The diamond that wanted to be a lump of coal

Around my neck hangs an invitation, an invitation that has apparently made me a much more interesting person according to my people on the ground. Although I feel the same - I still want to join Twitter and post updates like I'm throwing cats at a pencil case until the authorities investigate - it is provoking envy and offers of cash for me to relinquish. I'm rarely in this position of envy, and habitually throughout my day I have thrown it into conversation, just because it annoys people I am going to something they can't. It's made me think that if I was somehow in a position of real power, I'd be insufferable, I'd be constantly flicking the ears of underlings and firing them if they didn't know how many games Graham Yallop captained Australia for. Maybe. Certainly articulating this invitation and what it entails makes it seem a little silly, but it's fun to taunt, even just a little. Such festive thoughts of social bettering were a little disrupted as I gambolled carefree past a sandwich shop, and a bearded guy in a camel coat was praying. Or he was possessed, I'm not quite sure. He was facing away from his dining companions, and he had his eyes shut, and his hands clasped, and in the outdoor setting he seemed oblivious to how uncomfortable he was making the female who wasn't his girlfriend, and eventually she shuffled off to buy some rather unreligious T-shirts from the T-shirt shop that blasts pumping techno out all day long but still seems depressing. There really isn't anyone to envy at midday in Rosny shopping centre, no aspirational figures, no social leaders to look up to. Shuffling bogans, bewildered old people, shop keeps with a do not touch that merchandise folded arms stance, tinkling Lily Allen in the background not loud enough to hear. Fat Sweaty Girl is back working, exhausted as ever. She's taken a younger girl under her meaty wing, and she's pointing out all the features of Big W. The younger girl has this horrible frozen expression on her face, as if the horror of her starched blue and white stripey shirt has begun to imprison her soul. Her mind, wherever it is, is already dreaming of Syrup, of the weekend, of escape...I want to tell her, just to really get at her a bit more, about my exciting social event, but her eyes are rolled so far back into her head as fat sweaty girl shows her how to use a pricing gun that, well, it would just be cruel...

There weren't many aspirational figures to follow in mid 90s Burnie - a girl who's Dad owned the furniture store here, a firey brimstone football coach with spittle flecked tones there, but they were merely aspirational figures for those who wanted to stay in Burnie and while away their lives toiling outside KMart and pondering the fate of the South Burnie Hawks over chocolate milkshakes. In the library room where we sat and pondered our fates, me with pen in hand making notations in a tattered notebook that ended up being far more gossip riddled than I had intended, we would ponder what was to become of our youthful selves, and when the pondering became too ponderous, we'd go out and drink beer instead. I was enrolled in the slightly facistic sounding Young Achievers group around about this time - not just for the irony - but because well everyone else was doing it, it being some sort of after school project which was supposed to teach you how to run a business, and it was a good excuse to hang out at the Pulp Mill every Tuesday and eat free Mars Bars and hit on girls with nary more than the odd quip about Spiderbait. In truth, my enthusiasm dimmed for the project on night one when I wasn't voted the group treasurer - who knew that basically coasting through life was uninspiring to the electorate? Damn girls with enthusiasm and ambition and, quote, plans, unquote. Ah well, it just gave me more time to eat Mars Bars and come up with slogans for our bumper stickers. Since I couldn't treasure and I couldn't sew, I wasn't much use to the business project, so I became social co-ordinator. To boost morale I would come up with time killing games such as throw the rubberband over the spike, whatever happened to LL Cool J, and plan far off parties and social events that never really got off the ground. I think they gave me an office, thought I suspect that I've made this up, and I actually just went into someones office to play Solitaire on the computer. The glimmer of light in all this though was our planned trip to Hobart, the big city, to allegedly sell our product at Salamanca Market, but which really was just an excuse to stay at older girls house and get smashed on alcopops and then go out and smash Hobart to bits - which were new in 1996, I read it in Select. This trip was talked about in hushed tones in the library and it began to take on a life of it's own, it was talked as if it was going to make Satyricon look like an episode of Keynotes with Richard Wilkins. Even Kylie, the girl I really liked, took the time out from her busy schedule of indecision and confusion to ask me to take care...take care? What was I getting into? Well, the classroom for Maths if you don't hold me up for much longer. Like chinese whispers - or like Chinese Democracy - I had no idea if this trip to Hobart was going to be my wild road to ruin, but it sure was going to be fun finding out...bring on the achievement I said, for young and for old...

It was 10:30, when I was in a sleeping bag since the older girl and her friends had all gone to bed and no one else was up that I realised - as I would be with Chinese Democracy - I had been rather mis-informed. It's part of why I hate Robbie Williams, because his cover of Freedom was the first thing I heard that morning, as the girls milled our with perky glows and made breakfast and said that last night had been awesome. I felt that they had rather missed the point. I felt incredibly deflated that such a massive build up and only delivered an early night, intermittent disturbances from a ticking clock, Robbie Williams and muesli congealed in a bowl. Deflated, I had to get out of the house, and got hopelessly lost in some sort of decrepit broken down sing park with jutted metal corners on the swings and where the kids learned hard lessons about life as drunken hobos slumped against walls that seemed to go on forever. Where was I? Somewhere, some suburb, with a drunken feeling in spite of my alleged sobriety. A dog was looking at me suspiciously, but I didn't feel like engaging him in a stare off and he shuffled off to sniff a rogue frisbee just because it felt like the right thing for him to do at that moment. Pondering what went wrong, I began to think things had possibly gone wrong when my friend - perpetual motion machine, maths calculations, that guy - had taken as false ID a photocopy of a passport page with one of the numbers crossed out in pen. By the time I realised I was hopelessly lost, I really didn't have the energy to debate it in my head. By the time it started to rain, I really pondered the temporal nature of cool. To take the taste of muesli out of my mouth, I ended up in a local shop scrambling around for change in my pocket trying to find enough to be able to scramble up a bag of Twisties, and as I mused whether pocket fluff still counted as currency, the shop keeper looked deep into my bloodshot eyes and made the universal fnuh fnuh gesture which one male makes to another to indicate he knows what you got up to last night. Yes mate, muesli for breakfast, it was one bacchanalian delight after another...but there was something about his little gerbil face that compelled me to lie. I don't know why I did it, but the party I made up in my head just to tell him about was an absolute riot. So deeply did I immerse myself in my story - I bet it didn't have paragraph breaks - that it took me a full minute after I left the shop to reconcile with the truth of the evening, maybe when a piece of muesli caught the back of my throat. It was nothing compared to the story I told Kylie though - that one had live music and depravity you couldn't dream of. Yes, someone ate Fruit Loops...the horror...the horror...

Back in the present, I've got Lily Allen on, and my sense of social importance has well and truly dimmed as I mill about in my slippers reading books on Dream Team Football. I often, just as I drift to sleep and when I don't have Jennifer Adams dreams, think about the nature of envy, the exaggerations slipped in to my life like pills in the cereal. Not just the never to be named Tasmanian celebrity in Sandy Bay who had a party going in his house with flashing lights and loud music while he sat in the living room on his own eating mac and cheese, but every day. Will my much hyped social event be another disappointment I'm forced to cover up with tall tales and cheeky winks? Who knows? In KMart, a gang of giggling bike panted girls - and again, I'm at that age where my reaction is less of a Sid James cwor and more of a why aren't you in school finger wag - are eyeing off one of the shop assistants. Shame on them for fancying shop assistants...anyway, as they check out that way he puts the toys on the shelf, one of them casually walks past and says hi. Oblivious to the scene he's causing, he says hi back with no real grace and certainly no cwor, but the girls take it as if he zomg totally loves them, and go off giggling into the sunset - or the electronics department if you are less poetic. I would imagine this call and Kmaresponse will become massively exaggerated on Twitter tonight, especially by the girl scowling at the back with her imitation Fisher Price My First purse and store bought pout who no doubt is convinced that zomg he totally likes me. Ahead of them will lie the same experiences I went through, the crushing disappointments of over hyped parties and the surprisingly amazing oh my god we said we were just having one beer what happened to my keys why have we been hugging for an hour parties that have no hype at all. I'm sure they'll figure it out, and I'm sure they'll move on from Twitter to something else, and I'm sure they'll realise in time that it's not worth chasing some boy with slicked back hair who can't even hook a Randy Orton WWE figure onto a hook at the first attempt. As for me, my phone is still twittering with text messages from a friend trying to get into the party - I turn it off, turn it off so I can swear at Max Sharam on the TV, and then go to bed aware that tomorrow, I do it all again...

And by again, I don't mean learning to use a pricing gun...that poor, poor young girl...

Trying to catch the bouncer deluge in a paper cup...

A few years ago, when I was in Glasgow, a red T-shirted woman who was big of chest but displaced of morality pushed into me and demanded that I signed her petition. This was far more pushy than the normal Glasweigan mall approach of engaging you in conversation about your day until they lower the boom. Her petition, on a regulation brown issue clipboard, was against the proliferation of Irish theme pubs. I was busy, I had a lot to do, so I dragged myself away from her chest and wandered off, but now, I wished I had signed and signed more than once now that Irish Murphys is now Hobarts worst pub. It's been turned over to them...the bouncers...the black T-shirted mafia now assigned with full self importance. One of them demanded, to prove my sobriety, that I tell him how many people were at the Crowded House concert, almost poking me in the chest and asking if it was a billion, and then when inside a blonde haired male model was pushing people out of the way to clear a space, while a girl with her pants down was allowed to display her junk in the trunk to everyone. It was this point I wondered exactly why I wasn't in bed - the onset of drinkers remorse it was not, it wasn't even the onset of middle age. It was the demeaning of a fine drinking establishment by officialdom. There's nothing you can do, if you are pushed out of the way by a bouncer, the responsibility is yours to cop it, the reversal of general service standards. Outside the Quarry, two T-shirted men are in a punch up with a small bouncer, swinging blindly, one with a T-shirt over his head, while his girlfriend pulls him away tenderly and plaintively by the arm. We stop and watch, aware that it probably wasn't his fault, after all The Quarry is the place that once said someone with MS was drunk and wouldn't let him in, despite the production of a medical alert bracelet, so we don't expect much these days. Be a blonde, pull your pants down, and you are fine, but you are labelled by age and jumper, and the city belongs to them. My enthusiasm for going out is at an all time low, and can't be continuing if this is the life we lead now - crammed in while Sven the enforcer physically pushes people out of the way, listening to Kings Of Leon covers with changed lyrics, spinning down an endless black hole until we all tumble blindly into a taxi. A girl sprawls outside the Commonwealth bank ATM, rolling from side to side until she comes to rest against the glass of the newsagents window, her legs pointing in different directions, her eyes tightly shut. I wonder if her physical attractiveness meant she got to drink more than she should have, I wonder where her friends are, and I wonder why we don't stop to help, as we ply into another moderately cool venue to hear moderately cool songs, and the venues don't know the bouncers outnumber the patrons these days...can't think why...

Of course, such bleak assessments are reserved for the morning after - at the time, everything seems normal. Hobart seems even exciting after a serious session on the 8.50 cans of UDL, and Crowded House can sound like the most amazing band in the world. Next to me in the field, as I sulk my way through a session of Josh Pyke support songs, is the Liberal leader Will Hodgman, in what can only be described as politican casual. He looks a bit bored, like I was at Wolfmother, and luckily leaves before a beer can hits me on the legs. You can never tell at a concert if you are enjoying the band or enjoying the fact you know the words. Will Hodgman doesn't even know the words to Don't Dream It's Over, but he looks like he'd prefer the Sixpence None The Richer cover version anyway. We assign to ourselves the memories we want to anyway with certain bands - my girlfriend told me a long time ago that she always thought the perfect way to end a relationship was just to put Don't Dream It's Over in a tape deck with a note attached to play it and never speak again. We didn't even get that far. I get completely lost at one point, whether it's just through an interminable song from the new album or trying to not throw up from the 8.50 UDL, and people are trying to get me to join them, but I think it's kids bumping into me, and I ignore them until they think I'm sulking. It's a strange evening, both quite great and weird at the same time. One minute I'm happy the next I'm bewildered. My sober friend is excited and drinking the 8.50 UDL, and my excited friend is drinking water and preparing for exams. I don't know what to say anymore, I've lost my ability to enjoy myself in a series of self doubting moments and strange self analysis. Drinking makes me unwell rather than drunk, my friends are all over the place, wanting me to join in but talking to someone else when I do, and if you peek over the head of the beanie in front of you, Neil Finn can appear to be the greatest rock star in the history of the world. That's not to say driving through the streets of Glenorchy, heckling passers by and singing It's Only Natural to disconnected passers by with your friends isn't somehow glorious in the right circumstances, but my natural state is discontent, it always has been, discontent and concern, and I'm too old to change that no matter how positive my intentions. I know the concert was good, I know my friends are good, I know I'm having a good time, but I'm still edgy, and I always think someone more successful is going to get the attention. It's because I'm Scottish...we aren't happy no matter what, we feel the need to be on edge in case we are cut down to size. On cue, my Dad texts me to say St Mirren lost 0-2 to Dundee United...my sober friend is now tremendously excited to be going out, which throws me even more. Would my life be a lot better if I was able to drink without the girly problem of a stomach ache and a much greater capacity for enjoyment? Perhaps, but I wouldn't be me, and I probably wouldn't be where I am...for better or for worse, this is where I am, this is who I am, and these are the songs I will listen to forever...St Mirren, of course, will seemingly never score a goal again...

Hours pass, things fall into place, people stay, people go, and here we are, dancing in Syrup nightclub, with no one around save for those with nowhere else to go. I wonder, at least for a moment, if there's somewhere better than this, somewhere I'm missing out on, someones list I should be on, maybe the place Will Hodgman went to. The DJ has a blue shirt and the hurredly shaved off remains of his Movember moustache. He looks as bored as the rest of us, no doubt dreaming of a summer session in Ibiza instead of trying to segue Reel 2 Reel into Young MC. Fat girls are on the stripper poll, and I'm dancing not quite drunkenly enough to convince myself this has any merit. Time passes, more people come in, another person pushes me out of the way, but I'm not drunk enough to protest. The DJ never changes ocuntenance until he becomes even more compelling than the tunes he played or what my mother would rather optimistically call the talent. He hates us, and suddenly I notice that there's now a charge to even ask for a request, and I turn right over mentally to the TV page, just as the bouncer tries desperately to salvage the diminishing returns by dancing from the shoulders only, just as some other painfully ironic self aware early 90s hit is spun. I can't dance, I've never been able to, but I'm hamstrung even more by my opting for sensible clothes. On the stripper pole a girl in a white shirt who's shape is that of a sack filled with billiard balls is throwing sexy shapes, and pointing to everyone demanding they join her, even that badly dancing chap in the sensible jumper. No one joins her, and the shapes become even more desperate, at one point they are even barbeque...there's no more demeaning climb down than the jump off the stripper pole at a Hobart nightclub at 1 in the morning when you haven't picked up. A middle aged man in a work shirt walks through with a whistle trying to get everyone to join in with the whistles tempo, but he's reached the end of his road travelling, if not with me, at least near me when a girl asks to stop and says it's lame. Chastened, he puts his whistle down, and leaves, just as the DJ, in a desperate act of self animation, waves his hands in the air like he just don't care. At which point, when he realises no one else is watching, he sinks back into his seat, takes a painful discontent sigh, and slumps back in his booth, sitting down on his chair like he really does care...at least, about where his life is going...

In the middle of the dance floor, just underneath the flabby left armpit of the latest pole dancing wannabe, who has managed to attract the attention of another T-shirted stubbled paramour, is a girl in a black cocktail dress. In the context of this club at the moment, she's the most beautiful girl here, and she's staring at me, although in fairness it's only because her attachment has spun her in my direction. Attached to her back like a tortoise shell is her boyfriend. At least, I think it's her boyfriend, he's got a shaved head, a full beard, a T-shirt from the discount rack of Just Jeans, and he's not counting the steps to the door of her heart but another part of her anatomy. She's paying him absolutely no attention, but he hasn't noticed, he's hugging her and letting his mind wander, shutting his eyes and holding on tight. She looks at me for a moment, just for a moment, with a sort of strange expression on her face, a kind of desperation for help, that alarms me for a moment but there's nothing I can do as she disappears into the crowd, or at least, to the bar, with her shell attached. It is a mixed blessing that while the bouncers at Syrup are as bad as their fiddly-dee counterparts, and you may find yourself wondering exactly why the bouncer clips a velvet rope across you when the club is only half full, the people selling the drinks ply you until all hours with no regard...that means the girl is going to have to work extra hard to shed her shell, a weird and strange metaphor for trying to break free of torpor. Maybe she could hook up with the whistle blower. By this time, the club is one third full, and I can see everyone individually, except cocktail dress girl and her shell, they must have the traditional Tssie outside Syrup bust up that leads to a girl in tears, a man swearing and a passer by with a kebab stepping in and getting a smack in the teeth judging by the last expression I saw her throw me. On this particular night, the battle is well and truly lost. It's not them, it's me, I'm drunk on self consciousness, and painfully aware that this isn't me anymore. I feel the freedom of liberation and release as I leave my friends dancing in and around the podium to the strains of Bon Jovi, aware that I'm unable to fulfil the dual demands of being wanted and being left behind, and I slide down the Syrup steps with a world weary air, soon to be engaged in fitfully animated conversation with a tip hopeful taxi driver who probably says he had Nick Seymour in the back of his cab, and drift off to an uneasy sleep, knowing that being outside my comfort zone and going out is becoming, for the moment, increasingly difficult and tiring but not wanting to live my life like my auntie, devoid of friends and sitting at a table saying this is my life...complexities and dualities, of course, that only strike you in the morning over toast and regrets...

Don't dream my youth...chances are...it's over...

Death by Mraz (Yellow Ray Parka Junior Remix)

Alicia Sacramone Strikes a Pose
Originally uploaded by JungsPN

So I'm sick today (and yet still blogging, give that boy a medallion) but also apathetic. I'd put it down to a mid life crisis if I wasn't ill. I don't know what it's like where other people work, but for me, I often feel trapped and suffocated. If the girl from a shop I won't mention comes in, I do a little flirtacious banter, but that's only once a day. Some days are a pure version of hell, my head explodes and my body aches, and the noise that keeps me awake is the plinky white boy reggae of Jason Mraz and his song "I'm Yours" - the radio programmers seem to spin the Mraz disc and the line about scooching over dear just whenever I'm at my lowest point, it's like a horrible aching paper cut when it comes on. It's like weak tea, a night stuck looking at slides, an old woman telling you about her grandaughter - it's just so tepid, it's just apalling. In fact, as I was driving home, it was no surprise Mraz came on just as I drove past a bad car accident that left a car on an embankment. He's more dangerous than the collider. I think there's a forced jollity to workplaces at times. I saw it today as I was out for my daily walk and stalk (I'm convinced blue eye shadow girl has quit), there was some kind of team building thing going at Boost Juice, they seemed very animated and pumped up to hate the customers. As a team. I know that the entire reason I'm grumpy though is that when I'm walking about, there's all these kids running around crashing into my knees and getting in my way. I think I need to just go and find someone who is appreciative of the solo album of Melissa Auf Der Maur, and who hates kids, and just live in their attic. Again. Either that, or the next kid who runs into my kneecaps after changing direction suddenly, I'm going to get old school on them, and tell them Santa Claus doesn't exist. Maybe I'll do it while sucking on a Push Pop, just to really re-create that old school Grade 8 vibe. Incidentally, speaking of old school, what's a man got to do to get a decent lime spider in Hobart? It's a struggle I tell ya. So today wasn't quite as pointless as it seems to be being Gabriella Cilmis drummer, but it wasn't exactly a raging success...speaking of which....

I've mentioned before I've spent the last decade in a horrible Caspar the Ghost spin when it comes to friends (if you don't know, Norm from Cheers once wondered why Caspar The Friendly Ghost had tons of friends at the end of one episode and none at the start of the next) - from the "I'm incredibly cool" peak of 92 through the horrible awkward teens of 94, the epic 18th in 96, the farewell to friendship, and the horrible year of 00 when I had to go clubbing on my own through to the multi faceted interesting modelled on Shane McGowan (maybe) witty pub sage avoiding a punch in the face man about town of today, it was probably no surprise that I ended up looking pale and spooky through the ups and downs. In 2000, things were definitely grim, although I didn't quite have an Internet girlfriend, everyone I went to school with was lost in time and space, and there I was in Hobart, sitting around playing Kick Off on a vintage Amiga. The nadir of the blank faceless debacle that was 00 (a few more 0s and it's the noise a ghost makes - weird) that was my life was undoubtedly, out of sheer need to get out of the house, accepting an invitation to go to a work party at this girls house where everyone would play Trivial Pursuit and drink martinis. To show you what we were dealing with in this situation, the girl who was hosting the party (with her obsession with mock tudor - I used to think she drove a mock tudor car) once did a psychological evaluation on the staff at work, and submitted it to uni, without telling anyone she was doing it, based entirely on their penmanship (I must have been a right Veronica). Her main male supporter, a homosexualist with a Daniel Johns obsession, once gave one of his best friends a Xmas present of a box of chocolates - which was the same box of chocolates that friend had given him the year before, turning brown chocolate white through the ravages of time - and he apparently told someone he didn't fancy me because he didn't like my thighs (thank god for Kit Kats I say). Needless to say, the chance to get everyone under one roof, ply them with drink, make them play Triv, and then pick on their sobriety and dumbness was very appealing to them. They were both very ordinary people, and real middle managers. Needless to say when I think of both of them I just want to spray Mr Sheen in their eyes and get all Bing Crosby on them, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and as a result, I went, in a bright yellow parka with a copy of The Advocate under my arm no less, to the land of mock tudor, to play Trivial Pursuit.

Needless to say, the night wasn't really a roaring success. The turn out was good, but the vibe was tense, and strained, even without adding the pressure of knowing general knowledge facts about monkeys to win a wedge. She had gone to a lot of trouble, and was clearly buttering us up in that kind of "I read about this in a team building manual" kind of way. There was white wine and wood fired pizza...and a big hat with all our names in it so we could totally like pick our names out and totally get onto a team...and of course, I ended up on the same two person team as Daniel Johns biggest fan. God bless his heard for trying, he tried to strike some some conversation about The Living End, but within seconds our mutual dislike of each other was apparent. I don't expect much out of life, I'm not Robbie Williams, my weekends aren't going to be spent in a hot tub with Alicia Sacramone discussing Wittgenstein, but really, I was hoping for more than this with my life. An older woman who was there got drunk in about 20 seconds on white wine and spewed in the mock tudor toilet. I spent most of the evening trying out my new pose, world weary cynicism, but the night was just dying, as I find most games of Trivial pursuit do, even without my jokes about the Red wedge (come on? Mid 80s UK politics? Style Council? No? Nothing?). Sensing the mood, our hostess with the mostess (wood fired pizza) decided that just to make things even more fascinating, she would begin a house wide scavenger hunt for chocolate liquers. At this point, someone sang a song about a honky tonk and it was time to leave. I ended up standing on the (mock tudor) balcony, munching a canape, and talking to this really bitter woman who was telling me exactly where she wanted to shove the chocolate liquers and then went on this horrifically awful rant about how awful her kids were and how they were plotting against her, mock (wait for it) pearl (ha) earrings glistening in the night sky. And then she ran to the toilet and spewed. Meanwhile, back in the living room, the homosexualist was arguing with a temp typist as to the capital of Albania...I casually walked past, said it was Tirana, and he called me a troublemaker. Ah, that honky tonk, how loudly thee sings...

Still, I was determined, at least in my own mind, to try and show these people that I was still cool and hip. So, to leave with at least some dignity, I announced to the stragglers who hadn't jumped off the balcony that I was going clubbing. I thought that this would be a good way to leave the party, announcing so loudly that I had better things to do, at which point, not unreasonably, the homosexualist pointed out that I should probably take off the yellow parka if I wanted to go clubbing. I hadn't realised I had left the stupid thing on all night. Everyone just stared at me, but it was too late to turn back. "It's the in thing" I said, sounding like Jane Gazzo, and marched off into the night, slamming the mock tudor door behind me. For some reason, as I was walking down the street picking olives out of my teeth, my brain went a bit weird, and in my own head, I thought, yeah, why not go clubbing...on my own, what could possibly go wrong? Chicks love yellow parkas! To this day, I don't know where I went, but I remember going into this club where the bouncers had "Underground" on their T-shirts, and it was probably the first place I ever had to pay to get in, and also get a stamp on my wrist. Naturally, my yellow parka, I talked up to the girl in the pay booth as a fashion statement and she said it was rad, but I bet she said that to all the kids. I distinctly remember stepping into the club and landing on the set of the Mickey Mouse club. There was just wall to wall 14 year olds drinking mocktails, a giant video wall playing (You Drive Me) Crazy by Britney Spears, a bewildered and irritated Maori manning the cloak room trying to find a black jacket (he'd have no problem finding mine in a pile), and a Bicardi girl on the floor who seemed to be pushing a Windex flavoured Bicardi onto unsuspecting kids. I felt so incredibly old and washed up at 22, with the full stunned mullet gaze, and I didn't know what to do. At which point, the Maori from the cloak room has said to me "Hey! Nice jacket!" and given me a massive thumbs up. The Bicardi Girl has then swished past and given me an equal thumbs up for my apparel, like my own little private cheer squad. I can't remember much of that evening after that (candy hearts in a bag again? Picked up the Bicardi girl? Got mugged and dumped in the cloak room? Fled the club in panic? Who knows?)) but at least I, for once, had come through on my word and gone outside my comfort zone...it was a minor triumph in a year of mediocrity...

I don't really care about the quality of the post, I just hope someone somewhere got the Ray Parka Junior joke in the title...if you did, you get a wedge...