Wednesday, 12 April, 1995, 11:07AM

S,

Well excuse me, I’ve just been dusting myself off after falling off my perch.  Thanks for the letter, Sis.  I feel much better now, knowing that it’s my genes that are to blame for my shocking Magnum ice cream dependency, not my jelly-like will that folds at the merest sniff of that white, Belgian chocolate modestly screening it’s heart of velvety ice cream.  Obviously those food additive experiments Dad signed up for in the late 50’s have warped his chromosomes and left both of his progeny with a congenital weakness for a certain type of highly priced ice-cream.  For Godsakes, we’re in the grip of Winter here (even though it is only Autumn) and I still eat them, in 17˚ weather!

What you said about me begging Dad to go on this accursed skiing trip is true, it is “A1 bullshit”.  Maybe that is his recollection of it, the important part is that I have to get out of it, so I am going to use work as my excuse.  I was really sick last week and had to take two days off, so I’ll tell him there’s too much to catch up on and I’m going to work over Easter, which may actually turn out to be true.  Geez, I don’t know what I have to do to get through to him, I um and ah every time he pulls something like this, trying to get out of it in a nice way.  I try to be oblique about it, but the message just doesn’t get through to him.

Thursday, 13 April, 1995, 10:48am

Mum came in and met me for lunch yesterday, she didn’t eat much, she’s on some diet to lose heaps of weight before heading over to see you.  She was on her way to my house to let the chimney man in.   So now I have a fireplace that works. Whooo-wee, a lovely fire for those long Winter nights.  I’m going to buy some marshmallows tonight.

X Files update……. The guy who smokes all the time is part of one of the secret movements inside the FBI who want to cover everything up and not let the public know stuff about aliens, the paranormal and all that.  I have nearly every episode on tape now, all on the same brand of tape, all lined up neatly in my bookcase.  I love putting things in rows.  I have about a year’s worth of toothpaste (I love buying in bulk too) all lined up like a wall of fluoride bricks in my bathroom cupboard.  So anyway, back to the X Files, we’re up to the second series, where Scully has just returned from the aliens and has to fight for her life and all that jazz.

I spoke to Dad on the phone today and explained I couldn’t go on his skiing trip.  He sounded miserable and wounded.  It must be embarrassing for him to tell the Green Family I’m not going.  I did feel a bit bad about it, in spite of myself.  Then after work when I was over the road at “Klicks”, Caitlin came and got me because Dad was on the phone, he said he was at my house with some wood for me and he couldn’t get in through the back gate.  I didn’t ask him for the wood, and can’t help thinking it was intended to amplify my guilt.  I really do resent his chicanery and manipulation by trying to ingratiate himself into my life.  Hell Sis, he’s forcing me to be a bastard, just like him.

Thursday, 20 April, 1995, 11:30am

Wow, guess who I ran into last night.  Don’t even try, you won’t guess, it was a stupid question.  I saw Harriet, that old girlfriend of mine.  I ran into her in Collins Place.  She was with her boyfriend (whose name escapes me, he does look a bit like me though).  We stood and chatted for about twenty minutes I suppose.  The odd thing is, it was actually nice to see her.  I actually enjoyed talking to her.  We reminisced a little, a la “Have you seen so-and-so lately? Oh my God, they’re so fat now” and so on.  She said she went to the Christmas Confest and did the nudity thing, she loved her trip overseas, got two tattoos, one on her hip. She gave me her phone number and asked me to give her a call I said I would, and at that moment I really did mean it.  I guess it’s just because I’m sick of all my other friends and Harriet presented another avenue of socializing (she invited me to “go out to a pub somewhere or something”).  So at the time, I felt really good about seeing her and wanted to see her again. Now that I’ve had time to reflect on the possible ramifications of being friends with her again (like running into Crazy Lana, Brett’s old girlfriend, you  know, the one who never wore shoes), I’m not so keen on the idea.  So which do I trust my primary or secondary reaction?  Am I transferring to her qualities that I’m looking for, but she doesn’t really possess?  Am I making her out to be something she is not? Who cares? I’m making too much out of this.  I’ll throw out the phone number and the problem’s solved.

Good to hear you’re down with the whole pharmacological cocktail vis-a-vis the birthing experience.  I was a bit worried you might go for the hard slog, au naturel “I’ll grit my teeth and bear it” thing.  Especially with your history of reflexology and iridology and other ologies too numerous to mention.  The good Lord gave us morphine for a reason Sis.

Well I better mail this thing, it’s getting a little old.

J