Porky The Puppy and Bandits at 12 O'Clock

Cyber Hair in Kingston - where I get my hair cut, and when I say cut, I mean shorn like page 6ix of the army handbook and when I say hair, I mean my own singular hair and when I type like this I feel like I'm doing a Foghorn Leghorn impression - is a vacuum of intellectual thought. The people in there are very nice, very pleasant, but speak in strange hairdresser formed sentences, all about weekends and travel and weekend travel. I think it's just page one of the hairdresser handbook, until you can form a question which will lead to leisure time discussions, no scissors for you. I must admit, I keep myself from laughing - much like yesterday when I was having a serious conversation with someone while She Bangs by Ricky Martin was on in the background - every time a difficult conversation tangent, say, football, is fobbed off with oh my boyfriend knows all about it and then silence. Should I say hows your boyfriend? Is that weird? I never know what to do when the boyfriends love of Essendon is brought up. So many handbooks apparently, army, hairdresser, the reactive...I miss the good old days of Swannie in Penguin, a good old fashioned hairdresser. Actually, what am I talking about, he nearly cut my ear off once and used to play old Scottish records from the 50tys, it was shit in there. The musk sticks weren't that great. I've mentioned before the heady winter of 1996 when I thought I had an intellectual soulmate in my hippy hairdresser in Burnie until she buggered off to live in a caravan with her boyfriend and suddenly sounded like the kind of person impressed with a souped up Rav 4 and her Tolstoy quotations were suddenly less impressive and felt like shtick taken from the back of a book in the library. Oh fickle fate, how you mock me as the tram lines are shorn into my head. It's why my conversation is less than animated with the hairdressers, I don't want to get involved, I don't want to lose my heart, or my ear. However, my own mother has the last word on interactive snipping. Once she got caught up in a conversation about family - the family of my Mother made up more or less of 13teen redoubtable Glaswegian children, all brooded over by my quite fearsome Granny, and my Grandad, auditioning successfully for the role of most drunken Glasgow stereotype of 1954. Times were tough, in fact so tough I used to ask my Mum why she never wrote one of those poor is me books, and the reason is her family would say she was soft, and she was the youngest of the kids and the most spoiled, at least comparitively. The last broken biscuit in the tin made you a spoiled wee brat in 1963. Having brought up her family, the blonde in the hairdressers - I should point out, one of my best friends types, if you can have a type, because he couldn't care less about conversation while I would just despair I suspect - let the wind whistle through her head and asked if it was a problem having so many brothers and sisters running into her room and pinching all her stuff. She didn't have the heart to tell her that to pinch her stuff would have required simply rolling over in bed and reaching out and grabbing it since the "weans" were all pushed into one room. Such a revelation of a spoiled only child might inspire a head to the hand, a mock swoon and some sort of oh my god the deprivation motion, but to the hairdresser, it took several minutes to process the logic of such conditions, and even then, Mum said it didn't really sink in that Mums family didn't live like Von Trapps in some fabulous mock tudor mansion, but in a tenement in Pollok, crammed together, trying not to get on each other nerves - unless it was on purpose, and they wanted to tell Mums sister that on her first day at school, she was going to be left at the school and collected by the parental unit after 14 years continuous hard labor...

So as you can imagine, in moments where time is passing and no one is speaking, this story is sometimes trotted for a good laugh. However, it dawned on me recently that I was also guilty of such a faux pas. In fact, mines was far worse. It was the electrifying summer of 1991 - our nation was gripped by anti English feeling, Debbie had left me to pursue more ambitious boyfriends, the sensational anti English band Foolish Hit was peddling their single Smash The English Way down the mall, and I was gripped by the idea that I could, if encouraged, become a film maker and asked, nay, demanded that I be bought a video camera. My mother, having seen my enthusiasm for becoming a keyboard player wane decided not to spend any money on something I was only going to use to film men being hit in the groin with footballs. In all seriousness, I asked her if her life had ever been as difficult as mines was. Yes, poor cockney urchin you, with your pockets out-turned to the world. Now, I suspect there was a subtext to this, that even after 3hree years I felt alienated in the land of Ayrshire, that I was single and alone and...there was no subtext, I was just spoiled. Indulged in fact by parents struggling to keep their heads above the financial mess they were in while Dad scrubbed around Ayrshires lowest schools teaching Maths on short term contracts. That said, ambition such as wanting to be a film maker or, as I suspect was really the ambition, filming man being hit with football in groin to win prizes from Jeremy Beadle on You've Been Framed, tended to die on the vine one way or another in early 90s Ayrshire. Kilwinning did tend to thrive on exaggeration, everyone was having sex and hanging around the Horden Pavillion and listening to Altern 8 at fabulous illegal raves - no one was at home scared and alone or fitfully standing outside Tescos waiting for a date that never came. So it's strange to me that all this illuminated thought and creative thinking was never put on paper. Had someone been sat in the lunch room while we drank our Coke and ate our polo mints with a notepad, they'd have got a hell of a script for a teen movie, as kids from Beith made themselves weekend superstars and hardened criminals when all they had done was watch TV and hide from the world. I could have shot it on my JVC. Oh wait, I don't have one....Mummmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

There's a guy in Rosny who works I think in the phone store. He's the one I wrote about before, the one who smokes outside the shopping centre with his girlfriend, too cool for his environment, looking scathing of contemporary culture, nary a centimetre of quiff out of place. It'd be a great photo if I could take a photo of them both pouting and looking like they loathe everything about their environment underneath the big sign that touts how fabulous the place is. At least that's what I thought, but now I wonder. The other morning they were both all hands and touchy feely with each other, and when someone, I don't think it was me, walked past, he instantly stopped and stood like a nervous teenager being busted by his Mum. It was strange - and now they've put him in this big corporate T-shirt that he has to walk around in, it's neon and has a big question about phones it, and yesterday he had a jacket on over it and was walking around with his head down looking pretty forlorn. So now, he just seems less cool - about as nervy and fitful and dorky as I feel most days, just with better hair. The thing is, most of my secondary school years in Ayrshire were like that - you could only get away with people thinking you were cool for moments, a week at the most, before the mob would tear you down, challenge your exaggerated stories, and leave you sat at the edge of the lunch table wondering what just happened. Such ruthlesness would not only apply to people like me who were claiming to be part of some horrific urban decay while clad head to toe in designer clothes, but also those who claimed voracious and constant sex lives and then crumbled in the face of girls they liked. This was the most ruthless of all our torments, and as much as the boy we were tormenting would claim it was different because he liked her and she wasn't cheap like all those other girls, the illusion would drop to the floor and shatter. I never got used to this kind of banter, or outright slander, I never learned to lie particularly well in these situations. I came from a school in Burnie which was run by hippies more or less - you were encouraged to paint, to draw, to eat Saveloys and drink Big Ms when you felt like it, and to spend afternoons staring at the clouds. My imagination could conjure up what a could looked like - look Sarah, it's a sheep...again - but not a convincing story where I had sex with a slapper fae Kilbirnie who sold me E outside a rave while The Shamen played in the background...but I didn't have a video camera, does anyone want to hear that story...

I told my Dad once that I had made up a disease called suitcase syndrome, that I was going to use it, the fact we moved countries 3hree times in 10en years as my excuse for failing in life. I can't remember what he said, because we were in London and he more interested in perving on a jogger. My Mum wouldn't buy this though - she came from probably the last hardy generation, and any time Billy Connolly comes on talking about his difficult childhood she pulls this disgusted face and shakes her head. As much as we would talk around our lunch table at school about how tough our lives were, all we were doing was whinging on and on and making sure no one got the last whinge in. There were no illusions in 60s Glasgow, everything was just shite, and that was how it was, and you just got on with it. Of course, what sounds shite to me - 13teen in a room for gods sake - Mum shrugs off as just life. I could have got multiple whinges out of that one alone. Outside Big W today, there was an old man and woman arguing - I know what about, because while I was idly flicking through Porky The Puppy and sending my friend a txt about Britney this old boy with thick glasses and an accent that could command a reich of indeterminate number was yelling at this girl about the price of textas. He was vicious, cruel, cutting...while his wife stood, lip trembling, eyebrow raised to heavens. The girl didn't give a toss of course, maybe she was thinking about Britney as well. However he seems very pleased with sticking to the man...via yelling at a girl about textas. Outside the store, the wife, a sort of Lillian Frank type with more make up, is giving him both barrels. She has him pinned up against the skill tester telling him to go and apologize and she'll show him what tough is and yelling at a little girl like that how could he. Like he's been sentenced to wear an orange T, the man shuffles from foot to foot awkwardly and sulks, and I laugh at his plight as my IPOD fades to a dull hiss. The trouble with all illusions is they fade - illusions of hardness, coolness, toughness, that you live in horrible times, virility, being a film maker, that one country is a panacea to anothers woes...and all that's left is gritty Scottish realism...lifes shite, business as usual...

I might even make a film about it one day...

The four ages of man - punch in the arm, prank to impress girls, all pubs are shit, what are you looking at

The Sundays - Wild Horses
Uploaded by djoik

It's early morning - I wonder what I'm doing up to be honest, and I share my space with several other muddled and confused workers of various businesses who are struggling with the problems of sliding doors, holding a coffee while they open a sliding door, or just drinking enough coffee to make sure that they have enough motivation to get through another day of dealing with the public and that damned sliding door. I can see on their faces years of disgruntlement, minor annoyances now cascading onto them like torrents, the every day death by a thousand cuts not soothed by javas. I'm on the down escalator, which I'm sure is a metaphor for something. One of my quirks is more all my intellect or perceived one, I always get escalators and elevators mixed up when I say the word and like the day I kept calling Jamie Shanahan Jamie Shanashanan and couldn't stop no matter how much I concentrated such a mental blind spot has ceased to be cute. On the up escalator, two schoolboys sit on the ground and go up seated and unmoving, their hair a shaggy mess, their grins broad. I realise at some point that they seem a bit upset there's no one around to impress with their zaniness - the only female anywhere near us is a lady who would have made a great bad girl wrestler in the 80s, sturdy of thigh with a good effort in the clean and shopping bag jerk. Too young to contemplate any port in a storm, they begin shifting uneasily as they wonder where the little blonde girl from Zamels is that they all fancy. Disappointed at the lack of audience for their alleged hilarious as usual cheek - I mean, who sits on an escalator, those mad kooks - they begin grinning at me. I'm expected to acknowledge their superior comedy skills by way of a mutual grin, although I expect it will follow with some sort of mocking coda, and to be honest, there's no one else around, so if they believe they can embarrass me with mockery, only the lady wrestler would hear it and she's got her own problems, a bulging bag causing her tracksuit trousers to be less than Rocky like in their defiance of the laws of gravity. So I move on, sipping my water, listening to my IPOD and knowing what they don't, that no one is as cool as their showing off no matter who much it is backed up by a third lingering friend guffawing at the outrageousness. As they get to the top of the escalator and have to get up, Panda Eyed girl walks by - whatever her faults, she walks with an outrageous sense of cool, a disdainful hundred yard stare backed up with a strut that comes entirely from the hips. As she walks past, the boys are suddenly stricken with nervous hormonal lust that no amount of hair gel or puffed up surf jumpers can mask. They shuffle off awkwardly into the distance, and I feel like telling them it wouldn't matter. Panda Eyed Girl wouldn't notice. She's punching numbers into her phone, probably Twittering, her self absorbtion so absolute, she barely notices she nearly collides with an only slightly opened shutter, limboing under it, not a blonde hair nor newly plaited pigtail out of place...

My car, just before this exchange, had puttered through Kingston at less than warp speed. Once in my car, a guy in a blue ute with Revving Bastard on the back of his car pulled up next to me in Sandy Bay, revved his revving bastard engine to try and drag me, and then stalled as I drove off with solid efficiency. Today, I am a driving model of solid efficiency, negotiating road works and the arrogant lollipop lady I fight with every day, in her silly oversized coat and Kato like ability to jump out in front of me and hold me up whenever a student might, just might, be somewhere in the region. There's two kids at the bus stop - one is a small, slightly geeky ginger kid with cokebottle glasses and a sinister smile, the other a smaller blonde boy who looks a bit like Michael Christian, and who is always wearing some kind of hat. Whenever I drive past, with a brief glimpse into their self created sitting around at the bus stop world, they are always fighting. At first, it seemed playful, but today at the morning moment when I passed the smaller child was fully, forgive the lapse into Penguinese here, cutting sick with his punches to the ginger kids arm. Maybe he was pushed too far, the hat to the back jokes just mounted up. Mum would probably have got out and stopped them - she's like that, although even she's been dissuaded from that action by too many Mercury horror stories. I drive on. A long time ago, in a draughty scout hall, as the KLF pulsated and a DJ pondered whether flirtacious conversation with a 13 year old girl would get him fired, there was a fight broke out in the corner although since the music was pulsating at an alarming rate of wicked beats over phat choruses not many people saw it - two friends fighting over a girl and where once their fighting had been playful, nay, phat, this was different. The girl in question I had always found quite vulgar - interestingly, she had a quite a posh elongated name but short snappy wee ned vocals that didn't seem to fit, like some strange composite character rebelling against her hyphen. She didn't seem especially phased by the fight, and copped off with the DJ at the back of the stage by the time the teachers had suspended both the brawlers. Obviously the ginger kid is too young to be fighting over girls - unless there's some memo I missed girls are suddenly into cokebottle glasses. I round the corner just in time to nearly hit some ambling kid who is taking his time crossing the road. He's in full on slouching pose, too cool for school but I suspect from my judgemntally clouded windscreen - no wait, it's just dirt - that he will be one day, sadly, not be too cool to be flipping burgers at a popular chain restaurant with a litigious bent. That's the restaurant that has a litigious bent, not his burger flipping style. He's so lazy and apathetic as he holds up my usually frantic mid morning drive, I want to go round the corner and get the hat kid to beat him in the arm just to wake him up. Whatever you could say about the kid in the hat, but he's certainly got spirit...

Laziness has crept into my Saturday - not old enough to give up, not old enough to be tired without it being commented on, but not young enough to be truly hip apparently, but then again not old enough to need a truly new hip - but so has a hangover, something I didn't used to get. On David Boon Day all those years ago - I've got to get to that - I sat on a couch drinking entire cartons of beer with no more than a casual shrug and still retained my ability to suggest that Regurgitator would be a musical force for years to come, just like The Sundays. There's a lack of pulsating music in this pub tonight - no atmosphere, a detached restraunteur in the far corner talking about his business being in decline, a television with Rihanna and the sound off on in the background. I go to come up with some sort of witty Observatory/observing that it's shit in Hobart line, but it'd be wasted on my friends. Besides, I'm drunk, curse it all, and I'm probably babbling on my default topics of sport and music. I know I at least brought up music - if I bring up sport, such is my surety my team will beat Dads team at AFL on Friday night he has taken to calling me smug and it's made me feel I'm jinxing the Pies in the Sky - because I mention the reformation of an allegedly trendy band. A cool girl in short shorts with blonde hair and overly orange make up - I'd say Tangello as a shade but such was my lack of knowledge about fruit at Coles was so poor it's almost certainly not - hears our conversation and asks excitedly if it is true. When I affirm that it is true, she asks if I am a fan of said allegedly trendy band. Now, had I been younger, and been in a desirous position to be amorous with said girl and wake up to a face that made me think of an amber traffic light once it had faded in slightly, and lets face it, we've all been there, I would have said yes, great band, their Led Zeppelin tribute act is truly a marvel of modern invention, I have tickets...alas, I cannot lie, and she skulks off once I say that I am not. I'm accutely aware that I am now too old for such one night stands and lies about music or what I do for a living - no one buys I'm a gad about Scottish playboy anymore, I've lived here too long and probably everyone has seen me at one point or another out and about doing the Tassie two step and word has got around. Besides which, I'm old enough to believe that these nights are fundamentally depressing. In my own hypocritical way, I still go and get drunk and such like things, but less than I used to. On my e-mail, the reasons why no one can go out tonight are getting more and more desperate. Who moves house at 8 at night? Truthfully, we're just at the age where the noisy thump of techno has given way to the quiet strains of Channel 7s football coverage, and instead of sleeping in someone elses bed and trying to sneak out the window, we're sleeping in our own in the afternoon cos we need a nap - or at least, some of us are, my friend of similar age was more than happy to declare himself a fan of said band, which is patently untrue, and if he was confronted in the morning with a face that neither indicates stop or go, I'm happy to leave it between him and his god, which last time I checked wasn't the least singer of that trendy band, and I'm happy to have a long boring talk with my taxi driver about the declining nature of Friday night entertainment...

I have an ambition when I'm old - it's not a noble one - to find a local pub and essentially retire there, flirting with the barmaids, calling them darl, rolling out of bed in my slippers and going straight to the pub to have opinionated chats about sport and glare angrily at locals in my chair. My chair of course will arbitraliry change depending on who's sitting where and I will be truly annoying within the confines of my own narrow world, floating emphatic opinions with absolute certainty and then changing my mind when people agree. Mind you, there is a recession on, so there might be no pubs, we might all live like the Reagan era trolls Michael Stipe used to be obsessed about before he discovered Buddhism and Sesame Street. There's an old man who's taken my desires and acted them out for me as some sort of street theatre involving the returning of biscuits. Such is his unhappiness with some aspect of the exchanging of money for goods and services and a big chocolate cookie, he threatens to bring the alleged biscuit infraction up in parliament. The girl behind the counter looks weary, even older than him, as she grapples with page 82 of the customer service manual provided on induction day - what to do when you really want to say fuck off old man and take your bushy eyebrows with you. She smiles politely but her lips still somehow drip with acid, aware that the ravages of time and the eternal pull of the grave will take care of her grey haired foe. Eventually, she just gives him another cookie and he smiles directly at me with some undeserved triumph, I shuffle uneasily from foot to foot. I think for one moment he's going to demand an up top. There's really nothing to up top about. I know Tasmanian parliament doesn't much to discuss other than how not to give Hamish and Andy a key to the city or problems with chickens, but I can't see them sparing too much time to a biscuit crisis. The girl watches him go, never taking her eyes off him as he walks off to a shop called What's New (not the decor! Am I right folks? Am I...is this thing on?) to complain about something else. I know from her overly pursed lips that she's thinking she'll never be like that, doddering and old and completely pedantic as to worry and complain and harangue about a biscuit because she's young and cool and carefree and won't let things get her down - but of course she will be, and besides, the anxious look on her face when she can't find her tongs and the over exasperated concern on her visage when she forgets where the hedgehog slice is in the stall seems to indicate the process has already started. It happens to the best of us, I feel like saying, maybe putting an arm around her in consolation and pointing out that she's using the tongs to pick up an almond slice...it happened to me the day I began really finding myself hating people mis-using the word ironic...

So very much....

World: Interact

No one ever said Cash Converters was some kind of magical wonderland. In fact, and if you don't know it's basically an 18th century pawn shop with a corporate logo, there are days I feel profoundly depressed as I remember the humiliating encounter I had in there selling CDs on one of the more awful days in my life, looking at all the CDs and items on the shelves and hoping they are simply sold by people trying to get a few extra dollars for the weekend and not some darker tale involving a single mother trying to flee and selling up in the process. OK, so it's a dark way to look at a 6ix dollar copy of BMX Bandits - but my frames of references can be dark at moments like this. A smug young girl chomps into a burger on one of the many TV screens, a plastic image of perfection stuck on a flickering screen with lines across her face. The staff mill around like overprotective parents, at times never taking their eyes off you as you paw through old Vanessa Amorossi albums trying to find a gem. There was this kid in there today, a fairly bland kid because I couldn't get a handle on their personality, mostly because I came in right at the end of the conversation the kid was having with his Mother. His mother was a harried woman in track pants with a neatly trimmed blonde bob, and she was swatting away child problems as she casually flicked through a selection of chunky VHS cassettes in eighties style boxes. I have no right to know the full context of the conversation, stuck as I am in the middle of a Cohen - Miller-Heidke - Zetlitz IPOD triangle of shuffling interface and still weighing up my options, but the mother turns to the child and says, quite simply, you know what I've told you about dreaming. I suspect it wasn't keep doing it kid, but if, at 1pm in a Cash Converters with military security studying you, witless radio DJs with half baked patter piped in through the headsets, and the faint air of a million desperate stories cluttering up your surroundings, you can't manage at least one or two little dreams to keep yourself sane, I would suggest you might just go a little crazy. As I walk out, head down, a gust of wind nearly knocking over a frail and bewildered pensioner, I noticed that next to Cash Converters, two stores down on the same street, is a giant liquidator store, which hardly improves my mood. The kid slowly trails behind his bother when he leaves, staring brightly at cheesecake and Heath Ledger posters as he walks with a purpose, while his Mum gets further and further ahead of him, texting blindly at a million miles an hour, her bob weaving in time with her key punching, her own dreams seemingly long ago dashed. I hope she doesn't blame the child, but for some reason, I think she does. As for me, I never bought BMX Bandits...the liquidation place has reminded me times are tough, 6.95 not to be squandered on Kidman based whims...

Fat sweaty girl from Big W was back today, fat and sweaty as always, putting books on a shelf. I wonder about exhaustion based entirely on stacking books, but that's her way. I've got things on my mind anyway, not just work stress, although fully in context by a greater appreciation of the fickle nature of life, not just the strange melancholia of the sandwich white female at my bakery, who yesterday was like a gambolling lamb in her haste to tell me she'd kept me a sandwich, but today seems incredibly depressed as she struggles with either paperwork or a particularly difficult Sudoku puzzle. For what it's worth, the work stress melts, and I buy a cake to celebrate the very act of survival that my Dad usually thinks is my forte. When I buy some cake, I'm staring directly as a poster of a well known footballer, in the window of a shop I haven't seen before. One of the female girls at the cake store, blonde, promotions model, over officious with the coffeee pumps, thinks I'm staring at her, and she flashes me a smile as she pours the coffee, one of those smiles which, as denizens of Hobart nightclubs would know, is an invitation to speculate as to whether or not 3hree seconds more staring will invite you home or invite the police. As one of said denizens, I'm well aware of the correct response, which is to flash the knowing smile which means get over yourself sweetheart, blue eye shadow girl has you covered. It's such a wonderful piece of non verbal communication that happens between us, I wonder why people use words at all - oh right, it'd be much harder to get a brownie. As I walk away, my place in the queue is taken by a shuffling, befuddled and confused homeless man in a white cardigan using a walking stick to help himself get around. He begins a series of unrelated tangential conversational jumping points to the blonde girl, mostly about a film with Anthony Hopkins and the relative merits of popular culture. He entraps the blonde girl in a continuing web of Grandpa Simpson conversation, without a single one of his points likely to end in the ordering of snacks or coffee. This allows to me throw another one of my little non verbal smiles, the one that says sucked in, isn't retail just a blast. As I walk off, I walk past a girl wearing deely boppers, with an imploring smile and a pile of leaflets she seems far too keen to pass on. I decline, I've had enough of human interaction for one day. When I look over her shoulder, the blonde girl is still being polite as she possibly can, as the old man is up to 1963 in his one man monologue play...I sincerely hope I get that way when I'm older...I've got a robe and slippers already looked out. I think I'll start conversations entirely about The Divinyls...that'll stump the young folk...

My Dad right now is out on my deck. He's not in the hammock, but he's come to visit without really visiting. He takes a call on his mobile phone from one of his gossipy friends, a little mini cabal of power to the people teachers broken down by the man. I suspect to some it might be a little undignified a man of nearly 60ty sitting on a banana lounger having the same conversation for 3hree years about a job he never got, about a terrible interview experience that left him drained and questioned his very ability to hold some chalk. Do they still use chalk in schools? My Gran, one of my main memories of her was the venom she used to spit at the TV whenever I watched a childrens show called Charlie Chalk, her face contorted as she told the writers of the show to get a proper job like coal mining, as I balanced a white plastic tray with my dinner on it on my knee. Dad doesn't have many friends, because Mum won't be friends with his friends. One time in Burnie, we got in the car like homeless people who had just sold all their Shakira albums to Cash Converters just to hide from this weird science teacher Dad knew, all of which I remember about him was he had incredibly pulled up socks, always white, always pristine, always knee high. We stat their for hours, just talking about the world, until we presumed he had gone. I've turned up Shakira really loudly just to drown him out. It's not that I mind the conversation, I just think he loves the misery too much. He's using phrases like restorative justice and deputy principal just way too much, but like a man hypnotised on stage, he's always blinking bewildered wondering how his life turned out the way it did. I think he believes in the essential goodness of man, something I long ago disagreed with. Eventually he leaves, taking a pile of my books with him, a passing comment about the merits of Shakira or Andy Murray mentioned as he goes. I think he sometimes wishes we talked about more than sport, but neither of us make too much of an effort beyond that, and that's fine with us. I know at times he's tried or I've tried to get beyond what certain football teams should be doing 70ty minutes into a game, but it never works. At some unspecified point in the mid 90s, he decided my life would be infinitely better if I lifted bricks in some sort of body building fashion because my PE teacher told him it was a great idea. He said this would make girls like me, although he said it in far more cringingly uncool mid 90s sub Bruno Lucia tones. We had one incredibly hectoring session in the garage while he tried to make me into Lou Ferrigno, I said I wasn't a laborer from the 1920s, and the whole thing unfolded with a tedious sense of inevitability. Next morning, he came down to the breakfast table, sat down, and said did I see the Liverpool Coventry score...boundaries drawn, natural order back in place over jammy toast...maybe that's what restorative justice is...

My weekend is mapped out. Comedian tomorrow night with someone I like but who I hope doesn't talk too much, mean as that sounds. We've had entire conversations sometimes where my only words are yes and sure if I'm lucky. Lunch on Saturday with someone I hope talks for hours, so we know whats going on with his headspace. Maybe some flag waving on Monday. Some tennis player is on my TV, talking about what a miserable life she had, depression, some such gubbins. No one rings, no one talks to me, a television flickering in the corner with some early 90s videos. A glamorous granny is standing outside my window waiting for a lift, squeezed into some sort of Madonna like corset as she stands perfectly still in a howling gale. I'm not surprised at the effort she's made, she walks my window sometimes, and she truly suffers in her bid to stay young. Every interaction I have during the day at the moment makes me glad for the peace and quiet. I get one of my periodical spam e-mails from one of those companies that links you with your old school friends, and throw it straight in the virtual trash. I had an uneasy interaction with a particular comedian a few years ago, when I was dragged up on stage to do a bit of a turn. Got a laugh too. Afterwards, it became apparent that two people - having seen me on the stage with the comedian - that I went to school with wanted to talk to me, and they wanted a photo of not just me, but them with the comedian. Without seeing the joins, you would think we had just picked right up where we left off in Grade twelve, but there was a conversational sour point, something known only to us, I can't remember what, but it was enough to make me turn back and talk to the comedian about his other life in London, freezing them out until they left, a one night brief re-union that ended quickly. They never got their photo either. I try and learn something every day, take something out of every interaction, make a note, but I don't live up to that, some behaviours keep repeating. The glamorous granny is the last person I see for the day, as she bundles herself into a car pool, muttering loudly something about Karen, and how she's unreliable. It's the last interaction I see, tomorrow it begins again, the first day of the rest of my life, a blank canvas with people who will educate me, who will frustrate me, and in the end, vanish without a trace for the most part into blog anecdote and their own private space...

I suspect what I may take out of tomorrow is another sandwich, but we shall see...

Campbell Town - Spittle, Sleaze, Steam Rollers and Skill Testers

So today I'm standing outside this little bakery and cafe - it's one my Mum takes me to when she meets me for lunch, and it's pleasant enough, waitresses are pretty down to earth, it's a bit disturbing how vast (remember that band? Vast? Whatever happened to them? And The Tea Party?) the place is, you can easily get lost in there, dying in a 50s decored theme booth waiting for some hot soup and crusty bread. It takes ages to serve just because no one can find you. And what I'm doing while I'm standing there isn't trying to pick something from the specials board, but I'm trying to confirm with myself that I have Real American by Hulk Hogan on my IPOD - and sure enough, I do, which is great, because it makes me feel like ordering the crusty bread with a hearty "brother!" on the end of the order....or, perhaps not. Obviously, I'm excited today because Alive and Kicking is on SBS tonight, all about footy fundraising in Woodsdale with promised cross dressing...and you can all surely give up the bosomy Myf, Alan and Adam Hills for one night? Can't you? Look, Adam Hills for three straight stand up shows promised, absolutely swore blind that he was going to bring the Bosom and Alan down to Tassie for a special Spicks and Specks show, and what did we get for this years comedy festival? Tom bloody Gleeson...sigh, yes Adam Hills is a lovely man, I'd love to hate him but I had like a 1/2 hour chat with about London, and yes, he dragged me up on stage one night to do a bit, and was gracious enough to repeat for the audience the little joke I to...wait, why am I sticking up for him! Stuff him, watch Woodsdale! Anyway, so I'm standing there humming away, and I look into the cafe, and I see this old bloke tucking into a chicken sandwich, just completely loving the delicate interplay of the freshly cooked chicken with the store bought white toast loaf...and then I notice, he's got earmuffs on...not just any old earmuffs, but those ones you wear when you are drilling, or bringing in a plane to land with the big ping pong bat or are in the booth in one of those game shows where you aren't allowed to hear the other persons answers. Big giant red earmuffs, stuck to his head, and boy did he look content not having to listen to kids whinging and thinking about his chicken. And I thought, you little Aussie champion, you just want to wear earmuffs, big giant ones, and nothing was going to stop you. It might have been medical, but I like to think he's just got the kind of rebellious elderly spirit I'm going to have when I'm older, and wander around Penguin in my robe and slippers, telling people about the mint Kit Kat and the time Crazytown topped the charts...in fairness, the old bloke in the earmuffs is probably blogging tonight about some annoying 30 year old staring at him and singing Hulk Hogan songs that are on one of those fancy IPOD things he was hearing about...

Whenever I think of earmuffs, wait, let me start that again...when I think of chicken sandwiches and confused elderly gentlemen, I instantly think of Campbell Town. Now, to the good people of Campbell Town who may wish to tell me about the three arch bridge or St Lukes church, I'm sure they are incredibly lovely, but there's no getting away from the fact that Campbell is the designated rest stop for drivers going between Hobart and Burnie (or vice versa - whatever happened to the vice versa? That was the best chocolate ever!) and not a lot else. And that of course means you unfurl grandpa from the car (well you do if you have a grandpa, which I didn't, on account one died and one was with me up to the age of 4 then seemed quite content to set me into the world on my own, with barely any advice of how to whittle wood or whatever the hell grandpas advise you on), wake up the kids, hell, sometimes wake up the driver, and get out and go to a sort of truck stop place and go and eat some food you normally would reject baked by people you'd normally hide your wallet from. Thems country folk boy. My main memory of the Campbell Town stop, apart from the food, chicken sandwiches and confused elderly gentlemen, is that it was the last place I ever saw really un PC comedy magazines. Now, there's obviously the cartoon in the average issue of People Magazine from is pretty full on by modern standards with the buxom blonde, the sleazy mechanic and the double entendre...well, these magazines had the single entendre. I'd say the average punchline involved a woman either being punched in the face, told where to go, or punched in the face and told where to go. Usually the bedroom or the kitchen, certainly not a university where I would like to see more women (oh yes, I read Jill Singer). And there was loads of these things lying around - the poor old community newsletter was shoved in the toilet, but kids were learning all kinds of interesting places there wife should be sent. I actually heard this old guy chuckling at one of these masterworks and saying the immortal "todays so called modern comedians could learn a thing or two!" from this, and he said to this girl, and he was massively sleazing onto her, and sort of pointing at one of the most offensive cartoons (Hagar the Horrible...awful cartoon - Lucky Eddie just never did it for me). She was trying really hard to be pleasant, but he was just reading, and reading...and he never noticed that the girls boyfriend, who by a lovely co-incidence was right behind her working the glad wrap and the deep fry with dexterity, was spitting right in the middle of his burger...and that's the only time I've ever seen that happen, I've just always presumed it did happen and it's why no matter who jumps the queue or how bad the lack of a toast chef is, I never blame the establishment, and his eyes met mine, and I shrugged and gave him a big thumbs up. He spat in it again, just as the old man was launching into a reference about the old lady from Nantucket...with the last line included...

Luckily for the good people at Campbell Town, it's not all sleaze and spittle. There's some fantastic quality grub to be eaten...although I've now obviously put myself off the place. I had the third best ever cheeseburger I've ever had in Tasmania in Campbell Town - the best was obviously at the Parthenon in town (shockingly replaced by a Japanese restaurant where you could get sushi on a train...honestly, do monkeys do the town planning in Hobart), and the 2nd best was at a place called Skooby Doos Hamburger Restaurant which famously had an advert in the football record that didn't tell you a phone number or address, but promised friendly service all night long (if you could find the place somewhere in the world and access the place via a secret knock...actually, where the hell was it? The burger I had at Campbell Town though (and 3rd is no disgrace behind that duo of burger magic) came when I was coming back from Hobart to Burnie with a friend of mine - we had had an argument (boy I'm on argument tip tonight, I'm really a nice person, honest, you should come round, we can discuss the inaccuracies in the Blur biography) about something, which I don't think was very serious, but it was still an argument. I think we had had an argument about Roves real name, or maybe it was because he'd tried to punch me...or something happened anyway, and we weren't talking, which is great fun in Oatlands when you don't have a radio to listen to in the car and have to count speed cameras to pass the time. The reason the hamburger was so good wasn't because of it's quality, it's because we ate next to a man with herbal tea-bags in his pocket. Maybe you had to be there, but the sight of a man roughly the dimensions of Dave McCormack (incidentally, if the girl in the orange top in Custards Girls Like That video ever reads this, I love you) with glasses like coke bottles and big clompy black shoes with a carefully colour coded set of herbal tea bags in his top pocket who's producing them proudly for wife and shouting "Who wants Mint Julip" without any trace of irony can't make you suddenly laugh out loud (no, I won't abbreviate that txt spk style) defrost an icy friendship, bring laughter to the community and make a burger taste like good times and make a brown eyed sky turn blue, then what can? Winning a small plastic duck on the skill tester? OK, that would have been better, but those things are rigged...

I do like Campbell Town for other reasons - although I think the main big truck stop greasy spoon is closed now? Someone might confirm that for me, but that's just really sad and depressing if it is - apart from the grease, and the curiousities. I really liked the way world moved in Campbell Town, the way you saw families, some proud and some dysfunctional, just making those long statewide journies, sitting at tables eating, and how you'd always wonder where they were going, what they were doing, what their lives were like at that particular point. One family I saw in about 1992, I've always wondered about. Our own reasons for going to Hobart that day were entirely because I had the afore mentioned sodie scone face and my parents needed to take me to something, and what better way to repair fractured dislocated conversations with a homesick kid than with a four and half hour car ride where I only had 58 minutes of Game Gear battery life? This other family that came into the restaurant was all dressed in suits, so I was immediately thinking they were coming back from a funeral, or some sort of sad occasion, or were just big fans of the Blues Brothers. They lined up safely in single file order at the counter, to get chips or something, and the eldest kid, he's kind of Hispanic looking while the rest of them are whiter than me (I'm so white I thought Coolio was a type of fan...that slayed in 1995). So I'm sort of interested now because they aren't talking to each other the kids, and Dad is being a real pain, just sort of rolling his eyes and tapping his foot on the ground, trying to get served quicker, and there's just...I don't know, just this real tension around them, an energy that isn't pleasant, and then the Dads pacing, and then the Dad is getting more and more annoyed, and he's about to take his tie off and throw it on the ground because they aren't cooking his chips quickly enough. So he turns to the oldest kid and says "That's the trouble with society today, no quality control! NO FUCKING QUALITY CONTROL! WE CAN'T EVEN GET FUCKING CHIPS QUICKLY!" and he's literally about to jump the counter, and the wait for chips has only been about, oh, a minute or so. And everyones just staring at them, and I'm just fixated on this can of Halls Lemonade, just scared to look. And the little hispanic kid, he's just taken the Dad by the hand, and gone, "don't worry about the chips, let me get them" and the Dad has gone outside and he's just lost his mind, he's just crying on one of the park benches, just smoking and shaking, and we all kind of clued in to the fact that obviously they'd lost someone close to them. and the girl behind the counter who's come back with the chips is just totally unsure what to say. And the little hispanic kid, he's just smiling sweetly, and he just sort of goes "He's just a bit stressed...have a Steam Roller" and given the girl a Steam Roller to make up for the trouble and quietly paid for the chips and just...I don't know what was going on, what they were going through or what the situation was, but I always just that little kids dignity under pressure, and how sweet and calm and wonderful he was on that day, and I hope he made it, and the Dad made it, and everything passed by. Of course, I was so self centred, I was bitching about the fact there was no Sarsparilla Halls in the vending machine...

Here's to you kid, if I ever win one of those damn plastic ducks on the vending machine (I'm still punching) it's dedicated to you...