Summer starts with a beer

I wrote this a few days ago, but I'm only just posting it now.  Sorry!

 

I’m here in my preferred watering hole having a quiet beer and planning.

Nothing more at peace than a man drinking alone

I’m officially on summer break.  The office formally closed on Tuesday and I worked the balance of the week in the office catching up on things.  I think things are ok for the summer.  It’s hard to feel sure, because I remember with much pain the debacle in 2013 that saw me fired from Thomsons Lawyers.  The scar remains.

Today has been challenging: SES callouts from 0830 in the form of a cat trapped under a house and a tree limb down in a back yard.  The first of those was the more challenging and required us to cut a chunk out of a lady’s kitchen floor.  The things we do for love of cats.

 

Post callouts I came down to the Barkly Square shopping centre in Brunswick to tackle Christmas shopping.  I’m at one gift per adult and multiple for my uncle’s kids (basically the same age as my daughters).  It’s not really enough, I feel, but then again adults are hard to buy for.  Me? My wants are simple.  Wine is enough. And books.

Speaking of books, I saw a good book shop near where I was shopping.  Huge selection of Camus, Hemingway and Faulkner, but ruinously dear.  $5 for a very battered copy of Road to Wigan Pier? I don’t need it that badly.

I’ll be at the farm for much of the break, although I hope to do a couple of races at Geelong and Point Nepean and Semaphore. Hence my initial comment: planning. We’ll see. The Goulburn Valley is great but I was still glad to leave.

Having wanted to leave the Valley makes me wonder if the ex was right to cut me loose.  Would I have been happy in small town Louisiana?  I thought I would have been. But maybe she was right to doubt. I don’t know anymore