After it's all over we'll live like kings

I just want to go already! I just want to pack my bags, chuck them in the boot with everyone’s stuff, put the keys in the ignition and drive anywhere.

We’ll listen to CDs because it’ll be a crappy car, we’ll wind down the windows instead of using air conditioning, we’ll zoom along the highway playing guitar and blowing bubbles out the window and laughing about how amazing our lives are, now that school is over.

We’ll make a campfire and sit around it and sing cheesy pop songs, the type that you’re embarrassed, but secretly glad, that you know the chords and the words to.

We’ll swim in the clear green-blue water for hours and hours until our skin goes all pruney and we get sunburnt except for where we put zinc war stripes on our cheeks. (Best look ever of course.)

We’ll make elaborate sand castles on the beach, collect shells and pipis and seaweed because we’re still five.

We’ll stay up all night in the tent talking about everything until we’re delirious with exhaustion and happiness and sugar.

We’ll let ice cream drip down our arms and take sthuper indeh photographs of it with Jermione’s orange DSLR.

And all the little worries of year 12 will disappear with the strumming of guitar strings and the flash of a camera.

Love you like summertime.

x

Winter

The heater’s on in my room, hissing like a snake, little ticking noises, Can you hear me, tick tock, I’m right here. The windows are all fogged up and every now and then little breaths of fresh, cold air slip through and freeze my hands as I try to type.

I love weather, cosiness, when it rains outside and you can hear it as you lie in bed all warm and safe with the smell and the smoothness of clean linen around you. Wearing coats and scarves and Tess of the d’Urbervilles boots. But I hate winter. Even Sydney’s winter, which is practically non-existent in comparison to anywhere else in the world, barely getting below 10 degrees and always there is this blue unclouded sky that goes on forever and the weak but warming sunlight.

It’s the darkness, though, that settles at 5:30 and makes you wonder where the day went, all the blue unclouded sky, all the weak sun. It throws me off completely every time, leaving me in the artificial light of the study lamp and the manufactured warmth from the heater.

There’s still really three days until the start of winter. Then three months of not-actually-cold coldness.

This is why I could never become princess of Sweden, or just live there like a normal person. If wussy Australian winter (late autumn) affects me this much, the Northern Hemisphere would be surely ruinous.

Um so I’m retreating into my shell. See you in summer, after the HSC, after high school’s over, in the 40 degree days of bliss and swimming and sunscreen and schoolies with the best group everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I’m holding out for it.

Love y0u like our year twelve jerseys, and these beautiful girls:

x