Hi, everybody!

Now, you might have noticed that I haven’t written a blog for quite a while.

In fact, some people have even been complaining about my lack of posts.

To them, I must now offer a most heart-felt: “Screw you! What the hell am I, your bitch?”

In the nicest possible way, of course  :0)

Alas, t’is true though. I have been even slacker than my trousers, and those puppies’ll slide right off just by looking at them. Honestly. It happens all the time.

Most of my excuse is that I’ve had an extended sojourn, almost two months in England, saying good-bye to my Granddad; I’ll doubtless write about it at some point, but I’m not quite ready yet.

The rest of the excuse is that, for an incredibly lazy person, I’ve been surprisingly busy lately! I’d like to say I’ve achieved a lot, but that would be a lie.

Instead, it’s been a weird time.

It’s been a month of ‘almosts’.

As in, I almost wrote a blog post…!

I almost missed my flight back to Australia (whilst looking at an iPad).

And I almost bought an iPad (whilst almost missing my flight to Australia).

I almost bought an iPad again, when my poor Macbook unexpectedly almost needed $800 of repairs… twice!

Oh, and I almost bought a house.

Perhaps it’s truer to say, I flirted with the idea of buying a house – or more accurately, buying land, building a house – and then selling it on for a whopping great profit. The scheme was simple enough (because I thought of it, and I have a reputation for being a bit simple); there were some blocks of land on sale near us for just $70,000! (That’s about £45k for you pommies!).

This wouldn’t have excited me, were it not for companies like Aussie Living that advertise all the time over here – and guarantee to build a complete house – 4 bedroom, with home cinema, games room, bloody everything you could ever want – for $160k. Amazing. Unbelievable! And you can’t buy a house in our area for less than $350k. So…

It was so simple, I could even do the maths in my head:

$70,000 (land) + $160,000 (house) + $that contingency think they always go on about in Grand Designs = Bloody great big piles of loot for me!!

+

 

including:

=

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I could end up deeply in debt, and homeless – but then I’ve been in debt and homeless for most of the last seven years, and I’ve managed to stay cheerful.

I called my parents to ask if I was completely insane. They agreed that I was, in fact, completely insane. Just as I’d thought! This plan was a goer.

But when I  checked with a local bank to see if I could get a three-hundred-grand mortgage, and mentioned that I was a writer, the response went something like this:

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! (Draws breath) Hahahahahahahaha! (Sobbing), “Ah, for a minute there I thought you said… said… writer! BWAAhh, ha ha hahahahaha…”

I thought about protesting, and pointing out that in addition to me having the earnings from the book, my wife is also a part-time cleaner… but I got the feeling this wouldn’t help very much.

So. That was the end of that.

Never mind, I told myself. A house wouldn’t really fit into my backpack anyway, and if I did want to pay a mortgage I might have to do something a bit more serious than write daft stories about my adventures. Like, you know, get a job!

Oh Em Gee! Shock! Horror!

Realizing what a close brush I’d had with the world of gainful employment scared me a little; I had to take the rest of the day off and start drinking wine straight away (instead of waiting ‘till after lunch).

The life of a writer is notoriously difficult, but it does allow me certain little luxuries; like the ability to do sod all and get hammered, when the occasion demands it. Or, you know, just whenever.

 

Just My Luck…

So, after almost getting a job – or almost starting looking for one, at any rate – I rounded out the month by almost winning the Lottery.

It was the second Lotto ticket I’ve ever bought. The last one was back in 2008, and I didn’t win then, either, which discouraged me a bit.

This time though, with the jackpot at seventy-million dollars, there was a kind of fevered atmosphere gripping the country. It’s like being in London for the Olympics: I couldn’t not take part.

(Please note: The London Olympic Commission has seen fit to ban me from attending for this reason.)

Roo (my wife) bought the ticket and we dreamt of all the stuff you can buy with seventy million bucks. Pretty much the same stuff you’d buy with one million really, there’d just be a lot more change.

As the numbers came out, we got the first one. And the second one. And the third. When the forth came out, and was on our ticket in line with the others, I shit the bed. Just a little.

And then it was all over; no more numbers, and we’d won some poxy amount which we couldn’t check because the Lotto website was utterly overwhelmed and crashed. Still, four numbers out of six. We’d come SO close…

But no banana.

So on the upside, I am still writing another book. Because although it won’t help me to get a mortgage, it will at least keep me from having to get a real job.

Like, say, being a part-time cleaner.

Life is SO hard these days, eh?

I promise to work a bit harder from now on. At least when it comes to blogging… And possibly drinking. I’ll experiment with that too.  :0)

Oh, and one other thing’s been keeping me busy: since the last time I posted a blog, I’ve almost sold 5,ooo books.

So life, whilst occasionally hard, is also quite good.