Sunday

(I used a journal entry because it was easier, because coming up with something every day is hard All the blog buddies that I once had have all stopped writing. I more, or less, just write for myself now a days)

1:30am. I get up and have a wee. (kind of early for a nightly wee, I thought)

I dreamt about liquid paper. I was in a house sitting at one of three desks belonging to, the implication was, three other people and I was using liquid paper.

I had a fully functioning bottle of liquid paper, which I was using.

I started to investigate the three desks and I found in different parts of each desk, on different shelves within the desks, bottles of liquid paper that had been left without the top screwed on properly and they had dried up. I was shaking my head in disbelief that someone couldn’t screw the top back on a liquid paper bottle properly.

At one point, I filled up a second bottle of liquid paper and somehow, I left it in the street. I could see it sitting there on the footpath. Sometime later, I went back to fetch this second bottle of liquid paper and then I couldn’t find it. I said to a woman who seemed to be the manager of the street, perhaps, that I’d left a bottle of liquid paper and now I couldn’t find it. She said, just keep looking for it, if you keep looking for it, you’ll find it.

5:15am. I wake up. Liquid paper, I think? Why? Weird. I can't remember the last time I saw a bottle of Liquid Paper, let along used one. I get up. I have a wee.

I get dressed in the dark. Being an early riser, I am practiced at that now. I head downstairs.

I log into my laptop. I check my TattsLotto with the hope I don’t have to continue to work. Nothing. Not a cent.

I give Milo food.

The air fryer has been dirty for a couple of days, from two days ago when I slept on the couch all night rather than clean the kitchen, so I loaded the air fryer bits into the dishwasher and switched it on. Done. No cleaning at 5.15am, no matter how overdue it is.

I made coffee.

Then, it was the sound of the swooshing of the dishwasher and the cracking of the cat food chow in Milo’s mouth.

I lie on the couch. I pull the pink blanket over me and read the news.

Silicon Valley is full of wealthy men who think they’re victims, says Nick Clegg. Former Lib Dem leader and Meta strategist writes in new book that power in tech capital is interlaced with ‘self pity’.

Ah, Silicon Valley, destroying the world in pursuit of billions, I think.

Auburn in bloom: Sydney Cherry Blossom festival 2025 – in pictures. Wet weather didn’t stop crowds gathering in Sydney’s west to admire the rows of fluffy pink cherry blossoms. Held annually, the festival is a main attraction of Auburn botanic gardens, where Japanese food, music and crafts mark the beginning of a new season.

I didn't know Sydney had a Cherry Blossom festival, I think. Finally a reason to go to Sydney.

‘It’s back to the future’: the 13th-century castle built by hand in France. A quarter of a century after our first visit, the Guardian returns to Guédelon to find old-fashioned toil has built a “thoroughly modern” architectural laboratory. Tourists throng Chateau Guédelon, which now gets 310,000 visitors a year, raising €7.5m.

How fascinating, I think. The woman running the show has been doing it for 25 years. Imagine staying in a job for 25 years.

I looked at YouTube. Donald Trump is a criminal. Donald Trump is a criminal. Donald Trump is a criminal. That's my algorithm. 

Milo comes and settles in the pink blanket with me. He needs to get all the love he can while the orange monsters aren't around.

I watched Nicholas Hoult & David Corenswet flirting for publicity. The new superman sure is good looking. I hadn’t exactly thought that seeing stills of him, but seeing him fully animated on YouTube it is a different story.

I write a couple more versus of my Donald Trump poem.

7am. I start watching Coldwarmotors. Ashley bought a kit car, a Jamaican 2 in blue. He has plans to chasis swap it and put a bigger engine in it.

7.30am. Sam was up. He starts watching TikTok.

7.45am. I make Vegemite Toast.

8.02am. “Where are they?” Sam says. Then he heads off presumably in search of bulldogs.

8.03am. Sam follows Otto into the lounge room. “They are both awake, and they are both on the floor.”

8.04am. Brun appears in the lounge room, in his snuffleupagus fashion.

Otto jumps up on the couch with me once he comes in from his morning wee.

9am. Brun and I head out the front gate. I get chatting to Jackson Wag standing in the morning sun, like we are chatting over the back fence. Jackson has given up booze and pot recently with no physical withdrawal symptoms at all. He said it was a doddle. Jackson is eating a banana he gives some of his banana to Brun. Eventually, Jackson remembers his coffee pot is cooking on the stove and he rushes off.

9:30am. Otto I walk down Smith Street. The sun is shining. It’s quite a nice morning. Everyone in Smith Street seems to have a dog.

Mark:

Check out this video. How I’d love to hear you play this.

Medici TV.

Members of 'Die 12' brilliant cellists from one of the world's most prestigious orchestras, the Berliner Philharmoniker playing the Theme from The Pink Panther.

Me:

Except they’re all cellos, I didn’t play the cello.

And I think I played that, the Pink Panther Theme, at some point somewhere I was playing, somewhere along the way.

I seem to remember it being inserted into another piece of music as a humorous highlight

In something, I was playing with some Orchestra, his dogs are

Oh, ‘his dogs are’ comment was because I was dictating the messages and I’m walking Otto down the street and I started talking to another dog owner and I didn’t realise my dictation picked up that bit of my conversation, so that doesn’t mean anything

Mark:

Haha.....what did you play....oh...the viola....of course, of course...

9:36am. Otto and I are in chemist warehouse getting some pills.

I go and sit on the seats provided while my script is being filled. A woman comes and stands next to the seats, looking down at Otto telling me how gorgeous he is. I think Otto looks like he is about to jump up on her at any moment. As I am wondering what kind of collision her head and Otto’s head might make, the pharmacist calls me up.

"Christian Fletcher?"

I ask the pharmacist if any of the medication I am on would give me the sniffles. Lately I have had the constant sniffles. Oh, it is nothing really, not really, but enough to make me wonder? He says none of the medications I have mentioned would give me the sniffles.

“I’ll have to investigate it further then,” I say.

“Perhaps an allergy to something,” he says.

Otto gets into going home mode, as soon as he senses we are done. He just wants to charge right out of the shop as soon as we are near the front doors, damn paying.

Sam has been cleaning when we get home. He’d vacuumed the lounge room. “Clean up all the debris on the floors in the rest of the house," he says. His tone is like an order. The hair on the back of my neck bristles, as they say. Just do it, I tell myself.

10am. I put Queen on in my headphones and I vacuum. I’m still on a Queen kick. I was surprised when I read Queen has sold 300 million records, when The Rolling Stones have only sold 250 million records. Queen's record selling period was kind of 20 years. The Rolling Stones selling period is 60 years.

11.11am. I was listening to Queen. I still have two queen CDs to buy. Oh yes, I know, subscribe to a streaming service, apart from anything else, it is probably cheaper. Yeah, I know, call me stupid. Old fashioned, even. Go on. But, I find unlimited choice kind of overwhelming. (I find the same thing with Netflix, unlimited choice makes choosing anything much harder) Is that a thing with other people? I can’t be the only person who feels that way? Yeah, sure, streaming services are really handy when you want to listen to something specific, sure they are, but at other times I find it mind boggling. 

I like having a music collection, and when I give up my monthly subscription, which I did when Sam stopped paying for it, I still have a music collection.

On eBay, I buy Queen The Works, a non-deluxe, 2008 remastered CD because it was cheap only $11. And besides, I’m not really interested in the extra tracks on the 2011 deluxe issue.

I buy Queen’s 2011 remastered, but non deluxe Innuendo album because I realise I don’t care about the deluxe tracks and it was cheap @ $15.

We change the bed sheet because of Otto’s dirty mouth causing dirty marks on the sheets. He is the type of bulldog whose tongue hangs out and that causes him to leave dirty marks on our sheets. Yes, I know, lovely. Still, it isn’t so much to deal with, we just have to wash the sheets more often. Neither Buddy, or Brun have had the same issue.

11:39am. Brun, Otto, and I are waiting on the footpath out the front of the house in the glorious sunshine for Sam to come out so we can get going to our lunch destination wherever that may be.

11:41am. We get going to our lunch date, with ourselves that is, a lunch date with ourselves.

I write another verse to the Donald Trump poem I am working on while we wait for Sam.

A man who constantly pedals in alternative facts, 

and that’s the nicest thing I can say about that,

who only ever has his own welfare in mind?

Never mind the country has been elected to run.

12.25pm. We’re in Franklin Street eating Indonesian Fusion, YOI.

It’s a bit cold sitting here. That’s the trouble with too many high-rise apartment buildings, you never get enough sun on the ground, and it’s always cold. 

Sam eats ribs. I eat a coconut curry.

Me:

My well rounded education, and now it's years later and my parents are dead, and it’s all behind me, everything has been said

Mark:

It’s like that isn't it, but, everything changes when you do shit.....in the last 3 days I washed and vacuumed both cars, cleared out a big section of the shed so Jane could store all her stuff, loaded up the trailer with a shit load of stuff to take to the scrap metal yard.

Got up on the shed roof and cleaned out the gutters, scrubbed and rinsed 24 solar panels, sanded the rust off my hand trolley and painted it with rust paint, fixed the wiring on my water pump and its pumping up lovely cool water from the crick....life feels good, mower is coming back next week, so I,m going to be VERY busy for the next few weeks, bringing the property back to gorgeousness......😁

Me:

Goodo

I’ve been working full-time while Boris swans around fucking Bulgaria yet again. I should just say no, I don’t wanna do it, but my big poo bah boss gives me a $5000 bonus every year for doing it, so what the fuck?

Mark:

WTF indeed....

Me:

next Mwarch

when pay wises and bonus are doled out

A guy comes out of one of the apartments, I assume, walking his cream Akita. We pull the bulldogs close so they don’t meet up with the likes of him.

Two, clearly wealthy, Indonesian girls, with fancy golf bags of golf clubs are next to me. They become entranced by the bulldogs, one of them in particular. She comes over and pats the bulldogs. She coos how lovely they are, as they act like lovely dogs for her.

Sam says he thought they were young lesbians, when I say that they have been joined by a very handsome guy.

“If they are lesbians, then he is certainly going to waste.”

“Maybe he is gay, too,” says Sam.

“Welcome to the team,” I say. “He’d be a worthwhile addition.”

12.52pm. We’re done. The two girls and the handsome guy leave when we do. They stop at the footpath out the front, each of them carrying golf bags.

We walk up Franklin Street, and very quickly we are in sunlight and I feel like it is warming me up, after eating lunch in the shadows.

The Vic Market is bathed in sunshine.

We go to the large pet shop to buy fish food for the gold fish in our pond. Inside the pet shop is a couple with a dachshund, which starts to bark as soon as it sees the bulldogs. Its owner picks it up straight away. 

“Look at these gorgeous bulldogs,” its owner says.

“They won’t react to your dog,” I say. They wouldn’t.

“Oh, but he will,” says the guy. He's referring to his dog.

Sam heads downstairs to the downstairs aquarium section to buy fish food. Brun, Otto and I stand on the street in the sun and wait for Sam.

It doesn’t take long, and we are heading off. 

We walk along the main market road. A handsome blond with buzz-cut hair, with a gorgeous Frenchie comes along behind us.

“You dog is gorgeous,” I say to him.

He smiles and says, “Thanks.” He is big, and buff, and blond. He has on tight, white, track pants, showing off his muscular legs and beefy butt. It is a bloody sexy look. I can see him walking ahead of us in amongst the crowds of people up ahead for some time.

The streets are busy with people, all coming out, no doubt, because of the gorgeous sunny day. The tables outside the cafes are full of people.

There are many people walking their dogs in the sunshine.

1:20pm. We buy black tea frappe in the top end of Swanson Street opposite the City Baths. We cross Swanston Street sit on a seat and drink outside the City Baths in the glorious sun. 

A guy in white shorts and a beefy arse, with thick hairy thigh stands next to us talking on his phone. 

A woman with huge breasts clearly with no bra in a skin tight pale pink knit walks past the other way.

A young gym guy, clearly going into the gym at the baths, walks past from the other direction in shorts the legs of which are so wide he actually looks like he is wearing a skirt.

Once we have finished our mediocre drink we head to Victoria Parade and cross at the lights. There is a huge crowd of people crossing from the other direction, and Brun walks on the wrong side of a guy walking towards us wrapping his lead around the guy’s legs, stopping him in his tracks. I apologise. The guy laughs, he is taken with Brun, as so many people are.

Brun is being difficult walking up Victoria Parade. He is getting his bulldoggie stubbornness going.

1.39pm. cnr Exhibition Street and Victoria Parade where the sun is shining so beautifully. A woman has picked up her small Oodle when she saw the bulldogs.

We walk through the Carlton Gardens with Brun stopping continually in his annoying bulldog way. I coax him along. It takes continual coaxing. It takes me standing him back up on his paw numerous times.

We walk up Gertrude Street.

2.07pm. We’re home.

It is screens on the couch after that.

I watched DD Speed Shop and the continuation of the build of his 1969 Chevy Nova.

I watched DD Speed Shop and an old video of converting a 4 door 1956 Chey to a 2 door.

I watched Merlin Johnson and his multi coloured 1957 chevy 2 door Belair.

I watched David Nebern and his 2 door 1957 Chevy, that I watched years ago him getting it out of a 1957 grave yard with Mike Finnegan.

I think about doing a blog post. I initially think about using yesterday’s post walking to Victoria Street, but the weather was different yesterday, and, besides, I'd already written a post yesterday, so I get to and re-write today’s journal entry about walking to the Vic Market.

We ate Hainanese chicken rice for dinner.

7.30pm. I’m scrolling Facebook, something I haven’t done for months.