Tuesday, 19 September 1995  8:11AM

Hey Sis.

I made it in. Just after finishing yesterday’s entry I packed my bags and went home.  Just felt way too crappy, went home and rang Mum for some hay fever advice and followed it to the letter. Made me feel a hell of a lot better actually.  So I sat on my couch, read my Sartre and listened to two CDs I bought on the way home – Portishead’s “Dummy” and that Pulp single that you’re probably right sick of, “Common People”. The Pulp song is such a catchy neo-disco thing, I like it. The Portishead is excellent, I listened to the CD three times yesterday, I really like it. I heard on the radio this morning a song they recorded for that War Child benefit album in the UK that’s sold absolutely squillions. And don’t the DJ’s just love that it was recorded in (put on an American Top 40 voice) “only one day”. They reiterate that fact every fucking time they play a track off it. I’m sick of hearing it already.

I was going to go and get a hair-cut this morning, but I chickened out.  I hate going to the hairdresser, I’m thinking of using my clippers to just give myself a number 2 skinhead. It’s in line with my ascetic leanings.

Tell you what, I don’t ever wanna be unemployed S.  I was so bored yesterday.  I guess that being sick accentuates the malaise, but I’m sure I’d go batty if I had nothing to do. I’d sure as hell have a lot more friends to distract myself with.  I was so bored yesterday that I nearly rang work just to check that everything was OK.  God, that’s like an executive thing to do, isn’t it?

Mum told me you’re moving Friday next week, I guess that’s enough time to mail this, and it really needs to go, fifteen pages is getting ridiculous. God, how have I managed to fill fifteen pages with my minimalist lifestyle? What absolute twaddle I must write. I wonder how big this thing would get if I just kept on typing and typing, and only sent it every three months or something.  You’d get a mini-bloody-novel four times a year.  Actually, I was re-reading some of these letters on Sunday. I had a cinema stub in my wallet. I knew which film it was from, but I wasn’t exactly sure when I’d seen it. I like to stick stuff like that in my diary. So I read through a few old letters and found the right date and all. My diary these days is just a collection of receipts, cinema stubs and invitations to parties that I never attend. It’s weird how evocative concrete stuff like that can be.  Like, I could have written an entry about the movie and who I saw it with, but that little stub brings it all back much clearer. It’s all a part of my mania for recording.  I take photos of my house, places I go to regularly, friend’s houses, their tattoos, random visions that litter my day.  I wanna have all this stuff for when my marbles go, it should help me remember. That said, I’d better go senile or all of this will have been a horrible waste of time and effort. God, I just had a horrible notion. Here I am going how I like to “record” stuff, thinking of myself as this data collection agent or something, and then I think about boring old people with their slideshows. Is there a difference? Geez, I hope so. I guess I collect my stuff for me, for my own personal edification, not for boring the Be-Jesus outta people. I must make a solemn oath to never show any of it to anyone else, or I’ll be no better than that dreadful old couple that used to live near the Milk Bar in Seaford. God, what was their name? It wasn’t Val was it? Maybe I’m mixing her up with Aunty Flapper-Valve (teehee). Was his name Tom? I dunno, I just remember that she was a crashing bore who never shut up. I’ll think of her name. I will. Really.

Same day, 9:16 AM

Hey, have you been watching the news lately? Australia is on the way up Sister. The World Bank just declared us the richest nation on earth, we won the world hockey championship, Australians are holding the top two positions in the motorcycle Grand Prix thingy. And I heard the results of some poll on the radio that said that 80% of Australians still consider it the Lucky Country. Looking at this, I’d say there’s an election in the air, wouldn’t you?

Scribble by S