Easter. Shacks. Beer. Fishing.

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I’m feeling sentimental. I always do at Easter. About 5 years ago our friends and us went to stay at my Pop’s shack at The Great Lake. It was a fabulous time. We each took turns in cooking dinner and started drinking beer at 11 o’clock in the morning and finished drinking at 1am every night. We all put on weight and ate bacon and sausages like they were the last food on the planet

The days were crisp and clear and we’d play cricket on the blue-metal driveway in our pyjamas.. some days we wouldn’t even get out of them!

And then in the evening Kylie and I would stay and drink beer on the deck while the boys went and tried to catch fish (a fruitless excercise just for the record!).

We’d eat bacon for breakfast, do jigsaws, buy takeaway beer from the pub that nearly sent us broke and watch football on the tiny tv.

We played cards - crib, hearts (we called it Hunt The Cunt!), 500, UNO.

And we just sat in the mustiness of someone else’s shack and enjoyed it.

The smell of wood fires, old carpet, folded linen, barbequed chops, cold air and laughter are still there if I close my eyes.

I remember getting up one morning and I was the first awake, it was about 7am and I went outside into the morning and it was the most beautiful day I’ve ever seen. The lake was literally glass and the sky was the deepest, purest blue nature has ever made and somewhere on the horizon the two met. It was perfection. My head was throbbing and my mouth was dry from our mammoth drinking session but behind me my favourite people slept and the future stretched on in front of me like the deeep, clean, blue of the sky.
Flannelette pyjamas, a dodgy booze fridge in the freezing cold of the laundry, the wood heater cranked up so hot that we all started feeling dozy, and Kylie and I sneaking out for a fag on the deck in the freezing quiet of night while the boys looked on in good humour.

All these things make me feel sentimental. Such a great time. How can I explain to you the smell of hot walls as the fire got too hot or the laughter as we try to clean up the impossibly excessive pile of empties?!

It was my happiest time - which is not meant to diminish any other happy times I’ve had since, I just mean that if i was about to die - they are the times I would think of.

And when Easter comes each year - that’s what I think of.

And that’s what I’m thinking of now.

Happy Easter xxx