Post 296ix - the Cheese Sandwich Epic Part 1ne

The dying days of my time living in Ayrshire were not especially great times for me. In the corner of my bare room sat a pile of farewell presents that went up to the ceiling, but apart from my bed and my autographed poster of Texas the room was otherwise bare. Our living room nothing but storage crates and whichever person had chosen to drink with my Dad that particular night slumped against a wall, my Mums pile of un-necessary party sandwiches sitting uneaten on top of a wooden palate. I would sit there and wonder how this had all happened, why we were suddenly moving back to Tasmania. Sure, Kinnock had lost the election, and we were broke and Dad had no job other than the depressing slog of supply teacher work that kept the dole rolling in...while there was an obvious fiscal logic in living in Penguin again, I wondered what was to become of me, how this had happened at such a crucial juncture in my life. I had just scored 98 out of a 100ed in a science test, and the only person who beat me had cheated and slept with the teacher. I had just discovered a girl with big glasses but a fantastic smile really liked me, I had discovered that thanks to songs by The Prodigy my bad dancing was now completely in fashion, hell I had just discovered that after years of toiling badly on muddy soccer fields I was actually really good at ping pong and could beat even the most athletic of posers like I had years of experience as a young offender...even the drug dealer on the corner shook my hand on a daily basis these days, offering advice like a battle scarred warrior prince, albeit a very evil 1ne...and what did it all amount to? Nothing, 4our years of social climbing and absorbing the worst excesses of Ayrshire culture and what did I have to show for it? A 1/2lf eaten ham sandwich and 267even pounds from the garage sale of my posesssions. Cash. I took the meagre scraps of cash accumulated from selling my wrestling figures, and bought whatever my new evil scarred friend was selling that particular day. He even took some for himself, and we sat together for a while in blissful silence, and all I can remember him saying was birds, like chicks of course but more Scottish, really dig moody silences...what would he know I thought, a man in a coat suspiciously stained...what would he know...

When I first moved to Penguin I not only imagined it as I left it, a happy place where everyone made jam and had heaps of local pride, I spent a lot of time either walking to the Post Office and back or just sitting in the empty stands of the football oval unwittingly creating a persona for myself as a brooding intellectual trapped in a vice of small town mediocrity. The persona was over thought and worked out over several chocolate milkshakes and by sitting on the Hiscutt Park fort in warm Scottish coats over several windy days just glaring at happy children. I was genuinely homesick, and while my Dad was able to express his homesickness in tourettes style bursts of abuse at having to watch Hey Hey It's Saturday, I had no real outlet for my depression other than my long walks and my fashion being different to everyone else. No Mambo shirts or flanneling about for me, I had the good sense to look like the bass player from EMF, and who could ridicule that? Everyone apparently. My Mum took it upon herself to be concerned about me and my sour puss coupon, wondering what had happened to her happy On The Buses quoting son, at least in the moments I wasn't walking up and down the aisles of Cut Price Sams with his hands in his brightly coloured pockets picking faults in the ice cream range. Eventually I realised that the persona I was developing for myself was being ruined by the brightness of my Joe Bloggs stripey tops. It was hard to be Penguins version of James Dean wandering around in a top that screamed I was a member of The Smart Es. Luckily I was able to gather Vicki as not just a supporter and pash buddy but personal dresser, and after several nights sitting around on railway tracks about how terrible life was, I was all set to don the cloak of respectability, clamber aboard a silver Kergers coach and head into the big city, having worked out exactly when and where I could wag school by looking at my timetable, and working out when I could have a lime spider at Fitzgeralds...green drinks, I know Vicki, don't go well with moody...

I didn't end up starting well at school though - it was 1ne thing to be moody and distant, but it helps if people notice you to begin with, otherwise you just look like a twat hanging around the playground on your own. I wagged school and no 1ne really noticed. I sat in Fitzgeralds in the middle of the day eating freezing cold chips and trying to cadge cigarettes off waitresses, but they were too busy to notice, too busy yelling at flannel wearing slackers for stealing the spoons. Was that how to be cool in Burnie - theft of cutlery? I rolled my eyes and tried to be disdainful, I mean, was this it. I came from a place where I had a knife pulled on me, I was hardcore. What was the danger and edge in this place, a too aggressive from the Toyworld bear? Well, I wasn't really hardcore, but in my mind I was. I shouldn't have been so naive. There was a drug dealer in Burnie, he just wasn't so obvious as to hang around sharing his stash with the kids. And unlike in Kilwinning where a kid called Chris said he was on magic mushrooms and pretended he was a cat through a whole art lesson, some1ne actually did turn up to school on drugs, got expelled and then came back at night to torch the place. And everyone just told me how terrible Burnie was, without fail, when they weren't pointing and laughing at the moody twat trying to be Rob Newman by the side of a brick wall. I got confused and panicked - I was supposed to be the moody 1ne, and I was failing miserably. When I wagged on my 2nd day, it was raining, I was homesick, I wanted something to rail against, and when I walked down a street, the Toyworld Bear was telling some naughty kids that stole his catalogues to fuck off in a distinct break from established kayfabe....I wasn't Rob Newman at that point, but David Byrne...how DID I get here? And how fun is it to kick the Toyworld Bear up the arse? Heaps and heaps of fun...until he sees you later in a nightclub...

Anyway, just when my confusion was growing like Bernard Sumner in Bizarre Love Triangle, I had to spend an English class on my 3hrd day with the school nutcase. Her name was Brianna, and she came from a family of about 200ed up in the mountains of Natone. I hadn't seen the TV show Hee-Haw at that point, but it's always reminded me of her. She wasn't 1ne for words Brianna, more gurning and pulling maniacal faces. Later examination would discern to me that she was playing a role, somewhat akin to what I was doing, only with more gurning. Cruel fate had dictated that we be paired alphabetically in some sort of co-opted writing exercise. When I lived in Ayrshire, I prided myself on my writing, I really thought I could make a career of it with my clumsy pre teen sentences and 1/2lf formed heroines who's character arc was always unfolding with a tedious sense of inevitablity. I took it incredibly seriously, it was probably the 1ne thing in my life I did take seriously whatever the exercise, and I didn't want to be distracted by gurning. I laid down the law to Brianna, I might even have given her a handful of banana chips to go and throw at the seagulls or something, and set about whatever the task was for the day. After about 5ive minutes our class was in a hubbub, and I imagined that yes, you should all be hubbubbing, this truly is an excellent piece of work, until I looked up and saw that Brianna had gone and got my school bag and dumped it in the rubbish bin as a ploy to get my attention, which had wholly and solely been on the work. Before I could truly wonder what was going on, she walked up to another girl in the class and slapped her in a Goldfrappesque performance art piece, and a scrag fight was unfolding at the foot of my desk. The fight never got beyond prep slaps, but suddenly I had an anecdote, a hook to converse with, and since it basically involved someone being stupid I could look down my nose at, the school benny if you will, a posse of people were gathered around my desk at days end, ready to take in my Scottish wisdom, quotes from drug dealers about philosophy, and jokes stolen from UK TV shows the pre cable era would never show them...

I was on my way to the top of the social world...and that's when things started to go wrong...