Thursday, 10 June 1993

How you going Sis?

How’s married life treating you? (I thought I’d get as many clichés out of the way as soon as possible.)  How’s life in England?  I can’t believe I’ve been back for over a month already, it doesn’t feel like it.  I still feel refreshed I guess, which is good I suppose, though Winter is closing in upon us and the mornings are getting harder, though I’m still walking to work.

Actually I won’t be able to walk to work for much longer now because I’m shifting out of the house in Richmond in the next few weeks.  The lease is up for renewal and the girl who shifted in while I was away is such a complete and utter toad that I can’t stand looking at the filthy Bull-Dyke’s Speed-Freak face.  I swear, just looking at her makes me wanna puke.  It’s a shame though, because I get along really well with the other girl there Penny.  So I asked Penny to move in with Kelly, Belinda and I into a three bedroom place, that leaves the toad out in the cold where she belongs.  The thing that really annoys me about her is that she never fucking shuts up!  And everything she has and everything she’s seen and everything she does and everywhere she’s been is better than anyone else. I mean all her jewellery is two hundred years old and so on and so on, you know the type.  Even when I’m reading a book she will not shut her ugly turtle face.  I hate her guts and that’s not something I would say about many people (and actually mean it).

So any way, I’m waiting to call the real estate agents today and find out if we got this house we applied for in St Kilda on The Esplanade, just opposite Luna Park.  It’s this really nice double storey town-house, 2 bedroom with – wait for it – a bath!  I really miss having a bath around the house.  So anyway, Leah and I are shifting in together, but she’ll still be spending three or four days a week at her Mum’s place because it’s so much closer to her work.  There’ll be at least one other person in the house with us so it’s not like the cat, the dog and the 2.4 children or anything.  Still, I think I would have liked to wait perhaps another six months or so before moving in with Leah.  I’m finally getting domesticated too, I bought myself a proper queen size bed from Daimaru.  Its really nice, it’s a four poster with cast iron bits and a stained-glass picture of a rose in the head board bit.  It sounds kind of tacky in print.  Now I’m just waiting for it to be delivered, which I hate.  I’m too impatient to wait four bloody weeks.  Anyway, it’s a suitable altar upon which to offer my sacrifices to the Sin Gods.  Ha Haargh!  Bring out your virgins to wax my loins!

Went and saw Mum’s new house the other weekend too, it’s really nice, got a really good garden in a good area.  It’s just near Josh’s parents place actually.  I was back in Poo Town for Monica Freemans 21^st which actually turned out to be her 20^th so I kept the present for the next sucker who invites me to a 21^st.  It was good, I saw a lot of people from school who I hadn’t seen for two or more years.  It was weird, it was like I could see their lives mapping out for them in a nice orderly fashion, you know – she’ll be a nurse, and he’ll be a real estate agent and he’ll be an impotent nothing.  Maybe it was just because I drank too much, who knows?  Anyway, I got back to Josh’s parents place at about 3am because I was too pissed to make it back to Mum’s where I had an 8am rendezvous with Leah to go house hunting. So I got about 4 hours sleep and then rang Mum to tell her I was coming in case Leah was early (which she was) so she could pick me up on the way.  I haven’t felt so shitty for ages, not really hung over, just unclean and shitty.

Oh wow, guess what?  Leah, Tim, Marcia and I went to the 21^st Century Dance Club in Frankston last Thursday.  What an experience, it was like watching anthropology in action, primitive mating rituals and courtship dances, low evolutionary beings in baseball caps and body suits.  It was the first normal club I’ve ever been to, if you know what I mean.  All the guys are so hostile, it’s like they see every other man there as competition in the primal race for the female.  Really tense.  Then on Friday Leah, Tim, Marcia and I went out for dinner (summoning up remembrances past of slow, agonizingly dull nights spent at Silver Chopsticks – (you remember) – I was dragged along to a Vegetarian Adventure (da da da da daaah!).  I half expected everyone to be wearing safari suits, hunting wild carrots with elephant guns, but it was really nice.  Lousy service though.

Well, I’d better go now and do some more work, for there are words hanging in the Great Void, waiting for me to pluck them from obscurity and raise them to the dizzy heights of fame among those other famous nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, in the hallowed pages of “Who the Fuck Cares”.

Love J

PS What’s the name of that book that you and Jack read to stop smoking?  I told Leah about it and she wants to read it.  Ta.

Wednesday, 16 June 1993

Well the fun just never stops, does it?  The very day I wrote the above, the laser printer went down and I couldn’t print for about a week.  So anyway, we cancelled the application for the St Kilda house because the area is just too rough at night,  all these really pissed Aboriginals wandering around.  So we’ve applied for this four bedroom double storey terrace in Richmond which is even closer to work for me.  It’s absolutely huge and I know the area’s ok because a friend of Penny’s lived just down the road and she never had any hassles.  Leah’s and my bedroom is massive, it’s so huge I don’t know how we’re going to fill it.  Penny’s got two rooms opposite ours, one is a decent size and the other one’s really small for all her art work.  Belinda’s room is downstairs at the front of the house and all the rooms have open fire places and Leah can get free firewood from her work.  We should find out today whether or not we get it.  I can’t see why we shouldn’t, our application was ok and our references are all good, it’s just the waiting game I hate.

Oh and guess what other super-dooper discovery I made yesterday?  The book has sold out and instead of doing a re-print, they’ve decided to rush out the next edition which means that I have exactly three and a half weeks of research time left.  This means that some of the mistakes in the 1993 edition will slip through the cracks and turn up a second, or even third time in the 1994 edition!  I’m not pleased, this means its unpaid over-time stress-to-the-max freak-out time.  Fuck!!  Gimme a break.  (Official whinge section now finished, please re-adjust your seats).

So I’m gonna print this baby out before something fucks up again, I’ll try to include some photos of the house and my housemates in the next letter, so until then it’s “Bye for now, and keep on smiling.” (ring any bells?)

Love J