Subject to the same forces of compression

It's Midday in a suburban Tasmanian shopping centre. There's a malfunctioning alarm system ringing throughout the shopping centre, as annoying as a well flicked ear, pounding its rhythmical warning beat to all and sundry. No 1ne seems to notice at all, pensioners amble to and fro, Chinese cooks fry and torture assorted dim sims, and a newsagent stares blankly out her window, dreaming of home time. A procession of old women and harried single mothers sit on the padded seats in front of the Internet kiosks, ignoring the signs that say they can't sit there. Challenged, they may claim war service or an ache that predicts a storm is coming. They certainly aren't moving for any social media checking teenagers with hats and pants in different directions with girlfriends who's name they won't remember in 2wo weeks time. Outside Banjos, an old lonely man is holding up the queue talking to a tattooed cheerful bogan girl behind the counter. The rest of the new Banjos staff I've encountered balance out her cheerful nature with a series of huffs, puffs and unhappy faces. They make sure that even the gift of a free house cake is given with the gift of grump. Somewhere outside this shopping centre, a protagonist in the maelstrom of indifference and non evacuation activity in the middle of an evacuation drill looks downward at his shiny shoes and see his own battle weary face in the reflection. He's been evacuated and stands divorced from his IPOD and his increasingly promising sandwich. He has in his pocket PK chewing gum acquired from the exchange of money for goods and services. He has to be light on his feet lest some1ne crash a shopping trolley into his legs. For reasons already forgotten he isn't speaking to 1ne of his work compatriots. Or she isn't speaking to him. She's under the pump, harried, harassed, stalked and lacking sleep. He's annoyed because that's what he gets like, especially when he's 1/2lf way eating a sandwich when an alarm tells him to stop. In time, they will patch up their differences for the sake of office harmony and exchange Quality Street chocolates brought in by a crazy lady who used to work for Cadburys - so she says. We're thinking lately we're eating stolen goods. For the moment though, our fussin and feudin co-workers are standing outside listening to a cacophonous symphony of repetitive wailing, staring at the ground, and trying to engage in the lifelong never ending competition of who can pull the angriest face after a fight for spurious pointless reasons...it's what makes us human...

My kindergarten teacher went on strike when I was 4our. When I passed the gates on a daily basis I would say to my Mum "what's going to happen to all us kids!" - given 1/2lf a chance I'd have lead the kids in a counter protest based entirely around what this was doing to our educational prospects. Back then I was tipped for glittering intelligentsia based success by the Penguin glitterati, also known as the milk bar owners, although they would also say my inability to tie my shoelaces would hold me back in the real world. They gaveth and tooketh away in the Penguin glitterati. It would have been wasted on my class - 1ne girl smelled entirely of tissues and dribbled on the Lego, and couldn't tilt her head properly, and she was the thinker of the class. She said profound things like sandwiches were better than giraffes and we would ponder if that was true. Mostly it was a theatre of cruelty kind of kindergarten however, the scrambles for the burnt sienna crayon in the morning particularly bothersome. I learned a trick that if you didn't replace the crayon at the end of the day you could just take it home and use it again the next morning. I've often wondered if my stash of stolen Crayola crayons and the cost of replacing them somehow contributed to the budget crisis that meant the teachers couldn't afford to be paid more, in a sort of butterfly flapping its wings causes the world to end way. I think the girl smelling of tissues eating the chalk didn't help either. So I was walking past the school with my Mum 1ne Sunday, and in a rare fit of parental indifference - my Mum was hardcore on the parental protection, not only calling our local bully in Scotland "Moggy" an "ugly wee bastard", but making my hold my legs on the Puffing Billy when I was 10en, so any time I was off the leash I remember it - she left me to press my face against the bars and stare aimlessly into a classroom that could be occupied by kids the following day if there was no strike...by me. I used to love school...and as I pressed my little 4our year old face to the bars, a girl called Saskia Vandermast walked past in the opposite direction, screwed up her face and said "you're SOOOOOOOOOOOO ugly..."

Ah, Saskia Vandermast. She had the jaw of a female boxer and was the first person I ever saw with corn-rows. She had a tooth that looked like Albania. She was the first person I ever remember that said I was ugly. I looked at her as she walked off into the distance towards the general store owned by the Scottish guy who we later found had "connections" and could get us supplies. Ugly? Me? Who was I to be told I was ugly by a girl swinging a Batman bag and rocking the Yuliya Dovhal look years before it became fashionable. My response to this grievous insult seemed very adult and grown up at the time - I would completely freeze her out of any group activity and every single moment of my life. Yes, that'll do it I thought. And so I did. For the rest of the school year, Saskia Vandermast would ask me for a crayon and she wouldn't get it. Saskia Vandermast would try and join in the games in the sandpit and I would simply leave her to it. She would always scrunch her face up in sad bewilderment, tug at her cornrows and walk off. I think she genuinely had no idea what she did, until 1ne day she just said "I'm sorry for..." and trailed off with a poignancy which didn't really belong in a Kindergarten classroom full of kids pondering whether a teddy bear was better than a badger. I felt really bad about it for a long time. I felt my response to my first conflict situation had been irresponsible and hurtful, especially since other kids - kids whose sole feeling in life was schadenfraude - had taken up the bullying baton. Some1ne once told me the closest they ever came to suicide was when their art gallery exhibition was attended by drunken upper class idiots who had become their fandom. Their work was entirely out of their hands. I empathised. I empathised entirely through the point of view of a 4our year old child trying to put a genie back in a bottle. I vowed on that night - after 4our joints it must be said - that I would learn not to be huffy, to deal with my problems in a more rational way...with that said...

The alarm eventually goes off, apparently due to malfunction, and not due to the usual standard reason the alarm goes round here - interaction with naughty kids with mischievous intent. My IPOD luckily hasn't been stolen by looting mobs of pensioners, my sandwich ends up being full of surprises, none of them pleasant, the chocolates lay uneaten while the staff sum up whether the crazy lady from the Cadbury factory is trying to kill us and normality returns to the office. Although my reaction to the minor infraction that caused the dispute has been pleasingly kindergarten, it doesn't befit the modern workplace. Especially since we got the instant messenger, and every single moment of life is reduced to OMG and LOLs. I put Smoosh on the IPOD to try and drown out the drama. Instead of fighting over burnt sienna crayons, we're pretty much fighting and railing against our own irrelevance most of the day. We're not doing anything important, we're not saving lives, so we have to do something to pass the time. If there was a sandpit in the office it would have a demarcation line in it, a clear line between the popular staff and the unpopular staff. Actually such a thing exists - it's called Xmas Drinks. In the case of Saskia Vandermast, there was never true re-conciliation since I left at the end of the year and she kept her distance from me. In this small office space, we re-conciled our differences, me and the new girl, through the exchange of messages and sweets. There are times it's best to let things go - maturity brings clarity of thought. Smile, shake hands, exchange insincere messages and at the end of the day shake hands and move on. Just like in the manual. On a flickering television screen inside the shopping centre Chilean miners are being pulled to the surface - while slack jawed Tasmanian shoppers gawp and clap - to hug ginger mulleted mistresses. My escape from my work place is far less dramatic - there's no book deal, not ginger mulleted mistress to hug, just a simple escape through the exit door into the afternoon air, past some slack jawed gawkers, leaving behind only another lesson learned in life, and a sad unanswered message from some1ne stuck in a different office, trapped in meeting hell, who envies our ability to leave earlier than him...

Many are prepared to suffer for their art, but never learn to draw. I'm prepared to suffer for my mistakes, but never learn not to repeat them...but now, I can manage them...