Still in a holding pattern ... but improving

Here I am with ABC News 24 on in the background looking after my social media accounts. My usual situation in the afternoons. It's where I go to get away from things, helped by a bottle or two of chardonnay. You can see Malcolm Turnbull here giving his press conference on the occasion of the announcement of the government's new ministry. Malcolm couldn't make it over to my place this afternoon because of prior engagements, so I had to do with watching him on TV. I'm so amusing.

It has been a week since mum's funeral. When I look back on the funeral it seems like such a little thing to celebrate - is that the best word? - an entire life. Perhaps more fittingly I have been going back over my blogposts - which started on the subject of mum in November 2014 - to read them anew. What I find is something full of life and tenderness. I am touched by the bigness that small details occupied in my life on the subject of mum. Little things like making lunch at the right time so that we could always have dinner at the same time in the evenings.

Of course it was when I was living with mum up on the Coast that I started to drink wine in the late afternoons, and on into the evenings. I would rock on over to mum's place at around 4pm or 4.30pm in readiness for preparing the evening meal. I remember what I cooked, too. There were the favourites like chicken wings roasted in the oven. Steak, mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables (the zucchini put on last because it didn't take as long to cook as the carrots). Or a nice roast beef with roast potatoes and pumpkin, served up with gravy made from the juices left in the baking tray.

I would drink while preparing the meal and while eating it too, then I would put a bottle of wine in the bag I had brought for the purpose, and carry it home to drink further into the evening, as I sat in front of the computer with the TV on in the background. Watching TV obliquely with social media to the fore, and with wine to accompany the mix, has become something of a habit.

And I remember those day trips down to Brisbane on the motorway from the Coast. About 2 hours driving outside rush hour, just a quick jaunt to the gallery to have a look at what was on in the art world. Two galleries in fact, since they built MOMA next door the the state gallery. And a sandwich for lunch at the cafe outside the state library.

Today I walked up to the post office to pick up the box of coffee that they had tried to deliver earlier on in the day. Somehow I had missed the buzzer on the front door. Sleeping probably. When I wake up in the mornings the day seems so lifeless and blank. I don't know what to do with myself, so I go back to bed to snooze through the morning if I can. If I cannot then I get up and switch on the TV and go back to social media and wait until it's lunchtime.