Cheers, Mate

It is a really beautiful winter's day; it may be a little cold with Southwesterlies blowing, but the sun is shining with the sort of vim and vigor it usually reserves for the summer, and the sky looks freshly laundered and the clouds like they have just been taken out from the dryer.

You have not only woke up to birds chirping outside your window, you have awakened at your own leisure (no bleeping cell-phone is going to call the shots today). More than that, you've woke up to good hair, with nary a pimple in sight, and a miraculously flatter tummy. All things considered, you woke up feeling good, and this sense of well-being and cheerfulness has the integrity to not turn out to be a flash-in-the-pan.

So it is with this sense of well-being and cheerfulness that you walk up to school. The field on the side of MacDonald Cresent and the foliage along Salamanca Road have never looked more vivid nor more verdant. And - lo! - there on your way up Kelburn Parade, you spot your girlfriends making their way down it. You're all of you all smiles when you three convene for a little chitchat, basking in the dazzling sunlight and crisp winter breeze.

Goddess, but does this not seem just utterly perfect?

Then, your girlfriend Jen smilingly tells you, "Hey, you look beautiful."

Your heart is about to start a little joyful dance when she blithely continues, "From far."

Then your other girlfriend, Aileen, merrily chimes in, "Yeah!"