endless summer nights

The weather in Melbourne has been pretty unrelentingly foul the last few days. I suppose I shouldn't say unrelentingly as there has each evening been a silly little thunderstorm of the kind that could only exist under a Howard government. Yesterday afternoon I took Annabel to visit Jane and Gavin and then went shopping and went and paid a visit to Michael and Nicola and Laurie (three weeks old tomorrow). Everyone is more or less sitting round listless and able only to emit brief witty comments. Laurie has a particularly rich sense of the absurd though he kept insisting he'd never experienced such hot weather and I was like, 'come on, what about new year's eve? It was hotter then' and he'd fall strangely silent. A&I then got Turkish food for New Estate who were in the process of warping my records in the music room by insisting on rehearsing there in saunatic conditions. A few doors up from the turkish place was a good All You Can Eat sign including faces to show how happy it will make you - it's at Curry King Sydney Road Coburg. Highly recommended, on the basis of a really great sign but no actual experience of the food.

By this time there was a bit of lightning and minor thunder going on. On the way back through north Coburg/almost Hadfield/Box Forest we found the power including the street lights were out, so I went through the backstreets to avoid any major intersections with traffic lights. In one street we came on an ambulance, police etc obviously attending a catastrophe. In some others large branches, and lots of small ones were strewn around the streets. I am still a bit spooked by 28 Days Later and people looming in doorways probably under the impression no-one could see them looked a lot like zombies.

Later we went to Tim's birthday party at the Brunswick Bowling Club and hung around for an hour or so it was the tail end of the night and people kept asking me what I'd been doing probably under the impression I'd been doing something really amazing for that is my reputation. I smirked and lied. Chrissie G said that Jon Michell had insisted that he would produce his (CG's) solo album including writing all the songs, music and lyrics 'he kept grabbing my face like this' (I couldn't see what this entailed as I was driving and CG was in the back seat) 'and saying "I will have complete control"'.