About time

Thanks to Awful Library Books for the original image.

Fortitude

We marched for refugee rights on Sunday. A Tamil man who had come to Australia in the 1990s from Sri Lanka, alone, barely a teenager, told his story. His school and village were brutally attacked. He saw a classmate hanging from a tree by his intestines. Once in Australia, he was locked in detention.

How can anyone deny such people the right to live safely?

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is having a winter appeal. They look after individuals that have no one else. They also campaign to change legislation. They are a very, very good place to send any extra cash you have floating around before you start thinking about doing your taxes.

You’ll catch your death

Me and craft have broken up for a while. We need some time apart – I was feeling smothered. So we’re seeing other people and I’m trying not to just go running back out of habit.

I think the combo of crochet and cold weather (lots of hunching over to reduce surface area) have conspired to wreck my shoulder, so that’s part of the reason for the trial separation. It’s a bummer because I’ve become obsessed with making pots of tea so now I want to bedeck my teapot with a cosy. Look, I’m sure me and craft will get back together and this week or two apart will make our relationship stronger.

My shoulder isn’t the only cold weather casualty. Russell is… well, Russell was. Let’s put it that way. Now he sleeps with the compost. Or does the compost sleep with the fishes? To be honest, he was kind of a pain because he’d only eat live food and he did bugger all to help out around the house. At least Squid defends the boundaries from burglars, mormons and zombies, and does the pre-wash on the dishes.

Birthday party

Queen’s Birthday today, and her gift to us is a day off work. Hurrah! We three went for a four-hour walk to celebrate. To North Fitzroy for breakfast then Carlton, Royal Park, around the zoo, through the virtually student-free Melbourne Uni, and then home through Collingwood. ‘Twas lovely. Especially the bit where Squid splashed boistrously through the long pond of the university’s South Lawn (something I had always wanted to do myself when I was a student) then bounded across the grass to where a couple lay canoodling and stole whatever snack they had been picnicking upon. We waved and shouted at her like fools, trapped on the other side of the moat.

The Queen’s was not the only birthday of the weekend, mind. I’m astonished we could walk at all after the German-themed party of one of the Curmudgeon’s oldest friends on Sunday evening. Beer, pretzels, 23,634 types of preserved meat and sausage, onion cake, roast pork and apple cake. Lordy. I don’t think the Germans poo much, do you? I couldn’t spot any fibre at all among myriad foodstuffs. Perhaps explaining the national obsession with inspecting one’s own wurst, faciliated by the platform toilet.

The Curmudgeon’s dream

“I was having a scary dream about Valdemort running around, doing all this evil stuff, but I’d worked out that it was a dream so I knew I could alter reality. So I turned him into a butt plug because it was the worst thing I could think to turn him into.”

Sushi train

LIfe-long dream realised this evening: I sat at a sushi train and plucked plastic platters from its conveyor belt. I dream of a world where every restaurant gives me the opportunity to sit on my ample behind and the food parades past. Hell, it doesn’t have to be a restaurant. My own kitchen would do.

We sat next to two very earnest ladies in their 20s who were talking about VERY important heart-to-heart things the way earnest young ladies do sometimes. As soon as we walked out, we started swapping some of the gold nuggets our ears had harvested:

• “It’s the same place that Pink gets her toes done when she’s in town.”
• “I found this Maori proverb I like, it goes… um… if you turn your face to the light, the shadows will fall behind you. Or something like that.”
• “He lied to me about his age. He’s six months younger than me, right? But he made it less, like he was only two months younger. It’s not that bad, but it was still lying.”
• ‘This is why I don’t want to get into a relationship. Hang on, that text is from him. Oh my god!”
• “I’m going to try door-bitching for a while.”

They were AWESOME.