A short history of carpentry Part 1

I'm just talking to ya...sigh...I'm just talking through ya...

It's Monday morning where I work. There's a Chinese lady at the end of the road with a colander on her head. She's gurgling like she's doing it to entertain a child, but I don't see any child. I briefly wonder if she really is Chinese - she may be Japanese, Korean, Nepalese...I don't like it when people call me English. I would apologize for my impertinence, but she has a colander on her head, so it's best not to get involved. A milling crowd has gathered around a girl in a school uniform who has just been assaulted. She lies in the middle of the street with the bewildered, stunned look of the ferociously attacked. It's hard to muster up much dignity when you are lying in the road, skirt hitched up, being tended to by a doctor who, having stepped through the crowd with the campest of "I'm a doctor!" flourishes, doesn't seem to be much help at all. He seems short in more than one way; short in height, short of medical supplies, short in wit...his medical technique seems to involve telling people to stand back a lot. The woman with the colander on her head isn't part of the milling crowd. She has wandered into the local hairdressers. With a colander on her head. Maybe they can cut around it...

My local hairdressers having proclaimed "Pink is back!" and try our free pink GHBs are now saying "appointments may not be necessary!" - this excites a woman with a black funereal coat and long stringy blonde hair that sticks out at weird angles. She says to her boyfriend "maybe I can get my hair done!" and he says "yeah maybe" and she beams as if he's proposed on an exotic foreign beach. They then walk off with hair resolutely undone as a car almost runs me over. That'll teach me to pay attention to other people. There's a gaggle of middle aged women smoking outside 1ne of the supermarkets. The most rambunctious of the women has a mullet that nestles gently on her neck, and a hooped ring around her wrist that could disable even the most determined of muggers. She also has a child on a leash that is inhaling a fearsome amount of 2nd hand smoke through its nostrils. The point of her story is lost on me since it contains several personal in jokes and references to the time Gavin cried, all of which seem to cast aspersions on the manliness or lack of inherent in poor Gavin. She then says as she slaps her own denim encased knees "Yer don't have to be crazy to be ma friend, but it helps!" and much hilarity ensues. The kid doesn't appreciate the hilarity or the craziness. It's about 1ne stretch of its legs away from picking up an empty packet of cigarettes and stuffing it in its mouth. You don't have to be crazy to be a parent...

"Where does it hurt!" says Doctor Quickfix, and then sort of winks at the crowd. She points to a cut. He looks at it. "Does it hurt!" he says. "YES!" I say, louder than I intended. He glares at me 1ne cack handed medical professional to another. Well, I have a First Aid Certificate...

He's re-assuring I guess if you are concussed. The girl’s eyes are black, but she still has the presence of mind to start txting people she knows. Some1ne with a colander on their head might make her laugh for a moment. Time constrains me from finding out her fate. I have to awkwardly step over her and go into work. I swipe my card to get in. If I don't have my card, I have to stand outside in impotent fury until some1ne else comes to assist me. This will not be an amusing camp doctor, but some1ne smug; swiping their card saying "lost your card!" - my work did a productivity study many years ago. I could have saved them a lot of man hours if we could just reduce the amount of time people tell each other obvious truths simply to pass the time of day. "You eating a biscuit?" "Nearly home time!" "It's cold today!"...

Actually, it is cold today, hence why Steve is here. "Hi Steve!" I should say. Instead I grunt "Nuh" at Steve. Steve doesn't even respond to my grunt. He simply turns and faces me name badge first. Then he turns around again, and resumes the pointless dance of the wrench and the little nut that never turns. Steve is here to fix the air conditioner so it will be warm where I work. A man with a splotchy face came last week when it broke down the first time and poked at it with splotchy fingers and said things like "There's your problem!" without actually fixing the problem or saying what the problem was. We had a security guard at the same time; because some1ne robbed something...no one tells us anything in detail. It's all vague short semi sentences. The concussed girl is taken away in ambulance to become a statistic of our frustrating legal system and our frustrating hospital system all the while watched from through a glass fish tank window by a victim of our frustrating air conditioning repair system...

And as I spit my dying wish, you're listening to something else...

Steve is in the roof. Steve won't fix anything. I know Steve won't fix anything. Oh he'll climb in the roof, he'll hit things with a hammer, but eventually, he'll descend from his ladder, shake his head, and say he can't do anything. I know this because Steve has confided in me already that air conditioning repair is, quote, "all political"..."Mate this game, it's all political!" he said, before he'd even pushed a button.

I guess our air conditioner voted for the wrong party and now must pay. He says this with a conspiratorial wink. Sure enough, Steve descends from his Ivory tower not with a dead raccoon or good news. He leaps off the bottom rung of his ladder with simply the sweat stains of a man who killed a few moments idling in the dark with his own thoughts before descending to eat a biscuit and say "it's all political"...he does have a clipboard full of forms for me to sign. Pink forms, blue forms, cerise forms...he calls me chief a lot Steve. Chief and champion. "Sign here champion!" he says pointing the point of the form where the champion - I guess that's me - has to sign. I sign. I sign with an angry seagull like signature. Yes, take that Mr. repair man. You and your fancy forms shall feel the wrath of my signature. I hate that I'm petty enough to think if I puff my cheeks out and sign in an angry way it somehow expresses a shared frustration between me and repair man that he has done a poor job. To be honest, he couldn't care less. He's got a van and 2wo of our Anzac biscuits. He's not even looking at me, and he's certainly looking at my signature. But in my mind I do for a moment think, yeah, I got you. You know I'm annoyed with you and your forms...I am king of the puffed cheeks...you will fear my rolled eyes...

In this white wave, I am sinking, in this silence

Steve leaves. It's still cold. He takes his clipboard and walks off whistling "Buffalo Soldier". He gets into his van and drives away. Some1ne says "it's cold". I say "it's political"...they don't get it. So I sit at my desk as a parade of people with beseeching eyes and shivering hands and over exaggerated mimes to indicate how cold things are pass me by. I look around desk. I don't own it - I have a temporary residence of it. My ironic girlfriend has done her best to personalise my desk whenever she walks past. She's put things around there to try and cheer me up, little posters, little nots but on days when everyone is talking in whinging riddles and saying how cold things are, even the most loving note or amusing photograph can't make the day go any quicker. The rusted hands of the clock never seem to move, except backwards. It is as if the fabric from the chair I sit in, the Suzette gray fabric with the dotted pattern, has entered into my very soul by osmosis and destroyed my spirit some days. There's a cabal of cubicle bound workers down the far end who gather together to bitch and complain about everything. I ignore them as much as I can - best to just focus on the endless supply of pens my company supplies. I wonder if their manufacture has been all political.

"Col Elliott!"

A man has come in brandishing posters to put up in the kitchen. He comes in every so often. He smells of salmon and poverty. I'm not sure why he does that. 1ne of them was signed by Kasey Chambers. Personally signed. I don't know why we ended up with it. I drew a moustache on it and threw it in the bin. Bit disrespectful perhaps. He's brought in a Col Elliott poster. Col Elliott. I haven't heard that name for ages, not since his "you can't help laughing with Col!" phase - somehow I managed to avoid laughing quite easily, even at his impression of a nun. Interestingly, the characters for this new tour seem to be exactly the same. "He's a funny man!" says salmon poor poster man. Oh god, he thinks I'm interested. I shrug feebly. "Lots of great characters!" - what is this fish paste scented man doing, selling tickets? I don't know why I don't run. New girl at work has a stalker. She gets flowers. I get Col Elliott posters and scaly smelling waves sent in my direction. Hell even my ironic girlfriend only gives me posters out of the paper. I smile a wan, thin smile. The poster man rubs his hands together and says what I know he's been dying to say, longing to say. "Bit cold isn't it!" - he says this like it's an interesting new way of thinking of things. I hate conversation....

"Yeah it is cold, it's all political" I say, not even looking up from my doodle of Yuliya Dovhal that I've done on a pad, right down to the cornrows...

He backs away as if in the presence of a nutter...slow, backward steps, leaving Col Elliott behind in his haste to leave. And that was just Monday...it's been all downhill from there...

Memoirs of an Unproven Placeholder

My Mum 1nce asked me what my first memory was. This was during 1ne of this interminable Foxtel ad-breaks, as I sipped tea and tried to pretend I wasn't disturbing her with my visit. My Mum watches a lot of crime shows, primarily to see the ending when, in her words, the bastards get caught. Slightly vindictive, but there you are. My Mum and Dad’s counter to any criticism of their TV watching is to say (for instance when I slagged them off for watching a 33 year old episode of Open All Hours) is to say "Yeah but you watch the Simpsons all day!", which isn't true.

Well, it is, but only on weekends....

I don’t watch much of the Crime Investigation Channel. I don’t watch much of anything anymore. I took a long break from the Internet simply to find thinking space again. Living alone is, by definition, supposed to be lonely, but I really enjoy it. I’ve never truly felt lonely. Even in, say, Dubai airport at 3hree in the morning with just me and 2wo cleaners and a mile of overlaid carpet within miles of each other, I felt more at peace than I do in a crowd. Actually I have felt lonely 1nce in my life. It was on Montello soccer pitches at roughly 11:47am sometime in 1988. It was the last game I played for my school team before I moved back to Scotland. My friends had said their goodbyes, and for some reason I had to go down to the far corner to go and get something – a cone (a witches hat, we didn’t do drugs that early in those days) or a sandwich or something. When I turned around, my friends, they were all at the other end of the pitch preparing for next week’s game. A game of course I would never see because I would be in another country. I swear to this day something ran up my spine. It lasted all the way back to Penguin, it stayed with me as I bit into my Monaco bar on the way home, and maybe it’s still with me. It suddenly hit me that they had already moved on and there I was, holding a witches hat and preparing to drive off. I never told anyone this of course because who can you tell? I wish that I had a more open relationship with my Mum and Dad. Hell, I had a girlfriend for a whole year they never knew about. They think I never got a job because of poor interview technique. Truthfully, after that day, I never trusted them because they had taken me away from my life. And I was, oh, 9ine at the time. I told my Dad 1ne day I was going to invent “suitcase syndrome” as a disease, and all the people who had to move around the world or from town to town would gather and complain about how messed up their lives were. Dad wasn’t listening I don’t think. He was eating a Monaco Bar at the time...if that’s not a sign from above...

"So, first memory, whit was it!" she said again, impatiently. Sadly I am no Cameron Adams when it comes to television criticism, and with her interest in my opinions about the Crime Investigation Network waning. I was forced to answer. I was 4our. I was in my room alone with my toys, and I had a holographic Indian toy. On his chest, you could sort of make an Eagle appear if the sun was aligned with the 6th Quadrant of Venus. Picking up at the Miss Universe backstage party was easier than making this thing appear. But, it was all worth the effort in the end. I know I got it from K-Mart, because the receipt sat solemnly on my cupboard for years as a warning that life wasn't always going to be fair. For reasons lost to time, I put this toy deep inside 1ne of my giant orange beanbags. I presume I was playing some sort of Cowboys and Indians game. I don't think this is right; we didn't have any Indians in Penguin. In fact, we, the Scottish family, were about as ethnically diverse as early 80tys Penguin ever got, so I doubt I had the complexities of divisive land warfare down pat, even in playtime. Maybe I was playing Penguinites vs Ulverstonians. Whatever the case, the Indian was placed deep inside in the orange beanbag to hide, and I never found the toy again. I put my hand inside the beanbag many times over the following year, and it never came out. Sure I could have tipped all the beans all over the floor, but given the beanbag was a hearty, pre health and safety era bean filled monstrosity the size of a small steam train, I'd have been picking beans out of the carpet until at least 2012...

Hairdressers. It's always hairdressers with me. I have another crush on a hairdresser. When I say crush, I'm 32wo, I'm too old for crushes. Its just some1ne I think is pretty. Blue eye shadow girl I had a definite crush on, but work has parted us now. In the window of their business it says "Hair is a religion!" with the ! underlined on a homemade sign. This is also the hairdresser’s mind you that screamed at me last week Pink is BACK! IN GHD FORM! - I think it was GHD, but I thought that was an illegal drug. I might have got it wrong - pink might have come back in some other form. Who would know. I didn't even know pink went away to be honest. Sadly if hair is a religion you could count my sadly inept barnet as an atheist. Long ago it developed an apathy to organisation and dammit that’s how it likes it. It's freezing today. If I was a kid in Penguin I'd extend my jacket out and let the breeze drive me dangerously close to cars as I flew down Mission Hill. There's a girl with a fringe that would make it impossible to drive walking past me in a school tracksuit. Her gaze is on a pamphlet handed out by an Indian man with a bored expression on his face. He never gave me a pamphlet because I had my don't give me a pamphlet face on.

I was eating a Subway sandwich because my work place was evacuated and I got stroll around pointlessly for a while dealing with the bewildered sandwich making fraternity of Subway

"Cheddar Cheese!" she said.
"Yes! For the love of God yes!" I said, for I had been asked if I wanted Cheddar Cheese several times already.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Give it a minute. Let the oxygen marinate in your tiny brain...
"Cheddar Cheese?"
I notice that her hair has a pink stripe in it. Got the memo on hair, but not on the cheese....

They were supposed to ring me to tell me to come back, but I don't think they did. I don't know that I'm strictly necessary at my workplace. I provide Vita wheats and sympathetic understanding, but not a lot else. I can't even get a pamphlet. I saw a prostitute give out pamphlets to sailors in the more liberal time of 1997even. She wasn't working hard for the money, just sort of leaning on a bench and handing out leaflets. I don't think I got 1ne of them either...I think it was the fault of my hair. It was the wrong religion. Someo1ne I know is in the local paper - their Dad died on the weekend. They then still went to the football because it's what Dad would have wanted. I don't ever make the joke anymore that what Dad really wanted was not to die - funeral experience will do that to you. I'm terrified to death. It's scarier to me than anything, a date with Yuliya Dovhal anything...I hate the idea of an accumulated lifetime of personal wisdom and anecdotes reduced quite simply to "what I would have wanted" and "remember that time with the pen" - the complexities of people, I don't think, are ever truly reflected in elegiac flowery poetry. It's what I do every day though - it shouldn't take death to make me reflect on the reality I see every day. The hairdresser is cute, the girl with the fringe is fringey, the guy giving out the pamphlets looks bored out of his mind, and the Subway girl is an idiot. Such short interactions every moment of every day, people reduced to frippery, to exaggerated qualities that take away every decision that lead to them standing there, in that job, in that moment, with those kids....I shut the paper. It nearly blows out of my hand. It turns to a story about a cat and a chicken that are friends...the girl with the fringe laughs in a high pitched way at a txt msg...maybe some1ne sent her the article...

"You don't see it do you Mum!" I say. My Mums house for what's it worth is warm, they installed a fire place a few months ago. They know have heat at the flick of a switch. That's why I go round there. Not for the conversational bon mots...

"It was the first thing in my life I ever lost!"

It's a weak point. It was just a toy. And she is Glaswegian. They are flint hard. Get on with it is in their DNA. The life lesson about the toy and the beanbag and how soon you can lose something, well, it wasn't really falling on the right ears...let alone getting out of conversational first gear to talk about...well...other things...

She sits in her chair and rocks forward.

"Do ye know remember whin ye were dressed up as the King Of Hearts in the Irvine Herald! That whis a cute photie...!"

I leave shortly after, warm house be damned. Some conversational barriers are just too hard to break down...

While You Were Thinking, I was Leaving You Behind

"I guess Mary Poppins had an accident"...

I say this to my drinking companion at the Telegraph when we step over a smashed up blue umbrella. The umbrella looks a little too posh to be lying in the gutter in pieces. It looks like 1ne of those umbrellas unfurled by old Lords at the cricket on the 4th day of a windblown tactical battle between England and India, just as a south west drizzle sets in. Some1ne has really gone to town on it. The handle is blocking a gutter, making puddles splash over the open toed shoes of the impossibly young texters queuing to get inside. My drinking companion has decided to ignore the umbrella. Instead he's holding a red ticket up to the light, 1ne of the free cocktail tickets we've accumulated over the course of the night. It has an amusingly entendre based name this cocktail, but our tickets go unused. I'll say 1ne thing for the Telegraph, in an era of fascist bouncers and people actively seeking ways to refuse your custom, the Telegraph could care less what you do. It's not exactly chapter 26 of Satyricon when it comes to debauchery, but it's robust enough compared to the anodyne scenes elsewhere - it's toilets overflow with twitching, discomforted teenagers hunched around porcelain meeting places, their first hangover simply hours away...

I never know if these scenes - the girl without the shoe, the boy hunched over with his friends carrying him down the road in homage to Jesus, but with more bourbon - are true drunken capers or mere acts. My Dad 1nce pretended to stumble in the gutter to get attention from my Mum. He was 37even at the time. We pretend it never happened in our house. In return, no 1ne mentions the little cut off white T-shirt with the brown sleeves I used to wear - the 1ne that had a BMX biker on it saying GO! on it. We have an understanding...

Some1ne turns the lights off in the toilets for a prank and the bewildered noises of the ill can be heard down the bar. No 1ne moves. I feel ridiculously old of course. I feel as though any minute now some cheeky young scamp is going to come up to me and ask me to tell them what life was like when we had to ring people from payphones. In the corner on a pulsating video screen is 1ne of my favourite ever musicians. She looks so happy, or looked, back in 1999. I wonder what she's doing now. T-shirted males dance and cavort in the kind of display you see in nature documentaries, and some1ne threatens to be sick in the far pocket of the pool table. A girl no older than 14teen is rifling through her wallet to try and find ID to convince the bored bespectacled barmaid she really is old enough to enjoy a shandy. I went on a drinking trip with some1ne who photocopied their passport as ID, and changed the date in black pen. That was his ID - a photocopy with a big alteration in it. I say drinking trip - we went to a girls house, watched Friends on DVD and were asleep by 11even O'clock. I blame myself for that you know. I should have put my foot down and demanded that we went out, but I was too sleepy. Secretly, just between you and me, I'm quite happy to get home most nights. I secretly hate the idea of stumbling around Hobart at 5ive in the morning scrabbling for kebabs with thick necked guys called Bullet trying to push me out the way. My aversion to hangovers is not as well known. Most people think I'm a party animal. Truthfully, I'm a mere sleepy kitten...

The 14teen year old drops her wallet to the floor with a spirit crushing thud. Her eyes sink in disappointment. To her shame, the barmaid goes to produce 1ne of those humiliating yellow drink cards they are giving out in pubs now. You have to be going some for the Telegraph to draw the line. A man even older than me - laden down with personal baggage, gold chains and the last vestiges of a beer gut creating mid life crisis - briefly threatens to intervene as her sponsor and patron, but suspecting, rightly I suspect, he may lace any bought drinks with his own special sleep inducing "additions", she leaves, muttering something about trying to get into Irish Murphys. Yeah, good luck with that...

"But I'm sober!" she says, defiantly. I believe her. Or I would, if she wasn't saying it into her purse, believing it was her mobile phone. Her companions are all laughing at her with a ferocity usually reserved for a Rodney Dangerfield audience. In the confusion, she loses a shoe to gravity, and her night is slowly unfolding with a tedious sense of inevitability. I envy them. Their mistakes are still being made. Mine all have consequence and gravitas. Or at least I think they do - some of them simply serve as fodder to write about it. There's a piece of graffiti I saw at Motherwell train station 1nce that sums it all up

We aw think we're the centre o the fackin universe, but we're just a pack of arseholes!

It was the ! that really topped it off for me - you spray paint philosopher you...

As it happens, at that point some1ne sings a song on the video screen about a free for all, and it's time to leave...

There's a man outside the bakehouse with his hood pulled over his head trying to talk to people about Jesus between mouthfuls of an egg sandwich carefully plucked from a lunchbox sitting innocently and without opinion on a park bench. I think he's drunk, but I'm aware fervour can come from the sober so I'm not going to judge. He looks suspiciously like 1ne of those early 90tys CTA warriors that used to lurk outside my high school luring the perkier children to a life of chastity and repression. I watch him for a moment, but not too closely because I may be lured into a conversation. I'm just drunk enough to be amiable and I am a sucker for an egg sandwich. There are no taxis anywhere, so I stroll around Hobart for a bit. My ironic girlfriend has just sent me a txt. I don't know what I'm supposed to do in order to cheer her up. I'm not an especially helpful marriage counsellor, I mean I've just found out how to make old Rosita tracks I have on vinyl into ringtones, but that doesn't mean I can fix the conversational distance of 2wo people who's affectionate romantic messages to each other contain more swear words than Hallmark approved sentiment. Best to leave it alone I think. I turn my phone off, leaving their problems best solved by them. I've become a cynic; I don't believe in love anymore, I don't know if that's always been my view. I pulled myself back the other night from dribble, diatribe and discourse on the matter. After all, the last thing I wanted to do was become the kind of man who perches on the edge of a barstool, oblivious to the fact I was ramming my opinions down every1nes throat, boring them, saying things that patently no-1ne else agreed with...

"Jesus LOVES YOU!" says the egg sandwich eating man. Eventually, he's hustled away from exalting mid word, mid opinionated rant about homosexuals, by a security guard who looks oddly like Bryan Mannix. Security guards should look more like Yuliya Dovhal than Bryan Mannix. They should have far stronger centres of gravity. The Jesus freak loses his sandwich in the moment - parting is such scrambled sorrow. To see a short man with an 80tys bouffant hairstyle push a bewildered tall skinny Jesus freak away from scaring bakehouse customers - is that a quintessential Hobart moment? Or just the kind of random strangeness you can expect at 3hree in the morning? 3hree in the morning? When did that happen...how long have I been out for...where did the lost hours go? Where did my drinking companion go? My ironic girlfriend has sent me a txt saying she needs some1ne to talk to. There's also a sandwich in front of me I don't remember ordering. It's the kind of bold and fancy flavours I only order when I'm drunk, otherwise I'm strictly butter or jam in my sandwiches. And Rosita is purring away, indicating some1ne is trying to ring me at a frantic pace. The 14teen year old girl from before stumbles out of Syrup, so at least she had a good night. As for me, I'm too young to feel this old. And I'm also too old for the old familiar line...

"Hey! I was before you in the taxi line!"

I turn, smile, and raise a middle finger at the Jesus freak, who responds by uncharitably calling me a word that rhymes with punt. I smile...he's not the only 1ne who talked a good game and couldn't back it up. I just wonder which 1ne of us will learn first...

I can feel it coming in the Ayr tonight

I was born in a country that doesn't believe in beauty or positivity. Not for us the broad beaming optimism of the American citizen. We support a national football team pathologically addicted to failure, the descendents of Highlanders and Lowlanders always 1ne inept battle away from disastrous defeat at the hands of the English. We don't accept nice things. We believe in guilt, we believe that if life hands you lemons, you've deserved them for being a terrible person. It's in our DNA. My Mum and Dad went on a honeymoon to Ayr, a Scottish town described in Wikipedia as very flat. I'd imagine that was a bit like the honeymoon. I've wandered around Ayr many times during my trips of Scotland, trying to imagine what having a honeymoon there was like. Often I've stared at bus stops and pram pushing lunatics through drizzle covered glasses and wondered how anyone could feel luvved up in such a place. It must have difficult creating a romantic atmosphere. My friend went to Ayr 1nce and was sitting quite happily on the bus when a local ned decided to chat her up between slurps of Special Brew and social commentary on the ethnic population.

"Whit colours yer hair darling!" he said, with all the suave sophistication of a young Gerald Butler.

"It's auburn!" said my friend - suspecting he was the nutter on the bus who claimed to have a nuclear bomb in a tin can of baked beans, it was best to just say something.

"Aye! Aw burnt tae fuck!" he said, before giggling maniacally all the way back to Irvine. If he wasn't Gerald Butler, he was certainly Butler from On the Buses...

My Mum and Dad met at a holiday camp in Scotland. They both worked there. Dad was a chef - well, chef in the same way you can call Ke$ha a singer. Gordon Ramsay didn't have much to worry about, but when it came to feeding the masses beans and little sausages made of pork and newspaper, he was your man. I don't know what my Mum did. Made the beds and played soccer in those hilarious "men vs women" matches in the mud where single entendres were pumped through the PA system to the hilarity of campers. They've made it work somehow, with a patience and resolve I can never imagine. I can't even wait for the toast to pop up without tapping my foot never mind getting married. And spending a honeymoon in Ayr? I've seen the hotel they stayed in, you can see a bus stop from the window. I know, because on their romantic honeymoon of a life time, Mum saw her sister. And my Dad can't even go to the shops bar his feet hurt and he's fretting about missing something on TV. Mostly though, Ayr has a tense, pre violence air of calm stillness. Maybe that's the key to its romance and charm - time, space, cold, nothing to do but walk and talk. Work things out. Plan. I can't go 5ive minutes these days bar something’s beeping, paging or ringing. 1970s Ayrshire there was nothing to do or see but talk and do other things Mummy’s and Daddy’s like to do. You could also go and see Sidney Devine perform some hilarious musical numbers at the local theatre, but it's no wonder we're a fatalistic people when Mr Devine is head of the musical society. My Mum being the practical person she is and was, such solitude would have been perfect for her. She isn't 1ne for plans and dreams my Mum. She grew up in a house of 13teen kids, always waiting for the moment when their Mum had to pack up and take them away from their alcoholic stereotypical drunken father, straight from the pages of an archaic Dickensian novel. Dads family wasn't much better, all Acker Bilk records and dudgeon coated layers of judgemental scorn. Maybe Ayr, for all its faults, really was perfect for them after all...

I think the most romantic thing I've done in Ayr was buy a pair of mittens for Debbie - my robot obsessed, hipster indie girlfriend of the time. The lady behind the counter looked at me like I was effeminate for buying such a pair of woolly mittens with jolly sheep or something stitched into the fabric. There was no way that a boy loaded with cash buying gloves was going to pass in the rough as guts part of Ayr as some sort of Hugh Hefner figure. That's the other thing about Scottish people - anyone who says it's cold, they are to be suspected of being a big Jessie Willox. She never looked up from behind her eye shadow splattered eyes - never took her eyes off the gloves as she put them into 1ne of those clanging old fashioned cash registers...

"They're fur my girlfriend" I said, nervously, unconvincingly. This was obviously a mistake. Any Scottish person would say "Ma burd" - girlfriend? What was I thinking?

"Aye, very guid" she said, in the manner of the distinctly unimpressed. I think she had correlated that the gloves fit my hands perfectly. I have titchy hands - built for typing, not for fighting.

"They are!" I said, before taking the gloves in the angry manner of the unimpressed. She took a slurp of her Diet Coke and said "Hope she likes them!" before tittering.

Stung by the assertion that I didn't have a girlfriend - when I so totally did - I went through quite the phase of wooing Debbie with dates and presents. I don't know why I did this, but I thought I probably should make an effort. We caught the bus to Ayr to go ice skating. I wanted to go to a rave at Ayr Pavilion, but was promptly told "they were shite", an assertion time and Youtube has proven correct in every possible way. Debbie was in a huff anyway. As far as I can remember her and 1ne of her friends Lindsay had had an argument about something, maybe Lindsays use of drugs. Talk about adult situations. All I wanted to do was take "ma burd" out and buy her a coke, and now I was in some scene from The Basketball Diaries. Heroin addict? Lindsay? She hadn't even progressed beyond mixing cough syrup and Irn Bru and calling it a cocktail! I pressed my face to the glass window of the no 52 A bus and watched the world pass by...

"Are ye listening tae me!" said Debbie, pouting, and adopting the position of a teapot.

Aye. I was listening. But I was also thinking - Paris. Rome. Sydney. Great romantic cities. And I was in Ayr. Bloody Ayr. Staring out the window at a psychopathic skinhead in a psychotically coloured bomber jacked giving me the finger. He maintained it all the way through, until our bus was out of sight. I don't know if you've ever ice skated in a bad mood. It's similar to ice skating in a good mood, but somehow even more pointless. I tried to make some sort of joke up in my head - Torvill and Moaner? Torvill and Whine? Torvill and...ah forget it - and as I marched around the ice in sullen icy silence, I wondered if this was what relationships were like. Grim marches around ice rinks while Adamski and Beats International played constantly on the PA system and a woman who looked like Yuliya Dovhal screamed at the skaters to keep skating and not mooch around the sidelines. Maybe Yuliya was the 1ne I was meant to be with. She certainly had a good pair of lungs. Nice hips. We got the bus home in equally sullen silence. I think it was Lao Tzu who said ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens. I had 1ne heel nailed in gum, and if I stretched I could touch some Artline pen graffiti that told me Brendan was a homo. The bus even threatened to break down at 1ne point as it swept an arc around a close and cul-de-sac so perilous it nearly threw an old woman off with it, her tenacity in clinging onto that silver pole truly extolling the spirit of the blitz. The bus driver threw every1ne off in Dreghorn, leaving us a long walk home in the rain. My orange FILA boots got coated in drizzle and her mittens looked inviting to wear in the cold - shopkeepers be damned, my hands were cold. I got to her door quicker than I expected, turned away to walk home and hopefully not got mugged, and she grabbed my arm by the fold in the elbow...

"Thanks for a great day!" she then said, out of the grey, in beaming sincerity. She kissed me on the cheek and skipped away happily. I never figured out Scotland. It was truly a strange place. I went home and put it all in a journal that has long been discarded, put on some Sinitta to fall asleep - and woke up with a phone number given to me at the ice skating rink that I never rang. What would be the point - I'm Scottish, it would never have worked out...

Carolines a victim, smash your social system

It's midday in a Tasmanian town. I'm biting into a sandwich sold to me by a perky, tattooed adolescent who finds shiny things cute and I suspect has a twitter account dedicated to things her cat does that are equally cute. There's a long row of computer Internet kiosks in the middle of the shopping centre, un-used, although the seats are used by small giggling children to form human pyramids of playfulness. There's a small child outside Coles who wants to join in but his arm is being clamped in a parental anti fun vice by his harried, pink boob tube wearing mother, who never looks up from her phone, simply adjusting her required grip whenever the child squirms. I guess it's a form of parenting. I wouldn't know - I don't have any kids. I have an African sponsor child who has just betrayed me by sending me a picture of herself grinning and holding a Manchester United bag. I think this as close as I'll get to 1ne of those horrendous moments in a sitcom from the 70tys when the bigoted dad finds out his daughter is dating an ethnic. I certainly fumed for quite some time but I forgave her because her mud hut is in Radio Tanzania Road. I wonder if they do crazy calls and the secret sound. The children on the leather stool across from the computer have stopped forming a pyramid and are now playing tickle fights. Their parents are idly discussing mobile phone plans with white trousered clipboard girl in the Telstra shop - a pudgy girl with a boil on her neck whose whole job is stand with a clipboard and wait for some1ne to discuss the fascinating world of mobile phones. The parents are wide eyed, so I guess she's good at her job. She's got jam from a donut on her top, but that's not stopping her. Wonder what would - a different kind of spread maybe. I've got a txt on my phone from my ironic girlfriend, who wants me to ring her just to talk. There's heavy life stuff going on with my ironic girlfriend, stuff I'm massively under-qualified to discuss. My accumulated skills for the day seem to be stain spotting, avoiding runaway children, and glaring angrily at people who cut me off in traffic. Answering heavy questions about the finite nature of a child’s mortality...not so good at. And especially not in txt speak...

They've put up the grand final display in the window of the local knick knack shop. There are a lot of people wandering around with wads of cash, and confused expressions, and in Tasmania, social functions depend on picking between a small porcelain pig and a wall clock apparently, such is the level of discourse. Anxiety is on the rise. It's like Xmas, but with specific stripes of paint on the presents. There's a girl pushing a trolley back and forth in front of the counter like she's rocking a child. She's got on 1ne of those T-shirts that supposed to be ironic, but I suspect it's not - it simply says God made me awesome on it in a Times New Roman red font - and she's giving lay by instructions to a girl behind the counter with a vacant stare, flecks of mauve eye shadow, and manual learned customer services. The details are roughly the length of the script of Das Boot. Precision pincer movements synchronised to the letter, involving mothers meeting children at millisecond precise moments and parcels being thrown from hand to hand. The girl duly scrawls down all the details, but only I can see, from my vantage point, she's actually drawn a pig on the notepad. The curly tail was a lovely touch. I sadly don't get to see the military collection from lay-by of the giant flag, but I imagine there was high farce involved. Lord knows my only lay-by experiences were at Fitzgeralds in Burnie, which involved telling some slack jawed employed to supplement his income football player from Cooee or Burnie to go and fetch an item from the back, and waiting 1/2lf an hour while he had a smoke, ate a sandwich, and flirted idly with middle aged women in the makeup section. He would then come back and say something about not being able to find...um...what was it again? Those blokes also filled in as Santa by the way when the real Fitzgeralds Santa’s were too drunk to make it in at work. There's an old woman who's smashed her hip being tended to by concerned relatives just down from the shop, her whole life now on display as she stares up at gaudy fluorescent lighting, being stepped over by football merchandise buying punters as she lies on the ground. The girl keeps drawing her pig, giving it her full attention, as life goes on around her. It says a lot about me that my interest is more captivated by her ability to - damn her - get a curly tail in a drawing right than helping an old woman, but I never claimed to be a helper...oh wait, another txt...

There's a radio station promotion just down the far end. It's some sort of teenage fashion parade. I'm not sure how you have a fashion parade on radio - someone told me once the English radio DJ Mike Read 1nce had a segment on radio called Jumper of the Week where he would spend 10en minutes on radio describing a jumper. I don't know if that's true. They've got some ruddy faced teenager on stage asking her to recount her worst fashion disaster. The microphone isn't working, it's hissing and cackling, and the woman holding the microphone is visibly frustrated, thus making it a disaster inside a segment about a disaster. Entire civilizations have feted plays about less poignancy. The woman with the hip injury is ferried on a stretcher down some stairs, with less care than my gift was wrapped if I'm honest. She disappears out of sight. I fret often about such elderly accidents. My Mum smashed her ankle getting the post a few years ago. Being hardy, she put herself on her own stretcher - I couldn't do that, pampered with middle class security. I hate getting old as it is - I don't mind the accumulation of pop culture wisdom, but the impending creaks, not to mention the dread of having a heart attack in front of slack jawed, muffin topped teenagers isn't appealing. The radio segment crashes to a halt in front of everyone’s eyes. The microphone troubles haven't gone away, and the ruddy faced teenager has been cornered anyway by white trousered clipboard girl, thus completing the circle of shopping centre life. The radio interviewer has her head in her hands in a chair and is being consoled by an effeminately haired blonde personal assistant offering Sustagen and hugs. Eventually, in a quiet corner of the mall, she has to record some nods and links to the webcam they have, which she deals with like a pro. She does this when I'm a queue for Red Bull and chocolate, dealing with the strains of being noticed by some1ne directly across from me. I don't deal with it like a pro, adopting my fiercest pout. Someo1ne pipes through some soothing music at ear bursting levels, and trapped in this hellish moment, I'd give anything for some Sustagen - although the wandering hands of the PA, I would say no to...

There are 2wo newsagents in the place I work now. I hate them both. 1ne is giving me Vietnam style acid flashbacks to the Penguin newsagency. Any time I pick up a magazine I expect a man to come storming down the aisle smelling of carbolic soap demanding I shell out 50c for a copy of Shoot! Magazine. The other is staffed by rude girls and indolent men, with narrow aisles that would torment a claustrophobic for hours - any time some1ne wants to pick up the Better Homes and Gardens magazine they have to suck in their guts if some1ne walks past. The first time I was in there I bought a bulky footy record and a paper, and the girl behind the counter didn't offer me a bag. She just stared at me as if bags were never invented, and in my surprise and retreat, I knocked 2wo books off the counter. Made her day. I could see her little beady eyes flickering with glee. Today, as she reached for my money, she knocked a packet of Lifesavers to the floor with her elbow. Vengeance. She knew I knew that I had got her back as well. Her beady eyes weren't quite as gleeful as the mint flavoured treat was placed back on the rack. I wish all my problems could be solved as easily as a clumsy girl can knock a packet of Lifesavers off with her tuck shop lady elbows. I've turned my phone off my now - irony and whimsy can go too far. I've no desire, as much as I'm trying to be supportive, to find an ironic girlfriend on my doorstep 1ne day. It's only then I realise I've already bought her a present for tomorrow. Ah damn it. Oh well. I wander off down the road, reading about a cat and a dog that are friends. There's something about stories about animals that are friends that always gets me. A mendacious girl with a broad smile almost accosts me with some nonsense in a leaflet, but I sidestep her. In her last attempt to get me to notice, she says a smile costs nothing. It may do, but I'm all cashed out anyway, so I keep on walking, letting her acrimony at being ignored hang in the air. I've done enough listening for 1ne day. Besides, I need to find out the circumstances of why the dog and the cat are friends...

Back in the car, I even ignore the hum of radio patter, the faux jocularity. I am, completely, at sullen peace...

Deriving from the Greek word Puxos

My fridge isn't working. It's genuinely not working - this isn't the set up to a joke from the 30tys. It's making a sort of old person in a nursing home who's given up on life hum and whine, to the point I think an old person is in the house waiting for bingo and pudding. Such middle class problems I have these days. I went through a phase of almost biblical strangeness where every time I had some sort of gripe like, say, my house was out of orange juice, the TV would put on a child who had no drinking water to put everything in perspective. I think it was the kind of niche advertising marketers dream of. I had to defrost the fridge of it's elderly tendencies, which means I have to sit in my room of accumulated knick knacks. I feel old at the moment, a sort of world weary fatigue has settled over me. I'd love to have accquired some great wisdom at this point of my life beyond what was the B side to Debbie Gibsons single "Electric Youth". My fridge splutters its final breath as it sleeps. There was only a can of coke Zero in there. When I was little, I used to have a distinctly weird lunch every day in Scotland, something like Sugar Free, Caffeine free Coke in a gold can, and a packet of M&Ms. Even the local drug dealer thought I was a kook. And he had a scar of undefinable roughness, that curved around his nose like the demented handwriting of a serial killer writing in green crayon. Maturity would mean having the knowledge to fix a fridge in a rational sensible manner, but I've simply never accquired the skills. If some1ne asked me what my skills were, I'd struggle to name them. Casual deflection of accumulated irony laced girlfriends might be 1ne of them, but it's hardly an employable skill. My auntie, a simple woman suspicious of social climbers, is still capable of carrying up to 15teen bags of shopping around her arms when pushed. And she could fix a fridge.

My woodwork class in Scotland was housed in a proper woodwork factory, an almost abandoned quarry at the back of the school accessed only by skilled map readers and those who could handle the trek - the scent of pine chips and slave labor hung heavily in the air. I was rubbish at woodwork. I made a jewellery box that was glued at 1ne end and nailed down at the other. It would have been the Alcatraz of jewellery box if anyone could put their valuables in there to begin with. Our teacher was a portly man who smoked a pipe, who, smartly realising the futility of plight, simply left to smoke increasing quantities of weed, and not so smartly leaving bored hormonal teenagers alone with weapons, wood, nailguns and a girl called Kerri-Anne who liked wandering around groping everyone for fun. It was a tense atmosphere most days. The ticking of the clock still sticks in my brain, just waiting to get out of there. There was also a car in the corner - well the remains of 1ne. It was like the aging overly painted diva in the corner of the average Tasmanian pub - strictly off limits, with a musky odor, but still it's incongrous presence had it's charms. I know there was a kid called Martin who used to climb in it's rusting hulk, clasp the steering wheel and pretend he was driving to more exotic locations. He had a penchant for driving in big races in Monaco, every twist of the wheel an imagined obstacle or driver conquered. I appreciated the symbolism, since I'd have given anything to get out of Kilwinning at that point. It got so anarchic that class that eventually I just climbed out of the window to sit in 1ne of the local chip shops sipping Irn Bru with a straw, watching rain drops racing down the wall, until it was home time. At the end of the year I was presented with a copious form of achievements listing everything I was supposed to learn from that class. Condensation race bets, avoiding the wandering hands, and coming up with the most imaginitve use of your mind to escape the drudgery of life for a moment - none of them were on the list. I wondered today how I found the time to make the jewellery box, then I remembered, I bought an almost made 1ne for 5ive pounds...sadly the glue and nails were my contribution...

The next door neighbours could not only put together a jewellery box, but 1ne with a water feature and 2nd storey on top of the original construct. He now has a middle level job in England - he's moved on from jewellery boxes to corporate boxes, and swings a golf club around freezing golf courses to make connections that are short lasting but profitable. In Scotland, a corporate box is the ultimate status symbol, a goal beyond all other. I've never been driven to be held in the plastic and glass prison sipping chardonnay with the great and good. My golf swing will be another sadly unticked box in my lifes potential skill set. When I did that particular woodwork class, 1ne day I found a notepad down behind the rusting car, just as I was going to the cafe, as I had 1ne leg out of the window. It was from the 70tys, a sort of sketch of an unfinished idea, a blueprint, some sort of big kitchen cabinet with 1 100ed added extras, rubbed out and re-drawn. I know it was unfinished because the last page sketch was missing several lines, as if it's creator had just stopped dead at some point in the 70tys. I presume it had laid there for 2wo decades, a spiral bound paeon to regret and unfinished dreams. Well that's how I took it anyway. I was fascinated by it, because even then I was obsessed with regret and the fast moving nature of time. No one else seemed to share my interest. The neighbours kid looked at the sketch and tried to figure out the best way to finish it while Debbie - in between thinking about robots and Galaxy Truffle bars - wondered what I was doing wandering around with, quote, "a manky auld book". I think I put it back after a while, and forgot all about it. The wilds of an Ayrshire winter weren't the place for ideas forged from emotions - it was a rational, logical world. No wonder I couldn't build a jewellery box and they could. They had the knack of working out that if A fitted into B you could make C, where as I thought A, B and C had to have some deeper reasoning, some depth. Maybe if I'd changed, I'd have a row of ornately made wooden objects on my mantle, and a more practical mind that could see a way out of my mental box of malaise. Maybe my fridge would work...maybe I'd have a ticket to the Grand Final...

My fridge is given the last rites. I could get a new 1ne because work has an incentive program and I could cash in my points for a fridge. I leave it behind to go and get takeaway. My chinese takeaway where I live is fantastic, a mix of spices and bewilderingly racked magazines from the 80tys mingling together in a bazaar of treats. The girl behind the counter is usually flicking through a magazine to cultivate a deliberate air of cool, and some harried and harassed family is usually huddled around the faux oak counter trying to keep some screaming brat from demanding extra prawn crackers, like, now. I'm usually so easy to serve, it takes all day to get to me, because I'm lost in the maelstrom of screaming kids and pushy elderly women. The man in front of me has 1ne of those hooded tops beloved of men in CCTV footage, a grey melange of stains and fade, his eyes darting from fingertip to floor as he balances a box of fried rice on his wrist while trying to discipline a small child - a child with a surfers air of casual indifference spelled out in his freckles. Inevitably, the dance of rice and gravity results in a slow, almost comic tumble of white grains to carpet, and there we all stand, boxed in, as it spreads across the carpet. The kid barely looks up from his indifference, I've got too much invested in a theory in my head about the decline of the Manchester music scene to be distracted by the seed of the monocot plant Oryza sativa landing on shagpile, and the girl won't look up from the compelling world of the Kardashians to clean it up, and so there the man stands, covered in egg stains, child on his arm hating him, scooping rice from a floor while rain beats down the window in a Kilwinning style race to the bottom. Just for a moment he adjusts his hood, grimaces, and stares at the kid as if he can turn him to ash just through the power of glaring alone. He hands the rice back, leaves in a hurry, the kid trailing at his back, utterly boxed in by responsibility, worn down by it, frustrated by it. In my own world of self absorption, I push unknowingly past an old lady in a race to the Thai skewers, before heading home to eat off a paper plate, and return home, to a restful sleep, ready to wake and try again tomorrow...

I never quite resolve my theories. They remain unfinished. It's a wonder I ever get to sleep at all...

Monday 2 Thursday - Byzantine Labyrinth Of Suburbia

Monday morning - I have the same recurring real life nightmare, and it always starts with me thumping my own steering wheel as the splash of rain water goes over my car. Inevitably, a 4our wheel drive will have just cut me off in traffic, and as I sit in my impotently furious state of middle class futility, a bus will push to a grinding halt somewhere in the middle distance. This will be adorned with a carefully managed publicity shot of 2wo radio Djs, both looking pleased with themselves for transporting jocularity into the ears of the nation. 1ne of them is dating a supermodel. I don't know a supermodel. I barely know a model let alone 1ne adorned with an affixation at the start of her profession. I pashed a Queens Quest contestant 1nce outside the Penguin football ground. Well, try saying that in southern Tasmania. No 1ne knows what the NWFU is, never mind the Queens Quest competition, and in the age of sexual freedom that is early 2tyteens Hobart, simply saying you pashed some1ne is a yawn extracting story. The radio DJs are thus able to in a single carefully staged publicity shot on the back of a Metro bus rub into me that my Mondays aren't filled with supermodel relationships or carefully stage managed pranks. They are filled with sharp left turns and showers that never seem to end however. My work installed a form of instant messenger to the computer last week, but that won't impress many at Vienna fashion week. Someone has scribbled under their moniker and logo on this particular bus the words ARE DICKHEADS in a sort of Verdana font style of graffiti, which is such a small victory against the forces of celebrity, it must be celebrated. The bus will pull off into the distance, I'll slam my brakes angrily because I've been held up at a red light, and there I will sit in the mid morning traffic helplessly unable to do anything about it. I think at these moments of some sort of overly dramatic u-turn that results in me heading to spend a day at the beach, but I never have, and I probably never will. There's a guy next to me at the lights with the same sense of futility, and some horn rimmed glasses only ever worn by nerds about to have a milkshake poured over their heads in an American teen comedy, and in a hopelessly pointless moment of maledom, we have a race at the lights. It's not a deliberate race, merely time killing engine roaring, and in a summation of our futile middle class position in life, a blonde girl with pink lippy roars past us in Daddy’s car, in a plume of smoke and youthful swagger. The metaphor is blinding, and the fact that she nearly ploughs straight into the back of another DJ infected bus and has to brake sharply is, as they say, a mere detail...

Tuesday morning - Same red light, although the light dusting of rain onto the dirt ground and absence of rosy cheeked urchins off to school to get on their computers and post Facebook updates that so and so is a skank, I've decided to place my entire happiness on the ability of my sports team to move a piece of leather around a piece of greenery once owned by Aboriginal elders better than 22wo other randomly assorted strangers who have inverted values to my own team. It might be unromantic to describe an AFL Preliminary final in such terms, but I've just been speaking to my unromantic auntie in Scotland. She lives in a street where a romantic gesture is sending a txt msg that doesn't contain a swear word or an insult, so explaining the beauty of an alien Australian based sport down a phone line isn't going to be easy. I say this because 1ne of my teams elder statesmen is on the cover of the newspaper making 1ne of those old persons determined fists photographers have them make when they are close to death or unlikely to be in a physical condition to pose for an action shot. A woman at work walks past later in the day eating 1ne of the morning muffins so generously provided by corporate pseudo generosity, and says 1ne of those strange glib work phrases people feel obliged to say to pass the time. Something like makes you think. I don't know what makes me think these days, but the posed machinations of an elderly gent probably don't do it for me. I drove past a homeless guy on the way home last night - he was propped up in the rain against an ATM machine, his tattered rags the kind of tattered rags other tattered rag wearers would point to and say damn those rags are tattered, his eyes shut, his silhouette a despairing shadow of venom, despair and cheap wine in a cask. Did that make me think? I don't know - maybe. Maybe for as long as it took for the lights to change. That's the usual pattern of attention for the meandering suburban driver. Attention spans last only as long as 1ne colour of light stays constant, or as long as the patter of the radio isn't too inane or bland to make you press the off button...complex social issues? I can't even work my CD changer...

Wednesday morning - I've tried to suppress my Road Rage by biting down really hard on my finger every time I feel frustrated. I hate that every time I drive past my ex girlfriends old netball court it's so early morning empty, always sodden with rain and lots and clods of rubbish generally swirl around in the breeze. It's a little bit strange to see it so dilapidated, like seeing your childhood home have a garden covered in weeds, or seeing a favourite beloved auntie without teeth, but with stubble, so you have to suffer a rash inducing kiss. There's a red light that I always get stuck at, and today it's almost broken down, so I'm stuck there, alone, with my thoughts and a staticy radio hissing in my brain. For some reason at work, I've acquired an ironic girlfriend. I should explain - I engaged with this girl what I thought was a series of ironic and sardonic flirtations on the routines of work. I didn't know that they don't do sardonic in Margate. Now she sends me txt msgs about the alienation and despair that marriages where 1ne partner can't wash socks can bring. So I don't know if that means were in some sort of tense future relationship, if she's going to pitch up on my lawn with a bag full of stuff but it means...something? Maybe - I have a crush on a girl who works at an appallingly named hair salon, but I don't think that means anything at all. Irony is a dangerous thing. I don't know why everything got so complex - mind you, I had a relationship with Debbie back in Scotland which was a consistent battle between the emotional maturity of an 11even year old and a 12elve year old. Apparently if you can't understand the emotional complexity of an Orange Juice record, or preferred a Twix to a Galaxy Truffle, you aren't worth knowing. I preferred Sinitta. I had no hope. So I just sat swinging my legs on the circular brick wall that was my relationship bachelor pad trying to decipher the riddle that was Cosmopolitan approved relationship chat. By the time I get out of my car, my finger has chewed through and is covered in bite marks. I suspect that I need to acquire a new anger halting habit...maybe some mellow music. I hear some of Sinittas B-sides are particularly melancholy...

Thursday evening - I'm in some rapidly emptying car park, standing in the rain, not just any rain - Tassie rain that kicks and punches in the face like a drunk outside Syrup trying to nail a bouncer. Cars pass my feet, splash water over my shoes, and head home to eat some crispy fried food from plates and engage in amiable or otherwise conversation about socks or some such things. My "other" car I'm driving today (don't get too excited, it's like a 6th toe my other car - a defective abnormality of fate rather than some sort of Jay Leno style collection) has broken down in a miserable battery induced sigh of despair. The RACT man is explaining to me the nuances of a split battery while I hop from foot to foot awkwardly, not understanding a single word he's talking about. I don't know how many times I've stood in Tasmanian downpours listening to words I don't understand, sentences that don't make any sense. Break ups, bouncer edicts, friends fighting with other friends, car care tips....all received with the same bewildered expression on my face, the same hunched shoulders. I get back inside my car, stuck in suburbia, while the RACT man glues...things to things. I am left to stare over the fence into a nearby house. The occupants are a woman who is coarse in face and vulgar of finger point, and a man who is a slave to hair gel who I bet has never ironed a shirt because his beard needs trimmed. They are arguing in fluent bogan, with exaggerated hand gestures and swear words that end in N. I suspect later he'll send her a txt msg that proclaims love + vulgarity. I move my eyeline from their disparate points of view to a quite glorious beanbag, a bright orange illumination of radiance, a bean filled wonder from the era where every Australian owned an ABBA album and something that was orange only if the thing they wanted wasn't available in brown. It's probably a reflection of my attention span - mature issues, social complexities, they go by the wayside. Ironic girlfriends who could become real girlfriends if you aren't careful? Not even worried...but show me a beanbag, and I'm there. Explains a lot, my dog from up (squirrel!) attention span...I can't change...I won't change....my car starts after much tedious discussion, and I'm away again, swaggering through puddles, cursing red lights, fiddling with my CD player, and letting happiness come in fleeting cynical waves...

Friday, it may yet spawn something glorious. Must keep hoping. Something richer than an Instant Message installation...