Yesterday I went to the beach here in Victoria for the first time in about 10 months or more - took my surfboard – and stood up on a couple of waves and then immediately fell straight back off. Lots of fun though!! Spent about three hours at the beach (for those people who don’t know about Melbourne – it has crap beaches, you have to drive for 90 minutes to get to a decent one, which is what we did) then of course we drove into Torquay to get fish and chips and ate them in the sun.

Then the Humber and old Kingswood station wagon convoyed home getting a six pack on the way and a good time was had by all!! An awesome finish to the little bit of time off I had over Christmas/New Year!!

Haven’t been in Collingwood since Saturday night as I am scared the fish is dead. Am having evil thoughts about hunting down another black goggly eyed one and doing a switch. Is that wrong? Will be meeting C for film tonight, though I may make it to the house before that just to assess the situation – oh dear. Have been sunk in the mire of total slump this morning – a combination of having such a good time yesterday, not wanting to come back to work and very little sleep – got to bed at about 2am on Saturday night and was up at quarter to nine for surf safari, didn’t sleep well last night as was haunted by work and haven’t been sleeping well at Collingwood because I keep hearing scary noises. If I had any money I would buy a bottle of Scotch and knock one back before bedtime.

Rode my bike from Footscray into the city today – which was a slight shock to the system, but actually pretty fun. The only un-fun bit is one nasty hill that goes for about two blocks, but I walk up that like the hack that I am. M is keeping the house like a palace and has done things like polished the kettle – it’s kind of worrying, but there are also bits he doesn’t know which make me laugh. He was telling me how he went to water the front garden (something that is my job) and he turned on the sprinkler hose and the fitting came off and he copped it all in the face – kind of like a silent slapstick movie. Then he got it working and went down the street, came back and…he says this in a very affronted tone…
‘Someone had come through the gate and turned it off!!’
I demurely enquired as to the time of day when this abhorrence occurred.
‘Oh, about lunch time.’
‘But you’re only allowed to use sprinklers between 11pm and 6am because of water restrictions!!!’ I shriek. ‘We’re going to be fined!!’
M looks pained.
‘Oh.’ Then quietly, ‘I’m sure they’ll give us a warning first.’
D’oh.
Besides my pot of purple flowers that he had 80% killed via neglect (they have to be done by hand because the sprinkler won’t reach) everything was very normal. I did offer to put all the plants that need to be hand watered into a pile so they could be tended to in one easy sweep. But he looked like a sad Labrador and said, ‘no, no, I’ll water them where they are.’
My fingers are crossed.
My eyebags are quite extraordinary.