AM
I call up Tully. For some reason he didn’t make it to the Jelly Wrestling on Wednesday night. I’d sent him a teasing text message from the pub, saying:

I can’t believe
you are missing
this…You of all
people

to which he replied:

What are you
kidding? I’ve got
jelly and a lack
of clothes at
home!

But given how it all panned out, I do wish he could have made it along. And now I want to debrief. We meet at Sweet Belem for coffee and chess, and I tell him the whole story. Phew, he sighs. Wow. I do wish I was there.

He has to scoot: more essays to procrastinate over. As we part at the lights, we make a tentative arrangement to meet again, to drive around Petersham scoping out photogenic sites. He’s a keen photographer, you see…

PM
After we visit Geoff at the church, Vanessa and I go for a coffee at Papa Cafe on Crystal Street. This place is famous for being a mecca for soccer fans around World Cup time. Apparently, hundreds of people come, they block off the whole street. And this year is no exception. Posters and news articles plastered all over the walls. A TV set pipes in an Italian talk show on cable, the topic is “New Haircut, New Man?”

We talk about our relationships with our parents. Vanessa has a book to show me, all about maps. One map, my favourite, shows the layout of the territory of the path to hell, including the Creek of Gambling, the Tributory of Sloth, and the Falls of Final Damnation. Another good one is the Map of a Woman’s Heart. I walk her home and she gives me some home made biscuits. “I can’t stop baking at the moment!” she says…