A short walk around Kingston

So I felt guilty today about the prospect of another four hour afternoon nap, and actually went out and got my hair cut and did some ironing. I've mentioned before Kingston isn't the most riveting place to go for a walk, unless you have a particular love or fancy for slightly overweight people jogging or walking the dog. Sometimes round my way, someone will be having a garage sale, piling up their old Garbage or Radiohead CDs in cheap to buy bundles, or there'll a religious event on to pack the cars along the side of the road, but otherwise it's a fairly sleepy suburb and you can walk along the road pretty much unbothered by wee weans on bikes, skateboarders or gawping gangs of hooded teenagers questioning your parentage. Actually, the only hoon I've ever seen in Kingston drove past me in a souped up Nissan Micra, doof doof speakers proudly blaring...The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. Even the football club here is pretty genteel, reasonably priced and accepting of it's mediocrity, more a place to visit and take the kids for a counter meal than any kind of rabid force of sporting excellence. Apart from the occassional smashed phone box, there's just nothing happening that would imperil any kind of tourist or worry those who write the Mercury in fearful green pen. As such, there's no question that like all respectable quiet neighbourhoods with the facade of a retirement village, there will be incredible sexual perversion and scandal behind every second door, I have no question of that, but the only evidence I have of that is that we used to live next door a highly religious couple (of whom more later) who I always believed to be swingers. They just seemed a little bit too keen to be friends with my Mum and Dad. Luckily, the only thing that's ever happened to me since I've lived here is that someone came onto my deck and took a chair - they returned in the morning...nothing says Kingston to me like polite thieves...

I usually get my hair cut in a place recently renamed Cyber Hair, some of futuristic wonderland where all the trainee hairdressers and promotions models have been replaced by efficient hair cutting robots. Actually, the weirdest thing about my hairdressers is that they completely trust you to pay, since the customer bit where you stand and give them the money is actually in the mall, and you could easily do a runner while they swept up. That would never happen in Scotland, hairdressers there have sealed doors you can't escape out of until you've paid. In fact it was in the paper the other week this Irish hairdresser chased a non payer and bashed him. I used to have this incredible discomfort going in there, because the first question the promotions model always asks is "So what are you doing for the weekend" - a loaded question of course, because if you are some sort of sad sack with nothing going on, you don't really want to say it out loud. With the exception of my hairdresser in Burnie that I had a crush on, I've always been OK with this question though because I am genetically resistant to small talk, but there was this old boy in there day when I was getting my bonce shaved, getting his hair cut by a girl who's name I think was Sofia, a blank eyed impressionable young girl with disdain in her eyes but a desire to wield scissors that was palpably touching. I know this because instead of starting with "So what you are doing for the weekend" one time, she David Brent style showed me her trophy (not an innuendo) and sort of rolled her eyes and went "Oh...god...embarrassing...trophy" - so anyway, she'd cutting this old boys hair, and he's full on answering the static question with all his vim and vigour. He's got tons on, he's got a party and a yacht and a watch and a car and a dog and a party and a dog and...you get the general idea, he's a man on the move, a man with a plan, a man comically unable to register that his flirtacious charms are not working on Sofia, who's putting tramlines in his hair in case he's a judge. So the haircut ends just as the butch lesbian one (one in every hairdresser) finished doing my hair and we're all standing at the pay desk waiting to hand over the cash. Our old boy is still living it large like an older Liam Gallagher, and I'm sure he was referencing the drugs he was taking (please god not Viagra) when his wife came up, tapped him on the shoulder, and asked him if he'd got the gloves he needed to do the guttering that was "all clogged up like shit"...his eyes slumped, his shoulders fell below his knees, and all his work was undone like a cheap shoelace...he looked at Sofia, struggling for the words to repair their fledgling relationship, but she didn't even pay attention. Instead, she blankly and straight forwardedly recited the price, but at the last moment, her cyber facade cracked, she smiled the wicked smile of the bored woman relieved of burden, and said "do you have gutters on your yacht" - it was perfectly evil, and reinforced my teenage belief that hairdressers, you just can't trust them with your heart...or your crap chat up lines...

My hair cut, which if I'm honest doesn't take very long anymore, I proceed on, past some Sudanese refugees animatedly discussing in an Australian accent copied from Kingswood Country just how souped up their Valiant is. I admire them for fitting in, I still know nothing about cars. Or how to do a proper Australian accent. I walk past the local church on the way home, the one the massive "Come and coffee with Jesus!" sign, the one that exhorts everyone to discover Jeebus in a fun and funky way. I know that's where the swingers go - we used to live next door to them, a couple from New Zealand who just seemed impossibly happy and disturbingly peppy. I'm from a country with an inherent suspicion of happy, so I was surprised at my Mothers willingness to befriend them. As it turned out, some serious backpedalling was required in the friendship when they invited one Saturday to come to their church and watch an inspirational video. I can't remember where I fitted into the invitation, but I don't think it was Weekend at Bernies we were being invited to watch. Given I think they are swingers, it might have been a very different kind of inspiration - particularly as about two years later, they tried to get me to their church by telling me there was a single girl there, Katie Holmes picked off a list style. I politely declined fearing that I was going to be shown a six hour video about "the leader" - and especially since we'd just had dealings with a couple at work who's real names were Ms Pleasure Me Please and Mr Crystals De Milo, cult nut jobs from a long way from Kingston. My religious suspicions are high, but I am a little warmed by the sight of kids putting in for the community, washing some cars. At least they are until I see one of the kids, nominally called "Anga", rather creepily getting her fourteen year old flirt on with a middle aged man to get him to wash his car when he isa little reluctant. Disturbed, I keep walking, knowing that my car will be never be that dirty that I succumb to the flirtacious charms of a fourteen year old as a way of determining who sponges my car (steady) - my car or my morals for that matter...

I make it home, past the store with the ever changing owners, the store that seems to be some kind of immigration scam. Two girls, not nearly flirtacious enough to be working the car wash but of the same age of Anga, are discussing a text message at the bus stop, one of the girls is crying because someone has let her down. As I walk past them, she spits "fuckwit!" with such sudden vengenance, I think for a split second she's talking to me, and as I look around, she apologizes and says it's not me she's talking to. I keep walking, I turn up Robyn even louder on my IPOD to shut out the noise, not of the girl crying, but of the world in general, turning it up until if deafens me. I walk past the fire station and ambulance centre where kids are playing basketball idly, the ambulance and fire station we had to get my cousin (the one I don't like) to hospital late one night, because he didn't have his proper inhaler - I realise whenever I walk around that I might not like small talk, might not be the kind of wonderful person who buzzes around fascinated by peoples lives, but I am fascinated to think that a million lives even in this quaint, tired suburb are falling apart or coming together and I'll just never know about it, I'll just assume in my ignorance that everything is OK. As I almost make it to my house, an early 30s  couple are pulled over outside my house in their car, a horrifically bright green colour, and they are arguing, because they are lost, clearly because they are referring angrily to a map. I'm not sure if they ask for me directions, because I've got Cobrastyle on really loud, but I can read their emotions, and they aren't good. In the back of a car, there's a small child strapped in, already looking world weary, as if this is her life, trips that end in a belligerent argument. As I look back over the arguing couple, the kid visibly sighs, and I smile in her direction, hopeful that I haven't misread her already broken and defeated emotions, and she's just tired. As I go to walk away, the girl locks eyes with mine, sighs again, and gives her parents the finger. Nope, I think, she's not broken....yet....

I make it home, slump on the couch, and shout at Peter Siddle for being useless...a small victory I have earned, my own world once again sealed off and in order...