... so I'm just going to put it up and walk away.
[continued from a previous writing session]
Anyway, I’d better actually do some work before the pub this afternoon. I’ve been a bit slack in my journal reading, so I’d best get onto it. I reckon I can get through 3 or 4 papers by 3pm. Wish me luck.
Have a lovely night with whatever you get up to (except old flames, of course). Love you.
Marshall
Marshall, [Fri 10]
Your reading habits sound, ummm, interesting…
I ran into an old high school friend yesterday evening and ended up having dinner with her in town. She went to uni in Auckland but has since returned to an accounting firm here in Chch. Her mother is being treated for ovarian cancer, so she wanted to be near her and lend a helping hand. Fair enough I suppose. I can’t really blame her. So anyway, she (her name’s Katie by the way; sorry for being rude) is going to try to rustle up the troops for a night out tonight. Only cool people mind you. We don’t want to be hanging around some of the creeps we went to school with. I shudder to think what some of them are doing now. No doubt drinking tinnies, snorting meth, driving utes and avoiding paying child support. Katie’s going to call me this evening and let me know what the plans are. Hopefully there’ll be a few of us; if not the two of us will just have dinner and chat about old/new times again (don’t fret, I’ve left out telling her all the bad things about you. She probably thinks you’re a saint).
As for Dad, the doctor wants him to stay another night under observation, but would allow us to take him home this afternoon if we insisted; she’s left it up to us to make the decision. Dad’s itching to get out, and I imagine he’ll talk Mum into letting him, which is a bit crap for me because I’ll feel obliged to stay home tonight if he is let out. Part of me hopes that he stays another night. Maybe I can get into Mum’s ear and convince her to make him stay. I want to go out and let my hair down for a change. Selfish yes, but well suck my dick.
I finished off the first draft of the short yesterday morning, but I haven’t gone back to it yet. There has been no spare time between running into Katie, having dinner, sleeping in and looking after Elise. It’s been fun though, and given me space to think of extra shades to add to the draft and start formulating ideas from other stories. On the whole it’s good I think.
Well, I’m off. I’ll call in a couple of hours. Hold tight until then.
I love you.
Hazel xXxXXXxxX
[And then something from a different Chapter]:
The community gathered, bonfires were lit, beer flowed steadily and together they danced and sang the night away safe in the knowledge that summer would produce bountiful crops of corn and lucerne.
Except it didn’t. While the water lapped eagerly at its wall throughout the summer, the paddocks and crops were stripped clean by a cloud of locusts that descended in January to feast for 3 days before moving continuing on westwards. Barely a patch of green remained on the ground, and once more the valley was coated in a layer of dust. What remained of the crops were tended to half-heartedly and harvested for chicken feed a few weeks later. The optimism that had electrified the community just weeks before was nothing more than a bittersweet memory. The men trudged wearily through the fine brown dust.
There were some calls for optimism though with the birth of a set of twin boys for one of the new families to the valley, and the promise of a railway siding being delivered into the bush downstream and the electricity that would accompany such a scheme. But the locals staunchly took the opinion of ‘we’ll believe it when we see it’, having been let down by the authorities numerous times before.
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