Monday, 18 September 1995  9:20AM

Empty weekend. Spent it watching videos and cleaning. Watched “Savage Nights”. It was OK, a bit pretentious in places, and a tad screechy in others, but you can’t really criticise a film when the guys whose vision it was is dead.  It’s about this guy with HIV, the guy who starred was also the director, producer, writer, and he even did the soundtrack for crying out loud.  It’s his story really, and he died not long after it was released.  Anyhow, I watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” too. How freaky to see a young Robert Duvall (he played Boo Radley), he even had hair. Watched “Look Back in Anger” with Richard Burton. That was a bit screechy too, sentimental in places as well. Now that ratings season is coming to a close, coupled with the Rugby and AFL seasons reaching their peak, weekend television is a graveyard.  Nothing but sport and John Wayne.  I was watching the news; they were reporting on a training session of one of the AFL teams. The fans behind the reporter were going absolutely nuts.  I can understand how people follow a team, and I can understand the crowd mentality at matches, but what drives that select band of fruitcakes, you know, the ones who paint their faces and turn up to every training session.  What’s wrong with them?  I seriously think they’re a bit touched, it’s like they’re having an ecstatic, shamanistic out-of-body experience when the news cameras start rolling. I was waiting for one of them to swallow their fucking tongue for godsake.

Sodding hay fever day today. You know, hay fever is the wrong name for it, it ought to be something like hay coma, hey torpor, hay drowse. I think I’ll head home soon, I’m all jacked up on antihistamines, and they’re just not working, I’m on my third hanky at 9:30 in the bloody morning. I have to stop working every thirty seconds to either blow my nose or wipe my eyes. I’m not a pretty picture, keying with tears streaming down my face.

Friday night was kind of uneventful. I had three vodkas, two black Sambuca’s. Rosie got spastic on two ciders and threw up in the “Klicks” loos. She and Henry left early (and separately), but Simon, Erin and I caught up with them in Parliament Station, sneaking up from behind, seeing them holding hands in a demure public acknowledgement of their secret romance that everybody knows about anyway.  I was half drunk and so desperate for company that I caught a train home with Simon and Erin, then trammed back down Mt Alexander Road.  I was home by 8pm.  Bit embarrassing really.