Brushing hair. It’s fluffy. Not my preferred look. Comes from washing it today. Wearing a light purple top, and a pair of loose brown pants. It doesn’t look as bad as I thought.
Dad’s busy moving around, he’s going over after mass. Me too. I’m not a catholic.
Pick my way through the mess in the room. Scrawl down some ideas. Gotta make this one work… nothing else has. Climb into the armchair with the footrest permanently up. Cross legs, hunch forward, sip water.
Look up photos of old TVs, they’re all the ones with the buttons on the side, not the bottom. And I can’t remember what colours they use for those stripes at the end of videos. It’s been so long since I saw it.
Do I have time to put one of the old videos in the player? We still have the old duel player.
Father’s watching TV. He’s in his collared blue polo shirt with his long beige trousers. One leg hooked over the arm of the large leather chair. He wants to watch the end of shortland street. Something about a kid with autism and a girl being an activist. I want to pretend I don’t know who at least one of the characters is. And I’m surprised because I don’t recognise the new girl. Or the kid.
It’s over. I put in the tape. There’s three remotes. The tv is silver, it weighs as much as I do. There’s only one set of batteries. Switch them back and forth, hit the right buttons, swear at the tv. Get the stripes, notice that they include colours i didn’t expect, like pale yellow, two kinds of blue, realise it must be because the TV is so wide, the last one I saw the stripes on was half it’s width. Run to get cellphone to take picture. It’s gone when I get back. Can’t get it back. Stupid thing.
Time to go over. I can hear the voices.
