The Show Day Trilogy - Burnie, 86, may contain traces of Bananarama

As it turned out of course, it could only end the way it did - on Show Day 99, Chris rang me up to say he was in town and wanted to go to the show, but never showed up, and that was the last time I spoke to him, or in fact anyone I was friends with at school, other than a rather strange and bewildering night out at the movies last year - the official moment I entered the friendless triangle of 99-02. My girlfriend incidentally told me everyone that she went to school with ended up a prostitute, so that was more heartwarming conversation from a cheery soul. Aside from show day 06, my fight with my physically disgusting boss, the kind of man who Fred West would say was a bit questionable, I never again have been to the show, never drunkenly once again partaking in the Hobart tradition of heckling the pig racing. I did consider possibly recounting the horrific nature of my boss and the disastrous night out I had in 06, when I thought I saw one of the Veronicas at Irish Murphys, but we'd all just feel embarrassed. Show day today means a day off work, a day to mooch around the house and watch old episodes of The Simpsons I've seen a million times. As I rapidly and somewhat depressingly age, there is a little part of me that wonders if I could still get excited about things like The Show - I have an auntie in that weird Penguin way where she's not really your auntie but you get told she is and go along with it cos then you get Milo and biscuits who is always incredibly upbeat, talkative, happy, laughing...and of course when she leaves we always go thank god she left my ears are sore, but she gets a lot of every day - her husband is equally happy though saying about seven words a decade and getting drunk on his boat, so it's win win I guess. But I do wonder what happened to my sense of mystery and wonder. Sure, I was impressed at Susannah Hoffs and her Bangles gyrations, but I'm cynical about everything, and while it was implanted into me by four years of relentless emotional pressure in Scotland, I would like to at least briefly be the wide eyed innocent boy who was always moved by those sap stories on Willessee, who cried when Molly died on A Country Practice, and who genuinely thought Santa was in Fitzgeralds and that it wasn't just some old pervy hobo called Kevin who, if he had elves, it was just his kids that had to work for their maintenance money...

As I said in part one, one of the things we used to do at my old school was go to the Burnie show for free a day before it opened, when no one else was there. We had a magical two hours to run around and be fleeced by sharpening their skills carnie folk until our time was up and some less emotionally cognescent school was let in. Ah yes, we were free ride testers, no question, but we were too pepped up on Mello Yello, sponsor supplied, and over stimulated exaggeration of things awesomeness that to question was folly. The only problem was the perpetual debate and argument between the "ride" kids and the "game" kids. The ride kids would spend their two hours going round and round on the rides, and the game kids would...you know what, you probably worked it out, no need for explanation, it's hardly the enigma code. I had a foot in either camp - I appreciated the velocity of the Alpine Express, but I also found an intellectual challenge in pitting my wits against the rotating mouth of the clown or in doing horrible things to a slow moving parade of plastic ducks. Of course, the only disappointment was that we didn't get to fully participate in the show, since no one was yet chopping wood, our local MC Tiger Dowling hadn't started rambling like Grandpa Simpson on the soon to be turned off microphone, and no one was letting pigs run amok with their own sense of wonder and amazement, which usually involved bowling someone over, but hey, it was free, there wasn't much to complain about. Even the Dagwood Dogs were free, what a treat! The Alpine Express of course was the epicentre of all our excitement, a ride that went really fast forwards and backwards, almost daring you not to spew everywhere, especially after a free Dagwood Dog, but at the 86 show, there was also a fully working computer that people could go and have a go on, and that appealed to the inner nerd that is palpably in me - as I said before, my Mum spent an entire weekend getting my high score off Grannys Garden just because I put my name in as "Cheeky Bastard", but this wasn't just a common BBC Micro, this was a C64...the queue went round the block...it was truly a magical land.

Of course, two hours wasn't long enough to devour the cotton candy (fairy floss - honestly, the Americanisation of our language...I was saying to my Mom...see what I did there? Ah, forget it) and see and do everything, but it was enough to pretty much disburse the entire school day and render any attempt to re-focus minds on maths, even footy maths, was completely pointless. So they let us after our trip to the show go outside and play cricket or something. We had a game a nun invented for us called bootball that just far too complicated to explain so cricket it was. My cricket skills declined at the same time my eyesight did, so I presume I was just fielding. I wasn't concentrating anyway, I was too over excited by the glimpse of the C64 (maybe one day we would play cricket on a computer!) and too full of several foods that shouldn't sit in the stomach together to be a valuable outfielder, and I conceded defeat when a low to the ground cut shot from a girl called Samantha went straight through my legs, and went off to do what I did best, lie in the middle of an oval assigning shapes to the clouds. About an hour passed, and just as I was considering whether a particular cloud looked like a sheep or Keren from Bananarama, I was alerted to an almighty rucus over on sports field #1. We were all abruptly jolted from our slumbering dazes to a meeting at the assembly hall. Was I being punished for assigning the wrong cloud shape (I knew it was a sheep) - I was always righteously indignant at group punishments for the innocent, but clearly the indiscretion, whatever it had been, was significant. And clearly it had involved sports field #1, but what could it be? I was so furious and righteously indignant, I completely forgot to get my Bubble O Bill from the school canteen...that's a lie, I still had time to go and get the ice cream treat from Scott Parkers mum who worked at the canteen. I'm sure she had a thing for me, but it was highly illegal, so lets just move on from that...

As it turned out, our problems revolved around a kid called Scott, who was firey enough of temper and freckle without the added emotional stimulus of competitive sport and the rocket fuel of fizzy drinks. Innocently, one of our teachers, Mr Brendan, a man who looked like what would happen if Deane Hutton from the Curiousity Show let himself go to seed, had joined in the game, bowling his slow middle aged portly gentlemen trundlers, and of course, completely clean bowled Scott, who slogged when he should have swung. Scott had thrown his bat somewhere into the middle of Yolla and let out quite the curse word. And that was enough of course for a talk to everyone about the complexities of sportsmanship in a modern age, and while I was of course indignant when I wasn't playing, Mr Brendan was having none of it, and neither was our school nun - which was a bit of a cheek because when she used to come visit our house and play the home version of Sale Of The Century she seemed very grumpy when I used to whip her elderly custard cream loving arse - but it was largely taken with good humour. Such good humour in fact that it seemed it would all be over in ten minutes with lesson learned. Even I kept my big trap shut about the unfairness of it. The Nuns problem though was twofold, she expected Scott to apologize, and it wasn't likely, and time was clearly passing us by, time we could be spending staring into space or running off the last of the Tang. As she tapped her foot impatiently, she folded her arms crossly, bones creaking under our weak underfunded lighting, and said "Now Scott, you know Jesus would play fair!" - I don't know about that, his stance on games of chance seems to be unrecorded, but I guess she could have picked worse role models. Scott though was impressively and rather stoically unmoved. With a shake of his head that probably knocked off about twelve freckles, he fiercely and decisively spat that Jesus "probably wouldn't bowl such a shithouse delivery!" - well, the Bible does have a lot of spin (ooh, get you bitch). Mr Brendan then fired back that Jesus probably would have made contact with the ball, and it was on again, a fat teacher and a kid arguing over Jesus cricket abilities while we were all gently ushered back outside to leave them to it....and I went straight back to my position on sports field #2, to stare up at the clouds, contemplate that I had good friends, and conclude that, after all, it was Keren from Bananarama...the clouds still in the same glorious shape I left them in...

And 22 years later, I spent show day doing pretty much the same thing, lying on my deck, staring at the clouds, and marvelling at technology when I did go inside. Only this time, it was definitely a sheep. Almost certainly...