3.20 am

I would have said it was  cold and damp and miserable outside at 3.20 but I was warm and sleeping when the phone yelled out with that urgent sound of a message coming in and the only person who would do that to me at that time of the morning would be Michael who’s in hospital with two knee reconstructions and he can’t sleep and doesn’t realise that some people sleep. But it might be important and someone died so I roll over and press the side of my phone and the message says – see you Tuesday evening – and I turn it off and of course I am now wide awake at 3.23 am and outside it is definitely cold and miserable and in the distance a wheat train sounds as it brings its mournful load down at this time of the day so it doesn’t get in the way of all the commuter trains that take their miserable hard working commuters down to Melbourne.
But it doesn’t make sense for Michael even if he is sore and in pain to say he’ll see me on Tuesday because I’m not going all the way up to Cairns 2800 ks by train and plane so I take another look at the message and it’s Anton bloody Anton whom I thought was dead for the twentieth time and he isn’t. I texted him back with a brief curt message of joy and understanding and said why the bloody hell you wanna ring me at half past bloody three in the morning and he comes back with sorry mate I forgot. It’s only a bit after six in the evening here so I ignored him and tried to work out where he was and time differences and all that means the dumb bastard is in London and sorry for swearing but I was just a little cross.
Anton does these annoying resurrection appearances as though he’s just spent forty days in the desert eating honey and grasshoppers like John the Baptist or in Anton’s case forty years – not quite but you know what I’m trying to say. There was the time years ago when he went with some wonderful benevolent organisation to Lebanon I might have already mentioned that and he worked his guts out getting food to starving women and children up the Beqaa Valley forty years ago and they kicked him out or rather he had to get out because he had fallen in love with a tall dark eyed Lebanese girl called Ferazia and her brothers came and told him he should leave and so did the boss of the organisation he was with.
So anyway he rang me half an hour ago when it was 10 o’clock on Sunday evening in Sussex Gardens and told me what plane he would be on and would it be alright to stay with me for a while and I worked out I could go down to Melbourne and see Dougie and Millie before they went to bed and pick him up.
And he just rang me now and said don’t tell anyone I’m back and don’t put anything on that blog of yours because all of Lebanese Melbourne will come looking for me and I just grunted something apologetic again and basically told him he had to sleep in whatever bed he had made for himself and he took me literally and said he’d purchase a blow up mattress and a sleeping bag so I told him I was delighted. Anyway the Lebanese thing was over forty years ago and he said Lebanese brothers never forget and did I miss ANZAC day and I didn’t get the connection until just now.
I might tell you more after he arrives but now I need coffee.