I’m sitting outside Tilley’s cafe waiting for Kelly to arrive after work. The lunchtime throng has thinned down to the unhurried few who either sit in older scrunched-in-close jovial groups or sit apart uni students tapping deeply into their laptops.

Kelly will be a couple of hours yet which suits me fine as I have just now finished a 7-day meditation retreat, and sitting here on slow percolate is the ideal way to transition back into the warp and woof of back-on-grid life.

The retreat was a furnace, in more ways than one, with a couple of 41 plus Celsius days and one long night in my totally airconditionless room where the temperature never dipped below 30 something.

Today, on the other hand is perfect. An intermittent cool breeze (only the slightest hint of bushfire smoke). A brewed coffee in hand….perhaps in a moment or two a beer.

My retreat residual silence only interrupted by a conversation with a random stranger that started with West Wing and convoluted its way into a weird discussion on the metaphysical evidence of manifesting your own destiny.

Yup. I’m back on grid alright. I think it’s beer o’clock.