Galah

I think M. Nature may be compensating me for the loss of little Richard. I walked out into the yard after work today to check on the asparagus and the lovage (don't you love that?) and my three proud little tomato plants. And there was a shamelessly pink (slightly fat) galah on the lawn, looking at me with no fear whatsoever. I'd like to say there was no fear in the look I returned, but I'd be lying. Credit to me though, I said hello, and told him he was welcome stay if he left my plants alone. He squawked in assent, and flew just over there, to sit on the fence and watch me from over his glossy grey shoulder. Welcome Galah.

I know tomorrow is Friday, still very much a work day, but M comes home tonight, and when he's home it's always a holiday.
Right now, the long thick kilometres of the Great Northern Highway melt beneath the wheels of the Ranger, and hopefully the roos just blink from the roadside.

On the way home from the station tonight, in a slightly hubcapless (ironic, isn't it?) Norma, I listened to Poison by Alice Cooper and cranked it up so loud my mirror was vibrating. It had to be loud so I couldn't hear myself singing...

I can't bear to write about work. To write about how wonderful it is to be doing what I really really want to do, doing something I feel matters.... and yet I've only got a week and a half left and most days I still don't feel like I've cracked the cool veneer of my colleagues.

I've just come back from another wonderfully sweaty RPM class, with the Malcolm Turnbull-Hughesy lookalike, who I am finding sexier every time I see him. Well, tonight his wife was there, and they're such a humorous couple. The new music is hideous: "Come on team, make your legs hurt, not just your ears"

There has been a book doing the rounds lately, called the Slap, by an Australian author of Greek origin, Christos Tsiolkas. And I haven't had such lively discussion about literature since the days of Straz and Mrs Howie. How she leapt around the classroom, holding onto Dawe and Fitzgerald and I knew...I knew exactly how she felt.
My soul has felt more awake these last few days of talking and analysing and reading... I am thinking about going back to study and getting a Dip Ed.

I love words so much. Two nights ago, I had a really bad dream, and while I was waiting for the black wings to stop flapping around my skull, I picked up the only Fitzgerald I have to hand (Gatsby is on holiday in Melbourne) - "The Price was High"... a collection of his final stories, poignant only because I know he was writing them just to get money to pay for Zelda's treatment. They're not wonderful stories, but they're so Fitzgerald. They drove the black wings away and I slept again.

I don't miss her actively, and indeed some of her latest writings have felt like a bit of a letdown, but I read Winterson's column today, and that too was full of light and hope and good words. Careful words. Not this careless bullshit where people don't even read over what they have written. I know that missing the odd apostrophe (fuck me, I'm sure I do it too, but let me have my rant) is not a sign of dull intellect... it's a sign of appalling carelessness.

And just one more thing...
I watched Spicks and Specks last night - and the quality of easy comedy was so wonderful, it took me back to Bedford, to Chook and Keith's lounge room, to my first week in Perth. I embrace that memory and I am so unbelievably fucking glad I am here.