A new television

Yesterday morning after extracting some cash from the ATM at the convenience store I headed up the hill to go on my usual walk around Chinatown but the thought of the diminishing sound quality on my TV brought me back home, where I measured the old TV with a tape measure. I left the building this time via the fourth floor, which has a door that lets you out onto the park at the back of the building. I walked down the scrubby hill with its stairs to Saunders Street, around the Fish Market and across Pyrmont Bridge Road to go up Wattle Street toward Broadway Shopping Centre.

At Harvey Norman I told the salesman that I had a 2006 TV that needed to be replaced and it has a screen of 93 cm in size. He pointed me to three models of similar size and I chose another Samsung - the first one had done good service for 10 years so why not? - and paid before leaving the store. They told me the new TV would be delivered the next day. On the way home I stopped off at the Fish Market and bought some lunch.

This morning the TV delivery guy called me - as promised - about an hour before dropping the unit off at the lift. (He couldn't get the lift to go to my floor.) And the scaffolding guys were busy disassembling the scaffolding outside my front windows. Today for the first time in I can't remember how many months I was able to open the windows that give onto the balcony. I sit here with a glass of wine and listen to the world outside humming along as it used to do back before they started putting up the scaffolding - it has been more than a year now - including cars and trucks, fire engines and aeroplanes, dogs and young men shouting into the endless afternoon. (We have daylight saving every summer.)

I calculate how likely it is that it will rain. I love the rain. Just the sound of it on the balcony fills me with a weird happiness, as though the world were about - finally! - to come to an end, and I was to be an observer of the event. Going by this afternoon's hum it seems likely that it won'r rain. But it's hot enough for a good summer shower. There are dark clouds in the sky. Perhaps it will rain this afternoon after all?