NPO (New Peach Order)

It's time for the NPO. The Peach has finally and thankfully shrunk from housing three residents to two. This process was not without some tension. The one that moved out was both a self-righteous and sanctimonious little antfucker* who saw fit to upset Grizelda on her way out the door.

Anyone who upsets Grizelda is not okay with me. The problem was simple and unavoidable, she gave notice but come moving day failed to move all of her furniture then attempted to store it here for another week. I said no, Judge Judy says no, so we told her no, so she came and got the rest of her stuff two days later and upset Grizelda.

It wasn't small boxes or the last bits and pieces, it was an entire double bed, a large l-shaped lounge, a huge television and other assorted things. Surely it is normal to move out on moving out day?

I'm not sorry to see the back of her but I am sorry that Grizelda got upset. Seems to me she just wanted to leave with a bang.

She was problematic as a housemate, rarely cleaned, almost never washed dishes, came and went like it was a hotel and then kicked up a stink every time a bill rolled in. This is not the kind of person I'm willing to share a roof with but I was willing to give it a try for the sake of Grizelda's peace of mind if nothing else. I even apologised for not being personable which is a world's first but there you have it.

I am looking forward to feeling delighted the very next time I come home and know that locking the door behind me means locking the likes of her out. In my mind home equals respite from antfuckers and people who straighten their hair for the twelfth time that week then deliberately go to establishments owned by Justin Hemmes after they have finished rereading their list of financial goals and pretended to follow religious direction but I digress.

It is time for the New Peach Order. May wandering in the hallway and trackpant wearing and tea making and cat feeding be the only exciting events to occur under this roof for a long long time. If not then I'm going to buy a gun. A big one. And I am going to shoot things in anger, like Elvis and Hunter S. Thompson and Hemingway and my grandmother did. It is a fine tradition.


*Dutch term, look it up, it's kind of amusing.

All kinds of fraud

Lately there's been credit card fraud on my credit card, email fraud on my email, even mail fraud in my letterbox so just for a little bit I'm battening down the hatches.

Blogs are bad enough already without someone committing blog fraud.

This is a test

Does this 'buy now' button work for back issue of PAN magazine as ebook work?

Buy Now

Because people always want reasons

It's a Groucho Marx problem and to explain it properly I'd have to understand the complete complexity of myself, but I don't, so I'm going to wear this fake moustache and ask you to leave.

On a jet plane

I'm picking Spencer up from the airport in a few days, well Grizelda is driving me in her car to pick him up, and I can hardly wait. I love picking people up from the airport. Airports have everything that counts, heightened emotions, shining public spaces, bars and moving walkways, newsagents lined with novels and people at the end or the beginning of adventure.

I love the long moments of watching a crowd walk by, searching for a glimpse of that familiar person, the top of their head, the curve of their turned back. That second when you spot your person of interest and know for sure that that glimpse of forearm weighed down with a bag is the one you are looking for feels like a revelation. How can it possibly be that the merest glimpse of their outlined shape fills me with such certainty? It's one of those minor miracles, the way we become so accustomed to another that we know, from an abstract shape or disembodied limb, they are walking towards us.

I wonder if Spencer will be grumpy, most likely he will be tired, travel-weary and swirling through relief at being home and regret that it's over. Either way I'm certain of one thing. I'll be glad to see him.

Turner vs Turner

Painting by Mick Turner

I explained that it was a Turner. He said "Turner! That's impossible, there's no way you could possibly own a Turner. I mean how did you even get it?"

I told him how I bought it, from a fundraising art sale for PAN magazine. He insisted that was ridiculous, that no one would ever donate a Turner to an independent literary magazine run by a bunch of drunken failed intellectuals. It was at this point that three things became clear to me, the first that the man was a prat, the second that he needed to be ejected from my bedroom as soon as possible and the third that he had no idea who Mick Turner is.

What kind of a man doesn't know there's more than one Turner and how to tell the difference between them?

Bad photo, taken by me, without a flash, it looks better in real life, come over and I'll show you.

Lemon Gold

Geoff Lemon has dropped another one, this time it's about Qantas.

"Of course, those of a certain view will always find a way to blame unions. The unions faked the moon landings. The unions gave me herpes. Union dingoes took my baby. The unions are the reason why my kids hate me and my wife never quite looks me in the eye anymore." - Click here to read the rest on Heathen Scripture

About some useless information

My parents have provided me with a large amount of excellent advice over the years, such as instituting a rotating system of shoes and not blowing off the tops of my thumbs with explosives in the garage but I think there was something crucial they forgot to impart about courage.

Every day there is an opportunity to be brave and a chance to shrink back into lesser deeds and slide sheepishly into the herd. Every day I require courage to forge a path forwards. There is no such thing as rising in the morning and finding a ready-made life. This is something crucial my parents forgot to impart about living, courage is a verb.

Dear Australia, fuck off, I've got a new country now

Between dreams

Caught somewhere between the bohemian and the conservative, the Baby Boomers and those fucking little pests we call Gen Y, there seems to be an awful lot of freedom and an equal mix of joy and despair.

Tired of not being able to shoot people in the head? Me too

You know those days when you need, and I mean really need, to white the world out and have time, all of it, to concentrate and write? Every day is one of those days for me. But I can't manage to do it. There's always work to be done, or looked for, applications to write, money to worry about and dishes to wash. I'm tired of living like this. Exhausted beyond reasonable human capacity is more apt, which is why I placed an ad in Gumtree for a patron earlier this evening.

So far only one response, and it was a man who simply said, "That was well written". Well 'forfunandbeyond' you can suck my imaginary cock. I don't have time to sit down and write some ridiculous essay begging for money. I'm too busy working on my magazine, and on my manuscript, organising all my notes and research and applying for fucked up jobs so I can pay my rent and on top of that dealing with a housemate (not Grizelda) who has preposterously decided to only pay a percentage of the electricity bill based on some kind of ratio of how many hours she spends in the house.

You should come over, I'll introduce you to her, you can sit down together and work out how to prepare a well-written proposal to me to pay rent based on the size of her arse and how many cubic centimetres of air it displaces when she walks down the hallway, or a letter to the resident cockroaches of the Inner West advising them that because she spends less time in the neighbourhood she should spot a percentage less cockroaches in gutters. Actually don't come over, go have a drink at The Ivy and drown in the rooftop pool. I'll be sure to make time to write a eulogy that outlines my precise percentage of giving a fuck.

Don't go out tonight

That old problem again. Walking home drunk and it's late and I'm tired and I'm smoking someone else's cigarettes and what a good time it was and then I 'm lost and then I'm home and then the keys and the door and then that's all of it finished and gone. Just nothing but me in an empty house where it is dark and an obligation for being quiet and not screaming up and down the hallway for just one more thing, just anything, something, someone to happen but all is untying shoelaces and remembering teeth and vowing about morning showers and nothing ever happens but the ordinary slow winding towards morning and one more day rattling up and down the hallway.

Send her victorious, happy and glorious or an earnest and boring first draft, publicly thinking about why I love the Queen

I love the Queen. I love her hats with matching bag, shoes and gloves. I love her gin-soaked downtime and the way she handles a horse. I keep a picture of her cantering across a field with a cigarette in one hand and a hip flask sticking out of her jacket pocket. It's how I spent the best years of my adolescence, wild and galloping anywhere I could.

Her life is public and she has been steadfast and dignified. For sixty years she has been the Queen, almost twice my lifetime so far, and not once has she failed to perform her duty. This morning I failed to dress and eat breakfast before midday because I was too interested in reading a novel, though I had many duties to perform.

I love the solid mumsiness of her. The kindly wave and stern gaze. The way she is so very clearly The Captain in every public conversation she has. Not once has she been accidentally offensive, uninformed or inappropriate. The woman deserves a medal for an endurance performance in public politeness lasting longer than anyone thought possible. Her private thoughts must be immense. They are a genuine mystery.