Amali Ward, Pension Fights and flats I never moved into

So today at work, two pensioners got into a fight. It marginally fell short of fisticuffs, but only marginally. This old bloke was telling all and sundry about his travails buying a used car, when he dropped the f bomb, at which point the other old bloke asked him not to swear in front of children. At which point, the first old bloke worked himself into such a fury, he was actually frothing at the mouth. I love any argument that boils down to "why don't you go and live in Russia"and he was really angry that his free speech and right to bag out used car salesmen with a range of colourful adjectives were impinged. As he drifted into his rant, I drifted off into the ether, and suddenly remembered in my last post I forgot another reality TV star from Tassie- Amali Ward, 10th place getter on Idol in 2004. Amali is the only person I've ever voted for in a reality TV show, and I can't remember why - but I do remember hearing once from a mate of mine that she was spotted in Target by two girls who loudwhispered "Wow! It's Amali Ward! That's amazing!" at which point Amali turned around and went "No, what's amazing is bras at these low prices!" and held up a bra with a big smile. Of course, that didn't stop her big homecoming concert at the DEC being spoiled by clearly visible nipples on the big screen, but that's another story. By this point in my musings, the old bloke was suggesting that the second old bloke would benefit from some national service. I always thought it was only lousy damn kids and hippies who still believe The Harrad Experiment was a documentary were targeted by old blokes as being desirable for a stint being called a variety of names all of which implied that the person was gay, but old blokes suggesting old blokes for national service? I don't know what madness this suggests, but I like the thinking. In fact, if the two old blokes want to line up for a foaming mouth version of Dads Army, I'm the first person on board...

So being nearly 30, I've been thinking a lot about things that might have happened in my life had things gone the way I had intended or had planned in my head (oooh, get you, like, deep, like an episode of Quantum Leap). The catalyst for this was finding a lot of school friends on Facebook - there's something really jarring about seeing someone you went to school with posing with a kid on Facebook, never mind if it's someone who the last time you even heard their name, it was in relation to a terrible bout of...er...let's just say when a Mummy and a Daddy love each other very much, sometimes there's a virus...one of our great dreams when we left school was that about six of us would all get a house together, and live in Sandy Bay with the man who held the fake parties and we'd all go to Regines and be like Friends forever! This plan began to unravel one day when one of the girls out of nowhere decided that I was really horrible and sent me a letter in furious red pen to tell me so - the reason according to her was that I didn't make a special trip to Burnie for her 18th birthday party. Now, that is true, although it was only my theory that I couldn't make it, I did say I'd see (male code for don't expect me), but I don't think it quite warranted a red pen letter (incidentally, green pen indicates nutcase fact fans). I think she'd have been angrier if she knew that the real reason I didn't go to Burnie on that particular day was that two of my other friends had decided to have a billy cart race down Mt Stuart hill, and one of my friends was amazingly unco and crap and building and I thought it would be quite funny to see him in his billy cart smash into something. Luckily, he didn't let me down, not quite attaching one of his wheels properly and ploughing Jackass style into the door of a parked car, and then getting told off by a small girl for his stupidity. His not unreasonable response to the little girl was to tell her the tooth fairy wasn't real. As he lay on the pavement struggling to get to his feet, tracksuit pants torn, knees skinned, his indignity was compounded by having a plastic bag blow ever slowly in his direction, and then landing on his face and stubbornly refusing to move - and to be honest, I could have made a four hour trip to Burnie to drink Midori and punch, but could it compete with a man in pain facing up to the righteous angry of a four year old in a Wiggles T-shirt? Frankly, it could not...

Anyway, the angry red pen letter set off quite the chain of events - and it really showed the fact that while the year before was the best year of my entire life, things moved on so fast, it was like it never happened - the least of which was that our plans to all live together fell immediately through the cracks of life. What I didn't do was ascertain this until much later - after all, later in the year, I did go up to Burnie, and went to the Tuesday night thrill, indoor rock climbing in one of the draughtiest school halls with some of the most exciting underground passageways (will it lead to a porn stash? Will it lead to a janitors closet? Why not find out!) in all of Australia, never mind just Burnie. This was always a really important meeting point to us, for reasons that had nothing to do with indoor rock climbing (my ego never recovered from seeing an 8 year old skim straight to the top of the wall - at that point, I figured I'd just go and play cards) and more do to with a pivotal conversation point for my group. When one of our friends answered the door and said he wasn't in, we discussed it. When I shot a three pointer at basketball after stripping the ball off a 6 year old, I was chastised at the conversation table. When one of the best kids I ever knew and it's a damn shame I can't remember his surname told me Arkarna were shit, I...agreed, but the point was, it was at rock climbing. It had become our Peach Pit. However, following the red pen letter and subsequent fight, when I entered the high school gym in the same way that I always had, I didn't seem particularly welcome (my friend who had slept with the writer of the red pen copped a lot more frost). One girl, who I didn't really know very well, has snapped in that sort of sixteen year old girl "oh you heard me accidentally on purpose way", making sure that her hands were firmly on her hips, "oh, the southerners are here!" - it took me a moment to realise that she was talking about me. We had become the Sharks in the land of the Jets. My comeback was to peg a piece of chalk at her - it slipped. Naturally, I was a little dis-orientated, but set about setting up our old card school. The girl who sent me the red pen letter apologized, and she meant it, but in such a way that I still knew that everything had changed, and we'd never be friends again. This was depressing, but not as depressing as the fact that the final time I ever saw her, she was walking away to her car in the rain with my money, having cleaned me up at go fish...

I actually remember the bus journey home after that particular trip. I realised that within six months, within the release of Spice and the recording of Spiceworld, I'd completely moved on from Burnie, and I was really sad about it. The last party I went to with everyone together as a group, and the writer of the red pen, it was in a flat that was really dark and dingy, and I can't remember who owned it, but it was hardly a laugh fest (someone, not me, had an unrequited love and insisted on playing Foolish Games by Jewel at really loud volume, which is hardly party music). I felt dislocated at that party, never mind all this time later, knowing that I had nothing really left to go "home" for. We had all moved on, and much as we said we'd be friends forever, it was already all over. When I got on the bus to go back to Hobart that night, it was pelting with rain, rain that was bouncing jumpily off the ground, so I sat down in the chair, with my book illuminated by the bus reading light in the dark, made sure that I avoided the bus nutcases and sat on a seat on my own, and as we pulled out of the street and I was just about to go to sleep, I saw two bogans standing outside K-Mart, one in an AC/DC shirt, the other with folded arms and a cigar between his teeth. I put down my book, an illustrated history of Brazillian music, took a deep breath, and said a silent goodbye to Burnie, and thanked it for all it had given me. As I sat there like a little overly poetic wanker, the bogan with the cigar took his own deep breath of cigar smoke, nudged his mate in the ribs, looked me dead in the eye, and gave me the finger, and held it up until the bus finally pulled away, into the night...

Frankly, both of them should be up for national service...