The 1ne year anniversary post - Progress Part 1ne

When I was about 7even, Penguin, the town where I lived and grew up and learned how to make a lime spider in got a Soapbox, a shop in which all kinds of fancy powdered washing detergent was available in little buckets for you to scoop up with little plastic scoops provided Mrs Benson from Upper Hale St wasn't hogging the scoop. Around about the same time, we got an even more impressive new arrival - the ice cream machine that was allegedly only 1ne of 2wo in the whole world that at the time could take little bits of your favourite chocolate treat or type of nut and mash it up into the ice cream. The possibilities were limitless, I mean who didn't want to imagine what it was like to take a Mars Bar and grind it up into a lump of Vanilla ice cream? I think the mythology that we were only 1ne of 2wo places in the whole world to have this technology might have grown from some kind of weird Chinese purple monkey dishwasher story the denizens of the Dial Arcade were trying to peddle us in the early days of Penguins new shopping mall, but I certainly believed it. I told everyone in the playground of this wonderful technology as if I myself had invented the Death Star or found the mythical Bernard Toohey card for my footy card set. It's fair to say that because I lived in Penguin and went in school in Burnie, which was a tiny bit Palestinia vs Israel but with less actual fighting and more references to what mothers did at night, I was proud of our little town growing and thriving, especially when my auntie opened her tea shop, with the best free fudge sundaes in the world. Yes, it was a heady optimistic mix of soap, crushed nuts and fudge that couldn't be washed off my face with the strongest of facecloths the old Penguin in the mid 80tys. If there was flaws in the place, I certainly didn't see them, buoyed with enthusiasm and patriotic spirit. It's no surprise that 1ne day I stood at the bottom of Mission Hill Road and said that Penguin sure was a beautiful town. Even my cynical Glaswegian mother would surely have to agree that we lived in a wonderland, and if she needed any proof, she could simply hold some of her whiter clothing up to the light and inspect it for stains. One dose of washing powder from the Soapbox would surely be enough to impress even the most dislocated homesick Scot who couldn't let a single comment go without a snappy comeback...

If I was hyped up on the boom time that was progressive Penguin, it was nothing compared to Mr Phillips the friendly newsagent. To the best of my knowledge he was what you might call dating one of Penguins less morally observant Queens Quest contestants, and he was full of local hype and excitement - front of the float when the Fire Engine would sail through the town at Xmas dishing sweets to the kids, down the beach jogging and saying hello to tourists in the morning, a big gregarious fellow with a happy smile. I think he was possibly a little bit loopy on the fumes from his incredibly dangerous heater he kept at the back of his little newspaper selling desk, but anyway, whenever something would be opened or something new would come to town he'd be out the front of the celebration with a big grin and a big stupid jumper. To be honest, I think if I met him now, I'd hate the guy - I'd find his smile insincere and wonder if he was looking over my shoulder to see if someone more important than me was available to talk to and I'd wonder if everyone secretly hated him, but back then I found his fascinating. He was bold, he was loud, he had the run of the entire town, and he was sleeping with a vacuous blonde woman who didn't clog up the relationship with conversation or anything like that - every mid 80tys male dream surely? I figured this would just be my natural progression - I'd grow up in Penguin, marry a local girl, watch the town progress and grow into a mecca, and everything would be fantastic surely? Hell, I was young, what did I know about progress? To me, progress and change was always positive, and who couldn't be excited about staggering technological breakthroughs like the BBC Micro - as for Mr Phillips, the last time I saw him was about a week before we moved into our little flat in Burnie that began the downfall of the worlds own optimist, ie.me, before we moved to Ayrshire. He had some Korean tourists bailed up on the beach and was telling them the colourful history of the Big Penguin while they looked terrified and concerned. I remember thinking how lucky he was that he would see Penguin grow and thrive while I was stuck in a horrible Ayrshire rut, and in doing so completely blocked out that as he turned to say hello to someone else, the Korean couple fled as fast as their legs would carry them, in a completely different direction, maybe heading towards Ulverstone...

Things were different when I moved back though. The teashop was gone, the Soapbox was gone, I presume without being able to accurately recall that other countries and towns had discovered the secret of putting nuts in ice cream by turning a handle. Mr Phillips appeared to have gone AWOL as well, or perhaps the demise of the Soapbox finally sent him over the edge. I don't think I would have been impressed anyway by any of my old pleasures after 4our years of Scotland taught me that everything was pretty much rubbish and enthusiasms were for people asking for a slap. I found that the more bleak and world weary and fatalistic I was when I first moved back to Penguin, the cooler I was and the more popular I became, but I stood for nothing much, and found fault in anything until the act became tiresome. Sometimes I would try and reflect on what had changed in my outlook and why everyone annoyed me so much, but I was just homesick and lonely, and I was hardly unique in being grumpy. I hadn't expected the bubble gum chewing vacancy in the eyes of the girl in the milk bar with the big hair and the pink streak through the middle of the thatch. I hadn't expected anyone in Penguin to feel sad or down because it just didn't compute to my memories of the place. She was down though, she would chew her chewing gum with perfect unmoving arrogance while you waited for a dollar worth of chips. She annoyed me, and I was also annoyed she stole my pose that I thought I'd invented, and every time I went in there we exchanged ever more terse grunts as I tried to show her that I thought life was more horrendous than she did and vice versa. One day in town I saw her getting out of an incredibly fancy car and she was smiling, and I figured when she saw me after a brief period of recognition that she would realise that she had lost, after all she was in a fancy car and giggling and without pose, but when she looked at me I realised then that I was holding a teddy bear in my hand for my pash buddy Vicki, with a Care Bear style love heart on it, and she eyed me evenly and victoriously. It's hard to hold a grunge era disdain for life while holding a big teddy bear and stupid I've just been pashed grin, and she looked triumphant as she smiled at me. I tried to mouth something akin to we'll call it a draw, but it was too late...damn bears...you can never out-run them...

There was a particular shop in the Dial Arcade that wasn't filled for ages - I think it had been a pet shop then a pizzeria then nothing then a shoe shop then nothing again. There were receipts on the floor and it was easy to get into, if you knew how, since it was abandoned and the early 90tys weren't a high point for the security forces in Penguin. The whole town was more or less wide open for slack jawed teenagers to wander around in, finding places to sit and pash and drink, and even the library was easy to get into if you knew how. I only took advantage of this freedom once - we set up for the night, Vicki and I, inside the abandoned shop, on a sort of date while drifters and wanderers shuffled through the place. I had snuck out the window early in the morning just to get there, almost breaking my ankle on the train tracks in haste. I was excited to be honest, there was a thrill involved in lock picking and such like activities to be honest. As it happened, in many ways I had made progress - I had the run of Penguin, I was dating the local, but the surrounds weren't the romantic wonderland I had thought of when I was younger. Unless you count finding 20ty bucks on the floor romantic. We pashed, obviously, because that's what we did, we drank cheap rum and talked a bit, but the excitement of teenage deliquency wore off pretty quickly for me, and I wasn't the big supercool nihilist that I had made out to be - in fact, I was cold and depressed, shivering in an abandoned shop and feeling like I was the only person on earth with this collection of feelings and fears. There was a girl hunched up in the corner when I walked past, and she frankly didn't look well. Vicki was unkind to her and to my concerns, but relented and checked she was OK. She was, I think. I did wonder what Mr Phillips would think about the scene I had wandered into and then out of a little later with a hangover, a scene that I knew I didn't want to wander into again...

It was progress, for sure, but I really did want to just eat an ice cream with nuts...