My birthday was the glorious non event that I hoped for, well, not quite like that, I had lunch with a friend which was lovely and in the evening cooked for in-law's and Christine and Dave, the kitchen still being the safest place for me in times of potential problems. Here are the pictures.

Our wedding anniversary two days after was a personal time and to be honest, not that bad, in this sense I am in exceedingly good condition, however the Zen in me and it's ever present companion, Fate, consistently conspire to send reminders into my life that balance is the secret to the universe....

So then, with one hand I am given and with the other...

All the months of moving from place to place have finally taken their toll, the myriad of kitchens in my life now have blurred into one and I can no longer locate with any certainty where the components for a cup of tea are in any of the various abodes that populate my existence, there are so many cupboards to open in my mind that I now just draw a blank and stand staring at the bloody kettle. My time in Sydney has been teetering around becoming a diorama of disaster and failing personal relationships and annoyingly I don't care as much as I think I should.

My feeling, and I don't believe that I am the only bereaved to find themselves in this position, ...is that somewhere along the line, somewhere in the last three months, I have disconnected from life (later added: Of course the brighter buttons among you will deduce that my life is still set with in the social walls of "our" existence, you may be reading the beginnings of a literal escape attempt). That feeling that some of you have experienced, sitting in ponderous, pointless work meetings where your mind wonders off the blame mongering at hand and not as it used to onto fun distractions, but to what instead sits deep in your middle calling for you to shout to the moronic gathering around the conference table that there are more important things in life other than arranging the next fucking meeting. Keep going with that thought and eventually in a couple of years you will find the place where I suspect I might be currently residing.

The journey, let us not forget, that I have been taking for the last year has been around people and not places, one wonders now if I knew this going to happen all along and company has been my method of trying to remain attached, which is probably why children have played such an important part in my proceedings, they are givers of unconditional love after all.

The reasons for me ending up here are complex and not totally unconnected to the comments last month, but no one person or situation is the reason, or if it is, I do not recognise it, as life, is well, life, an ebb and flow of many parts sometimes going in the same direction as you find yourself, frequently not, and the key is to know when to stand still and when to move and of course how to avoid the collisions. Having no car, job or abode has complicated this situation as Australia was built on the hard graft of the working class and there is an incredibly strong nine to five work ethic in this country, so to some I seem like a bludger, to use the local vernacular, to most I am confusing rather than enigmatic and no one likes a thinker. I have been told more than once since being here "why don't you get a job, that will sort you out", I think not, not until I understand how this country works.

I am not in the mood for writing, nor for discussing what is happening in my life at this moment so will end this with the following, I choose not to focus on the date that is coming up next month, I suggest that neither my wife and I would say that this day was one of our best and I would rather that you did her memory justice by celebrating her birthday rather than focusing on her passing. My phone will be off by the way.

M.

A P.S,

In the manner in which I post, four weeks in arrears, it is sometimes difficult to relay the full spectrum of what can go on; some stuff is just too odd, some too difficult to vocalise, some too dark and some far too worthy of unnecessary gossip, and of course, my life still changes daily as it should - I have been gloriously in love recently, past tense, it was unrequited, more is the pity, leaving my list of new life experiences still lurching towards the Thai lady boy rendezvous. I am happy and contented at this very moment after spending a week house sitting which pretty much consisted of doing nothing and having no obligations or projects to complete, the first real down time for over a year, other than annoying the dog, cooking, dancing round the house to FBi a local experimental music radio station and......... developing my life in a brand new direction...... Bliss.