4our Scenes from a Rainy Hobart Friday

It's Friday afternoon in a Tasmanian suburb. The rain gently coats the pensioners outside with something to complain about, and my lunch break is fading from me all too quickly. The problem with lunch breaks, to purloin the old vaudeville joke about something else entirely, is that you never remember the great 1nes. I'm inside the claustrophobic narrow catacombs of a suburban newsagency. A man with glasses and a receding hairline is blocking my path. He has the beady eyes of a gargoyle and the critical faculties of the pickiest type of restaurant critic. His wife is a small, stooped man, with a ginger mullet and the air of some1ne who's listening skills were killed by depression sometime about the Fraser years. She has a stripy bag that contains nothing but oranges, and is idly flicking through a knitting magazine in the 1/2lf hearted way some1ne idea rich but time poor will always do - she'll start knitting tomorrow she says to herself, she promises herself mentally. I empathise - I'd do lots more writing if only the quality of programs on AUSTAR wasn't so consistently high. The man is cleaning his glasses of rainwater and blocking the path of several other middle aged men killing time on their lunch break. He then flicks through a book rack of autobiographies, holding them up and pointing out loudly how little the various authors had done in their lives to deserve an autobiography. He thrusts 1ne such tome from a reality TV star or football right in his wives face and says that he has lead a more interesting life than said author. His wife doesn't even react. She just stares sadly and quietly at the stained and matted carpet until he finishes speaking. Meanwhile, over at the Tattslotto counter, a man in poncho - remember, you can't be unhappy in a poncho - is pontificating to a young girl in purple eye shadow about his system for winning the lottery. Apparently it's all in the kid’s birthdays and in the stars. She says in a soft bogan voice how many times have you won the lottery? He looks awkwardly at her, picks up his tickets, and walks away without saying a word. Outside, the rain continues to bounce off the ground, bounce and then dissipate in a torrent down a gutter, like the faded dreams of so many suburban bustling shoppers. My dream for the moment is to avoid getting soaked, and for a moment I wonder if the tattslotto ticket buyer has a system to avoid being mugged for his poncho...my surroundings, as it where, are leading me to more and more grim thoughts...

It's 5ive pm at my work place. My computer screen is off, and I'm standing around a white table covered in magazines. A man with a patchy beard, akin to, say, a bass player from Dr Hook, brings in about 5ive posters a week to work, all of which are advertising upcoming events. I'm staring at the rusty, creaky old visage of Col Elliott, 1ne of those comedians critics sometimes say are "holding up a mirror to challenge political correctness" - he does Chinaman impressions in other words. I'm engaged in this 1ne sided staring contest with Col because I work in a very girly workplace and a very girly conversation finishing is my last conversational hurdle to negotiate before I go home - already this week, I've discovered that all naked men are essentially laughable and funny looking, so I know my expect every day of my workplace life to contain some sort of Cosmo revelations. The bonding glue between the women in my workplace is they all have kids and all wish they didn't. I've become some sort of conversational totem pole to them because I quite openly don't want kids, so they keep asking my opinion but I'm not really listening, since I'm trying to remember the line in a song...battleship of baggage and...how does it go? And I'm also trying to send txt msgs to 1ne of my friends to try and cheer him up. He sits at a desk in a different office, 1ne that has meetings all the time, high pressure targets, inspirational videos to watch and a manager who runs the office with an iron fist and not much encouragement. In contrast our office is eating lollies, and our only morning meetings are held around the radio trying to win a garden voucher from a local DJ. I'm trying to keep his spirits up but it isn't easy. My Mum is somewhat bewildered by my reputation as a good listener. She thinks whenever some1ne is unburdening to me my mind is at the MCG imagining I'm playing for Collingwood or wondering what the 3hrd track on Withershins is. In most cases, that's true, but in this instance, I'm genuinely trying to help. When I say I'm going home, he trots off to another soul-less meeting in an oak panelled office to be berated...again. There's nothing I can do - I leave the txt unanswered, and go outside, for no other reason than to avoid our over chatty cleaner, lest I ask for hours on end when the hell she's going to some dusting...

It's later that night in a quiet Hobart pub. In the corner a black haired female singer is in cover version hell - her only audience are 2wo men inappropriately aged to wear baseball caps requesting Holy Grail endlessly with squeaky hoarse voices. She tries to engage our table in some banter just for something else to do, but we're a little distracted. We've got a list in front of us to organise Xmas drinks - who's in, who's out, as if we're organising an Oscar’s party, such is the exclusivity and passion of the debate. At 1ne of the poker machines a man with frizzy ginger hair sits down with a bucket full of coins, to try and win his fortune. He stares longingly at the machine as if it's the answer to all his problems, and then begins the process of falling victim to the slavish rhythm of the poker machines noises. Outside the window taxi drivers lean against their unused cabs, standing in the rain setting the world to social rights. Soon they will disappear into the night, taking with them passengers who will become part of the original social networking chain, and have opinions on all matters pressed deep into their conscious whether they like it or not. The singer takes a break to get her free drink for the night, and slowly walks up to the bar shrugging gently almost in apology that no 1ne is into her singing. The gambler truly doesn't know when to hold them, and returns to change a 2nd bucket of coins from the indifferent bar stuff. It's only later I realise that when we went into The Central that we sat at our "usual table" - we had our usual conversations, and although the singer and the gambler have changed faces, not much else has in the intervening years. Should I crave more from my existence or cherish my fortune in consistency, in friends and situations I could count on? Such questions probably drove ancient philosophers nuts, although none of them were distracted by the clunking and clicking of a never winning poker machine, the acoustic sounds of a slowed down cover version of Come Together, the whirling thrill of free passed around the bar snacks, wondering which Taxi driver in the queue has the most right wing opinions and debates about the 3hrd member of Bananarama. Everyone looks at me - Keren I say. They now I'll know. I know they know I'll now. It's come from familiarity....we've been here before, and we'll be here again...that's just how it always will be...

It's late at night now. The cold and black of Hobart night-time are overwhelming, a star poking its head out of the darkness providing the only illumination. A suited and booted stranger who tried to make our acquaintance has already been discarded, lost in transition when his conversation threatened to become obnoxious. He stumbled off to go and annoy some1ne else with his opinions on finances a long time ago, now no more than a footnote in an anecdote. I'm picking bits of fish out of my teeth and waiting for a taxi as the rain stumbles down from the heavens in awkward, ragged patterns, chilling my bones and making it difficult to check my txt msgs. Some bridesmaids are fleeing Irish Murphy’s in a blur of angel wings and wedding dress fabric, taking another fleet of taxis far away, and complaining about the cold. My jumper is by necessity thin and boring to make sure I was allowed into pubs, but the payback to this is freezing cold. Cold and dark, like those claustrophobic Ayrshire mornings trying not to get a punch in the head from older bullies. I think if I hang round long enough in the dark some1ne might attack me sometimes, the consequence of having a mother who hasn't wised up to the methods of modern media to create fear in the populace. She always thinks if I walk for even a moment, something is out there, and it's seeped into my brain through osmosis. Everything has a consequence I guess. I drop my phone in a puddle and a passing drunk tuts so loudly it disturbs the Gods. I don't know why my Samsung abuse has so irked him, but perhaps it's just his excuse to have a go at me. As it turns out, he's tutting at some1ne else entirely, an obnoxious brunette girl calling everyone and sundry the C word. My phone has survived the bruising encounter with the pavement, and I jump into a taxi, leaving behind their forthcoming fracas to another anecdote chronicler. As my phone recovers, a txt msg comes up on my screen - some1nes leaving their husband at Xmas. Everything has consequences. The rain lashes down hard on the ground, as my taxi driver turns, looks at me and says "rough night huh?"...

Articulacy leaves me as I grunt, fall asleep, and let the gentle hum of Katy Perry’s ongoing battle with poor radio reception send me home to bed...

Holiday Interlude - Tacos, Farewell, we hardly knew ye

My Facebook page is pretty much an irrelevance to my life these days. I'm sure the Farmville addicts and the people debating whether the new M.I.A album is rubbish or not have a wonderful time, but I've got valuable things to do. Sure most of them involve fantasy Basketball games, but there's no doubt that the novelty of finding old school friends and finding none of them invented a new formula of Coke and made millions has worn off. However, on a rainy Irvine day, it was worth enrichening the pockets of Zuckerberg a little bit just to click on and find out that Tacos had closed. It's a strange thing when you find out sad news from home delivered in a sort of Arial font typed as an update - coldly and without explanation or further analysis by someone who's profile picture is them wearing a silly hat and drinking from a beer bong. And because the person who typed it is likely to be asleep or sitting a pub somewhere in said silly hat and...Tacos Closed? That was it. No more words. No explanation. Was there a ! or an OMG on the end of that sentence? I'm guessing yes, since that's very much the style of this updater. Never short of an OMG. Tacos, for those who don't speak Hobartian, was the somewhat magical Hobart restaurant down in Salamanca famous for serving gigantic fishbowl margaritas and...well I'm sure they sold food as well, Tacos and wedges or something. Essentially, it was the starting point for many hens nights, bucks nights and works nights out where people would hi 5ive each other all week about what a massive night they would have, only for 1ne of the people to imbibe far too much and have to be carried home vomiting in funny maragita based colors and muttering about how they were fine. And now, it was gone, and no one had the grace to forewarn me. I tried to talk to my auntie about it, but she was watching 1ne of her programs, 1ne of those 1nes where embittered minor celebrities try and cook some crockenbush and learn a dance routine while eating a scorpion in a jungle house while running through a field of electric daggers and being given marks out of 10en by Amanda Holdan. How could she understand...I replied to this Facebook death notice but I had to wait, wait until Australia woke up from it's slumber...just alone, mourning a part of Hobart lost to time (and probably the Austrians...probably turn it into Schnitzels version 2...)...

We started most of those 2002 nights, the weekend 1nes, at Irish Murphys, before they accquired some of the worst bouncers in human history, all thick necks and swagger like the extras from some horrendous low budget rap video. We would only venture into Tacos on special occasions. Special mostly meant someone insisted in having tea first. Special doesn't have the same meaning in Hobart. It can easily apply to some1ne is just wearing different shoes. I got my first ever hangover from a Tacos Maragita, a piercing screamer that stabbed me in the head and then came back for my wallet to make sure the job was done. I spent the following morning in a writers course writing extremely angry poems about death and hatred that everyone seemed to love. I think they were a bit disappointed the week after when I turned up with my novel filled with pop culture references and a plot twist that was oblique and obscure but made perfect sense to me. I like to think someone said "What happened to all the death" but I think I made that up. I also used to use it as a sort of reference point for taxi drivers if I had to ring 1ne up. Sometimes it's easy just to say the simplest word possible, not just when you are drunk, but to taxi control operators in general. Try piercing through a combination of radio crackle, tired ears and drunken stumbling vowels and say "I'm just outside the Victoria Tavern"...easier just to yell the word "TACOS!" and hang up the phone. Always worked. The 1ne time it didn't work, sadly, some1ne had the same idea. A man in a checked shirt had worked the same system, and he was above me in the social rankings. He had won a meat-tray at a different pub. His logic in a quickly settled disputed was that he needed to get home quicker than me to freeze the meat, and the taxi driver agreed and I had to wait in the cold for another 4ty5ive minutes just to get home. I was dreading some other inescapable piece of Hobart logic would mean some1ne else got a taxi ahead of me...maybe more checks on the shirt, or more knowledge of the best way past a traffic problem in Glenorchy. Suffice to say, to avoid further problems, I started just yelling "MURES" into confused taxi co-ordinators...

One of our nights had been planned for a long time. It was a flurry of e-mails, and youthful high spirits. Especially from me, who had emerged from the horrendous triangle of friendless years, and was now out and about. I was like Jay Z for a while, I ran this town, if by running a town you mean being able to co-ordinate 12elve people into a pub at an agreed time and getting them to have a socially acceptable night out, and doing it by e-mail. Yes, I certainly ran that town. As it unsurprisingly did before it became Hobarts most god awful pub, Irish Murphys was rocking, a band played aggressively in the corner - well, as aggressively as you can play Train and Maroon 5ive covers - and we were in the middle of the social vibe, dispensing japes to all and sundry. We accumulated an entourage of hangers on that night, and decided to go to Tacos to continue to revelry. It was hardly bacchanalia of course - I don't think you could soundtrack bacchanalia with covers of Drops Of Jupiter while a girl called Sharon talks about how everything is "frigged up" for 1ne thing - but it was a fantastic evening. People hooked up who are still together for all I know, and the band even came over to drink with us. We had an entire corner of the pub to our own party. As far I can tell, we never made it to the comedian set - why risk a night of being told the differences between men and women when you can sit and enjoy each other company and celebrate youthful stupidity? It was only on the way to Tacos that our now expanded group heard a suspiciously ominous thump and yelp. Someone had fallen over in the gutter and was now clutching 1/2 a high heel and a plethora of our attention...we had no idea who she was at all, we were confused, we were hungry and within sight of Tacos, I mean it was just right there, so we could probably do a runner if we wanted...

Her name was Alison. She was the height of a WNBA starting centre, which was handy if we wanted pickles from the top shelf, but bad for those lumbered with supporting her as she walked. She had straight black hair, thick red lipstick, and a pout that could stop a clock. She was knowlegable, intelligent, and drunk as a skunk. She had theories on George Bush that would make that same clock get up in a confused fog and call a taxi. She also worked in government, that much we all knew, dealing with traffic and traffic infringements - my joke about that being a fine job not getting a laugh. See, fine, fine...ah forget it. No one quite knew who she was a friend of a friend of, so no one knew who's responsibility it was to pick her up when she fell over. I was far more empathetic than I am now, but even I was growing weary and impatient of her stumbling, which I now realise is uncharitable, of course, but back then I had things to do...well I had nothing to do really, but the wedges looked good. We shuffled around in the fading daylight trying to work out who would take responsibility for her. She kicked over a chair in Tacos and that still didn't make anyone get up to help. The Tacos staff didn't seem to want to help - anytime we tried to catch their eye to get them to ring a taxi, they would disappear into the distance or find an unseen stain to clean up with Windex and a cloth from the Harold Holt era. I presume they had knew Alison, and were glad to palm her off, like an old CD to Cash Converters, onto some unsuspecting strangers. Eventually, after an hour of weaning Alison off the Maragitas and the nicotine and enduring a sort of life crisis discussion that seemed straight from the set of Dr Phil, Alison was able to attract the attention of Tacos staff, a lifeboat coming in to save her from the sea of self pity and doubt and Guinness up to the gills. However, all the training in customer support couldn't prepare our young badge wearing friend from the moment Alison looked deep into his eyes, said "no one gets me", and left, in a achingly poignant swish of denim and grace, like the final stanza of some semi-tragic poem...lucky she left when she did, it would have been less poetic 20ty seconds later, when someone fired up the Mariachi tape over the PA system...

Sometime later, a Facebook message pops up. It says "Tacos Closed! I know!" - I'm not sure how to debate this point, or what it all means, so I close the lap top, and read a book for several hours...goodbye Tacos...lest we forget...you are now closed...and I know...

The Observatory - Mans Worst Friend

The Observatory, Hobarts third best nightspot with a y at the end, isn't feeling like a magical wonderland as I stand in the corner. It's a farewell party for someone, technically a friend, but someone I kinda sorta stopped thinking about at some in 2005, but we're kept together by the chords of fantasy sports games and jibing e-mails that refer to long gone incidents far too tedious to recall. In a moment of eerie presience the DJ seems to be fixated on playing that Brittany Murphy song from a few years ago over and over, which is the first time I've thought of her since my DVD of 8ight Mile got stuck in my Mums player and I had to pull it apart with a screwdriver. The bouncers don't even care anymore, they stand in a semi circle around the dancefloor talking about Manny Pacquiao while a minor disagreement threatens to spill over, and in the far corner, a man with a ruddy complexion and a nose you can use to cut cheese is standing up against the wall, asleep while standing up, long beard flowing across the dance floor, drink precariously hovering in mid air about to crash down onto the ground and scatter glass at the feet of idling school leavers awkwardly sharing a 1st kiss. 1ne of the bouncers pokes him with a fat Samoan finger, but it doesn't stir the man, and he gives up after a while, going back to his discussion and making ribald suggestions about Rihanna that he would never have the self confidence to assert if he actually met her. My friend is tired, and I realise I should say something profound about our friendship - but there's not much to say, and so I just buy him another drink as he begins to talk idly about how the barmaid won't accept his gift vouchers. It's 2wo in the morning, when such things really matter. The 2wo guys who were fighting are now being ticked off by a bouncer, and shaking hands like naughty school kids caught in the playground punching on and made to apologize by the teacher.

The barmaids name was Carmela. She was younger than I ever remember being, the kind of young where every birthday is still exciting and lifes horizons are no broader than finding out the latest sparkle to stick on your mobile phone. She has a tattoo on her arm that snakes and cascades, and she says it's tribal. I say it's shite, because cocktails provoke forthrightness. She giggles in a corporate way all service staff are required to and pours me a cocktail. It's my final drink, and I indicate as much. I'm miles away from being drunk, having drunk water for most of the night in a follied attempt to stay up for some soccer later on that night. My knowledge of popular culture allows me to talk openly about the band of youngsters cavorting around the stage. It's lucky I'm not drunk, I'd think she liked me, but I can see she doesn't. Since her eyes trail 1ne of her co-workers around the bar and back again, and our chat, while brief, is meaningless, and I don't think I'm 100 times cooler than I actually am. There's a thumping dance beat on the video screen, but no thumping dancers. She's peturbed by the empty dance floor, the lack of business tonight, and in the middle of her chat drops in the word perspicacity, which you certainly don't get from the tiny blonde hairdresser barmaid at Customs House. That 1ne couldn't spell perspex. Her co-worker wipes some spillage off the bar though, and she turns into the hairdresser barmaid, speaking in short, breathy sentences in his direction, and saying no words longer than cat for the whole conversation. She finishes by tossing her hair and giggling like an idiot. When he leaves, she tries to pretend nothing has happened and return to normal, but I must have an expression on my face of surprise at her suddenly beimg dumb struck. She shrugs, says like you've never pretended to be something to get a girl, then goes off to tell 1ne of the bouncers the girl with the angel wings on has vomited again. The girl with the angel wings, I can confirm, is vomiting, although it's short, struggling gasps rather than anything significant or messy. She has 3hree colours in her hair that don't conform to nature, a big hole at the top of her tights, some hastily created angel wings, and she's vomiting on the floor of Hobarts 3hrd best nightclub that ends in a Y. She looks plaintively up at a bouncer who's about to kick her out and 2wo of her concerned friends who are stroking her wings in consolation and says she's too old for this shit. Whatever this shit is, I'm afraid I can only concur, but I've some well worn anecdotes to recount over my final expensive cocktail of the evening...

I don't know that I've ever pretended to be something to get a girl, I can't imagine wandering around a nightclub saying I was a spy or a merchant banker just to impress some1ne. I don't have the presence, I don't have a great ability to lie under disco lights. My cousin, the 1ne who died, used to buy sports tracksuits from his local market and pretend he just signed for whatever team tracksuit he had bought. His attempt at a New Zealand accent 1ne night was Guttenbergesque, but he still picked up a Blackpool barmaid. I tell this to my friend, as another of the travelling party we're hanging out with - who earlier bought me drinks and said his wife was his "better ho", Stephon Marbury style - has decided the girl with the angel wings is his perfect pick up, and he nods but he's not really listening. The girl with the angel wings somehow managed not to be thrown out despite her stomach troubles, or lack of support from her store bought Kayser Platinum. My farewelling friend looks quite sad to be honest, which for a man of exceeding self confidence is surprising, but then it is his farewell. I can only hope at this point he doesn't put his arm around me and say I'm his besht mate. Luckily the man asleep in the corner wakes up and causes a kerfuffle - I love that word so much - and is dispatched into the street with pretty aggressive kick. It is, in the words of Christian Bale, fucking distracting, but in a good way. My friend had wanted to say something I'm sure, a thankyou for coming or something like that, but in the end it was all lost in the kicking up the arse, appallingly sloppy pashing on the dancefloor, and the fact that the kerfuffle allowed him to simply go with the tried and tested conversation - remember that time at work with the water bottle. Oh yes...see I'm male. It's far better this way. When my Dad is proud of me, he doesn't tell me, he just puts a cup of tea on and breaks out the good biscuits. It's better to leave on these terms quietly and quickly with a short wave...and far better than awkward morning regrets when you stay out too long and see, and I mean these on both sides given the pashing going on on the dancefloor, exactly what you've picked up the night before...

The man asleep in the corner at the Observatory is 1ne in front of me in the queue for the taxi on the way home. He's doing an involuntary Tassie 2wo step, hopping from foot to foot, at any moment likely to snap in the kind of violent outburst the Mercury warned me about. He folds him arms, then unfolds them, then puts them by his side, then folds them again, perpetual motion, all leading to a grievance of some kind. He also has a cut lip, and the taxi driver at the front of the queue won't pick him up, instead driving off and leaving both of us standing there. I know the grievance look by heart - my Dad has it all the time when he's drinking. It's usually about how his Dad never loved him. Sadly for me, I've got 1ne of those retro New Zealand cricket tops on, the beigey 1ne Richard Hadlee used to wear. Mums right, I shouldn't wear it out, but it's so damn comfy. I think for a moment he's going to racially abuse me, but instead his gaze falls on the girl with the angel wings and my earlier Stephon Marbury aping friend, who are walking along the path engaging in a quite open, but utterly wrong display of open mouth pashing. He stops moving and narrows his eyes as he watches them disappear down a lane in Salamanca, his entire body leaning forward, as if the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders. He then swears really loudly into the air, and begins laughing. Out of nervousness, I laugh to, as if to say, hey, yeah, that's pretty messed up those 2wo huh, now please don't stab me. He then begins to walk all the way towards to Irish Murphys, on unsteady legs, just yelling something that I think is supposed to be get a room, but ends up being geratraotoon, and he collapses giggling face down on the path, where he still may be for all I know. I look up at the Observatory as I get into my taxi, and my farewelling friend is now on the top deck. At least i think it's him, sitting on 1ne of the couches, talking to a girl I know works in the ANZ bank who manages to mix the hotness of the average 60tys model - big beehive look, very Longet - and somehow the earnest sadness of a suburban poet as she stares across the counter. At least, that's what I think I see, I can't vouch for it. I hope that's what I saw anyway. Farewell my friend - we will always have the water bottle...good times...truly, good times...

As for me, I go home, put some Megan Washington on, and go straight to sleep, having picked up nothing but fatigue...

No More Conversations On My Own (Friday night in Hobart)

So it's funny the way life is - last night I was sitting at a lovely amiable but kind of dull Hobart pub, in a nice and dull and amiable jumper without any kind of logo or sporting reference so that bouncers can't refuse me service, and the girl at the table across from us as we talk idly about nothing of any consequence is stunning, she's got black tights on, beautiful hair, she's mixing shivering in the cold with a diffident casual confident air even though she's not involved in the conversation, and she's also completely oblivious to the fact that about three seats down from her, at the same table but on the other edge of the conversation, a guy with black hair, jeans, sad eyes and the posture of a boy in the throes of complete adoration is looking at her, and she can't see it. He's telling a story about work to the group, but it's clearly pitched entirely at her, and I think surely everyone can see this, but it seems to be just me, and it's certainly not registering with her. She's staring at the water and the boat and the Maori bouncer and the ground and everywhere but at the story teller, and as he gets to the punchline of his story, he trails off, not delivering it with the conviction he would have if she had just engaged him for even a moment. I don't get the chance to see how this little mini table drama plays out, or try and isolate her all for myself to pitch some sort of "so, airline peanuts, sup with that!" flirtacious banter, because we're up and off, to sit through the same conversations we always have, but in different settings. I'm exhausted, and my contributions are nothing more than a greatest hits compilations of conversations past, even though the steak is good. Partially I can't get the girl out of my head (don't worry blue eye shadow girl, it was the tequila) but also I can't be bothered coming up with new material. So I set myself to a default position which generally involves amiable conversation about old cricketers and the follow up single of Flock Of Seagulls, and keep it up until it's time to go home. Much like the guy at the table, by the end, no one seems to be listening, so I set the autopilot on, down rum and coke by the gallon, and appreciate how lucky I am to have friends so good and so close to me, I have to make absolutely no effort at all...although I'd have liked some compliments for my Muttley T-shirt...that hurt...

Of course, as with a lot of things these days, there was a strange and wistful melancholy to the evening - we aren't, as a group, getting any younger, and I certainly find it strange when people begin pulling out pictures of their kids or their renovated house and talk about going home early because they are driving or have kids to look after. And that's before we even get to the fact I'm completely exhausted and as a group we've completely devolved from the old notion that "eating is cheating" to go and eat a full proper meal with starters. The waitress, a sort of weird amagalm of what happens when you superimpose an old face on a young one with photoshop, is tip hovering around the conversation. She's anxiety personified, one of these people over anxious for a mouthful by mouthful recount of whether or not you've enjoyed their steak. To be honest, this particular restaurant, that never changes, but I feel sad because the last time I was here, I was with a close friend who due to personal circumstances is now a social recluse. Time moves on, and not just while you wait for a baguette. One in our party is what my mother would call "one o they Ayrshire mooths" - she's a gossip, keen for strands of dirt but I'm not giving them to her. She takes my lack of social ambition and turns it onto me as if I'm a childlike figure sometimes, which I accept, because I know her husband uses their credit card to download trans-sexual porn and fat girl porn and has had dating agency women around to their house. Too easy, I shrug, whenever it's my turn to take some good natured ribbing. I think to myself that this mutual know each other so well that baiting is easy but never harsh type conversation is strange, but I don't think about it too long, because tiphog is pack, a little more mascaraed, and is asking how our water is. I smile and wish her the best, and she calls me darling, and the conversation continues with no real meaning until someone we all know comes in the restaurant, with a new man and a much shorter haircut. She air kisses us all, which makes the inner Ayrshire man in me uncomfortable, and says we have to say goodbye to her before she leaves - I think she thinks we're her escape valve for the evening, but it means nothing, and we leave a well earned tip. Last time I saw that girl anyway, she was dressed in a mini skirt standing outside Syrup desperately trying to pick up a seventeen year old she could get in and look cool, and ultimately feel good about herself. I smile at the barmaid, out of absolute politeness, and feel good about myself that I'm not the dorky head waiter, who's all teeth, glasses and fumbling fingers...I hope that glass isn't coming out of his pay packet...

We retire to a bar, quite a trendy bar, well, trendy by Hobart standards, and my boring jumper comes in handy, as does the fact that I'm completely sober and upright. Some girls try and beat us to the couch, much younger girls no doubt waiting to use the couch for prime preening, now forced to preen from the far less classy preening position of the pool table or the freezing cold outside tables. It's packed, really packed, but spaces clear as soon as everyone notices how packed it is, and goes away again. There's cricket on the TV - there's girls on a hens do passing dirty comments on Andrew Symonds. My friends want to party on, but I'm about to pull a disappointment for him and go home. Hobart is a bad place to go out now anyway - bouncers, children, dress codes, expensive spirits, pub bands who still think Live are the height of elan and elegance. It's not my scene anymore. I wonder what is. A girl is looking at me, she's not quite preening, but I can't pick the look, whether it's directed at me or the couch. Once in my head at least I figure it's the couch, I re-engage with the conversation. I feel younger than the man in the white work suit though - he's double my age and a bit wider, a confused mix of cocktails, thrown off shackles of respectability and an unfinished mullet. He's walking in that way people walk when they are drunk and want to hug people, arms up in the air, clearly enjoying generic trance track #17 from the Ministry compilation CD. My friends aren't looking at him though, and they are talking about nothing meaningful. I can barely remember how we all came together to sit on this couch at this moment, and struggle to piece together some of the circumstances. The man in the white shirt is getting uncomfortably close to sexually harassing his secretary. I'm getting uncomfortably close to leaving and being told not to leave and then having one more drink and leaving anyway and wondering what the point was. I'm able though to pick that generic trance track #17 is by Felix Da Housecat. No one moves, no one seems impressed, but behind me, in the cheap non couch seats, I clearly hear a guy tell his dis-interested punk chick paramour that the song is by Felix Da Housecat. She perks up briefly, and I wonder whether I can use my vast knowledge of the Chillout Sessions 3 CD to pick up (next track is PaulMac featuring Abby Dobson) but she then says he's still a retard and slumps back down, sipping on her blue Curacao with disdain, and no regard for the joys of a bendy straw...

The final bar, it's always a sad moment. You've either picked up or you haven't, you've either had a great time or a boring one, you've either charmed someone with an Andrew Symonds story or been told you can't get into the pub - either way, the night is settled. We file this night as comfortable - dull, uneventful, a social obligation. We stand at the bar, and we're mentioning how old fashioned everything seems - the pub band seem to have been going through the same mid 90s repetoire of Oasis-Live-Powderfinger-Silverchair et al since I've been going out. As a wildcard, he plays Best Days by Blur to mass apathy, until you expect someone to yell sing us a song we know. They've eliminated debauchery too, no one in this pub is going to start a fight or throw up, it's a clientele stripped of danger. Since the final bar has entrapped us all, we start talking about other nights out and nights out to come, just as a 12 year old girl walks in. We joke she wouldn't have a clue who Nik Kershaw is. She's amazingly young, but dressed for a night out on the Gold Coast. She's coated in fake tan, head to toe, hair dyed blonde, mini denim shorts, high heels and bad intentions. She walks in alone, expecting everyone to stop, like in a bad western where the piano player stops in the second chours, and look at her, twirling around for people to hit on, hands on boney hips, eyes darting at a million miles an hour. She may be drugged, she may be anxious, she may have school in the morning, but no one looks at her, and she slumps against the bar, alone and patently about to catch a death of cold. Rather than wanting to pick her up, I want to pick up a blanket and throw it over her. She smudges some unapplied fake tan on the bar, and stands perfectly still for a long time, trying to get the heat back in her body (matron). We smile at her, not out of any lust or want, but because as a group, we remember making that much effort when we went out - and appreciate how comfortable we all are with each other, and in our lives, and how we never have to worry about the ravages of underage drinking and picking up again...

On the way home, the taxi driver begins a long, boring conversation about speed cameras, and I put Smoosh on my IPOD, and drift off to sleep, social mission accomplished...

Montgomerys Burns (to the sound of hot karaoke action)

So my Dad is asleep the other night, which if you know my Dad isn't a very unusual experience, and he says that his dead friend visited him in the middle of the night to tell him something was wrong, and when Dad woke up, the back door was wide open. He puts this down to his friend looking after him, and my rational explanation that the door being open left him freezing and unable to sleep has been summarily dismissed. This is a great example of my dad doing what he does best, conjuring up a situation where he can argue with me about any topic. My Dad doesn't believe in ghosts, and when my cousin supposedly visited an Irvine town hall to communicate with his mother, he had to bite his tongue to be supportive - however, for the sake of the argument, he is now telling me he's mad for ghosts. just to get a reaction. He has also now started backing the Scotland football manager to keep his job just because I want him sacked. He has had one win today though, the principal at his school, the one who basically said that kids didn't have to stay in class if they didn't want to (I'm so born in the wrong generation) and tried to eliminate failure has just quit, so he's stoked about that. Personally, I'm sad that her experiment to eliminate failure has seemingly passed, as it really gave me hope that one day I could go back to school and just behave like Rodney Dangerfield, slack off and somehow pass the final exam without studying...or did he get to stay in school because he won the diving competition? I can never remember how Back To School ends. Anyway, I think had she been my principal, I would definitely had got straight As without doing anything, because I would have totally made up a large variety of learning disorders, some of them about ghosts. This is a school after all with a selective mute who gets away with doing her oral presentations, but then is struck mute and can't answer questions about them...oh yes, I would have completely stormed that school...and won the diving competition. I still don't believe in ghosts though, apart from the one who locked my door in Queenstown...that one was terrifying...

It's fair to say I don't go to the infamous Hobart pub Montgomerys very often - it's the kind of surreal experience pub I only tend to go to on very strange nights out when the Salamanca pub options are exhausted or someone feels the need to emphasise their cooler than thou credentials by proclaiming, say, Irish Murphys "so 2004" - the notion of applying a thing to a year does bother me by the way, as surely if something is so 2004, that doesn't render it as a bad thing does it, it's like people who say "Oh you can talk!" to which i always say "yes, I can, but there are many poor mutes in the world, so a bit of respect. The key thing you need to know about Montgomerys is it has karaoke, hence why the nights when I've gone there have been a little strange. It's also where I saw a fine specimen of Hobart man try and prove his sobriety to a barman by reciting the nine times table over and over again until security threw him out. One of the great regrets of my life is that I can't sing, so my karaoke experiences are limited in scope. I can shout, but that's only good on AC/DC songs. The first time I ever went into Montgomerys, a shy Twiggy like figure (actually more like Candy from the 60s movie of the same name, but no one saw that) was attempting to woo the masses with a rendition of Norah Jones epic song to drown yourself in the bubblebath to, "Don't Know Why", and she was wearing a retro Belgium soccer top, which attracted me to her far more than the singing. Anyway, a bogan from the crowd yelled out the obvious heckle, "Don't know why you don't shut the fuck up!" (oh, someone let Oscar Wilde in) and she actually walked out into the crowd, hit him over the head with the microphone, and resumed singing. As she was doing this, one of my friends, who has now married a Danish sailor or something like that, was trying to teach a dishevelled and disjointed me how to dance, which really isn't going to happen. As she was banging on and on about how to dance like the cool band of the time (possibly Mis-Teeq) I said to her something along the lines of "leave me alone, I can tap dance!" which has stuck with me to this day - obviously, I can't tap dance, but people, sometimes people I don't know that well, ask me how my tap dancing lessons are going. If my Mum was here, she'd no doubt say I keep falling in the sink, but we'll move on from that...

With such a strange night behind me the first time, my second visit being even stranger wasn't very likely, but it was definitely an experience. In 2003, I was pretty much drunk all the time. It explains why I took nine weeks off work for a holiday where I did nothing but eat cereal, sleep til Midday and then get up and watch Felicity and Ed (it was, obviously, fantastic). This one Friday night, I remember very well Collingwood were playing Hawthorn at the MCG, and we lost - I know this because one minute we were all watching Collingwood playing, then I turned around to swear and rant a bit, and everyone was gone - chances are, a lot more than a minute elapsed, or I'm really a boring bastard when Collingwood are playing - but suddenly everyone I was with was up doing karaoke, and I don't remember any of the build up to it. As it turns out, as a group they had chosen to do, I don't know, Bananarama or something, but when they went to sing, some B side from Grease came on, and they didn't know it. Worse, one of the microphones didn't work, probably because some girl hit someone over the head with it, and screeched feedback all across the dancefloor. None of this really worried me, as I was swearing at Nathan Buckley and trying to compute the expensive cost of a rum and coke comparitive to the price of the two ingredients (maybe the ice cost fifteen bucks?) - as it turned out, the feedback laden tribute to John Travolta sparked an uncharacteristic amount of Hobart fury, maybe there were just fans of Two Of A Kin in, and for the one and only time in any pub I've ever been in, someone actually threw a chair, western salooon style. They must have been really bad, someone sang a song about a honky tonk and it was time to leave level bad. The management actually intervened to say that they were banned from singing karaoke, and a red headed girl actually came up to me and said "I wouldn't want to be associated with those losers!" - she was stunningly hot, poured into a midnight blue dress, and she had accutely put distance between me and her and the rest of the pub, singling me out as someone better than the herd, someone who wasn't a loser, to which I replied in my sexiest and most seductive voice "FOR GODS SAKE CHASE HOLLAND YOU DICKHEAD!"...what, Colllingwood were losing, do you expect me to be focused?

It probably won't surprise anyone that some two years later, on another god forsaken Friday night, Collingwood lost again, this time to North Melbourne, but I was already over it due to other circumstances which I will get to one day - suffice to say that the highlight of the evening wasn't someone offering me five hundred dollars for my Gold Coast Chargers top and me turning it down (wait, that was a lowlight surely?). As we stood mulling over the events of the night inside Montgomerys, sheltering from the cold and the homeless, a girl began what can only be described as a feeling out process. That is, she actually was wandering around groping everyone inside Montgomerys, for no apparent reason other than, well, she wanted to. I'm luckily enough an old hand (is that a pun?) at this game, because when I was in woodwork in Scotland there was a girl called Kerri-Anne who used to wander around groping everyone, but it certainly worked a treat on one of my work colleagues, a guy who looks a lot like Warwick Capper as it happens. He not only groped back, he was groped back for his grope back (make your own grope back mountain joke) and proceeded to take his shirt off, get on the dance floor, and pogo insanely to a song that desperately inappropriate to pogo to (it wasn't Bette Midlers The Rose, but lets say it was). He actually screamed out a Yee-haw at one point, and I was thinking this is the guy who reads the Financial Times and will very occassionally muses "interesting", and now he's drugged out of his head, copping a feel and pogoing wildy. As he did this, I was glad for him that he had quite obviously picked up, and as I scanned the scene, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a very very famous pop star, in disguise, but obvious to me. She was sipping an orange juice out of a curly straw (curly straws rule) and I was just about to mention to my friends who it was, but she caught my eye, looked gently and softly at me, and shook her head, just gently, but clearly enough so I could see she didn't want to be disturbed. I understood, understood completely, she just wanted to enjoy a night out...so I left her alone, and then I waited until I was leaving to tell the security guard and about three people standing outside in sparkly boob tubes that she was in. I think they made her get up and sing a song in the end...that'll teach her for charing 75 bucks for her shithouse concerts...

I think the most important lesson to be learned is...some people are allowed to sing, and some people aren't...and some people are born to grope...as for me, I just can't pick when I should sell my top....and I shouldn't go out when Collingwood are playing...but everyone knew that....

The Welcome Stranger (where friends and strangers sometimes get poor service)

So while I was writing that last post, I had this incredibly cred run of songs on my IPOD, cred to the point I actually thought, did I mix up my IPOD with someone elses? - well, I presume Stereolab are still trendy - and it was all this kind of odd indie nonsense. Naturally, I was quite cheered when S Club 7s Bring It All Back came on. My conversion from a Triple J rock snob to someone not averse to a pop tune would have been posted here if it had been a particularly interesting story that wasn't I quite liked The Beat Goes On by Britney Spears, and that's it, someone call the editor, there's gold to be published! Anyway, S Club 7, they were OK - my cousin (the one I sort of don't like), I bought him Bring It All Back one Xmas (the same Xmas I went drinking with Russell Robertson) and rather pompously gave him a bit of a lecture about real music and real songwriters...you know, I like to spend Xmas turning into Jane Gazzo (not literally). His response was to say I had a stick up my arse and put a Roy Chubby Brown DVD on, and then we had a massive fight because I was rude to his girlfriend. OK, so it wasn't exactly Deck The Halls at our house (we've had on and off fights ever since we were kids and he turned off my imaginary TV). What was really interesting about that Xmas was that he told me a story about one of his mates who went into a cafe in Penguin and tried to play some songs on the jukebox, only to have "We're Going To Ibiza" by The Vengaboys come on, and the record got stuck so about 14 times in a row We're Going To Ibiza came on, until everyone got up and left or threatened the management with violence and they all had to slink out in embarrassment. My cousin told me this like it was a hilarious story, while I (still in rock snob mode) shook my head and went, gosh, how awful, a cafe playing pop, didn't anyone have some emergency Sidewinder to play? No one had The Blackrock soundtrack to hand? Honestly....

All of which leads me nicely to the latest in the good pub guide to Hobart, and my long, long night at The Welcome Stranger. The Welcome Stranger (in Harrington Street, if you have a pen) you would think is a pub that, with a name like that, would have some men in tweed gathered around the bar as you enter engaging you in conversation like a lost soul as soon as you hit dry land after a long voyage to the island...I've got to stop watching Two Thousand Acres Of Sky...but of course, in true Hobart fashion, it's nothing of the sort. I can't remember why we went there, but I think it was because we wanted to play pool on my birthday. It wasn't the greatest birthday ever, let's put it that way. If you've ever had a birthday where you want to get drunk but no one else does, it was like that, only I wanted to gargle Jack Daniels at 4 in the morning while my friends were thinking light supper and a glass of milk - you know, different wavelengths. So The Welcome Stranger, it has a pool table, so we go there. Now, I remember very very clearly that Port Adelaide were playing Fremantle on the television (hold your excitement) and where you got your drinks from was a big giant open bar area with two staff behind the bar. The male staff member had this weird Bad Boy Bubby thing going on, he sort of had his tongue on the floor as his mouth was fixed in a wide open space, his body was vaguely lolling in the direction of the flickering Foxtel TV, his eyes rolling back in his head in his complete determination not to serve a single customer. It was futile trying to get him to move, never mind make a move to pour a drink. After about ten minutes of waving my hand in front of his face, I gave up and tried to attract the attention of the female staff member, a Max Sharam lookalike who seemed to take an inordinate amount of time cleaning one glass. I certainly admired her dedication to her chosen craft of individual glass cleaning, but it made for a long night as we waited for one of them to get the memo on customer service. Eventually, my patience was rewarded as Bubby snapped out of his Matthew Pavlich induced coma, and poured me a mediocre rum for five dollars, and grunted something about ice...had he sold me drugs, it might have taken the edge off the Manson family vibe...certainly no one in tweed was putting their arm around me, put it that way...

When we adjourned to the pool room, leaving Bubby to be Pavlichtonic again, we were unsurprisingly the only people there. I don't know why, considering the warm welcome all strangers seemed certain to receive. So we stuffed around on the jukebox, and tried to make our only drink for the evening last for three hours (in that dogged aren't we all having a great time way, we ploughed on as if we were raging like that girl in the dry cleaning ad). To pass the time, we began putting songs on the jukebox. Now, since it was my birthday, I was going to put one Britney Spears song on, just for old times sake - however, this was a no go zone, as Britney Spears is not an artist to put on in a pub - a very kindly Auntie picked a Britney song for me on a Paris video jukebox, and the reaction wasn't favourable. So even though we were the only ones there, I learned from my Penguin roots that it had to be rock music (or The Gambler) and I didn't put on anything more unfavourable than Khe Sanh or The Divinyls. We're Going To Ibiza was unavailable. Alas, and I swear to this day it was an accident, I was trying to put on Pantera, I put on Anticipating by Ms Spears somewhere between Metallica and I Touch Myself. And of course, in true sitcom fashion, by the time it came on, there was us, three massive giant Maori bikies, and two patrons with a fixation for blue shirts, denim jackets and drinking beer as if it was going out of fashion. Of course, the bikies didn't take to kindly to Britney, and threatened immediately to rip the head off or gut (one of the two, nice to have options) the person who put on this fucking shit...so I casually suggested it was Bubby, and they went out and...of course, I said absolutely nothing, and completely focused on knocking the little yellow balls into the little nets on the end of the table with the stick thing. I was so focused I won off the break...and of course, vacated the premises...

Naturally with my birthday going horribly wrong, I was in a pretty bad mood, and stormed out, certainly not feeling welcome, but I decided that before I went, I was going to try and win some money on the poker machines in the glamorous "gaming area". I don't know why this was, as I'm normally quite anti gambling, at least apart from my yearly bets on the Grammys (made a mint on Steely Dan one year). As I was progressing through the evening towards the poker machines, Bubby suddenly came to life and started shouting "Yercan'tgointhere..." and pointed to a giant sign on the wall. "Carnyaread...cleaning!" he said, and certainly, the sign said that there was cleaning, although I failed to see how the presence of a steam cleaner would affect the gambling experience - if anything, it would enhance it, given I wouldn't have to listen to the music of the machine as all the noise would be the steam cleaner and I would find that soothing and I could thus concentrate entirely on what I was doing, free of burd...I could see my line of argument wasn't swaying Bubby, who again began lolling into his pre cleaning state. My friends tried to get me to leave, but I wasn't really in any kind of mood, and again went to go into the poker machine bit, and again, he pointed to the giant sign. At this point, I noticed out the corner of my eye that at least three people were in the tiny little red seats, and they were indeed playing poker on the machines, with an obsessive gambling nature glowing on their little faces, the kind you only hear about in fables. "What about them?" I said, pointing, "how come they get to use the machines!" - ooh, I was mad, I was on my (Sean Micallef) high horse and about to say something about communism - Bubby stroked his dribble soaked chin, and then nodded. "They," he said, very slowly, "gots nowhere else to go...can't get rid of the pricks...big problems...". He then went back to stroking his chin, while behind him, a glass was really, really gleaming...

And a little voice in my head said, it is time to go back to where we used to be, and let's enjoy it...

The Central (or why Lolo Jones is hotter than Sally McLellan)

I haven't really got the kind of friend that I'd really like anymore - I'd really like a friend that I could sit down with and say "Do you remember the Best Of Hey Dad CD?" and get the reply "Of course! Who could forget the mix ups!" - I can only go so far with this kind of interesting Australian cultural whatever happened to the Blue Heaven Big M conversation (that's why I'm blogging, a last ditch attempt to force my enthusiasms on the world - did you know you can get Blue Heaven flavouring now? Seriously - how awful does that sound?) before the topic turns back to football, sport (we're amazingly varied) or work. I'm one of those people who isn't a very good conversationalist about work, well, I can talk about work but I just don't much care. One day I'll wake up and realise my priorities were all wrong, but for right now, I'm happy to talk Homer Simpson style about how I always know what football coaches should do. It's interesting though when you do meet someone who genuinely knows about football how you freeze up at the lack of actual positional knowledge you do have, but hey, I know Collingwood should never have traded Heath Scotland and that's good enough for me. At lot of my finer conversational moments take place, of course, in pubs. These aren't the drunken conversations at night were people tell you what the really think of you, but rather the innocent, individual little chats around a big table while you wait for people to get off work before the lightweights go home and before you move onto another pub and call them lightweights before realising at about 1am how much you wish you were a lightweight. I must admit, I have a massive aversion to sitting alone at pubs, and would rather walk around the block than sit on my own reading the Herald Sun and looking a bit tragic. And for many years, there's only been one Hobart pub that satisfies the need as an easily reachable meeting place, has affordable beer, a clientele that isn't snobbish or discerning, tasty delicious snacks brought to you free on a tray, live sport on television, and poker machines out the back...and then completely ruins it with one fatal error. That place - The Central...

Now, I don't think I'm being flippant to say without The Central, I wouldn't have very many friends. When I first started drinking in Hobart (as opposed to just going to that really weird underground place where you felt about 200 years old if you were 14, the one with the giant screens and the Disney Channel music, the hell was that place?) it was a Friday night ritual to meet up at Central. Luckily, Central is in the centre of Hobart, which is handy, since no one can ever do them for false advertising. Unlike, oh I don't know, Syrup, where I got punched in the head, there are no physical problems with the Central - the only problem I've ever had with the place was a bloke who pretended to be taking a cover charge to let people in, and who burst out laughing at me when I reached for my wallet. I'd love to say I had a great comeback but it was something like "grow a brain!" (I might as well thrown in a "duh-brain" or a "so funny I forgot to laugh!" for all the Sleepover Club level of comeback ability I showed). Other than that, nothing really happens there - it's a nice, pleasant place to sit down, have a beer and a nice chat. I don't remember a single ostentatious Victoria Tavern style gimmicked promotion involving Coyote Ugly, not a single celebrity appearance, not a guest appearance by a band, not a troubled brawl outside the taxi rank between slappers and himbos and no incident in which I've clashed with a bouncer (which for me is pretty good). If the Central was your friend, it'd be the one who loaned you five dollars when you needed it, the one who scooped you off the lawn at 3am and tucked you in...if it was a drink it'd be milk and if it was a Collingwood player it'd be Scott Burns. There's no fuss, there's no frills, there's a bottle shop next to it and a taxi rank outside just to help you on your journey onward...there's just...good solid conversation before it's time to move on...unlike the horrible Irish Murphys and it's ban on people being sick, the Central wouldn't throw you out, in fact, it's probably got a sick bay to make sure you are OK...

Now, this is all well and good, but there is a massive problem with the Central. Just like that solid reliable friend who would lend you five dollars, there's much sexier, flasher alternatives. Just as you can't expect Sally McLellan to be Lolo Jones, Kristine Radford to be Amanda Coetzer, or Scott Burns to be Dale Thomas, so the Central can only ever be a place to meet up before you move on. Some people may dispute this, but it's true. The only people I've ever seen there at 9pm are poker machine addicts and people in there perving on Hobarts hottest barmaid (she's way out of your league man who drinks Midori to try and look like he has a feminine side...we know who you are and we know what you are up to). This one time we went to see Ross Noble (chimps on bikes style comedian fact fans) at the Theatre Royal and we had a drink at Central at, oh, 7pm? It was completely empty apart from me, my friend, and a cleaner lady who looked like the blacksmith from the Great Expectations episode of South Park ("Oh don't mind me, I just stick to me blacksmiffing" - that guy). Not even Midori man was there. The snacks were though, they are kind enough to provide snacks, on a little dainty tray, but still everyone had already moved on, and gone to Syrup, which seems insane when you think about it - why would anyone want to go to a nightclub where they play Dave Dobbyn, the bouncers punch you in the head, girls don't want to talk to you, and the girl who stamps your hand sometimes will finish off what the bouncers start? And that's when I realised the major problem with the Central wasn't that everyone wanted thrills and spills, or to run anyway from Midori Man, or run a gauntlet to try and pick up a clearly bored uni student at Syrup or queue for 12 hours at Isobar just to end up talking to a girl who's sick in a potplant...

It hit me then that the main problem with the Central is that it's central (that's good writing!) function is a conversational pit (like the Beatles had in Help!) - so why do they then ruin it with...the singer. Every single time I ever went into the Central, we were having a lovely pleasant chat about Melbourne Victory or something and then...the tuning up feedback. On comes the artist in residence with his guitar, and it's time for some good old fashioned pub cover version rock. Now, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with pub singers - at Customs, they spend so long setting up the band area and knocking you out of the way to put up a speaker, you know that the band is coming on so you can deal with it - but this guy, he can certainly play the guitar, but he's a little bit like a drop of lime flavouring in a bottle of banana milk. And you know, you just know, he's going to do Wonderwall (or the new one - you know he's going to do Wish You Well by Bernard Hitman Fanning). I hate Wonderwall - it reminds me of a time I really didn't have any musical discernings and just loved Oasis because they were popular and everyone said I had to. I even went to see them at Almondvale stadium in Livingston and...let's move on. And he's really loud in a small space, so what can you do? So the conversation is essentially immediately halted by Summer of 69 and Alive, and that's when everyone has to go. A girl on a blog I read once wrote that when she used to go to Maccas, when the clown came out at a kids party, that was the Maccas way of moving the parents on because the clown took the kids outside, the adults would get bored, and restless, and thus leave. Maybe this is part of the Central marketing plan, before everyone gets onto spirits and cracks onto the barmaid, get the singer out and make everyone go to Curleys. Brilliantly, one night this girl singer was on, clearly a channeller of Connie from Sneaky Sound System (the sneakiest of all the sound systems). She was giving it a bit of rock and roll star banter with a lot of "WOO!" and "WASSUPHOBART!" ("My arse from the seat cos I'm getting out of here" is always my response to that). Her response to the parade to bodies going past her was to try and engage the passers by in a bit of banter, and ask for requests. This old bloke, clearly just having a retirement drink and a good solid glass of Boags, has responded to the request for requests with the old classic "I request you shut the fuck up" - but of course, he said it way too loud, copped a massive glare from Connie, some good old belly laughs...and then without any further conversation, she proceeded to do Wonderwall.

At least it wasn't a reference to her first real six string I suppose...