A lovely day makes for a lonely night

I was lucky enough to spend a great deal of the weekend in the company of understanding, soothing people, which could not have come at a better time given the shitty tone of the week that both Leslie and I  experienced.

It began with breakfast with Kate on Saturday as is our usual practice, only this time we ventured South of the Yarra (SOYA) to Spoonful on High Street, Prahran, which is quite far away from our usual haunts. Kate and I have been having breakfast every Saturday since we first met, I think. Anika and Sasha used to join us before they moved to the nation's capital, but since then it's just been the two of us, with the occasional guest appearance of Mark, or more often Leslie. After Max was born Kate very generously extended an open invitation to Leslie for Saturday breakfast. I must say, though, that I have veto rights and I usually exercise them. It's not that I don't love spending time with my beloved - I can never spend enough time with him - but I do like to keep Kate to myself. She does not know that I've spread awful rumours about her over the years to any new 'friend' she's mentioned so as to rid myself of any potential competition. Saturday mornings are without a doubt the absolute highlight of my week and I live for them from about Tuesday onwards. Our conversations, ranging from the acerbic to the absurd, are never quite the same when we have additional company. I like to be able to discuss my machinations for bringing about sinister ends to all of our enemies unselfconsciously and without fear of outside judgement, which I feel would be rapidly forthcoming if only people overheard the kinds of nasty shit we've been saying for close on 3 or 4 years now.

Spoonful was actually a pretty classy cafe. It was really tastefully decked out with fine furniture and spunky crockery. One should never underestimate the value of friendly and attentive staff, either. Spoonful had all of these things, although its clientele was a little generic. The other breakfasters were from a very different demographic to the usual Northcote/North Fitzroy subjects to which we've become accustomed. They were older and a great number of them looked like they'd summered in their holiday houses in Portsea.

Perhaps the best thing about the cafe was the fact that you could order a PARISIAN BREAKFAST (!) consisting of a cafe au lait and a baguette with fancy butter and a smidgen of jam. That's probably a pretty ordinary sounding breakfast if you're into the bacon and egg variety but it was infinitely thrilling to me. The second best thing about the cafe was its wicker chairs, although wicker chairs is probably a bit of an understatement. I haven't been able to stop thinking about them and wish I'd taken a picture. Instead, you'll have to go there and see them for yourself.

Amongst other varied conversational topics, Kate revealed her new plan for us to share the Vogel prize for best unpublished manuscript this year. This kind of came out of nowhere, but often our greatest schemes do just that. I excitedly perused the official documentation which seemed all well and good. The only catch is that you have to have an unpublished manuscript to submit by 1st June this year. As neither of us have an existing tome we can dust off out of the bottom drawer (however we do have a cellar full of good intentions), there's no way of getting around the fact that in order to be in the running for the Vogel we first must pen a novel from scratch between now and then. It doesn't seem like such a crazy idea when you take into account the fact that for many years past we've thought we could write one within the space of a single month. We also both have a lot of free time on our hands, being merely part time workers. I have no false hopes that a novel written in five months wins you a Vogel, but it does at least get you 30,000 words closer than you ever were before. You can't underestimate that. 500 words a day is our challenge. Oh, and of course to come up with an idea and all that, though I'm guessing this is the least of our worries...

I've decided my novel will be called 'The Heart is Willing', because it's important to start off with a title, or a 'heading' as Kate likes to call it. It will be a story drawn from life, but fictionalised. In other words, I will write scathing caricatures of all my closest friends and change their names from Sally to Sylvia. The plot is probably going to involve a dead baby, as everything involves a dead baby for me at the moment so it seems counter-productive to use up all my energy trying to avoid one. The rest of the details are a bit sketchy, or rather, non-existent, but I have to come up with 3000 words by Saturday. I'm not sure what the punishment for non-compliance is yet but given how good we both are at punishing ourselves for lesser crimes, I'd imagine it will be pretty nasty. So stay tuned for the first instalment, friends. I will probably need some strong words of encouragement/threat to get this story underway.

On Saturday afternoon Leslie and I drove out to the Dandenong Ranges to visit good friends of mine, Michael and Ava, who have just bought a house out there amongst the hills. Their house is really amongst the hills. We almost needed a 4WD to get up the hill that led to their street, and then we needed a death wish to get down the incredibly steep hill that led to their actual house. Their house is exceptionally cute and woody and had the most peaceful and calming vibe that it took all I had not to go home, get my stuff, and move right on in. They are lucky that the spiders and threats of summer bush fires would prevent such a thing from happening! We toured chook sheds, wood piles, under house storage spaces and lofty bedrooms before settling in for a lovely BBQ lunch and a few hours of relaxing conversation with two of the most generous and emotionally open friends you could ever hope to find. We had such a lovely time out there amongst the hippies and the huntsman (we saw examples of both) and felt refreshed and lighter hearted while we were there, which is something of a rarity for us both these days.

When we got home, though, my mood seemed to sink much deeper. Any temporary relief I seem to have from my feelings of sadness seems to rebound in the exact opposite direction at the end of the day. I crashed when we got home and could not manage a single thing to make me feel less dreadful and hopeless except to go straight to bed and take an Ativan, which is exactly what I did. Leslie is also not himself at the moment and I'm really noticing how much harder it is not to have him around to bring me out of myself at those times like he usually does. I desperately hope that some of our raw pain starts to heal soon as I'm really getting worn down by the everyday trauma of surviving, and most times it really is a trauma to get to the end of another day.

Thank heavens for the people in our lives that help to soothe our souls, though, without whom we'd have no moments of reprieve.