What Miles Did Next, after sickness, more Melbourne, and more sickness...

There's a kid who lives around the corner from me who looks like I used to look. He pays as much attention to his clothing as I used to do, he has his hair swept up in a surfer do just like I used to have, and he has a girlfriend with impeccable vacant eyes who shimmers in the light, even if she just has a tracksuit on. They are impossibly young, and they always in my brief interactions with them seem perfectly happy with themselves, not in a smug way, but in a comfortable way - they don't seem to notice anyone else or anything as they hold hands quietly or just watch the traffic go past with a smile on their face. That traffic would usually just be me of course, driving with a less than spring in my step, the bitter acrid taste of coffee or sour cereal milk in the back of my throat, a bland commercial tune playing inoffensively on the radio, and air conditioning whipped into a frenzied dance of recycled air and cool slaps on the face. They usually lift my spirits those 2wo because whenever I drive past and things are bleak they look so optimistic - until today, because I drove past, in a cold morning chill, completely unsure as to what setting I should put my air conditioner on, and she was standing with arms folded like a 60tys model, pouting into the middle distance while he stood in trendy jeans with his fringe over his eyes, while a new 3hrd girl seemed to somehow be intervening, standing across the road perhaps innocently, but like the time my Mum wore a jarring bright Xmas cardigan with a snowman on it, everything feels somehow wrong, just from their posture and body language. I have a flashback to all those youthful post argument stand offs in carparks when I was younger, the horrible feeling when your relationship is going wrong and nothing you can say can fix it because you don't have the life skills to fix it...I hope I've made a misjudgement because I'm miserable that there's nothing but Nickelback on the radio, but I'm sure that they won't last. In fact, I drove past again today, and only he was there, and I might just be a little bit down about it, or maybe I was drunk on cough medicine, but I'd swear his fringe looked a little uncombed and his eyes looked sad as he looked straight ahead, his bag thrown on the road, the cares of the world outwardly manifested through poor hair care...

At the other end of the age spectrum is the Kingston nightmare. A shambling old man in denim with an eye patch for effect who wanders around the edge of the doctors surgery in a series of ill fitting cardigans and a suspiciously put on limp telling people walking past he had swine flu, and in great detail just how long he had been in isolation in hospital. He's telling this on this particular day to a long chinned receptionist with horse teeth who couldn't care less, since she has a pile of paperwork bigger than her teeth to complete and a telephone that won't stop ringing and ringing and tormenting her brain and getting in the way of the paperwork...so she smiles politely and is completely unaware of the potentially life threatening tale Captain Germ is spilling. She dismisses him with a wave of a manicured hand and he turns his grim face around and shuffles initially in my direction - I can't even lift up a copy of a New Idea to shield my face from him and hide, but he sees an old woman in the corner he hasn't yet annoyed. Just as he gets to the perimeter of her conversational wall, a girl in a grey top storms out of one of the offices in bitter desolate tears, kicking the door open and holding a face too young to be pained in her hands, running quickly and desperately into the street while a doctor with a clipboard stands a little upset in the corridor, twisting a St Christopher medallion in her middle aged fingers and shuffling awkardly while a receptionist with a horrendous 80tys perm shuffles papers and tries to pay attention to the radio until the faint air of melancholy has truly left the building, pairs of eyeballs swivelling in the direction of the childrens television show on the big screen in the corner. None of this deters the man in the eye patch - like an experienced campaigner he simply announces to the room that he knows exactly how the girl feels because when he was told he had swine flu and had to face up to 10en days of isolation...

It's a late night bar - the kind you don't want to go into without a sense of wariness or at least back up better than a friend who's response to physical threats is a concoction of stammers and shrugs so ineffectual it's positively jarring, especially compared to his later recount of the situation in which we was 1ne step away from delivering a roundhouse kick to the head. There's a pool table going unused in the middle of the bar, and my chatterbox friend is trying to set me up with someone, a girl with a bored expression and no signs of emotive life. The connection is an alleged mutual birthplace, but her recollections of Scotland seem so overwhelmingly negative, you have to conclude she truly is Scottish - although it is interesting the way our accents seem to get stronger and stronger as the conversation goes on, but she's bored and I'm unimpressed, and we drift apart at about the same time I get a strange craving for some Strawberry Milk. The only thing sparkling about her is a shoulder spangle that glints under a flickering dingy light at around the same time the threat over my shoulder rises, floundering arguments and counter threats somehow out of sync with the good time music the DJ desperately tries to spin. He's positively vibey, bouncy, articulate, as if he's convinced himself in his own mind he's a magician and everyone is listening to him exclusively, working up a sweat stain while the tapestry of life unravels around him. Eventually, the threatener storms off, whatever slight there was on his honour assauged by repeated apologies and the need for a drink which incongrously has a big slice of less than manly lime in it. I don't know what became of the bored Scottish girls - I presume they had to stand and look cool somewhere else. In midnight drizzle you can convince yourself it was them that was boring, when maybe it was just you. I look across the road outside the club, and a very minor celebrity is posturing desperately, trying to get attention through loud overuse of a mobile phone, and look at everyone around me throwing desperate cool shapes, and I can't be bothered. I throw myself into a taxi, and drink the strawberry milk, while the taxi driver spins me a tale of how he really wants to be a writer, and I slump against the vinyl seat, unsure of myself, unsure of my age and my place in life, and suddenly fully aware that somehow in the conversation with the bored Scottish girl, we both switched accents about 25ive times in a minute, and reflecting on how close I probably was to a pool cue over the head...

The strawberry milk finds it's way mysteriously into my fridge - something I know I bought, but I have no idea where I've bought it, or if a 7/11even owner saw the distant light in my eyes and ripped me off for it. Possibly. I'm relatively free of hangover and my annoying perpetual cough, so I put Movits on the IPOD and go for a jog. I'm trying to look a little less rough than I do at the moment, my orange shoes and aching calfs splash in Kingston puddles like a disruptive perpetual fault crashing into a watery world. There's a girl sitting on the path as I jog past - she has a Hello Kitty T-shirt on and pegs in her hair. She smiles at me and I smile back, although I have very little that I could possibly say to someone with pegs in their hair. Other than why do you have pegs in your hair. My hood is up, and an old woman sitting at the bus stop is glaring at me through the means of hissing teeth and fired up eyes. Nothing makes me feel young like the disapproval of an old woman, so I try and look at least a little menacing as I jog past, maybe increase my gait so I can look like I'm running away from a shop with something under my arm. The old woman folds her arms, pressing her arms against the buttons of her tightly restrictive coat, her purple/grey old woman hair bouncing with indignation. It's entirely the hood up I find, the old women around here don't like it. I leave her behind and run past the real deal, a kid no older than 12elve in a hooded top trying car doors to see which 1nes are unlocked. The old woman clocks him and gets up to tell him off, jabbing her umbrella as she does so. She turns to me, and suddenly I'm on the side of the man against the kids - she motions to me and points, as if we're suddenly all adults together and we need to fight crime. All I can say is it'd be the worlds most poorly dressed crime fighting unit. The kid disappears into the bushes, and I don't want to stick around for the moral indignation, thrown as I am into which side of the age gap I really belong to. The girl with pegs in her hair watches me all the way down the road, I know that because I keep looking back and her eyes are following me down the road, and they continue to do so until the old woman with the buttoned up coat catches her eye and decides to deliver a lecture about modern society - I leave them both behind in a less than gainly flurry of leg burning running, the closest I've felt to doing anything interesting in 2wo whole weeks...

I don't think she was Scottish you know...when you don't know where Irvine is...I mean, we have The Magnum...

Melbourne Part 2wo - Modern Interactions with Strangers

It happened in a laneway - don't worry, this isn't going anywhere Rugby League - in Melbourne. I can't remember the time, but it was cold. I had my hood up, because I thought if I did the Italian spruikers would leave me alone and not thrust special boards in my face. My aversion to sales pressure is now officially a medical condition because the nearest hint of a uniformed staff member is enough to send me fleeing in the direction of the nearest 7/11ven for some old fashioned rudeness and disinterest. I'm eating a slice of pizza, I know that much. Bit spicy, but at least it has character. No McDonalds, no bewilderness, no homeless guys selling ketchup, something actually cooked. As I bite hard into this particular slice of bready goodness, I realise that while nominally talking, on a vacation no less, to a friend of mine, I'm actually completely out of not only interest, but words. I have nothing I can possibly say of any interest, nor do I especially want to listen. It's a strange sensation, maybe partially inspired by my hangover, maybe by the hood blocking my ears, but after all these years, I'm weary, uninspired, I can't fix bad boyfriend troubles anymore than I can make the last slice of salami stay on the end of the pizza, and I can't listen anymore. The conversation is so predictable and boring, so self pitying, I'm not sure what the point is, so I focus my attention on a downtrodden but cute busker with 80tys hair who is struggling to pick up whatever instrument it is while balancing change in her hand. I'd be able to tell if I had my glasses on. I know I'm nodding - I mean I can feel my neck muscles moving, if such a thing is possible, but my brain isn't engaged. The busker girl eventually gallops off in the direction of a waiting tram, losing a heel like Paula Wilcox in the opening credits of Man About The House. And when I mentally rejoin the conversation as the busker girl fades into the distance, my friend is nodding back at me and saying what I've just said is really helpful and deep even though I have no idea what I've just said. My profoundity is surprising to me, because I had been thinking entirely thoughts of 1ne syllable or less, but I can't let things like truth and honesty impose on a friendship, so I just shrug, chalk whatever I said up to good food and the reliable predictabilty you can only find after being friends with someone for so long, stock phrases and general indifference are fine, and all the effort was made long ago over weak coffee anyway...

It happened in a pool hall. I had far too much to drink, and had set about dismantling class barriers and preconcieved notions of appearance simply by walking up to everyone and saying hello, regardless of blondeness, hair gel or sharp suit. This wasn't like me, I'm normally far more shy these days. I wish I wasn't, but I am. There's a flight leaving with my name on the guest list in the morning but I don't care much - I'm happy, I think I can dance, my impressions are in my own mind utterly spot on and hilarious. My satirical wit is almost at the sharpest before the dawn I find. My pool skills are obviously inverse to the quality of my satirical wit, my failure to come up with a coherent reason why the Chaser has gone downhill usually a clear sign I'll be potting reds like there's no tomorrow. Her name was Sarah and she had a leopard skin bra on - my friend was leading the course of vulgarity towards her, which is to be expected of course, late night pool halls are notorious for their attitude towards to women with blonde hair and large breasts next to alleged leopard patterning. She was uneasy with 1ne of the phrases in particular, a lewd suggestion too far, and for some reason I stepped in, maybe I did an impression or something. Man, my Snagglepuss...I know I showed some form of gallantry because she wrote me a note on a table napkin with her facebook page on it. I can't see knights of yore that showed gallantry towards damsels getting a facebook link in return, but the thing that struck me was this was a very detailed note with lots of long words and even a picture, and her Facebook page was anything but verbose, a txt spk nightmare of shorthand and photos of her drinking. The note, incidentally, is still next to my laptop - I'd like it if we met up again, just for the raw disappointment that is modern life. She'd expect a gallant self confident conversationalist with endless ability to amuse and I'd expect some kind of female poetress with dexterity and charm. Then I'd tell a boring story and she'd talk about cars and the whole scene would unfold with a tedious sense of inevitability. I added her of course, pending deletion the first time she mentions hubcaps or manifolds...

It happened at the zoo. I'm wandering around on my own, taking in some me time, clutching a tacky novelty souvenir, sold to me by some girl who took the time and care to interrupt a story just to sell me the said tacky novelty item. Her story was about university and a long lost library book and picking up at a nightclub, with vigorous details that belied her studious appearance and her posh manner in selling the novelty item. Her hair is so neat and her hair so shiny, her shoes so buffed and polished and her tone so clipped and precise it's entirely at odds in every possible way with the actions she's describing without a care in the world to the general zoo going public. She tells it with a smile on her lips that in my direction seems flirtacious, but it might just be to enhance the outrageousness - the position suggested sounds like it would throw your back out. It's even stranger than the slumping sleeping kangaroos who don't seem to respond to any kind of call - if any of them were in charge of Skippy duties for the day they'd fail miserably and poor Timmy would never make it out of the well. There's a large weekend Dad with a Zapata moustache on the fringes of 1ne of the cages, slumped against it with elbows in classic sulky teenager position, watching his kid feed a giraffe some kind of grass and straw based concoction. When the kid turns around to make sure Daddy is watching, Daddy is grumpily waving a flannel shirted arm brusquely in the kids direction to indicate that time is up with the long necked creature and time with the long faced father must resume apace. Caught in the maelstrom that is modern seperated weekend parentdom, I involuntarily shrug the universal non verbal communication for kids today huh, but he glares at me and grabs his kid by the arm and disappears in the direction of the exits. The kid is unbroken and when he smiles at me, I give him a cheery thumbs up, and he points to his weekend Dad and gives him a subtle middle finger, and we both laugh as we part, the kid by now not even being subtle about his tribute to parental skills, and me so unsubtle in laughing at it I wake up a snow leopard and probably disrupt at least 3hree other stories of vigorous sexual activity on a budget coming from the genteel surrounds of the novelty store...those little purple hippos must have ears that burn by now...

It happened in a posh hotel. It's 3hree AM, it's Melbourne, there's calm in the hotel, flickering images on the Television, some cricketers so rich you can't relate to them meandering around greener pastures, and there's an incessant thump from the room next to me, you know the kind, although not accompanied by any particular noises of joy, just incessant thumping. Alesha Dixon can't drown it out, so I have to get up and get out, walk through the laneways and alleyways of Melbourne, through the haunts and dives and parties of bewildered revellers looking for somewhere to go to fill in the last moments before sunrise. There's a drunken footballer stumbling around the pavement showing dis-interest in his teams defeat that night, and I feel the need to at least tut a tabloid commenters tut of disapproval in his direction, not least of all because I hoped as a supporter of that team he cared about winning and losing. I take a photo of him on my mobile phone for home based reference, and maybe for some free tickets at a later date. I head back to the hotel bored, because I don't know any1ne in the city, it's cold, hopefully the thumping has stopped, and the girl in the lobby is pretty and helpful. There's a party at the traffic lights, girls and boys and sparkles mixing in the night, the usual teens in the usual social configuration of beautiful people and less beautiful hangers on radiating in the glow of beauty and sparkles. Hell, if you have attractive friends, it gets you into nightclubs I guess. I was eating a KitKat so god knows where I'd get into - the alpha male had a lopsided eye, but enough hair gel to compensate, and they radiated with such youth and vitality, I envied them because their hangovers would be light and breezy and the clubs they attended would still seem magical and exciting even if they just played the Black Eyed Peas 50ty times a night. It was then the Alpha Male said that everyone was going back to his place to look at his Twitter photos, and they disappeared into a cab, and I was left wondering what happened to the world I grew up in, and sadly the girl behind the counter at the Hyatte is more interested sucking a Wendys milkshake and talking to someone on the phone. She smiles at me, but I see it's insincere, and I wander to the lift with my head down, tired of strangers, and in need of sleep...

Luckily, the thumping subsides, and a new day breaks without any further trouble...

She lives in this house over there, has her world outside it...

It was the summer of 1991ne, a particularly unmemorable summer for me. Without the distraction of a major international football tournament or the anxiety riddled stress of a robot obsessed girlfriend to distract me, my unsocialibility had caught up with me. There was a Scottish tradition in our circular street called chapping the door, which didn't mean dressing the door up like a camp cowboy, but rather meant that at any moment a large group of weans, sometimes weans you didn't even know, would come knocking on the door with a tennis ball or a football or a catapult and demand that you came out and joined them in escapades. However bleak my nuclear winters had been, however much I felt angst ridden or bullied at school nor quite sure where the line between male tomfoolery and actually being beaten up was drawn, no matter how strange it was 3hree years on from lying in a field on a mandatory cloud shaping exercise to be casually greeting drug sellers on the playground like old friends or hoping inter religious warfare wouldn't break out...at least I got out of the house a bit more as a positive to the bizarre nature of my own life. Sadly post Debbie I slipped into what can only be described as a funk - had this funk made me more rhythmic or danceable as the music suggests, I'd have been a lot better off, but I failed to return the chap door compliment and the crowds fell away as if I'd released a terrible follow up album. That's not to say things didn't happen. One of the neighbours kids was bowled over by a rottweiller, there were poll tax riots to attend and anti English posters to put on lamposts. It just felt a bit like everything was bland and boring. The excitement that a greater exposure to criminality and adult themes that Scotland had offered me had now become blase and dull. So I spent an entire summer more or less with the blinds shut trying to finally work out how to put together my soccer ball lampshade and make cassette tapes off Atlantic 252. I know I had friends, I know I must have done something with my time, but if it was memorable, I don't remember it, rendering at least part of this sentence irrelevant and overwordy, but what the hell, if you've stuck with me this far, you generally know what you are in for...

My Dad, an indistrious sort prone to gross moodiness in a social situation who was shedding some of the more excessive ravages of his standard look of the 80tys, some of the more lengthier hairs on the back of his head and some of the starchier shirts, decided that my funk could only be cured through the magic of swimming. Which is how I found myself on the mini bus to the Magnum swimming centre, with my Dad by my side like a bearded clamp - while Mary the bus driver played her stock standard range of country suicidal classics on 8eight track, my Dad was responding to my eye rolling and huffing and puffing about the fate of the little doggies getting along by launching into his comedy routine about rap music. It wasn't too different to the time he had originally stolen it from Bill Cosby, but as we passed the little bit of Ayrshire that always baffled me, the bit where beautiful breathtaking scenery on 1ne corner was immediately replaced on the next by a derelict scabrous shopping centre riddled with drunks and graffiti, I remember feeling as though this bastion of parental wisdom had let me down somewhat. He wasn't from my generation, he didn't understand me at all, he was trying to cure my blues with exposure to aqua and somehow he had confused me for someone who liked rap? I liked KLF, they didn't rap did they? Much? He was embarrassing me with his thoughts and his very presence. It was a strange bus ride, 1ne of the few times I have felt genuinely disconnected from everyone and everything. Most of all, I was sure that I was not going to get old. As the bus trundled through Ayrshire, 2wo scrags in flourescent eye burning tracksuits at a bus stop saw me, and to this day I'm sure they pointed and laughed at the dorky kid stuck with his dad who was throwing rap shapes deliberately to emphasise his Cosbyesque point. Oh no, I'd never be embarrassing like that I thought, I'll never get to that age where I was so out of touch and...was that Debbie? It sure looked like her...what happened to her hair? How teased could it be? Dad, stop bipping and bopping, I need to talk about...oh whats the point? Maybe there's something in that country music after all...

5ive years on, a Burnie spring, 199six. It was raining, the Coles elevator was packed with trollies and 1ne rather fetching dapper gentleman employee with Rick Astleyesque shiny shoes drinking Fruitopia from a bottle pushing them hither and tither and almost comically cleaning up random passers by as he struggled to control the wobbly carts. Of course, his boss had suggested he put down the Fruitopia and push with both hands, but he was a maverick, he didn't play by societies rules. Actually he couldn't have played more by societies rules if he tried judging by the shininess of his shoes, but at least I didn't have any angst on this particular day. I had just turned 18teen, thought that Kylie and I had a chance, had a large group of friends who swore they'd be friends forever long before Vitamin C commercialised the whole enterprise, and having just had my first all night drinking session, I felt on top of the world. It was then that a trolley decided to get in on the maverick spirit of the occassion by detaching itself and heading straight for the plant district. In it's wisdom, a small business had set up a display with a rather sparse selection of plants that took up an unconscionable amount of space, and it was only with some deft shimmying that I saved the day, pushing the trolley away from the table and gently into the ankles of a kid in a flannel shirt with a Janet from Spiderbait haircut and the wispiest hint of pencilled in moustache. Slowly he grunted in a particularly flemmy manner and said something akin to watch it Grandpa. Now, given the atonal nature of the grunt, it is possible he said nothing of the sort, but as walked off, I was entirely enraged. Grandpa? I knew everything in the Triple J playlist, hell I was drinking Fruitopia, and could quote it's many visionary hippy musings without referring to the label. I had a tickle me Elmo before anyone knew what it was...it really got to me that I had been called old in such an off handed manner....especially by someone who was from Natone...the Atonal Natonal if you will...meh, that was too clever for him, should just have given him the finger, stupid 13teen year late comeback realisations...

It bothered me for the rest of the night. I didn't have the wise council of my co-worked Janie Jane to draw on, just the mad woman with the ripped tights and the glint of a starry sky to console me. I knew everyone got old in the end, but I hadn't done anything especially old other than work for the man and wear shiny shoes and glasses that only suited a Korean propaganda poster from the 50tys. OK, I did look somewhat old, but I still pushed my trollies with a definite grievance, checking my reflection in the back of some of the shinier silver cars to check for wrinkles. Not many trollies got pushed that night, as I moped even more than usual, remembering more youthful days in my past eating Kraft cheese sandwiches...there was only a smattering of prostitutes out that night, not really the regular crew, definitely not clacky heels girl, so only 1ne of them gave me my usual cursory you think you got problems nod that I returned with a yeah I do got problems but I still feel you guys got it tougher nod - it was a whole conversation based around nods and shakes really - when I walked past pushing trollies through puddles of what I hoped was rainwater. I pushed 1ne of the trollies past a big black van, like the A-Team van with more footy stickers, when I saw flannel boy in the back, almost cowering. As best as I could tell, his Dad, a big bear of a man with a big bushy beard and a tattoo which in the admittedly bad light looked like a snake doing bad things to a woman - far worse than not listening to her conversation or appreciating her lamingtons put it that way - had decided to get him a hooker, and he was somewhat reluctant as 1ne of Burnies finest was hustling price and trying to make her hotpants look alluring and not like 2wo dollar knock offs from the Routleys rack. It felt unseemly of course, but I was a little greatful my Dad only took me swimming. I left them with a click clack of my own heels, Clarks rather than High of course, left to them their fates with a swagger, a surety of my age and place in life, and several trollies that never left the car park...left them all behind and went swimming if I'm not mistaken....

That things went entirely wrong just a few weeks later, well, that's just the way the country song crumbles...

Dreams, ambitions, hollow balls to spin round...

I had a dream last night. It wasn't 1ne of my more vivid dreams, since I was loopy on ennui and little purple Lemsip pills stacked up on the counter like medicated temptresses, imploring me to take the siren song between meals. It had tangents and as many pointless scenes as a DVD of Weeds, but in the main, there was a windowless, airless Grade 12elve library room. There was for some reason lemon madeira cake on the table with a gently sloping carving knife beside it, but the madeira cake was fractionally out of reach unless I produced a significant and aggressive reach across the table. There was a guidance councillor across the room from me, shimmering with hope for me. It was the September of my youth, when I still had promise and hope and a youthful vigour, and I was wasting it in the first forlorn hopes of a lustful pursuit doomed to failure and angst. In my dream, I was squiggling on a notepad, listening to the hypnotic thump of the clock while the guidance councillor rhapsodised an unwitting eulogy for my youth. She had plans for me that lady, although like the air in the room I was probably a little stale. The lemon madeira cake was more enticing than her plan for me, this dream lady, as was the girl outside the glass tomb, doomed as it all ended up being. Someone was doing a blowfish on the glass window, and I was giggling because it was funny to the overmedicated. And it was funny when our ballcrushingly gritty realist librarian carted the blower of fish away, dooming him to an hour of stamping books and stamping away his spirit. Then she shows me her notepad, this guidance councillor full of professionally trained hope, a mapped out chart with arrows and lines and she smiles a hypnotically entrancing smile, not an attractive one, but a functional one, a smile of re-assurance, a smile that says she's on my side, and will keep in touch after Grade 12elve. I don't want to show her my notepad of course, it's just got 2wo drawings on it now, 1ne of me eating a slice of cake and the other an immature savaged love heart with lines and squiggles and more badly constructed imagery than the 1st Hole album. And when she goes to complete her plan for me with a simple, wrapping it all up question, something simple to just ease me out and let the female equivalent of me in for a similar chat with more flowery language, something like who is my hero, I can't answer, and I have nothing more to say - I want to scream something about things happening too fast, but I'm too shy shy, and I wake up in the present, underneath a flowery doona with an alarm clock hissing a staticy cry in my ears, and a strange desire for some madeira cake...

It's lunch time where I work. I'm washed out from the flu, the bitter acrid taste of a long sucked Strepsil is running amok in my throat, and I'm far too tired to even peep in the hole of the rapidly constucting book shop, another corporate chain created in the space where independence 1nce stood. Naomi Klein books just stay in your head I guess. I'm sitting at a table with my paper spread out in the international symbol for no disruptions, because there's a girl on the rampage, handing out little sachets of free Cheese Vegemite, like a Bicardi girl in a nightclub except without that little awkward moment where there might be a chance the guy might think she's genuinely interested...I had a talk with 1ne of the Bicardi girls 1ne night in Syrup, which was very strange because she liked the fact I wasn't hitting on her and I liked the fact that I had shut her up about Bicardi for a minute, so it was strange, and she liked Billy Joel which was even stranger. I don't think my interaction with Cheesymite girl is going to be so interesting - she's all eyes and teeth, eventually locking intellectual horns with a man in a Hawaiian shirt, who is incongruously sunburnt in the midst of a horrible Hobart winter. He puffs his chest out and takes as many Cheesymite samples as he possibly can - they fit into his hands neatly but the conversation falters when the stage school graduate sees a motherload of potential clients, a harassed family with a pram, and like that she's off in a cream coloured blur of activity. Not that our fricassed friend seems to mind, he's got little samples of spread to savour - I would hope he didn't want for something more out of life, but he seems happy enough, and wanders off with his thongs flip flapping across the tiled floor in the direction of the skill tester machine, while I continue to munch idly on my sandwich in the middle of a suburban twister, sat in the brace position until all the wreckage had passed, and someone at the safe haven said the coast was clear...

I'm not sure I ever had that conversation - not sure I had anything I wanted to be when I grew up. Maybe famous, maybe in movies. I had short term goals - the first Big M of the day, the final football card that made up the big picture on the back of the SCG at night, the newest Transformers, a VHS tape of that episode of Punky Brewster where she spoke to Buzz Aldrin...each goal achieved, more time passed, but I'm not sure I ever got to a point where I wondered where I was going. Maybe we had the conversation on 1ne of this mandatory hippy afternoons my primary school pushed me into, where we lay on the ground and picked cloud shapes. Maybe I spoke about it to Pippa, on some sunny day when she wasn't shimmering by the monkey bars speaking in short mystical sentences. I had this boisterous mate called Nick, he had a face like Mr Toad and he was the 1st person I knew to understand the rules of Grade 2wo comedy, just saying words like booger and putting them in a sentence. I could never re-concile that in the 4our years I was in Scotland he drifted into petty criminal activities. It just seemed strange to me, but then I left as a shiny intellectual hope who attended all his classes and came back a smart mouthed cynic with a cheeky attitude and found a girlfriend who was older and pashed viciously and gave me cream buns for nothing, so who was I to judge from the moral parepet that was the school fort? He came screaming up to me 1ne day while I waited for a Caramel Big M and told me he knew, he positively knew that I was going to be a fireman. He never explained his rationale but he was confident that was what I was going to be. He knew as much as I did I guess, but maybe the fire he lit in the science block some time around 199four that got him expelled was a test for me and his instinct, 1ne that I failed due to a lack of preparation, a lack of available water due to restrictions, and the fact I was asleep when he did it. And when I found out, it was definitely a where did it all go wrong moment, and 1ne that had to be mused over over the munching of a Golden Rough, while aggressive fire marshalls picked bits of glass up from ashphalt, swearing in a manner which didn't make my predicted career path seem attractive...

I think I tried to explain this to the Bicardi girl, I think I tried the myriad threads of my own life, the ups and downs and oscilliations of hope and what might have been. She smoked a Malboro Light and talked about her own dreams, a modelling contract dangling before her, once she had sold enough Bicardi to clear unspecified debts. It was late at night, the club was scarcely full, it was a miserable Wednesday night, positively airless, and she was smiling smiles a hypnotically entrancing smile, not an attractive one, but a functional one, a smile of re-assurance, a smile that says she's on my side, and will keep in touch after our conversation. Actually that's unfair, she was just as cynical as me, she didn't like her job, and she seemed far too young to seem so old, eventually getting up to dance to a Billy Joel song with an accountant from Natone, giving me an opportunity to exit gracefully a conversation spiralling into maudlin territory from both sides of the sofa. She came back to say the accountant had bad breath, and we parted company when she saw a rube in the corner she could sell Bicardi to. The rube was someone I went to school with, someone who should have known better. He positively radiated success, but it was false, the sharp suit tattered a little bit in the corners, the smile more nervous than he would admit, the emptiness of his table depressing. I'm sure he flashed me a smile that said a relatively attractive girl with positively shaking hips was coming his way, that was the epitome of cool and style, sitting in this club, music pumping, joint less than jumping, the only girl in the club with teeth heading his way. Fates had smiled on him, so he thought, and I left quietly before any kind of realisation he was being played yet to hit him. After all, last time I saw him, he was scooping a slice of madeira cake into his face, spreading the crumbs all over the window as he did a blowfish, and was so full of the joys of life and so full of optimism, I much preferred to remember him that way, rather than just as a fat bloke with elbows hanging out of his suit...

Another day ended, another dream was out there hanging in the air...bit like today, with less cake...

Cafes and walkways and sculptured weekdays

I knew it was cold today - if for no other reason than the people around me stopped coming up with ways of describing how cold it was, much to the relief of mother-in-laws and witches everywhere. Instead they simply swore, or blew smoke, or puffed out their cheeks or started whinging. Further examination of this trend might end up being a bad stand up comedy routine, but it was still noticable. I spent most of my day lurking around the local shopping centre, an extra in a rich tapestry of life going around me, most of it clad in scowls and flannel, texting Facebook updates and swearing into the grey sky. Obviously about how cold it was. I ended up huddling around the DVD section in K-Mart simply because they had the biggest heater turned on, and because who could resist the 5ive dollar charm of a Rodney Dangerfield section? There was a slightly dorky guy in a black T-shirt armed to the gills with bargains, with a perfectly pleasant girlfriend to his left basking in the bargainy goodness, but in an instant she'd found a chink in his reliable boyfriend armour, the fact that he never got up and joined her in games of Singstar. With an expression reminiscent of Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel he turns to me and grins, stopping one step short of inviting me around to the family home such is his bonhomie and desire to include me. I'm entirely the wrong person to rope into the game of cheerful reciprocated mutual glances, and I bury myself visually in the nearest pile of DVDs at the expense of inclusion. I certainly have no opinion on the merits of Singstar, nor do I really want to engage in conversation with a man who's T-shirt is so in thrall to the wrestler John Cena. A girl with a hard to pin down hair colour sweeps past with a trolley full of discounted toys and the Cena clan are so enthralled they stare at it leeringly like a cheerleader has just walked into Syrup and the accountants can't contain themselves. They turn and chase the trolley like the Bratz dolls are calling a siren song of bargains, and I'm left huddled under the warmth of the air conditioner, whistling a happy tune and hoping the curly haired nemesis of mine won't interrupt and offer to help...or ask me how cold it is...I'd really hate that...

Cold, ah, so cold...Troon train station, 1995ive. A winter chill from the east sweeping across the train platform, freezing the Twixes as they lay comatose in the vending machines. I can't say I had an especially grand time on this particular vacation. The snow lay on the ground for a whole month, my friends had aged and moved on without having the courtesy to tell me, I had become apparently a clumsy non drinker with no idea what the cover of a magazine was telling me to do, and certainly no idea as to which Gallagher was which. So I was left on my own to forage and fossick in small Scottish towns in an endless winter of traipsing and shuffling. It wasn't so bad I guess, finding tiny little shops, tiny little pubs with log fires and unfriendly locals. It was a very independent holiday simply by mutual agreement and the passing of time, an unfussy holiday with no one obligated to pitch in or take me anywhere special. Across from me on the train station platform was a bearded father with an burly arm around his son - his face seemingly scarred and cracked from the miners strike - a small elfin child clutching a rather fetching pair of Canadian Ice Hockey skates from the very top of the line. I admired their mutual support of one another in the midst of this horrible unending winter, at least until they realised they were entirely on the wrong train platform and begun a long and violent argument that involved words you just don't hear from your average elfin child. After a while when it seemed as though they were going to begin using their skates as a weapon, they both turned and looked at me as if I was some sort of vagrant adjudicator, swooping over from Hobart just to fix family disputes. My homeless look and patchy ungrown in beard and warm coat must have scared them off, and after a pointless moment where we all stared at each other, in a race to see who could look the toughest, or at least who would strike first and I was ready to use my rolled up copy of the Guardian as best I could, until their train came, and I last saw them getting onto a train in the snow, in complete and utter family misery, and as they did the little boy turned and waved a cheerful wave to me, as if my silence had been some kind of signifier I was really on his side. I probably was, after all, he clearly said Platform 1ne...

Debbie, my summer romance of 1990, was really into winter. It made our romance slightly awkward because in the midst of an strangely warm Indian summer she would talk about snowmen and frozen lakes and children singing if we were listening. Mind you she was just trying to rush the years along so she could be older, live a more ambitious lifestyle and have the government finally get around to building some of those robots she was obsessed with. When the relative heatwave was punctured by a bout of Ayrshire rain and cool breezes flowed through the air as a gift from nature, she seemed a lot more happy. In fact when it rained or was cold she seemed to want to do more things, like show me cafes with fancy coffees on the menu and cakes that didn't come in packets of 6ix for a pound. I wasn't really prepared for dating, nor a girlfriend who was so seasonally affected. She took me into a bakery 1ne day in the midst of a downpour so strong even Irvines hardiest drug dealers were forced inside phone boxes if they wanted to sell their wares. We met her cousin Mary, a string bean girl with a sickly face, and I wasn't in the mood to meet family. I must have really rude to Mary, speaking in no more than the approved Twitter length of 140ty characters and a selection of my own finest grunts. I wasn't really in the mood to talk I must admit - I was young, I was cold, I was wet and the conversation was keeping me from selecting cakes. And it was 1ne of those conversations that was going nowhere anyway, about how it was raining and what was I doing on the weekend...pure hairdresser talk. And for some reason, when I got back to our dating palace, the little circular brick construction where we would go and hang out, Debbie kissed me harder than she ever had or would again. Turns out she hated Mary with an incredible violence. I could never quite figure out Debbie at all, the complexities of a girl with such specific and clear likes and dislikes when mines were dependent on what VJs and style icons told me they liked, but if it rains in a certain way or is just the right degree of cold, I know I'm 11even again, and having my face pashed vigorously for reasons that aren't quite clear, but thinking what the hell, at least I won't have to hear about robots again today...

It's cold in the present day as well - so cold there's only 2wo people in the queue at the supermarket, an idle nail filing blonde too young to remember the early 90tys or ever have wondered what Sir Mixxalot was knighted for, holding us up as she pretends to put a paper roll on the cash register. It certainly doesn't take that long, I should know, I have overcomplicated fingers that make most things a lot more complex, that operate independently of my ideas like rowdy red cordial drinking children, and even I could change the receipt roll on the till. The only other person in the queue is a short grey haired lady with alarmingly thick black glasses, that do nothing but make her seem overly aggressive, the sharp pointy corners seeming to frame a face that wouldn't mind getting out the mace at any point. It's then that the PA system plays a particular song about a special 2wo, and I can't help laughing, since me and old granny Mace are the only 2wo people around, and we couldn't be any less of a special 2wo since she's buying the Jodi Gordon weekly magazine and a tub of butter, and I'm buying a chupa chup and a heaping helping of pasta for 1ne, and neither of us are dressed in what you would call finery. Even if we were in a relationship, our pooled resources wouldn't be enough to provide any kind of nutritional system for us to enjoy. It's just one of those things that I find amusing, songs tinkling away on PA systems that don't fit the clientele or the moment. Of course, that leaves me inanely grinning in my rugged up clothes to no one in particular without means of explaining the ironies inherent in the song relative to our standing in life...and when they, the shopkeep with the angled nails and the woman with the hotline to suspicion tattooed on her face, when they both turn to me and stare blankly as if to ponder what I'm grinning at, the articulation required from me melts like the 6ix year old me did around Pippa, and all I can do is stare into the light and mutter something inane to pass the time...

Something like boy it's cold today, that oughta do it...

Melbourne The Interlude Part 2w0 - A morning when ZOMG is just un-necessary

It's a cold morning in Kingston town, my Dad is driving me around in a community car, since mine is at the mercy of grease mechanics and the whimsical fates of a spanner. A romantic way of saying the car might be stuffed, but you know, someone has to provide the romance around here, since the car park is empty, the familiar haunted woman in the garage is there 1nce again staring pained out of her glass petrol scented prison, and the only chat up option available to me is a toothless woman in a tracksuit who seems overly aggressive towards 1ne of the trollies, as if it has personally jilted her in the same way denistry and life in general has. I don't think she's my type. I'm in my occasional pattern, where I have to get my hair cut in Cyber Hair - the hairdressers of the future, with robotic patter somewhat appropriate. The girl who collects the combs seems inappropriately retro however, she seems like 1ne of those Beatles fans you see in old films screaming outside the airport, with a swept up 60tys beehive and a devil may care hippy attitude towards sparkles, spangles and bangles. It all seems strangely at odds with her youthful face. I'm sure that my stock standard chat about the evolution of the Walkman isn't going to play with this young audience, and I'm too sleepy to test my material. The girl who gets the honour - if you can call it that, for I think the Cyber hair people consider themselves artistes, and my head is somewhat of a blank canvas - of fixing my bonce seems positively East German however, austere with big shot putter hands. That's unfair, it's me who feels clinical, my own conversation is not up to standard, but it's not entirely my fault. Confronted with a giant up personal size of the room mirror - which disappointingly isn't the slighest bit futuristic - I can't help but notice one of my eyelids isn't opened right. It's positively napping on the job, and I get completely distracted by it. The hippy girl isn't distracted by anything, she's gleefully setting up combs like Woodstock is picking up steam. The herrdresser meanwhile is using her East German charms to measure by sideburns with a ruler to make sure they are even. I can't even begin to imagine how they get on in the same tiny building, in this faux futuristic hairdressing wonderland. At least I have the knowledge of having perfectly even sideburns, and escape with my conversational dignity intact, having betrayed none of my weekend plans or said anything stupid. If my old hippy hairdresser in Burnie could see me now...the things I said in that chair...

The only growth industry in this shopping centre appears to be skill testers - it's getting to the stage all the shops will close, and all that will be left is little machines that make you pick up milk and juice with a tiny unworkable claw. I walk past a sad, unloved empty building with a dirty concrete floor, and to my disappointment I can't remember what was in the building when it was open - some hopeful small business maybe, sat next to the optometrists, which has a magic eye style eye test in the wall, taunting the bored and idle who walk past and take a 2nd look. In the supermarket, as seems to always happens to me these days, Coldplay are playing on the PA system, like a tinkly piano playing soft rock siamese twin. There's a father pushing a trolley in my direction, loaded with fizzy drink and 20ty different kinds of biscuit. My kind of trolley really, although mines is a bit feeble at the moment, just yoghurt and unfulfilled culinary dreams. Oh and a sponge cake. The father has a big bushy beard, the best kind of beard, and has a motorcycle jacket on, with a twisting, venomous snake hissing from it's back and some no doubt fiercely named motorcycle gang pressganged onto the pocket in suspiciously unfierce gold leaf stitching. It seems a little incongrous that this man of rebellion would inflict his hissiest cobra as he strolls down an aisle of tasty snacks while Coldplay tinkle aimlessly in the background, but his kid doesn't notice the juxtaposition of light rock and dark jackets, since she's pulling his denims in a constant bid for attention and Arrowroots. That's if kids still eat Arrowroot biscuits, maybe I was just unusual. Monte Carlos, no thankyou. I'm txting a friend of mine some nonsense - she's trying to get me on Twitter and I'm ignoring the question as I txt, and our trolleys nearly collide in our mutual male inattention. We're both in an alien world, out of our comfort zones, but neither of us really notice our near collision really, and I like to think we shoot each other a mutual look which suggests empathy in our weariness, but he maybe thinking what's with that guys eyelid while I'm thinking I wish that kid would shut up and stop screaming about Samboy chips. We shimmy around each awkwardly as he ambles towards fruit and veg, leaving behind from our chance meeting on this big planet the faint smell of early morning ennui and the faintest sound of tinkly elevator rock humming in the background...

There's an old couple milling around the newspapers when I try and grab my newspaper. I've been transformed from slightly scruffy urchin to army cadet in the space of one shearing, and so the local shopkeepers don't need to keep their eye on my anymore now I look more respectable. They are reading some bad news on the front of the paper - a horrible murder, everyone afraid - like it hasn't happened, as if Hobart is a haven of peace and love and the paper has made the whole thing up. I'd make reference to 10thousand holes in Blackburn Lancashire, but no-one gets that reference. The old woman is eating a Snickers bar and shaking her head in sad denial, her husband so uncomfortable he's just dying for her to turn over to Fred Bassett. I've got a copy of a magazine with Lady Gaga on the cover dressed in bubbles, so I can't really join in the funereal mourning around the paper. Outside Chickenfeed there's a slightly bewildered old man in a hat nodding to passers by. He seems to be a bit simple, but he's charming the patrons with his display of mannerly conduct, doffing his hat to any lady who passes by, and basking in his mannerly superiority. He's certainly 1ne up on me given I've just collided with a slow moving nanna and am not sure whether it's my fault. The nanna glares at me and I glare back because I'm still not sure if it was my fault, and she crumbles first, apologizing and moving slowly towards the counter to pay for her copy of the Mercury. The old couple around the paper have moved on by then, the poignancy of real life having proved too much for them. If the Mercury wants to give the people what they want, they need more stories about lost teddy bears and fund raising farms, not grizzly murders. The hat doffer meanwhile has also gone, his wife taking him by the arm as if she's personally chaperoning him away from hussies and harlots trying to steal him away. That just leaves me and old Granny 2wo step, and she exacts a form of revenge on me just in case the collision was my fault by holding me up in the line, caught in a moment of indecision. Steamrollers or Juicy Fruit, Juicy Fruit or Steamrollers...an ice age forms in the time it takes her to decide...I'm sure if she was less of a lady that when she turned around after finally deciding she'd have given me the finger, but she settles for a raised eyebrow and a brush of the shoulders of her Millers cardy...I have the last word though, since Steamrollers, of course, absolutely suck...

If the East German had asked me in that rote hairdresser way what I had planned for the weekend and not been a slave to the ruler, I would have had no answer. I could have made something up, but this is a weekend for rest, and I don't think the answer that I was planning an entire weekend of getting nothing done would have really made for stimulating chat. I could have been motivated, I could cleaned mould off the bathroom wall and tidied up, I could have drunk beer like a lush, I could have danced around in Syrup like a mad man, or better yet found some out of the way bar that I didn't even know existed, but instead I'm in the middle of the local general store, cursing that I had to even get up, just for the sake of drinking bottled water. Water and a good book, it's not exactly Rocktober. I'm not even being served, no John Inman is popping out here, saying he's free. There's a guy on the phone, nominally behind the counter, speaking in loud bragging terms about the fantastic night out he had the night before. He's motioning to me like he's trying to get off the phone and serve me, but I'm not buying it, and I begin to wonder who much I really want this bottled water and ice cream treat. He's just not convincing me that his life is so fantastic though, and his store bought tales of sexual nightclub conquest are falling on deaf ears. He's got the bling, but his stories lack zing, and he seems nervous as he speaks, at least to a trained ear. After a while, just as I go to put my ice cream snack back in the frosty cell it came from, the guys dad storms out to serve me, shooting his son a filthy look and trying his best to fix my soothed customer brow. I feel like asking for a free Freddo for my troubles, but the fact his son has to put the phone down and apologize to me lest he feel more monobrowed wrath, and after money is exchanged for goods and services and an ice cream with a double entendre name, I leave them in family argument, while I pack my belongings into my bag, and wander off home, where I might have oddly shaped eyebrows and no particular place to go, but at least I am free from the shackled days when my Dad got to yell at me, and the only stories about nightclubs I had were ones made from older, much cooler kids...

The hippy girl now I think of it was singing along to the Black Eyed Peas...she's off the Xmas card list as well...

Melbourne The interlude - Fitzgeralds burns the toast

So I'm cross legged on the floor of my house tonight, and obviously I didn't win the big lottery prize that everyone was talking about. I've got a pile of e-mails from people who had the money spent before the draw, intricate insights into peoples minds where they share far too much information and then no e-mails since, as if an entire nation woke from it's slumber today melancholy and angst ridden that they still had to go to work. The night after my surprise 18th birthday party, I worked for 6ix hours at Coles, thus meaning I had been awake for something like 37even hours straight drinking, in unrequited lust, and then scanning Mrs McGlumphers roast chicken like it's 19teen9ty9ine. That joke kills at Coles...you see 19.99 is a price, and a so...anyway, never mind the ins and outs of supermarket humour, my lottery tickets lay horribly piled up on the floor, a testament to hype and overexcitement just as much as the myriad of horrific unlistenable albums I bought because of a positive Rolling Stone review. Groceries are unpacked, horrible improvisational comedians flitter and shimmer on a television set with fuzzy tracking lines a constant companion, and there's a largesse of books surrounding my feet - wacky real life travel stories, people who survived things more arduous than an aching knee and an allergic reaction to Rebel Wilson. I'm in torpor and tracksuit because they closed a store in Burnie, my old home town, and I didn't know about it until today. When I say a store, you have to understand it was basically the only store I can remember in my first 6ix years on the planet that didn't sell chips in a paper bag or had a shopkeeper who knew my name and ruffled my hair in a way that became socially unacceptable after 1987...the glory days are long gone of course, I'm sure it's depressing these days and small and pokey and they pipe The Presets over the PA and there's no ramp or piles of surprises for you to uncover...I had an argument today with someone about Twitter (shakes angry fist) and the argument segued into a rant about how not everything from my childhood was great when she was using simplistic nostaglia as her illustration, and I cited Simply Red as my basic tenet, but Fitzgeralds, the store, the place, I wouldn't have any criticism of that...I burned my toast just thinking about it...

I'm not sure if Fitzgeralds would have won any awards for design, but to people living in Penguin in the mid 80tys, it was basically Las Vegas. Given that we got excited about what the new Wally The Wombat fire safety sticker was, you can understand a chain store with a big ramp and a whole section full of toys was enough to cause palpable excitement. I wouldn't say the strength of the store was necessarily organisation. A He-Man toy was hard to find under a pile of clothes and Betamax tapes, and I'm sure 1/2lf the time it was easy to scam the shopkeepers by putting an expensive item on the 5ive dollar table and then waiting for the most stoned of the checkout staff to wander by. I think that's how we got our fridge. It wasn't even the service that made Fitzgeralds memorable. The cheeky urchin who asked for an extra scoop of ice cream in their lime spider was dispatched post haste from the chip smelling restaurant within with a clip around the ear. Now that's not to say the staff at Fitzgeralds lived their day to day existence to a consistent set of ethical principles. It was entirely at their whim whether or not you got fresh food or something scraped together from the bottom of a silver tray. It added a real edge to the proceedings as the 40ty year old single mum wielded her scoop of power over you, as you stood helplessly in Mum bought clothes wondering what you were going to get to eat. 1ne day while I stood in line waiting to be served in the midst of the gristle vs quality food swingometer, a smarmy middle manager in a suit was pitching to one of the Mums that they should have a suggestion box. She said she had an f'n suggestion...and to be honest, I got it about 6ix years later in Coles when my own smarmy middle manager pitched a suggestion box...I don't think Simba was singing in the Coles carpark about circles of life, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he was, avoiding the prostitutes and the out of control trollies as he did so...

I think sometimes Fitzgeralds could have been 3hree huts that sold cheese, cheese and more cheese, and I would have loved it because I had to make an effort to get there. I had to get out of bed early, I had to throw myself on the whims of my parents - and in the mid 80tys those whims were very strange, because they could fight about the most trivial bizarre things, my Dad being a master of finding duality of meaning in the most flippant of comments, a man pre-disposed to finding offence in questions about whether he wanted a cup of tea. So to get to Fitzgeralds, I had to hope at least 1ne of my parents felt peppy and awake, and then if they were talking and motivated and even hinting at leaving Penguin to go to Burnie, I had to allign myself in a perfect universal triangle where my chocolate brown Torana would start, Mums sister wouldn't come to visit and distract her with her beehive hairdo and tales of domestic woe told with a detached Glaswegian irony. If the car was good and there were no visitors, there was still a 3hird problem, that my Mum would decide to head to Ulverstone, or worse, Devonport, where the shops were alien and strange and some of them didn't have toys and a few of them had nothing but clothes and monobrowed girls and we had to sit in Mums friends house drinking tea and I was divorced from television never mind seeing piles of toys. I'm sure there were explorers in new lands who went through less trouble than me just to get a Man At Arms figure. And all that just supposed I myself wanted to go to Burnie in the 1st place, and not just play in the Pampas grass and try and find hidden treasure in the back garden...it was a high point of personal motivation, and if I found a similar motivation today my life could be rich and rewarding...but nothing has motivated me like Fitzgeralds...

Many years later, Fitzgeralds got rebranded as Harris Scarfe, and that was just all wrong, like your girlfriend getting a buzzcut or something. The livery of the store and the cadence of the shopkeepers just seemed all wrong. I wanted to physically grab someone and demand things were stacked in more haphazard fashion and a drunk Santa was on hand from October-December just ready to fall in a heap on command. I was in the middle of my Hicksian winter of 92, and if I did go to Burnie, it was just to say everything was rubbish and kick some cans unconvincingly. Oh I was cool and suave, I really was, sometimes I even kicked the cans quite far, while other times I would kick the can just a little bit. Maybe I mis-heard Bill Hicks, I'm sure he said to stick it to the can. I was smoking at the time, and I had a crush on a girl in Toyworld called Karen, who was I think taking the piss out of my accent but I didn't mind because she had beautiful eyes and was culturally ironic before it became cool. She also didn't understand shame, or wasn't able to spell it if I'm honest, and there's the possibility she had to wear that horrible Toyworld purple bear suit on weekends so there's a chance I kicked her up the arse once, but that's not that point. She didn't like Fitzgeralds, I know that because she found the staff rude - but our burgeoning relationship which consisted of me stealing brief snatches of conversation in between her serving bratty children mostly floundered on of all things a mutual enthusiasm. She began to tell a story about Fitzgeralds from her childhood, about something to do with Santa Claus about a special memory involving the creation of a grotto and how kind and friendly Santa was and I was smiling because I too enjoyed Xmas there, and had looked forward even more than the release of Battle Punch Skeletor over Xmas 87...and then, we realised that our poses had fallen, that I wasn't a cool detached strider through life hustling from town to town, and she wasn't the unattainable ice queen you had to woo...in fact, we'd probably stood behind each other in the Xmas queue, and even then, we'd liked it more than we'd care to let on...

Vale Fitzgeralds, you influenced me more than you would know...