My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

I promised a friend (I still have the odd one or two) that I’d post. Crazy, being WFH and not finding time to post, but there it is.

I guess I was holding out for the ‘right time’, only there is never a right time.

Maybe the week the roof fell in is the right time. No, really, it did. That (insert expletives here) possum keeps pulling up tiles, so every time there is a massive storm (and there has been one every week for the last three or four weeks – I’ve lost count – and one more to go) it just pours water into the front room and the ceiling finally just turned to porridge/oatmeal and well, there we are.

It cost me one and a half grand to get it all fixed and within hours, like the very same day, the bleep bleep bleeping possum had the tile up again and water pouring down into the front room again.

Then the house locked me in the laundry for two hours. Suffice to say, I’ve been better.

That said, and my long dreamed of grand tour being cancelled again good and proper and forever (this time they rolled out a plague and border closures, to follow up with account emptying storm damage repairs, just in case I was keeping one tiny glowing ember of that dream alive), it wasn’t too bad. Until now.

Yeah, I feel like the whole plague thing is my fault, just because I wanted to do my one big trip. Every time it’s been something to stop me. This time I overshot. Sorry, everyone.

Despite my ongoing war, and it is war, with the tree-hating neighbour, I managed to ninja plant over a dozen trees, mostly by getting up at the crack of and planting them by torchlight (so much so that Mr Stands On His Roof And Yells At Me has now installed motion sensor and floodlights that light up my yard, yes, my yard, whenever I go out there).

Ah, well. Trees are good, enhance wellbeing, provide shade, lower temperatures and add a spot of privacy, as well as providing food and shelter for critters (especially as I’m not allowed to feed the birds any more, can’t imagine who complained to the council). Cried a bit, more than a bit, about not being able to enjoy the company of parrots any more (they weren’t that happy about being cut off either, and it was all my fault). The trees are half natives and half fruit trees (not that I’ll ever get any fruit, but it’s the promise, that’s the thing).

I don’t have to tell you whose house looks like an actual breeze block bunker and has concrete for lawn now, do I? No, thought not.

Other WFH projects (before the weather and neighbour turned really nasty) included new garden chairs (the old ones had rotted, it’s been so long since ‘ve spent more than eight consecutive hours at home) and a greenhouse to try and preserve the herb garden from possum predations. Yeah, that possum has cost me a lot of money. Why, I oughta..(some days I idly imagine chucking certain marsupials and certain persons into a sack and tipping them into the swollen river, you know, traditional, historical).

So, I’ve swapped office politics (which drove me into downward spiralling loops of self-pity) with neighbour wars. Same same. Seriously, since when did planting a grevillea deserve so much hate? Especially as it barely comes up to my knee. It’ll be years before it’s big enough to fling a leaf in the wrong direction. Years and years. Sigh. I don’t understand (same at work, work like a dog, get kicked like one).

Never mind. The plum I brought home from Bunnings on the bus (yes, you read that right), has tiny wee blossoms.

Monday: It's an ill wind and all that, and there is one good thing to have come from the McCarthy witch hunts, albeit indirectly, and that is Shakespeare's Globe theatre, dream project of Sam Wanamaker, father of Zoe, who ended up in London as a result of being blacklisted.

I couldn't make the screening of Much Ado About Nothing, which I had been squeeing about in anticipation for weeks, and I was, and remain, completely gutted, but, bless 'em, the Globe just got back to my hastily thumbed email to say that they would certainly think about venues closer to my locale (which is kind, as Sydney transport is nowhere near London transport) and that Much Ado would be out on dvd from The Globe shop by years's end. So yay. Not as much fun as being there, or seeing it on the big screen, but still very much yay because I thought I'd missed out.
( more: in the air tonight )