This room feels like it's floating. Has done for all the years I've been coming here. I try to look at the curtains, really look at them, not just to register them as green apple but to process the batik type print that's on them. The white lines make celery sticks, a saucepan with a lid, and assorted leafy vegetables. They're kitchen curtains, and this no kitchen. I get up to close one side bringing shade across my bed, and throw open the other. Morning sun falls on a single bed across the room. I open the window and breeze, no, just air, is relief. Outside it's autumn cool and I've been sunbaking in my floating green 70's batik world. Tree leaves match the curtains, and past them through ghost gum branches, the water is silver sequins. I lie back down, half close my eyes and it's all blue and green.
I remember a sleep in Sicily. A hungover back-to-sleep in a room in a white hotel, and through the green shutters, only terracotta and blue water. Flat squares of colour. Noonie and I had been down to breakfast, around us Italian couples groomed to within an inch of their lives. We were wearing sunglasses, and Noonie asked for a glass of Coca-cola. The waiters were amused. The well-groomed Italians quietly horrified. Me drained and puffy-eyed from drunken tears in a taxi down the mountain the night before. The taxi-driver wanting to involve all his Italian sense of drama: "she crying over a man?". Noonie: "No, she's just drunk." So after breakfast we're back in our room with the green shutters, and sleep. That sleep is what I aim for now, and constantly. If I could sleep like that back-to-sleep. Do you think that a sleep, a particular sleep can be, could be, should be a highlight of your life? I know it can. It's what I aim for.
A text from Andrew in London: Oh Sally, my head feels like a yellow clutch with a fetid sausage roll in it! That's the last time I'm drinking on my Low GI cardboard diet. Neither perky or (sic) glum. Just in want of good sense. Is 35 the new 15? Is retrograde maturity the new rebellion? When's the next Bluelight Disco?
Now you're just trying to get in the blog, I say.
He responds: Sweetie, Hazel is dead. You need new material.
Just then we're both vapourised in a cloud of self-reference.
We're coming back from a meeting, talking about ice on Four Corners and Ben spots it on the floorboards. A tiny doll made of camel coloured wool wound up tight. Its head, covered in fabric gathered at the nape of the neck like a pirate, is topped by a small bell and its eyes are set wide making it look cross. It belonged to one of the Macbeth kids I'll bet but it's mine now. It's the start of a collection of faces around my desk: little cross doll and Gerry on a stick.
Now it's dark. Across the water the apartments are a grid like any other block. The layers go: harbour, lit meeting room, dark apartment, the pool at the Commonwealth Games on wide screen, dark apartment with bubbles rising in the fish tank. To the right a crane and another grid, lights at East Balmain.
John Pareles in The New York Times asks: is perky the new glum? He's talking about the South By South West Music Festival. One of the acts from the UK is called Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly. He (it's a one-man-band) plays right before our own Dappled Cities Fly. Perhaps they program by similarity of band name. All the optimistic band names together, and bands with optimistic names are bound to be perky.
Still, I've spent a large part of the weekend pounding footpaths with Pickle and perky seems to get you quite a long way when you're a dog. We sit outside a cafe on Glebe Point Road. I eat haloumi sandwiches and Pickle picks up passers by.
While Chris and Ray are in the Apple shop Pickle and I go for a look at Broadway Betty. I ask if it's OK to bring the dog into the shop. They say yes and would I like them to hold him while I check out the clothes? There's a perfect 60s cream frock with navy spots and a great collar. Pickle sticks his nose through the changing room curtain as I'm trying it on and then jumps up on me when I emerge. I've got no money so I leave the dog as collaterol, blag from Chris (thanks Chris) and the dress is mine. I'm imagining a wide purple sash around the hips and then I will be Renee Zellweger in Down With Love.
At dinner I sit between a criminal psychologist and a vet. The woman across the table talks about a boy she met at Barons. I ask the vet about Pickle's itch. It's been worse since Noonie's been away and clearly he's stressed and missing her I say. The vet looks at me straight and says that it's probably a flea allergy.
Then there's a general conversation about handbags. It reaches a lull and I fill it in with the story of waking to find a sausage roll in my yellow clutch. I've underestimated the audience and they're shocked. Afterwards, we head back to Newtown for martinis and I feel compelled to point out Crispy Inn as the probable source of said sausage roll, like we're on the tour of my life. Luckily, we're distracted by the hoards on the footpath outside Istanbul on King and the moment passes quickly.
There's an email from Noonie in WA. Films are making her melancholy. She says she loved Walk The Line but found it very sad and so it made her feel a bit EMO (that's emotional). I'm familiar with the genre, Noonie, thanks.
But dear god that Pheonix boy was a bit tops, she says (and I want to hug her for the turn of phrase) tho fear he was typecast as wantonly destructive smouldering but tourtured hard to live with artiste. Yes, Noonie, that's pretty much the whole charm for me.
And on Capote: note Harper Lee as a role model for smart girls like you and I. Roger that, Noonie.
It’s the annual birthday event and we gather on the deck. When I ask what I can do to help the host says: get yourself a glass of champagne, so I oblige. There’s a u-shaped table overlooking an empty beach and a turquoise tarp that’s shading it. We think the bunting on the balcony is festive and French themed. Later we’re told it keeps away the white cockatoos that descend to chew through the cedar exterior of the house.
The girls are off for a swim but first they stand on boogie boards on the sand and the dad takes their photo.
First course is duck parfait. There’s a visual artist sitting near us. He’s from WA. We start to talk about Australia’s culture, our outlook, our identity and our apologist leanings. Chris says that the only two Australian artists who have been well known outside Australia are Nolan and Whitely. Not true, we cry. Who else? It’s salon-after-several-drinks chat, and we’re straight into it.
The risotto is made over a camping burner on the deck. The girls pour the stock and take turns at stirring. By the time we’ve eaten it the artist is asking if I’m happy. I deflect. Others are filing past in their swimmers. Convenient distraction. There are no waves, so I join them. No waves. No waves. It’s warm, and it falls away so fast. We bob between courses, and think how lucky we are.
The outdoor shower has hot water. I leave on my sunglasses and wash away the sand. The sun’s heading down, the tarp no longer required and there’s one course to go. Chris changes outfit, as if for dinner, but it’s still lunch. Already we’re playing just single tracks on the stereo for maximum manipulation and it’s not yet dark. The brother is throwing CDs down from the balcony for me to catch.
Then comes the homemade pasta with venison, veal and chestnuts. The conversation is mainly an all in discussion about the birthday girl’s breasts. Someone asks if they’re real. How did it come to this?
As I wait in the car at the lights there’s a woman in the Old Fish Shop Café. She has a baby sitting on her lap and she’s flicking through photos and smiling. The boys in the car in front must be watching too and they wave to her. She lifts her hand over the top of the baby’s head and smiles at them before the lights change. We edge forward around the corner, intimidating the pedestrians into hot-footing it.
They’re redeveloping my car park, the one that I drive through (yes, Jo, through which I drive) each day to thwart the NO LEFT TURN on the way home. It puts me off kilter. I have a list for focus: fish, RID, flowers, Pickle.
By the time I’ve put the garbage out they’re here and there’s no time to walk the dog (sorry, Noonie – but he did get to attend a dinner party). We sit in the concrete courtyard drinking sparkling red and talking about celebrities, the Oscars, the landlord, language and highlights of the receptionist’s interaction with the general public that day.
His job, he says, could be summed up as: I Google for Dickheads because even when questions are unrelated to his organisation, it’s easier just to Google for answers.
At the end of the evening we don hats from the rack in the hallway and the receptionist takes photos of us. He’s skilled at group self portraits and with his long arms he holds the camera way above our heads so that no double chins are captured.
Hazel died. Her funeral is today. The family gathered on the footpath outside her house this morning. Her daughter carried Hazel's little dog with her in the car to the funeral.
Never ever buy Rimmel Extreme Definition mascara. It's, like, totally crap. It claims that a fine tooth comb separates and defines every lash. It's not a fine tooth comb. It's a plastic stick, and it doesn't do anything of the sort.
I'm preoccupied by what's happening in New York. Each time I type "Cate Blanchett" into nytimes.com (which is the easiest way) it asks me if I intended to search for Cate Blanched. It makes me laugh inside.
There's a small spider living in the lightfitting above my bed. Its presence is creating bad dreams. I think of the child who wakes to find the cat's front paws on his eyelids. The child thinks that the cat is feeling his nightmares. That image makes me want to cry.
In my life there is still angst and dissatisfaction. But where once there was damp grey concrete, now there are shiny white tiles. Number 47 is still yelling into the phone. But Autumn is here, and I feel like cooking.
