Topspin required

The Coalition are going to win government later this year. Today was the day I realised this horrible truth.

As I watched Howard, Costello and Hockey wave a leaked Australian union manifesto around in question time I realised they've finally worked out how they're going to win.

Labor: Truly terrifying, Dark Ages union domination + lack of experience at handling a sophisticated, complex economy ("they're just copying our ideas now") = Your financial ruin. Your children's financial ruin. Your grandchildren's financial ruin.

Coalition: Superior economic management ("they're our ideas, remember, and let's be frank, it's about business, Stupid") in uncertain times = Glory days forever, bitches.

The Australian Labor Party would do absolutely anything to win government, so it will be interesting to see what they come up with to counter this. However, Rudd's confidence won't be enough now that Johnny has worked himself up into a confident, excitable lather again.

Ultimately, I don't trust or care for the ALP anymore, but, boy, they've put forward some great stuff lately. It is an awful, awful shame that we won't see them in action. Hooking geo-thermal energy into the grid would have just been groundbreaking and precedent setting at a global level. I don't think anyone realises how big that could have been.

But, Australia, it's all about the money, right? Climate change is bullshit, oil is going to last forever, and, really, all that's important is that you can buy your twelfth DVD player (for the kennel), get fatter on bulk-buy GM pork mince and keep HIV positive, terrorist immigrants away. Awesome.

Whatever. You're buying your kids a front row ticket to the end of the civilized world. Don't think they won't spit on your grave after the show.

In ten pieces, please.

My second coffee had already arrived when she sat down beside me at the bar. I had already sensed her presence. She was alone, she was close and my peripheral vision told of great beauty.

I could feel her looking at me, at the book I was reading, as I too was glancing across from the very corner of my eye to see what she was reading. I sat there trying to concentrate as to how I could interject, speak to her, but nothing came.

Her coffee came and I now I could hear her. Her voice smiled along with her lips as she thanked John. A beautiful smile. She looked again as she had her opportunity to do so.

I continued to read, she pushed her book aside—a classic by the brief glimpse I had at the cover—and began to write in her worn Moleskine. She turned the book upside down – was she afraid I might see what it was? It did not matter to me by this stage – she was reading, she was beautiful, she was next to me and I was intoxicated by her.

As she wrote her body was turned towards me, making the writing impossible to read. Not that I would want to have entered her world uninvited anyway. I wanted to be asked there and I willed her to do so.

Her soup came and she ate. Her slender wrists broke bread and she ate her soup, elegantly but hungrily. The chilli that I too had enjoyed in the soup but half an hour before made her nose run. She blew her nose confidently. She looked again.

Through this I sat impassive. She did not know I had been sensing every move. That I had stopped reading long ago and was instead sitting still in the face of nervous energy, practically begging my mind for a solution to enter into conversation. To know her, to understand who this smiling, beautiful woman was.

I finished my book. I left. I returned home to realise that I had not paid for my lunch. On the way home I had lamented my inaction, and now I had to return. This was fate. This was it.

I returned to the busy bakery. She was there, on her phone. Gone to me. I paid. I left. I was defeated.

“What are you reading?”
“Tolstoy.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“Yeah, I thought it was time I read some of his work. What are you reading?”
“Flights of Love.”
“Good?”
“Brilliant. I would recommend it. Journal or writing the next great Australian novel?”
“Journal. I was writing about the weather, how I was enjoying the new season. Do you write?”
“I do. Although, I’m not as good at bringing my Moleskine along as you are.”
“I forget, too.”
“I’m W.”
“I’m-

Easier than breathing.