So I won't probably bore you with the sad and depressing demise of the Devils - if it was a break up today it certainly wasn't the romantic embrace as a couple are seperated by war or terminal illness, but rather, the kind of break up when you turn to a girl and say "Do you want to go out again" and she says "Nup". I was really upset that they didn't do a farewell lap though - I was hoping for some free merch handed over the fence as well. However, I would like to give out a big shout out to the girl in the Merc Kick final, Janelle - I didn't catch the school she was representing in the long kicking competition, or the colour of her armband, but I must admit, I have had a thing for girls who can kick a football - I think when I was growing up in Penguin, it was in the dying days of those kind of comedy events where you would get girls playing football in the mud in short shorts and tight tops and they'd throw the male referee in the mud at the end and everyone would say "cor" and call the girls darling and there would be a couple of seriously butch girls at either end that everyone would compare to whoever the fattest footballer of the day was...but there was one girl, at the only time I attended one of these hilarious events (and really, they were knee slapping comedy, the number one way I learned a number of offensive terms for breasts), who was sensational, really attractive, and could kick a football 60m, and she stayed in my head to this day, because she was so confident, refusing to be stereotyped and standing up for herself. It's hard to quantify peoples confidence - I myself am only confident as a front - but this was the real deal, without an ego. She just stood out, and I never found out her name, but I know that the only other time I saw her in my life, she was in the pub, downtrodden and awkward while her boyfriend was having this massive go at her in front of everyone. I didn't know what had happened in the intervening years, but it's probably one of the few people I've genuinely wanted to save. Or at least, recruit her for Collingwood, she had better footskills than Shane O'Bree...
So while I don't make the same assumptions that the 39m kicking ability of Janelle equates to any kind of self confident expression, she was at least out there having a bash. My own life currently amounts to little dreams and goals, rather than a particular big ambition, and my own self confidence has always been in question. My current ambition forged today is now to join the local football committee of Kermandie, my local football team (who uniquely come from a place that apparently doesn't exist) and do it within two years. My best friend kinda sorta bigs up her involvement at Penguin football club a little, at one point claiming she picked the side, but she does at least know a lot about politics within a local football club. She told me today that the big social circle to crack into at a local football club is the little circle that prepares the lunches. She said that the major issue she saw at Penguin was that everyone would battle for the job of mashing the potatoes. The reason for this was that the main potato masher was the presidents wife, who would spend her time with her fellow mashees discussing all of the problems within the town, never mind the football club, and she had the power to make or break the career of a would be footy club socialite. This has greatly worried me because my own cooking career isn't the stuff of Ramsay - never mind mashing potatoes, at home economics once, me and my mate forgot to turn the oven on when we tried to bake scones, and then had to try and pass off the resulting mess as some kind of doughy soup. It failed miserably. And you should have seen my attempts to make happy pants. Actually, in home economics, my happy pants remained distinctly unmade - we spent most of our time playing that game where you tell someone a coin is stuck to their head and make them smack it off...and bagging out 1927 I think. If I have to crack a circle in which I have to mash some spuds, I think I could be in trouble. But at least, it's an ambition...
I don't know if I have to take today as a sign that I have to save myself before I can save other people, if that makes sense, but that I perhaps have to take a greater interest in my own post 30 life. I've felt quite dislocated for quite some time, as if perhaps if I stepped up and showed ambition I'd only fail and retreat. I'm not sure where this dislocation has come from, but when I was out in the middle of Bellerive today, I did think of the old days in Penguin when I was lot more open minded and happy and would quite often hold up football games by wandering around the goal square long after the second siren. However, I do feel very positive about my life right now, dispite the dislocation - in fact, there's no way I would want to be 16 again. I was queuing for a Time Out bar today when I saw a girl of medium build in a black and white furry jacket, black jeans, try hard boots, about 16, who was telling her girlfriend about this boy she liked - she said she'd pretty much tried everything to get him to like her - she'd sent him a message on Facebook, she'd sent him a text, she'd even gone round to his house and offered to, well, let's say when a mummy and daddy love each other very much...she munched thoughtfully on her lukewarm saveloy, annoying the large woman in the pink shirt behind the counter because she was holding up the queue, stared into the cold middle distance and put her hands on her hips. Her friend, a glamazon in giant sunglasses, simply shook her head and looked her friend dead in the eyes (I presume, she was wearing sunglasses, and my attention was distracted by Garbage on the IPOD). "You," she said, mustering every single dreg of humanity and empathy from the pit of her Jetty Surf bought soul, "simply have to root his brains out until he comes around." When I grow up, I'll turn the tables indeed...
Of course, the composition of thoughts running through my brain today (and typed here with little pausing) couldn't distract from a miserable day on the field. Players were going through the motions, standing around, waiting for the end. It was cold, it was final, it was the day after the break up already. I did at least get some sense of finality from my team playing their last game, even without the lap of honour - I remember when I left my soccer team, St Mirren, behind, in 1992, when we moved back to Burnie from Scotland. They had been a massive part of my weekly ritual in Scotland, and then, suddenly, they were gone, as swiftly and silently as the day Kenickie stopped making albums. They didn't go out of business, but it was a depressing day, they were relegated, and every step, every minute of the last game we went to, I felt like something significant was ending. We stood sadly at Paisley Gilmour St station, saying goodbye to the neds and the petty criminals, the loose women and the slightly drunk at 11 in the morning "jakies" - it was a touching and significant farewell. Of course, we lost, 1-0 to Dundee United. We took a look around the ground as it emptied, me and my Dad, while behind me, a Dundee United fan with a son of his own, a son my age, was also taking a look around, and offered me a unique farewell to fours years of ups and downs supporting my Saints - he piped up in addressing his son with "St Mirren? Worst fucking team at the worst fucking ground with the worst fucking pies, the worst fucking juice, the worst fucking strip and the worst fucking grass - thank fuck I'll no be fucking back!" - I don't think the collected works of Antonella Gambotto could provide greater insight into humanity, nor could I be provided with a better send off.
Farewell Devils, goodbye troubled lustful teens, goodbye Janelle, goodbye kid who was doing impressions of the final siren to entertain his friends and goodbye local community football...I'll see you again someday...
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
When the second hand doesn't know the first hand is doing (matron)
So I've woken up today, and it's my parents anniversary - 34 years and counting. That's quite the effort, and I like to think how I would have survived in 1970s Britain, debating whether T-Rex was better than Wizzard. By all accounts, it was quite a rough place, where survival relied on either a quick wit or the ownership of a butchers knife. I've got to stop reading Rebus - anyway, I'm pretty proud of them, I know people who give up on their marriage after two days. The last wedding I went to, I'd say that marriage is going to last a few years and then dissolve - I certainly don't mean to make a rash judgement, but when the highlight of the wedding isn't any kind of heartfelt declaration of love (because they are spending all day fighting) but when the drunken snob girl in the wedding party who thinks she's so much better than you goes outside, drunk, and rides a golf flag around a putting green like a horse, you know things aren't exactly lighting up the sky. My Mum and Dad had their honeymoon roughly about 3 towns along from where the lived - they saw my auntie at the bus stop. Considering the easy life I've had, where the only thing I have to worry about is finally seeing the episode where Wile E Coyote finally catches Road Runner, I really appreciate their sacrifice in bringing me up. Of course, my Dad keeps referring to my big stupid coupon...so what am I sticking up for him for?
So anyway, I've been throwing all my old CDs - yes, young people, we once had to buy CDs, just like people older than me had to buy cassingles by bands like Ratcat - into a skip, if for no reason than I can't stand Cash Converters. Furreners, Cash Converters is essentially the easy way for bogans to swap items for cash, and once upon a time I had the misfortune to need money and took a bunch of CDs down there (OK, they weren't great - I still don't know why I spent 29.95 on a Simpsons album, but it probably explains my lack of cash) and was rewarded handsomely for my efforts in packaging up the box nicely with...six bucks, take it or leave it. My local Cash Converters also has about 7 security guards per person, as if you are going to make a bolt for it with an armful of Joanne singles and Cop and Half with Burt Reynolds tucked under your shirt. Seriously, the putters are in a locked glass case. How hard would it be to steal a putter, what's the security systems obsession with speciality golf clubs? The main security guard also doubles as someone behind the counter, and he has this really fearsome monobrow, which I think affects his mood. Whenever you go and buy something, he seems to be making a personal assessment on your social standing, and he seems to take an age making a judgement on it. The last time I actually bought something without running out of the store feeling like I was about to be nabbed around the collar just for stealing oxygen, it was a copy of a CD I bought for a friend for her birthday, let's say Sophie Lee and The Freaked Out Flower Children, he seemed to spend an age contemplating just how freaked out those flower children were, furrowing his monobrow in sheer confusion as if he was a drowning man who saw a life raft and contemplated whether life was worth going on with. Eventually, he put the CD into a small plastic bag, and as handed it to be me, his face lit into a (for him) animated mask of excitement. "Sophie Lee...she went out with Mick Molloy" he said with as much enthusiasm and emotion as a minimum wage employee of Cash Converters could muster. Yes, I said, she sure did, if you believed the 8th page of New Idea in May 1992 that had them both on a yacht - at which point, as I was about to leave the store, he has concluded his midday musings simply by saying "Fnh, she could have done better" - having seen Boytown, yes, yes she certainly could have...
Had this been a few years ago, I would have taken this box of CDs to "I Like" Aeroplane Records, the much missed second hand record and filthy old magazine store in the middle of Hobart, just next to the car park and the milkshake drinkers. There was always a wonderful staff synergy to Aeroplane Records - a very special man (and I mean special) and a parade of different attractive women. I think the attractive women had to work there with him as part of community service or some kind of witness protection program. There was always this feeling in Aeroplane Records that the attractive woman was shackled to the cash register or was wearing a tagging bracelet. What was always good about Aeroplane Records as well was that it was right next to the pervert shop, the Adult Basement, which was as subtle in hiding perverts as the fact my local video shop used to have the porn tapes on a shelf facing the window, so everyone could see the porn getters just as they drove their car in to park. There was always a wonderful juxtaposition between nerdy record buyers scanning the tables outside the door and the adult shoppers trying to get out of the pervert shop with their shifty purchases. I know that I could certainly spin my second hand CD collection into spun gold with the simple man - he had a stall at Salamanca, and E-bay style, if you were selling him CDs, so someone told me, if you had some kind of interesting story to go along with the CD, he would pay you more for the CD. For instance, this person told me that he had sold a CD to the guy and was offered two bucks for it, at which point, based on the urban legend, he began a long winded story about how the CD had been his mothers and when she passed away she left to him but a high HECs debt had left him unable to pay his bills and his mother had always said...at which point, the great man from Aeroplane records held up his mighty hand and shook his head. "Two fifty", he said, muttering for everyone to hear, "and next time, come up with better shit than that..."
However, the ultimate second hand shop experience was Burnies maginificent palais du wonder (that's probably atrocious French grammar) Collectors Corner. Now, my local KMart used to be the single worst storers of stock I had ever seen, simply DVDs stacked on top of each other as a small child might when told he can't get outside until he's cleaned his room. Collectors Corner was, in it's infancy, a place where a lot of stuff was just thrown into a grey compact warehouse and left in bundles on the ground, so you really had no idea what you were looking at until you began digging. The staff were just massively indifferent to side issues like theft and vandalism, and spent most of their time pottering around on the Internet looking up the value of old Cher vinyl. If you were a collector of stamps, you were absolutely stuffed, as under the stamp sign in the shop (handwritten on a big piece of cardboard) there were indeed stamps, but they were under the coins which were under the old copies of the New Idea which were under some old fossils. Oddly, the only thing they had taken their time to properly organise was the porn magazines, which were neatly stacked, chronologically ordered, and given roughly a 1/4 of the store, tucked away behind some pretty flimsy saloon doors, which was always pretty embarrassing for any passing cowboys who got confused. Brilliantly, this was the front corner of the store, at least initially, so the saloon doors and the apathetic staff weren't stopping any young men not quite of age from wandering in there to have a cheeky peek - which was bad news for a kid who went to our school, who one day wandered into the saloon to have a quick look at some Playboys (the same kid who later went out with the Centrepoint Jeans girl, bastard) and was so engrossed with the sights, he didn't notice a large group of school friends had spotted him and stood behind him as he perused the articles. When he turned around, they gave him a massive round of applause and some encouragement. Fair play to the lad though - rather than being embarrassed, he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Well, your Mum was busy today"...
And for Burnie, that's practically Oscar Wilde...
So anyway, I've been throwing all my old CDs - yes, young people, we once had to buy CDs, just like people older than me had to buy cassingles by bands like Ratcat - into a skip, if for no reason than I can't stand Cash Converters. Furreners, Cash Converters is essentially the easy way for bogans to swap items for cash, and once upon a time I had the misfortune to need money and took a bunch of CDs down there (OK, they weren't great - I still don't know why I spent 29.95 on a Simpsons album, but it probably explains my lack of cash) and was rewarded handsomely for my efforts in packaging up the box nicely with...six bucks, take it or leave it. My local Cash Converters also has about 7 security guards per person, as if you are going to make a bolt for it with an armful of Joanne singles and Cop and Half with Burt Reynolds tucked under your shirt. Seriously, the putters are in a locked glass case. How hard would it be to steal a putter, what's the security systems obsession with speciality golf clubs? The main security guard also doubles as someone behind the counter, and he has this really fearsome monobrow, which I think affects his mood. Whenever you go and buy something, he seems to be making a personal assessment on your social standing, and he seems to take an age making a judgement on it. The last time I actually bought something without running out of the store feeling like I was about to be nabbed around the collar just for stealing oxygen, it was a copy of a CD I bought for a friend for her birthday, let's say Sophie Lee and The Freaked Out Flower Children, he seemed to spend an age contemplating just how freaked out those flower children were, furrowing his monobrow in sheer confusion as if he was a drowning man who saw a life raft and contemplated whether life was worth going on with. Eventually, he put the CD into a small plastic bag, and as handed it to be me, his face lit into a (for him) animated mask of excitement. "Sophie Lee...she went out with Mick Molloy" he said with as much enthusiasm and emotion as a minimum wage employee of Cash Converters could muster. Yes, I said, she sure did, if you believed the 8th page of New Idea in May 1992 that had them both on a yacht - at which point, as I was about to leave the store, he has concluded his midday musings simply by saying "Fnh, she could have done better" - having seen Boytown, yes, yes she certainly could have...
Had this been a few years ago, I would have taken this box of CDs to "I Like" Aeroplane Records, the much missed second hand record and filthy old magazine store in the middle of Hobart, just next to the car park and the milkshake drinkers. There was always a wonderful staff synergy to Aeroplane Records - a very special man (and I mean special) and a parade of different attractive women. I think the attractive women had to work there with him as part of community service or some kind of witness protection program. There was always this feeling in Aeroplane Records that the attractive woman was shackled to the cash register or was wearing a tagging bracelet. What was always good about Aeroplane Records as well was that it was right next to the pervert shop, the Adult Basement, which was as subtle in hiding perverts as the fact my local video shop used to have the porn tapes on a shelf facing the window, so everyone could see the porn getters just as they drove their car in to park. There was always a wonderful juxtaposition between nerdy record buyers scanning the tables outside the door and the adult shoppers trying to get out of the pervert shop with their shifty purchases. I know that I could certainly spin my second hand CD collection into spun gold with the simple man - he had a stall at Salamanca, and E-bay style, if you were selling him CDs, so someone told me, if you had some kind of interesting story to go along with the CD, he would pay you more for the CD. For instance, this person told me that he had sold a CD to the guy and was offered two bucks for it, at which point, based on the urban legend, he began a long winded story about how the CD had been his mothers and when she passed away she left to him but a high HECs debt had left him unable to pay his bills and his mother had always said...at which point, the great man from Aeroplane records held up his mighty hand and shook his head. "Two fifty", he said, muttering for everyone to hear, "and next time, come up with better shit than that..."
However, the ultimate second hand shop experience was Burnies maginificent palais du wonder (that's probably atrocious French grammar) Collectors Corner. Now, my local KMart used to be the single worst storers of stock I had ever seen, simply DVDs stacked on top of each other as a small child might when told he can't get outside until he's cleaned his room. Collectors Corner was, in it's infancy, a place where a lot of stuff was just thrown into a grey compact warehouse and left in bundles on the ground, so you really had no idea what you were looking at until you began digging. The staff were just massively indifferent to side issues like theft and vandalism, and spent most of their time pottering around on the Internet looking up the value of old Cher vinyl. If you were a collector of stamps, you were absolutely stuffed, as under the stamp sign in the shop (handwritten on a big piece of cardboard) there were indeed stamps, but they were under the coins which were under the old copies of the New Idea which were under some old fossils. Oddly, the only thing they had taken their time to properly organise was the porn magazines, which were neatly stacked, chronologically ordered, and given roughly a 1/4 of the store, tucked away behind some pretty flimsy saloon doors, which was always pretty embarrassing for any passing cowboys who got confused. Brilliantly, this was the front corner of the store, at least initially, so the saloon doors and the apathetic staff weren't stopping any young men not quite of age from wandering in there to have a cheeky peek - which was bad news for a kid who went to our school, who one day wandered into the saloon to have a quick look at some Playboys (the same kid who later went out with the Centrepoint Jeans girl, bastard) and was so engrossed with the sights, he didn't notice a large group of school friends had spotted him and stood behind him as he perused the articles. When he turned around, they gave him a massive round of applause and some encouragement. Fair play to the lad though - rather than being embarrassed, he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Well, your Mum was busy today"...
And for Burnie, that's practically Oscar Wilde...
Tales from a Mall - The Aero Caramel and The Chad Who Loved Me
I don't really know what to think about today, it's one of those nothing days that really slip and in and out of your memory as soon as they are over - regardless of Buddy Franklins 100th goal - and I've been amazingly lazy. I've probably spent far too much time in the spa or lying around on the lawn. I was talking to my friend today about the fact that I quite like being the age that I am now - I like my broader scope of references. That's not to say I wouldn't sometimes like another crash at the coffee and dating scene, hanging out with Alix, but it's passed. I went for a nice walk and saw the mother of the most beautiful barmaid in Hobart - so that might be my in, although my competition is fierce, comprising Midori Man and several members of the Lauderdale football team. I like walking around Kingston, because there's not many people about, and I don't have to walk through the really dodgy swing park anymore. I walked through that place to get home one night (don't tell my Mum) and there was a girl on the swings who said "What's your name?" and when I told her, she didn't say anything, so I was a little worried that perhaps her boyfriend was on his way to club me over the head so I didn't say anything, and after about fifteen seconds she said "My names Jodie" - to get out of this tricky situation, I sort of tried to get quickly to my house, passing the comment that "That's a nice name"...when I got to my front door, she had sat and taken in this piece of wisdom and replied "Nah, nah, it's pretty fucked!" - end of conversation I would have thought. I miss Jodie, she called a spade a spade.
Everyone who hangs out in the mall in Hobart would know there's a newsagents in the middle of the mall, directly across from Big Sanity, run by a white haired gentleman who I'm certain plays Santa Claus at Christmas functions. He's a very nice man, unlike my local newsagent where I work who puts the magazines into plastic bags so people can't read them and is only nice to you if you buy a magazine priced over $10, and unlike his slightly less enthusiastic wife and his parade of disinterested minimum wage staff. I used to go in there all the time to buy my copy of the Herald Sun and get my bottle of water - and he was always nice enough to point out to me when he a brand new chocolate bar. I really don't know why he decided that I would be the official taste taster of new chocolate, although he wasn't nice enough to give them to me for free. One day I went in and held up a meaty fist to halt me from espying the fridge of any new types of Red Eye, and he said wait there in deep tones. I stood there not sure what was coming out of this transaction - footy cards, a loyalty card, a copy of the album Love and Kisses by Dannii Minogue - but he unwrapped from his paw a silver wrapped Aero Caramel. He was holding it was one might hold a newborn baby, with the utmost care - "try that" he said, with no further word. Well, there wasn't much to do but take the entrustment I was given and run with it. To protect the mighty silver chocolate, I put it in the fridge at work, but when I went to get it, it was gone, scoffed by a fat workmate with trouble fitting into a pair of jeans I suspect. When I returned to the newsagent the next day, he was beaming, to the point you could see his back teeth, and he was leaning forward conspiratorally. "So, did you like it?" he said - by which point, I was getting really suspicious it had been loaded up with E or laxatives or something to punish me for my parsimony in not buying top shelf porn at twenty bucks a pop (or maybe because I did) - and after racking my brains, I realised what I was meant to like, and said, sure, why not, and he began chuckling heartily (only the older man can chuckle heartily) and replied "I thought you would, you look like a caramel lover" - I can assure everyone that I have no idea what a caramel lover looks like, but apparently, I do, or indeed if I've missed some kind of terrible sexual code. The contents of this mysterious bar to this day remain a mystery (mysterious mystery, gee, that's just good writing isn't it?) but for some reason, I remain eternally greatful that I didn't eat it...
Of course, this strange exchange certainly can't diminish my pleasant memories of the man, regardless of his opinions on what I looked like I like. In fact to get onto my favourite theme of local pride, I'm proud that most local businesses in Hobart (apart from Boost Juice) do at least make the attempt to provide customer service with some kind of friendliness, particularly the ones in the mall. I don't know if you remember the English band Mansun (no, me neither) - they had a song called Stripper Vicar which I think was about our local guy in Penguin. The first song on their album was called The Chad Who Loved Me - which always makes me think of a particular waiter in a little coffee shop in the mall called Chad, who didn't love me, but my friend, Andrew, in a terribly unrequited way. I don't know that this unrequited love ever got very far though - Andrew was a bustling, busy man with very little time for human emotions, nevermind affections from a gay waiter. One day I was sitting in Chads restaurant minding my own business listening to Beaverloop (too obscure) on the walkman when Chad decided that he would pull up a chair and join me. I'm terrible at being interrupted mid thought, although in this case my thought was probably "Wow! Beaverloop will go on for decades!" He was terribly tormented, he sipped his mediumly tepid hot chocolate and asked if things would ever happen for him and Andrew - and I had to say quite honestly, no, that it wouldn't. He was clearly very upset by this news, but shook his head, and said, no, he wasn't going to cry. And then he did, big upset tears of...er...upset (this is quite the poetic post isn't it?). There was only one thing for it...human empathy? Well, it's not my strong point, and I realised people thought I'd just dumped him myself...I quietly got up, left a five dollar tip, and moved on, leaving Andrew to be comforted by an all men are bastards style waitress called Amber - when I looked back, I realised that the incredibly gay Chad was actually...perving quite openly down Ambers top...it was all a trick to pick up women I assume, but what could I do? Our eyes met and he gave an imperciptable flash of his eyes, the flash that said he was busted, but Amber was a really nice girl, and I think they ended up very happy together, and tour the nation watching the Veronicas as part of their "crew"...
At night, the mall is slightly strange - one night, I was part of a social experiment/bet with my friends as to who could bear sleeping on one of the circular green benches for the longest without going home (I lasted a minute and went home with KFC). The Mercury continually tells us that the mall at night is this dangerous hotbed of crime and violence. The only problem I've ever had in 11 years was one night recently, when I was walking through the mall and was suddenly accosted by one of the night-time Jesus freaks. One of the things I love about Hobart is that we have very, very few of those people who try and stick you up for surveys and leaflets - unlike Glasgow, which is just shocking for semi attractive girls with a cause telling you they love your accent as a way to try and get you to love the WWF (the pandas not Hulk Hogan). However, there is a small pocket of Jesus freaks who tell you that because you have in your hand a prostitute handed out leaflet (if it was 1997 and you were an American serviceman) or are wearing the clothing of a sweatshop company like Nike that you are going straight to hell unless you put a dollah in the box...in my case, I made the mistake of stopping to tie my shoe lace and she was straight into me like a pit bull - specifically for wearing my IPOD, an immoral purchase instead of putting a dollah in the box for Jeebus...of course, being the person I am when faced with the horns of a moral dilemma, I simply ensured that I turned my IPOD on, as a sign that no, I wouldn't be putting a dollah in the box, and by chance, on my shuffle selection came Accidentally Kelly Street by Frente! (I think I should have a dollah in the box for Jeebus rather than spending time thinking about Frente!) and I walked away in a jaunty fashion while behind me, her face was contorted in religious fury, sound, and contempt for my soul, her small soul almost leaping out her body in a gymnastic attempt to articulate her anger. I, on the other hand, remained undaunted, because I was where friends and strangers sometimes meet...
And it wasn't, on this particular night, the church....
Everyone who hangs out in the mall in Hobart would know there's a newsagents in the middle of the mall, directly across from Big Sanity, run by a white haired gentleman who I'm certain plays Santa Claus at Christmas functions. He's a very nice man, unlike my local newsagent where I work who puts the magazines into plastic bags so people can't read them and is only nice to you if you buy a magazine priced over $10, and unlike his slightly less enthusiastic wife and his parade of disinterested minimum wage staff. I used to go in there all the time to buy my copy of the Herald Sun and get my bottle of water - and he was always nice enough to point out to me when he a brand new chocolate bar. I really don't know why he decided that I would be the official taste taster of new chocolate, although he wasn't nice enough to give them to me for free. One day I went in and held up a meaty fist to halt me from espying the fridge of any new types of Red Eye, and he said wait there in deep tones. I stood there not sure what was coming out of this transaction - footy cards, a loyalty card, a copy of the album Love and Kisses by Dannii Minogue - but he unwrapped from his paw a silver wrapped Aero Caramel. He was holding it was one might hold a newborn baby, with the utmost care - "try that" he said, with no further word. Well, there wasn't much to do but take the entrustment I was given and run with it. To protect the mighty silver chocolate, I put it in the fridge at work, but when I went to get it, it was gone, scoffed by a fat workmate with trouble fitting into a pair of jeans I suspect. When I returned to the newsagent the next day, he was beaming, to the point you could see his back teeth, and he was leaning forward conspiratorally. "So, did you like it?" he said - by which point, I was getting really suspicious it had been loaded up with E or laxatives or something to punish me for my parsimony in not buying top shelf porn at twenty bucks a pop (or maybe because I did) - and after racking my brains, I realised what I was meant to like, and said, sure, why not, and he began chuckling heartily (only the older man can chuckle heartily) and replied "I thought you would, you look like a caramel lover" - I can assure everyone that I have no idea what a caramel lover looks like, but apparently, I do, or indeed if I've missed some kind of terrible sexual code. The contents of this mysterious bar to this day remain a mystery (mysterious mystery, gee, that's just good writing isn't it?) but for some reason, I remain eternally greatful that I didn't eat it...
Of course, this strange exchange certainly can't diminish my pleasant memories of the man, regardless of his opinions on what I looked like I like. In fact to get onto my favourite theme of local pride, I'm proud that most local businesses in Hobart (apart from Boost Juice) do at least make the attempt to provide customer service with some kind of friendliness, particularly the ones in the mall. I don't know if you remember the English band Mansun (no, me neither) - they had a song called Stripper Vicar which I think was about our local guy in Penguin. The first song on their album was called The Chad Who Loved Me - which always makes me think of a particular waiter in a little coffee shop in the mall called Chad, who didn't love me, but my friend, Andrew, in a terribly unrequited way. I don't know that this unrequited love ever got very far though - Andrew was a bustling, busy man with very little time for human emotions, nevermind affections from a gay waiter. One day I was sitting in Chads restaurant minding my own business listening to Beaverloop (too obscure) on the walkman when Chad decided that he would pull up a chair and join me. I'm terrible at being interrupted mid thought, although in this case my thought was probably "Wow! Beaverloop will go on for decades!" He was terribly tormented, he sipped his mediumly tepid hot chocolate and asked if things would ever happen for him and Andrew - and I had to say quite honestly, no, that it wouldn't. He was clearly very upset by this news, but shook his head, and said, no, he wasn't going to cry. And then he did, big upset tears of...er...upset (this is quite the poetic post isn't it?). There was only one thing for it...human empathy? Well, it's not my strong point, and I realised people thought I'd just dumped him myself...I quietly got up, left a five dollar tip, and moved on, leaving Andrew to be comforted by an all men are bastards style waitress called Amber - when I looked back, I realised that the incredibly gay Chad was actually...perving quite openly down Ambers top...it was all a trick to pick up women I assume, but what could I do? Our eyes met and he gave an imperciptable flash of his eyes, the flash that said he was busted, but Amber was a really nice girl, and I think they ended up very happy together, and tour the nation watching the Veronicas as part of their "crew"...
At night, the mall is slightly strange - one night, I was part of a social experiment/bet with my friends as to who could bear sleeping on one of the circular green benches for the longest without going home (I lasted a minute and went home with KFC). The Mercury continually tells us that the mall at night is this dangerous hotbed of crime and violence. The only problem I've ever had in 11 years was one night recently, when I was walking through the mall and was suddenly accosted by one of the night-time Jesus freaks. One of the things I love about Hobart is that we have very, very few of those people who try and stick you up for surveys and leaflets - unlike Glasgow, which is just shocking for semi attractive girls with a cause telling you they love your accent as a way to try and get you to love the WWF (the pandas not Hulk Hogan). However, there is a small pocket of Jesus freaks who tell you that because you have in your hand a prostitute handed out leaflet (if it was 1997 and you were an American serviceman) or are wearing the clothing of a sweatshop company like Nike that you are going straight to hell unless you put a dollah in the box...in my case, I made the mistake of stopping to tie my shoe lace and she was straight into me like a pit bull - specifically for wearing my IPOD, an immoral purchase instead of putting a dollah in the box for Jeebus...of course, being the person I am when faced with the horns of a moral dilemma, I simply ensured that I turned my IPOD on, as a sign that no, I wouldn't be putting a dollah in the box, and by chance, on my shuffle selection came Accidentally Kelly Street by Frente! (I think I should have a dollah in the box for Jeebus rather than spending time thinking about Frente!) and I walked away in a jaunty fashion while behind me, her face was contorted in religious fury, sound, and contempt for my soul, her small soul almost leaping out her body in a gymnastic attempt to articulate her anger. I, on the other hand, remained undaunted, because I was where friends and strangers sometimes meet...
And it wasn't, on this particular night, the church....
Friday, August 29, 2008
Never was a cornflake curse
AlixandKelly=singleandfun
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
So I figured that having written about Kelly and Alix the Asterix extra from the Mercury in The Great Kettering Man Drought Post, you might like to see them in all their high maintenance glory. They copped a bit of a spray in the comments section of the paper - so if you are in Hobart and a bit of a quality single man, why not look them up? Sure, Alix will hold you to high standards and Kelly probably won't put the phone down for the whole date, but they are available, and I'm entirely sure that's their real names, and they aren't just employees for the Mercury hired to pat out a flimsy story, caller to talkback radio style. I get the feeling that Kelly and Alix would instantly think you are scum if you asked them out, but hey, you never know, might be worth a call. There's certainly no other news down here at the moment - The Devils are obviously going out of business, but we knew that. As for me, I've been mostly reading old NWFU footy records from the early 80s, when the men were so unreconstructed, they wouldn't have been interested in Alix and her career. One Peter Borlini for instance, in his East Devonport player profile, doesn't even list his wifes name and says openly he likes a beer and a roast. I wouldn't imagine this kind of maleness would appeal these days - and I can't imagine Peter Borlini sipping a latte...unless it had beer in it.
So I don't really believe in ghosts or anything like that - I really never have, and not even that show where Girls Aloud ended up getting spooked out or any episodes of Spooky Ghost (how did he keep that hat on?) could convince me otherwise. I feel a bit bad sometimes because we've lost some of our relatives before their time, and their families have gone to James Van Praagh style crazy gay mediums to try and get closure. Naturally, they then try and apply vague generalisations to the lives of their dead loved ones - for instance, when I was in Scotland on holiday, the medium said to one of my relatives "he's saying something about a caravan" and they instantly went "Oh, there was a caravan holiday we went on in 1985!" - and I'm sort of sitting on the couch listening to a Get This podcast going...oh...good...and trying not to launch into my James Randy speech about it all being bollocks and didn't you see that episode of South Park? Since I don't believe in any of this, I would like to point out that I have seen a ghost - it was on my Grade 8 school camp in Zeehan (boy got to get to that soon). I was asleep in my bed after a heavy night in the TV room of watching Chances, when my door, and I don't how this happened, locked itself. This was spooky enough, but about an hour later, there was a ghostly tap at the window...tap...tap...tap...I didn't open the curtains...tap...tap...tap...and against all the fear...I opened the curtains...tap...tap....slowly...so pale...so...frightening...tap...tap...and it was a local Zeehan youth who had got onto the grounds of our camp giving me a bit of a pressed arse against the window. Until the janitor caught him and absolutely smashed him with a hard tackle into the ground. I guess you could say I saw a spiritual opening...anyway, it turns out he was really after the girls camp, which was about 1km down the road, and had taken a wrong turn at Alberqueque. Poor bugger...knowing some of the girls at our school, he'd have been half a chance...
Anyway, having established myself as a sceptic, I must admit I do find one thing pretty weird - three times in the last 11 years (and only 3 times) I've eaten a bowl of Kelloggs Cornflakes a major international disaster has happened. I had Cornflakes in 1997, Princess Diana died. I had a bowl of cornflakes in 2001, Victoria Beckham released Not Such An Innocent Girl...no, actually, September 11 happened, I was on holiday in Scotland, and was on the bed lying watching an episode of Ricki Lake that was about fat out of control teens (incidentally, I have a theory the best episodes of Ricki Lake are the ones where she's fat and grumpy rather than thin and inspirational) and then...well, that was twice...and the third time, Mum bought Cornflakes into the house and suddenly there was a giant tsunami sweeping across South East Asia. I'm sure there are other reasons as to thy all this has happened - I was probably wearing tracksuit pants (not good enough says Alix, why not wear a smart suit?) and I was probably being lazy, but as to why I connect all of this to Kelloggs, I think there's probably some kind of backwards message for in the Tori Amos song Cornflake Girl, something like "unleash the evil" or "one day my tinkly piano stylings will be stolen by Vanessa Carlton (noooooooo)"- actually, the other problem when Princess Diana died was that I was in Mount Stuart, in a 6 bedroom house all on my own, and instead of using the time to have a giant party, with strippers and drugs and rock and roll and rapacious uni students - I was using my time to watch the Sunday programme and eat cornflakes. It might not have solved the cornflake curse, but it certainly explains the girl drought curse that afflicted Mount Stuart throughout most of the year...thank goodness that's been cleared up.
While I consider my cornflake curse to be the only supernatural thing I can't really explain, the rest of my life I've been very cynical about the spirit world. In fact, I can remember the exact moment I lost interest in the notion of an afterlife of ghosts who ended one episode with lots of friends and the start of the next episode of one friends. And it wasn't anything to do with spiritual realisations or a massive questioning of my own mortality or anything theological. It was a girl called Sarah who made me realise it was all nonsense. Sarah was a Scottish Ayrshire girl with the brains of a chair but the social life of Hugh Hefner, and a seriously ugly best friend who's name I can't remember, who looked like Rocky Dennis. Anyway, she was trying to tell us all a ghost story once in art class, about these ghosts that came and took your soul at night, and then would do horrible things to your soul when you were helpless (like making you live in Beith...one for the Scottish people out there). If your soul was sensitive to having things put into certain parts of your anatomy or being entirely exposed to torture, then you certainly didn't want to encounter these ghosts. Unfortunately for our "Sar", and indeed for Rocky Dennis who was backing her up on this story, at the key point of the story, she let slip that this group of ghosts were known as "The Proclaimers" - I guess her cultural radar was off, as of course The Proclaimers are Scotlands most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo, responsible for I Would Walk 500 Miles, and two ginger twins in glasses who, yes, are as pale as ghosts, but she certainly lost her thread at that point. I can still remember her anguished cries of "Yez are aw fucking basterds" as we ridiculed her story and Rocky Dennis glared with all her masky glaring power, her entire existence, and wondered exactly how far the ghosts would have to walk just to get someones soul...oh, 500 miles...how hilarious...
I realised at that point there was no such as ghosts...they'd surely have been smart enough to name themselves after a better standard of Scottish group...Strawberry Switchblade is much scarier...
The elderly (Everybody Gonfi Gon)
So Collingwood lost, which is fine, I'm not that worried about it, but it was an interesting night in and I didn't really feel like getting my groove on. I'm mostly just sitting around contemplating the decline of American rap music, there seems to be a lot of songs about clubs and licking lollipops and Justin Timberlake somehow seems to be the blackest man in music. I can't be doing with all the references to bitches and hos, it just reminds me of this girl I went to school with - not that she was any of those derogatory terms, certainly not - but there were two kids in our English class one day who, during silent time, had managed to find a pile of Sports Illustrateds and, I don't know, People Magazine or whatever the 1994 equivalent of Alpha was (maybe Inside Sport?) - to cut a long story short, they were simply looking at the swimsuit editions and the pin ups, and commenting on various bits of the female anatomy and where they would stick various bits of their anatomy, Beavis and Butthead style, when this girl has broken silent reading with the classless but still quite poetic arrow in their direction "I guess that's what happens when you can't get a fuck" - no, it's not Dorian Gray for wit and wisdom, but in it's own way it's quite poetic, and no, one of those two boys wasn't me learning a valuable lesson, I was up the back minding my own business reading Wisconsin Death Trip. I think that girl could probably have sorted out the rampant sexism in black American rap quite quickly. Incidentally, I'm also very proud of my book case, as when I went to get Wisconsin Death Trip off the shelf to get some research material, I noticed Flying High by Alisa Camplin is next to the "Wit and Wisdom Of Ghandi" - my moving men have the best sense of humour...
In 1994, for what it's worth, I didn't have a lot of friends. I'm a bit like Norm from Cheers theory on Caspar The Friendly Ghost in terms of how sometimes I have friends then other times I don't. However, I was quite young...christ was I young. Nobody could tell me about the state of music industry in their day or in my day bar I was on the button - Everybody Gonfi Gon by Two Cowboys? I was certainly Gonfi Gonning let me tell you. Morning and night, nothing but Gonfi Gonning. As opposed to Murray Tregonning, the sound effects guy on Hey Hey. Anyway, the point is, christ I was young. To emphasise just how young but also responsible - caught somewhere between a boy and man as it were (thankyou Kid Rock) - we all were, my school used to send us off as "leaders in the community" (in which case, the community was in massive trouble) to go and visit the elderly in old folks homes. This was quite the burdensome task for young me, not least because I didn't have the social compass or thirst for local pride that I have now - and because obviously I was completely embarrassed at seing old people in that state. I mean, the last thing I'd want if I (god forbid) wind up in a home is for some 16 year old to come and ask me how my day was. There was this girl at my school though, called Renee I think, who was really into it, and she would sit in the library and actually come up with questions for the old people for us all to read off cards (and I was the one with no friends?) while I would do constructive things like stand with a yellow jacket on waiting for the bus doing my best sulky teenager impression. One time when were standing outside with paintbrushes (I think we attended the old folks painting class, thank god it wasn't nude model day) she had a massive chip at me for my attitude, saying something like "Yeah, well you should just have STAYED AT HOME! Old people have the right to enjoy themselves!" - constructing arguments was never Renees strong point, and what more could you want after a lifetime of toil than Renee mixing paints for you, but she was rightly indignant I guess, after all, I was a pretty miserable bastard...that said, she didn't apply the same righteous indignation to people who, oh I don't know, take drugs and have little sleeps with no shirt on on the school lawn? I guess people have the right to enjoy themselves...
Anyway, I wasn't the best person to go and visit the elderly - especially as one day I found the pool room and spent most of my time hiding and playing pool (obviously, as there was a pool table - playing darts would have been dumb) and listening to The Grid on my walkman. Renee would just have had me singing Three Pockets In My Overalls anyway. One day though, to combat my pool playing, they paired us up - for the sake of the story, it would be excellent if me and Renee hung out, Captain and Tenille style - and I got paired with this kid called Casey who was the only kid I could ever beat in running races. So it was obviously a bit of a dream team for the poor guy we had to go and visit. As it turned out, the poor old bastard didn't have any legs, so he was stuck in bed, and in the exaggarated version of the story I tell sometimes he was in his underpants having a cheeky fiddle (which is massively untrue, and a slur on his character - he was just scratching). Even I must admit, I felt really bad for him - mostly because he was trying to catch a bit of Midday with Ray Martin and then in came the conversational equivalent of The Blakeney Twins and he had to turn it off before Jeannie Little came on. Naturally, the conversation was pretty muted, and I was hardly going to suggest to him we started Gonfi Gonning. I'm not a great conversationalist to begin with, and the old bloke, he was certainly not doing any lifting. So into the void strode Big Casey, who broke the silence fine style with a cheery "so, mate...get out much?" - between the lack of legs, and the sparse possessions in the battlers room, I was pretty sure the answer was no. So now I felt even worse for him, as he was plainly resisting the urge to kill us both with whatever spirit he had left, so I did the only thing I could...I went and found Renee and got her to spread her own brand of cheer...
The reason I've been thinking about all of this is because I'm about to turn 30, and by AFL standards, that makes me a pensioner and probably entitled to a home visit from Renee. The fact I can remember individual members of Bananarama doesn't seem to cut it with the kids today, and obviously I'm too old for Alix in the Mercury with her coffee and busy lifestyle eating wild boars in Asterix books. To be honest, I'm getting massively too old for places like Isobar and people who can individually recognise members of Operator Please. This cheeky young upstart at work has started asking me about the songs I hear on nine minutes of the 90s like I'm his tour guide to a past universe...mind, he doesn't even know who Boonie is, so he's just thick...that said, I like my vast range of experiences and references, and I certainly don't fancy another crack at being 18. In fact, just the other week, I felt much better about 29, I felt like a canny old fox rather than a knackered old Rocca - I was standing at the little taxi rank across from Knopwoods (I'll get to that place soon) that normally has a queue that runs up the street for ages and then has a massive dispute about whether the rank starts from the top of the street or the bottom of the street. Luckily, my years of Hobart experience told me that with two couples and me waiting for a taxi, some crafty work on my behalf would ensure that no matter what happened, I would get a taxi. So, I went up to the first couple and politely enquired where the taxi queue started - they were at the bottom of the hill, and naturally said it started at the bottom of the hill, making them kings of the hill (too many hills in that sentence, I need a sherpa). With the speed for which I've never been famous, I had a quiet word in the ears of the second couple, a girl in a Presets T-shirt isn't going to be hard to outfox is she, and asked them where the taxi queue began, and they said, quite obviously, at the top of the hill. So with my accumulated Hobart wisdom, I pointed out (can you point it out quickly I know you are thinking) to them the first couple had said it started...well, this resulted in quite the Mercury disapproved punch up between the two couples, with several variations of insult on the girls sexual activities, and while they were punching on, I got in and got into the taxi ahead of both of them...and was rewarded with a Sudanese taxi driver who got lost trying to find the Southern Outlet...
Still, at least when Renee comes to visit, I'll remember to put some pants on...
In 1994, for what it's worth, I didn't have a lot of friends. I'm a bit like Norm from Cheers theory on Caspar The Friendly Ghost in terms of how sometimes I have friends then other times I don't. However, I was quite young...christ was I young. Nobody could tell me about the state of music industry in their day or in my day bar I was on the button - Everybody Gonfi Gon by Two Cowboys? I was certainly Gonfi Gonning let me tell you. Morning and night, nothing but Gonfi Gonning. As opposed to Murray Tregonning, the sound effects guy on Hey Hey. Anyway, the point is, christ I was young. To emphasise just how young but also responsible - caught somewhere between a boy and man as it were (thankyou Kid Rock) - we all were, my school used to send us off as "leaders in the community" (in which case, the community was in massive trouble) to go and visit the elderly in old folks homes. This was quite the burdensome task for young me, not least because I didn't have the social compass or thirst for local pride that I have now - and because obviously I was completely embarrassed at seing old people in that state. I mean, the last thing I'd want if I (god forbid) wind up in a home is for some 16 year old to come and ask me how my day was. There was this girl at my school though, called Renee I think, who was really into it, and she would sit in the library and actually come up with questions for the old people for us all to read off cards (and I was the one with no friends?) while I would do constructive things like stand with a yellow jacket on waiting for the bus doing my best sulky teenager impression. One time when were standing outside with paintbrushes (I think we attended the old folks painting class, thank god it wasn't nude model day) she had a massive chip at me for my attitude, saying something like "Yeah, well you should just have STAYED AT HOME! Old people have the right to enjoy themselves!" - constructing arguments was never Renees strong point, and what more could you want after a lifetime of toil than Renee mixing paints for you, but she was rightly indignant I guess, after all, I was a pretty miserable bastard...that said, she didn't apply the same righteous indignation to people who, oh I don't know, take drugs and have little sleeps with no shirt on on the school lawn? I guess people have the right to enjoy themselves...
Anyway, I wasn't the best person to go and visit the elderly - especially as one day I found the pool room and spent most of my time hiding and playing pool (obviously, as there was a pool table - playing darts would have been dumb) and listening to The Grid on my walkman. Renee would just have had me singing Three Pockets In My Overalls anyway. One day though, to combat my pool playing, they paired us up - for the sake of the story, it would be excellent if me and Renee hung out, Captain and Tenille style - and I got paired with this kid called Casey who was the only kid I could ever beat in running races. So it was obviously a bit of a dream team for the poor guy we had to go and visit. As it turned out, the poor old bastard didn't have any legs, so he was stuck in bed, and in the exaggarated version of the story I tell sometimes he was in his underpants having a cheeky fiddle (which is massively untrue, and a slur on his character - he was just scratching). Even I must admit, I felt really bad for him - mostly because he was trying to catch a bit of Midday with Ray Martin and then in came the conversational equivalent of The Blakeney Twins and he had to turn it off before Jeannie Little came on. Naturally, the conversation was pretty muted, and I was hardly going to suggest to him we started Gonfi Gonning. I'm not a great conversationalist to begin with, and the old bloke, he was certainly not doing any lifting. So into the void strode Big Casey, who broke the silence fine style with a cheery "so, mate...get out much?" - between the lack of legs, and the sparse possessions in the battlers room, I was pretty sure the answer was no. So now I felt even worse for him, as he was plainly resisting the urge to kill us both with whatever spirit he had left, so I did the only thing I could...I went and found Renee and got her to spread her own brand of cheer...
The reason I've been thinking about all of this is because I'm about to turn 30, and by AFL standards, that makes me a pensioner and probably entitled to a home visit from Renee. The fact I can remember individual members of Bananarama doesn't seem to cut it with the kids today, and obviously I'm too old for Alix in the Mercury with her coffee and busy lifestyle eating wild boars in Asterix books. To be honest, I'm getting massively too old for places like Isobar and people who can individually recognise members of Operator Please. This cheeky young upstart at work has started asking me about the songs I hear on nine minutes of the 90s like I'm his tour guide to a past universe...mind, he doesn't even know who Boonie is, so he's just thick...that said, I like my vast range of experiences and references, and I certainly don't fancy another crack at being 18. In fact, just the other week, I felt much better about 29, I felt like a canny old fox rather than a knackered old Rocca - I was standing at the little taxi rank across from Knopwoods (I'll get to that place soon) that normally has a queue that runs up the street for ages and then has a massive dispute about whether the rank starts from the top of the street or the bottom of the street. Luckily, my years of Hobart experience told me that with two couples and me waiting for a taxi, some crafty work on my behalf would ensure that no matter what happened, I would get a taxi. So, I went up to the first couple and politely enquired where the taxi queue started - they were at the bottom of the hill, and naturally said it started at the bottom of the hill, making them kings of the hill (too many hills in that sentence, I need a sherpa). With the speed for which I've never been famous, I had a quiet word in the ears of the second couple, a girl in a Presets T-shirt isn't going to be hard to outfox is she, and asked them where the taxi queue began, and they said, quite obviously, at the top of the hill. So with my accumulated Hobart wisdom, I pointed out (can you point it out quickly I know you are thinking) to them the first couple had said it started...well, this resulted in quite the Mercury disapproved punch up between the two couples, with several variations of insult on the girls sexual activities, and while they were punching on, I got in and got into the taxi ahead of both of them...and was rewarded with a Sudanese taxi driver who got lost trying to find the Southern Outlet...
Still, at least when Renee comes to visit, I'll remember to put some pants on...
The Central (or why Lolo Jones is hotter than Sally McLellan)
I haven't really got the kind of friend that I'd really like anymore - I'd really like a friend that I could sit down with and say "Do you remember the Best Of Hey Dad CD?" and get the reply "Of course! Who could forget the mix ups!" - I can only go so far with this kind of interesting Australian cultural whatever happened to the Blue Heaven Big M conversation (that's why I'm blogging, a last ditch attempt to force my enthusiasms on the world - did you know you can get Blue Heaven flavouring now? Seriously - how awful does that sound?) before the topic turns back to football, sport (we're amazingly varied) or work. I'm one of those people who isn't a very good conversationalist about work, well, I can talk about work but I just don't much care. One day I'll wake up and realise my priorities were all wrong, but for right now, I'm happy to talk Homer Simpson style about how I always know what football coaches should do. It's interesting though when you do meet someone who genuinely knows about football how you freeze up at the lack of actual positional knowledge you do have, but hey, I know Collingwood should never have traded Heath Scotland and that's good enough for me. At lot of my finer conversational moments take place, of course, in pubs. These aren't the drunken conversations at night were people tell you what the really think of you, but rather the innocent, individual little chats around a big table while you wait for people to get off work before the lightweights go home and before you move onto another pub and call them lightweights before realising at about 1am how much you wish you were a lightweight. I must admit, I have a massive aversion to sitting alone at pubs, and would rather walk around the block than sit on my own reading the Herald Sun and looking a bit tragic. And for many years, there's only been one Hobart pub that satisfies the need as an easily reachable meeting place, has affordable beer, a clientele that isn't snobbish or discerning, tasty delicious snacks brought to you free on a tray, live sport on television, and poker machines out the back...and then completely ruins it with one fatal error. That place - The Central...
Now, I don't think I'm being flippant to say without The Central, I wouldn't have very many friends. When I first started drinking in Hobart (as opposed to just going to that really weird underground place where you felt about 200 years old if you were 14, the one with the giant screens and the Disney Channel music, the hell was that place?) it was a Friday night ritual to meet up at Central. Luckily, Central is in the centre of Hobart, which is handy, since no one can ever do them for false advertising. Unlike, oh I don't know, Syrup, where I got punched in the head, there are no physical problems with the Central - the only problem I've ever had with the place was a bloke who pretended to be taking a cover charge to let people in, and who burst out laughing at me when I reached for my wallet. I'd love to say I had a great comeback but it was something like "grow a brain!" (I might as well thrown in a "duh-brain" or a "so funny I forgot to laugh!" for all the Sleepover Club level of comeback ability I showed). Other than that, nothing really happens there - it's a nice, pleasant place to sit down, have a beer and a nice chat. I don't remember a single ostentatious Victoria Tavern style gimmicked promotion involving Coyote Ugly, not a single celebrity appearance, not a guest appearance by a band, not a troubled brawl outside the taxi rank between slappers and himbos and no incident in which I've clashed with a bouncer (which for me is pretty good). If the Central was your friend, it'd be the one who loaned you five dollars when you needed it, the one who scooped you off the lawn at 3am and tucked you in...if it was a drink it'd be milk and if it was a Collingwood player it'd be Scott Burns. There's no fuss, there's no frills, there's a bottle shop next to it and a taxi rank outside just to help you on your journey onward...there's just...good solid conversation before it's time to move on...unlike the horrible Irish Murphys and it's ban on people being sick, the Central wouldn't throw you out, in fact, it's probably got a sick bay to make sure you are OK...
Now, this is all well and good, but there is a massive problem with the Central. Just like that solid reliable friend who would lend you five dollars, there's much sexier, flasher alternatives. Just as you can't expect Sally McLellan to be Lolo Jones, Kristine Radford to be Amanda Coetzer, or Scott Burns to be Dale Thomas, so the Central can only ever be a place to meet up before you move on. Some people may dispute this, but it's true. The only people I've ever seen there at 9pm are poker machine addicts and people in there perving on Hobarts hottest barmaid (she's way out of your league man who drinks Midori to try and look like he has a feminine side...we know who you are and we know what you are up to). This one time we went to see Ross Noble (chimps on bikes style comedian fact fans) at the Theatre Royal and we had a drink at Central at, oh, 7pm? It was completely empty apart from me, my friend, and a cleaner lady who looked like the blacksmith from the Great Expectations episode of South Park ("Oh don't mind me, I just stick to me blacksmiffing" - that guy). Not even Midori man was there. The snacks were though, they are kind enough to provide snacks, on a little dainty tray, but still everyone had already moved on, and gone to Syrup, which seems insane when you think about it - why would anyone want to go to a nightclub where they play Dave Dobbyn, the bouncers punch you in the head, girls don't want to talk to you, and the girl who stamps your hand sometimes will finish off what the bouncers start? And that's when I realised the major problem with the Central wasn't that everyone wanted thrills and spills, or to run anyway from Midori Man, or run a gauntlet to try and pick up a clearly bored uni student at Syrup or queue for 12 hours at Isobar just to end up talking to a girl who's sick in a potplant...
It hit me then that the main problem with the Central is that it's central (that's good writing!) function is a conversational pit (like the Beatles had in Help!) - so why do they then ruin it with...the singer. Every single time I ever went into the Central, we were having a lovely pleasant chat about Melbourne Victory or something and then...the tuning up feedback. On comes the artist in residence with his guitar, and it's time for some good old fashioned pub cover version rock. Now, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with pub singers - at Customs, they spend so long setting up the band area and knocking you out of the way to put up a speaker, you know that the band is coming on so you can deal with it - but this guy, he can certainly play the guitar, but he's a little bit like a drop of lime flavouring in a bottle of banana milk. And you know, you just know, he's going to do Wonderwall (or the new one - you know he's going to do Wish You Well by Bernard Hitman Fanning). I hate Wonderwall - it reminds me of a time I really didn't have any musical discernings and just loved Oasis because they were popular and everyone said I had to. I even went to see them at Almondvale stadium in Livingston and...let's move on. And he's really loud in a small space, so what can you do? So the conversation is essentially immediately halted by Summer of 69 and Alive, and that's when everyone has to go. A girl on a blog I read once wrote that when she used to go to Maccas, when the clown came out at a kids party, that was the Maccas way of moving the parents on because the clown took the kids outside, the adults would get bored, and restless, and thus leave. Maybe this is part of the Central marketing plan, before everyone gets onto spirits and cracks onto the barmaid, get the singer out and make everyone go to Curleys. Brilliantly, one night this girl singer was on, clearly a channeller of Connie from Sneaky Sound System (the sneakiest of all the sound systems). She was giving it a bit of rock and roll star banter with a lot of "WOO!" and "WASSUPHOBART!" ("My arse from the seat cos I'm getting out of here" is always my response to that). Her response to the parade to bodies going past her was to try and engage the passers by in a bit of banter, and ask for requests. This old bloke, clearly just having a retirement drink and a good solid glass of Boags, has responded to the request for requests with the old classic "I request you shut the fuck up" - but of course, he said it way too loud, copped a massive glare from Connie, some good old belly laughs...and then without any further conversation, she proceeded to do Wonderwall.
At least it wasn't a reference to her first real six string I suppose...
Now, I don't think I'm being flippant to say without The Central, I wouldn't have very many friends. When I first started drinking in Hobart (as opposed to just going to that really weird underground place where you felt about 200 years old if you were 14, the one with the giant screens and the Disney Channel music, the hell was that place?) it was a Friday night ritual to meet up at Central. Luckily, Central is in the centre of Hobart, which is handy, since no one can ever do them for false advertising. Unlike, oh I don't know, Syrup, where I got punched in the head, there are no physical problems with the Central - the only problem I've ever had with the place was a bloke who pretended to be taking a cover charge to let people in, and who burst out laughing at me when I reached for my wallet. I'd love to say I had a great comeback but it was something like "grow a brain!" (I might as well thrown in a "duh-brain" or a "so funny I forgot to laugh!" for all the Sleepover Club level of comeback ability I showed). Other than that, nothing really happens there - it's a nice, pleasant place to sit down, have a beer and a nice chat. I don't remember a single ostentatious Victoria Tavern style gimmicked promotion involving Coyote Ugly, not a single celebrity appearance, not a guest appearance by a band, not a troubled brawl outside the taxi rank between slappers and himbos and no incident in which I've clashed with a bouncer (which for me is pretty good). If the Central was your friend, it'd be the one who loaned you five dollars when you needed it, the one who scooped you off the lawn at 3am and tucked you in...if it was a drink it'd be milk and if it was a Collingwood player it'd be Scott Burns. There's no fuss, there's no frills, there's a bottle shop next to it and a taxi rank outside just to help you on your journey onward...there's just...good solid conversation before it's time to move on...unlike the horrible Irish Murphys and it's ban on people being sick, the Central wouldn't throw you out, in fact, it's probably got a sick bay to make sure you are OK...
Now, this is all well and good, but there is a massive problem with the Central. Just like that solid reliable friend who would lend you five dollars, there's much sexier, flasher alternatives. Just as you can't expect Sally McLellan to be Lolo Jones, Kristine Radford to be Amanda Coetzer, or Scott Burns to be Dale Thomas, so the Central can only ever be a place to meet up before you move on. Some people may dispute this, but it's true. The only people I've ever seen there at 9pm are poker machine addicts and people in there perving on Hobarts hottest barmaid (she's way out of your league man who drinks Midori to try and look like he has a feminine side...we know who you are and we know what you are up to). This one time we went to see Ross Noble (chimps on bikes style comedian fact fans) at the Theatre Royal and we had a drink at Central at, oh, 7pm? It was completely empty apart from me, my friend, and a cleaner lady who looked like the blacksmith from the Great Expectations episode of South Park ("Oh don't mind me, I just stick to me blacksmiffing" - that guy). Not even Midori man was there. The snacks were though, they are kind enough to provide snacks, on a little dainty tray, but still everyone had already moved on, and gone to Syrup, which seems insane when you think about it - why would anyone want to go to a nightclub where they play Dave Dobbyn, the bouncers punch you in the head, girls don't want to talk to you, and the girl who stamps your hand sometimes will finish off what the bouncers start? And that's when I realised the major problem with the Central wasn't that everyone wanted thrills and spills, or to run anyway from Midori Man, or run a gauntlet to try and pick up a clearly bored uni student at Syrup or queue for 12 hours at Isobar just to end up talking to a girl who's sick in a potplant...
It hit me then that the main problem with the Central is that it's central (that's good writing!) function is a conversational pit (like the Beatles had in Help!) - so why do they then ruin it with...the singer. Every single time I ever went into the Central, we were having a lovely pleasant chat about Melbourne Victory or something and then...the tuning up feedback. On comes the artist in residence with his guitar, and it's time for some good old fashioned pub cover version rock. Now, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with pub singers - at Customs, they spend so long setting up the band area and knocking you out of the way to put up a speaker, you know that the band is coming on so you can deal with it - but this guy, he can certainly play the guitar, but he's a little bit like a drop of lime flavouring in a bottle of banana milk. And you know, you just know, he's going to do Wonderwall (or the new one - you know he's going to do Wish You Well by Bernard Hitman Fanning). I hate Wonderwall - it reminds me of a time I really didn't have any musical discernings and just loved Oasis because they were popular and everyone said I had to. I even went to see them at Almondvale stadium in Livingston and...let's move on. And he's really loud in a small space, so what can you do? So the conversation is essentially immediately halted by Summer of 69 and Alive, and that's when everyone has to go. A girl on a blog I read once wrote that when she used to go to Maccas, when the clown came out at a kids party, that was the Maccas way of moving the parents on because the clown took the kids outside, the adults would get bored, and restless, and thus leave. Maybe this is part of the Central marketing plan, before everyone gets onto spirits and cracks onto the barmaid, get the singer out and make everyone go to Curleys. Brilliantly, one night this girl singer was on, clearly a channeller of Connie from Sneaky Sound System (the sneakiest of all the sound systems). She was giving it a bit of rock and roll star banter with a lot of "WOO!" and "WASSUPHOBART!" ("My arse from the seat cos I'm getting out of here" is always my response to that). Her response to the parade to bodies going past her was to try and engage the passers by in a bit of banter, and ask for requests. This old bloke, clearly just having a retirement drink and a good solid glass of Boags, has responded to the request for requests with the old classic "I request you shut the fuck up" - but of course, he said it way too loud, copped a massive glare from Connie, some good old belly laughs...and then without any further conversation, she proceeded to do Wonderwall.
At least it wasn't a reference to her first real six string I suppose...
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Great Kettering Man Drought Of 08
Mena Gimps It Up For Charity
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
So I've woken up this morning and I've got a day off which is really good because it means I can sleep in - I always plan to have a massive sleep in, but my head is too full of thoughts that are really loud in my head and I have to wake up. I have a massive fear of Collingwood players being interviewed in the paper because it means they play terrible in the next game they play - so when I get up I scan the papers to make sure no one has told the paper what great form they are in. I read the Herald Sun, because let's face it, when you read the Tasmanian papers and head for the social section, it's not as appealing. I love local events, but I also love reading about little fashion shows and club launches in Melbourne because I just that whole little sub celebrity vibe - exclusive, but not exclusive enough you can't set your sights on attenting - where TV Rock (the band you get when you can't get The Potbelliez) provide the soundtrack and Anne Maree Cooksley gets her free glass of champagne. I was obviously thus quite excited to read about Fashion Aid, hosted by Jennifer Hansen with special comments by Richmond Tigers star Matthew Richardson and a soundtrack by TV Rock. It's an obscure celebrity fest, and perfect for my girl Anne Maree to go to and do...whatever it is she does. I guess the girl in the picture, Melbourne model Mena, is the new Kasia Z (the girlfriend of Lance Franklin)...world keeps on spinning...
Anyway, enough about that, lest I start turning into Perez Hilton...I really hate him. What I've been mostly focusing on today in my thoughts is that Tassie is apparently suffering from a man drought. No doubt Melbourne model Mena can and will get herself a footballer, but if she was in Tasmania, she couldn't even do that. This man drought is apparently worse than the real drought, and certainly the Mercury is right on top of the situation, informing everyone that Kettering is the place to go if you are single and male - for every 1 single man, there are 9 single women. I don't know a lot about Kettering, I haven't been there very much although it's not far from Kingston. The only time I've ever been to Kettering was to see one of my friends play cricket at the semi legendary Kettering Oval, home of the equally legendary Taste Of The Huon festival where everything tastes of pork rinds and pine (good name for an album that). I went down there and it was about 1 degree, so we stayed in the car to watch the cricket and I didn't really realise I had on my Collingwood jacket. Now if you don't know Collingwood aren't the most popular team in the country, and as we were driving off, this kid with about two teeth and one beanie per brain cell has knocked on the car window and he's gathering his mates around to deliver some real witticism and he's pressing his spotty face right up against the glass - I didn't wind the window down, because I knew what they were going to say and it was going to involve the phrase "Collingwood" and "fucked"...with maybe the word are in the middle, or some spittle maybe. He wasn't going to debate me on the merits of Teenwolf Too or the music of Etienne De Crecy I wouldn't have thought. I've never even been to Ketterings main attraction, the Mermaid Cafe, where you can always enjoy a relaxed coffee (stressed coffees presumably failed the interview) and stunning harbour views. It seemed like a really nice, friendly local community in fairness, the people selling the Violet Crumbles seemed to have their heart right in the community, and I love that, but I can't help feeling if the beanie to brain cell ratio in the average male is as the fine example of Kettering manhood proved to be, then no wonder there's a man drought...
The Mercury chose to illustrate the story with two girls called Kelly and Alix (wasn't she one of the people who ate some glazed boar at the end of the Asterix books?), one of whom said something about "all the single men are hiding or gay" and you kind of knew that the word gay wasn't the word she used and it was cleaned up in editing. I don't know these girls, or whether they live in Kettering, but one was on her mobile phone and one was drinking coffee. They didn't seem strangers to the Syrup scene, but I kind of thought there props were meant to represent individuality and how independent they were and the lifestyles they lead, but there's nothing worse than being cracked onto in a coffee shop, which is where I think Alix is going wrong. I was cracked onto in Gloria Jeans once, while I was waiting for my Latte (ooh, get you you Age reader), almost being dragged onto the horns of desperation by a girl who cracked onto me by talking about invidual types of coffee beans and how much she liked the fact that Starbucks was selling Paul McCartney Cds (she would have had me had she preferred the single work of Ringo, La Di Da is awesome). I hadn't been that uncomfortable since I was in a queue where an old woman was individually discussing her coupon rights with all 6 staff in the shop, and no one else was getting served, and my friend was audibly wishing her a heart attack...as for Kelly and her thinly veiled homophobia, I think she might be one of Syrups infamous corner girls. If you don't know, in Syrup lately there's a group of girls who stand in the corners of Syrup talking on their mobile phone, and if they get chatted up by someone they don't like, they just tap their phone as if they are busy and stare into the middle distance until the would be paramour (I love Misery Business, what a great song) gives up and moves on, hopefully not to a different corner. My mate swears he tried to chat up a girl who's phone was clearly off when she was doing this - so why bother going out? Surely there's some great things on TV now Hey Hey It's Saturday isn't on anymore? There's certainly nothing wrong with standards though and I think good on Kelly and Alix for refusing to settle - hell, if I hadn't settled, I'd probably not be a Collingwood supporter, and how much happier would I be then!
I guess the other thing with Kettering that I know is that it seems to be a bit of an "alternative lifestyle" (hello Kelly) culture, ie. Xavier Rudd fans. I can't speak too openly on this as a reason for the man drought, but I can speak on the great Burnie man drought of 98, which seemed to be something everyone was really keen to tell me about when I went up there that year for the summer. It was the talk of pubs, and clubs, and Maggies Bazaar (I've so got to get to that place soon) - my guide to this man drought was a girl called Candice, who always told me that every single man in Burnie was a jerk and a hobo and a wife beater and a Tom Petty fan (she hated that Mary Jane song). She would illustrate this by flirting with people in pizza shops, outside K-Mart or on the phone until they displayed their incompatibility to her by listing a book, movie or TV show or displaying a characteristic she didn't find acceptable. In my case, even though I wasn't from Penguin, according to her we could never go out because I liked Tori Amos, although this was never really qualified. I think she just thought I was a minger. Now I'm not Peter Positive, but this seemed to be entirely the wrong way to go about things, a little bit like if I picked up a javelin, said there's no way in hell I can throw this javelin it's a stupid sport, and then deliberately throwing it backwards to prove my point. Candice would always tell me every single man she ever met was lazy, with the exception of Nelson Mandela. She absolutely loved Nelson Mandela, found him really inspirational, and even though she was in her twenties, would have engaged Winnie in a bout of foxy boxing just to get with the guy. Eventually though, even Nelson failed her. I remember she told her that she had lost the last man she ever thought was perfect while we both had a Caramel Big M at the bus stop one day. She interrupted me midway through my fascinating description of the exact way to make a Blue Heaven Big M to tell me that, finally, Nelson Mandela was also off the list. I asked her why, and she stared wistfully at her shoes, shrugged, and said "saw him with the Spice Girls..."
I don't know what became of Candice, but I like to think she's living in Kettering, having coffee with Alix, and picking holes in St Francis Of Assisi...
Staying at Eddie McGuires house
So I've woken up this morning and been pretty grumpy because I'm sore and tired and I'm not sure what day of the week it is. I get disgruntled in the mornings if I get woken up with a start, and at no stage do I seem to recover and become gruntled again. In fact, as I write this, I'm sore all over, and only the quality of the Banjos (them again) sausage roll I've eaten for morning tea has perked me up. I was really annoyed to hear about the disco in New Zealand that was pumping out a bit of Bob The Builder for the kids and got shut down by neighbours complaining about the noise - I don't mind cranking up a bit of Can We Fix It when I'm feeling festive and ironic (I like my mums Scottish inspired creation, Shug The Shoveller, who's response to "Can We Fix It!" was a dis-interested "Nup"). I love the girl who lined up for ages to go and get Stephanie Rice and E-Sulls autographs only to be told they were only signing sponsors underpants. I love the fact she'd skipped dole day to go and draw E-Sull on her arm and got rejected. I'm all for this kind of devotion - I still feel the sting of rejection when my Dad wouldn't let me cross the road to go and get Chris Reynolds autograph after the 1987 NTFL Premiership win by Penguin, and can still remember looking over at the football ground and seeing the massive bonfire lighting up the night sky and feeling a little piqued that I couldn't just go and have a schooner or two. Mind you, I hadn't drawn Chris Reynolds on my arm, that would have got me in the paper. And the way I draw, it would either have been a stick figure or something that looked like a pig - I painted a spaceship in art class when I was little and turned it into a hippo, it was the only A I ever got until a hippy Grade 8 art teacher said one of my paintings was a violent explosion of colour, which it was cos I cracked it and threw all the paint at the canvas, Angry Homer style. And I'm completely sure that my parents are planning something really terrible for my 30th. I hope it's not a Veronica pretending to be a lesbian, that's the worst gift I could get...
So my Mum, she has this little joke she's started telling me where she goes "Remember when we were in Melbourne and we stayed with Eddie McGuire?" - furreners, if you don't know, Eddie McGuire is an Australian television personality, and the president of my football club, and let's just say opinions on him are mixed and leave it politely at that - and she's absolutely right, when I was 10, we stayed at Eddie McGuires house, the joke of course being the Eddie McGuire we stayed was a nonogenerian Scottish gentlemen with a wife called Bessie who in that true kids fashion, I have no idea how we knew them, and I certainly don't think I ever saw them again. However, for three days in 1988 (the year before the release of Cop and A Half with Burt Reynolds), I did indeed stay with Eddie McGuire...um...that's it...that's posted...goodnight everybody. Well, not really, because there was more to it than that. You see, this was our stop over in Melbourne before I left Penguin to go back and live in Scotland, and it had not been a good week. I had a terrific farewell, beating this school we really hated 2-1 in soccer, and I kicked this red headed kid I hated fair in the guts, but I still had to leave Penguin behind, especially when we sat in our empty house and I had the time to look at my signed Bicentennial medal. And my friends. And my (admittedly now a lot more corporate) swimming pool. And Swanny, my hairdresser who slashed my ear...OK, I wasn't sad to miss him. Well, I kinda was, he had some awesome musk sticks. Anyway, I was in this wooden strangers room in some suburb of Melbourne where everything was my favourite kind of pine (who doesn't love treated pine, anyone?) and I always remember he came in and gave this little yellow book about soccer, and it was really nice of him to do that, and he'd written this lovely inscription in it about Scotland and stuff...my parents meanwhile did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to being sociable, sitting through a four hour VHS tape of their ballroom dancing which had it involved some Paul Licuria Dancing With The Stars style funkadelia might have been impressive, but which in fact was a room full of dancers shuffing awkwardly to the Pride Of Erin Brockovich or whatever they do in those situations. Well, it was four hours now I think about it start to finish, if you take out the times Eddie paused it to show Big Willie and his incredible much talked about shuffling, only to start the tape again and commentate on a seemingly indistinguishable old man clomping around the scout hall - I guess we just didn't have a trained eye. We also went to dinner at someones house and someone let a cockatoo out that clamped onto everyones head (I'm sure it was trained) in a seemingly pre-determined order. Again, I found something else to do while my parents did the Haworth style lifting in the social world - I found an ATARI in one of the kids rooms and sat down and played Super Slalom until hometime. I think that's always been my state of mind, it seems quite solitary and abstract at times, the classic mindset of the only child, and not even a flying cockatoo trained to peck at crusty bread and say "beer" can lure me into social situations with strangers at times.
The centrepiece of our trip was an outing to a VFL game between my team, the Pies In The Sky and the North Melbourne Bob Ansett owned Kangaroos. I've exaggerated so many aspects of this day in my own mind - we didn't win by 132 points, but by about 50, it wasn't bucketing with rain, just a bit muddy, and it wasn't at the MCG or a final, it was Waverley Park and no one was there, or anything else I associate with this day. I do remember being completely struck by the sheer size of Melbourne though, as we walked along the streets in variable weather. Mostly, I remember it was the first place I ever saw a caramel Milky Way, just sitting in the shop in a brown wrapper like a long lost girlfriend with a fantastic new hairstyle. Caramel? In a Milky Way? What is going on...and at the ground there wasn't just brassy old Di saying lewd things to kids like "I'll give him a lesson when he's older" and selling Violet Crumbles at marked up prices like in Penguin, there were vans selling kebabs and salad sandwiches and Halls Lemonade that wasn't even out of date...less impressively, it was also the first place I ever saw Home and Away, the episode where Nico turns the hose on Frank because he's not in the wedding party, and I was totally hooked, in a way I wouldn't be with Home and Away again until the Thomsen/Godbold era. So we're walking along to the game and Eddie suddenly realises he's left his banana at home. That's banana, single, not even a packed lunch with a Rice Bubbles bar in it, just one banana, and he decides we have to go and get it, because it's his banana, and one from the shops just wouldn't be prepared right. What can you do? Turn the hose on him? So we walked all the way home just to get Eddies banana, then all the way back, and missed a good chunk of the first 1/4 (in my version we missed most of the game and arrived with 5 minutes to go and got in for free). My Dad is still pretty annoyed at this, and brings it up whenever we're stuck in traffic mentioning someone must have gone back for a banana. I can never exaggerate that my first ever VFL game involved just a lot of angry emotions - I was angry because we didn't have time to look at merch, Eddie was angry he didn't have his banana, Dad was angry because he didn't get to see the start of the game, Nico was angry he wasn't in the wedding party, and the woman in the row in front of me was the angriest person of all - she was head of a family of 6 North Melbourne supporters sitting in a row with one kid sitting in the middle of the family in a Collingwood beanie, smiling all day long. At the end of the game, the Mum just turned to the kid and said "If you say one word you are fucking dead", to which the kid simply froze in fear. If only he'd gone home for his banana...
I don't really remember Bessie, I don't know what she did - obviously apart from the ball room dancing, we got a fair idea of her abilities in that regard. Maybe she was the brains of the outfit, or maybe she just hated us. When it comes to Eddie, well, my favourite ever line of rap music (is that a correctly constructed opening?) is on Jay Zs the Black Tape where he raps on the subject of what happens when a rapper tries to deliver a message and fails to connect that he's, quote, "Just talkin to ya...(sigh)...just talking through ya"...I really love that line because Jay Z has been talking through me for years, and I can't remember the last time anything Jay Z said connected with me ("stack chips in anticipation of precipitation on a rainy day" indeed), but it always makes me think of Eddie. I always felt I was talking through him in our brief conversations, that whatever I was showing him wasn't really registering, that he was of an age and from a time of strict train timetable like routines, only eating bananas after 12 and never drinking juice before 2, before a bit of Willisee at night and some toast with crusts cut off at 6:42 and ball room dancing at 7:31. Whatever I was saying to him (and most of it was nonsense, about the decline of Transformers or Empty Nest or...actually, I just realised I'm still the same) just bounced off him and struggled to get through a fog of routine and muddling. Look Eddie, it's time for Lost Cities Of Gold, want to...no, it's 4:37, you've got gardening to do, cheers bud. Everything was set up, there was no spontaniety or deviation at all, just treated pine and elevenses, ballroom dancing and routine. But it made him happy, and I wasn't going to argue with that, he'd earned the right to live the way he chose, and he chose to live his life in set order. For all that though, he gave me something really kind and heartfelt, and I did keep the soccer book for ages, referring to it whenever I wanted to check out something soccer related on the history of the European Championships or just wanted to remember someone doing something really decent for a kid he didn't know. I'll always really appreciate that.
Oh yeah, Bessie had a thing for antique pigs...never did find out what that was about...
So my Mum, she has this little joke she's started telling me where she goes "Remember when we were in Melbourne and we stayed with Eddie McGuire?" - furreners, if you don't know, Eddie McGuire is an Australian television personality, and the president of my football club, and let's just say opinions on him are mixed and leave it politely at that - and she's absolutely right, when I was 10, we stayed at Eddie McGuires house, the joke of course being the Eddie McGuire we stayed was a nonogenerian Scottish gentlemen with a wife called Bessie who in that true kids fashion, I have no idea how we knew them, and I certainly don't think I ever saw them again. However, for three days in 1988 (the year before the release of Cop and A Half with Burt Reynolds), I did indeed stay with Eddie McGuire...um...that's it...that's posted...goodnight everybody. Well, not really, because there was more to it than that. You see, this was our stop over in Melbourne before I left Penguin to go back and live in Scotland, and it had not been a good week. I had a terrific farewell, beating this school we really hated 2-1 in soccer, and I kicked this red headed kid I hated fair in the guts, but I still had to leave Penguin behind, especially when we sat in our empty house and I had the time to look at my signed Bicentennial medal. And my friends. And my (admittedly now a lot more corporate) swimming pool. And Swanny, my hairdresser who slashed my ear...OK, I wasn't sad to miss him. Well, I kinda was, he had some awesome musk sticks. Anyway, I was in this wooden strangers room in some suburb of Melbourne where everything was my favourite kind of pine (who doesn't love treated pine, anyone?) and I always remember he came in and gave this little yellow book about soccer, and it was really nice of him to do that, and he'd written this lovely inscription in it about Scotland and stuff...my parents meanwhile did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to being sociable, sitting through a four hour VHS tape of their ballroom dancing which had it involved some Paul Licuria Dancing With The Stars style funkadelia might have been impressive, but which in fact was a room full of dancers shuffing awkwardly to the Pride Of Erin Brockovich or whatever they do in those situations. Well, it was four hours now I think about it start to finish, if you take out the times Eddie paused it to show Big Willie and his incredible much talked about shuffling, only to start the tape again and commentate on a seemingly indistinguishable old man clomping around the scout hall - I guess we just didn't have a trained eye. We also went to dinner at someones house and someone let a cockatoo out that clamped onto everyones head (I'm sure it was trained) in a seemingly pre-determined order. Again, I found something else to do while my parents did the Haworth style lifting in the social world - I found an ATARI in one of the kids rooms and sat down and played Super Slalom until hometime. I think that's always been my state of mind, it seems quite solitary and abstract at times, the classic mindset of the only child, and not even a flying cockatoo trained to peck at crusty bread and say "beer" can lure me into social situations with strangers at times.
The centrepiece of our trip was an outing to a VFL game between my team, the Pies In The Sky and the North Melbourne Bob Ansett owned Kangaroos. I've exaggerated so many aspects of this day in my own mind - we didn't win by 132 points, but by about 50, it wasn't bucketing with rain, just a bit muddy, and it wasn't at the MCG or a final, it was Waverley Park and no one was there, or anything else I associate with this day. I do remember being completely struck by the sheer size of Melbourne though, as we walked along the streets in variable weather. Mostly, I remember it was the first place I ever saw a caramel Milky Way, just sitting in the shop in a brown wrapper like a long lost girlfriend with a fantastic new hairstyle. Caramel? In a Milky Way? What is going on...and at the ground there wasn't just brassy old Di saying lewd things to kids like "I'll give him a lesson when he's older" and selling Violet Crumbles at marked up prices like in Penguin, there were vans selling kebabs and salad sandwiches and Halls Lemonade that wasn't even out of date...less impressively, it was also the first place I ever saw Home and Away, the episode where Nico turns the hose on Frank because he's not in the wedding party, and I was totally hooked, in a way I wouldn't be with Home and Away again until the Thomsen/Godbold era. So we're walking along to the game and Eddie suddenly realises he's left his banana at home. That's banana, single, not even a packed lunch with a Rice Bubbles bar in it, just one banana, and he decides we have to go and get it, because it's his banana, and one from the shops just wouldn't be prepared right. What can you do? Turn the hose on him? So we walked all the way home just to get Eddies banana, then all the way back, and missed a good chunk of the first 1/4 (in my version we missed most of the game and arrived with 5 minutes to go and got in for free). My Dad is still pretty annoyed at this, and brings it up whenever we're stuck in traffic mentioning someone must have gone back for a banana. I can never exaggerate that my first ever VFL game involved just a lot of angry emotions - I was angry because we didn't have time to look at merch, Eddie was angry he didn't have his banana, Dad was angry because he didn't get to see the start of the game, Nico was angry he wasn't in the wedding party, and the woman in the row in front of me was the angriest person of all - she was head of a family of 6 North Melbourne supporters sitting in a row with one kid sitting in the middle of the family in a Collingwood beanie, smiling all day long. At the end of the game, the Mum just turned to the kid and said "If you say one word you are fucking dead", to which the kid simply froze in fear. If only he'd gone home for his banana...
I don't really remember Bessie, I don't know what she did - obviously apart from the ball room dancing, we got a fair idea of her abilities in that regard. Maybe she was the brains of the outfit, or maybe she just hated us. When it comes to Eddie, well, my favourite ever line of rap music (is that a correctly constructed opening?) is on Jay Zs the Black Tape where he raps on the subject of what happens when a rapper tries to deliver a message and fails to connect that he's, quote, "Just talkin to ya...(sigh)...just talking through ya"...I really love that line because Jay Z has been talking through me for years, and I can't remember the last time anything Jay Z said connected with me ("stack chips in anticipation of precipitation on a rainy day" indeed), but it always makes me think of Eddie. I always felt I was talking through him in our brief conversations, that whatever I was showing him wasn't really registering, that he was of an age and from a time of strict train timetable like routines, only eating bananas after 12 and never drinking juice before 2, before a bit of Willisee at night and some toast with crusts cut off at 6:42 and ball room dancing at 7:31. Whatever I was saying to him (and most of it was nonsense, about the decline of Transformers or Empty Nest or...actually, I just realised I'm still the same) just bounced off him and struggled to get through a fog of routine and muddling. Look Eddie, it's time for Lost Cities Of Gold, want to...no, it's 4:37, you've got gardening to do, cheers bud. Everything was set up, there was no spontaniety or deviation at all, just treated pine and elevenses, ballroom dancing and routine. But it made him happy, and I wasn't going to argue with that, he'd earned the right to live the way he chose, and he chose to live his life in set order. For all that though, he gave me something really kind and heartfelt, and I did keep the soccer book for ages, referring to it whenever I wanted to check out something soccer related on the history of the European Championships or just wanted to remember someone doing something really decent for a kid he didn't know. I'll always really appreciate that.
Oh yeah, Bessie had a thing for antique pigs...never did find out what that was about...
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Campbell Town - Spittle, Sleaze, Steam Rollers and Skill Testers
So today I'm standing outside this little bakery and cafe - it's one my Mum takes me to when she meets me for lunch, and it's pleasant enough, waitresses are pretty down to earth, it's a bit disturbing how vast (remember that band? Vast? Whatever happened to them? And The Tea Party?) the place is, you can easily get lost in there, dying in a 50s decored theme booth waiting for some hot soup and crusty bread. It takes ages to serve just because no one can find you. And what I'm doing while I'm standing there isn't trying to pick something from the specials board, but I'm trying to confirm with myself that I have Real American by Hulk Hogan on my IPOD - and sure enough, I do, which is great, because it makes me feel like ordering the crusty bread with a hearty "brother!" on the end of the order....or, perhaps not. Obviously, I'm excited today because Alive and Kicking is on SBS tonight, all about footy fundraising in Woodsdale with promised cross dressing...and you can all surely give up the bosomy Myf, Alan and Adam Hills for one night? Can't you? Look, Adam Hills for three straight stand up shows promised, absolutely swore blind that he was going to bring the Bosom and Alan down to Tassie for a special Spicks and Specks show, and what did we get for this years comedy festival? Tom bloody Gleeson...sigh, yes Adam Hills is a lovely man, I'd love to hate him but I had like a 1/2 hour chat with about London, and yes, he dragged me up on stage one night to do a bit, and was gracious enough to repeat for the audience the little joke I to...wait, why am I sticking up for him! Stuff him, watch Woodsdale! Anyway, so I'm standing there humming away, and I look into the cafe, and I see this old bloke tucking into a chicken sandwich, just completely loving the delicate interplay of the freshly cooked chicken with the store bought white toast loaf...and then I notice, he's got earmuffs on...not just any old earmuffs, but those ones you wear when you are drilling, or bringing in a plane to land with the big ping pong bat or are in the booth in one of those game shows where you aren't allowed to hear the other persons answers. Big giant red earmuffs, stuck to his head, and boy did he look content not having to listen to kids whinging and thinking about his chicken. And I thought, you little Aussie champion, you just want to wear earmuffs, big giant ones, and nothing was going to stop you. It might have been medical, but I like to think he's just got the kind of rebellious elderly spirit I'm going to have when I'm older, and wander around Penguin in my robe and slippers, telling people about the mint Kit Kat and the time Crazytown topped the charts...in fairness, the old bloke in the earmuffs is probably blogging tonight about some annoying 30 year old staring at him and singing Hulk Hogan songs that are on one of those fancy IPOD things he was hearing about...
Whenever I think of earmuffs, wait, let me start that again...when I think of chicken sandwiches and confused elderly gentlemen, I instantly think of Campbell Town. Now, to the good people of Campbell Town who may wish to tell me about the three arch bridge or St Lukes church, I'm sure they are incredibly lovely, but there's no getting away from the fact that Campbell is the designated rest stop for drivers going between Hobart and Burnie (or vice versa - whatever happened to the vice versa? That was the best chocolate ever!) and not a lot else. And that of course means you unfurl grandpa from the car (well you do if you have a grandpa, which I didn't, on account one died and one was with me up to the age of 4 then seemed quite content to set me into the world on my own, with barely any advice of how to whittle wood or whatever the hell grandpas advise you on), wake up the kids, hell, sometimes wake up the driver, and get out and go to a sort of truck stop place and go and eat some food you normally would reject baked by people you'd normally hide your wallet from. Thems country folk boy. My main memory of the Campbell Town stop, apart from the food, chicken sandwiches and confused elderly gentlemen, is that it was the last place I ever saw really un PC comedy magazines. Now, there's obviously the cartoon in the average issue of People Magazine from is pretty full on by modern standards with the buxom blonde, the sleazy mechanic and the double entendre...well, these magazines had the single entendre. I'd say the average punchline involved a woman either being punched in the face, told where to go, or punched in the face and told where to go. Usually the bedroom or the kitchen, certainly not a university where I would like to see more women (oh yes, I read Jill Singer). And there was loads of these things lying around - the poor old community newsletter was shoved in the toilet, but kids were learning all kinds of interesting places there wife should be sent. I actually heard this old guy chuckling at one of these masterworks and saying the immortal "todays so called modern comedians could learn a thing or two!" from this, and he said to this girl, and he was massively sleazing onto her, and sort of pointing at one of the most offensive cartoons (Hagar the Horrible...awful cartoon - Lucky Eddie just never did it for me). She was trying really hard to be pleasant, but he was just reading, and reading...and he never noticed that the girls boyfriend, who by a lovely co-incidence was right behind her working the glad wrap and the deep fry with dexterity, was spitting right in the middle of his burger...and that's the only time I've ever seen that happen, I've just always presumed it did happen and it's why no matter who jumps the queue or how bad the lack of a toast chef is, I never blame the establishment, and his eyes met mine, and I shrugged and gave him a big thumbs up. He spat in it again, just as the old man was launching into a reference about the old lady from Nantucket...with the last line included...
Luckily for the good people at Campbell Town, it's not all sleaze and spittle. There's some fantastic quality grub to be eaten...although I've now obviously put myself off the place. I had the third best ever cheeseburger I've ever had in Tasmania in Campbell Town - the best was obviously at the Parthenon in town (shockingly replaced by a Japanese restaurant where you could get sushi on a train...honestly, do monkeys do the town planning in Hobart), and the 2nd best was at a place called Skooby Doos Hamburger Restaurant which famously had an advert in the football record that didn't tell you a phone number or address, but promised friendly service all night long (if you could find the place somewhere in the world and access the place via a secret knock...actually, where the hell was it? The burger I had at Campbell Town though (and 3rd is no disgrace behind that duo of burger magic) came when I was coming back from Hobart to Burnie with a friend of mine - we had had an argument (boy I'm on argument tip tonight, I'm really a nice person, honest, you should come round, we can discuss the inaccuracies in the Blur biography) about something, which I don't think was very serious, but it was still an argument. I think we had had an argument about Roves real name, or maybe it was because he'd tried to punch me...or something happened anyway, and we weren't talking, which is great fun in Oatlands when you don't have a radio to listen to in the car and have to count speed cameras to pass the time. The reason the hamburger was so good wasn't because of it's quality, it's because we ate next to a man with herbal tea-bags in his pocket. Maybe you had to be there, but the sight of a man roughly the dimensions of Dave McCormack (incidentally, if the girl in the orange top in Custards Girls Like That video ever reads this, I love you) with glasses like coke bottles and big clompy black shoes with a carefully colour coded set of herbal tea bags in his top pocket who's producing them proudly for wife and shouting "Who wants Mint Julip" without any trace of irony can't make you suddenly laugh out loud (no, I won't abbreviate that txt spk style) defrost an icy friendship, bring laughter to the community and make a burger taste like good times and make a brown eyed sky turn blue, then what can? Winning a small plastic duck on the skill tester? OK, that would have been better, but those things are rigged...
I do like Campbell Town for other reasons - although I think the main big truck stop greasy spoon is closed now? Someone might confirm that for me, but that's just really sad and depressing if it is - apart from the grease, and the curiousities. I really liked the way world moved in Campbell Town, the way you saw families, some proud and some dysfunctional, just making those long statewide journies, sitting at tables eating, and how you'd always wonder where they were going, what they were doing, what their lives were like at that particular point. One family I saw in about 1992, I've always wondered about. Our own reasons for going to Hobart that day were entirely because I had the afore mentioned sodie scone face and my parents needed to take me to something, and what better way to repair fractured dislocated conversations with a homesick kid than with a four and half hour car ride where I only had 58 minutes of Game Gear battery life? This other family that came into the restaurant was all dressed in suits, so I was immediately thinking they were coming back from a funeral, or some sort of sad occasion, or were just big fans of the Blues Brothers. They lined up safely in single file order at the counter, to get chips or something, and the eldest kid, he's kind of Hispanic looking while the rest of them are whiter than me (I'm so white I thought Coolio was a type of fan...that slayed in 1995). So I'm sort of interested now because they aren't talking to each other the kids, and Dad is being a real pain, just sort of rolling his eyes and tapping his foot on the ground, trying to get served quicker, and there's just...I don't know, just this real tension around them, an energy that isn't pleasant, and then the Dads pacing, and then the Dad is getting more and more annoyed, and he's about to take his tie off and throw it on the ground because they aren't cooking his chips quickly enough. So he turns to the oldest kid and says "That's the trouble with society today, no quality control! NO FUCKING QUALITY CONTROL! WE CAN'T EVEN GET FUCKING CHIPS QUICKLY!" and he's literally about to jump the counter, and the wait for chips has only been about, oh, a minute or so. And everyones just staring at them, and I'm just fixated on this can of Halls Lemonade, just scared to look. And the little hispanic kid, he's just taken the Dad by the hand, and gone, "don't worry about the chips, let me get them" and the Dad has gone outside and he's just lost his mind, he's just crying on one of the park benches, just smoking and shaking, and we all kind of clued in to the fact that obviously they'd lost someone close to them. and the girl behind the counter who's come back with the chips is just totally unsure what to say. And the little hispanic kid, he's just smiling sweetly, and he just sort of goes "He's just a bit stressed...have a Steam Roller" and given the girl a Steam Roller to make up for the trouble and quietly paid for the chips and just...I don't know what was going on, what they were going through or what the situation was, but I always just that little kids dignity under pressure, and how sweet and calm and wonderful he was on that day, and I hope he made it, and the Dad made it, and everything passed by. Of course, I was so self centred, I was bitching about the fact there was no Sarsparilla Halls in the vending machine...
Here's to you kid, if I ever win one of those damn plastic ducks on the vending machine (I'm still punching) it's dedicated to you...
Whenever I think of earmuffs, wait, let me start that again...when I think of chicken sandwiches and confused elderly gentlemen, I instantly think of Campbell Town. Now, to the good people of Campbell Town who may wish to tell me about the three arch bridge or St Lukes church, I'm sure they are incredibly lovely, but there's no getting away from the fact that Campbell is the designated rest stop for drivers going between Hobart and Burnie (or vice versa - whatever happened to the vice versa? That was the best chocolate ever!) and not a lot else. And that of course means you unfurl grandpa from the car (well you do if you have a grandpa, which I didn't, on account one died and one was with me up to the age of 4 then seemed quite content to set me into the world on my own, with barely any advice of how to whittle wood or whatever the hell grandpas advise you on), wake up the kids, hell, sometimes wake up the driver, and get out and go to a sort of truck stop place and go and eat some food you normally would reject baked by people you'd normally hide your wallet from. Thems country folk boy. My main memory of the Campbell Town stop, apart from the food, chicken sandwiches and confused elderly gentlemen, is that it was the last place I ever saw really un PC comedy magazines. Now, there's obviously the cartoon in the average issue of People Magazine from is pretty full on by modern standards with the buxom blonde, the sleazy mechanic and the double entendre...well, these magazines had the single entendre. I'd say the average punchline involved a woman either being punched in the face, told where to go, or punched in the face and told where to go. Usually the bedroom or the kitchen, certainly not a university where I would like to see more women (oh yes, I read Jill Singer). And there was loads of these things lying around - the poor old community newsletter was shoved in the toilet, but kids were learning all kinds of interesting places there wife should be sent. I actually heard this old guy chuckling at one of these masterworks and saying the immortal "todays so called modern comedians could learn a thing or two!" from this, and he said to this girl, and he was massively sleazing onto her, and sort of pointing at one of the most offensive cartoons (Hagar the Horrible...awful cartoon - Lucky Eddie just never did it for me). She was trying really hard to be pleasant, but he was just reading, and reading...and he never noticed that the girls boyfriend, who by a lovely co-incidence was right behind her working the glad wrap and the deep fry with dexterity, was spitting right in the middle of his burger...and that's the only time I've ever seen that happen, I've just always presumed it did happen and it's why no matter who jumps the queue or how bad the lack of a toast chef is, I never blame the establishment, and his eyes met mine, and I shrugged and gave him a big thumbs up. He spat in it again, just as the old man was launching into a reference about the old lady from Nantucket...with the last line included...
Luckily for the good people at Campbell Town, it's not all sleaze and spittle. There's some fantastic quality grub to be eaten...although I've now obviously put myself off the place. I had the third best ever cheeseburger I've ever had in Tasmania in Campbell Town - the best was obviously at the Parthenon in town (shockingly replaced by a Japanese restaurant where you could get sushi on a train...honestly, do monkeys do the town planning in Hobart), and the 2nd best was at a place called Skooby Doos Hamburger Restaurant which famously had an advert in the football record that didn't tell you a phone number or address, but promised friendly service all night long (if you could find the place somewhere in the world and access the place via a secret knock...actually, where the hell was it? The burger I had at Campbell Town though (and 3rd is no disgrace behind that duo of burger magic) came when I was coming back from Hobart to Burnie with a friend of mine - we had had an argument (boy I'm on argument tip tonight, I'm really a nice person, honest, you should come round, we can discuss the inaccuracies in the Blur biography) about something, which I don't think was very serious, but it was still an argument. I think we had had an argument about Roves real name, or maybe it was because he'd tried to punch me...or something happened anyway, and we weren't talking, which is great fun in Oatlands when you don't have a radio to listen to in the car and have to count speed cameras to pass the time. The reason the hamburger was so good wasn't because of it's quality, it's because we ate next to a man with herbal tea-bags in his pocket. Maybe you had to be there, but the sight of a man roughly the dimensions of Dave McCormack (incidentally, if the girl in the orange top in Custards Girls Like That video ever reads this, I love you) with glasses like coke bottles and big clompy black shoes with a carefully colour coded set of herbal tea bags in his top pocket who's producing them proudly for wife and shouting "Who wants Mint Julip" without any trace of irony can't make you suddenly laugh out loud (no, I won't abbreviate that txt spk style) defrost an icy friendship, bring laughter to the community and make a burger taste like good times and make a brown eyed sky turn blue, then what can? Winning a small plastic duck on the skill tester? OK, that would have been better, but those things are rigged...
I do like Campbell Town for other reasons - although I think the main big truck stop greasy spoon is closed now? Someone might confirm that for me, but that's just really sad and depressing if it is - apart from the grease, and the curiousities. I really liked the way world moved in Campbell Town, the way you saw families, some proud and some dysfunctional, just making those long statewide journies, sitting at tables eating, and how you'd always wonder where they were going, what they were doing, what their lives were like at that particular point. One family I saw in about 1992, I've always wondered about. Our own reasons for going to Hobart that day were entirely because I had the afore mentioned sodie scone face and my parents needed to take me to something, and what better way to repair fractured dislocated conversations with a homesick kid than with a four and half hour car ride where I only had 58 minutes of Game Gear battery life? This other family that came into the restaurant was all dressed in suits, so I was immediately thinking they were coming back from a funeral, or some sort of sad occasion, or were just big fans of the Blues Brothers. They lined up safely in single file order at the counter, to get chips or something, and the eldest kid, he's kind of Hispanic looking while the rest of them are whiter than me (I'm so white I thought Coolio was a type of fan...that slayed in 1995). So I'm sort of interested now because they aren't talking to each other the kids, and Dad is being a real pain, just sort of rolling his eyes and tapping his foot on the ground, trying to get served quicker, and there's just...I don't know, just this real tension around them, an energy that isn't pleasant, and then the Dads pacing, and then the Dad is getting more and more annoyed, and he's about to take his tie off and throw it on the ground because they aren't cooking his chips quickly enough. So he turns to the oldest kid and says "That's the trouble with society today, no quality control! NO FUCKING QUALITY CONTROL! WE CAN'T EVEN GET FUCKING CHIPS QUICKLY!" and he's literally about to jump the counter, and the wait for chips has only been about, oh, a minute or so. And everyones just staring at them, and I'm just fixated on this can of Halls Lemonade, just scared to look. And the little hispanic kid, he's just taken the Dad by the hand, and gone, "don't worry about the chips, let me get them" and the Dad has gone outside and he's just lost his mind, he's just crying on one of the park benches, just smoking and shaking, and we all kind of clued in to the fact that obviously they'd lost someone close to them. and the girl behind the counter who's come back with the chips is just totally unsure what to say. And the little hispanic kid, he's just smiling sweetly, and he just sort of goes "He's just a bit stressed...have a Steam Roller" and given the girl a Steam Roller to make up for the trouble and quietly paid for the chips and just...I don't know what was going on, what they were going through or what the situation was, but I always just that little kids dignity under pressure, and how sweet and calm and wonderful he was on that day, and I hope he made it, and the Dad made it, and everything passed by. Of course, I was so self centred, I was bitching about the fact there was no Sarsparilla Halls in the vending machine...
Here's to you kid, if I ever win one of those damn plastic ducks on the vending machine (I'm still punching) it's dedicated to you...
A big fight about Lamingtons
OK, so it's to complete the circle of life (I guess that makes me Simba) - it was summertime in Northern Michi...no wait, that was Kid Rock. It was 1999, and I had just proven myself the worst law student in the history of the world. Worse than the nervous old Hungarian woman with the flimsy grasp of political correctness, worse than the girl who was 7"1 with the giant man hands...the worst. And I had the marks to prove it. Liverpool had just thrown away a 1-0 lead with a minute to go against Manchester United, and Collingwood were lining up another memorable year under Tony The Tiger Shaw. For me, there was no fallback plan - I'd have to join the workforce. Wait, there's always improvisational comedy to fall back on...no, I had to put the props back in the case and face my fate. Maybe, just maybe, the marks were wrong, it was an 82 not a 28, maybe I could say my Grandma died or I could defer for a decade or I could...no, it's not going to work is it? My parents were naturally very angry, and I couldn't face them just yet - I'd love to say that I showed a Steve Waugh like grit and determination and stuck it out and faced them, but I didn't. To be honest, even though I was facing a lifetime of stacking bottles of lemonade in a supermarket, I didn't seem to care, in my head trying to work out things like who would win a fight between Natalie Appleton and Geri Halliwell rather than thinking about my future. I still remember sitting on the steps after I failed, seeing so many bright young optimistic things though in funky fun GC17 style fashions talking about, like, how awesome it, like, was to be, like, alive (so Avril) and feeling so old, so dis-interested. So that night, instead of going home, I did what I could to get through the night, first of all spending as much time as humanly possible in the Internet computer labs draining the last of my soon to expire password, maybe playing some Sensible soccer or chatting to people about the joys of the banana Milky Way, and then, when that had lost it's appeal quicker than Grape Hubba Bubba (the most maligned of all the flavours), I did the only thing left that I could for the sake of my sanity - I got a six pack of beer from a faculty lounge bar where peoples happiness went straight through me, went round the corner, and went to my girlfriends house, to sit on the porch until morning, and talk about anything but lemonade bottle stacking...
Actually, she wasn't really my girlfriend - if I was to turn into Sid James, I'd simply stay I stayed over, and then do a filthy laugh, but my filthy laugh just sounds a bit rubbish, worse than my impression of a drunk Geordie - because, well, she played netball and had proper dreams and ambitions where as I was like, er...well, I was there also. She had eyes...no, I'm not making the Colin Lane Joke...that were bright and alive and full of interest in the world around her. She quite openly liked someone else, and I was a bit flirty with the single mums at the library, and the whole thing was just totally dysfunctional, and messy, quite arty in the fact that she liked to discuss poetry and literature and I kept only messing it up by mentioning the career trajectory of Burt Reynolds and old episodes of Evening Shade. One night on film night I made her get out Cop and A Half, that was a whole week of frost I tell you. However, don't think it was all Jane and the Dumbarse, I introduced her to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, she made me watch The Woman Who Loved Elvis with Roseanne and Tom Arnold. I can't even remember how we met or what the thought process was behind it - sometimes I think we got talking outside Creek Road netball centre, other times I think we met at uni, other times I think we met on the fourth hole of Moonah pitch and putt in a rain storm and she was more beautiful than...no, it was definitely outside Creek Road netball centre, it's just the fact I can't remember why I was in Moonah that's still got me. It's not exactly a hot bed, and I wasn't hunting around for Reggie biscuits from the bakery...that was later. What was I doing there, was I stalking netballers? Was I hanging out with the Video City skateboard crowd? What was good about all this was that my Mum and Dad, my bugbears, knew nothing about it, so when I was supposed to having job interviews, I was really in her attic playing ATARI, because she bought me ATARI as a present for our two month anniversary...I wish she'd bought me a better game than ET though, how many bugs does that thing have, and I had to go and get Peles Internation...wait...she remembered...we talked about ATARIs one night...she remembered our two month anniversary...oh...
You see, when she bought me an ATARI, and I remember it really clearly because I was outside Sanity sending her a text message and avoiding an interview, I realised that I actually was in a relationship, as opposed to just something that would get me a cameo in Confessions Of a Windowcleaner or something that was passing the time until nap time or just something that was allowing me to listen to different kinds of CDs or something that at times had me in a bad Cheech style state of mind...it was a relationship. With feelings, and presents and dates and trips to netball awards nights and I didn't know it at the time but the guy she liked was actually a jerk who was on trial for displays of public nudity...and it wasn't love, but it was something. We went from a relationship of little quirks like we wouldn't have any kind of Twistie in the house except Cheese, and we picked a favourite one out of the New Bohemians, and then, she was talking about what I could do to find work or what kind of wallpaper goes well in a rented apartment. One morning we even had breakfast together, before I went off to go and play Pacman in a local milk bar and she went off to better herself. I felt incredibly awful that I was being so lazy that I went and had three job interviews that night, and all I wanted for her to be happy, and the best I could do was win her a little pink chicken out of a skill tester machine. It took an hour, but it made her smile. It was to be honest a little sickening, but I felt so greatful to her for her support, and I felt useless around her, embarrassed to be among the unemployed when she was working so hard to get her degree. If I'd known at the time she was struggling so much with her school work and her health, and oddly, was relying on me to cheer her up and make her laugh, I'd have been a lot more self confident, but we were just as neurotic, unsure and...struggling as badly as each other. The difference was, she was trying, and I was failing...
And then, it ended - it was a Sunday, and I had just got a job, and I was sort of distracted, watching some kind of sport or telemovie or something, hoping that my ironic detatched commentary would get me through the day without feeling really guilty about my apathy. She was really quiet, and was baking lamingtons in the kitchen as part of a netball fundraiser. Now, I remember this really clearly, she put the lamingtons on the table in a pyramid, and I am a fantastic judge of lamingtons, in fact I think I took it as a subject in Kindergarten along with not shoving crayons up your nose and advanced nipple cripples, and the thing was, she was a terrible baker, like, worse than me, and I couldn't put beans evenly on toast, but they looked terrific and I know what I meant to say, and how it was meant to sound, but I looked up, and sort of said off hand "Oh, you should have made pink ones" - all I meant was that her netball team had pink bibs, so it would go with the team colours, but it was so flippant, in a way I didn't mean, she just shook her head. Honestly, the way she looked, it was the most beautiful I've ever seen anyone look, just amazingly beautiful in the kitchen light, just standing there in her apron and her own frustration. She just looked at the lamingtons, and sighed deeply. Then, she put her fist right through the middle of the pyramid, sending bits of lamingtons everywhere, and stormed out. I realise now how it sounded - how it sounds when you are slogging your guts out and can't get any support. And how it feels when you think you've done nothing wrong and someone brings your world crashing down. And it wasn't even that one thing, nothing to do with lamingtons, it was just...everything. Everything on top of her. I've thought since that day that the world won't end because of religions or cultural differences or disputes over land - it will end because one person at a conference wants tea and gets coffee, and takes it out on the world. I've seen a million relationships, friendships, families - my Dad and his Dad haven't spoken for 26 years because of a fight over a christening shawl - just dis-integrate over nothing, small, tiny issues, the size of a speck of dust, but it's never just that...it's never just lamingtons...
I saw her a year later, and we spoke for thirty seconds outside H&R Block, and we said how are you, and made a joke about Gal Costa, and that was that...closure....and as she went off down the road, I wished her well quietly, and let it all go after three seconds of wistfulness and regret...I don't know what became of her, but we'll always have The Woman Who Loved Elvis...
Actually, she wasn't really my girlfriend - if I was to turn into Sid James, I'd simply stay I stayed over, and then do a filthy laugh, but my filthy laugh just sounds a bit rubbish, worse than my impression of a drunk Geordie - because, well, she played netball and had proper dreams and ambitions where as I was like, er...well, I was there also. She had eyes...no, I'm not making the Colin Lane Joke...that were bright and alive and full of interest in the world around her. She quite openly liked someone else, and I was a bit flirty with the single mums at the library, and the whole thing was just totally dysfunctional, and messy, quite arty in the fact that she liked to discuss poetry and literature and I kept only messing it up by mentioning the career trajectory of Burt Reynolds and old episodes of Evening Shade. One night on film night I made her get out Cop and A Half, that was a whole week of frost I tell you. However, don't think it was all Jane and the Dumbarse, I introduced her to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, she made me watch The Woman Who Loved Elvis with Roseanne and Tom Arnold. I can't even remember how we met or what the thought process was behind it - sometimes I think we got talking outside Creek Road netball centre, other times I think we met at uni, other times I think we met on the fourth hole of Moonah pitch and putt in a rain storm and she was more beautiful than...no, it was definitely outside Creek Road netball centre, it's just the fact I can't remember why I was in Moonah that's still got me. It's not exactly a hot bed, and I wasn't hunting around for Reggie biscuits from the bakery...that was later. What was I doing there, was I stalking netballers? Was I hanging out with the Video City skateboard crowd? What was good about all this was that my Mum and Dad, my bugbears, knew nothing about it, so when I was supposed to having job interviews, I was really in her attic playing ATARI, because she bought me ATARI as a present for our two month anniversary...I wish she'd bought me a better game than ET though, how many bugs does that thing have, and I had to go and get Peles Internation...wait...she remembered...we talked about ATARIs one night...she remembered our two month anniversary...oh...
You see, when she bought me an ATARI, and I remember it really clearly because I was outside Sanity sending her a text message and avoiding an interview, I realised that I actually was in a relationship, as opposed to just something that would get me a cameo in Confessions Of a Windowcleaner or something that was passing the time until nap time or just something that was allowing me to listen to different kinds of CDs or something that at times had me in a bad Cheech style state of mind...it was a relationship. With feelings, and presents and dates and trips to netball awards nights and I didn't know it at the time but the guy she liked was actually a jerk who was on trial for displays of public nudity...and it wasn't love, but it was something. We went from a relationship of little quirks like we wouldn't have any kind of Twistie in the house except Cheese, and we picked a favourite one out of the New Bohemians, and then, she was talking about what I could do to find work or what kind of wallpaper goes well in a rented apartment. One morning we even had breakfast together, before I went off to go and play Pacman in a local milk bar and she went off to better herself. I felt incredibly awful that I was being so lazy that I went and had three job interviews that night, and all I wanted for her to be happy, and the best I could do was win her a little pink chicken out of a skill tester machine. It took an hour, but it made her smile. It was to be honest a little sickening, but I felt so greatful to her for her support, and I felt useless around her, embarrassed to be among the unemployed when she was working so hard to get her degree. If I'd known at the time she was struggling so much with her school work and her health, and oddly, was relying on me to cheer her up and make her laugh, I'd have been a lot more self confident, but we were just as neurotic, unsure and...struggling as badly as each other. The difference was, she was trying, and I was failing...
And then, it ended - it was a Sunday, and I had just got a job, and I was sort of distracted, watching some kind of sport or telemovie or something, hoping that my ironic detatched commentary would get me through the day without feeling really guilty about my apathy. She was really quiet, and was baking lamingtons in the kitchen as part of a netball fundraiser. Now, I remember this really clearly, she put the lamingtons on the table in a pyramid, and I am a fantastic judge of lamingtons, in fact I think I took it as a subject in Kindergarten along with not shoving crayons up your nose and advanced nipple cripples, and the thing was, she was a terrible baker, like, worse than me, and I couldn't put beans evenly on toast, but they looked terrific and I know what I meant to say, and how it was meant to sound, but I looked up, and sort of said off hand "Oh, you should have made pink ones" - all I meant was that her netball team had pink bibs, so it would go with the team colours, but it was so flippant, in a way I didn't mean, she just shook her head. Honestly, the way she looked, it was the most beautiful I've ever seen anyone look, just amazingly beautiful in the kitchen light, just standing there in her apron and her own frustration. She just looked at the lamingtons, and sighed deeply. Then, she put her fist right through the middle of the pyramid, sending bits of lamingtons everywhere, and stormed out. I realise now how it sounded - how it sounds when you are slogging your guts out and can't get any support. And how it feels when you think you've done nothing wrong and someone brings your world crashing down. And it wasn't even that one thing, nothing to do with lamingtons, it was just...everything. Everything on top of her. I've thought since that day that the world won't end because of religions or cultural differences or disputes over land - it will end because one person at a conference wants tea and gets coffee, and takes it out on the world. I've seen a million relationships, friendships, families - my Dad and his Dad haven't spoken for 26 years because of a fight over a christening shawl - just dis-integrate over nothing, small, tiny issues, the size of a speck of dust, but it's never just that...it's never just lamingtons...
I saw her a year later, and we spoke for thirty seconds outside H&R Block, and we said how are you, and made a joke about Gal Costa, and that was that...closure....and as she went off down the road, I wished her well quietly, and let it all go after three seconds of wistfulness and regret...I don't know what became of her, but we'll always have The Woman Who Loved Elvis...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Duelling Banjos (or Corporate Bakeries Still Suck)
So today I'm sitting in my car, driving obviously because if I was just sitting there I'd get tooted, and the bridge is allegedly closed according to our breakfast radio hilarious duo who are talking this complete drivel that I eventually turn off, not just because I can see quite obviously it's open and because they talk about how much they are loving Brian McFaddens new single and my head is just full of drivel to begin with because I can't sleep and I've got this confused tired expression on my face like the bass player from the Living End trying to do backing vocals - I often think when I'm driving over the bridge about that time the boat crashed into it and knocked it over in the 70s because the captain was incredibly drunk, and how few boats I actually see these days, and I sometimes think about what happened to Brashs or I sit and get myself all pumped up for the finals and think if Early Dawes gets dropped for Rocca would they bring in McAff...then the traffic in front of me comes to a complete stop and it's time to slam the brakes on. The bridge is where I have most of my thinking time, when I don't drive semi-legally listening to Melissa Mars or White Lillies or, I don't know, Real American by Hulk Hogan on the IPOD. To be honest, Tasmanian drivers are pretty useless - I've adopted my Dads tried and true philosophy with cars "right up me arse" of just driving a lot slower - of course, this course of action will one day get me killed in a horrible road rage incident, but what the hell - and I've become a really bad person when I drive because I don't let anyone in at all, hence contributing to the problem not solving it. I think about the year Freddo had a creamy Blueberry version, and wonder if I could still get one. Not the standard blueberry one, but this extra thick whipped blueberry mousse style that wasn't the usual drippy liquid you get in a Freddo...and then, my conscience kicks in, and if you want to know the voice of my conscience, imagine Kathryn Harby crossed with Debbie Black...it resonates in my head to this day....
Banjos, should you not know, is a franchised chain of bakeries and eateries that down here in Tasmania inspire, if not quite the fervour of the day in 1992 Burnie got a Maccas, at least some form of passionate devotion from pensioners who swear by it in that uniquely "we like everything safe and tepid" kind of pensioner way. Why take a risk with that home made hedgehog slice when you can have a mildly appetising "worlds best" sausage roll (The Albanians beg to differ). Actually, that's a little harsh, but the reason I sometimes talk like this is because (here we go again) I used to know this girl who I would see on the bus to work. We got to chatting, as you do, before I became rigidly terrified of buses and people cutting my head off up the back and before I scared people on buses with my "Hey! Remember City South! What a footy team!" line of banter. I can't even remember what she looked like as she was all teeth and voice, but you know, I'm surprised at myself that I was talking to a stranger so there must have been something to her. I think it was because she knew who Catatonia were, maybe that was it. As it happens, she would lecture me pretty regularly about the horrific nature of multi national and national and even state based franchises, and she would always have No Logo by Naomi Klein (which if you remember became a logo) on hand to rescue her arguments. Everything with her always had to be single identity mom and pop (she was also against Americanisation of our language - oh wait, did that joke) stores selling local products with local service and nothing else. She was always telling me about the quality of the sliced hedgehog (that's a chocolate slice foreigners, we're not that crazy down here, despite what it says in Lonely Planet) in little Grandma Pakingas bakery down in the Fingal Valley and how she was going out of business because there was a Banjos built on the grazing land of the sparrow in Avoca, and...obviously, all tedious nonsense in hindsight, especially since I think a Tasmanian owned Banjos anyway, but she had picked her target with me. Gosh darn it, there's local pride at stake, little Grandma Pakinga has been making those hedgehog slices for 20 years! She's a key part of the local community! She raises funds for the local football team! How dare you turn up with your slick advertising campaigns and your sub Bakers Delight slices and drive her out of town! I was naturally furious, in that fantastically unfurious way of the early 20s male, in that you get quite indignant but forget about twenty minutes later because the cute girl in Tracks Record store is putting up posters. The last I saw of this girl she was organising a rally in Brisbane against a corporate whistle company (no, really). Still, she did re-inforce several of my beliefs in local pride and local businesses and whenever I had a purchasing conscience moment, it was her voice that nagged me - at least, until I saw her two years later, jogging out of Chickenfeed (franchise! Driving cheap salvos shops out of business! Or something!) in a Nike tracksuit (Naomi wouldn't have liked that). Naturally, I felt compelled to question the melting of her beliefs, and she simply held up a bucket of pegs and pointed to the price tag, and indeed, Naomi Klein, for all her sound and fury against the corporate machine, wasn't going to question a full bucket of pegs for 99c, regardless of their ethical origin...
My local Banjos is really weird - I know Granny Pakinga needs the business, and I should buy local, but sometimes I get a bit Sophie Monk at KFC and can't help myself - I can't get a handle on it, or it's consistency. Sometimes the sausage rolls are great, sometimes they are terrible. Sometimes there's no sandwiches, sometimes there's so many sandwiches you think Jesus is turning water into thick crust ham and cheese. Sometimes, the girls are lovely and sometimes they are terrible. What I love in life is a consistent shop - I know if I go and get a Boost Juice, I certainly won't get a boosted ego from the actress/model/slash I'm doing my time until Tyra Banks discovers me girl serving me. Against that, I can guarantee that if I go into my local pub in Kingston, they'll ask me if I want herb bread, even if I've ordered a chocolate mousse and a coke. My only other problem with my local Banjos is they always ask how how my day is - the surly ones and the cheerful ones, always the same question. It's one of those questions I spend too long thinking about, when the correct answer is good thankyou, how are you? I'd love to give them an honest opinion after careful consideration. Actually, the real problem is queue jumpers. To get served early in Banjos where I work, you need Tetris like dexterity - it's like Frogger, you've got leap over the moving people just to get a powdered mudcake. There's this one old lady who's an absolute maestro at it. There could be a queue of a hundred and she'd work her way to the front. I watched her today, her trick is usually to jogamble to the counter, in an opposite corner to the queue, huddled over like a munchkin, some kind of woolen hand knitted blanket over her shoulders, and then feign an interest in the little charity tin up the front or to pretend she wants to get a sample slice of Boston Bun from the counter, and obviously everyone gives her some air as she ponders the merits of spending her last 3 bucks on a Daffodil Day pen (what a good egg) and then, with the reflexes of a Batkovic, she's suddenly alive, blanket thrown aside, singing like Shirley Bassey that she wants a pie. It's genius, it really is. The bewildered or the patient just never expect that kind of move. As an aside, my Dad is one of those bewildered, and to this day he still doesn't understand why, on a 37 degree day in Burnie when I had to sit in the car in a suit going to a job interview (it was so hot we got Melbourne TV, always a treat), when I asked for a "tasty treat" from the local shop, and expected a Calippo or a Solero, and he came back proudly with a pound of mince, I wasn't over the moon...
Anyway, so I was in there today, felt like a sandwich, and she was obviously in prime fool the bewildered position, and there was no way out of the queue, the long snaking queue, and I was thinking about how jaunty I would make my "good thanks, how are you", but my mind was already wandering off, to the last time I had been in a Banjos queue this long - it was the day Tassie hosted the Sheffield Shield final against NSW at Bellerive, the sun was shining, my IPOD was shining, the Shining was mildly disappointing the first time I saw it, and I was in town (mainlanders, from now on, this entirely refers to Hobart) having breakfast with a friend of mine before the eternal Bellerive struggle of beer vs light beer began. I obviously proved my masculine credentials by ordering a hearty manly breakfast of waffles with a hint of raspberry jam. My friend ordered the more North West Coast option of 245 things deep fried in chip batter (or is that the Scottish option?) including eggs and bacon and several types of toast (I forgot to ask if they deep fried Apricot Ripple cornettos). So we sat and waited, and enjoyed the magic as his breakfast was brought our ingredient by ingredient. Even the tomato got an individual entrance (he didn't appreciate my is Joan Rivers hosting a red carpet entry special, mostly because he didn't know who Joan Rivers was). As the beginning of the match approached, there was still no toast. The bacon was stringy and cold, the eggs were tepid, the waffles were bloody delicious now you ask, and my conversation was fluid with a hint of cheek and a garnish of repetition. After 45 minutes, there was still no toast, and of course, we were getting anxious to see some cricket, so, politely, he asked the Banjos girl to find out what was going on, and as she wandered off twirling gum around her finger, she got the manager, a small and frail fan of the band Jet (can't you just tell?) and he said, in full seriousness and from the bottom of his little heart, "I'm so sorry, this normally doesn't happen...the toast chef has called in sick"...and preceded to make it up to him by helping him to another serve of delicious cold stringy bacon. Obviously, no toast ever came, what with the toast chef crisis...lucky the bacon chef was on hand...
And they don't do sliced hedgehog either...that chef quit in 1995...fight the power...
Banjos, should you not know, is a franchised chain of bakeries and eateries that down here in Tasmania inspire, if not quite the fervour of the day in 1992 Burnie got a Maccas, at least some form of passionate devotion from pensioners who swear by it in that uniquely "we like everything safe and tepid" kind of pensioner way. Why take a risk with that home made hedgehog slice when you can have a mildly appetising "worlds best" sausage roll (The Albanians beg to differ). Actually, that's a little harsh, but the reason I sometimes talk like this is because (here we go again) I used to know this girl who I would see on the bus to work. We got to chatting, as you do, before I became rigidly terrified of buses and people cutting my head off up the back and before I scared people on buses with my "Hey! Remember City South! What a footy team!" line of banter. I can't even remember what she looked like as she was all teeth and voice, but you know, I'm surprised at myself that I was talking to a stranger so there must have been something to her. I think it was because she knew who Catatonia were, maybe that was it. As it happens, she would lecture me pretty regularly about the horrific nature of multi national and national and even state based franchises, and she would always have No Logo by Naomi Klein (which if you remember became a logo) on hand to rescue her arguments. Everything with her always had to be single identity mom and pop (she was also against Americanisation of our language - oh wait, did that joke) stores selling local products with local service and nothing else. She was always telling me about the quality of the sliced hedgehog (that's a chocolate slice foreigners, we're not that crazy down here, despite what it says in Lonely Planet) in little Grandma Pakingas bakery down in the Fingal Valley and how she was going out of business because there was a Banjos built on the grazing land of the sparrow in Avoca, and...obviously, all tedious nonsense in hindsight, especially since I think a Tasmanian owned Banjos anyway, but she had picked her target with me. Gosh darn it, there's local pride at stake, little Grandma Pakinga has been making those hedgehog slices for 20 years! She's a key part of the local community! She raises funds for the local football team! How dare you turn up with your slick advertising campaigns and your sub Bakers Delight slices and drive her out of town! I was naturally furious, in that fantastically unfurious way of the early 20s male, in that you get quite indignant but forget about twenty minutes later because the cute girl in Tracks Record store is putting up posters. The last I saw of this girl she was organising a rally in Brisbane against a corporate whistle company (no, really). Still, she did re-inforce several of my beliefs in local pride and local businesses and whenever I had a purchasing conscience moment, it was her voice that nagged me - at least, until I saw her two years later, jogging out of Chickenfeed (franchise! Driving cheap salvos shops out of business! Or something!) in a Nike tracksuit (Naomi wouldn't have liked that). Naturally, I felt compelled to question the melting of her beliefs, and she simply held up a bucket of pegs and pointed to the price tag, and indeed, Naomi Klein, for all her sound and fury against the corporate machine, wasn't going to question a full bucket of pegs for 99c, regardless of their ethical origin...
My local Banjos is really weird - I know Granny Pakinga needs the business, and I should buy local, but sometimes I get a bit Sophie Monk at KFC and can't help myself - I can't get a handle on it, or it's consistency. Sometimes the sausage rolls are great, sometimes they are terrible. Sometimes there's no sandwiches, sometimes there's so many sandwiches you think Jesus is turning water into thick crust ham and cheese. Sometimes, the girls are lovely and sometimes they are terrible. What I love in life is a consistent shop - I know if I go and get a Boost Juice, I certainly won't get a boosted ego from the actress/model/slash I'm doing my time until Tyra Banks discovers me girl serving me. Against that, I can guarantee that if I go into my local pub in Kingston, they'll ask me if I want herb bread, even if I've ordered a chocolate mousse and a coke. My only other problem with my local Banjos is they always ask how how my day is - the surly ones and the cheerful ones, always the same question. It's one of those questions I spend too long thinking about, when the correct answer is good thankyou, how are you? I'd love to give them an honest opinion after careful consideration. Actually, the real problem is queue jumpers. To get served early in Banjos where I work, you need Tetris like dexterity - it's like Frogger, you've got leap over the moving people just to get a powdered mudcake. There's this one old lady who's an absolute maestro at it. There could be a queue of a hundred and she'd work her way to the front. I watched her today, her trick is usually to jogamble to the counter, in an opposite corner to the queue, huddled over like a munchkin, some kind of woolen hand knitted blanket over her shoulders, and then feign an interest in the little charity tin up the front or to pretend she wants to get a sample slice of Boston Bun from the counter, and obviously everyone gives her some air as she ponders the merits of spending her last 3 bucks on a Daffodil Day pen (what a good egg) and then, with the reflexes of a Batkovic, she's suddenly alive, blanket thrown aside, singing like Shirley Bassey that she wants a pie. It's genius, it really is. The bewildered or the patient just never expect that kind of move. As an aside, my Dad is one of those bewildered, and to this day he still doesn't understand why, on a 37 degree day in Burnie when I had to sit in the car in a suit going to a job interview (it was so hot we got Melbourne TV, always a treat), when I asked for a "tasty treat" from the local shop, and expected a Calippo or a Solero, and he came back proudly with a pound of mince, I wasn't over the moon...
Anyway, so I was in there today, felt like a sandwich, and she was obviously in prime fool the bewildered position, and there was no way out of the queue, the long snaking queue, and I was thinking about how jaunty I would make my "good thanks, how are you", but my mind was already wandering off, to the last time I had been in a Banjos queue this long - it was the day Tassie hosted the Sheffield Shield final against NSW at Bellerive, the sun was shining, my IPOD was shining, the Shining was mildly disappointing the first time I saw it, and I was in town (mainlanders, from now on, this entirely refers to Hobart) having breakfast with a friend of mine before the eternal Bellerive struggle of beer vs light beer began. I obviously proved my masculine credentials by ordering a hearty manly breakfast of waffles with a hint of raspberry jam. My friend ordered the more North West Coast option of 245 things deep fried in chip batter (or is that the Scottish option?) including eggs and bacon and several types of toast (I forgot to ask if they deep fried Apricot Ripple cornettos). So we sat and waited, and enjoyed the magic as his breakfast was brought our ingredient by ingredient. Even the tomato got an individual entrance (he didn't appreciate my is Joan Rivers hosting a red carpet entry special, mostly because he didn't know who Joan Rivers was). As the beginning of the match approached, there was still no toast. The bacon was stringy and cold, the eggs were tepid, the waffles were bloody delicious now you ask, and my conversation was fluid with a hint of cheek and a garnish of repetition. After 45 minutes, there was still no toast, and of course, we were getting anxious to see some cricket, so, politely, he asked the Banjos girl to find out what was going on, and as she wandered off twirling gum around her finger, she got the manager, a small and frail fan of the band Jet (can't you just tell?) and he said, in full seriousness and from the bottom of his little heart, "I'm so sorry, this normally doesn't happen...the toast chef has called in sick"...and preceded to make it up to him by helping him to another serve of delicious cold stringy bacon. Obviously, no toast ever came, what with the toast chef crisis...lucky the bacon chef was on hand...
And they don't do sliced hedgehog either...that chef quit in 1995...fight the power...
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