Strange Days

My ex-girlfriend, Madeleine, is getting married to a guy she’s known for three weeks. Sloopy and I have known her since high school and so we are having many moments of ironic mirth remembering the lengthy conversations about how ridiculous the institution of marriage was and how we’d never get married. And later, her tirades on how ridiculous the idea of monogamy is, which she decided to prove by sleeping with Sloopy’s boyfriend while still with me. It’s well and truly in the past now, but it forever excuses our bitchy comments towards her: “You know, I think Madeleine must have realised that she hadn’t had any attention in a while and figured that marrying a guy she barely know is a good quick way to get some”. We’re not holding our breath for our invites.

My cousin from the over-achieving side of the family, who I haven’t spoken more than 2 words to since we were 14, is in town (he’s doing a placement in a small country hospital for his final year of Med School), and he wants to catch up for coffee. Weird in many ways, I sorta thought that side of the family had washed its hands of us after Dad left. We were always a little too strange for them, anyway. We never went to church, we had no aspirations to be Head Girls or Duxes of our schools, we choose more aventurous paths than school to study to a nice respectable career.

Except that Talula has gone to University to study to be an accountant. I still can’t quite get my head around this.

Anyway, maybe it’s up to the younger generation to put differences aside and get along. Or maybe he’s just being polite.

Flora, on the other hand, is moving up here. And by “here”, I mean here. Into La Casa Revolutionista. Well, OK, we’re going to hire her a caravan, but she’ll still be here. I have no idea how that is going to work out, but there’s no way that I’m going to discourage her from moving away from those lowlifes she’s been hanging about with.

She’ll arrive about three weeks before Ali moves in. It looks like I’m coming out to my sister, mm-hm. And let me take a moment to describe the size of the house: The living room/kitchen/bathroom area is the size of a single garage. Sloopy’s bedroom is a platform about half this size which looks down onto the living room/kitchen/bathroom area. It’s not walled-off, it’s just higher. Mine and Ali’s room is the same deal, except overlooking the garage, so it has a little more privacy. Fortunately, we have 8 acres of orchard, trees, lake and grass to escape from each other in.

And about Ali coming to live… No, this deserves a whole other entry, when I have more time to talk about it. Sometime soon, I swear.