Yesterday morning, Saturday, after my morning walk I played a music CD, 'A Pirates Treasure, 20 Jimmy Buffet Gems'. In no time at all I felt laid back and relaxed and at peace with my demons, after 3 weeks of busy busy work and running around with little time for self indulgence. Jimmy Buffet can do this for me, he's a bit like on old mate, I having first enjoyed his songs as a young man more 30 years ago. He's of my generation although about 5 years or so older. His style would not appeal to everybody, in fact many may think he's a Bogan. But there's a humour in his work that comes with the raunchy, irreverent, boozy nature of it. It soothes me. It frees me of guilt from my errant youth, and reminds me that it's OK to let my hair down and be humanly fallible.
When the boys were young they often came with me on days when Lib worked. A couple of days a week I'd do deliveries around Melbourne, foliage and flowers to florists and herbs and flowers to restaurants. I'd play cassette tapes in the van. Gordon liked Jimmy Buffet, and when he was older he'd sometimes buy me a gift for Xmas off the net so a couple of Jimmy Buffet CDs kept me up to speed and last year a book written by Jimmy titled 'A Salty Piece of Land' turned up for my birthday. It was a good read and I laughed and laughed. It's so good to laugh. I've always been too serious, trying to put wrongs right. Jimmy B helps me lighten up and lose some baggage, though I may go 6 months without playing him.
On Friday night Lib and I had dinner with Huiet and Wilma at their house. A pleasant evening with good food and conversation and some games of pool. I hadn't handled a pool cue for many years and Hueit was too good for me. Last night we again had dinner out, this time at John and Raelene's at Avonsleigh, who made the evening a bit of a celebration for Lib's 50th birthday (complete with '50th' balloons and tiara) which is on Tuesday the 22nd. They have recently returned from a few weeks in the south of France staying in holiday cabins in 3 three French villages so the evening had a French flavour with apperatif and wine being French (John bought it at Dan Murphy Berwick) and we watched the modern equivalent of a slide show on the new giant flatscreen via ipod. The meal was good old Aussie beef, ozzo bucco, topped with mashed potato and parsley. Bon appetit! The slide show was followed by some DVD's of live reunion concerts of Roy Orbison and some of the Willbury crew, The Everley Brothers and Simon and Garfuncle. Gord picked us up a little worse for wear and we got home after 2.00am.
Today we're going to the footy in Melbourne and taking Raelene who hasn't been to the AFL for decades. We are leaving soon so I'd better sign off and do some household chores before we go.
