My back door is really where everyone enters, so it's there I've stuck my bay-leaf Christmas wreath. A bit amateur, not much bling...
...but bling would fade quickly here. I have to introduce you to the third party in our playtime, as yet un-named. Did I say 'playtime'?
Sad as it seems, unemployment is my preferred state, or, to be more accurate, my default state. There was once a time when bookselling mattered everything to me. I worked for many years at the first children's bookshop to have been opened in Australia, in 1960: The Little Bookroom. It was regarded as one of the best in the world, and it's still going well, under new owners. I loved it immensely, despite the hard work, and I had no plan to get ahead of it, for I was already where I wanted to be.
But here am I now, fluffing about all day, making vases of flowers, parenting a kitten and a doggy. Here, in Melbourne today, after a couple of days of cold and heavy downpours, it's been 20 degrees ( my favorite degrees ), the sun has been beautiful, there's been no wind, and I know I really don't care very much about what they call working, though I'm not supposed to say that, and in truth, I have been 'working', in my own way...
...just as whatshername is.
It's not much. I can't pretend to be a gardener of repute. Mostly, days in the garden are a sort of mucking- about thing I do because it's about all I CAN do. Why is it, that among all the people I know, I am the one who's failed most successfully to have anything like a normal life? Who is missing some sort of ruthless ambition? Who's been blessed with the chance to play? For play is essential for life, isn't it? I played about with some flowers on a door-step today, one of only a handful of skills I possess... 
...apart from dog-loving. Zara and Our New Kitten are hitting it off wonderfully. Oh, these little things, they mean more to me than being rich or being someone or being noticed.
Not every day, of course, is as easy as this. Ever since, as a little boy, I used to bring my mother home flowers I'd picked, I feel a certain path was already laid out...
...life isn't always about being right or being on top, or being enviable. It's just about BEING. Our puss-cat with the mauve-olive eyes and a rubber ball to toss about, would totally agree. It's about BEING and it's about being happy, even if there aren't any consequences.
