Latvian camping (we bring the philosophy straight to your tent)

A lot of believe that moving in decreasing circles is some kind of horrific fate - when I didn't have any friends for three years, my horizons were very broad and intellectual, I mean if I had friends and some cognac the Wittgenstein discussions we could have had - and I think sometimes I really feel a little uncomfortable with another year of AFL draws, Collingwood failures, pop tarts rising and falling and the little bit of the year when the road is free of school kids. Nothing is new, nothing is exciting, but I'm OK at the moment with that, secure in the knowledge that the people I believe in also believe in me - I would like a little intellectual stimulation at the moment though, perhaps a writers course (well, maybe not, I'll get to that soon). My auntie (the one with the living room of mystery) for a long time tried to parlay herself as the intellectual keeper of the flame, the true drinker of cognac, the listener of classical music, the reader of books that didn't have a list at the back of "my favourite cricketer" - she's always found me a curio, as if some noble savage had wandered in from the jungle just because I have a vast and gripping knowledge of Britney Spears singles. My mum and Dad went round there for a party once and she was positively thrilled to show them her friends, her intellectual friends, and start a game of charades (my Mum miming "get my coat" as a three word less than puzzling direction to my Dad). As I said before, stripped of this superiority by poverty, illness and desolate loneliness, the last time I was there she was watching Neil Diamond on TV, common as the muck she used to talk about me. It's probably struck a chord with me that I could end up like that, in the blink of an eye reduced to an ironic parody of my former self, so I've been a lot happier with my lot lately, happier than I should be. After all, contentment can breed it's own form of problems, a life fading quickly from a lack of decisiveness - but I was just happy to have friends when I saw her, to know that I would never fulfil the great fear of my life, dying alone in the armchair (which, since I don't believe in the afterlife, is an irrational fear, but anyway). Gratitude towards my friends isn't easily given on my part, since I'm Scottish and grew up in Penguin, not two of the great emotional heartlands of the world.  Jean Paul Satre said hell is being trapped in a room for eternity with your friends (don't tell my auntie I know that quote because it was the set up for a joke on Red Dwarf) - but it'd surely be worse to be in that room on your own, only two dogs for company, knowing that your moral belief system and sense of entitlement had been reduced to watching repeat performances of Crunchy Granola. I've learned to a be lot more patient with my friends too - it was a long struggle, believe me, to get to this stage of our friendships with acceptance of my fourteen year old girl music taste, to get me out of a life of Diamond...so hopefully, you'll understand why, just for the moment, I'm contented (mainly because I totally rock at Duck Hunt...wait, lost the intellectual crowd again...)

Eggs and Bacon Bay is one of the most beautiful bits of Tasmania I've been too. People go to camp, to relax on the beach, to get in touch with nature, and to fish and bushwalk. In other words, why I went is a complete mystery, since I hate camping, am a patently lousy fisherman, and pitching a tent was never going to earn me a merit badge even in the retarded scouts. Why did I go? I have no idea, and I have no idea why I was invited. I think it was the testing ground for new friendships, lets go camping and see if we all get on. I went with two female friends and one male friend - I would say as one thing they wouldn't remember is that the first time I met the second female friend they (being the other two, who I knew from work) desperately tried to set me up with, as much as they would now deny it, since they were desperately trying to get me to buy her a drink or get her some water - the basis for this ingenious would be paring was, get this, she was born in Scotland and so was I...but as I've pointed out to them a couple of times, I was also born in the same country as Sheena Easton but that doesn't mean I'm popping round to her house for coffee and canapes. Perhaps the camping trip was some sort of planned third or fourth date for us both, and they probably cursed that I didn't just get the damn jug of water. Anyway, since I sort of knew everyone that was going pretty well by then, I knew that my main fear would be an outbreak of camp zany. Let me explain - I love my friends, but the female friends I have scare me because when they drink, they are loud and prone to great eccentricity, by which I mean they are incredibly loud and bogany and likely to take a waitress at Tacos that no one understands their pain. I, myself, am Scottish, and we are terrified of eccentricity. We tell eccentrics to sit on their arse and weesht. We don't of course apply these standards to ourselves when we are drunk, running around the living room wearing a lampshade, but about six drinks in, the little Weegie voice in my head kicks in and says it's time to go to bed, yer making an arse o yersel. I barely knew these people, not really, what if they ran around nude, what if they got out drugs, or did something illegal or...it didn't bear thinking about...so I did what any rational terrified of the possibility of zany and loud never mind pitching a tent first time camper would do - I bought a book. Yep, that'll save me....when things are getting loud and zany and I feel uncomfortable, I dip a toe into the world of literature. I might as well have faked a headache.

I didn't behave particularly well on the camping trip as a result. I certainly was of no use to anyone when it came to helping out, apart from saving the fire by selflessly pouring vodka on it. What I thought at the time was being the moral compass of the group was actually just me being a pain. And most importantly, I was a horrible and terrible fisherman, unless you count the sitcom style hooking of a rogue sock as a catch (it smelled like a fish). As strange as it sounds, I just wasn't ready to have friends again - I wasn't used to it. I've always been a solitary person anyway, being an only child, and the only person within a fifteen mile radius to have seen Crossroads (I think some kid in Gagebrook got it for Xmas). I had, as my dad would say, my face tripping me, and it says a lot for my state of mind that I actually can remember one of the happiest times in my life was on that camping trip - when I was on my own. When I was five I said to Mum "Sure is a beautiful country!" as I looked at, I don't know, Mitre 10 or something, but my ability to be struck by the majestic wonder of the world (or popular hardware stores) has been lost along the way. However, as I sat on the beach, I was genuinely and quite shamefully (for a West of Scotland male) moved by the beauty and wonder of where I was. I can't explain it very well, but I was overwhelmingly struck by the smallness of the world and how unspoiled bits of Tas...and then, my friends found me, interrupting my train of thought before it sounded like the back of a Fruitopia bottle. It probably says a bit about my state of mind that I was a bit annoyed to be disturbed - I wasn't rude about it, but I certainly wasn't talkative, as I never am when I'm interrupted mid thought, perhaps the rudest personal state that I present to people. As we walked along the beach though back to our little mini world of tents and discarded lemonade bottles, I remember talking some absolute time filling bollocks conversation, and boring myself in doing so. I did wonder if there was any way that my behaviour wasn't quite registering, after all these were optimistic people, but of course it was, because their conversation back was equally tepid and meaningless, and if there's one thing I know, when I'm boring the arse off people...if we had called it all off right there, agreed to disagree, well, that would have been fine...but we only had a night to go, a pack of footy franks to eat, and a face to untrip...

As it turned out, when we got back to the discarded plastic village that night, past the dissolute Latvians struggling with the complexities of the Nokia phone system, past the little wooden shack selling overpriced crunchies and over heated Big Ms, and past the dissolving mute families who masked their hatred for each other by talking about how great the trip home would be, we heard possums, and my friends instantly and immediately backed away, but I just didn't care, and walked forward, oblivious to the possum related danger, stood for a minute, then lit a fire much to the amazement of myself and the Latvians (except Orba, she just wasn't impressed by anything). It was Survivoresque, without the script, and after that everyone (ie. me) was a lot happier and more relaxed. i suppose I was quite lucky that I was able in the final flickering flames of the trip that I turned myself around, and actually began relaxing around people again - lucky because I saw the alternative, the car journey home in total misery, from a family of bearded, burly Tasmanians who had, to my eyes, come to save their relationships. The son, well, he was a write off, because he was off trying to burn down the shack, but the husband and wife, Mr and Mrs red and black flannel 2003, were just not even speaking to each other. I watched them as I pondered the safety of two hundred degree milk the final morning we were there, and it was all in the eyes and the hips, they didn't even look at each other, their body language sullen and distant. As they loaded up the car, thankful that the son didn't have my obvious fire lighting skills, I know that the husband had one final look at his wife, a piercing, meaningful look, one that she didn't even register, as he blindly threw the esky in the rough general direction of their Holden ute. I know that look because it was the same look I exchanged with my my girlfriend when we broke up, the look that tries to find some tiny trace of the the happiness you once had, but fails, and says goodbye. I said to this to my friend (and officially, the three people in that car were now my friends, even though I nearly ruined it) and she questioned me, questioning my ability to ascertain such deep readings from a simple glance, and I explained, I explained my own broken heart, my own broken friendships, in such moving and genuine detail that they actually turned the radio off to listen to me speak, and we truly bon...oh who am I kidding, I had to fess up that I mostly gathered a lot of my information from the fact he went "You can get the nerfucking divorce papers out the fucking glovebox when we get home mole!" - I was lucky that I didn't have to translate for the Latvians, I don't know what Latvian is for glovebox...

So is hell being trapped in a room with your friends? Maybe - maybe it's being trapped on a bark riddled camp site in the middle of nowhere, but maybe it's not...as long as I actually remember to cheer up - now where's that lampshade...