Naive Psychologist

All right, keep using the bookcase as a climbing frame and launch pad, but don’t come complaining to me when you break your neck.

Pour one more glass of red. Let it slosh around the sides when it pours, let there be a clunk when the bottle goes back to the bench.

Turn down the lights, lean back in your chair. Sip on your wine, sip again, close your eyes.

Augie March. Moo, you bloody choir.

Go back to the best, the best, the very best night of your life. And then further back to the one that was better than that. The one you can only bear to think about every now and then.

What a night. What a song. What a night.

None of this:

A bit of this:

And a shit-load of this:

Sometimes at the end of the day, at the end of the week when nothing’s been done and nothing’s been achieved, I look at the bench and the Rice Bubbles haven’t even been put away and I really do think what’s the bloody point.

And then at just the right time, a little boy says mum, would you like to come and see how good I’ve got at my skipping.

And I don’t say can’t you see I’m cooking the tea or I’ll just finish hanging out this load.

I say yes.

And at the end of the day at the end of the week, thank goodness, there’s always a point.

…is that on Monday nights, Boston Legal doesn’t finish until 11.30 pm, and then there’s Scrubs.

My mother did not teach me that ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything’. She taught me to just let fly.

But I haven’t got anything to say about the report I have heard on the radio regarding the Prime Minister’s decision to stay on to contest the next election.

Excuse me. I am off to sit in a dark room with my hands over my ears and my eyelids down.

Did your mother sing you what shall we do with the drunken sailor while you were in the bath?

Apparently, not all mothers did.

37 years old, and still learning.

‘I don’t think it’s any coincidence that cleaning the bathroom was followed by four days in bed with the worsest virus I’ve had for years. It’s your turn next time.’

‘Yes, I’ll mark it on the calendar now,’ he said, flicking through to December the twenty third.

I am off to scrub the bathroom. I may be gone sometime.

It is that time of the day at that time of the year.

It brings on dreams of assignments that followed you around and menthol cigarettes you hid under your bed; of afternoon feeds and your baby asleep on your chest; of the CD you played on the road trip you couldn’t afford but will never regret; of the one unrequited love that haunts you still; or of the two hangovers that really were worth it for the night before.

And then you dream of all the things you could still get done. Before tea, before bed, before life ends. But because it is that time of the day and that time of the year, it won’t really matter if you don’t.