Day 42. 92,330 words.

This turned out to be a busier day than anticipated what with that luggage anecdote from yesterday, so I decided screw it, I’m splitting them into separate entries and pre-writing myself a relaxing weekend. There’s also a Creepy and Hatboy story beginning to shuffle into the spotlight in my head and demanding to be written, so I’m not sure whether my travelogue is going to take a break or if I will do that first…

In fact, I’m considering writing the short story, releasing it on Amazon, and trying for the Hugos with it, because screw it why not. But I don’t quite feel right about selling short stories that way (unless Amazon lets me do it really cheap), plus ballots close in March so I may not have time to get the story done. It’s an … interesting one.

Anyway, after the victory at the airport, I was in high spirits and so when the guys from the Perth Highland Pipe Band sent me a message calling for short-notice pints at the local pub, Mrs. Hatboy and I dashed down there.

We had a couple of drinks (a beer, then a “minimal Pimms”[1]) at the Cottesloe Hotel, which I couldn’t remember visiting since the night all those many years ago when Shambles had been slipped something that made him practically paralytic, requiring us to carry him home – where, if recollection serves, he had a hallucinatory psychotic break and began wandering around like a zombie, and Mrs. Shambles blamed me.

[1] We were in the beer garden, which was now a paved and very stylish outdoor area, and the bar back there wasn’t supplied with all the “bullshit” required to make a Pimm’s properly. It wound up with just orange, lemon, lime and (I think) cucumber in it, which is a massively more bullshitted Pimm’s than I had ever seen before and makes me wonder what a “maximum Pimm’s” would have been like and if there would have been any room for actual Pimm’s in it. Anyway, the minimal Pimm’s was very nice.

The atmosphere was lovely even though we all had a bit of a laugh about the beer garden no longer being a beer garden, and what a bunch of old farts this conversation made us. Then Mrs. Hatboy and I had to run home to spend the rest of the evening eating and drinking a stunning amount of wine with some more friends from the old East Fremantle neighbourhood: The Lutzes.

It was another very enjoyable session, the Lutzes being good friends and excellent company. It was also amusing to sit there and listen to Mr. Lutz (my dad’s old pal) giving my dad shit for being the only “Leftie” in Cottesloe.

Mrs. Hatboy and I sat very quietly, so as not to accidentally let slip what actual Lefties looked like.