The Blawhard (or how I learned to stop worrying and enjoy Shameless)

So it was another disappointing night - I did everything right, I stayed relatively sober, I drank sensibly, I stuck to spirits because beer made me sick - and I was still refused entry to Irish Murphys because I had an Adidas tracksuit top on. It wasn't even a team, just a top. Amazing. I don't think Irish Murphys actually wants customers these days. In fairness, the passage of time and the weary ennui (I'm so naming my own pub that) of our repetitive Hobart circumstances have left us in a bind, and even the hardiest drinkers we know are pretty much done by 1 in the morning, leaving us scrambling for taxis just as the 12 year olds make it out of their parents window. There was at least some amusement in the fact that the bogans in the souped up car who called my friend a dumb slut were instantly and comprehensively pulled over by an unmarked police car. I haven't really written about the Telegraph Hotel (I don't think) which is our new haunt, but it was a fascinating case study in human movement and behaviour. A girl burst into tears when she was refused entry, two men simulated sodomy up against the window, a drunk girl in a silver metallic top danced and flirted with two men at the same time trying to provoke jealousy in one of them, a guy in a flannel shirt on and end of season footy trip tried to break a stool and was clearly going to either spew or punch someone a little later, and when I went to the toilet I had to get past someone doing the running man. I still fail to understand why businesses in Hobart are so absolutely hell bent on refusing people entry though, it's bewildering. It's surely not a good business model? Incidentally, the girl in the silvery metallic dress as she was dancing with the bald guy in the suit and the aggro boyfriend in the grey suit, she was clearly looking at us and winking, but I didn't much feel like playing along. Nothing says trouble like a Hobart harlot, drunk on her own sense of inflated beauty, who likes Sneaky Sound System a little too much...it can only end badly.

One of my major problems in life, and one I quite openly discussed in the last post, is my lack of interest in other peoples stories. In Scotland, a "blawhard" is someone who toots their own trumpet, someone who spins their accomplishments into something far more impressive than they actually are. Early in the day, I had gone to a lunch for someones 75th birthday, at the Kingston pub. A quite bogan waitress girl got really flustered about the scallops and whether they were crumbed or battered, and it was one of those obligation attendance functions you stumble to in the course of your life, the ones that you go to, turn up, say hello and because you are not immediate family you pretty much end up, like, at the kids table or something up the back talking to the family black sheep. I was really stoked though, because I found something out that really made me feel like I was with my people. One of the attendees is a girl I quite like (as a person, not in "that" way, whatever that way is, perhaps the magical feeling you get when you meet that (that word again) special someone who likes Space Jam as much as you) and she told me that in Penguin, the high school prom (this came up because one of the 16 year olds is shelling out 450 bucks to go in a stretch limo to her prom - and incidentally, her life goal is to work for the AFL and possibly sleep with Lance Franklin, which I'm sure will upset Kasia Z) or leavers dinner, if you want something less American, in 1984 was held in the Penguin high school library, which I just absolutely love. Nothing says hot leaving fun like pashing in the reference section. As I ate my garlic pub loaf, I tried to remember my own leavers dinner, and the fact I couldn't remember it is probably not a good sign. I obviously didn't pash anyone, and I certainly didn't have a stretch hummer since I could walk to the school. In fact, my main memory of the Grade 10 one is that I didn't go to the end of dinner party at this girls house, because I didn't drink and was uncomfortable with the prospect of "let's spike the non drinkers coke" hilarity at my expense. I think it was a wise decision to be honest. One of the kids who went they got really drunk and pushed him off a deck into the mud. That could have been me I think had I gone. I instead had a safe night in bed, oblivious to the fact that somewhere in Penguin, people were doing waltzes and tangos around copies of David Boons "Boon In The Firing Line"...

As much as I took something positive out of the library conversation, ten minutes before, my brain hadn't really had to kick out of neutral. This woman for some reason had locked into our conversation path, I still have no idea who she was, and decided to blawhard up a treat about her son, Daniel. Daniel, for what it's worth, is apparently quite the ladies man, humble with it and would never tell you about his many awards, runs several mines in Queenstown, won a state Premiers award and didn't tell any...and so on. As she was talking, I was considering faking a heart attack just to get out of there - it was one of those conversations that just seems like it will go forever, and you start to question the motives of it. I started to think she was perhaps quite insecure about her parenting abilities or something, given the vehemence of her protestations that Daniel was a great son. After all, we didn't ask how Daniel was or anything. My Dad is way better than me at coping with these kinds of conversations, and while I was in my head planning to do a runner with the girl at the TOTE (she totally gets me, given how she fills in my betting forms, I know it's love) Dad gently asked (having previously tried to change tack by remembering the day Daniel saved a penalty at soccer) if Daniel was an engineer. I visibly saw the woman deflate, her eyes darting around the room. "Well," she blustered, trying to deflect this blawhard deflating question, "if he passes two more tests, and if he works for one more year..." - she trailed off, beaten and bowed, and clearly went off to ring Daniel to question why he hadn't attained the rank of engineer and was still a lowly technician. My Dad is subversive and he doesn't even know it sometimes. He was completely oblivious to what he had done, just like he's completely oblivious to most things, and went back to his fractured sly sideways glance at the difference between medium rare and rare steaks...

I'm absolutely sure though that despite my limited life accomplishments (unless owning a framed signed St Mirren shirt counts as an accomplishments) I do realise that in social situations I am quite capable of being a blawhard. Everyone is, especially when cornered with the small talk questions about work, life, love and so on. The worst blawhard I know is my cousin in Scotland, the one with the saxophone playing daughter and the one who told me when he beat me at ten pin bowling that when you play him at a game that he's never beaten (at which point I demanded a DNA recount). He's always telling us about his connections in New York, how he goes to the same gym as Eva Longoria, and how much he enjoys playing tennis with Jelena Jankovics coach. He's not a cousin I see often, but whenever I do see him, he's pretty keen to tell us how well he's doing. Or he was, until I went home the last time - it wasn't like he was making less money or anything, and there's still a hint of the old swagger, but he looked...tired. Really tired, as if he'd had a realisation that all the time he'd spent sitting in airports and airport lounges, all the time filling in those little immigration cards, all the time swigging champagne with celebrities and making small talk, all the time he'd spent in meetings or training people to do their job, all that wasted, wasted time, maybe, just maybe, it should have been spent at home, with his kids...I wonder if everyone ends up like this, the hard working successes questioning the quality of life, the less successful questioning whether they should have done more with their life. I hadn't seen this humanity in him before, it was quite strange and a little sad. He didn't even mention his usual assortment of sycophants and minor celebrities that he knew in his apartment block. This might sound really weird, but the most beaten down he sounded was about the TV show Shameless, my Auntie was talking about it, and he said in this quiet childlike voice "I've heard it's amazing...I wish I had time to see it..." - it was desperately sad, and perhaps I'm not quite articulating it right, but he looked like a man questioning the values in his life, and doing it while sitting eating an iced biscuit on an Ayrshire coach in Gucci loafters...

Me? I don't envy anyone, except for the girl in the silvery dress - I mean, she's so hot and amazing, she can have two drunk accountants fighting over her. From limited victories though, comes confidence...or at least, ten minutes of fumbling...