22:40pm Its been a wild day here. The storm winds picked up this-morning and by the time we were driving over to meet friends for a chilled-out trip to the ‘Mudgee Food And Wine Festival’ there were trees down on the roads, chaos beginning to brew. The car was blowing everywhere as we drove over Sydney Harbour Bridge. The sea was so beautiful though – like looking out over an ice-mottled stretch of the Antarctic Ocean. Spray was being blowing 50 feet off the crests of the waves, surfers getting completely mashed beyond belief.
I’m now pretty sure that I was a sea-going man in some past life. Maybe in the sixteenth century, some deckhand travelling the oceans on stormy nights, on a passage to some safe harbour and to sharp foreign rum.
1:48am Its late. As ever, I am playing catch-up with the journal. Its tough, trying to keep it together, especially since life is getting a bit insane at the moment. I’m flying back to London next week, to begin the next phase of life. Getting married! I can’t believe it. Its all change back in Ireland, with my grandparents moving out of the house they have lived in all my life, the last true anchor of unchangeability. Still, I supposed I am allowed to be a little bit sentimental about Old Cavehill Road – it was a great house, full of memories of warm Christmas Days and late afternoon whiskies chewing the cud with my grandfather, of long summer afternoons… I’ll miss the old place, but now they are installed near the sea, where they’ve wanted to be for so long. My grandfather was in the navy.
Anyway, I shan’t rave on. One more cup of tea should see me to bed.