The cemetery gates are closed. Dogs and their owners linger in disappointment (dogs) and frustration (owners) as fuzzy rain collects on the shoulders of their all weather coats. Mainly the owners have the all weather coats, although some unfortunate dogs are also subjected to them.

I wonder if it's dark days already.

I've just enough change to buy the papers. He hands over two shiny five cent pieces in return and I wonder how much of my time ten cents would buy.

Chris is at Pink Drinks.

On the way home there's the Irish waiter stepping down from Campos with his coffee. The coins are light in my pocket. Nearby skinny-jean Chad is getting his legs out of a red car driven by a bald man. Returning from his Chad Synergy class, I think.

We throw ourselves into the papers over breakfast and I take two images away: one of a man mad with cold and lack of oxygen sitting cross legged in sunshine on the tallest mountain in the world his fingers, like his mind, no longer his own; the other of a couple so wracked with the grief of losing a child they can't bear to be near each other for danger of remembering too much. Bruce and Wendy. Reading. Understanding.

Rememberance. Is that our cousins on the tv news standing on the shiny street with rosemary and medals on their chest. Whose medals? Surely their family is mostly our family too.

LT says Deus is a destination. It's not just for the inner west. John Leary. Heidi Dokulil. I like to imagine that it's New York. Soho. Actually it's just a well-polished concrete floor. A woman with a walking stick tries to steal not only my stool but my tuna sandwich.

I want a coffee table painted high gloss green like the dots on the photo frame in my bedroom. Hot green. I want it to have glass on the top under which are scattered old black and white photos.

And I want to do more.

"...she was used to the homage of the streets and her vanity craved a choicer fare."
Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country

I'm putting the garbage out and three bats swoop low down the street.

Josie says she had a bird in her room and they had to catch it between two pillows to put it outside.

Tim and Tara are going to three weddings in two weeks. And then India. Tara's stocking up on pads and pens. Tim is quoting poverty statistics.

We talk about spray tans, eat sushi and sashimi, and then gelati.

Margaret Fulton doesn't rate Jamie Oliver. When asked her favourite cook she names herself and her daughter.

Up in my room the bats are at eye level.

Outside the Saturday night drivers crawl down Church Street and there's a repetitive negotiation at our corner. Through the kitchen window I see cars that inch forward, then the white light of reverse, hand gestures indicating GO-OR-LET-ME-GO. All this during a first sip of rose.

Jarvis says log on in the night-time.

A sunny morning and without a shower I'm amongst it. The remains of the college informal is just a boy screaming at a get away Commodore screeching onto Missenden with the windows down. French toast at Deus and the long-delayed wedding post-mortem. When will people get that it's the sweet savoury that's interesting. There's all sweet, no savoury.

He says no-one should die of boredeom, at the very least.

It doesn't seem much to ask. I remember car journeys home. From anywhere really. I remember the short journeys the most. From Rutherford. Bullens. In summer mostly. Dwindling down opportunities. Last stop Lochinvar shop, and after that nothing. No possibility of running into anyone. All known and understood. Predictable. I think this as I'm ironing cloth napkins.

The sign by the gates says "Cemetery Closed After Dark". Someone has written "Days Ahead" at the end.

I laughed today.

Once apon a time there was a man called Marc Jacobs. He had a fancy dress party, and the theme was Venice. The crowd dressed mainly as wealthy Venetian atristocracy, but Marc Jacobs went dressed as a pigeon. He was doing the pigeon, boys and girls.