Cooksleyplusone
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
OK, so Mary Livesey news is obviously thin on the ground, but this places style icon, the champion of the cheese plate, the filly of the function, the legend of the launch and lunch, Anne Maree Cooksley, was in the paper with a new boyfriend. It was awful that they pointed out she looks like Suzie Wilks, I hate that, she doesn't need to look like anyone else, she looks like AMC and AMC only. She's dating former Mimco owner David Briskin. I have no idea what Mimco is or was, but they seem a lovely couple. There was a reference to the "in crowd" going to some bar called Fog in Prahan, which obviously isn't as good as that bar in Sydney where you sit on milk crates after you get an SMS entry code, but it still seems pretty "in" - I mean, it's got black lacquered columns, gift vouchers and cocktails. I can't imagine it plays Dave Dobbyn at 2am like Hobarts own Syrup, but if it's good enough for my girl, it's good enough for me. I love AMC, because her job, as far as I can tell, is professional partier, and I would love a job like that. I'm amazed more people don't champion her fantastic work. Stephanie Rice this, Leisel Jones that. How did Sonia "they are just getting me to play the dumb blonde, honest, tee hee" get to be famous while AMC toils in relative obscurity. It's a shame I tell you, a damn stinking shame.
Of course, the parties I go to really have relation to those the goddess of the free glass of champagne goes to. I am a really bad party guest, I always have been, particularly at other peoples parties where I have to show an interest in the event. I'm also someone who likes to be home by 2am, which doesn't always endear me to people. And when I say home, I mean my own home, I don't like staying at other peoples houses. I tend to freak out a bit if I'm drunk and can't work out how to get out of a room. As for my own parties, when I lived in Penguin they were always really popular - my Dad would cook sausages, we'd go over to Penguin football oval and kick a football, and my Mum and Dad would play this horrendous vinyl (remember that kids?) disc that you could only play if you put coins on the stars on the disc, and it was an alien singing that it was my birthday and they'd zoomed from the moon. It was just absolutely horrible, and I used to run away whenever it was played, which is an elixir to Scottish parents, who just play it more and more. Then they would run dancing competitions, and give me the prize even though, as we've discussed, I danced like Tamsyn Lewis runs. Crap. There was always a big fight from someone who felt gypped they didn't win a prize, and I'd usually end up in a big huff. My main fear though was, and it is to this day, that no-one would turn up. It's the party equivalent of having no one laugh at your stand up show, of dying on the toilet, of running like Tam...oh you know what I mean. I tend to find in Tasmania, 12 means a Tassie 12, which is about 12:20, so if you don't know that, 12 rocks around, and you're standing there looking down the path thinking no one is turning up and you've made too much fairy bread for one person to eat. Of course, the Tassie 12 wasn't something my parents adhered to - if we had to go a party, a Tassie 12 became a Scottish 11, and we were always there before the setting up had even begun. The number of times I sat alone in a cold rumpus room, watching TV or throwing darts until the other kids came along, it was almost every week growing up. I think my Mum just had a thing for helping set out fairy bread...
However much my own parties were a mass of will they-won't they-how did he win the dancing competition emotions, it was other peoples parties that always seemed to be weird, alien and foreign. I went to school with this kid who's parents served oranges during a break in the sports and games. No cake, just oranges, which was like stepping onto Mars for weirdness in early 80s Tasmania. They were friends of Grant Hackett I think, and they had all the Classical Composers magazine set, even the composers no one knew, unlike us who gave up after Chopin. I stayed with another friend of mine for a week (this was a different friend to the axe wielding family), and he had a Commodore 64 in his basement, and a soccer game on cassette. Naturally, I spent the entire weekend playing the computer and really annoying him because it was his birthday week and he wanted to play volleyball. Crazily, outside in the sunshine volleyball - what a fool. I'd like to think I was selfish and learned a valuable lesson, but obviously, I didn't, I'd do it again if I had to, those soccer games were fantastic. The main thing I remember from other peoples parties when I was growing up was the varying quality of cordial - no one ever got a glass of champagne, just cordial in a paper cup - which would always set aside the future social standing of kids. Kia-Ora was vaguely acceptable, but any kid with Cottees was feted and beloved. Home Brand was a source of death. No one I knew ever threw a fancy dress party, although I was once in the paper, through circumstances I can't explain, dressed at a fancy dress party as The King Of Hearts. Mind you, whatever the theme or quality of juice, I was never a good party guest, I was anxious and nervy as a child, thinking that if I wasn't getting attention or spoken to, I was doing something wrong. Mind you, sometimes being lost in the mix was quite a good thing - this one time, I stayed overnight at this kids house, and all the kids staying over decided that it would be nice, at 3am, to cook the parents of this kid a little breakfast as a thankyou for their generous hospitality and lashings of fairy bread. It was only many years later I realised that when we delivered it to them in their room after a lot of effort, we actually disturbed the process by which a mummy and daddy loved each other very much. When I actually realised that, many years later when I was sitting on a bus, I thought how bad it was that I had disturbed them, and how bad it was that this other kid went back 10 minutes later to ask them if they enjoyed their breakfast...
Of course, by the time I grew up, in mid 90s Burnie, alcohol was thrown into the mix. I was still a terrible party guest, still nervous, but now drunk, and a little bit more relaxed as a result. Instead of being inside eating fairybread we were now outside around a campfire, drinking and doing some rather ungentlemanly spews in the back garden. Completing the circle fully, I was often chastised for sitting inside watching TV instead of going outside and getting smashed. There were girls at the parties, often huddled around the fire singing Alanis Morrisette songs, and there was always something really dramatic going on - I don't know exactly when the drama at parties changed from quality of cordial to X and Y broke up because Y was found on top of Z, but it was a fairly sudden lurch, almost overnight. Burnie being a small town, you had to tread carefully at these parties, lest some kind of scandal get out involving the daughter of a prominent shop owner, a boy, a bathtub and slatherings of baby oil, just to pick something at random. Nothing like this ever happened to me - mores the pity. Although, I did once go to a party with Burnies social elite, in a downstairs part of a nightclub, for one of my friends birthday. It was so exclusive, I was the only person from our little social group to score an invite, and to this day, i have no idea why that is. Given my previous adventures in Ayrshire with the weird downstairs poker den, I was incredibly excited to finally make it past the velvet ropes and see what was in the VIP room of a nightclub. As it turned out, they had kitted out the entire room to look like this persons bedroom, with My Little Pony posters. Naturally, I was freaked out by this, and really didn't have a good night, and it wasn't my kind of demographic. It was a lot of rich people, snobby families and people into Air Supply. I struck up a long and tedious conversation with a used car dealer (that might make it sound common and earthy, but it was used BMWs, and I still remember how bored I was, and how much my head hurt) and his son, who I think fancied me. Anyway, I was just about to go home, when for reasons I can't quite explain, someone (well, obviously the DJ, but someone requested it) put on the Nutbush, and all the old uncles and aunties got up and danced around, and I realised you can set up a party as snobby as you want, you can put on the fanciest parties, but at heart, people always want to do the Nutbush and get pissed and pick up. I felt better about my social standing at that point, and as I walked home through the cold Burnie air, I thought, you know what, if I could just a lucky break, get some confidence in myself, maybe, just maybe I could get invited to the Fog nightclub in Prahan...
Of course, my dear AMC, I could never fit in your world - I went to a club in London and was thrown out, a club that two hours previously had ejected Peaches Geldolf...I know that you would never go somewhere so common...no free champagne for one thing...
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