My Mama always says to keep your head up, even at casinos

I wish I could get this song out of my head, it hums and rotates in my brain, and I don't know what it is. It's making me scowl in an oasis of cheerful faces, and I'm standing out, not just for my swanky haircut. Good intentions are floating around the pub like the chunky waitress with the tray of ordives, that's for sure, and even she's in a good mood, mostly because she's stealing an olive or 2wo off the plate when she thinks no-one is looking. I'm sitting waiting for a taxi on another 1ne of those horrendously wasted nights that pile up, 1ne of those horribly promising days off where the heat shimmers and everything seems promising. There's a small blonde girl all but standing on the table in excitement, loudly proclaiming in a screechy voice that this night will be the greatest night ever. Her companion rolls her eyes as if she says this all the time and begins colouring in the teeth of Zara Phillips with a handily placed pencil. Outside, there's a sound that sounds like someone vomiting on the pavement, but no-one wants to look, in case such a horrible event takes away the bad vibes. No one wants to be the old guy in the pub, but I think I would be anyway, by default, even if I was wearing braces and wasn't allowed to watch the original Batman movie. The good vibes in the pub extend to casual enforcement of the ID rule when it comes to buying shots. The girl leading the party cheerleading has her hair entirely in line with the Lady GaGa template, stiff and blonde and wig like, and she slams her glass down with her tiny fist, in a 2ndry plea for support to her thesis that this is going to be a good night. Her glass almost smashes on the table, her eyes and mouth certainly don't seem to be cased in good vibes, and for an awkward moment the clunk of glass on table has made everyone stare at her to see what she does next. Sensing everyone staring at her, Lady Tantrum takes a tiny slice of brie from the plate, and sits back down like a naughty child, while her colouring in friend calls her a nasty name without ever looking up from her from her descration of royalty. Although there's another 1/2lf an hour I sit in that pub, nothing quite gets back to the heady heights of when I first got there, the joy and good feeling is all gone, even newcomers can feel it, and to top it all off, a bouncer looms into view, causing people to scatter like poppy seeds in the wind or winos hearing a police siren...

There's a trendy left wing slightly opinionated comedian sitting on the pavement outside 1ne of our hotels when I walk around Hobart looking for a cab. He looks at me hopefully and earnestly, perhaps in expectation that I'll ask for an autograph or want to hear the 1ne about Kevin Rudd, but I preferred his old comedy partner, and I'm reading something about basketball anyway. He looks down a little sadly at his own reading material, a bright thick orange novel of the kind rapacious students carry around in their 3hrd year at uni to impress nervy young out of towners. It's thick, sure, but there's only about 2wo pages actually flicked. For a moment, we're the only people around, and for whatever reason I feel almost obliged to make conversation, but am saved by his driver appearing like an apparition, a man who glides in a positively camp way, keeps his suit entirely pressed even in strong heat and opens car doors without even glancing away from his own shoes. The earnest comedian tries to strike up some basic conversation, but is dismissed relatively early on, and returns to his novel a forlorn figure. The car pulls away at a fantastic speed, just as 2wo girls in low cut tops come up clutching autograph books and asking if they were too late and missed him. He just couldn't catch a break the poor guy. Hope his novel was good. Not that the girls are too concerned, within seconds they've launched into a conversational diatribe about what happened to the cardboard standee of the Bundaberg Rum bear in the window of the old Gas Centre building. Their conversation is somehow coded, as if they are feeling nostalgic, but I don't think they deserve the right to be nostalgic. I'm sitting wearing a retro soccer top, but I bought it when it wasn't retro, it was BNIB as they say in the trade. I want to curse them for feeling nostalgic when they don't look old enough to even get into Syrup, but it's just too damn hot. A man meanwhile in spite of the heat walks past in a full business suit and sweaty shirt, a man the size of a small bungalow dragging along his small Asian girlfriend by the hand, while the poor girl lags along behind carrying umpteen cans of V. We all watch them go past, hope we haven't witnessed some sort of kidnapping, and then go back to our own private thoughts, theirs about cardboard, mine about how long it will take to get the Liverpool manager not just sacked, but publically flogged...

It's mid afternoon in Hobart. On the pavement, several wounded bogans limp along in the heat, their black Motley Crue T-shirts attracting heat the same way they attract a dole cheque. It is hot though, everyone feels it. My taxi driver hasn't added it to his list of gripes, but I'm sure he still will. He's got a long list of them that he can unspool with only a tenuous link to the subject. He's already seen off women, immigrants, female immigrants, other taxi drivers and women again, not realising like an aging slightly grizzled and forgetful insult comic he's doubled back on his own material. I'm dying to ask if anyone is in from out of town, but he wouldn't get it. Mostly, he hates driving taxis. I find this curious, this unburdening to me as I sit idly fiddling with my IPOD, a sort of reverse confessional that his passion for the work has faded over time, in line with the increase in his waste band and his growing likeness to someone who could have stood side stage for The Allman Brothers and punched anyone who dared to get too close to Jeff. I wish I was more dis-interested, but I find the aging process strangely curious at the moment, a sort of pallid fascination as I try and pinpoint the exact moment too much driving around listening to Lady Gaga on the radio, too much drunken exposure. Even more curiously, the driver has a fading gold star for customer service on his licence, 1ne that doesn't seemed gimmicked like my trophy slash crystal decanter style thing they would have given away on Sale as a consolation prize that I won many years ago for something or other at work. He loses his rumination though in a flood of egg sandwich, traffic light problems and some kind of rant about immigration far too long winded and xenophobic to even begin deciphering, and I lose interest in finding out anymore about him. I eventually dis-embark from his taxi at the casino with 1ne last bitch in my ear, something about pensioners gambling at all hours of the day and night. As he says it, someone I know has no money lurches and limps down the doorway of the casion in a charity shop piece of casual knitwear, clutching enough coins to do a years worth of laundry at an 80tys style launderette with enough change left over to fit in a cheeky game of Pacman. It's too late for agreement with the taxi driver by then anyway, for I realise I've sat in this taxi wearing a Glasgow Celtic soccer top, and at some point, he surely took against me as a foreigner, and was simply padding out the fare before he could pit his wrath against me to the next customer, an old woman who just craves the chance to go boat people I'd say...

By the time I head home, it's midnight. The last rum has been drunk, the last pointless post modern sub ironic comments on Super Grover passed, the girl on the floor of the casino has deflected the chat up lines of drunken idiots - not me this time - and I'm in a taxi rank behind 2wo old dears. Both have on large swanky coats, and are both smiling amiably. They both gently smell of gin, and good cheer. They are mildly complaining about something, but not in a nasty or vicious way. After a while waiting for a taxi that seems to never be coming, no matter how many times the man with the wig who works for the casino blows his whistle or officiously talks into a walkie talkie - which just brings back memories of being horribly ripped off on walkie talkies at a young age - the 1st woman, a sort of Rue McClanahan a like with a more wrinkly face, begins a tale about her son who lives in her basement. I've never lived in a basement, apart from a week I was supposed to be hanging out staying with 1ne of my friends and never made it out of his basement because I played C64 soccer against his sister all week. I'd like to rent a loft...Rue thinks that her son is some kind of desperate eternal batchelor, the kind who'll sit on the Internet typing all weekend and never go out and find a girlfriend like that nice Brad Pitt. She hates Facebook, she clucks her teeth when she says the word, as if it's a dirty swearing thing. The 2nd woman, smaller, older, more covered in make up, smaller, but more lady like and dignifed, head high in the air, listens to every word of this little rant. She pauses, looks up at a star, and says to the 1st woman she should be glad her son is around to be a batchelor. The 1st woman stops, puts a consoling arm around her friend, and they both get in a taxi while the man with the walkie talkie self importantly berates the taxi driver with swishes of his non verbal communication for keeping the ladies waiting. I'd tell him a late taxi seems to tbe the least of their problems, but he's got me a cab at the same time, and another night on the road to the end of the decade is over, and I've got Girls Can't Catch on the IPOD, and another pointless journey to make just to get to bed...

Which I do, after a lot of fumbling with the stupid key....