Got the cuddles I sought and even though Friday night felt like Friday night those endomorphins were still shooting through my brains and little restless Shaun decided to open up all fourteen crates downstairs in the garage and bring up all the contents into the flat which was another two hours running around, and I was bouncing up and down the stairs two at a time with boxes of records and tapes and comics and clothes, so pleased to have them back in my possession again and yippee, we found the Deep Turtle tapes straight away but by the time I’d finished rushing about we weren’t in the mood to hear them, Broni unable to cope with my activity rate watched TV and relaxed herself for the evening which was fine with me. Dripping with sweat I jumped in the shower for the second time that evening and fell into bed dead dog tired.

Stayed there for quite some time too despite the urge to get up at five in the morning again and when we finally did make it out of bed Broni headed into the city while I unpacked some boxes sorting out CDs and generally jumping up and down with my air guitar to Deep Turtle at full blast, this, of course, proved fatal to my over worked body, my brain not fully realising quite how exhausted I was and I found myself in bed when Broni came home knocking on the door.

Sometime later we headed up to Hurstville to go and see The Nightmare Before Christmas, an animated tale of the folk from Halloween town taking over Christmas and abducting old Santa, some corny bits didn’t help but it is Disney so what do you expect but it was the animation that really stole the show, brilliantly done with so much going on on screen at one time.

We couldn’t quite get it out of our heads some article on the radio Broni had heard earlier in the day that detailed the beginnings of Christmas and how it had evolved over the years and where the Santa figure came from, apparently in the early part of this century Santa had all but been forgotten when Coca Cola used him for an ad campaign and that’s where Santa’s current red and white colours originate from.

The film had put us in high spirits so we picked up a bottle of champagne and got drunk watching another movie in the comfort of our beautiful home, sat curled up together on the lounge. We made it in to bed and again slept the sleep of the dead.

Sunday morning was cold and quiet except for the paper boy blowing his whistle at eight in the morning, with thoughts going through my head about where best to shove his whistle, sometime later actually getting up when the sun decided to come out and stay out and fry our socks, up to thirty six degrees today, we’d arranged to meet P_ and the kids after their visit to the church in the city but arrived too late due to our error on the trains and Broni fell about in hysterics, the heat and the pressure getting too much for her, I tried to comfort as she flopped on the cold ground in Hyde Park saying she wanted to be a leaf, I stayed calm and kicked her butt into gear and got us on a train up the North Shore to Hornsby where we ended up about an hour later, the sun still ferocious not a cloud in sight.

At P_’s we kept the kids occupied, later taking Ben and Damien up into the town to the olympic size outdoor swimming pool where we all swam about playing diving games and me getting better every time I touch the water, this time managing to do handstands and sitting on the bottom, so pleased with myself I am about that.

The pool is on the edge of bush land and gum trees tower over the stands at the edge of the pool. The sky was darkening and the trees swaying and swishing in a medium wind, although warm in the pool the wind chilled the skin as you surfaced the water and slowly the clouds got darker and darker and the air became still and oppressive. The temperature taking a big increase as we walked back, the sky watching us, the clouds following closely behind.

Back at the house we sat on the verandah as thunder grumbled gently in the heavens and brief flashes lit up the dull leaves of the trees, a few drops of rain descended making little dusty balls of liquid in the dirt then as if someone had given a signal, rain cascaded in sheets and everyone made their way inside execpt for me and P_, sharing a love of the weather whatever it’s like, marvelling in it’s magnificence.

About ten seconds later, again it was impossible to believe because although the rain was heavy there was not a whiff of breeze, but bang, the wind was a rage, big trees were in danger of breaking in half and the rain blew into the verandah soaking us in an instant, we couldn’t see the trees on the opposite side of the street, white sheets of water obscuring our view, we headed inside to watch it out the back, thunder louder now and lightning more frequent, we watched the trees whipping the ground, watched the fence blow over bending the iron bars in the ground, waited to see if the guinea pig cage would survive, watched it all pass over and a minute later the sun started peeking out, brightening the storm’s destruction and soon after we fixed the fence and were back out playing basketball.

We hit the train again at about eight o clock and made it through the door a couple of hours later realising that it would take us two hours to travel between Poole and London, a hell of a lot further, and we promised to get ourselves a car as soon as we got some full-time work sorted out. And of course, we’d gone through the sleep barrier and into our second wind and stayed up into the early hours before long and beautiful sleep.