dot points!

• I continue to be interested the pandemic experience, especially in the Melbourne variety, somewhat mysteriously to myself, since I'm also really bored with thinking about it and talking about it. What is that? A couple of nights ago I went for a drink and a walk with a friend I haven't seen in person for a year. This was also the first time I've done that nice low-key social catch-up thing since Amanda came to dinner in June, in between the two lockdowns. Draining as it is to be sociable when you're really not used to operating in the proper mode, let alone when what it consists of is three straight hours of 2020 lockdown and pandemic notes-comparing, I still just found it really compelling to hear about how someone else's child has fared, what someone else's working from home has been like and what someone else really thinks about the politics of pandemic spin in Victoria. 
• To be quite honest I am at a bit of a loss about how to go about restarting casual social contact. I'll do it, but I just feel really dorky and awkward about getting the ball rolling, and frankly it can really be a drag finding mutually appropriate times, and then it sucks time away from my current life, which is really pretty excellent I have to say. The other night, as the time to meet C got nearer, I really didn't want to go out, I wanted to not brush my hair and instead lie on the couch and read my book, but I forced myself and then it was fine. 
• Next week is Birthday Week and after angsting inconclusively for a while about whether or not to attempt some sort of picnicky party, I've resolved instead to set up a string of catch-up walks, coffees, maybe dinners (I'll have Leonard) etc through the week - starting this weekend, even, and extending on into next. I say 'I've resolved to' but I haven't done the setting-up yet. I will though.
• With the freedom to come and go from the city restored I've already made two visits to the rest of my family, who are all living in my parents' house in a regional city. And that was pretty nice. The presence of an eight-month-old baby is, as you know, a rock solid guarantee of happiness. Leonard came with me the second time and acted around this new cuz just exactly how I knew he would - he smiled at her and chatted to her in baby talk, remarked often on how it's a bit creepy the way she stares and stares at him, refused to hold her, and then after a while pretty much ignored her in favour of his book (seven of thirteen, something about dragons something something.) So visiting family is something i recommend. What I don't recommend is having a Zoom appointment with your shrink in the spare bedroom of your parents' house. I don't want to forget how teeth-grindingly uncomfortable that was. I mean, I'm definitely not going to write a novel about the pandemic or anything but you never know when some scrap of uninventable real life is going to come in useful.
• On that topic, I've written and drawn a short comic in tribute to Basil, drawn from a combination of many years of occasional reflection on how good he was combined with extensive mining of the riches of documentation laid down in this blog. I've never done a comic before and it was a super interesting exercise and also one I was heartily sick of by the time I'd finished it. My drawing is really a bit stuck in a kind of tentativeness or anxiety, it's not free and spontaneous the way that it will get when I bite the bullet and take some life classes - it's not even capable of generating a stylish line, let alone a correct one - and so I soon realised I'd condemned myself to a large number of finicky drawings of the same animal, ironically an animal who was as chill and unfussed a creature as any who ever lived in a house with people. It was lucky that this happened to be an animal, and a narrative, that I knew as well as I know my own life story, so trading on the strength of that foundation I got it done and found plenty of moments of playfulness to enjoy along the way. That is a technical perspective. From the point of view of my emotional life I am glad I've made something to acknowledge how much that animal enriched my life. I used to make fun of him but honestly, he was excellent. The comic is going into a little book David is compiling and I'm not too sure when that'll be good to go, but when it is I'll send you a copy if you'd like one.
• Going to work tomorrow for a couple of hours - haven't been there for five months - there are complicated rules and caps in place around who can and can't go there but these might be lifted pretty soon the way things are headed. I'm really looking forward to it. 
• Speaking of work and work things, I'm reading the 450 page IGADF report on the Afghanistan Inquiry. It's sickening, horrifying and depressing in every way, even coming after extensive whistleblowing and in the context of a lot of generally very concerning stuff about the way the SAS operates and the way certain veterans of the Afghanistan war are lionised. I don't know how my work is going to change because of it but I do know it's going to have to change. How to set about beginning to come to terms with it is not something i can comprehend right now. All I'm doing at this stage is working on getting on top of the facts and the way the ADF and the government are going to deal with them, and taking note of the demonstrations of how not to deal with them that various players in the commemoration industry are currently providing on a daily basis.