Solipsistic Postings from Burnie - If I can't be a star I won't get out of bed

It's 6ix am on a sunny mid December morning. I'm somewhere in the middle of Tasmania spooning beans onto toast, having realised my complaints that the Angry Angus advert was racist wasn't providing enough fodder or interest to turn random words in a conversation which would henceforth kill enough time for me to fail to notice I seemed to be eating beans which tasted like eggs and vice versa. My Mum on the way up to Burnie had told for the umpeenth time about how I stood at the bottom of Mission Hill in Penguin and said Australia sure was a beautiful country. I don't recognise that person of course, how optimistic they were, before slow moving Volvos and batteries that always seem to cut out at the wrong time broke me down tiny grudge by tiny grudge against the world. As part of returning to Burnie for a family re-union we pieced together a large group of photos on card to put on the kitchen wall of the party venue, like the kids from Why Don't You, and I got obsessed and maudlin with all the 1nce youthful faces frozen in photographs that were going to be at the party withered and depressed, although I didn't apply that standard to myself of course. I just saw 9ine year old me at the Irvine Magnum ice skating rink in a top I would kill to own now. You don't communicate any genuine thoughts or feelings though while spooning beans onto toast in the middle of Tasmania surrounded by your parents, truckers, and someone elses kid you've squeezed into your car at the last minute. It doesn't help that the owner of this retro fitted truck stop style diner has decided to blast Kid Rock at full volume, as if his Alabama tinged party invocations have any relationship to this setting. Trying funny things? Yeah right pal - these beans are hilarious, and if I smoke any funny things, my Mum will give me a clip around the ear. That's the thing with these weekends, if I ever get into a car with my Mum and Dad it's instantly like I've regressed into a small child. I even sit in the back, and even though I'm reading a Malcolm Gladwell book and trying to make intellectual conversation, objectively if I applied memories of past behaviour to this situation of being trapped in the back, I should be shuffling a collection of Mercantile Mutual Cup Cards and praying Mum doesn't find out I haven't done my homework. It's the straggly kid who makes the most attempt at conversation. The last time I saw this kid he didn't understand object permanence, now he's talking about his girlfriend and his new job. He says new job with such confidence, I think he's going to start working as a junior associate at Jackson-Steinem. Instead, he's handing out cheese on sticks in a mall. He calls it a career opportunity. Maybe he's right, but my Dad has already started giving him "the rubber ear", and has drifted off into his own little world. Come to think of it, he had that expression on in the ice skating photo, a world where fuzz and static replace the pain of thought, and a man can comfortably chew on a lukewarm 3hree day old diner sausage without hearing a word, and pretend to himself it's quail on a cracker...

My local shop in Burnie still, just about, stands to this day, although it is noticably run down, the shop traffic seems to be low, and I'm sure the same Bubble O Bill I didn't have enough money to buy after the school cross country championships in 1994 is still in the freezer next to the faded Peters standee, probably from the time Wil Anderson advertised Maxibons. Or was that Rove? I see someone out of the corner of my eye I went to school with. He used to write letters to WWF wrestlers in primary school, but hardly any of them wrote back. He wrote to a lady wrestler called Desiree Petersen 1nce. She wrote back. I think only her and Bobby Heenan wrote back now I think about it. He had asked her about why she lost all the time, and she wrote back a ridiculously nice letter on fancy notepaper that explained a win wasn't far away and she was working really hard in practice. I was thinking about him the other day because I saw a picture of said lady wrestler still lady wrestling in 2009, and she has Queen Mother teeth now. I realise that I've boiled down what is now no doubt a 31 year old man with all the complexities, subtleties, highs, lows and life experiences that age brings down to a glib anecdote from 1985, but he would just remember me as that kid that cut his knee and needed stitches after we ran down the hill following the school fete. I'm not sure what type of conversation we could get out these mutual memories, but I'm not sure it would be meaningful. He's got a basket full of baby food and flavoured milk, and argues with the shop keeper when his change comes back piled up with coins instead of notes. He makes a gesture that indicates he has no pockets, but the shopkeeper is un-moved. He turns around to me, grunts, and says service at this shop has gone down hill. I say something incredibly like I hear that or something, and he nods as if to say this guy gets it. He obviously didn't remember me, but there we are, now stuck together in a 2nd glib anecdote about change, milk and the decline of the service industry. It's only as he walks away I realise something about his T-shirt. It's a John Cena T-shirt, and if you don't know, John Cena is a wrestler. I have a feeling this whole thing, this whole incident is some sort of manufactured welcome back to Burnie set up, and would have reflected on this moment a bit more had, at that moment, the shop keep not called my wrestling fan school mate a very rude word, handed me change in notes, and said he does it every day to wind him up but don't tell him. Don't worry mate, your secret is safe with me...

There is, when I get to the party venue - when I say venue I obviously mean someones unmowed back yard - an inordinate amount of cheese on sticks. There is some cold meat cut into little circles, but there's so much cheese it's lucky I'm not lactose intolerant. I would bring out my lactose intolerant joke I stole from Greg Fleet 1nce upon a time, but not yet, save something for the twilight hours I say. As it turns out, this proves to be a prescient decision, the kind of divine omniscience you don't expect to have in a backyard full of cheese and small children kicking you up the arse like you have the Toyworld Bear costume on. My cousin, 1nce stout of mind and robust of prank, has decided that I'm the person to divulge marital and family woes to. I wonder on the Sunday why me, by the Monday I've been invoked as the cause of a row and then apologized to profusely for incorrect interpretations and by Tuesday it's like it never happened and I've done nothing more offensive than eat too much cheese on a stick. My cousin doesn't blink for 10en whole minutes, his beer is undrunk and untouched, his brow is furrowed and there seems no escape for me. The girl with the large breasts who seemed to agree with me Powderfinger sucked seems to be slipping further and further away from my follow up chat we had promised each other, and here I am playing a Celtic top wearing Docca Phil. Ah Docca Phil, curse you and your need for everyone to talk about their problems. You want problems? I can't get a Samboy chip for love nor money at this party. Plus I can see my old house from this backyard and seems to now be being used for drug deals. My cousin and I aren't especially close, but I'm nothing if not a good nodder. I know I'm old now because I'm attracted to conversation. This isn't the conversation I wanted to be attracted to, and later when the girl with the large breasts sort of lead with like don't you find like the rise of like Lady GaGa like really amazing...like I have to go now, there's a drug deal being done in my old back yard. Damn you Samoan "quick purchaser"...I think my cousin is ready to belt someone, since his wife has been ignored for about an hour by everyone here and really isn't welcome at this party. I think I would like someone in my life I could just e-mail 10en conversational topics to per week, and then just bat and forth ideas with. Fat chance right, it would break down immediately when 1ne of us cracked and fwd a picture of a cat wearing a santa hat with "OMG CUTE" in the subject line. No wait, he is going to punch someone. And then I see out of the corner of my eye a big plate of cheese, make the joke, and he calms down, laughs and sips his beer. As he does so, his wife runs her fingers through her hair and looks so desolate, I would feel sorry for her were she not kinda sorta evil. I'd pass her some cheese on the way past, but the girl with the large breasts is over by the drinking fountain...



It's still sunny when I'm drunk anyway before all that happens, fading sunlight, but still bright, a typical Burnie day where the sun is out but you need 3hree coats on. I'm narked I haven't had a chance to go into town yet, narked that they only have Perroni beer and 28eight types of cheese to pick at...the kind of concerns that could comfortably be picked apart as trivial by a war veteran. I'm sitting on a plastic bucket seat, my tracksuited self is pushed forward on the edge of the seat, and I'm agitated. 1ne of my traits I hate about myself, other than my addiction to wearing a Celtic "Bogan" top from 91/92, is that when I'm drunk, I'm likely to find a particular aspect of popular culture annoying and feel the need to tell people about it. In this case, it's an otherwise innocuous sentence at the end of Tadgh Kennellys book where he says he watched the Hangover and it was really funny. Why is that in a book? It just seemed such a terrible piece of writing, like the worst kind of hackneyed Twittering. I'm saying his aware that no one is listening to me but I don't care. Someone across the fence across the way has turned their sprinkler on and my auntie gets a tiny bit of water on her blouse, and everyone is paying attention to her and no one is paying attention to me. Except for 1ne wrinkly old 1/2lf blind lady with a reasonable stab at a mullet that like all 1/2lf blind old people at a party gets the most comfortable chair and first crack at the fudge, much to everyones secret chagrin. She says something about me and my books...I didn't know there was a me and my books, but that's what she associates me with. A learned man, a man of letters and words destined for higher educations highest peaks. Or just a book about cricket, I don't know what the reference is. She says it again, and I shrug aimlessly. Burnie is making me uncomfortable, all these references and faces with more wrinkles and bits of trivia that don't quite make it into an anecdote. It's only on the way home I remember this old woman and I had a conversation at Burnie market (loosely described, a rather feeble attempt in the Roelf Vos car park 6ix weeks into 1993 that didn't catch on) where I had used the word solipsistic in a sentence. She had simply said "you and your books" then said are you buying some of my jam or not? It was a fair point, and I bought 6ix jars for a fiver. I was 8eight. Yes, me and my books...and my jam...and the old house where I snuck a girl in 1nce and then nothing happened because we ended up watching Rage...

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that one's own mind is all that exists, or to put it Glaswegian the idea that you are the centre of the fucking universe...after 1/2lf a bottle of rum, it's entirely possible to feel a whole town stopped when you left and never moved on...ah, philosophy is wasted on the drunk, pass me another slice of Edam...