The bewilderness and the Diamond

So a nothing day today, no humourous Asians, no cantakery, no e-mails, in fact the kind of day that at the end of your life you are supposed to realise you wasted in some sort of death bed moment of clarity - there's a great mythology about the wasted day as if you should have leapt up in the morning and driven to, I don't know, bungy jump, but everyone knows some days you just can't be arsed. This kid on TV said the good thing about Nathan Buckley was he always tried his hardest when "the chips were up" - that was about the best thing out of today. That and my Dad telling Mum on the phone that "Jim" Henson (not Bill, Jim) had been busted going around schools scouting for underage nude models with dickie bow wearing Dads who love art. I did go to school with several muppets, but Jim was never in the playground. It was also one of those days where you have many conversational avenues that really go nowhere. One of my friends basically told me I was a big fan of Gabriella Cilmi, and I told him I wasn't, until we realised we were arguing about someone who in 5ive years time will be as culturally relevant as Collette. What did amuse me was there was a promotion for Curleys Bar (the pain) and their new DJ, and you should have heard some of the nonsense musical terms they were using for his set - "electro crunk and macro beats" - the hell? I know more about contemporary music than anyone, and trust me, if they are plugging "thumping macro beats", no one knows what that is, and the guy will just play a longer remix of Rihannas Disturbia...I hate that song, "Disturbia, am I scaring you now!", er, no, the ghost tunnel at the Marist fete scared me more than you Rihanna, and that was just Grade 8s with silly string...yep, pretty pointless day in all, gonna regret it on my death bed for sure...

Speaking of my Dad, I've recently worked him out, and what he's all about. To all intents and purposes, he's a bit of an amiable old duffer, not some sort of shambling pork pie wearer, more a kind of I've got my routine and I'm not breaking it kind of guy. Him and Mum don't go out that much as a couple, because it would disrupt his timing when it came to cooking (MCs like a pound of) bacon (sorry for the random Vanilla Ice reference, but it was totally worth the edit) at exactly 6:42. He once said to Mum that they couldn't go out for breakfast on a Sunday because it was "boiled egg day". And he has passed on a fantastic legacy to me - a love of an afternoon nap. He's also famous for sitting in a chair not paying any attention to the conversation like white fuzzy noise is going through his head (this nearly had bad consequences when he had his minor heart attack...funny story...) and then sort of going "Oh, were you talking to me?". Now all this is fine, as he has his little life and his amusing foibles like, well like Jim Henson and like his complete inability to dance - but something sinister is going on, and I'm amazed it's just come to light now. His bewilderness, it's entirely fake and fraudulent. I realised something was up when I was talking to him about something like Dale Thomas (Collingwood show pony) and his inability to make a tangible career for himself, and he kind of spun around like I hadn't been there and said "were ye talkin tae me?" - I know he was listening to me, because he stopped his crossword when I approached and shifted to the left, and that's when I realised he was just faking, he just wanted me to go away. My Mum has busted him for this before, mostly for "Ye jist stand around looking stupid until somedae does it for ye" (in relation to the way if, say, he can't open a box, he 1/2 arses around until someone snaps the box open for him) but I was really quite surprised I'd never noticed it before, the cocoon of amiable dufferness was all a fraud, the jester playing out the third confused act before me...I was so hurt, so apalled, that while he was pretending he didn't see me, I nicked one of his Twixes...and I know he saw that...

As it happened, I should have realised this before - Dads family is pretty nutty. Out of his whole family he speaks to one sister, the other one he spoke to having buggered off somewhere about two years ago, never to be seen again (last we heard she was dating Rangers reserve goalkeeper from 1973). So he probably got off lightly with a minor streak of insanity relating to pretending not to notice people. His sister worries me, the one he does speak to. She now lives in a big flat in Glasgow which is staggeringly filthy with about, like 6 rooms, 3 of which are completely empty, and the other three split between her, her ex husband and her son. When Dad and I went to visit them last though, they steadfastly and categorically refused to let us into the living room. No idea why, we had a suspicion possibly they had had their furniture taken away or lost in gambling debts, but all five of us had to go into her room, her bedroom, a tiny room with filthy dog hair matted chairs, and yes, the five of us had to share the room with her two massive dogs. Categorically, and somewhat unusually for her, she would not under any circumstances tell us anything about her life (she was going into hospital, dunno what for, but we only knew because it was the excuse to keep us away), which considering she usually bigs up her kids as if they were the Veronicas, was really creepy. Instead, she made stilted awkward conversation about American Idol, particularly about the Neil Diamond episode. Now, I'm not a Neil Diamond fan (ooh get you, aren't you cool, what blog boy, he's not as good as Miley Cyrus?) but I did happen to mention Neils Crunchy Granola Suite, mostly to keep the conversation going, which I only knew because it was often a Tony Martin reference point on The Late Show. She went palpably mental with excitement though, since I'd given her a conversational out to make the day easier, and every second sentence was about Crunchy Granola. No matter what we tried to talk about, it was back to Neil on the TV or some sort of "Oh there's NOT a song called that!" reference and some creepy fake laughter. That was when the dogs weren't doing tricks to pass the time. I don't know if Neil Diamond has ever been used as a desperate please God don't ask us about our lives conversational crutch, but I think he'd be pretty proud of it if he knew, probably writing a song about it...but it was a bewildering, bizarre day, and by the time we escaped (and they escaped us) we were all relieved to go back to our own worlds (ours revolving around train station chips and gravy)...still, his sister did make a mean toastie...

Thinking about this day, and the complete lack of conversational impact, it often makes me think about my own life and how I present myself. I've had my share of mad moments (by, oh, November 2009 this blog should have covered most of them) and irrationality, but nothing as strange as a grown woman talking about Idol in a room no bigger than a cupboard, with a locked living room and dogs given the run of the house. I think my Mums side of the family, level headed Glaswegians of the "yer talkin shite" plain speaking school, watered down most of my mad tendencies before they got really out of hand. I just think though it's a lot easier sometimes to talk about music or art or literature instead of actually saying something that has an immense amount of impact - I've got this mate, he's a fairly straightforward kind of guy, likes his beer, loves his parents, unless he has a girl locked up in his basement that we don't know about he's a regular every day guy. A few years ago he got fixated on this girl called Connie, and I think she kind of liked him to, and that was great, except they couldn't (like me with blue eye shadow girl I think) just go and say, look, I like you, let's go out...one night they were both out, not together, but they saw each other across the metronomically swinging beating dancefloor of Syrup nightclub. I was probably not let in on account of my T-shirt looking vaguely like a soccer top...again. What I do know is, it was his chance, his chance to tell Connie he loved her, his chance to really say something meaningful, poetic, insightful and above all else true. He looked her in the eye, she looked at him with a cute and lustful smile, and he said something that would resonate in her heart forever. "So," he said, "that new R Kelly single...it's...good isn't it?" - and she said yes, and that was it, the moment lost, the initiative unseized as they slunk off in different directions...his head lost in the eternal bewilderness that is every day living...

And yes, as you would have gathered, had he mentioned Neil Diamond, they'd still be together...maybe without furniture though....