All my life I've longed for this afternoon

Fuckin’ hell… it’s the last day of June already! Where has the time gone, like seriously? Halfway down 2005… our days are so numbered!

I used to love June… I always wanted to have a June wedding, I don’t even know why! And June always meant the start of school and college and everything else and that wasn’t much to look forward to but after two months of doing absolutely nothing in the heat of a Madras summer, June at least brought with it some kind of change to the regular monotony… even if that meant classes and teachers and books all over again!

Good things have happened in June… my adorable cousin M was born in June and he shared that day with Fudge… that dog of mine was the perfect gentlemen… my little wild thing C was also born in June… I threw her a birthday party once… that catastrophic experience ensured I will never throw a birthday party for a dog again… the poor birthday girl herself had to be tied up because she was extremely unwelcoming to her guests… that’s also when that tiny little terror M scared the hell out of H…

Bad things have happened in June… my mom falling really sick and R dying…

I love that song June Afternoon by Roxette… it always makes me feel high on life…

It’s a bright June afternoon, it never gets dark

That couldn’t be further from the current situation here… its rainy and misty and rapidly getting dark and did I mention, its fucking cold!

Ah well, maybe June hasn’t been all that fun in the last three years, although last year I did manage to spend a few days in sunny Queensland in June!

I wish I could say that my June afternoons in Madras were somehow different to all the other afternoons I spent in Madras… they were not… I spent my June afternoons also getting stoned and drinking coffee at the drive-in… maybe we made an effort to get slightly more stoned than usual because college would be reopening real soon or college had just reopened and Stella Maris being what it was just had the effect of us wanting to forget we ever attended it!

I remember this one particular reopening day, I think my third year… oh yeah, we were finally allowed to leave the bloody prison for half an hour every day during our break… that morning, I dropped my sister at school and got the shock of my life when I saw this half-smoked joint sticking out of my ashtray… someone had left it there the previous evening and my sister being as out of it as I am in the mornings thankfully didn’t notice it… so that break, the first time we were ever allowed out during working hours, we went to the drive-in and S and I smoked it (the others smoked cigarettes)! It was barely two drags each but it got us pretty stoned… I think that was more because of the illicit nature of what we were doing over anything else. Thus fortified, we returned to our esteemed place of education to finish what was left of our first day (but our final year thankfully)! That was a real fun June afternoon…

Look at all the people, happy faces all around
Smiling, throwing kisses, busy making lazy sounds
Cos life's so very simple just like la-la-la
All my life I've longed for this afternoon

These afternoons will come again... I know they will!