It's not going well.

Getting up in the morning like a normal person is not going well.

Yesterday, I arose at seven in the morning, had a coffee down the road, rode my bicycle into the city, lay in the sun while reading in preparation and waiting for the library to open, went into the library, and promptly failed to have an idea.

For an entire day.

Not one, solitary idea.

Or, not a good one, at least.

I worked hard, don't get me wrong, but to ABSOLUTELY NO AVAIL.

If I was my boss, I'd fire myself.

Hang on...

Now that Standing There Productions is in the business of developing children's television scripts and trying to turn them into children's television SHOWS, I have been studiously watching:

Degrassi Junior High
Round The Twist
Press Gang
and whatever else I can find on the telly when I'm pottering around doing something else.

Hence I was idly wondering today about the Degrassi legacy. How long did they milk that show for? How many different Degrassi schools were there? How many actors found their careers revived after the first Degrassi in order to launch the next generation?

The answer to most of those questions is: heaps.

Joey Jeremiah, the pipsqueak bully with the skateboard from Degrassi Junior High, comes back as AN ADULT in Degrassi The Next Generation. Check him out here and at his very Joey-friendly website (Joey would surely approve of "patmeup.com") here. Apparently, Adult Joey has an on-again, off-again relationship with Adult Caitlin. Also starring in Degrassi Next Generation are Snake and Spike, who are (I do believe) married. Degrassi: Next Generation is definitely my next DVD purchase, and it's even work related!

What seems disappointing, from looking at the photographs of Degrassi: Next Generation, is that it LOOKS like other TV shows. Everyone's a hottie. Nobody's dowdy or fat or squinty or pimply. Nobody hunches. Nobody even has outrageous hair, worn with aplomb in the original series by Spike, the likes of whom I had never seen roaming my school, but I certainly wouldn't have minded if she did. It's a shame everybody looks the same in Next Generation, since the utopia of Degrassi really was a lovely place to imagine. Where everyone was normal, with the possible exception of the "hot" girl, Stephanie, who was (we all knew deep down) a bit of a tool.

Now, she's a jazz musician. Check it.

Anyway, look, obviously today is a day for thinking about important things like Degrassi, because the news itself is too ludicrous for words. Hence I am interested only in Degrassi, and the following: Motorola has apparently invented battery chargers for mobile phones that are run by... guess what... riding a bicycle. Yes here it is. You ride your bike around and your phone is charged. Designed for African farmers apparently, although it doesn't explicitly rule out idiots who forget to take their mobile chargers with them to work.

There are some things that were just delicious when you were a kid, but seem to require effort in these adult years. Cycling in the rain is one of them.

Today, I cycled through the rain on my way home and it was gorgeous.

Cycling in the wind is utterly complain-worthy. Hair in your face, noise in your ears, gale force pushing you wherever it wants you. Anyone who has tried riding a bike up a hill and into the wind has probably gone on to have a bad day in the office if my experience is anything to go by. But cycling in the rain is bracing, exhilarating, fresh, damp. It's like going for a surf in a storm. In your clothes. On a bike.

Mind you, I don't recommend you do it on a busy road. Nobody sees you. Find a bike path in Carlton.

Don't have a bike? Let my friend at Unibicycles pick out one for you: www.unibicycles.com.au

Aaaanyhoo, ringing commercial endorsements aside, bike rides are exercise, and at the end of them, it helps to be fitfully rewarded. At the end of my bike ride, I went for a coffee. I needed to write a few things down before I got on with the writing I had to do, so I ordered a coffee and stared out the window with my pen in my hand.

Rain was bringing people inside. Mothers with small squaking people in prams. Blokes in hard hats. A child with a parent who could have been a grandparent, or a grandparent who could have been a parent. Then, behind me, suddenly, a table full of women. Groups of women, and this is a generalisation, but by God they can talk. Put a group of women together at a table with a cup of coffee and the prospect of rain outside and watch and learn. It's like listening to a Caryl Churchill play.

This brings me once more to my attempt (again) to justify my bad habit (shared with many writers) of eavesdropping in public places around people I don't know. People I do know don't interest me quite so much, because eavesdropping on people you know is usually not very surprising, or else it is terribly surprising, and either way I'm not particularly comfortable gaining such information via covert surveillance when (presumably) I could just have a conversation with said acquaintance and be done with it. Eavesdropping on people I don't know, however, feels like a lesson in writing, in narrative, in the formation of an argument. The lack of context (who ARE these people?) is a useful lesson in storytelling. Sometimes, I find myself madly scribbling things down as I hear them. Expressions, opinions, interruptions.

Today, I heard:

- He left a note, apparently.

- A note?

- On the kitchen table.

- Wow.

(Coffee machine)

- Gone home to live with her parents.

(Coffee machine)

- Unpaid leave, isn't she?

- Yeah, I knew that.

(Coffee machine)

- Position becomes available, I've told them I'm interested in...

- What did they say?

- They can't promise me anything but they'll keep it in mind.

- Hang on, I don't get it. He left the note asking her to move out, she got the note, she moved out. The last time she came in to work was... When did they...?

(Group realisation):

- Aaaaahhh!

This is the moment when, at the next table, I feel like turning around and saying WHAT? WHAT, AH? AH WHAT? WHEN DID THEY WHAT?

But that's the beauty of it. I know nothing. I know nobody. I just listen to bits of something and pick out which voice is interested in a new job (character motivation), which voice is friends with the girl in question (alliances within the story), which voice doesn't know anything but wants to be friends with the others (character status), and which part of the table is silent (silent characters are usually the powerful ones). As I leave the cafe I try to get a picture of these women in my heads, but by now they're talking about something else, and the two men at the table within earshot are loudly talking about whether the Brownlow medalist will reconcile with his father, so I can't hear anything anyway.

Then I ride my bike home in the rain, wondering about someone's partner leaving a note in their kitchen. All in a day's work.

Here's some advice: go outside and enjoy the sky.

Today is lovely.

Try riding your bike.

Things you see when you wander through your old university to get a fragment of a beer bottle removed from your bike wheel and to use the library:

1. Religious groups, everywhere. When did this happen? What brought this on? The answer is probably VSU, but I do not recall even the POTENTIAL for people with T shirts tucked into their jeans to talk loudly about Christ outside the library back in my day.

2. A couple breaking up on the "break up" bench nobody otherwise sits on outside what used to be the law library.
Him: What, and you can't understand why I'm angry?
Her: Yes, I understand. I told you I understand. You don't see how your behaviour effects people when you drink.
Him: I can, but I was angry.
Her: No, because if you could see, you'd stop doing it.
Him: Oh my God. (Spins around to see if there's an audience. Discovers there is, in the form of a protest)...

3. ... The "protest" consists of a crowd of (I'm not exaggerating) six people with a megaphone and a banner saying "Stop The Melbourne Model". Someone shouts through a megaphone, "Wake up, People!" A dude wearing boat shoes sails past on a scooter eating a free sausage from the commerce BBQ and looks disgusted. Some things never change.

4. Meanwhile, a pizza is being delivered to someone on the other side of campus by the pizza shop, which has purchased (from our clever friend at unibicycles) huge three-wheeler bikes with which to transport pizza anywhere across campus.

5. The library is equally full of people researching the psychological consequences of genocide and people looking at facebook while drinking coffee they have snuck into the library under their jackets.

6. It's my grandma's birthday so I call her from the downstairs phone I always used to call her from. She recognises the background noise almost immediately.

Now I'm back online researching the Australian political system, the more broad-brush details of which I seem to have forgotten since studying it at the above esteemed institution. Tonight, off to the film festival to enter other worlds. Ones I've never been a part of.

Bit of a heads up, to those of you living in Melbourne...

It's raining outside. Or, in my case, it's raining inside.

Weather is always such a conversation in Melbourne, due to its erratic nature, and I must confess to having had a rather less productive day than usual on account of it. Riding your bike to the library is not such a delicious prospect when staying home in front of the heater is an option. You can still write, right? Right. And I will, when I get these other nine million things done.

My bike looks inviting, as always, but the prospect of riding home in the sleet, with wet handlebars, a wet bike seat, and drenched hair is a little unappealing, even for me (someone who does not normally have any objections to unattractive public displays such as going out for lunch in a tracksuit).

So, it's an inside day. I'm glad I'm not a postie.

So I was riding my bike into the sunset the other day (literally, straight into the sunset - I know what those flat earth guys were on about - sometimes it feels like you're going to ride straight over) and I remembered something.

I remembered the main difference between riding a bike and driving a car or walking. It's not the lactic acid in your thighs. It's not the lack of a dashboard and a glovebox or an ipod and an umbrella.

I was riding my bike into the sunset and I looked up and I remembered! The greatest thing about riding a bicycle is that you CAN look up. You can look up and take in the whole sky and the entire 180 degree view of the universe and you won't have an accident or fall over or crane your neck peering through half an inch of windscreen.

It's an unreal thing to be able to do. There really is no other way to travel, at least not for the truly self-righteous such as myself. "Yes, everyone," I think as I ride along, "I am getting excercise AND helping the environment AND getting from A to B, all for a few hundred bucks I otherwise would have spent on petrol, thus promoting the oil market and continuing the divisive global resource war which the government today admitted was the reason we are at war in Iraq! Huzzah! What are you fools doing in your four wheeled horror boxes? You can't even see the sunset, you complacent boxed-up morons!"

Bear in mind, until a week or so ago, I myself was a boxed-up moron of the highest order.

Thank you again to the prince among men who sold me my freedom at a bargain price. Want some? Go here.

Meanwhile, I'm counting down the days to the film festival, to and from which I will of course cycle. Presuming my joy extends that far into winter, which is a noble presumption indeed.

I'm in the library. I'm going to go and do some work so I can meet my appointment with this evening's sunset. Hooroo!