When You Are A King

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

I was a little down today. It's not the birthday thing, it's the other things. 

Do you keep up with the young people? They have their own version of "long story short". It is "too long, don't read". Or TLDR.

The TLDR is that I'll be going to the UK next week. Things have gotten way worse way faster than we expected. So I'm going over for just a week to say goodbye. 

So I was a little down. 

Caro not so much. She was BUZZING this morning. She was up early and CHEERFUL. Which in itself is kind of a red flag but I was in my own little funk and so who even notices stuff like that except in a very peripheral way. 

"Come on! I'm taking you out for BRUNCH!" she insisted. And so she took me to the Shoreline cafe in Raumati which is a nice little place where they do a decent all-day breakfast. I mean. Who can be grumpy at bacon?

And of course when I got there, Jefe and Manda and Ellie and AJ and Aubrey and Corrie and Craig and Shenee were there too. I didn't say anything I just let them cheer me up with their chat and their enthusiasm. 

It was really nice and I called them all bastards and they all laughed. 

Jefe told us of his house in Wisconsin. He dad moved around a lot with his job and so the family had to sell their house in Southern California and buy a house in Wisconsin instead. To avoid capital gains tax, they had to NOT make a profit. 

This is a problem because the price of a house in Southern California will buy you a LOT of house in Wisconsin. 

"It had six and a half bathrooms ALONE," said Jefe. "And a full attic and a basement and I had a playroom and a pool table." 

I visualised him like the little boy in The Shining, cycling around and around the many bedrooms on his trike. 

"It was JUST LIKE THAT!" he said.

"And it was SCARY because I was a latchkey kid and I'd come home alone. One time I tried to make hot chocolate and it burned and the kitchen filled with smoke."

Jefe described his kid-panic.

"I wasn't SURE if it was a 911 situation or not," he explained. "I mean... there was no actual FIRE...."

So he employed kid-logic and dialled a completely random number instead. Just seven digits.

"I got through to a really sweet lady who said, 'Oh honey, you really should call 911 even if there's no fire yet'," he explained. 

Then Jefe showed us pictures of his childhood bedroom. It was covered in Star Wars stuff. Bedspreads and Empire Strikes Back wallpaper and such. 

My childhood bedroom was covered in pictures I'd cut out of La-La-La-La-La Look-In, the kids' magazine of the time. It was what we had in the days before "Smash Hits" which was what they had in the days before "Loaded" which was what they had in the days before the internet.

I am really old. 

This brings me back to today. The crew cheered me up no end and I went home with lots of thoughtful presents including a HUGE jar of pickles and a bottle of whisky*.

But there is melancholy in my heart. The TLDR is that I'm aware things are changing and it feels like being alone in a house with six and a half bathrooms. 

S.

p.s. Today's earworm for you.

* "No picklebacks with THIS whisky!" said Manda. She is quite right of course. It is the top stuff. I feel very loved.