day off blues

Adrenaline hangover. Have to make a call but feel disinclined to do so - yet. I decide to drive over to Newtown for cigarettes. The outlets that sell Gadung Garam in the strength I like have narrowed down to three that I know of, two in the City, and this one. Philip's looking for his cat so I tell him she's round at the door of my building. Bitch, he says when I say I spoke to her but she turned her back on me. He goes off rubbing his neuralgic face. In Salisbury Road, some guys (have to be guys .... ) in a hotted up black car are throwing something out the window. As I come up to the corner of Australia Street, I see a brown ovoid arc from the passenger side over the roof towards three girls walking down the footpath. There's a splat!, barely heard. Eggs, then. One of the girls has suffered a direct hit, there's goo all over her face, her bare shoulder, down her arm. O my God ... ! she shouts, seeming more excited than upset. I want to take the number of the black car but it's way down the street now and I'm not going that way, I'm turning. Outside the Courthouse Hotel, a skinny guy in denims and hat is walking his ferret on a lead. The ferret, all ginger and black, hunches its back as it hops along beside him. A woman parked in a no stopping zone opposite the police station runs to her car and climbs in the driver's seat, hardly waiting for her young son to get in the other side. She gives me a getaway grin as she pulls out. I cross two sets of lights, buy my smokes, stroll down King Street a ways, pulling the cellophane from the pack. Two drunks outside the railway station sardonically kitchy-koo a baby in a stroller. The mother ignores them. I cross two more sets of lights. 3000 men from Newtown fought in the Great War says a plaque set in the pavement where I stop to light my cigarette. The hoped-for headspin doesn't come. I must be more addicted than I think. It's hot and I feel lazy and stupid as I wander back to the car. When I come home again, I make the call. Tonight we'll be watching horror movies at six because my friend says she'll be scared afterwards if we do it later. I put Modern Times on the stereo and come through here to write this. The way Bob sings In this earthly domain / Full of disappointment and pain / You'll never see me frown ... almost makes me cry. Yesterday it did but today the memory of those tears makes it impossible to shed them again. Lunchtime already. I have no idea what I want ... unless it's hard boiled eggs.