Sorted: Sorting

Now it was the time, the hour, the creeping sense of senility, the wave across the pond, the fleas that attacked, bold, confrontational, young, armoured, willing to risk, or take risks, willing, then, to be born again. He embraced, we embrace, small town gossip, he had always been the subject, and all he could think was something stupid: the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about. And shrugged off minor irritants and small minded people, and let it go, in a way he once would never have done. For you cannot touch me, no matter what you do. 

Daylight saving had ended, we couldn't even tell the time in this country without the government interfering. Be bold. Be brave. Truthfulness, compassion, forbearance. And a great weight was lifted from his shoulder. And they could fly again. 

Everywhere you looked the country was in trouble. Penny Wong, the proudly "out" Foreign Minister, had declared Easter Sunday Transsexual Visibility Awareness Day, as if they weren't visible every day lately, and the aging gays he knew, trumped in the awareness socially progressive stakes by a very noisy bunch of newcomers, rolled their eyes and said, "they have gone too far".

Lisa, an old police photographer and friend of the gang, you might say, a group of miscreants of old, reformed, or largely reformed, or dead, whichever path they took. She had been working weekends as a councillor at a rehab. Perhaps it was just one of those things, one for the road. The one for the road that killed you.

Sixty one. And dead of a heroin overdose. Leaving behind a well put together 25 year old daughter, who no doubt knew grief beyond understanding, because he had never truly understood how they operated, humans, even now, after all this time in this form, these mists, these disappearing lives. Sad, it was effing sad, that was all there was to it.

The diminishing gang. The places we could have been, the lives we could have achieved. He talked to Deb, who he had known back in the day, the 1980s in her case. She'd had an abortion after they slept together, and he never knew until years later. He would have gone through with it, done the right thing, etc etc., although it was just a casual thing, when they were younger and hornier and everything was in flux, their desperate lives, those desperate street corners, all disappearing into earnest meetings and the sharing of experience. 

And now Lisa was dead.

***

CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES COLLAPSE 

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/companies-collapse-as-nsw-construction-faces-crisis/news-story/d73c227e4ea98db14f1d87e71dd0aca7

Companies collapse as NSW construction faces crisis

Tradies are in for a torrid time as terrible new figures highlight a devastating reality.

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https://www.apimagazine.com.au/news/article/construction-companies-continue-to-collapse-by-the-thousands#

Construction companies continue to collapse by the thousands

Australian construction companies continue to fall like dominoes, with the trend only worsening in the second half of 2023 and around 100 more Victorian home owners in limbo as another builder folds.

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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-28/builders-collapsing-state-breakdown-of-legal-rights/102878514

Hundreds of Australian construction firms have collapsed.

A range of factors have created the perfect storm for the demise of builders in the country, says lawyer Jennifer Dizon, of commercial litigation and insolvency firm Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams.

"A large number of builders have faced economic distress due to significant increases in interest rates and cost of materials, labour shortages and supply-chain issues," Ms Dizon said.