Friday, 8 September 1995, 9:41PM

Hey Sis. I’m all jittery, just had an unpleasant experience. My book was quoted as a source in the Australian Financial Review today, in a full page piece on Coles Myer (there’s intrigue galore there, even secret diaries have come out).  Hundreds of thousands of people would have read that article Sis. I’m quaking with fear. Now I’m starting to wonder how accurate my book is. I never really thought that it would be actually used by anybody.  I just guessed it was a vanity thing, you know, only the people who are in it bought it.  I’m terrified that I’ll end up on “Media Watch”. Do you remember Media Watch? It’s this fifteen-minute show on Monday night ABC with this guy called Stuart Littlemore, and he’s a media critic, and he is so scathing Sis, it has to be seen to be believed.  I mean, all his criticisms are justified and all, but God I hope I never end up on the receiving end of one of them. I don’t want to be in the public eye. I want to be wallpaper; I only want to quietly do my thing until I shuffle off this mortal coil. I wish I could just live in the forests like Siddhartha, and be at peace, know the joy of living. Awwwww fuckity fuckity fuck fuck FUCK!! I’m gonna be unsettled all day now.

 Same day, 4:04PM

I’ve got an invitation to drinks tomorrow night that I have to weasel out of somehow. What’s the best excuse?  It has to be good, Leah’s heard ‘em all. Maybe I’ll just tell her I don’t feel “up to it”. That has a good combination of disinterest and ill-health. Hmmm.  It’s the front-runner so far. Pathetic isn’t it? A fecund mind like mine should be able to spew these things forth in rhythmic couplets. That’s what booze does to your brain.

One of the other researchers here just got a raise today. He’s on the same as me now. He’s been here a year.  I’ve been here four. He’s been graded as a journalist for fuck’s sake.  I’m fucking well outraged.  I am definitely doing something about this on Monday.  It might look a bit funny if I did it today.  Where is my Buddha-J now? This is going to ruin my whole weekend. Why can’t I just be wearily designed and expect the nothing that I’m always gonna get.  It’s expectations that fuck you up you know.  There’s no point in expecting anything from pointlessness.  Pointlessness is the glue that holds the cosmos together you know.  I wish I could pull it over my head like a blanket and go to sleep.

Mick the despatch guy just came in and shown me an article form today’s Herald-Sun. It was about some guy in Malaysia who was crushed to death by a python. The python was in the middle of swallowing him when the guy’s brother showed up, took a photo, and then had it killed and thrown in the river.  The museum was upset because it was a huge python and they wanted to preserve it. They killed it.  What else can you expect, hey?  It just reinforces my conviction that the world is doomed.  We’re all doomed. The best thing we can do is speed up the process, wring as much entertainment from our own demise as we can.  Sorry, this is not the sort of thing a new mother really wants to read is it? Feeling a bit gloomy today.  Feel like sitting around, drinking coffee and being cynical, hard, vicious. Feel like bringing everyone else down to my level. It’s just a passing thing I guess. I need to go buy a few books, maybe a new CD, cook some good food. Take refuge in the senses yeah?

Friday lunch. Provided by the boss. Normally I’d go and sit around the back office with some of the journo’s and chat. Today I didn’t feel like it and sat in my office, eating my chips (the vegetarian selection is rather narrow) and playing computer solitaire. I get a phone call and it’s Henry (British editor of EB Publication) saying “Where are ye? Why aren’t ye here?” I said I couldn’t find a chair, and then they organised a chair for me and told me to go around.  I haven’t conveyed the atmosphere correctly here, I’ve made this sound like bragging about how much everyone likes me – it wasn’t like that, it was more absolute shock that anyone should deviate from established patterns of behaviour.  If I didn’t go and sit there, I thought people would realise that it’s because I don’t feel like it. And being lily-livered, I just obeyed and went around. People just won’t leave anything alone will they?  Everything has to have their will exerted upon it.  The exact same thing happened later when Jeremy came in to tell me about his pay rise. He joked that the drinks were on him, and I remarked that I wasn’t coming out tonight, I wasn’t drinking. Jeremy’s eyes widened in horror and he lent forward urgently and said “What?! Not even one! Not one drink? Are you telling me you’re not even having one?” I said “Yeah, I’m off the booze” (what a hard-man I am – “off the booze”) and he shook his head and told me I had to come over, to which I stepped up my polemic and said “No man, really. I’m On The Wagon”. His eyes glinted with realization, he changed track and exhorted the restorative qualities of Klicks’ fine array of coffees. I relented and said I’d come for a discreet docile neutered decaf. Life is difficult isn’t it?

Same day, 4:48PM

Just called Cav in Canberra. It was a bit weird. I didn’t really have much to say, and you can’t gossip too juicily in the office, you never know who’s listening.  A bit disappointing really, I guess I was expecting some special bloody reunion.  Embarrassing to tell the truth.  It just goes to show that you can’t go backwards.  He’s shot off into the stratosphere of real journalism, why would he look back? He asked about my “love life”. Yeah, like I’ve got one of those.  I wanna go home.  I wanna go home. I feel like slipping into one of those sensory deprivation tanks, you know, the ones filled with salt water.  Feel like shutting off for a whole weekend. My brain’s not working right.