The Sun is Shining

It is one of those glorious days here again in Melbourne. It is just the perfect spring today. Sparkling. Fresh.

I worked most of the day, but now I am lying on the couch (what I do best, let’s face it) with my French Doors open and the sweet scented breeze wafting in. I am so comfortable, I never want to move. (Bugger that 3.30pm meeting)

My bulldogs are lying next to me snoring.

You've got to love working from home. I know I do. It is my Friday too, my weekend starts after this.

I'm trying to get back to my short stories. There are a whole bunch of them that are just about finished, that I want to get onto and get finished, but I keep getting distracted by Facebook, and YouTube, and life, and the likes.

(Brun gets up on the couch and squeezes in between me and the back of the couch – and he’s not a Chihuahua that’s for sure – he turns and lies his fat face right across mine. Yeah, ood onya Brun)

Sincerity is the Key to Success

One of the women at work was having trouble with some financial stuff and she ask me to advise, not sure why she asked me, but she did.

(I mean seriously, do I give the impression that I am that helpful? Really? It’s a character flaw in this day and age)

Anyway, I gave her some advice, and she took that and went off to put that advice to work.

Sometime later, she emailed thanking me for my help, with my advice she had sorted the problem out.

(I call her Big Girl’s Blouse, [to myself, you understand] as she is a big girl, I mean in a hockey player kind of way, and not a slovenly fat kind of way, and she always wears these kind of shirt dresses that always look, to me anyway, that she is wearing a big blouse and she’s forgotten to put on the bottom half)

I emailed her back, Oh that is good news, I am so pleased.

You know, "Sincerity is the key to success. Once you can fake that, you've got it made," as Groucho Marx once said.

Joggers In The Park

You've got to love all the joggers in the park, watch them run by in their little shorts. I admit I am a bit of a perve (said in the best possible taste), the glimpse at their undie elastic is a thrill, I know it probably shouldn't be, but we’re only human, what can we say. Watch all those muscles work, up the back of his legs to...

Thup, thup thup sound their feet on the path…

To all those hot arsed boys, with legs right up to their hips… nose twitch. Sweat drips. Watch them just for the thrill, no strings attached, it’s cool. They fly by like gazelles, with ease so rarely seen.

Watch them go, imagining which spots are damp, sweet, scent of man, lick your lips.

See them running to you, watch their manhood bounce in their shorts, so many sorts, good for a view.

Muscular calves, hairy legs, thick thighs, beefy butts, narrow waits, torsos so full of grace.

Appreciation, not demonised by all those people who have agendas, when they see your eyes dropping below the waist. Nervous smile.

Active wear gives you a view, all those muscles working together and isn’t it better that we can see the legs of a thorough bred on full working display.

I remember back at all those dance parties way back when, straight or gay, it didn't seem to matter if they wanted to play. Curious, I guess is what you call it, boys are curious it is true. And dicks are their favourite thing, usually their own, but it is not such a stretch to appreciate a buddy just like that.

I watch the joggers run in the park, and I can’t help but wonder who loves them after dark.

I did my laps today. That’s every day for me this week. I’m back on track. Good for me.

A Walk In The Park

It is Sunday and I head out into the cold, and recently wet, for my hours exercise, early before the tourists turn up, lockdown, or not.

The first thing I see is a sexy boy in blue short, shorts, a green t-shirt and a cap walking across the museum plaza. Nice legs, nice arse I think as I pick up my pace.

There are dark, rain soaked colours in the park. There are not many people in the park just the way I like it.

There are a couple of athletic wog boys in track pants throwing a frisbee as I head up the hill on the north side.

People exercising in puffer jackets makes no sense, I think, as a chick comes towards me with corded earphones staring down at her phone.

I’m walking across the plaza on the Rathdowne Street side, when a fat chick in nude coloured tights and a dark coloured top who genuinely looks like she has left the house forgetting to put on her pants. I am somewhat alarmed when I first spot her, as she really looks naked from the waste down. I wonder if that is the reaction she was going for?

Walking across the museum plaza, the sun comes out. A woman walking a golden retriever and a woman walking a small black terrier head towards me.

Magpies call by the tennis courts. There is something wonderful about the magpie’s song.

Then Stephen Fry comes walking towards me with a small bat-eared dog and I do a double take. He is wearing ill-fitting grey trousers, a blue crumpled suit coat and a green shirt.

The hot wog boys have been replaced by a couple of hot Asian boys throwing a frisbee in exactly the same place up by the caretaker’s cottage, my second time around. They are wiry and agile and spend a lot of their time flying through the air.

The sun comes out as I walk along Rathdowne Street warming my face.

The Asian lady with the golden retriever from the other day is in exactly the same place by the Rubik’s cube. It is a weird deja vu.

There is a guy training a black Lab seeing eye dog.

There is a woman with a chihuahua. I want to run over and jump on it, but, of course, I don’t. How could anyone like those fowl little dogs?

Stephen Fry appears again walking in the completely different direction to what he was walking the first time, as though he was a part of the ministry of funny walks.

The cute fresh-faced blonde boy with long hair from yesterday jogs across the museum plaza by Rathdowne Street.

An Asian couple run a baby Malamute across the museum plaza. It leaps about as if it wants to say hello to everyone it sees.

A guy on a bike with a noticeable wet arse rides up to the cross road. He gets off his bike, pulling wet denim from his arse crack, his jocks are clearly up his hole, as he is digging around up there for a while. He pushes his bike through the gardens, very PC of him, I think. I never understand why people can’t ride their bikes through the gardens because, let’s face it, everyone does anyway.

Still more idiots exercising in puffer jackets. Seriously? These people should be studied and we may just find out why people are vaccine hesitant and why people believe in conspiracy theories. I’m going for global warming induce brain rot.

There is a mother and daughter walking a grey and white chihuahua as I head down to Rathdowne and Victoria cnr. I growl at it, and true to form the nasty excuse for a living creature growls back.

There is an Asian man with a cavalier walking in front of me, and a red-haired woman with a big dog holding her dogs pooh bag like it is a precious thing walking towards me.

An obese Asian chick is waddling in my direction, with some noticeable difficulty, as if she is on a doctored ordered diet plan, and this was its first day.

I think Noel Gallagher comes walking towards me as the sun comes as I am about to leave the park, but I think better of it, Noel Gallagher would never be the cause of the sun coming out.

I leave the park.

Action Man

I saw a man in a business shirt and tie with camouflage pants and wrap around Ray-bans, as I went for my walk this morning. Which is kind of odd, as the men in business shirts and camouflage pants don't generally come out until well into summer. And here was this crazy man at the beginning of spring.

He was standing in the street, very still, kind of like he was his very own action man figure. It was as if he had, done as Madonna had asked, and struck a pose. He was muscle bound, and really too short for the muscles he had, if I was honest. He couldn't get his arms down by his sides, as his pecs, or whatever are next to his pecs bulged out getting in the way of his arms.

He had a bit of the Rodrigo Duterte's about him. His camouflage pants were tight on him and there wasn't much room to hide his gun, if it was the drug dealers he was after. I could make out the faint outline of a gun, maybe. Perhaps, he was suddenly going to go Shazam!  suddenly and spring into his crime fighting action. Perhaps?

But he remained perfectly still as I walked passed, his arms jutting out from his sides, like a decommissioned terminator, the sun glinting perfectly in the corner of his shades.

And Just Like That...

And just like that, the sun went away, and the prospect of summer dissolved right before our eyes, and it rained and rained and rained, so much so, we might have been excused for calling for a boat and the animals in twos. (from anyone of the foundation myths, any country, just pick one, they all have big flood scenes) 

I particularly love that the Christians so often depict two male lions getting on the boat, so, you see, right from the beginning, Christians embraced homos, they just don't like talking about it now, so many of their priests turned out to be shirt lifters.

Glorious

It is a glorious day, the kind of day that makes you feel great to be alive

the brilliant sun, crisp and bright, the balmy wind, the smell of fresh and new beginnings

when the politicians lies, and the bigots cries mean nothing any more

like the weird anti-everythings, that have spread like a virus in these modern times, don't even exist

none of that matters, nothing matters

as Mother Nature shows us how perfect life can be

(and what we are in real danger of losing)

as the sun dazzles my eyes and makes me smile

nothing matters, except what I can feel, here and now, in this glorious moment.

Pinch Punch

Pinch punch... the first day of spring. The beginning of the good weather, when the days are brighter and longer and we shake off winter darkness and gloom and become butterflies and fly. 

The start of the best month of the year. My birthday month. I turn some age this year, quite devoid of any meaning to me. It's a con, it's scam, the ageing thing. I am supposed to feel different, but I never do. I suspect it has something to do with marketing companies trying to sell something to someone. Most likely.

Today is sparkling, it is a gorgeous day, making us all happy. Blue skies, and golden sun.

September. A year and half since the whole covid thing started. Where has the time gone? It is a year and a half later. How time flies when you are having... er... fun 😕

Suburbia

Where we all live and die. Where the city goes to eat and sleep. We we all go to leap and cheat. For most of us, it's our heart beat.

Some may say the great waste land, miles and miles of it. As far as the eye can see, and then some. Joy, death, birth, heartache. Suburbia, the great known. Where most of us call home.

We all grew up there. Some of us couldn't wait to leave there. It's where we dreamt. It's where we all go back to, at Xmas, celebratory elephants.

Cold Morning

Wow! It is so cold this morning it would freeze the balls off Michaela Cash.

(Yes, folks, that is an Australian politician. Is that the ugliest thing you have ever seen?)

The Weekend

So, the weekend went fast, whoosh. Sunday went even faster than Saturday, so it seemed. It rained mostly, that is how I'd sum the weekend up, rain.

I had my first wood cutting accident, in all the time I have been cutting wood, how many years has that been? I was cutting kindling and the axe missed the thin piece of wood that I was trying to split, hitting my finger, which pushed it down onto the jagged edge that was sticking out and a piece the thickness of a chop stick went into my finger like a thick splinter. It was okay. It's just that moment that I had to pull the wood out of my finger again, which was the bitch. It bled, but nothing some Betadine and a bandaid didn't fix. It's sore, but it will heal, hey.

I only walked for exercise one out of the two days. 😞

I walked the dogs on both days. We got that black sky and bright sun at one stage, which is always kind of dazzling.

I saw a guy get thrown out of a tobacconist accused of stealing for the third time by the guy who ran the shop. The guy who was accused really lost his shit and was screaming at the shop guy as though he was going to attack the shop guy, all the time the shop guy was on the phone saying he was calling the police. In the middle of it all, Buddy headed over for a pat, just moments before the accused wannabe thief started to really lose his shit. So as he was starting to scream and projectile spit, I was bending at his thighs grabbing Buddy's harness. So, yay Bud. 👍

Sam went to the Asian grocer, and Buddy, Brun and I sat on a window sill and watched the screaming match unfold from a safe distance.

Tomorrow I have my second covid vaccine, and I will be fully vaccinated. Yay me.

I'm out The Door On The Third Day, No Problem

I go for a walk for an hour, earlier in the morning today, than yesterday. I head off in my shorts, changing to the sunny side of the street on my way to the park. It is hard to wear a mask when you are walking for exercise, but I persist, as it is protecting me as much as it is protecting anybody else.

I’m listening to The Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet, and then Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out

10am, in the park, I can take my mask off as I cross the museum plaza as the coast is clear of any people, that is until some fat jogger jogs up from my left, and settles into a pace just ahead of me. I mean who is he kidding, judging by the shape of him he has never jogged a day in his life, before today. I put my mask back on.

A cute boy on the tennis courts bends over to pick up a ball showing me his lovely arse right on queue. Baby!

I raid the dog pooh bad dispenser on my way passed.

There is hardly anyone in the park as I walk up the path closest to Carlton Street, so I take my mask off. Then a jogger runs past me, again, settling into a rhythm just in front of me. Grrrr. I put my mask back on.

10.20am. Two strapping fathers in black track pants and in blue track pants come toward me, and cut in in front of me from another path, both pushing prams (is that what they call them?). The one in blue track pants has a particularly nice arse going to waste.

There are people with matching dogs, not that that is a bad thing. A couple of small wire-haired black dogs that look like clones of each other, and a couple of Westies.

There are women with matching prams (pushers?) come from the other direction, yacking away.

A woman on a crutch hobbles in from Rathdowne Street. She has a lot of park to cross in her condition. I have never been able to go further than 100 metres on a crutch, so props to her, I thought.

The old bloke who looks like he is on his last legs, who, I assume, is doing doctor ordered exercise, he looks so pained, comes walking towards me. He is often walking in the park when I am.

The woolly haired jogger, with the muscular arms, who always seems to be out jogging when I am walking, jogs up, staring at the ground as he always seems to be doing. Nice legs.

Over by Victoria Parade, there is a man sitting on a bench smoking, seemingly liking every drag on his cigarette. Those were the days.

A girl on a scooter comes zipping through.

There is a greyhound up ahead in army fatigues, with a woman in track pants with an arse the size of the rear of a small hatchback, walking with another girl ✌up the Victoria Parade side.

There is the handsome Indian guy with a huge cock flopping from side to side in his track pants, doing circuits opposite to me. I find my head bobbing from side to side, as he jogs up and goes past.

There is a second person in a crutch, have we had a clumsy lockdown, I wonder?

As I head back up Nicholson Street side, there is a woman with babies in a double decker pram talking in baby talk to them. I always find that somewhat unsettling.

A fat boy in blue harem pants and a green mummy knit jumper with a fez on his head, whizzes by on an electric scooter, as I cross the road out of the gardens.

10.56am. I’m home.

11.11am. I’m finished with my shower.

How Quickly I Forget

Jesus, fuck me up the arse, let's do a train with the disciples, Christ, it got to 1pm and I hadn’t taken my fat arse for a walk today. Go for a walk every day and you reduce the risk of heart disease by 30%. I hadn’t even thought about it. On only my second day of getting back to exercising. How quickly they forget, I forget, I thought to myself.

I was trying to get back into my novel. I have dropped it for 12 months. (Too much YouTube to watch) Grrrrr. I’d just planned everything I needed to do, how I was going to do it, and which bits I had to write, and I stopped. Stupid me. So, now it is all out of my head again, I have to do a lot of reading just to get back to where I was.

I watched YouTube. I hadn’t watched any of my car youtubers because I had been re-writing my journals. Bugger. (I went looking for a date when something happened and I kept reading over entries in my journals which were short and sparse on detail, all of which I could remember, so I went and filled in the blanks, if you like)

And suddenly it was passed midday. And I just don’t ever feel like exercising in the afternoon, it has to be the morning, it is a morning thing. Besides, I have to take the dogs for a walk in the afternoon.

Move it, Or Lose It

The other night, I saw a TV report that said if you walk for 30 minutes a day you decrease you risk of heart disease by 30%. I was walking every day, but I haven’t been walking these last 6 months, so I had better get back to it, I thought. It is such an easy thing to do really.

I should, but do I go for a walk? It’s cold, I think, at which very moment the sun comes out. What was that telling me? (Coincidentally, David) I push myself, drag my fat arse off the couch and get changed.

10.45am. I go for a walk for an hour out into the somewhat grey, cold day. (I love working from home. I started early)

I’m listening to the Rolling Stones, but of course. Let It Bleed.

The sun comes out again as I get to the park. Twice around the Carlton Gardens that is all I have to do.

The first person I see is a jogger in white shorts and a black singlet running towards me. He has nice muscular arms, and thick thighs, and he does rounds in the opposite direction to me as I do my circuits.

There is a couple of hot Asian boys jogging in black active wear. They have nice legs in, what are after all, their tights, hugging their shape.

11am. I see a bulldog near the cnr of Carlton Street & Nicholson Street, she has on a pink harness so I assume she is a girl bulldog. I chuckle to myself unless they is… er… are gender fluid.

11.05am. Two gorgeous Border Collies get out of a 4WD on Rathdowne Street and are told to sit on the grass while their owner faffs about getting leads and whatever, which they do.

I speak to David. His old fat housemate, Fat Fred, has just announced his new boyfriend on Facebook. “How can someone that fat get a new boyfriend… when I can’t?”

“Keep eating, in that case,” is my sage like advice.

He tells me the boyfriend is deaf and American.

“Two handicaps,” I say. (I don’t really mean that in my heart of hearts, but I was trying to make sense of it for my friend) “What is wrong with you?”

“I have been looking for him since I was sixteen, where is he?” says David. “My hair hurts.”

He sends me a photo of the two of them, and it looks like fat Fred has married himself, albeit a thinner version.

The sky is grey, it looks threateningly like rain, but I keep walking, what else am I supposed to do? Around by Victoria Parade. Up Nicholson Street again. Steady is my pace. I’m wearing shorts, I always wear shorts, as once I get walking I no longer feel any cold. I like to think the fresh air is good for my skin, my circulation, all of it. Stupid really. But the one thing I know, is if I wear track pants while exercising, I always get to a point where I feel like I am, if I said overheating you’d know I was exaggerating, but something like that.

I see a man walking a wolf looking at the Border Collies with a hungry expression as they all head towards the tennis courts.

I’ve fallen into my rhythm, and it is all plain sailing then. (no cliché is beyond me) I chastise myself for being lazy and promise to myself I am going to walk every day.

I nearly get all the way around on my second lap when at 11.30am, it starts to rain, as I am walking back up the Victoria Parade side of the park for the second time. 

I walk the rest of the way home in the rain. The rain drips down off my forehead down my face, which I kind of like. It’s fresh, it’s freeing, I lick it off my lips. My hair begins to drip down the back of my neck. I walk without stopping heading to the verandas which start just over Brunswick Street. I’m quite wet by the time I cross at the lights, but when you are exercising in old clothes and messed up hair and nowhere to be but home and in the shower, it doesn’t matter, in fact it is kind of an excuse to not care and to get wet and enjoy it for once.

11.45am. I am home again. Brun is excited to see me, he is always excited to see me when I come home from a walk, but I am wet and you know how I hate wet clothes. I want to get into the shower straight away. No time to play with an excited bulldog.

1pm. I have laksa for lunch. Sam has clay pot chicken rice.

I don’t have much work to do in the afternoon.

Charlie Watts

Charlie Watts, the heartbeat of rock and roll 
2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021

Anti-Vaxxers

I find it interesting that it is the antivaxxers who are always the ones who ask the rest of society to respect their choices to not get vaccinated. You know, all choices are valid and should be respected. 

Of course, this is true.

So, I wonder if the same respect will be shown when schools choose not to enrol unvaccinated children, when businesses choose not to serve unvaccinated customers, when hospitals, doctors and nurses, choose not to put themselves at risk with unvaccinated patients, or when countries choose not to allow unvaccinated travellers to cross their borders.

Scott Morrison and Gladys Berejiklian are talking endlessly about vaccines to cover up their monumental failures 

My Fat Friend

7am. I was up. Early. I’m up early now a days. I wonder if it is something to do with working from home?

Brun and I headed downstairs.

8am. I did the dishes from last night, which I didn’t do when I was too busy falling asleep in front of the Agatha Christie movie.

I spoke to David, not long after I got up. David has taken to calling me in the mornings, now that he no longer sleeps in too.

“Hello, it is your fat friend here,” said David.

“My fattest friend,” I said.

“Isn’t Jill your fattest friend.” He replied instantly.

Poor Jill, I thought. I wondered how she would feel being the reference point for the word's fat problem? 

“How much do you weigh?” I said.

We both laughed.

“Well, I remember a few years ago when I porked up and I was complaining about hitting 90 kilos for the first time in my life,” I said. “And Jill quietly responded that she could only dream of being 90 kilos.”

“I’m 95 kilos again,” said David.

David had ballooned, but he had dieted back down to 85 kilos and was doing quite well. But since he’s been in lockdown recently, he has put it all back on.

“I’m beginning to get the sense I had last summer, when I locked myself away, not being able to face the beach at… er… um….”

“100 kilos?” I offered.

“After the horror I was witnessing in the mirror on a daily basis.”

“You’re game,” I said. “You are risking 7 years bad luck.”

“All I could do was peek through the venetian blinds at the outside world, last summer,” he said. “Fucken hell, I’d done so well, and I just put it all back on in record time.”

“Oh universe, I popped the odd extra sultana in my mouth and I just ballooned over night, I don’t understand how,” I said. “How is that fair?”

We both laughed.

“Anyway, I’m now going to walk the arse off the dog for a couple of hours and then I am going to the beach for a swim.”

“Don’t scare anyone.”

“I’ll try not to.”

 

Yesterday, I got mouth wash from Chemist Warehouse, I had to do something, and it seems to be working. Did you know there is only, something like, one mouth wash with an active ingredient, all the rest are just scented mouth water.

The sun is shining, it is another glorious day.

Getting Wood

It was a bloody glorious day. Spring is nearly here. You know with global warming, you could almost say Spring is here.

4pm. In the afternoon, my mate Charlie messages me with photos of some tree recently cut down by his neighbour, now on his neighbour’s nature strip. “You want some fire wood?”

So, we drive over to Charlie’s to pick the cut wood up. We take the back way through Brunswick, so as not to be so obvious. It is still within 5 kilometres of home, but it certainly isn’t one of the reasons you can leave home, in lockdown. It is a $5000 fine after all, if you get caught. It would make it very expensive firewood. And, after last weekend’s flouting of the rules, apparently, there is a police blitz on.

Alexander Parade, usually heaving with cars day, and night, was empty, so that seemed like a good sign people were obeying the rules.

I say to Sam, “As long as we don’t end up on the 6pm news with Dan Andrews saying, “Even after all I have said, some clowns thought it was okay to go and collect firewood from the next suburb.”

Charlie and Lenny were in their front yard when we got there. 

“Do you think it is okay to take the wood?” I ask.

“It’s out the front,” says Charlie. He shrugs.

“I’d better ask,” I say. “It seems only polite.”

Charlie asks the neighbour over the back fence if it is okay if we took the wood. It is.

So, I back the car around and Sam, and I, start loading the wood.

The neighbour comes out a one stage, a quintessential hot, muscular wog boy in a white singlet, with tight, blue track pants that… well… did what tight track pants do. Well, hello there. He says it is good someone is going to use the wood.

Really, when it is all said and done, it is probably pretty stupid, as the wood will take something like 2 years to dry out enough to burn. And we have no idea what kind of wood it is. It was big tree rounds, what were we thinking, I think as we load it into the car. But wood has got so expensive now, so the idea of free fire wood is always tempting.

Granny makes an appearance right at the end, in classic floral on floral on floral, apron and headscarf and scuffs, she probably knows from her 105 years on this earth that the wood is no good as fire wood. Who are these malakas taking away this useless firewood? she is thinking as she shuffles up to the front gate. Let me get a good look at these idiots.

We ware our masks the whole time. We don’t go into Charlie and Lenny’s house, “I don’t know if we should ask you in?” says Charlie.

“We’re not supposed to,” I say. So, we speak to them over the front fence, socially distanced, of course.

We just drive straight home, I don’t bother with the back ways then, and we are home by 5pm.

Gum Saga

We were home from walking Buddy and Brun around 5.15pm. 

No sooner had we got home, that I realised my gum under my bottom front teeth was flaring up with infection, again. Fuck this world to hell, I thought. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, late Friday just after any hope of contacting my dentist had disappeared. Damn you universe! Why did this have to happen now? (David would, no doubt, say in his stupid new age way, What lesson do you think you need to learn from this? We need 24 hour dentists?) Had I missed the tell-tale signs? No, I don’t think so. It hadn’t been noticeably sore, and suddenly it was. When it happened a month, or so, ago, I called my dentist and while she couldn't see me in lock down, she email the antibiotic script to the chemist straight away. All done so simply. Now, I was going to have to wait 3 days before I could talk to her, by that time I would quite possibly be toothless.

Dramatic?

No, I don’t think so. It is no fun having a sore gum for any length of time, without even thinking about the threat of losing teeth hanging over your head.

I've never had a filling, but I have been through 3 periodontists trying to keep my teeth in my gums. 

Grumpy old hygienist Stella from East Melbourne always said it was too much smoking, (her annoyance with my smoking drove me away from her practice) but surely it is much more likely to be an allergy to something. 😬