Confirmed (thou is a white ant)

So I have this fear today, a sort of weird morbid fear that I might be whiteanting someone at work - which is, if you don't know, is our special Aussie word for the process of internal erosion of a foundation, or put simply, nicking someones job. I don't want to white ant them, but they aren't doing a very good job and keep making mistakes. I was oblivious to my potential white anting today, but I kind of stepped back a bit when I realised (when the woman in questions desk was said to be my desk) what was going on, did no work, and instead talked to a girl at work all day long about music. There's a void in my life that I sometimes suspect could only be filled by having Alan Brough as a friend. I care so much about music, that I very rarely find anyone that I can sit and talk to about it with the level of passion I display before I find a roadblock in the conversation because they will like something I don't, or don't appreciate the genius of Miley Cyrus, something like that. This girl is really young, demonstrably pretty, and a massive drinker (she's the one I mentioned before who we met at a big festival here in Tassie who was drunk out of her mind and telling us her boyfriend was a dick and she was turning lesbian). She is pretty well up on music, since she spends a lot of time in clubs, but the roadblock was her love of Ne-Yo, and her devastation that Wolfmother (Australias #1 Led Zepellin tribute act) broke up. Oh well, back to the drawing board. However, what I do talk to her about mostly is escaping - she's usually talking about running off back to America where's she's just worked at a summer camp, and getting out of work and I don't know, moving in with Pete from Fall Out Boy while teaching kids archery, especially when she's being yelled at for not doing any work, because she's daydreaming out the window. I totally relate, I spent about 5 years doing that, but nothing is the same when you go back to where your joy was. If you go back and are happy again, great, but it won't be the same. Of course, I pass on my wisdom, knowing it's of limited value, since people should do what they want, and make their own stuff ups, especially Ne-Yo fans. Incidentally, I pretty much ruined work morale today by telling everyone Wolfmother split up, but oddly enough, just saying it out loud increased my morale 35%...there's certainly no posters of them at "my" desk...

I think everyone learns lessons in life as they go along - from my point of view, I learned a lot from my three or four months of Saturday morning preparing for confirmation classes in Ayrshire, mostly that I didn't want to work on a Saturday. Our classes for the Catholic sacrament which is probably the most pointless (I didn't finish it because I went on holiday to Australia - I think it involves just reading a pamphlet for some old biddies?) of all of them were held at a place called the Village in Irvine. The Village is probably Irvines best/worst example of over-reaching commerce and Thatcherite decline, since in it's hey day it was supposed to Irvines second shopping mecca, a place of wonder, magic and cheap Co-Op bread, but ultimately ended up being a place with one Pakistani owned fruit shop (where the perpetually harassed owner would chase kids away who were stealing black jacks), a newsagents with suspiciously copious amounts of porn, and the video shop/pool hall that I've mentioned before that had the blue video cassette that was just "XXXX" written on it in felt pen. It's probably now a condemned area, but it was only on the cusp of it's decline when we went there as good little caflics, into a purely wooden highly flammable community hall roughly the size of Iceland, with temperatures to match. It was here that one of my friends went to a disco at about 12 in the morning in a leather jacket with a map on the inside and never lived it down, but my main confirmation memory was probably that the whole thing started with an incredible promise (free Irn Bru on a Saturday! Bring it on Big Yin!), excitement and wonder, marked by the fact that they had prepared us a massive float size banner in welcome on day one, and fizzled out into nothing after about week four (the sandwiches were very sub par from then on). I still to this day don't know why it took four months of classes to prepare us, or anything really about it - because I left before the end, it was like turning off The Crying Game before the big reveal. Maybe once I left, there was strippers, blow and the "XXXX" movie was played in celebration of graduation, but before that...four months? Really?

In the midst of this four months of tedium and regular parental updates, the one thing I do remember was this kid called Jamie. Now Jamie was a fat bloke, who even at age eleven was basically a very dodgy character. To put this in perspective, he once knocked on my door at about 9 in the morning wearing a blue denim jacket to sell me some Celtic programmes. Why an eleven year old needs money desperately at 9 in the morning, well, I didn't like to ask, but it was a sign of impending career as a petty criminal anyway. One of the things we had to do during confirmation class was put on a play, and for some reason, the leader (was it a priest? a teacher? I don't know) decided Jamie should head the play committee. Now, Jamie certainly wasn't an intellectual by any means - but his little pudgy face lit up with joy as he was finally given a position of responsibilty which wasn't "keep an eye out for the cops". Jamie was naturally full of ideas, and cake if we're honest. The theme of the play was that the play had to be a commentary on some sort of social issue - it was 1989, so it could have been how the poll tax affected a Scottish family say, or the break up of society, or some interpretive dance about Stefan Dennis. Anyway, Jamie thought long and hard about what he wanted to say creatively, and actually came up with an interesting idea for our play - it was going to be about the pressure students faced at school in bleak economic times. Wow, I remember thinking, that's pretty good, I wonder where he got that from, I don't remember that being an editorial position in the Celtic programme. We all agreed that this was a fantastic idea for a play, but Jamies vision wasn't finished there - at the climactic scene of the play, the student would snap and kill the teacher. Or as Jamie would put it "knock the fucker oot wi a crowbar" - actually, by about the third reading of Jamies script we realised that it wasn't quite the subtle nuanced social aware play that was pitched to us, and in fact Jamie just wanted to kill a teacher, or at least act it out, and to be honest, when we say script, it was basically action, chib, bash, bash, cut. It was fair to say that the role of "the teacher" wasn't one that appeared to be highly sought after, put it that way...

Naturally, despite the relatively "we're all groovy" stance of the leaders of this particular class, a teacher slaying play wasn't really the kind of thing that was going to pan out well as a social statement, and it would certainly have got mentioned in the church newsletter. However, no one wanted to crush Jamie and his slightly disturbing feelings (life would do that much later). As it turned out, there was a movement, albeit very brief around some white plastic chairs and a table that had "Muggsy4fucks" carved into it in standly knife, to have me installed as some kind of auteur saviour of the project. However, I stuck to my principles, and decided I quite liked my kneecaps, and backed out of white anting the play for my own gain. As it turned out, there was no need for me or the other potential softener, "The other Megan", to step in with a softer tone. What happened after I went on holiday to Australia was they told Jamie that yes, he could do his play, but only if he played the teacher, and of course "Naebodys gien me a fuckin doin!" (which means Sir I would rather respect it if you wouldn't portray me as someone who takes a beating) and Jamie scratched his name off the project. In the end the play on social issues focused on the homeless, and a samaritan called Chuck who went and saved them - tedious nonsense really, but safe. I was proud though I hadn't been at the centre of any kind of white anting, and had kept a respectful distance. I do wonder though how Jamies life might have turned out, since there was a potentially wonderful career in film direction stifled by the fearsome morality police of the Village elders - after all, Jamies rage might have turned into some sort of Irvine Welsh style gritty social realism chronicles, only about Ayrshire - but deprived of his big moment, he lost interest even more. The last time I saw him, he was was selling Kilmarnock replica shirts from a market stall, at about, oh, age 13? Only they were missing the a. He looked in my direction, was about to launch into a sales pitch, but was then distracted by what I presume was his girlfriend, and, surely that's not his child in the pram? Gritty realism at it's best, give the man a pen and paper I say...

That's one of the many reasons I don't believe in the Catholic church anymore - no sense of adventure and stifling dreams on a daily basis. And don't tell me those priests don't white ant to get the best parish...loser gets Irvine I'd bet...