It's 2wo PM in Eastlands, and a lady so big it must be painful just to expose her cankles to the world is wobbling awkwardly up the path, her gigantic floral tent blowing in the wind as she walks with as much dignity as her daily grind will allow her. I'm fiddling with a copy of a coffee magazine, for I'm sitting in the middle of Gloria Jeans despite my dis-interest in franchised coffee these days, while a smug smiling sports star beams out from the cover, radiant, sipping coffee like all his tomorrows are smooth and luminous. The large lady meanwhile abandons her steps after a moment because the work of walking is too exhausting, and collapses against the window, making it shake and vibrate. The thrust of the cover story is that in his coffee shop that he owns, he will personally stand in the foyer, or the dining area, and just talk about sport. As I flick through I realise that all he wants to do of course is talk about himself in specific circumstances, answering the questions about his glory days, with the bad selectively edited, and the coffee overpriced. He seems happy enough though, while I find conversation of that kind, personal questioning and so on, as exhausting as simply walking can be for some people. My head is full of trivia, such as whatever happened to Carlos or The Tick Tock biscuit, but I'm not much chop at answering questions on my life direction. The large lady eventually regains her poise and in a fleshy flash she's off reasonably quickly while a soft soothing family approved track floats across the PA system, soothing the chaos behind me as a shop girl hops from foot to foot having burned her hand on some errant coffee. The sports star meanwhile finds all of this mirthful, his countenance unchanging as he thrust his mug, proverbial and literal, into my eyeline, the smile fixed and wan. Eventually, I had to thrust his espoused charms aside and stop staring at a girl far too young for me who might have been staring back, and no she didn't have cankles even though the word amused me and delivered in a funny accent would probably have the power to amuse and enchant a maiden if delivered in the prop...no, she's here, she's got coffee, and I must focus my energies on the sheer dread that is a conversation with no escape...
If only I'd played sport...
How I got here - by which I mean how I got out of bed at all this morning - is a rather strange mixture of cough medicine, DVDs of The Wire scattered around the living room while I tried to rush around and resist the temptation to watch 1ne more episode or read about 1ne more disease that rendered a man incapable of telling his wife from a hat...and a kerfuffle with a toaster that even in the most tedious of personal recaps with the best intended cute accent wouldn't get past the first sip of a girls Midori and Lemonade before she got bored and eyed off the drummer. I'm at the age where I can easily list 200ed things I loathe before I get to 6ix I like. I spent a fair portion of my weekend wondering how I could bulldoze Irish Murphys and it's loathsome bouncers, and then realised between that and waiting for football to pass I'd wasted an entire 2wo days, so I'd like to be more positive and do more things, but I don't have the time because I've kerfuffled with the toaster and I'm late for work. Barry Tosser, my neighbour, and his small, appropriately pleased with itself dog sit at the end of my driveway as if desirous of some morning entertainment, desirous of me ploughing into the gates of my driveway. I zoom past them with nary a glance, although I'm sure the dog gives me one final evil stare on the way past. At the petrol station, the lady behind the counter says hello with such vigour and such a level of intensity it's positively jarring. She emerges from behind a wall of overpriced chocolate, rising serpent like from a pile of KitKats with fangs bared. Her own intensity takes her aback, and she takes a step back as if she hasn't recognised her own voice. I don't know what it is about that petrol station - everyone behind the curtain seems prey to eccentricity, to strange personal foibles. I think it might be the petrol fumes...or being stuck all day listening to a tinny radio playing Leighton Meester at a low volume. Either way, I never stick around long enough to get to the bottom of it...there's more important kerfuffles to deal with throughout the day...
I had had an anxiously strange day wandering around before I had to make conversation, killing time in the cold grey afternoon, avoiding hooded top wearing wearing bogans clutching their tax cheques and hanging around outside Boost Juice trying to see if their names had been selected as Boost Juices lucky name of the day. It just seems to me as though everyone around today is trying to win something. Be it a free Boost Juice served in a cup by a grumpy promotions model, a free Dave Hughes DVD with the entrance from in the top pocket of a Dave Hughes cardboard standalone being ripped out in a frenzy by a bogan in a baseball cap with a frenzied grin of excitement, or the lady nervously gripping the skill tester, knuckles turning white as she purposely trains all her energy on trying to win a Cherry Ripe. There's an old man leaning with his elbow on the Dave Hughes cardboard standalone. He's buttoned his shirt up to the neck, he's combed the cornflakes out of his thick bushy beard and he's confidently speaking about a book he's reading. At the top of his voice, he begins to narrate a story about summer days and how good it is to sit on his porch and read a book and how the particular author has lost him with his latest work. Dave Hughes doesn't flicker an eyebrow ironically or otherwise, and it takes me a good 30ty seconds to realise the man with the beard actually isn't talking to anyone at all, just speaking out loud to passers by like a lonely and distracted town crier. Over at the skill tester, the woman thumps her hand angrily against the machine, and lets out a shriek of annoyance that even breaks the bewildered face of the Boost Juice head model, but not the flow of the book reviewer, who continues his epic rant as if nothing has happened, his shirt is freshly pressed to accomodate a major speech to a university, and Dave Hughes is hanging on his every word, kindly not even interrupting to plug his DVD even 1nce...
My boss has decided that today will be the day she takes us out for coffee and chat. I think she read it in a book or something, 1ne of those management books. The awkwardness is palpable, since I used most of my pop culture material up during my performance review, just to get out of there, to sprint through the rain and get away from the 1ne on 1ne bonding mandated and diarised by the management book. I've been dreading it all day, trying to get out of it, but now, I have to be nice, pass some time in the company of someone who's smile is as painted on as her lipstick. There's a tiny child next to me who's smile is sincere, clinging to the jeans of her jaded, puffy eyed mother, a woman old before her time with a macchiatio meandering lazily in her shaking grip, threatening to smash in a million pieces. The child has in her hands a drawing, but the mother barely stirs as she relates to her friend a tale of woe about her partner, Dean, a criminally cut adrift loser without much hope who seems incapable of replicating love or affection in anyway. As best as I can tell, there's not much anyone can do for Dean, and things are desperately bleak. I get a bit lost in the tale, especially since the poor child has failed to be depressed by any of the angst spilling over the edges of the conversation, and is defiantly and proudly grinning at the drawing of the pig/cow/dog/spaceman that's she's frantically waving and trying to get her Mum to smile at or even acknowledge. My boss, from the depths of her management book, tries to start a corporate approved amiable conversation when my gaze has been away from her painfully fixed smile for too long, but my mind is already home, where I can get away from poignantly aching family disputes, badly constructed conversations, and fudge brownies with just a hint of cigarette ash lurking deep within in the mix...
A CD and a cup of tea later, and the day is already long, long gone...
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Kingston, 6pm eternal (the post that got delayed because of 3 weeks of flu)
It's 6ix Pm in Kingston and an idle and fidgety and restless member of the human race needs petrol. It's cold and dark and old men conforming to the old man uniform of the region are gathered around the garage forecourt discussing manly things about cars and manifolds and such like things, leaning on their cars like old men should. Things I don't think I'll ever be interested in, an overactive imagination and sense of impending doom usually keeping my attention span fully occupied. My car is now officially roaring to such an extent that NASA give me a countdown everytime I back out of the driveway. My attempt to make rum balls was a balls up, and the spectre of 2 and 1/2 Men being on every channel all the time continues my deepest non football related anxieties. There's a pile of books on my floor that I'll never read even though front covers in the book store continue to inspire me to purchase, and in the midst of my quiet contemplation of miniscule worries adding up to a molehill, the girl from the service station engages in me a conversation through her secure glass window of the night-time counter. I don't even have the time to wonder exactly happened to the manic depressive black jumpered petrol station attendtant who used to stare wistfully out of the window before she's pointing an aggressive jabbing finger at the front page of the Mercury. Her freckles and old before her time face are illuminated by an unnecessary bright yellow vest, the kind worn by distracted gum chewers on the tarmac of Hobart Airport. The jist of her conversation as far as I can tell seems to involve someone in the paper who held up a garage being let back into the community and not sent to jail. I'm not sure if the implication of her conversation is that I'm going to rob her - I'm not the type really, and judging by her arms, she'd beat me senseless - or she's projecting a genuine anxiety onto the customers out of fear and nervousness about being locked in her garage with only a KitKat and a yellow vest for company. She never smiles during her right wing style heckling about crime and punishment, building to a crescendo which suggests that boiling people in oil for double parking might be a suggested platform for her yellow vest campaign for mayor, I have to make 1ne of those gestures people make when they really aren't sure how to stop a crazy rant, a dismissive gesture of my hand ending the conversation, but when I step back to my car, she's still talking, just to the next man in line. She hasn't missed a beat. I don't even know if she knows I've gone...I don't even know if I paid....
There's an old woman standing next to her trolley when I park my car. She's got 1ne of those old women dresses on, the classic gingham look, or so I think, I just presume everything is gingham, hair immaculately combed and then recombed like an OCD patient would do, obsessively teased to the point of strain. She stands around the car park most nights to be honest, or at least a version of her is, a bewildered older woman with a bag of oranges or some singular purchase clutching in wrinkled gnarly hands, her body stooped over, the purchase on the verge of falling from her weakening grasp. This particular old woman is walking with a pronounced limp, although like my Mother with her rapidly decaying ankle the prospect of walking with a cane is as horrid as a nursing home and Friday night bingo, and is clutching a bag of frozen peas and has nothing in her trolley whatsover. It's too dark to see if she's already unloaded her groceries into her tiny car, but she has a craggy face that dares passers by to challenge any aspect of her life. If she wants to eat nothing but tiny green vegetables and loiter around near a Datsun of many colours, she'll do it, for she is old, and all knowing. What's strange about this old woman is that she has her finger tied to the trolley with string and is pushing it back and forth like she's nursing a child, or playing with a yo-yo with really terrible wheels. I don't know if she's crazy, or just knows something the rest of us don't about the importance of keeping your shopping trolley close but your enemies closer...
The teller who scans my miniscule and obviously single man pile of groceries is disressingly young. He makes me and a lady straight from a furniture catalogue in the 70tys wait while he stands awkwardly on 1ne foot, trying to put his money in the drawer and failing miserably. His little green shirt is perfectly ironed by his Mum, who has sent him out looking nice but can't do anything to iron onto him a confident personality. The lady from the catalogue has a tiny dog on a leash that stares awkwardly and vacantly out towards the bakery and some of the attractively locked away goods, tongue and wail wagging as 1ne, as if it could just get off the leash and strike out on it's own it would be happy, and I could compose some sort of analogy to some of the people around here if I could take my eyes of the spellbinding and captivating lives of celebrities glimmering from the magazine rack. The pale boy behind the counter then unexpectedly swears, loudly and in a deep voice that belies his youthful exterior. He throws his money filled cylinder down, and gets yelled at by a black jumpered supervisor who swishes through the air like a lecturing superhero, wagging a finger in his direction, the gum in her mouth perpetually on the edge of her lipstick abyss like mouth. The lady from the catalogue puts on a pair of Anna Wintour style glasses and turns towards the exit, a hostage to both Wintour and Winter, tapping a heel on the ground like Vogue isn't going to get printed on time, the dog continues it's 1ne canine want for a tasty snack with icing, and I'm left idly wondering how much of my brain is taken up knowing things like the lineage of What's Up Doc hosts...and there's plenty of time for us all to ponder our perpetual wants and flaws, because the telling off goes on so long the poor manchild doesn't even care anymore, and even he stares outward, maybe to the single mother with the ringlets carefully packing cans of peaches delicately and gently upon the shelf...
My meagre handful of groceries and slobberingly melting ice creams are taken back to the car in the drizzle. In spite of everything, I'm in a good mood I think. Not just because flu medication does that for me, but because I'm almost home, where I can pull the covers over my head and pretend that my flem filled voice is somehow sexy and Barry White esque. There's a newsagency that's been abandoned and is now coated and tarred with fliers and notices like a uni message board. There's 2wo bogans picking over the fliers as if it's part of their dating ritual. The woman has a white tracksuit that suits her like a 2nd skin, and the man is drawn hypnotically to slightly dodgy out of focus black and white photos of utes where the flaws are deliberately blocked by a glamourous housewife leaning on the front bumper. While I probably need to take a flier so I can join a course on indentifying car parts, it'd probably help. The woman in the white tracksuit is taken with 1ne of the fliers, a gaudy pink and green flier in a font that screams good taste. I have to stop and shine my bright orange shoe and set aside my meagre foragings and environmentally friendly plastic bag on a bench and hiss in the direction of any naughty kids gathering around asking if I wanted to pull their fingers. The bogan takes the psychedelic flier in her callused hands, and exclaims to no one in particular that she wants to learn Korean. Her boyfriend doesn't stir from the most out of focus ute of them all, and she initially seems a bit defeated by his lack of enthusiasm, but she puts the flier in her top pocket and smiles the smile of the truly insanely relentlessly determined, before resuming her browse through the fliers, and for all I know, she might still be there now, starting a path to fulfilment that would be inspiring to a lazy battler like me, but if Powerade hasn't been inspiring to this day, I guess my knowledge of Korean will be restricted to soccer, and it's time to wander off home...
And by 7even pm, the world has well and truly moved on...and the day has what I most like in a day...an ending...
There's an old woman standing next to her trolley when I park my car. She's got 1ne of those old women dresses on, the classic gingham look, or so I think, I just presume everything is gingham, hair immaculately combed and then recombed like an OCD patient would do, obsessively teased to the point of strain. She stands around the car park most nights to be honest, or at least a version of her is, a bewildered older woman with a bag of oranges or some singular purchase clutching in wrinkled gnarly hands, her body stooped over, the purchase on the verge of falling from her weakening grasp. This particular old woman is walking with a pronounced limp, although like my Mother with her rapidly decaying ankle the prospect of walking with a cane is as horrid as a nursing home and Friday night bingo, and is clutching a bag of frozen peas and has nothing in her trolley whatsover. It's too dark to see if she's already unloaded her groceries into her tiny car, but she has a craggy face that dares passers by to challenge any aspect of her life. If she wants to eat nothing but tiny green vegetables and loiter around near a Datsun of many colours, she'll do it, for she is old, and all knowing. What's strange about this old woman is that she has her finger tied to the trolley with string and is pushing it back and forth like she's nursing a child, or playing with a yo-yo with really terrible wheels. I don't know if she's crazy, or just knows something the rest of us don't about the importance of keeping your shopping trolley close but your enemies closer...
The teller who scans my miniscule and obviously single man pile of groceries is disressingly young. He makes me and a lady straight from a furniture catalogue in the 70tys wait while he stands awkwardly on 1ne foot, trying to put his money in the drawer and failing miserably. His little green shirt is perfectly ironed by his Mum, who has sent him out looking nice but can't do anything to iron onto him a confident personality. The lady from the catalogue has a tiny dog on a leash that stares awkwardly and vacantly out towards the bakery and some of the attractively locked away goods, tongue and wail wagging as 1ne, as if it could just get off the leash and strike out on it's own it would be happy, and I could compose some sort of analogy to some of the people around here if I could take my eyes of the spellbinding and captivating lives of celebrities glimmering from the magazine rack. The pale boy behind the counter then unexpectedly swears, loudly and in a deep voice that belies his youthful exterior. He throws his money filled cylinder down, and gets yelled at by a black jumpered supervisor who swishes through the air like a lecturing superhero, wagging a finger in his direction, the gum in her mouth perpetually on the edge of her lipstick abyss like mouth. The lady from the catalogue puts on a pair of Anna Wintour style glasses and turns towards the exit, a hostage to both Wintour and Winter, tapping a heel on the ground like Vogue isn't going to get printed on time, the dog continues it's 1ne canine want for a tasty snack with icing, and I'm left idly wondering how much of my brain is taken up knowing things like the lineage of What's Up Doc hosts...and there's plenty of time for us all to ponder our perpetual wants and flaws, because the telling off goes on so long the poor manchild doesn't even care anymore, and even he stares outward, maybe to the single mother with the ringlets carefully packing cans of peaches delicately and gently upon the shelf...
My meagre handful of groceries and slobberingly melting ice creams are taken back to the car in the drizzle. In spite of everything, I'm in a good mood I think. Not just because flu medication does that for me, but because I'm almost home, where I can pull the covers over my head and pretend that my flem filled voice is somehow sexy and Barry White esque. There's a newsagency that's been abandoned and is now coated and tarred with fliers and notices like a uni message board. There's 2wo bogans picking over the fliers as if it's part of their dating ritual. The woman has a white tracksuit that suits her like a 2nd skin, and the man is drawn hypnotically to slightly dodgy out of focus black and white photos of utes where the flaws are deliberately blocked by a glamourous housewife leaning on the front bumper. While I probably need to take a flier so I can join a course on indentifying car parts, it'd probably help. The woman in the white tracksuit is taken with 1ne of the fliers, a gaudy pink and green flier in a font that screams good taste. I have to stop and shine my bright orange shoe and set aside my meagre foragings and environmentally friendly plastic bag on a bench and hiss in the direction of any naughty kids gathering around asking if I wanted to pull their fingers. The bogan takes the psychedelic flier in her callused hands, and exclaims to no one in particular that she wants to learn Korean. Her boyfriend doesn't stir from the most out of focus ute of them all, and she initially seems a bit defeated by his lack of enthusiasm, but she puts the flier in her top pocket and smiles the smile of the truly insanely relentlessly determined, before resuming her browse through the fliers, and for all I know, she might still be there now, starting a path to fulfilment that would be inspiring to a lazy battler like me, but if Powerade hasn't been inspiring to this day, I guess my knowledge of Korean will be restricted to soccer, and it's time to wander off home...
And by 7even pm, the world has well and truly moved on...and the day has what I most like in a day...an ending...
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
3hree short stories about rainy days
I was walking around today with no real purpose. It was far to gloomy to cast a shadow on the pavement, and my me time in the library was interrupted by a glaring corner bound laptop wielding Santa Claus alike in a tracksuit. He had his own laptop plugged into some kind of illegal port and spoke in short breathy defensive grunts, as if anyone was going to penetrate his nylon forcefield and steal his ideas. He discombobulated me so much just with 1ne raised fuzzy eyebrow, I had to leave, and he looked pleased to have seen off a challenger to his corner bound entitlements. The alternative was to wander around in the rain like an orphan in some sort of depressing musical with my hands in my pockets and my despair somehow metaphorical and meaningless to the wider world. I walked briskly instead to the book store - the new 1ne with the little seats and the pleasant Irish lady who comes up with a pun on the title of every book you buy - and as I walked to get away from the milling crowds, a girl behind me began to look up at the sky and let out a curse that the Gods themselves would wince upon hearing. Her curse was caused by the rain, and the fact that it meant that her netball game on Sunday would be cancelled. She seemed incredibly agitated by this, while her John Stamos a like boyfriend walked with a stoop and an attitude which suggested he didn't care either way as long as his hair was in place. I lost them somewhere around KFC at which point John Stamos had put his hands into his leather jacket and had the temerity to begin a sentence that evolved into his problems being spelled out. She cut him off of course, her lack of co-ordinated ball sports more important than what sounded like a genuine emotional problem on his part, waving her hand dismissively in the hasty search for fried chicken, the only proper way to ignore whatever cracks there are in your relationship...
Creek Road, as I've mentioned before, was where my girlfriend used to play netball, a collection courts in Moonah filled with girls running around bumping into each other and learning the power of bullying as far as I could tell. She was really competitive my girlfriend, and would be the 1st girl there, despite the alleged social nature of the competition she was in, to set up and practice and I would wander down and yell encourgaging things like good hustle and things that really showed I was a good attentive boyfriend. I knew nothing about netball apart from yelling the phrase contact centre a lot. When netball was cancelled - and to be honest it was cancelled as many times because their goal keeper was drunk or stuck in some boys house as it was because of rain - we would have to negotiate a far greater peril, grocery shopping, so I would certainly hope the game was on. Anything but a 1ne hour tour of the melon stand. Especially since there only 1ne melon to look at most weekends. Sometimes they would start the game anyway in cyclonic conditions which would just mean I always that ended being 1ne of 3hree people in the stand, me, the wing attacks girlfriend with the big lips, and this pervy guy who always thought he was a chance to score with 1ne of the girls and claimed to have been an ex boyfriend of Kathryn Harby. And always, every time it rained, he would say just 1ne thing over and over again like a vinyl record tattered and torn by his own ennui...
"How wet does it want to be?" - it was undefined. Perhaps it was just a pervy come on line to the lesbian. Since I never had a definitive answer to the question, an ice age would occur in between him saying his catchphrase, realising I was ignoring him, and him turning with the self assured pose of the totally deluded and yelling something that could only be described as a single entendre in the direction of the flooded netball court...
On reflection, I just liked it when they played, it was sunny, she won, and I got to use the ATARI and had a sandwich made for me...I think that happened, oh, maybe 2wice...
Although being an 80tys child, Noah had to float on top of the football oval before any sporting activities would be even considered for postponment, rain did deny us on more than 1 occasion the chance to partake our hippy school idealistic afternoon stare at the clouds. This was always upsetting to me, as it was not only an outlet to get out of the classroom box, it also meant I didn't have to play board games. I wasn't opposed to board games, but the mixture of claustrophobia, condensation and the likelihood Georgina would stick 1ne of the dice up her nose didn't exactly look like an enticing prospect. Those afternoons were aimless for a thinker like me, and they were all the same, the only thing that was different was who fought with who once Smithton syndrome - like Stockholm Syndrome with less teeth - kicked in. It came pass 1ne rainy day in the mid 8tys I was discussing the career of some cricketer in my psuedo intellectual way, a shock of blonde hair as obscure as some of the terminology I used, when Georgina, a sort of gurning toothless child with shaggy blonde hair who inevitably grew up to be the best looking girl in school, handed me a note with a gurn and a grunt and a gammy limp away. In purple crayon was written "Guess who likes you?" - with likes spelt with an x...
Georgina? I mean, she had a nice personality...
It was actually from Sarah, but of course Georgina had failed to mention that. So instead of my alloted cloud staring time I had to sit in a small room while Georgina gurned in my direction which I was worried was some kind of attempt at alluring that failed miserably when Big M came out of her nose. There was nothing else to do, I had to be a man, I had to...well, run out into the rain to be honest, to get away from her. As I huddled under the big ramp, my emotional maturity not strong on account of my lack of life experience, I looked across at the monkey bars and Pippa was standing there, in the rain, just staring out at the oval getting soaked. She looked at me, I looked at her, we both realised we were a pair of idiots standing out in the rain, and we walked back into the classroom silently together, without a single exchange of glance or any of her more prophetic statements, and believe me, if the shimmering goddess of the monkey bars was silent, I didn't want to know what was up...
Time passed, lots of rain fell on Penguin, and I got older. My Dad used to coach me in soccer. School soccer was a horrific experience for me, because part of my I'm really cool because you haven't found out I'm a dork yet experience involved a strange mythology that I didn't create that I had been coached by Pele, Hotshot style, and was some kind of god, rather than an awkward geeky teenager with gangle disease. I'm afraid once word of my gangle got around, I became another bog standard bewildered kid counting down the seconds until he could go home. So the cancellation of school sports due to bad weather was often something of a godsend, a chance to go back to bed or lie around the house stretched out on my horrible bedroom carpet staring at the ceiling wondering when exactly I could get back to Scotland for a holiday. I spent most of 1994 alternating between homesickness and nausea and never being sure which was which. My PE teacher was something of a local coaching legend, 1ne of the old fire and brimstone coaches with silver hair and short grumpy sentences. He had suggested to my Dad, being something of a weatherman when his knee injury from the 67 Grand Final played up, that my gangle be cured through a fitness program he had devised. Sure enough, when rain got the soccer postponed, that I spend my time lifting bricks in the garage. The perfect cure for gangle...
It didn't go well...
It rained all day of course, and my Dad and I ended up sitting in the garage trying to work through the fractured elements of our relationship. He was in the shock cycle because I had told him where to stick his bricks, which oddly enough wasn't in a neatly arranged and perfectly cemented wall structure, and I just wanted to go back to bed. Being male, neither of us spoke for hours, until eventually by magic, the rain stopped, a beautiful rainbow spread out over Burnie and....we argued for another 3hree hours of course. It had nothing to do with bricks, it was just the way of the world. It could rain, it could be beautiful, we could both like Clannad, and I would still be resentful that I was ripped away from my beloved Scotland and all it's cable television goodness to sit and be told by an old limping badly jumpered PE teacher that I was gangly and awkward. If I could have explained it, sat and talked, who knows, but instead, I waited until the rain evaporated to the point I could leave the garage, took my rage out on 2wo innocent bricks, and ran away for 2wo days to go and wander around Burnie, wondering where it had all gone wrong, as melancholy as the guy outside Penguin post office who used to just yell "I hurt!" to random passers by. Not exactly like him, I mean, I didn't get arrested for flashing, but I felt a kinship to him I didn't feel to my own father...
And it's still raining outside....but I'm feeling better now at least...I think it's the house...or the IPOD...or the lime spider...something like that...
Creek Road, as I've mentioned before, was where my girlfriend used to play netball, a collection courts in Moonah filled with girls running around bumping into each other and learning the power of bullying as far as I could tell. She was really competitive my girlfriend, and would be the 1st girl there, despite the alleged social nature of the competition she was in, to set up and practice and I would wander down and yell encourgaging things like good hustle and things that really showed I was a good attentive boyfriend. I knew nothing about netball apart from yelling the phrase contact centre a lot. When netball was cancelled - and to be honest it was cancelled as many times because their goal keeper was drunk or stuck in some boys house as it was because of rain - we would have to negotiate a far greater peril, grocery shopping, so I would certainly hope the game was on. Anything but a 1ne hour tour of the melon stand. Especially since there only 1ne melon to look at most weekends. Sometimes they would start the game anyway in cyclonic conditions which would just mean I always that ended being 1ne of 3hree people in the stand, me, the wing attacks girlfriend with the big lips, and this pervy guy who always thought he was a chance to score with 1ne of the girls and claimed to have been an ex boyfriend of Kathryn Harby. And always, every time it rained, he would say just 1ne thing over and over again like a vinyl record tattered and torn by his own ennui...
"How wet does it want to be?" - it was undefined. Perhaps it was just a pervy come on line to the lesbian. Since I never had a definitive answer to the question, an ice age would occur in between him saying his catchphrase, realising I was ignoring him, and him turning with the self assured pose of the totally deluded and yelling something that could only be described as a single entendre in the direction of the flooded netball court...
On reflection, I just liked it when they played, it was sunny, she won, and I got to use the ATARI and had a sandwich made for me...I think that happened, oh, maybe 2wice...
Although being an 80tys child, Noah had to float on top of the football oval before any sporting activities would be even considered for postponment, rain did deny us on more than 1 occasion the chance to partake our hippy school idealistic afternoon stare at the clouds. This was always upsetting to me, as it was not only an outlet to get out of the classroom box, it also meant I didn't have to play board games. I wasn't opposed to board games, but the mixture of claustrophobia, condensation and the likelihood Georgina would stick 1ne of the dice up her nose didn't exactly look like an enticing prospect. Those afternoons were aimless for a thinker like me, and they were all the same, the only thing that was different was who fought with who once Smithton syndrome - like Stockholm Syndrome with less teeth - kicked in. It came pass 1ne rainy day in the mid 8tys I was discussing the career of some cricketer in my psuedo intellectual way, a shock of blonde hair as obscure as some of the terminology I used, when Georgina, a sort of gurning toothless child with shaggy blonde hair who inevitably grew up to be the best looking girl in school, handed me a note with a gurn and a grunt and a gammy limp away. In purple crayon was written "Guess who likes you?" - with likes spelt with an x...
Georgina? I mean, she had a nice personality...
It was actually from Sarah, but of course Georgina had failed to mention that. So instead of my alloted cloud staring time I had to sit in a small room while Georgina gurned in my direction which I was worried was some kind of attempt at alluring that failed miserably when Big M came out of her nose. There was nothing else to do, I had to be a man, I had to...well, run out into the rain to be honest, to get away from her. As I huddled under the big ramp, my emotional maturity not strong on account of my lack of life experience, I looked across at the monkey bars and Pippa was standing there, in the rain, just staring out at the oval getting soaked. She looked at me, I looked at her, we both realised we were a pair of idiots standing out in the rain, and we walked back into the classroom silently together, without a single exchange of glance or any of her more prophetic statements, and believe me, if the shimmering goddess of the monkey bars was silent, I didn't want to know what was up...
Time passed, lots of rain fell on Penguin, and I got older. My Dad used to coach me in soccer. School soccer was a horrific experience for me, because part of my I'm really cool because you haven't found out I'm a dork yet experience involved a strange mythology that I didn't create that I had been coached by Pele, Hotshot style, and was some kind of god, rather than an awkward geeky teenager with gangle disease. I'm afraid once word of my gangle got around, I became another bog standard bewildered kid counting down the seconds until he could go home. So the cancellation of school sports due to bad weather was often something of a godsend, a chance to go back to bed or lie around the house stretched out on my horrible bedroom carpet staring at the ceiling wondering when exactly I could get back to Scotland for a holiday. I spent most of 1994 alternating between homesickness and nausea and never being sure which was which. My PE teacher was something of a local coaching legend, 1ne of the old fire and brimstone coaches with silver hair and short grumpy sentences. He had suggested to my Dad, being something of a weatherman when his knee injury from the 67 Grand Final played up, that my gangle be cured through a fitness program he had devised. Sure enough, when rain got the soccer postponed, that I spend my time lifting bricks in the garage. The perfect cure for gangle...
It didn't go well...
It rained all day of course, and my Dad and I ended up sitting in the garage trying to work through the fractured elements of our relationship. He was in the shock cycle because I had told him where to stick his bricks, which oddly enough wasn't in a neatly arranged and perfectly cemented wall structure, and I just wanted to go back to bed. Being male, neither of us spoke for hours, until eventually by magic, the rain stopped, a beautiful rainbow spread out over Burnie and....we argued for another 3hree hours of course. It had nothing to do with bricks, it was just the way of the world. It could rain, it could be beautiful, we could both like Clannad, and I would still be resentful that I was ripped away from my beloved Scotland and all it's cable television goodness to sit and be told by an old limping badly jumpered PE teacher that I was gangly and awkward. If I could have explained it, sat and talked, who knows, but instead, I waited until the rain evaporated to the point I could leave the garage, took my rage out on 2wo innocent bricks, and ran away for 2wo days to go and wander around Burnie, wondering where it had all gone wrong, as melancholy as the guy outside Penguin post office who used to just yell "I hurt!" to random passers by. Not exactly like him, I mean, I didn't get arrested for flashing, but I felt a kinship to him I didn't feel to my own father...
And it's still raining outside....but I'm feeling better now at least...I think it's the house...or the IPOD...or the lime spider...something like that...
Sunday, August 9, 2009
At least Sunday would bring respite, unless there was someone bringing jelly squares around...
My Mum found a new photo of herself from the archives. It's probably surrplanted even the 1ne her and her sisters rather camply hold pigeons, their London holiday rather dispelling the tortured poverty myth of their family I've grown up with. In this rather disturbing black and white Glaswegian tableaux of despair, her Mum holds a child rather uneasily on her knee while my Mum loiters in the background holding a cap gun, like the worlds most cheerful hostage taker. It's rare that a photograph interests me. I still dread Penguinian era slide nights, being strapped to my mothers knee as if restrained by a seatbelt as a tedious horribly jumpered neighbour would self importantly lecture us on an array of flora and fauna. I could see my Whiplash and Leech He-Man figures just out of reach, but I couldn't get them because the neighbour would be loading another carousel and I was was barred from leaving. I would have to console myself with wondering where I knew the neighbours from, whether I had seen them trying to steal a loaf of bread or arguing with the postman, or even just studying the attention to detail in their overly perky jumpers, the way the last sheep seemed to be so badly knitted. That was Penguin, a parade of horrific casual knitwear. When I pointed out to my Mum the strange nature of her childhood photos, she threatened to dig out photos of me when I was younger. This was not a good thing to say, because I hated having my photo taken. I still do to be honest. I've never loitered in the background of any photos holding a kind of firearm though, and my shots are all clean scrubbed and hold no form of social commentary. I know if she digs them out, I won't be smiling either, a modelesque pout is generally my way of getting through the torment. Even clad in a Primary school tracksuit in the glimmering knowledge I was the schools bright intellectual hope, I'm still pouting nervously for the camera according to the evidence of my 30th birthday photoboard montage, my apprehensive swept blonde hairdo a sign of a mind and body not entirely uncomfortable with itself, even with the devil may care feel of a nylon tracksuit on my side...
I'm amazed that my Mum would spend so much time wining and dining and socialising with Penguins elite and semi elite to be honest, especially armed with slides. She's not a sociable woman to be honest, keeping to a close circle of friends and phone contact. To think she let people into our house to show slides and flaunt their knitwear around our living room, to eat our Cheesels and stay in our house boring us with their anecdotes for far too long. 1ne of the main memories of my childhood in Penguin was the late afternoon search for Cheesels to cram into a wooden bowl just in case our guests got hungry in the middle of their long and involved stories. In truth, my contribution presuming I didn't have to stay for slides or get trapped into small talk about school - I was fortunate that unlike some of my cousins I displayed no musical talent whatsover so I didn't have to do a turn - was limited to a small wave and a handful of Cheesels before I was allowed back into my room to while away the hours. Since I didn't have my own TV, alas this deprived me of a glimpse of A Country Practice, but I couldn't complain. As an only child, I would go to bed early most nights anyway, but there was something claustrophobic about those banishments, because as Dr Hook or some other adult contemporary hoary old band would tinkle on the record player, I couldn't sleep anyway due to the loud thumping but safe rock strains, so I would lie for hours listening to raucous conversation and the munching of cheesy snacks, lying in the dark with some cotton sheets pulled over me huffing and puffing to no-one in particular that I wanted the noisy adults to keep quiet. In later years, they would perfect this art of noise to the point where they could have put it on stage. At around 2am at 1ne point every 2nd Sunday they would have a singalong to Elton Johns "Sacrifice" as regular as clockwork. As a child there was nothing I could do to complain about the noise. I could sometimes stumble up, pretend I was going to the toilet, eat a Cheesel from a bowl and look faux grumpy in the hope I'd be noticed and people would pay attention to me, but there were risks - being drawn into conversation, the possibility that slides were on the projector and worst of all the chance that I would be asked to adjudicate in some drunken trivia. So rather than answer what the capital of Bolivia was, I would huddle in my room, sheets over my head, and just wait until I heard the clunk click of seatbelts and the thud thud of car doors would act as a numbing lullaby...
The alternative to this bedtime banishment would be the inevitable put on some entertainment hour, a troupe of strange children piling into my (my!) bedroom, to pick at my toys and disrupt to cocoon of solitude that I had carefully constructed. In most cases, these thrust upon friendships would fade instantly, a concocted 1ne night stand as awkward as waking up in a strange girls house with no idea how you got there. Because they were in your home, they would be effort dressed, in a smart jumper and some tight pants, shoes shining at maximum glare, their hair combed neatly and thoughtfully, while I was allowed since it was my domain to loiter around in a tatty T-shirt and trackpants combination, officiously demanding that sticky fingered kids keep away from my stuff. The alternative was to be dragged out of the house into someone elses lair. My Dad had a procession of teacher friends, all bearded, who we would have 1ne date with until my Mum decided they were weird and my Dad would use her Glaswegian disdain for, say, charades or their taste in politics to never have to go their again, since it interrupted his nap time. Truthfully not many of these visits stand out - they remain a mystifying blur recollected only as 1ne giant trip in the back of the car to a strange street somewhere in Burnie, a large digital clock in the child I had to spend time with's room the only illumination. I was generally affable as a child, but I was especially affable if my new friend had a computer or some technological advance. I should have learned my lesson from my weekend at Daniels house where I played his Commodore 64 instead of playing volleyball with him and he rather spat the goo, but mostly natural charm and a knowledge of toys got me through. I think only 1ne of these playdates seems even remotely memorable, unless you want me to recount specific brands of toys, or the joys of antique toy boxes. Some of those things were worth messing up my Sunday best clothes to dive into, and risk of being shut in the box...
Her name was Wendy. She lived in a weird part of Burnie that had far more street lights that was essentially healthy. She had bug eyes and a ponytail and a whiny voice but a treasure chest of cool stuff, a computer, a cupboard full of shoes and several mysterious staircases with big spooky doors that lead under said staircase. Had I been a bit older I could have asked if Sarah Greene was sucked in there, but no one gets that in this day and age. Or back then to be honest. Her house was neat and tidy and the adults in it were restless and theatrical, pointing out the similarities between my 8eight year old self and Wendy as if they had arranged a marriage between us. If I had any lust at that point, it would have been for her Commodore 64. We didn't have much to say to each other, so we ended up in the kitchen at about 10en at night, eating sandwiches off a plate and waiting for my Mum to get bored or sleepy and drag us home in the Brown Torana. An age passed until Wendy had an idea. I was glad she had an idea, my theories on Tom and Jerry were just bouncing off her head. Wordlessly, she took all the drinks in the fridge - Fanta, Mello Yello, TAB, Orange Juice, Bottled Water, Milk, Ecto Cooler and several foaming and rather horrible scented liquers from what I can remember - she took all the drinks and poured into a pint glass, her eyes dancing with menace as she thrust the pint glass in my direction.
"Drink it," she said, making a drinking motion. The glass was full to the brim of a disgustingly coloured drink, and to top it off she stirred sugar and salt and cooking chocolate into it, until it was frankly the colour of bronchitis.
I shrugged and tried to back out of my dare. Like most boys my age, the prospect of anyone - let alone a girl rocking the Marty Feldman look and wearing a stripy top - flapping her arms and calling me a chicken with flappy arm mime to boot didn't appeal.
"No," I said, miming disinterest. Somewhat inevitably, I was compared to poultry, but I had an ace up my sleeve that I learned from a kid called Greg, who was able to turn down all dares with a simple catch all phrase. "Nup," I said, impersonating him as best I could, "it's duh-brained!"
Whether it was duh-brained or not was up for debate, but Wendy wasn't to be deterred. "Brett drank it!" she said. Whoever Brett was, his stomach was cast iron and his will determined. I imagined some 9ine year old super genius with man sized arms and the ability to take a tennis ball soaked in water right to the head and not even flinch. "Well then Bretts a duh brain!" I said, although my squeaky voice betrayed a certain envy of Brett that he was able to fulfil a dare. I expected more chicken noises, but Wendy took genuine offence to the dissing of Brett, lowered her eyes, poured the pint glass down the sink, and walked off to her room. 1ne hour later, my Mum came and found me eating a Rice Krispie Square off a ceramic plate, and we drove home, never to see that family again....
There were confusing girls, confusing social engagements, my Mother acting completely out of character, and even if I did pose for photos, it would still all have been strange. It was lucky that I was able to sleep in the car, and wake up in the safety of my room, He-Man figures lined up as a welcoming committee...
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Melbourne Part 3hree - The Final Sparkle
It's a feature of my nationality that we are malcontented and dislocated - in a cold climate we'll rub our hands mournfully and demand sunlight but when sunlight comes we'll shuffle around in search of a breeze. I'm not much different, but I try my best. It's early morning, the middle of the Bourke Street Mall, street sweepers and Big Issue sellers milling around for position. I have in my possession an expensive bag, to drop off for my glamorous cousin, the kind who is so immaculate and fashionably dressed you feel bad for being as rough as guts and the possession of offensively weak stubble. I can't grow a moustache, if I do it just ends up looking like something a tramp would reject for being a little too outre'. Even though I've bypassed a healthy dose of grease on the breakfast tray to be here, or at least an ironic death eating the healthy dose of grease breakfast they've advertised, and my eyes haven't adjusted to the levels of mid morning grey desolation enveloping the sky - my eyes working a little bit like the contrast button on an old television with a bad aerial, with adjustments needed all the time just to get a picture - I'm trying to be positive about the joys in doing something for someone else. The street sweeper is a buzz kill on any positive thoughts, meandering up and down on one of those little carts with all the burdens that go with it. Maybe it's my bleary mid morning eyes, but I'm sure he's just hovering on the 1ne spot, sweeping up the same fag ends and concrete spots over and over again. There's a refugee from the night before sleeping vulnerably on the park bench - a sparkly mess of spangles, bangles and ignored advice about the dangers of alcohol. She has one heel on the ground isolated and alone, her fringe swept right across her face, her arm trying to push her up even as the rest of her body is asleep, and her friends have long disappeared into the night, tales of misadventure to be recapped for another day. Outside 1ne of the breakfast bars, an Asian woman is jabbing her finger violently into the face of the shopkeeper, aggrevied anxiety written into every wrinkle as she recounts a broken string of injustices, all of them mounting endlessly into a tableaux of despair, while her impervious to sunlight husband, pale and ghostly, sits at the table barely moving a muscle, munching on muesli with a middling expression on his face. Her finger jabbing gets her nowhere, and in the end she's left screaming into thin air. The malcontented feelings come back, as I yearn for bed, some form of mid morning joy, my unfocused eyes struggling against the light. The girl on the bench stirs a little, makes a noise like she's about to vomit, and then goes back to sleep. The street sweeper makes an arc, and in a flurry of apathy and brushes is heading in the direction of the girls heel, munching it up with a crunch and a smile that suggests he knew exactly what he was doing. I'd stick around to explain what happened to the girls heel to her, but she looks settled in for the day. My cousin sashays down the concrete like a catwalk professional, we exchange a hug, and the bag is handed over with the minimum of fuss. After she leaves, the girl on the park bench yells out the name Brett in a deep inhuman voice, and goes back to sleep, the cares of the world lost in a daze, mines very much yet to unfold in the gloom....
On the way back to the hotel - a class below my usual standards I must admit, mostly because the shower felt like a tiny child had spat on me - I'm stuck at a traffic light for an age. The little red man seems to thoroughly enjoy the power he has over us all, discontented commuters milling around like livestock in danger, waiting for just a glimpse of green. There's a girl at the traffic lights with hairdresser hips and a squeaky voice, in 1ne of those tops that seem trendy at the time but which will become a bugbear to her image in later years if she is ever photographed in it. She's got 1ne hand on her hip and a diamond ring that glints and sparkles but seems cheap on closer inspection. She's gossiping loudly to her galpal, a dis-interested semi skeleton with a know it all expression and a garish lemon yellow T-shirt that hangs off her emaciated frame with a devil may care attitude to gravity. She's texting, Twittering or something, pressing her bony fingers into the keypad while a smiling child with flickering eyes tries to negotiate the perils of eating a sandwich without getting it all over his face. The first girl is wrapping up a tale about her boyfriend, which seems to imply he was involved in a police chase, the exaggerated details failing to engage her bony companion to even look up for a second. For whatever reason, the perils of Gary - it's always a Gary with those hairdressers, I'm sure the hippy hairdresser I lusted after in Burnie turned me down for a Gary - engage me in a silent flick through my IPOD listing. It gets to a gripping point in the tale, although the words are distinctly rapidfire and high pitched, where Gary apparently had gun drawn on a policeman and a tense stand off ensuing, and to my eternal chagrin, the red man goes green with envy, frantically flickering and permitting everyone to cross the road, and I lose the thread of the story, the 2wo girls disappearing in a blur of conversation, while the kid stands bewildered with tomato dripping all over his face. I think the kid was engrossed in the story as well, or his first view of hairdresser hips...
There's a barmaid in a pub later that day - she's got a tattoo on her arm, some sort of dragon looking ridiculously fierce, at least in intent, I just think it looks camp. She's familiar and friendly, a shock of red hair and a cheerful smile disguising her inability to pour a pint of beer that didn't look like a liquidy golden mess, of a particular shade that brought back youthful defiant staring into the sun just because my Mum told me it was wrong. She's telling a semi tedious story about her diet, although in deference to a regular patron she interrupts talking to us to acknowledge the old boys seniority and give him a free Samboy chip or 2wo. She begins to weave a complicated story about the importance of dieting, a tale told in a perky upbeat service is important kind of way, while out of politeness we nod and smile while The View flickers unimportantly on the TV behind us. After a moment, during which I realise it's impossible to figure out her age from her face alone, a plumber comes in. He's a little older, the legman in the duo forced to lug the heavy equipment into the broken toilets. The barmaid breaks mid description of the importance of eating bananas to follow the plumbers trail down the hallway, and his eyes meet her for an awkward tense second before he disappears, having dropped his monkey wrench in the moment. She begins awkwardly cleaning a glass over and over again, mutters something about they dated 1nce, and leaves it at that, staring out through a plate glass window with ridiculously unsuited to the surroundings poignancy, poignancy Barbara Walters spoils by pulling a stupid face, and the old boy in the corner ruins by thumping an empty glass on the counter, his bald head shining in the light as he embarks on a mission for beer, a mission he has all the time in the world to complete...
They gouged me at the airport - 7even dollars for a sandwich. I'd complain, but I'd sound like 1ne of those horrible observational comics and I don't have any real follow through on the observation other than a Seinfeldesque what's up with that? Satre might have said hell is being trapped in a room forever with your friends, but it's far worse eating a 7even dollar sandwich with your friends in a mid morning airport, especially when eating the sandwich is making an impossibly tense get to the airport 3hree hours early worrier like me feel like we might miss the plane. I do feel contented because everyone is still talking, which is the definition of success for a trip these days. Everyone is still talking and no one got bashed. There's a fancy dan on his phone across from us, slicked back hair, a mobile phone so small it has to be pointed out to you, legs swinging freely on a stool. He's self confident and loud, a minature Gordon Gecko with white teeth and a smile spread wide across his face. In the blink of an eye though, he slips, his shiny Rick Astley shoes catch on the bottom edge of the stool, and he stumbles off it, landing face down on a just scrubbed floor, quickly scrambling to make sure he's got his keys in his pocket and his dignity still intact. He recovers as best as he can, eyes frantically scanning the crowd like overactive windscreen wipers to see if anyone saw his slip. Satisfied no-one did, he resumes his position, his smile, his game show host poise, and resume his phone conversation as if nothing happened. But we saw - we laughed, we enjoyed, we saw him fall, and we walked off not having to discuss any of the more awkward moments of the trip or why in the hell we were dragged along to the sushi bar. We had a shared memory that would take us all the way to the car park without a need to discuss anything else that happened...
And just like that...contentment...
On the way back to the hotel - a class below my usual standards I must admit, mostly because the shower felt like a tiny child had spat on me - I'm stuck at a traffic light for an age. The little red man seems to thoroughly enjoy the power he has over us all, discontented commuters milling around like livestock in danger, waiting for just a glimpse of green. There's a girl at the traffic lights with hairdresser hips and a squeaky voice, in 1ne of those tops that seem trendy at the time but which will become a bugbear to her image in later years if she is ever photographed in it. She's got 1ne hand on her hip and a diamond ring that glints and sparkles but seems cheap on closer inspection. She's gossiping loudly to her galpal, a dis-interested semi skeleton with a know it all expression and a garish lemon yellow T-shirt that hangs off her emaciated frame with a devil may care attitude to gravity. She's texting, Twittering or something, pressing her bony fingers into the keypad while a smiling child with flickering eyes tries to negotiate the perils of eating a sandwich without getting it all over his face. The first girl is wrapping up a tale about her boyfriend, which seems to imply he was involved in a police chase, the exaggerated details failing to engage her bony companion to even look up for a second. For whatever reason, the perils of Gary - it's always a Gary with those hairdressers, I'm sure the hippy hairdresser I lusted after in Burnie turned me down for a Gary - engage me in a silent flick through my IPOD listing. It gets to a gripping point in the tale, although the words are distinctly rapidfire and high pitched, where Gary apparently had gun drawn on a policeman and a tense stand off ensuing, and to my eternal chagrin, the red man goes green with envy, frantically flickering and permitting everyone to cross the road, and I lose the thread of the story, the 2wo girls disappearing in a blur of conversation, while the kid stands bewildered with tomato dripping all over his face. I think the kid was engrossed in the story as well, or his first view of hairdresser hips...
There's a barmaid in a pub later that day - she's got a tattoo on her arm, some sort of dragon looking ridiculously fierce, at least in intent, I just think it looks camp. She's familiar and friendly, a shock of red hair and a cheerful smile disguising her inability to pour a pint of beer that didn't look like a liquidy golden mess, of a particular shade that brought back youthful defiant staring into the sun just because my Mum told me it was wrong. She's telling a semi tedious story about her diet, although in deference to a regular patron she interrupts talking to us to acknowledge the old boys seniority and give him a free Samboy chip or 2wo. She begins to weave a complicated story about the importance of dieting, a tale told in a perky upbeat service is important kind of way, while out of politeness we nod and smile while The View flickers unimportantly on the TV behind us. After a moment, during which I realise it's impossible to figure out her age from her face alone, a plumber comes in. He's a little older, the legman in the duo forced to lug the heavy equipment into the broken toilets. The barmaid breaks mid description of the importance of eating bananas to follow the plumbers trail down the hallway, and his eyes meet her for an awkward tense second before he disappears, having dropped his monkey wrench in the moment. She begins awkwardly cleaning a glass over and over again, mutters something about they dated 1nce, and leaves it at that, staring out through a plate glass window with ridiculously unsuited to the surroundings poignancy, poignancy Barbara Walters spoils by pulling a stupid face, and the old boy in the corner ruins by thumping an empty glass on the counter, his bald head shining in the light as he embarks on a mission for beer, a mission he has all the time in the world to complete...
They gouged me at the airport - 7even dollars for a sandwich. I'd complain, but I'd sound like 1ne of those horrible observational comics and I don't have any real follow through on the observation other than a Seinfeldesque what's up with that? Satre might have said hell is being trapped in a room forever with your friends, but it's far worse eating a 7even dollar sandwich with your friends in a mid morning airport, especially when eating the sandwich is making an impossibly tense get to the airport 3hree hours early worrier like me feel like we might miss the plane. I do feel contented because everyone is still talking, which is the definition of success for a trip these days. Everyone is still talking and no one got bashed. There's a fancy dan on his phone across from us, slicked back hair, a mobile phone so small it has to be pointed out to you, legs swinging freely on a stool. He's self confident and loud, a minature Gordon Gecko with white teeth and a smile spread wide across his face. In the blink of an eye though, he slips, his shiny Rick Astley shoes catch on the bottom edge of the stool, and he stumbles off it, landing face down on a just scrubbed floor, quickly scrambling to make sure he's got his keys in his pocket and his dignity still intact. He recovers as best as he can, eyes frantically scanning the crowd like overactive windscreen wipers to see if anyone saw his slip. Satisfied no-one did, he resumes his position, his smile, his game show host poise, and resume his phone conversation as if nothing happened. But we saw - we laughed, we enjoyed, we saw him fall, and we walked off not having to discuss any of the more awkward moments of the trip or why in the hell we were dragged along to the sushi bar. We had a shared memory that would take us all the way to the car park without a need to discuss anything else that happened...
And just like that...contentment...
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