The Weekend that wasn't

Harriet and Maisie met for their regular Saturday morning cup of tea. The previous night had not gone well. Maisie the spinster school teacher had been confronted by her personal black dog earlier in the day and a shopping trip to the op shop at Lithgow to purchase a copper hadn't eased the emotional pain. Meanwhile Harriet had gone to the local bowling club for an environmental comedy night and had indulged in a rather ominous looking merlot.

"It reminds me of the time I drank all that mulled wine on the camping trip to Mt Selwyn when I had to sleep in the back of the ute. Did I tell you that your hair looks like a rats nest, especially at the back, why don't you let me cut it for you.
"How's the love triangle going anyway?" Maisie was always interested in the secrets of other peoples romances. In her spare time she was writing a novel about love and was always fascinated to find all of the corners of a new love triangle. She always wanted to unpick these love fabrics and restitch them in a new form.
"Not so great," replied Harriet,"They've gone to Bora Bora on a cruise, they've told me it's ten weeks but there's an option to extend it for another two. He's got to come back for a work meeting at the end of the month so I'll be able to see him for 24 hours."
"Oh, how long's the meeting?"
"It's all day but he might take a sickie and stay an extra night, any longer than that and she'll feel abandoned and turn a little bit high maintenance."

They were making fried tofu and shitake mushroom omelette. Later they were planning to walk the dogs up to the village and indulge in a latte. Harriet admired Maisie's typing abilities, once upon a time she'd been able to touch type at 60wpm, it was one of her 'big moments' as she liked to call them. Maisie was desperately lonely and was thinking of becoming a librarian, the children at school called her Madam Have No Fun and it was starting to give her migraines. She admired Harriet's zest for life and the many adventures she was able to manifest through the power of positive thought. Once she'd met a fellow traveller on the commuter train to Sydney and befor the day was out they had dined at Bar Italia and exchanged phone numbers.
"Do you think the collar is a little too big for Captain Goodspot? asked Cedric the neighbour as he wandered in with a basketful of lemons from the garden. He'd been a vegan for far too long and sometimes felt faint if he stood up too quickly.
Just then the phone rang, it was one of their friends,"I'm just on my way to Charing Cross. Charing Cross, Waverley...that is." Maisie and Harriet were speechless. They were engaged in a philosophical discussion.
"Do you really think that Jane Austen wrote about social contracts?"
"The problem with a social contract is that it remains far too general, the specifics aren't ironed out, the opposite of bi-polar, oh myopic I mean"
"What are you going on about? What did the dyslexic, socialist, insomniac, agnostic pet lover do?"
"Oh I know this one......speaking of which Cedric has such a bad commuter flu that I could hear him coughing through the tree tops all night long. I woke up from the strangest dream, I was on a cruise ship looking out across the great wide sublime sargasso sea and all around me on the deck were beanbags. What do you think that might mean? Then I woke with a start...."

Cedric doubled up with a grim, pnuemonic spasm.
"What do you think we could give him for that?"
"Lemon and honey....... I think we make a social contract with everybody and if you ask me people should stick to their side of them. What's the point of spouting philosophical points such as; "Ultimately we're all alone", when you're not the one that's abandoned and besides which if you haven't even read Goethe, which I haven't, or Kant for that matter, I've only read a bit of Nietzche but I don't know how to spell it. What I'm saying is if you haven't read the great philosophers than how can you position yourself in a philosophical discourse, do your words then just become a flurry of hot air?"

"Thus spoke Zarathustra....when he was on the hillside communing with Ahura Mazda.....did you know there's a fire somewhere in the middle east that has been kept burning by Zoacastrians for thousands of years?"
"I wish my Jotul would do that, it always goes out."
And Harriet said,"Yes, there's no one around to light my fire either! Actually that's the hardest part of this triangle business."
Maisie replied,"If I was going to be in a love triangle I'd like it to be an equilateral one in a warm climate. The whole scalene thing sucks if you ask me."
"I didn't ask."
“I think Bora Bora was an atoll in the Pacific that the French used for nuclear testing in the seventies, I’m not sure though. Maybe it’s a nuclear waste dump now, or it’s the capital of the Bikini Islands. It would be a good place for beach combing then. You know there’s a whole cargo cult that is supported by flotsam and jetsom”
Harriet pulled a sour face,“The thing is about lemon and honeys is that you need a lot more honey in them. Do you realise that we have to put in a daily entry on our blog”
“You’ll have to learn how to access it first,” said Cedric
“Good point”