Woke with a splitting headache after a bottle of Abottsford Invalid Stout and a night of baby talk at a Bentleigh housewarming – Jack and Gills. A rare outright lie to a family member meant I didn’t need to attend ANOTHER DAMN BABY EVENT and could do what I like with my Sunday. We speculated what’s caused my frequent headaches in recent years and made a list of 3 in order of likelihood. One goes to dehydration because I never drink and our ducted heating is making a sultana out of my body. Two goes to glare – why else would I set my screen backgrounds to grey and feel bad the night after driving or painting in full sun. And LAST OF ALL IS MALT. Malt because it’s in scotch and stout in large quantities. And they seem to give me the biggest blinders. Moving on – tablets duly downed we shot through to Carlton and split up. Kim went for the fashion and I hunkered down inside Book Affair on Elgin St., buying 5 and scaring myself because the “To-Reads” are now a bigger pile than ever before. So much pressure. No wonder Kim just gallops through her books. All new writers for me: Meades, Ozeki, Williamson, Jones, Colapinto – it could be my pitching squad in Fantasy Baseball for all they mean. We bought tickets to “Touching the Void” at the Nova and wore extra clothing because of the snow scenes – I remember seeing a film about Iceland years ago and leaving the cinema totally frozen. IT WAS TIME TO GET SMART ABOUT MY FILMGOING. We both liked the film, the salmon focaccia and the exotic seedy loaves at Browns Bakery across the road afterwards. It was sunny, mostly still and the Tour De France was starting on SBS when we got home. A perfect day.