Life on the road is often just like this. I’m sitting in my hotel room a little after 7.30. The TV is on, the 7.30 Report commenting on the travails of Tony Abbott. Sitting at the desk I face the large window that looks out over a darkened harbour. I’m in the Intercontinental again, in a ‘Bay’ room on this occasion. I’ve not long returned from an hour or so in the bar downstairs where I took advantage of the 2 Mojito’s for the price of 1 offer while reading the current issue of The Monthly and quietly flirting with the waitress.
In about 20 minutes from now there will be a knock on the door and my dinner will be wheeled in: a Wagyu steak sandwich with chips, and the strudel for dessert. Tonight is a night in. It’s raining outside, my friends are busy, and I’m weary. My ambitions extend no further than some idle and pointless flirtation. I’ll eat my dinner alone, happily, I’ll channel surf searching for something worthwhile to watch I don’t have to pay for, then I’ll end up in bed reading. Tomorrow I’ll have breakfast downstairs or in my room, I’ll check out and cross the road to work. There I’ll do my days work before heading to the airport for the flight home.
I flew up this morning. It was the same as it ever was: up early, the taxi calling at the door, the drive to the airport. If anything varied today it was that I didn’t have time to stop in the Qantas lounge. Walking towards the gate I glanced over towards the Gloria Jeans in the corner. A memory loomed shadowy in my mind. I recalled a time I was at the airport early and drinking one of their concoctions waiting for my flight to my called. As I continued on I wondered: when was that? Who did I work for then? Was it a trip to Brisbane? Or was it Sydney? Or even Darwin? I couldn’t remember.
Did it matter? Not really. It was of idle interest. I continued on my way, clad in my suit, trailing my carry-on baggage. I was one of many, reduced from the individual to one of the faceless mass. Still, the question went to the heart of business travel. Today I fly to another city as representative of one company, looking to gain an advantage. Yesterday it was another, and another the day before that. Tomorrow it may well be another. The suit doesn’t change but the colours do, but in the end, despite all best intentions, it’s all very mercenary, and all very transient.
So it is. My meal has arrived. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow doing my thing and tomorrow night back home as if nothing has happened. Life happens and this is just part of it.
Life is fraught in so many ways today, war and terror abroad, economies on their knees in the wake of the GFC, society itself being pushed and pulled in tumultuous directions - and yet, here at least, we are living the golden age of lifestyle.
In Melbourne we're just coming off the Fashion and the Food and Wine Festivals. The annual Comedy Festival has just commenced. This weekend the Grand Prix rolls around Albert Park. Last night I went for drinks in the city before footy at the G. This morning I went to breakfast at Kanteen by the crook of the river in South Yarra. Everyone was happy and well fed. Dogs sat at their masters feet; at our table of 7 we discussed which comedy show we were intending to see as we tucked into our poached eggs and our latte's. On my way home I stopped by my local supermarket. Out tonight I picked up a jar of marinated Persian feta from the Yarra Valley, and I'll grab a bottle out of the wine rack tonight as I head out. No doubt we'll have lovely evening consuming them and more amid laughter and convivial conversation.
It's all very easy. It's all very pleasant. Notwithstanding the range of issues here and abroad life as we know it continues apace. One season, one event, blends seamlessly with the next. The sun shines and we are comfortable and time passes like time lapse, the clouds scudding across the face of the sun, one happy and forgettable event after another slips into our wake.
I have to guard myself against the siren call of 'lifestyle'. It's very seductive. I don't deny myself the pleasures of it - I'm no ascetic - but I have to remember these are the things at the edge, these are the pleasant time wasters that sit around what I think to be the real stuff.
I don't know what most people think. I want my life to be more than just a lot of nice times. For me I want to aspire to something more than a nice house and an annual holiday abroad. I want those, and the perfect family besides, but I also want to achieve something. I don't just want to live, I want to do, and do something that means something to me.
I don't forget that, not for now anyway. Lifestyle is fine, the finer the better, but sometimes it's like sitting on a deep couch that it's a struggle to get up from, and to easy to remain seated on. You have to push to get up, and strive to get ahead.
Melbourne has its own style, everyone knows it, even those who’d rather not admit to it. As a city we know we’ve got it good when it comes to food and fashion, bars, coffee, the arts, and not to mention sport. Though it’s organic roots sit in the diversity of lifestyles there is much in it that ultimately becomes self referential. We are known for something that we look to live up to. I've little doubt that there is no other citizen in Australia that has as much civic pride or sheer affection for their home town as a Melburnian does. We know we’re stylish, and so we strive to be stylish and ever more so.
In some sense that’s one of the things that sets Melbourne apart from many of the other Australian cities. Style not only matters, it is a distinct and central part of the cities consciousness and identity.
So what is Melbourne style? I was given cause to wonder this a few days ago on a visit to the CBD. I’d made a day of it managing my appointments and catching up with the odds and sods of my city life. About mid-afternoon I was on my way to have coffee with one of my ex-IT guys when I stopped at the pedestrian lights at Collins Street. In that mindless state you have while waiting for something to change from red to green I took in the guy standing beside me.
He was a stripling really, one of those pale and weedy types of no particular physical distinction. He had dark hair cut into a style Robert Smith might have looked upon with approval, reflective, no doubt, of his personality. It was different, but not objectionably so. What really took my attention was his attire.
It was a pleasant day of about 23 degrees. It wasn’t hot, but it certainly wasn’t cold. I was in shirt sleeves, but this guy was dressed all in Melbourne black with a woollen coat tightly buttoned and bound around his narrow body. He had oversized cans on his ears as he cruised through the city to his own particular soundtrack. My first thoughts were that he must be bloody hot. Then, as the lights changed and he raced ahead of me, I reflected that certain sacrifices are willingly made occasionally on the altar of fashion – discomfort is small cheese really.
I went my way and he went his, but I was left pondering. I wondered why I so rarely saw pale and weedy types in the summer. It’s true. You see plenty of hale and hearty types spreading out in beer gardens or sitting down to indulgent breakfasts or improving their tan in shorts and t out and about. The sun, for most, is the occasion to celebrate wherever you are in Australia, including Melbourne.
It’s in the summer that Melbourne style is at its dimmest, if only because it has the least scope. There are only so many ways you can pull on a pair of shorts, and flip flops are only thongs no matter how you dress them up. That might explain why the pale and weedy type is invisible in the sunny months. It’s my guess that they have pretty much the same relationship to the sun as Count Dracula does. I couldn’t imagine one in a pair of shorts, thongs and a pastel polo shirt. Summer is the season they hibernate, huddling inside their home, the blinds closed and watching the calendar keenly waiting for daylight savings to end.
It gets damn hot in Melbourne through the summer, but Melbourne really is a winter city. I wonder if that’s the European influence. The city itself, the style and a lot of the attitude is European, as are the passions and the intellectual discourse. I'm gilding the lily perhaps as there are no shortage of bogans either, but in general and in the CBD and inner suburbs that's the life. In winter the Melbourne look really comes to the fore, woollen coats, dark colours, long boots, layers...
I can remember a few years ago when I was living in Brisbane I returned to Melbourne for a conference. I befriended a guy from Adelaide and showed him around. He had a great time of it as we went to one obscurely located bar after another. That was Melbourne he said, it’s all down laneways and in arcades and hidden in the nooks and crannies only the locals know. He went on, commenting on the things that I had always taken for granted, most particularly the Melburnians propensity for black.
We ended up at a bar near the Arts Centre. We sat there sipping on a wine. At the next table were a table of very stylishly attired Melbourne women. I saw them as I had never seen them before. They had a glamour that I had forgotten living in Brisbane. They had an individuality and self-assurance that was very attractive. They were women in the best and most alluring sense of the word. Listening in they were discussing a show they had all just seen and I thought then that this is my town too, the place I belong.
Walking to work this morning I could hear the scream of the F1 cars in the distance as they prepared for the Grand Prix on Sunday. It reminded me they were in town. The GP is hardly low-key, but it slips into Melbourne’s busy sporting schedule pretty easily.
While there’s plenty of interest in whether Schumacher can reclaim his former glory and if home town boy Webber can cross the line first, there’s no mistaking the main game in town.
The AFL season started last night inauspiciously with a terrible game of football with two erstwhile power-houses. Like much of Melbourne I sat down with some anticipation looking forward to the first bounce of the ball. What followed was a scrappy game of low intensity that only served to make this spectator frustrated. For me the real action begins tonight. Like thousands of others I will make my way towards the MCG tonight to watch my team take on last year’s premiers. Hope springs eternal they say, and that’s never truer than of footy fans. While most pundits are tipping an easy victory to Geelong tonight I feel confident that our young team will give a good account of itself. I’ve tipped them regardless, as I always do, and expect to be entertained no matter the outcome.
I guess I feel a small buzz. Footy is back. The big men will fly, the crowd will roar, outrageous goals will be kicked and doubtless the odd dust-up will occur – both on the ground and in the outer. Sitting here I recall that feeling of anticipation as if I am about to take the field myself, and the feeling that ebbs and flows and surges occasionally like the ocean as fortunes rise and fall and rise again. I know I will be on my feet many times tonight, roaring support or abuse or simply expressing my feelings, my fist raised perhaps and perhaps pumping, and a discrete glance towards the demure Geelong supporters as if to say: thought it would be easy didn’t you? Well take that.
And afterwards I will join the crowd as they leave the stadium, excited talk all around me. I’ll get on my tram holding close to me the events of the game, reviewing, analysing, and dissecting them for hours and days later. This we can do better, but so and so was great. And what a goal that was – think he’ll be a player. As for him, well no matter how you cut it he’s a dud – get rid of him coach...
In recent years Apple has gone from being a successful, but niche technology company to a powerful, mainstream entity. For many years Apple users were almost a geeky cult of slavishly devoted fans who sneered at the average Joe happy in his Windows environment. Apple was deadly cool – something that hasn’t changed – with a narrow user demographic – something that certainly has.
With the advent of the iPod, iTunes, the mega-cool Air notepads, the iPhone, and the soon to be iPad Apple is now very much a company front and square in mainstream society. I would think there are few individuals in the affluent west who do not own, or at least are exposed to, an Apple product. Whilst they retain much of their street cred and all of their sniffy attitude Apple is now raking in the dough and looking for world domination. Good for them.
It seems to me an inevitable part of the cycle that success breeds a certain amount of contempt. When everything you touch turns to gold it’s hard not to think that your shit doesn’t stink either. The greater the share of the market the more, it seems, is the urge to control and dominate the market. We saw it with one of Apple’s great rivals Microsoft, shopped for anti-competitive practices. It may yet happen to Google, perhaps their greatest rival going forward, who are becoming more ambitious with every passing month. For now though it’s Apple who rule the roost, and they know it – and it’s not something they’re going to let slip.
More and more often lately Apple have been flexing their recently acquired muscle. Not enough for them to rest on their pedigree, they’ve been pumping iron and they’re not going to take any shit from anyone.
Now I admire Apple in so many ways. By and large I think their products are great. They’re designed and engineered with an elegant simplicity and an eye towards creativity and quality. I think Steve Jobs is a visionary. If I don’t quite think he’s the messiah as so many Apple-philes do, I certainly think he’s a clever boy – and will be rightfully lauded one day as a pioneer in the building of the world we live in. His influence goes beyond technology, he has shaped society.
In recent times though they have looked to crowd others out of the marketplace, and heavied small operators looking for their cut. More and more their professional disdain for much of their rivals has become a high-handed and indiscriminate arrogance. They’re not a high-end cottage industry anymore and so have lost the quirky individualism that always seemed much of their appeal. In short, as they’ve become big they’ve lost their charm.
Unfortunately it is the common punter who has to face this charmless corporation. Apple is parading up and down the beach with its new muscles and kicking sand in the face of the average Joe. I went to download an app for my iPhone from the iTunes store before. The download was interrupted by a message saying that Apple had changed its iTunes agreement and I had to acknowledge it before the download could proceed.
I was surprised to find that Apple now restrict use of these apps outside the country of download. In other words if I pay for and download an app in Oz I’m not allowed to use it when I fly out of the country. It’s no idle demand either as Apple claim they may disable apps they find being used in contravention of this.
This strikes me as being unlawful. If I buy a book I own it. I have exchanged my money in order to own and do with it what I want, wherever I want. If I buy music in the iTunes store then I can play that wherever I want. Surely the same principle applies to iPhone applications I purchase – applications, by and large, built not by Apple but by third party developers and sold in the Apple store. By what law can Apple demand of me where I use what I own?
I agreed to the terms. I had no choice as my download would abort without it. I have no intention of honouring it. It is a contravention of my rights as a consumer, and if Apple choose to exercise the option to disable my apps when I go abroad then I’ll be fighting them all the way.
It’s a disappointing development, and pretty cheap. The Apple name is being tainted by such actions and you have to wonder if they are following the dark lead of Microsoft.
Late last night as I was considering bed I was channel surfing when I happened across a documentary about mountain climbing. What boy in his heart doesn’t have a fascination for mountain climbing? Well, quite a few as it happens, but I’m one of those who find something captivating in the quest to climb tall mountains. I find something both heroic and romantic in looking upon a mountain and wanting to get atop it. It wouldn’t be nearly as so if it was easy – like most things the romance is in direct relation to the degree of difficulty. Overcoming sheer rock faces, blizzards and avalanches may be the stuff of boys own stories, but there is also something inherently powerful in it. It may not be for everybody – certainly not for me – but there is something of the stuff of life in the aspiration to such a deed, regardless of success.
I think all climbers recognise the philosophical implications of mountain climbing. When asked why he wished to climb Everest George Mallory famously replied ‘because it’s there’. It’s a response that has probably had many people scratch their heads over the years, but an answer I understand completely.
A mountain represents mystery. There it sits upon the landscape, lording it over the surrounding area, capped in snow, wreathed in mist, a monument to immutable majesty. It is a relic of time and from nature, haughtily indifferent in a world civilised and made tame by man. It compels fascination: what secrets does it hold? And it challenges the ego to conquer the unconquerable.
Somewhere in the intersection of all these emotions a spiritual dimension is given rise: a mystical grey area in the nexus of all this where what is without becomes inverted and is within. It is a calling, it seems to me, that expands the mind and the soul without the aid of drugs. As such it appears that most climbers are addicted to it: and why not?
The documentary last night – The Beckoning Silence - was particularly good. I stopped to watch it because Joe Simpson was the featured commentator. He is a climber who turned his hand to writing. I came across his writing years ago and found in his words much that articulated the fascination I have for climbing. He explores the great and mysterious themes that climbing throws up. Like many he seems to be endlessly searching for something elusive and unknowable. You turn to it again and again trying to grasp in it meaning and rhyme and reason. At times you glimpse something more definite, a moment you can pin down, the spur to continue the search.
It doesn’t end though because there is no end to it. It is not something to be contained in a box or described by a few sage words. It is like a river that flows and ever flows and it is that that sees Joe and others like him return to the mountains again and again, and to write about the experience chasing after it. In a man like Simpson there is in climbing something like the meaning of his place here on earth. This is what he does, this is who he is, this is the narrative of his life. His story is more profound because he is the unlikely survivor of a fall and presumed dead. His tale was told in the book and movie Touching the Void.
The main subject of the documentary last night was a 1936 expedition to be the first to successfully climb the north face of the Eiger. They were four, Germans and Austrians, who sought to climb the north face of the mountain. It was not long after they commenced their climb when the Austrians were injured in a rock fall. They attempted to continue, somehow traversing the sheer face of the mountain in a great feat of mountaineering. When the weather closed in they realised that they could go no farther, nor could they go back the way they had come. The only way back was straight down over an overhanging ledge.
It’s a great story. Not far below and off to the side was a railway tunnel cut through the side of the mountain. It was a scant few hundred metres away. As they prepared to set off they heard someone call to them: a railway engineer. Injured and in dreadful conditions they responded, all is well, denying their injuries and perilous situation from a kind of professional pride: we can manage ourselves thanks all the same. They began their descent when tragedy struck.
It was at that moment that an avalanche came their way. In the torrent of falling snow one was swept away to his death. The others, tied together and affixed to a piton in the rock were swept over the ledge, one, and then another. The first man was smashed faced forward into the side of the mountain and died instantly. The man who hadn’t fallen was instead slowly asphyxiated as the weight of his dangling friends crushed the air out of his lungs as he was pressed against the rock. Only the middle man, Toni Kurz, had survived the fall, and now he was dangling helplessly in mid-air between his two dead friends.
Guides came to rescue him, but night fell before they could do anything. He spent the night in the freezing cold dangling there and fighting off sleep and the easy, but inevitable death it promised to him. Come morning he was still alive.
His friend below was frozen solid against the rock face: he cut himself free. Then he began to climb the rope, desperately fatigued, freezing, his hands frostbitten. Somehow he managed to pull himself up to the ledge. There he cut himself free from his dead friend there, but found he had not enough rope to abseil down.
With his frostbitten fingers he separated the strands of the frozen rope and tied them together end to end. He lowered a message to his rescuers barely a 150 feet below requesting more rope. They attached a rope and he began to haul it up. More than halfway up the rope ran out, and so the rescuers tied another length to it. Then he began to abseil down.
He had gone ¾ ‘s of the way when he came to the knot. He could see his rescuers, could speak to them, but they could not reach him. Desperately he tried to force the knotted rope through his gear, again and again a bare few metres above his waiting rescuers. If he could pass the knot through then he would survive, if not... Then after four days of enduring, of surviving, of battling against the odds he had enough.
After all he had endured it came down to the knot. Had it been smaller it might have been different; had the rope been longer then it would not have been an issue. But none of that was to be. After coming so far, enduring so much and metres away from safety and a long life in prospect he’d had enough. “I can’t go on,” he said, and slumping at the end of the rope he died.
This is a story that resonates on many different levels. It’s a story of endurance and determination; a story of the power of nature and the invincible mountain; it’s a tragedy, an heroic but futile battle for survival; and it is in the very narrow margins between life and death a poignant reminder of how tenuous life is. Hanging by a thread indeed, and alive but for a knot.
Is it a good death? It’s a hard death certainly. It has a spooky quality. But these climbers do this knowing the perils they face: that’s much of the intoxication. Hundreds, thousands perhaps, lay frozen on the side of a hundred mountains or dashed to the ground below. In the end it’s a famous, almost mythic, death. And, I guess, he died doing what he loved doing most.
When I woke this morning it was with my mind more clear than normal. I had dreamt much of the night about an alluring brunette I had come across recently. My dreams had been triggered by the news that she was interested in me, though the dreams had a strange content.
Though I was reasonably awake I had no desire to get out of bed. I felt deliciously comfortable lying there, and disinclined to disturb the tranquil state of being I was enjoying. Bugger it I thought, I’m going to lay here until I’ve had enough of it, no matter the time. As it turns out I eventually climbed out of bed 45 minutes later than usual, reluctantly getting myself ready for the office.
Despite my indifference for work I have surprised myself by my productivity this morning. Once I sat at my desk I was straight into it and addressing the various issues on my agenda. As always seems the case with me, I have fingers in a lot of different pies. I wonder if I should scale back some of the sheer range of things I am looking at or attending to. The fact is that I’m a one man department and there is only so much I can do alone. And, truth be known, I don’t want to get so involved that I can’t leave when I choose. It’s important to me to finish what I start – the more I start the more I have to finish, and the more tangled up I become in the company.
I’ve pretty well decided that when my contract comes up for renewal in a few months time that I’ll turn it down and move on. That means that at some point I need to look at the loose ends with a view towards tidying them up. In the meantime I’ll do my thing no differently to normal.
On Tuesday morning I flew up to Sydney again. This time I used a taxi service to get to the airport. The car was an upmarket sedan and the driver was an ex-Bosnian Muslim.
As you do we chatted on the way to the airport. I’m not at my most verbose first thing in the morning, but he was a pleasant and interesting man.
He told me how he had come to Australia in 1994 with his wife and two daughters. He was a mechanical engineer by trade he said, and his qualifications had been properly recognised here when he arrived. What held him back was his poor English. He took lessons to improve it, but just as his English improved to an adequate level his wife became sick. She was diagnosed with MS and he stayed at home to look after her. She died 2 years ago, and in that time since he had become a taxi driver, bought a home, and seen the two daughters he adored set off to uni.
There was in his voice and attitude gratitude for what he had found, but also some melancholy. He explained how since the war in Bosnia his old home town had been rebuilt and was many times more beautiful than it had been before. The country itself, he told me, was very pretty, and once upon a time he and his countrymen had been the envy of the other eastern bloc countries for their freedoms and lifestyle.
Circumstance had forced him out of that home. He had come to a distant but peaceful country where further circumstance had forced him into a profession other than his chosen one. He had watched as his wife had sickened and then finally died. Listening to him it sounded as if his life had taken one unexpected turn after another after a period of stability and happiness. Sitting beside him on my way to attending to my own business it felt as if he had been denied his own destiny. I think he felt somewhat the same.
Don’t get me wrong. He was far from maudlin, he had accepted his situation and was grateful to live in a place where his daughters could live out their dreams. They were very happy he said, and his eldest had just joined KPMG.
On my way home from Sydney I caught another, regular cab from the airport. This time the driver was Indian, a recent arrival by way of Canada.
He was curious about Melbourne and what it's like to live here. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun blazed down. We drove over the Bolte Bridge and to our left the sunshine reflected off the glass of the city buildings. He was impressed with the city he told me. The roads were good and very organised, and the transport system superior to what he had seen before. He thought Melbourne was a good place to live, and that it was great if you loved sport.
He asked me about the weather and how it compared to Sydney. He'd had a Sydney woman in the cab the day before who claimed that it was always raining in Melbourne - never true, and never less true than now. I told him that Sydney was more humid and had about twice the rain of Melbourne, no matter what anyone else tells you. Melbourne is hotter in summer and cooler in winter, though it never really gets too cold. He mentioned that he had come from Canada where it was as cold as 40 below.
We chatted about the cricket a little, always a popular topic with an Indian, and then he explained how he had come to Melbourne 6 months before with his wife. She was studying accounting at Swinburne. He’d had a job before with an engineering company in Canada, and had nearly finished his MBA, when he lost his job because of the recession. Now he was driving taxis.
It’s hard not to feel humbled hearing stories like this. Neither are terrible stories, but they highlight how others have to fight for what we take as our birthright. We enter the world as Australians and are presented with a destiny of unlimited opportunity. It is ours to make of it what we will, and there are no guarantees. I think sometimes because we know no different we don’t value it as we should; it is those who have come from more disadvantaged backgrounds who truly know the value of this gift.
Sitting there in those cabs I contrasted the simplicity and ease of my life with what these men have had to contend with. I grizzle and groan sometimes; sometimes I feel hard done by, and sometimes shit truly does happen. By and large though my angst comes from a surfeit of choice. Like many of my countrymen I have the rich man’s dilemma, without having a rich man’s bank account. I have the luxury of choosing from options unknown to most peoples of the world, and the dreams of others are but the bread and butter of daily life for me.
It’s good to acknowledge this and to know it for what it is. If ever you should question the gift you have been given then remember that it could be far worse – as it is for most. We have been blessed to have what is ours by birthright what others often can only imagine. This is one of the reasons I am so sympathetic to others less fortunate. We are so fortunate, why would they not aspire to the same?
Our good fortune is not something we should ever overlook. There but the grace of God, and random chance, go I. Good luck to those guys, and all like them.
About 12.30 last night I was walking home after an evening out. I had got off the tram and was making my way the short distance between the tram stop and my home, listening to my music and thinking about bed. I turned the corner of my street. In the crook of the road is a church, though it is better described as a church hall, like a brick barn with a steepled roof. It seems a progressive, cheery congregation of young families and solid middle class citizens. Walking by on a Sunday morning you'll often hear a choir singing or a guitar strumming as all join in, and sometimes you'll see smiling parishioners arrive with plates of food, their children trailing them.
Last night there was no congregation, but the place was lit up. I glanced over as I walked by, an old Whitesnake song throbbing in my ears. There I saw an elderly man, short and plump though clearly still sprightly. He seemed to vacuuming the church with an upright vacuum cleaner that he pushed forward and back across the timber floor. The sight arrested me. It instinctively reminded me of Hopper, and a painting he might have composed. I was curious why the man should be alone and attending this task at this time of night; then it struck me how lonely an image it was. For a few moments my mind went to the man in the church, contemplating his lonely duty.
I passed on then, as we forever do. The church fell behind me, home beckoned. And, undisturbed by anything outside, the music continued in my ears.
It’s a warm and rainy morning and I can’t get a song out of my head. Don’t You Want Somebody to Love, the old Jefferson Airplane song goes round and round in my mind until I begin to hum it sitting at my desk. I heard it earlier when I went up to a local cafe for an impromptu sit-down latte and muffin. I read the paper, checking out the latest news on the upcoming AFL season when the song came on in the background.
In a way this is a reflection of my morning. Not the sentiment so much, but the light-hearted vibe. I feel pretty fresh even though my back aches. I’m looking forward to the weekend and the variety of delicious tastes to indulge in. I’m hungry and keen.
In part – and let’s be honest about this – it’s woman related. Not any particular woman, just the fact of, the undeniable existence of women. There have been times I’ve damned the fact, but they are few and far between. Walking to work this morning I saw a particularly fine woman in a pair of tight jeans. It made me feel happy and benevolent, like a generous uncle at peace with the world. I was moved to send a text message to Cheeseboy: Do you stop looking at girls when you get married? It’s like birdsong and pretty sunsets and chocolate, a sweet girl is a joy forever.
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