neighbours 2012

So Rani was sitting on the bed, listening to her iPod, and Sophie was just sitting underneath it? Huh?

Now the ads are on, I'll just mention what else I've been doing lately. I've been riding the brompton (no, it's not a bike, it's a brompton - actually it's a Brompton) a lot, and I'm loving it, even when it's hot and gruelling. I don't know why. I particularly enjoy it as the ride home goes on, because I get to go through Pascoe Vale and North Coburg, both of which are charming places. And once I'm in the 19th century grid of the northern suburbs I can basically go a different way each time, more or less, always know where I'm headed and at the same time I'm, you know, going a different way each time. Also of course I can listen to podcasts (this morning it was This American LIfe, this afternoon it was In Our Time and Thinking Allowed).

Karl wears shirts like mine. I guess I'm his age. Maybe. I just looked Alan Fletcher up and he's 8 years older than me.

I see Sophie did mention Harry just then. That's a relief. I thought maybe he'd been unmade.

i drank a lot but didn't seem that drunk

It was the whisky, I suppose. It has that effect if you take it occasionally. I started out at the State Library. Yeah, the State Library bar. No, I started the afternoon at the State Library looking up various great things, and finding a few (I am going back there this afternoon to get other things I didn't get around to getting this time) and then to Greg's to attend to a couple of minor things re: the comp, then back to town to the Pony (via Pellegrini's - still the best coffee in the world) to see New Estate play a great show to a small priveleged crowd. We all had to get out of there fast because these weird, stuck up tap dancers showed up and started bossing everyone around. I was already pretty into whisky by that stage so I was less affronted than I might have been. Then we went to a housewarming party for some friends of Olivia's in north Coburg, who seemed like very nice people and they had a music room which unfortunately many people took as a reason to play some music. Actually I did that too, now I remember. Damn. The house had great decor, old cartoons from the Bulletin etc. Looked terriffic.

At about 2 am Mia and I walked to Pascoe Vale and got a taxi.

I did drink a lot, it was only Ballantyne's whisky but I think that is still an alcoholic one. but I feel fine today. Maybe I am kiddin' myself.

I have been reading Ada Holman's Sport of the Gods. It was a runner-up in C J De Garis' great Australian novel competition, 1921 and she won a hundred pounds for it. She was wife of William Holman, a NSW Labor premier, and a staunch feminist. The book was published by C J De Garis publishing and I am going to look into the books he published as an expression of his personality and ambitions, if that is possible. The same way W F Archibald's Bulletin was a vast rich text about W F Archibald, qv Sylvia Lawson's The Archibald Paradox. Or is all this just the whisky talking.