Departure delayed

Almost two months have passed since I attended to this thing, which I could attribute to sheer laziness or the fact that very little of note has happened.
I also lost a camera, leaving me bereft of visual accompaniment to my random musings, and I had my internet cut off, which really didn’t help matters.

Anyway, life is much as I left it – punctuated by part-time work laying out pages and wondering when the hell Mick and I can move out of town.
We went to Maitland after Christmas in the hope of securing a rental, a kind of stop-gap until he finds a place to buy. The drive up was, you could say, adrenalising. As soon as we got out of Sydney, there was a severe thunderstorm warning on the radio and for the next two hours this was my view:


Terrifying, but we made it.

As for the home-hunt, it was singularly depressing. There were hardly any houses available and those on offer ranged from weatherboard meth-house (security mesh on every window and door) to a bungalow on the New England Highway ten minutes out of town (it was, however, tantalizingly close to KFC). We didn’t even bother looking inside any of them; a cursory external examination was enough to send us back to the pub/drawing board, where we decided we might have to reconsider our options.

I’m glad I haven’t given formal notice to either my work or landlord that I’ll be leaving at the end of January, as I so naively thought. Lord knows when it'll happen.

Maitland is still top of the list as far as destinations go. We even stumbled what appeared to be a gay enclave – the pokie lounge of the Belmore Hotel. About half a dozen or so younger queens were there half-heartedly divesting themselves of money while chatting away. Come to think of it, it’s a little depressing to think that’s all they have but I guess you work with what you’ve got.
Besides, Bogan Bingo sounds pretty funny: