2 December

Morning
I had a look at my garden this morning. I found some ripe raspberries on the vine, and I picked a bunch of the last of Mrs Collier, the white sweetpea, and took them to work. A woman at the coffee shop struck up a conversation with me on seeing them. I knew she would. She had that look in her eye.

Afternoon
Mrs Collier sits in a wine glass on my window sill. The skies have begun to clear and the louvres are open, and all I can do is enjoy Mrs Collier's perfume wafting in on the balmy zephyrs.

Evening
After Christmas drinks I was going to go straight home and watch that tv show, really, but instead I went for a walk around the shores of Glebe Point. On the way down to the water I found the first frangipani blossom of my summer, already fallen. At the water I watched the dragon boats training, and wondered what motivated those teams, with all that sweating exertion and the bellowing of their coxswains. I saw a young guy settling in for the evening on his ketch in Blackwattle Bay, and shared the path with joggers, cyclists and dog-walkers. Sometimes I caught their gaze and tried to imagine them. The breeze was blowing from the huge bridge towering across the bay, and I hoped that when people looked into my eyes, they saw clouds scudding across a silver sky before a cool north-east breeze.

When I got home I lay down for a moment (I had eaten 300 semi-fried dumplings at drinks) and woke up three hours later, the frangipani blossom crushed somehow beneath me.