humanity for their deliberate mishandling of the planet's climate (to appease political donors).

There was a team of scientists, I think scientists, who worked out that if we mass plant trees we would buy ourselves something like 20 years, they even identified the public land where this could be done throughout the globe, and we are not even doing that.

It's such a shame really. What a beautiful planet. The blue planet. It was once just mind boggling taking in its spectacular wonders.

And it is also such a shame because humans have created some beautiful things too.

Throughout time, we have fought to stop the rich from destroying us in many, many ways and, essentially, the rich have now won. In the fight to get more toys than anyone else, the rich have destroyed us all.

The human race, such potential, but they just couldn't give up their petty jealousies to live together in collective harmony.

And you know, we think we are so superior, but a few short thousand years, and the planet will wipe any trace of us from its surface, like we might squash a bug into the ground with our shoe.

MacBook Keyboard

I have been using Sam's spare 13 inch MacBook all week. It is kind of the old trusty go-to laptop when our better laptops are out of action.

My MacBook Pro is four years old and it has one of the first butterfly keyboards and, quite frankly, it has been a total disaster from the day I got it. It has been really terrible. How Apple made such a mistake with this keyboard is beyond me.

I think it was all the keys around the K key that stuck first, one by one. Then it was the zero key, which never came good again, it has doubled the zero every time I pressed it for nearly four years. How annoying do you think that has been. Then it was the O key that went dead, the O and the zero together for a time, that was distracting. Then it was the space bar, the comma and the full stop that wouldn't work properly. And there were various other keys that have either stuck, or gone dead.

I have usually been able to fix them with that high pressure air, all except the zero which has never come good. Do you know how many tins of high pressure air I have been through?

Then Sam read Apple had come up with a fix for their dud keyboard. Initially, it was just the 13 inch laptop, but then they added the 15 inch laptop, so in we went with my laptop to get it fixed.

We had to go to one of those privately owned Apple shops and not "Temple," as Sam refers to the Apple Genius shops due to the lockdown. They um'd and ah'd about it coming in under warranty, being 4 years old. "Let's see," said the guy behind the counter. "I'll let you know before we do anything."

Any way, we have just heard that it is being fixed under warranty, and so it should be too. It has always been crap since the day I got it.

I don't mind the 13 inch, it is an easy size to use, but the screen just isn't quite big enough for everything I look at. And Sam sets it up with my own log-in so I can access all my usual stuff. And it stopped the separation anxiety I would have felt if I didn't have a laptop to use. Oh, I have had it bad in the past when I haven't had my laptop, which has only happened a couple of times due to whatever reason, and I am glad I am not feeling it again.

Anyway, Friday should be the day I get mine back.

 

Changeable Weather

It was a cold, wet day, so I didn’t do an hour exercise. Yes, summer yesterday, then plunged back into winter today. I’d ask you what do you think it to blame, but honestly, Melbourne’s weather has always been as changeable.

I had a black African American French teacher at school, the first black African American teaching in Melbourne, from all accounts, who had lived all over the world, who said there was only one other place he had lived that had more changeable weather than Melbourne, and that was some place in South America.

It’s annoying too, because I have got down to 84 kilos and I want to get to 80 kilos, but I seem to be stuck just insight of my goal. I need to keep exercising every day.

Going For A Ride

Midmorning, I went for a bike ride, the weather was lovely. It was a shorts and t-shirt ride. It was like summer is nearly here.

The bike track was full of people, good weather, people are so predictable, and it was a Sunday; joggers, dog walkers, women with prams, who never get out of the way. There were in-line skaters, it looked like a mother and daughter combo, grown out of pageants, in pink mohair jumpers.

I slipped along the bike track and got to Dynon Road in no time. That’s where I turn around and head home. Half an hour out, then half an hour back home again.

I followed three sexy jogging boys back from Dynon Road. Slim, dark-haired, 20 something, all three in tiny shorts. The path was busy with slow traffic, at the beginning of my ride home, so I hung behind the three joggers for a while. The backs of the legs of their tiny shorts flipped up showing their red, yellow and green jocks hugging their tiny little arse cheeks one after the other. Arse, arse, arse. Arse, arse, arse. Arse, arse, arse… if there had been sexy music, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Green was the hottest, sexiest, as you’d expect. He had the shortest shorts, nose twitch. Yellow looked as though he could be indecisive, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t, even if he seemed the happiest to be in between red and green. Red, looked like a tease, he looked the most intense, who’d probably not put out. He had the most muscular thighs.

Eventually green moved over and said, “I guess you’d like to go passed?”

I nearly said, No, I’m fine back here, thanks, but instead I simply said, “Thanks,” and rode passed.

I slid away, up the bike path towards home.

The Ugly Chick Next Door

A friend and I stepped out into the garden to enjoy the day and to drink our coffee in the sun, when he asked me, “Whose is that awful voice?”

“Oh, that’s the ugly chick next door.”

“Wow! Imagine living with that?”

“Imagine,” I said.

She has a nasal voice worse than any finger nails down a blackboard, I liken it more to grinding smashed glass into concrete with one’s bare feet. Our back yards are close, or at least the living parts of them are being terrace houses and she has a habit of sitting outside, rain, or shine and yapping on. She is loud and talkative.

It’s even worse when she sits out there with friends and drinks and gets louder and louder and more and more loquacious, although, I always find that word to sound sweet, like mellifluous, and what she does could never be called sweet.

She and her girlfriends have been known to serenade the neighbourhood at midnight with their awful singing. So bad is it that even the cats of the street are inside with their heads under pillows so they can’t hear. And always to 80’s songs, bad 80’s songs.

Truthfully, it is only ever on a Saturday night, all the other days of the week we never hear a peep from them. But, it can be all Saturday night, until Sunday morning. The insane lady up the back, with all the cats, has complained to council and called the police on them, more than once and they don’t seem to get the message.



A while later the ugly chick’s housemate came to the door. “She heard what you said earlier,” said he housemate, “You really hurt her feelings.”

Goodness me, I thought, I really ought to be more careful. But there was a grinding determination to her housemate that made me less sorry and more defensive than would normally be the case. “Surely, she doesn’t think she is attractive?” I know an involuntary smirk came across my face at the, preposterous, thought.

“Seriously?” replied the housemate. She looked furious, very intense was she.

“Well?” I could feel my jaw fix into a grimace as I played scales with my hands.

“You really are mean.”

“She must be the ugliest girl I have ever met. Seriously.”

“You really are a pig.”

“Funny, I was just about to say the same thing about her.”

“She is a lovely girl, and she didn’t deserve that.”

“I am guessing she is a lovely girl, I mean she’d really have to have developed a personality now wouldn’t she.”

Then the housemate just looked at me with her mouth open, as though she was waiting for something, what, I had no idea. Millennials. Ug.



The ugly chick has a lot of blond hair, piled onto her head. She is rat-faced, she has quite a beak on her. And she always has the expression as though she has just smelt shit. She’s a bit bozz-eyed, and she has a habit of casting her gaze about 30 centimetres in front of her honking nose, which, more often than not, gives her the look of special needs. I guess you’d call it a lazy eye.

I see her mother occasionally dropping her off at her front gate in her luxo BMW four wheel drive. Her mother is gorgeous, oozes Brighton which makes perfect sense of her daughter having a privileged upbringing that allowed her to be as loud as she liked. And now we all get to endure her entitled off-spring.



I gazed back at her housemate. “Um? Are we done here?”

“You could apologise,” she said.

“Oh, dear god, what you have done to the musical back catalogue of the world, even if you started apologising now for your transgressions you would, you couldn’t, live long enough to make amends.”

“We like to sing…”

“Get drunk and sing.”

“Yes, we like to drink…”

“That is not singing, that is elevating karaoke throughout the world to the level of the genius.”

“It’s not that bad…”

“That is ripping the intestines out of a cat to make tennis strings while the cat is still alive.

“We enjoy it…”

“That makes the sound Sharon Tate made as the Manson family hacked the eight month old foetus from her stomach sound like harp music.”

“It is just a bit of fun…”

“No, just a bit of fun is when all participants and everyone within the vicinity of the said fun is left with a smile on their faces…”

“Well, we…”

“Not parties to the “said fun” considering poking out their ear drums out with metal skewers if it continues any longer…”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” she said.

“And I just want you to acknowledge that I have never once complained about your god awful carry on.”

“Okay.”

“Not once.”

She just stared back at me. “Say it.”

“You have never complained.”

“And.” My hand did an involuntary twirl.

“Not once.”

“I think we are done here,” I said.

“Yes.”

I could feel my head tilt.

“Okay.”

I closed the door.

This conversation never happened, well, not passed, "Who's is that ugly voice," in the first paragraph. The descriptive details are all correct, but the actual conversation is imagined, after I said the voice belonged to the ugly chick next door rather too loudly than I really meant to. 

Pruning The Creeper

The weather has been gorgeous, it has turned from winter to spring. The sun has been shining, the sky has been blue. It has been nice to waved winter well away.

I got up the ladder and chopped the creeper on my side wall. It grows wildly and has to be tamed every so often, otherwise it becomes a monster. I did some yesterday and filled the garden cutting's bin, with just a small section. But, today was such a gorgeous day and there was so much more to do, so I got up there again. I really mustn't have done it for a number of years. 

I picked a spot in the middle of the wall and the first thing I saw was a nest with some eggs, so I chopped around it, trying not to disturb it, which I didn't. And a few hours later I had it all chopped down, except for where the wall connects to the back of the house, I'll get up on the roof at a later date and do that, once the rest of the cuttings have been taken away by the council.

The eggs in the nest looked a bit like they were now sitting in a forest that had been completely logged out. (Must have been Liberal Party policies) And then on dusk, I saw the saddest thing, the mother bird grimly sitting on her eggs now completely exposed to the world, a sitting duck for my cat, Milo. So, cross your fingers for the mother bird, I thought.

I must say, I do like the creeper once it has been ruthlessly cut back, it takes on a somewhat ancient and ethereal quality, like a European piazza. It is very satisfying. Funny how something that was such a huge ugly monster can be reduced to something fragile and fine.

There was no sign of that mother bird this morning. I had been the ruthless logger destroying the world and she had been the victim now wiped out. So easily. Habitat gone, the story of the world.

We never feel the apex predator guilt that we should.