OK, so I submitted to my mother (what a surprise) and had a nice lunch on Saturday and then a wander around the shops - where I scored a rather excellent badge for my car (photo to to appear later). Naturally she made me fix her printer [sigh] but that was to be expected. I managed (for the most part) to bite my tongue and not shriek; “I told you not to buy this piece of antiquated crap that you call a ‘laptop’. It would be more useful as a doorstop.” Gah. Slow computers make my teeth grind, but ex-Education Department Acer laptops make me want to kill. Despite this, all was well - I went home to my temporary abode, ate the rest of Ellise’s leftovers and flicked between The Parent Trap and Crocodile Dundee.

Sonic spent the night on my feet, under the doona, which was a blessing as I was a freezing block of ice, due to my crappy circulation and inability to work the heater. I woke up at 5:30am, jumped in the borrowed Volvo and went to take on Camberwell Market yeeeha! Two dresses, two tops, two trousers (that it would later emerge that I was too fat to fit into), one man’s shirt, a Shure microphone case, Lauren Henderson’s Chained and a signed first edition of Peter Temple’s Bad Debts later I was driving back to the palace. No band practice…again. So I killed a few hours by putting more hair-dye and sitting in the sun with Sonic. The weather was divine. So divine that I didn’t really want to waste an hour of it by getting public transport from Hampton to Preston, but it had to be done. I tidied up, left the house/car keys in a burglar proof spot and carefully pulled the front door shut - usefully leaving my mobile phone upstairs in the study. ARGH! Proceeded to the station, where a psychic feeling came upon me which urged me to buy a ticket - so I did, and was pounced on by ticket inspectors two stations later. I was able to smile smugly, and wonder if they were getting penalty rates for working on a Sunday.

The tram journey from the city to Plenty Road should be bottled and sold as sleeping potion. I finally made it. Chris greeted me in between coughs and I got fed chocolate cake, beer, wine, chili prawns and a strawberry ice-cream. She made me watch Australian Idol - which was kind of like watching a car crash circa 1986, and I finally put faces to the names that I read about over at TSSH.
Oh. Other highlight. Met Chris and Jody’s new cat - Eric. He has stumpy legs and is a Burmese. Extremely cute. He goes to work with Jody at the nursing home - half the people there think Eric is a chihuahua, and the other half assume he’s their cat they haven’t seen for 50 years. Luckily, Eric appears to be very amiable - purrs on cue and is happy to be patted. His only shortcomings (ha ha ha) are his legs - and his I-am-a-lost-stray-who-may-never-be-fed-again routine at feeding time. Kind of like M and a bottle of good red.