Horrible Reactionaries

I wonder how many people understand the simple concept, HR is not your friend. HR works for the company. HR always has the company's interests at heart.

And because HR is a very highly paid role now, when the HR people are not working for the company, they are always working for themselves and their career - read pay increases - progression.

If HR is ever there for the employee, which is arguable, the employee, at best, comes a fairly poor third.

I think many people labour under that misapprehension, but in truth, the clue is in the title. Human Resources, these are the resources of the company, that are the human element, which have to be managed. You are simply a part of the many resources the company employs that have to be managed.

(And the Witches of Eastwick are invariably the mechanism by which you are managed)

I have never met an HR employee who I haven't disliked. Oh, of course, there were the exceptions. There was the senior manager who always kept a carton of Coke Zero under her desk which she handed out willy nilly as a panacea to everything, who used to tell me HR was mostly bullshit. Or there was the other lovely senior manager who was so disenchanted with my termination at the black law firm that she left 6 months later to work in a munition's factory dedicating her life to the destruction of the human race. But, other than those two, they have been mostly trash you wouldn't piss on if they were burning. (too harsh?) 

Perfection

What a glorious day, the weather is perfection. It is days like today that make me think I am wasting my life inside working for someone else. It is a day when everything feels just right. Air, light, scent, warmth, just gorgeous. 

If you are not skinny dipping off golden sand into turquoise water with someone you are madly in love, having just dined on lobster, and honey nectar, with not a care in the world, you really have failed in life. That is the sort of day it is.

 

I’m listening to Bob Dylan.

But, I Don't Want To Go Back To The Office

OH nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I just read the email from last week, on one of my two days off. The CEO. Everybody back in the office. Fuck off, that's what I think.

A better way of working has been discovered, don't take that away from us now.

My boss has said to me in the recent past, that he was happy for my team of two to decide for ourselves, and that if we decided to keep working from home, he was happy with that.

I hope that still stands.

I don't want to go into the office again. No way. I know I have it easier than most, half an hour walk from my door to the office door, but still. That is an hour I waste every day. I could walk in the park for an hour, and I often do.

This morning, I got up at 6.30am, and I started working at 7am, so they get more work out of me as well.

I'm just going to keep quiet.

I hope none of the HR witches get it into their heads to round us all up and drag us back to the office. Theponytail, biggirlsblouse, theplainone, fillet-of-fish, thesnarkyblondone, thedumbone, they are vindictive, those HR slags, they would do it just because they have to be in the office. And that would not please me.

I listened to Joe Cocker all day.

Sam cooks for me. I never have to cook. I know, lucky me

Laksa for dinner.

I’m lucky, I have a boyfriend who cooks for me. I never have to think about food, shopping for it, or preparing it, and that is pretty cool.

I pay all the bills. Sam buys the food – that includes eating out, which we do less and less now a days – and he cooks. I clean the kitchen. I do the washing. I think I have the better deal. I know I have the better deal.

Sweet pies QV

Me, “Look at these glorious pies,” eyes out on sticks like boiled lollies, “we should have one.” (I'm sure there was drool)

Sam said, "No." He can be bossy, we know that.

Me, insert sad face emoji.

We’d just eaten Indian at Chilli Indian Melbourne Central for lunch. I’m sure I would have had more luck getting a sweet pie if we’d been hungry, I’m guessing.

I shopped at JB for Trueblood season 4. (the only one in the set I didn’t have, something I felt I have needed for the longest time, and now that I have it, I feel nothing. We are funny creatures, aren’t we?) Sam shopped at Big W, for iron-on patches for the continuing repair of our lounge room dog blanket. (The difference between Sam and I, I am sure Sam would tell you… ah, maybe it’s true?) A $600 name brand blanket we got for $150 – which may say it all, I guess – which started falling apart much sooner than I expected it to. It is now more patch than blanket, but I like the patched look, so I’m not really complaining. It's just a fact.

We’ve been watching Homeland – television watching has changed for all of us, I guess. We are intermittently binge watching Homeland. It’s good, I’d recommend it. That’s Homeland, and not intermittently binge watching, although I’d recommend that too, but, undoubtedly you have discovered that for yourselves. I want to follow that with Trueblood, but I wanted the entire series before we started. It’s not on any of the 3 streaming services we to which we subscribe, and I already had a number of the DVDs. I bought most of them for nothing in second hand DVD shops, but I couldn’t crack it for the 4^th season. It’s been awhile since I first watched it, and I don’t think I ever watched the last season, maybe the last two seasons. I can’t remember now? Even that relatively short time ago – relatively is a relative term depending how old you are – it was free to air TV, which was a different world, you had to fit it in around life. I think it has been long enough now, however, when it could get its own binge watch. It’s a sexy show. I loved it. 

 

Cool cobweb.

We have a huge red and white spider who built this web. I have never seen a spider quite like it before, white legs and a red body, quite big, as big as, oh I don’t know, a knuckle. 

He built his web a couple of times in places where we walked into it, when we’d take the bulldogs out for their last wee before they’d go to bed. Sam and I would leap about like girls trying to pull the cobweb off ourselves, just in case, knowing what the spider looked like. 

(Oh, okay, the use of language that girls want boys to stop using. To be fair, I have quite a number of girlfriends who are terrified of spiders and who jump about as though they want to peel off their skin at the thought of a spider being on them. I don’t have any boyfriends who do that. I have boyfriends who’d simply brush spiders off their person, or, in fact let spiders walk over their hands. But, I’m sure we all get the point) 

But then the spider rebuilt its web out of our way as if it understood, or was sick of the squealing, or was tired of having to rebuild its web, or all of the above, and we have gone back to cohabitating together happily.

Everybody Gets A Day Off

The sun is shining, we both have the day off. Sam has been working extra hard these last few weeks and his company has given him today and Monday off for all his good work. It’s nice to be rewarded.

I’ve never been anything remotely close to special anywhere I have worked. I’ve only ever heard complaints.

We're off walking in the park, and out to lunch, with Buddy and Bruno.

 

It’s not quite as sunny as promised under the wide veranda of the Lygon Street shops. We shared ribs, Sam ate fish and I had oxtail soup which was so salty that I wouldn’t order it again.

Buddy is slow now, I have to walk at a glacial pace with him. It’s not that he can’t walk faster, I think he has just got to that old man stage when he thinks fuck the world I’m walking at my own pace. (I’m sure the fuck the world attitude is the payoff for aging) He’s still much more social than I am. He will say hello to anyone for a pat, he charms people so easily, where I still naturally kind of avoid people. (Drink coffee, know things, and hate people)

You have them off-lead, voice trained and suddenly they are dangerously close to the end of their lives. They are the perfect dog and… let’s not think about that too much, hey.

 

We watched Homeland all afternoon, it was just that sort of day.

Gone Shopping

Today, my weekend started, Yay. (What was my crazy boss thinking suggesting I increase my hours? It almost translated as part time workers don’t deserve pay rises. That’s your progressive law firm for you) Sam worked. I was gone all morning.

I shopped, got lost in it, sometimes I can. I zipped all over the place, care free. Second hand shops, I love them, looking at all the stuff. I avoided the bakeries, as I wouldn't have once. Oh, my shopping trips would always normally involve tasting the sweet treats along the way, but not anymore. I went to my favourite emporium in Melbourne, Hot Bargains.

I bought a number of DVDs for my movie collection. $2 a movie, I don't reckon is a bad deal. I think I have told you before, I have a hard drive that works just like Netflix, or Stan, on my TV.

Brunswick, Preston, Thornbury, Northcote, the northern suburbs. It was nice, not really having to buy anything in particular. Just looking at all the stuff. It is purely escapism, sometimes I am up for it.

I bought a Chinese Money Plant for $3, which I repotted as soon as I got home. I bought an elephant for my elephant collection. I nearly bought, oh what would you call it, an orange Indian beaded throw, but I didn't. I liked it, but wondered what I'd do with it.

I was home by 1pm. My Korean sweet potato noodle lunch was warm and waiting on the bench for me.

My day shopping.

It Is A Changing World

You know, one of my pet hates at the moment, – amongst so many pet hates? Do you sometimes wonder if it is you? I know, I do – is the various business groups saying that workers should be made to come back into the CBD offices to save the small businesses in the city.

Really?

Office workers have found a better way of living working from home, and the business council of whatever wants to ruin that.

Isn't that just the way it goes, sometimes? Supply and demand. Demands changes, and supply has to change to meet that changed demand. So, businesses will do better in the suburbs, and the CBD won't do so well. 

Things change. It is something of which you can be guaranteed, change.

I, for one, will be very keen to stay working from home, I love it. And you know, the cafe near my house will get increased business, and the muffin shop in Collins Street will close down, that's just what happens.

And government should keep out of it. Especially, the Liberal party, the party that espouses market forces.

Who wants to get up early? Who wants to iron a shirt? (Every day for the rest of your life) Who wants to commute to the office, if they don't have to? Who wants to do battle with peak hour traffic, over crowded public transport, crowds, rude people, pushing and shoving, if there is an alternative?

Dear Diary, If I Can't Have A Monumental Whine To You, Who Can I Whinge To?

I didn’t get a pay rise and a bonus this year. Oh, I got a pay rise, just a small one. My boss called me personally to say he was sorry he couldn’t give me more and that I could apply for full time hours, he’d personally back the increase.

Um… er… I thought. What is he talking about? Full time work, have you lost your fucking mind, is all I could think.

My wealthy law firm reduced all of our wages by 10% when the pandemic hit. Our CEO did a personal appeal to the employees which was a great sob story for those who bought it. 

“We’re all in this together, and he was sure that we’d all take a reduction rather than having to sack a few employees. Blah, blah, fucking blah.” I wondered if he got a media consultant – there’s another useless position – to write his speech for him?

No, I wasn’t keen on that, I thought.

I knew that at the same time, they got 400 million from some huge matter they took on, government, or something. I also knew something went wrong with the authorities for 500 million they held in a bank other than our main bank as a contingency and there was a time just after the pay reductions they were scrambling to get the authorities straightened out.

Not to mention they did well out of the pandemic. When things are bad, like rats, lawyers clean up.

So, six months later, our wages were put back to normal, in stages over a few months.

Now they have given 2million in bonuses, but only to a select number of employees, and I didn’t get one.

A 10 per cent pay reduction for all and only bonuses for a few, you don’t see a problem with that?

Another problem being, I am one of the salt mine workers who has some input with the financing of the bonuses. Well, not so much the financing… I’m involved. (I’m guessing that was the reason for the last minute phone call from the grand poobah, as they realised, possibly at the last minute, that I’d be seeing my lack there of) [I think I give them too much empathy, er, business is business]

I know why I don’t get bonuses, because I am too forth right. I don’t sugar coat things, like you have to in corporate’ademia. I don’t employ the velvet corporate speak when I tell people they are lazy cunts, or stupid fools, I just come out and say it. And I know that pisses some people off, but, to tell you the truth, if anything, it only amuses me, if it does anything. Oh, come on, you have to have a smirk when poh-faced Lionel from intellectual property gets all bent out of shape over being told his idea is stupid, surely.

Oh, I’m just cross that I am still doing this. I gave it all up in 2011 to write and I spent three years watching YouTube and smoking pot. So, when Beck told me these people wanted a financial accountant – oh, I figuratively hang my head in shame when I write what I am. I think saying you are a prostitute has more cachet than the A word, at least the clientele would be varied and interesting – I jumped at the chance. I saw it as punishment for my slacking off and an incentive to get back to writing. I thought I’d hate it so much that it would be my impetus to write again.

And here I am four years later. Perhaps my father was right when I’d hear him tell people Christian really is a lazy arse.

Oh, I’m just pissed off that when I went to Swinburne and did business that I didn’t take writing seriously. It never occurred to me back then that it was an option. So, I struggled through business and started working in the financial salt mines, not realising until much later that I had ruined my life. Sabotage, I used to call it. I could have done anything, indeed I was told I could do anything, and I chose this. It is still a fucking mystery to me. All I ever wanted to do as a teenager was write poetry, I have folders of the stuff. It was all crap, but that is hardly the point.

At the same time, I studied my brain numbing degree, Swinburne had a much respected creative writing course. To think I was actually there, in the right place at the right time… oh… frown. Banging head on desk repeatedly.

And here I am, still working at something that has no intrinsic value other than to make a handful of wealthy, narcissistic lawyers even richer and more entitled.

Oh yes, I know, it is never too late, blah, blah, blah…

Now, there are certain things that I do that no one checks, that if not done, would potentially cost the firm money. I have a certain amount of autonomy with certain things. I reckon I might stop doing those things. It wouldn’t take long to surpass 10K in bonuses not given, by my very rudimentary calculations.

Childish? Quite possibly.

T-Rex Strikes Again

OMG! Carla van der Voogle strikes again. The most annoying employee in our company, she even has an annoying name. 

I call her T-Rex, because she has a great huge arse – not that I am judging anyone by physical appearance, [and I have just updated my certification of company policy this very day] of course not – and seemingly short arms and she never stops chattering away. The gob is never still, you can, actually, hear her most days before you see her. If she did a primeval lizard shriek in the middle of the office [when the people displeased her] I’m sure no one would be surprised.

Be very wary of the person who never stops talking, said my dear old gran (that's the gran who used to sit in a chair and drink a bottle of brandy and smoke a packet of Kools a day for the last 20 years of her life, and not the gran who wheeled and dealed in property until she died at the age of 95, still with a property contract in her hand.)

Anyway, Carla is some sort of middle manager of long standing with the company. I imagine she lives in a ground floor flat one of those 1960's orange brick blocks of flats, in a suburb like Wantirna, with her 4 cats and her collection of porcelain ornaments all sitting on their own doilies. There would be plastic on the furniture to keep the floral fabric looking new, of course.

I imagine she’s been on her own all her life, other than that one night after a work Xmas function when she drank too much champagne and she and mouth-breathing Ivan from accounts slurred and sweated their way through an entanglement on the vinyl seats in the back of Ivan's poverty-pack Commodore in the back streets of the CBD, after which she ended up in the back of a taxi cross-eyed and clueless, feeling nauseous and head spinning as the car slid its way out to the far side of the eastern suburbs, as Ivan slept it off with a pair of panties bigger than his actual head for a pillow, too pissed to drive. Woken Saturday afternoon with one of her cats licking her face. All four cats sitting on the bed contemplating eating her in place of breakfast, as death could be the only reasonable explanation of the inconceivable change of schedule.

Her employment dates back to the years our company was a small family-like operation (not that it was ever a family business, but it had that feel) when my predecessor, probably that person’s predecessor, even the person before that, if the truth be known, used to calculate personal financial figures for the staff. I don't do this for anyone now, except Carla. 

Every year, she gets in contact with her figures, pink knitted twinset pearls and grey woollen slacks, smelling of Old Tweed, which her mother used to always wear. 

“Woo Who!” 

Usually at a time I am busy, she has a great knack for that, as if she couldn't be more annoying if she tried. And my, now, boss says,

"Oh, just do it for her." 

I object to this every year, and my boss says to me again, 

"Oh, just do it for her."

It is because Carla has been around for so long, and she knows everyone, and she never stops with her questions, statements, demands until she gets her way. I think everyone ends up saying, 

"Just do it for her," just to shut her up. 

She is always smiling and laughing like she is your best friend, but if you don't do as she wants the sheer volume of wordage you get in response is akin to Guantanamo Bay's method of waterboarding. Carla never lets up until she gets her way, all done with a smile. [Someone make her stop! Would, actually, be the collective noun]

So, begrudgingly, last week I prepared a spreadsheet for her figures. I included phrase that any figures I provide are only of a general and advisory nature and that she should seek professional advice to confirm all the figures.

This morning, I have a long email from Carla, firstly acknowledging my warning of a general and advisory nature, going on to question all assumptions I have made, complete with a completely re-worked spreadsheet, coming up with completely different figures I provided to her.

Presumably, I now have to go through it all again, (Yes, not only do I have to do this once, but now I have to do it for a second time. Really, annoying Carla!) investigate and understand the assumptions she has made, and restate the figures to her again.

Seriously?

Own Your Choices

The east coast of Australia floods. NSW goes under water in a severe weather event. (Oh my, the weather is changing, what could be causing it? seriously?)

At some point the people who live in these areas (Fire prone, flood prone areas, apparently drought prone) have to own their political choices. (climate change is real?) Did they vote for Morrison's tax cuts, or did they vote for a government who will enact climate change policies?

Did they vote for Liberal Party climate change denials, or did they vote for a party who put a price on carbon?

Did they vote for the planet destroying, coal loving National Party, that stated categorically they don’t give a rat’s arse about 2050, or did they vote for clean renewable energy?

But, it is pretty simple really. (Well, maybe not simple)

As they watch their properties destroyed they can be happy in the fact that they (allegedly) pay less tax under a conservative government, which has a history of telling them climate change isn’t to blame.

21.03.2021

But… increasingly unstable weather? Increased extreme weather events? Fires, floods, droughts, storms, and other natural disasters, which are predicted, linked to rising global temperatures. Fires have burned large swathes of Australia, the Amazon and the US – which also suffered unprecedented flooding. 

Perhaps, those scientists are right?

22.03.2021

I can tell you one thing, it is going to be a shit show once we get to critically endangered and we have to do everything possible to save ourselves. There is a great chance that we won’t, actually, survive that stage. No we won’t, not a chance. Look at the conspiracy theorists, the reality deniers, the antivaxxers and the assorted loons when it came to fighting a pandemic.

23.03.2021

So, essentially, this is it, this is the end. We are now the last of the human race and we don’t even realise it. That is because no government in the world is taking tackling climate change seriously, so we are going to get to critically endangered, a stage we are not going to survive, because we will destroy ourselves in the process.

24.03.2021

Is that what the truth is now?

25.03.2021

It was a glorious morning in the park. Buddy was extra slow, maybe it is because he is getting older, but I prefer to think he was just enjoying the perfect blue sky.

 

Good Bye Christian

We were the Christians, we kind of liked the irony of us both being, you know, like all intelligent people, atheists. He was funny. He was smart. He knew stuff. He wasn't afraid of life.

We had a short, intense affair in the beginning. We hadn't seen much of each other just lately. Oh, you know, life happened.

I stuck my foot in it a year, or so ago, when he was posting many and varied pictures from exotic locations he was visiting. I wrote on Facebook, 

"What's going on, Christian, have you been diagnosed with a terminal disease and are doing the old bucket list?"

Yes, you guessed it, the answer to that was yes.

"Don't stress," he said. "We'll catch up and I'll tell you all about it over a beer."

We never caught up. He died yesterday.

It is very sad. He was a good guy.

I guess it doesn't really matter anymore? Catch up, don’t catch up, he won’t be bothered about it now. But, I wish I'd got his take on what it was like to face death, it would have been something to hear. I wish I’d looked him the eye and listened to what he had to say. Too late.

For every friend who dies, we are less.

The more people who die who knew your younger self, the more your younger self is lost… until all you are left with is this wretched moment in the present.

Now I Have Heard Everything

I was in a shop yesterday and there was, what looked like a mother and daughter, shopping near me.

The first thing that got my attention, read annoyed moi, was the mother had parked her arse on a chair on one side of the shop and she was giving advice to her daughter across the shop.

Oh yes, you know how thrilled this cranky one would be with that situation. Oh yes, thank you for willingly, or unwillingly, including me in your shopping experience today, I thought. Thrilled, I was thrilled.

I couldn’t quite work out what it was that they were actually doing, but the daughter had new bride written all over her. The little home maker. The type who would have definitely called herself Miss, until she could proudly announce to the world she was a Mrs.

I listened to their banter, back turned to them as thought I wasn’t listening. Well, I wasn’t listening, not willing.

So, I finally worked out what they were doing, making me say to myself, now I have heard everything.

The daughter was picking out books, I presume to go on her newly acquired coffee table, maybe they were for the book shelf, I don’t know I was only guessing, that best matched the décor of her lounge room. She was picking books according to colour.

Seriously? I thought.

Pretty little books all in a row. I was shopping with intellectuals.

Sunrise

You’ve got to love a sunrise, it is like a direct shot of the open heart surgery on the night getting the morning pumping.

Chatting Over The Side Fence With Jackson Wag

I noticed the creeper up the side of my place was hanging down off the wall, when I came home from my bike ride, so I went and got the long handled clippers and gave it a prune. It is a constant job that creeper, it grows like a mad man’s pubic bush. As a little kid, my mother used to always look a little anxious at the mention of creepers, I never understood why.

Jackson came out and chatted while I was cleaning up. He’d just got back from getting some pot. He tapped his pocket, and then the side of his nose when I asked him what he’d been up to. He has big those eyes and that devilish grin

“My drug dealer just died, actually,” said Jackson. “He was a year older than me which makes him, ah…” Jackson smiled, “sixty…five.” (Actually, I thought Jackson was younger than that, but the sly look indicated he was lowering his age)

“I wouldn’t know how to find a new drug dealer now a days, if I had to,” I said. Don’t worry, Guido is still around, even if I haven’t been calling on his services, of late. (It’s been 12 months next month, but who is counting. Oh, er, Sam doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t like me being stoned, so what the hell…)

“Oh, you just have to ask around,” he said. “It would surprise you who has a drug dealer.” We both nodded sage like as if that was a universal truth.

“Bad luck about your guy.”

“Well, worst luck for him, than me.” Jackson laughs.

I laugh. “Well, yes.”

“He’d been my drug dealer for years,” said Jackson. “But, I have a new one, obviously, although the new one doesn’t deliver, which is a damn shame.”

“Saves a lot of time if they deliver,” I said. “And, in the past, I’d get to see their cars. Drug dealers always have new cars.”

“Yes, they always seem to have a nice car,” said Jackson.

“Yes,” I said. “It is those cash purchases.”

“The kinds of things this idiot Liberal Government thinks it will eradicate if it gets rid of cash,” said Jackson

“So many idiot things this Morrison Liberal Government thinks,” I said.

We both laughed.

“I miss it, getting home delivery,” said Jackson. “I have to go and pick up from the new guy, but it isn’t all that far.”

“I want to try those new up to date services where you order online and a courier delivers it to you in no time.”

“My new guy only has two customers, he tells me he has to get more customers because he is smoking all the merchandise.”

We laughed. “Oh, we’ve all been there.”

“This guy’s not young, either,” said Jackson. “I thought that was a twenty year old dealers way of business, smoking all the hooch.”

“It is always better to get a dealer who isn’t using all the stock.”

“Much more reliable,” we both said in unison. We both laughed again.

“Anyway.” Jackson tapped his pocket again. “I’ve got to see a man about a… er.” He looked down at Buddy who was sniffing about around our feet. “A, horse.” He tapped the side of his nose, and made big eyes and grinned his devilish grin.

I half filled the bin with creeper cuttings, which seemed like bad timing since the bin had only been emptied this morning. Still, it is good to trim the creeper, as it is a never fucking ending requirement.

I think Jackson has never offered to roll me a spliff? In all the years we have been neighbours, not once. I pondered on that for a moment, as I picked up the next piece of pruned creeper cutting it into pieces each falling into the bin after I had cut them. It is probably best, I think upon reflection, best not start now, all things considered. Probably best to keep the relationship just neighbourly. It’s not the sort of relationship you want to complicate. No really, happy relationships with neighbours are like gold.

But, isn’t that how you make relationships? I’m not sure the whole friendship paradigm is as simple as it sounds. I’ve made lots of friends over the years, it’s keeping them which I have never really been all that good at.

As Miranda Priestly would say, “They all seem to disappoint me in the end.”

A Table For Coffee

I wish I was drinking a macchiato in Italy. These gently, sunny mornings and the smell of coffee always remind me of Italy, Europe for that matter. The expansive square of St Peters, the fresh food market of Florence, the hills of Tuscany, the red roofs of Verona, the alley ways of Venice, the trams of Milan, like my home town, the sea of Sorento, the beaches of Calabria, the shores of the beautiful lakes, or the hills of Bolzano. The Italy I know.

You never know where the earth’s brew might transport you.

Fiat 500s, fresh bread, tumblers of red wine, olives, black and green, meat dishes, cheese, pizza, pasta, peppers and goat, the tarantella, boasts and brags, grandmothers, and mothers who were sainted. Scooters, fashion, soccer, gelato and art. Cobble stoned streets. A race of men who lose their minds behind the wheel of a car. And David’s hot arse.

What Keeps You Up At Night?

I woke at 5am this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I lay in the dark and contemplated life.

It is never the things I do that screw me up, although exposing myself to Auntie Dawn that time getting out of the pool wasn’t my finest moment – purely unintentional, I don’t want you to think I am some kind of pervert. She told the world I was a ‘big lad’ with wide eyes, always followed by that 100 a day cigarette habit wheeze, which doubled as a laugh. 

(All the old aunts, they are all pretty much gone now, love them or hate them, they were something)

Or, there was that time I wore that crocheted scarf my sister made me to match my jumper to my dad’s cricket club, without giving it any thought. It was maroon, made from left over wool from the jumper my nana knitted me, with long white wool tassels my sister added as her contribution to my sartorial elegance. Dad’s mate Peter Robby spotted me straight up in the car park and asked me, 

“Jesus Christ, what kind of flamin’ are ya?” Which was, actually, a blessing because otherwise I would have walked, flounced, into the club rooms still thinking I looked fabulous.

(Naked men en mass, my fourteen year old eyes can still picture them in that club room. I can still remember what they smelt like)

No, they are not the things that stop me from sleeping, even if they do produce a wince upon reflection.

No.

It is the things I didn't do that keep my staring at the ceiling in the dark until the wee, small hours, or until the sun comes up.

I Don’t Know What You’d Call This, But I Am Serving It Cold

Late in the afternoon, I take Bruno for a walk while Sam cooks away his migraine. He’s been on the couch for most of the day with his hand over his face, but he says he has to cook, and it might help, after how many painkillers? 

Bruno and I head up GT Street, down R Lane, down Little F Street, down B Lane, and right down M Street. 

As we are heading up M Street to Go Street, Bruno does his final shit. (Not to put too finer point, as they say) That is the last of 3 shits. The boy knows how to crap. I pick up the shit in a green baggie, you know like you do, and I think to myself, self? (Look where I am) I could feel the devilish grin spread across my face. I know where this is going to go. I look in the distance. What is it, 1XX M Street? I could almost see it from where we were standing. Almost.

He may not even remember slamming his gate on Bruno’s head, but I do. And he may never understand why bags of pooh are deposited on the step to his gate, but I do.

One afternoon we walked along the footpath behind him, and when he stepped through his gate, Bruno tried to follow him, just like inquisitive pups do, probably without thinking, what’s in there? At which point our man the animal lover slammed his gate shut repeatedly on the side of Bruno’s head until he got the gate shut, sans Bruno. 

So, fuck him. I hope he steps in every last bag of dog pooh. Truthfully, I only drop them on his step occasionally. It is a timing issue. So, when the time is right…

As Bruno and I approach Ge Street, there is a couple with a staffy on the other side that appears to be aggressive and it is twirling about excitedly, I assume looking for another dog. It couldn’t have been Bruno, we weren’t in his line of vision. They walk up M Street in front of us at a glacial pace, so Bruno and I have to fall back and wait for them to pass the gate for which we are aiming. Grrr! But, finally, they pass by the head slammer’s gate, and Bruno and I cross the road.

As we cross the road, two women, what look like a mother and daughter, come out of the house opposite. The daughter is holding a cat, and the mother looks as though she is on a mission. (serious. Staring unwaveringly ahead. I could almost hear the Viking horn of battle) I assume they are having a cat issue. They cross the road and stand in front of the house next to the gate as though they are waiting for someone to come out, of the house, not the gate. Bruno and I continue walking passed the gate in question, turning at the next corner when we get to it. What else could we do? I could hardly drop the pooh bag on the step in full view.

We took a few steps along the next street when I look down at the green bag of pooh still in my hand. (The guy slamming the gate on Bruno flashes in my head) Bugger it, I think. I turn Bruno around and head back again.

As we approach the corner again, a bleach blond stick insect of a girl crosses across M Street from the other side. She stops as soon as she gets to our side and is clearly writing a text message on her phone. Bruno and I slow our pace. 

We wait.

I can hear a motor bike somewhere behind me.

The bleach blond stick insect finally starts to move again, so Bruno and I do too. We turn the corner and take a few steps along M Street, when I realise the motor bike is on the footpath behind me, and I realise it is the motor bike that usually parks on the foot path just by ‘the’ gate. Bruno and I step out of its way. Bruno contently sniffs at the tree we are just next to.

I look up to see the bleach blond stick insect has now stopped in front of the gate in question and is typing out further text messages, as the motor bike passes us heading for its usual parking spot.

Well, I think? Do I need that proverbial wall to fall down? I chuckle, wide-eyed, I am sure. This is like fucking Bourke Street. How many people do I need to get my way to tell me that I won’t be doing a pooh drop on his doorstep today? Seriously?

I pull Bruno away from the tree and turn him in the direction of home.

Bread & Butter

Is toast just a platform for delivering butter? When my toast (I now eat boutique style spelt bread) proved to be a little dry this morning, I scraped a knob of butter off the butter on the butter dish (we are not barbarians) and slide it into my mouth. (Don't judge me)

Side note – my cholesterol has actually decrease slightly, yes, only slightly, but decreased none the less, since I have started eating butter in place of margarine.

Oh yes, you want to talk about conspiracy theories, let's talk about the great margarine manufacturing fraud. (Polyunsaturated whatever's don't result in lower cholesterol. It was simply that some Liberal Party donor had excess vegetable oils they wanted to dispose of, the rest is just pure marketing department) Ha ha, I have no idea, but I do wonder if, indeed, that is how conspiracy theories start? I reckon if you go back far enough, it will just about always be some doofus making it all about themselves. (do you like my gender neutral pronoun?)

Yap, Yap, Yap

The sun shone down.

I rearranged my pots, that I had been meaning to rearrange for the longest time. I moved the huge empty terracotta pots, that David gave me when he escaped Melbourne (ran screaming), with which I really don’t know what to, next to the struggling lemon tree, to stop Bruno running along the raised garden, as he is want to do. I moved the pots of succulents, that were previously in the place the large pots occupied, into the sun, where they should have been in the first place. I don’t know how I got that around the wrong way in the first place, but I did, I stood and pondered for a while, and there now it was fixed.

I pulled out all the multicolour geraniums I had in pots, and replaced them all with red geranium cuttings. There, I’ve just about got only red geraniums now. One colour. I only ever wanted red, I’m not really sure how I ended up with an assortment of colours?

The young boy lawyers have moved in next door. Friday nights must be girlfriend’s night. They sit outside in the evening and get pissed and make a lot of noise. After which, I’m guessing, they retire and the girlfriends suck their cocks. Then the boys give the girls a thank you breakfast Saturday morning (seriously? You don't think that is how the world works?) hence them sitting outside again making a lot of noise all over again, this morning. Yay.

Beck lived there for 15 years and never made a noise. Before beck was that couple with a kid, who were quiet. And before that, it was the owners Kelly and Greg and Kell. So, it has always been quiet.

Why do the girls seem to make way more noise than the boys? Is it because they have been told they can? Or do they have to, otherwise they’ll be drowned out by the deeper timbre.

Where they sit out the back of their place is on the side of my house where I have all my plant stuff, hidden out of sight down the side of my house.

So, I am out there repotting my begonia, the big one that sits on the shelf above the stove that I have been meaning to repot for the longest time, and the baby lawyers are talking about all sorts of shit they think is cool, and maybe they even think it is revolutionary. (Oh, I can’t remember now, but it did make me laugh [out loud] a number of times as I had my fingers in my potting mix. Laughing, loud, confident, full of their entitlement, pregnant with their advantage, with very little world experience. What is it they say, naivety is lost on the young?) But, you know it’s not. It’s all stuff we have heard before, and was probably being said long before I even sat around with my young friends and talked the same stuff thinking we were going to make some difference to the world.

Good on them for getting an education, but for all their young, excited talk, they are just industry fodder, in the end. Some of them will do relatively well, some will be let go after one year at their first law firm, not making the grade after all that study. Some of them will struggle with even that.

Maybe one of them will do well, probably because luck was on their side. But, most likely, none of them will do anything special, none of them will make any mark on the world. They will be chewed up and spat out by life, some faring better than others. They will have so, so careers, at best, probably have broken marriages, most will probably struggle to balance work with shared custody of children, some of them, at least, probably never wanted.

One will die young. Maybe suddenly. Always having struggled with anxiety they kept well hidden.

They will all get fat and grey, and in a very short time after death, they will be remembered by hardly anyone. That’s the real truth.

And there, my begonia was repotted, and it was time to take it back inside and put it back on the kitchen shelf above the stove.

Put your fingers into dirt, that’s what’s real.

Oh, and of course, coffee.

(Ha ha, reading back over this, I was just cranky about their noise intruding on my Saturday morning. I’m used to having quiet neighbours who I hardly ever hear and now I have these straight boys who make a lot of noise. So, truthfully, I hope they all catch Covid 19, you know the strain with which you don’t fully recover and they drop out of uni and have to move back in with their mums. Or they die in a fiery car crash heading down to Bells driving too fast showing off to each other – isn’t that what straight boys do? Or their cocks drop off from some terrible new developing STD that only affects 21 year old straight boys, 21 year old straight girls being the carriers, and they have to immigrate to Thailand for years of reconstructive surgery {eventually becoming middle aged lady boys when all the surgeries fail} And the house is let out again to a nice quiet couple who I only ever hear from when they say hello at the front gate on the rare occasion we bump into each other in the street)

Now, I have to find out all their names and freeze them in ice block trays in the freezer. (I had an old aunt who used to do this for real)

Chuckle. (She was a poisonous old cow)

Not Writing

Words. Sometimes, I don’t know what to say, you know, on the page. I mean, often I don’t know what to say. What are my words?

Then they come to me, sometimes in a rush, sometimes drawn out like removing a splinter from my finger.

In a rush can be as difficult as being drawn out. Rushing to get it all down can be like tripping over my own feet. The ache can be as great as being drawn out like blood. Although, I have to say, nothing is worse than getting nothing.

I’ve picked up books lately, to inspire me, books left out in boxes out the front of houses. (The things you see when you walk dogs) Tobias Wolff, Tim Winton, David Marr, Ann Bronte, Harry Potter. Tim Winton and Tobias Wolff always inspire me to write, maybe the rest will too. I remember writing a lot after I finished Breath. It is doubtful Harry Potter will inspire me. I read half of the first book before I put it down mumbling rubbish under my breath. I’ve never been inclined to pick up another.

I wrote a lot at the beginning of lockdown, but I have been pretty lazy for the longest time now, collecting dvds and movies and watching YouTube instead. My two great distractions.

Endless days, like this will never end. It’s good, I don’t want it to end. It’s like life has suddenly become civilised, no more commuting, it is good. I mean, my commute was always just a walk into town – I would have topped myself years ago if it was a 2 hour drive in traffic morning and night, I’m not that attached to life, to do that – but this is nicer. Gentle. Grown up. Just have to go into the study and switch on a laptop, that is my commute now. It is like it should always have been.

Maybe, I am too relaxed? Maybe I need a bit more angst. What is it they say, a happy life never does a writer any good.

 

I call this one, Go Melbourne... and, um, er, that's about as patriotic I ever like to get

Steven

A guy I know died this week, Steven. He was about my age. (I guess that is middle-aged, not that I feel it) I didn’t know him very well, he was really just a guy from the dog park. We used to talk as our dogs played. We had quite intense conversations, he was quite the chatter. We’d always chat away in the middle of the dog park as our woofs played with the other dogs.

Steven had degrees, and always had something interesting to say, but he never seemed to work. He said something about work when I asked him, but it seemed as though he had been retrenched, and he didn’t offer any further details, so I didn’t ask.

I went through his first dog, Gaz, dying, and his subsequent new puppy, Gabe. Both Labs, Steven was a lab man.

I went through his feud with Stella, which I never quite understood what the fuck that was about, to be honest. I know Stella is a space cadet, at the best of times, which is what I always put the feud down to. There was something they weren’t saying, I think maybe sex may have been involved, or at least, unrequited desire, more so than the actual dead. Oh yes, the steamy shenanigans of the local off-lead. It made the dog park quite uncomfortable, the two of them being there together, or at least, unable to be there together, until Sophie stop coming, which seemed to fixed that.

I went through his parents moving from a house in my street to one of the apartments in the new complex built at the end of my street. Steven was very pleased for them.

I used to see Steven driving around in his silver car and he’d always wave.

We’d chatted for years down the dog park. It was always a bit political, our chats. I was only chatting to him the other day, something about the Federal Government. I’d called Morrison Scumo. Steven had talked about the cover ups by the Liberal Party.

And now Steven is dead. He died suddenly from a pre-existing medical condition, so one of the other women down the dog park explained. I didn’t ask what the pre-existing medical condition was. Although, I wanted to. I mean, don’t you always want to know those details, but I was a little lost in thought about him actually dying and the moment passed.

Funny, he keeps coming into my mind. Fancy Steven dying, I keep thinking to myself, just out of the blue. I was only chatting to him a day and now he is dead. That’s how fragile life is. When we were chatting a week ago, under the blue sky looking out at the green lawn, as we always chatted, he had a week to live.