The wages of sin are ... pretty damn good, actually

You know, I feel so damn good, so damn fine, so very very happy... that a less sspicious man than myself would become a little bit concerned.

There is of course, a good reason for this. I have just had the first four days of my ED free holiday.

And how did they go, I imagine I hear you ask?

Pretty bloody fine.

Thursday I descended on the Bookshop like a wolf on the fold, and glutted myself with books. I have ordered "Spook", the sequel to the truly remarkable "Stiff" by Mary Roach - you know those books where it says on the back "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll stay up all night..."?

Well, Stiff will do it. Read all about fat man's dandruff as a traditional medication, Russian head transplant experiments and some allegedly cannibalistic dumpling makers. One of the funniest/saddest/most horrible books I have ever read.

What else? A collection of Chinese supernatural stories, a collection of short stories by "some miserable bastard" (suggested by my ex as particularly suitable for me a number of years ago), a book on the history of morphine and laudanum as patent medications, something on the travels of a Franciscan monk in Asia, a book of Tim Winton's stories ... I think if someone had't pulled me off the discounted books section I would have burst something. I almost needed a shopping trolley.

A glorious orgy of literary excess.

Thursday night we went out with old workmates and drank.

Friday I pottered about the house and then went out and drank.

Saturday morning I went to a geekfest and glutted myself on superhero comics from the fifties and sixties, where square-jawed men in wrestler costumes battled giant apes with ray guns. I have found lately that covers with pictures of giant gorillas or creatures with huge brains and see-through skulls are usually markers of fine literature. The Shipping News was a damn fine book, but who's to say it would not have been improved by Quoyle battling a giant gorilla?

In truly top flight literature, of course, the heroes are assisted in their fight against the giant ray-gun wielding gorilla by animals wearing costumes as well - who have names like Astrodog and Galactic Cat.

Saturday evening we went out and drank too.

Sunday night I did not go out ad drink, but that's because all Sunday day we went out and drank, and by that time I was all dranked out. And over four nights I would have had maybe two bottles of wine, but still, I was and am pretty damn relaxed.

And Sunday we were doing a winery tour with a friend of ours (her cousin has recently arrived from England, so we decided to show him the kind of country that his lot had sent our lot to as a punishment. So it was mile after mile of open, sunlit country, leafy vineyards, rolling hills, the sky a clear and open blue and the magpies warbling in the gum trees, and Sarah and I doing a lot of lolling, eating oysters and some kind of pate thing and drinking merlot, sated with the sunshine of the day, and then going home and reading Borges in bed.

Anyway. Tomorrow is back to work, but only for a few days, and then I have a few more days off. I sspect, although I cannot prove it, that Sarah is trying to show me how good life could be if I didn't do shift work. And I am sorely tempted.

Get thee in front of me, Satan.

Thanks for listening,
John