Why I Don't Write Poems about The Sun

JB-Hifi in Hobart is not a place for reflection or solitude on a day off. They remain as a store conceptually bound to the premise that no second shall feel unfilled with thought or consideration. If the thumping, ceaseless rock music of Metallica doesn't get you, 1ne of the ever friendly staff or a barging woman in a stripey top desperate to see exactly what you are seeing will surely impinge on the notion of considering buying. Not for nothing is this paeon to modern corporate thinking down some stairs and hidden away in it's very own thumpingly loud bunker - it's it's own world, it's own universe carefully constructed. It's not for me, often, simply because the narrow CD laden corridors of doom and the thumping rock music just make me tired and flee. However, it is worthwhile if you can get in, get Series 4 of Weeds on DVD, and negotiate the indifferent shop girl behind the counter with the hooped ear-rings who thinks both you and your choices are feeble and inept. This 1ne even places a hand on her contemptous boney impossibly young hip, and ever so slowly crawls towards the cash register, as if disturbed from a beautiful dream where she is rich and famous and doesn't need to work and all scum is washed from the streets. Her make up is ineptly applied, but I'm not sure if that's a statement of personal identity - who can tell with Generation Y? There's a manual on the counter, I see it sometimes when I go in. It's a red folder - and the red cover is a luxurious type of red, the type you see on Hugh Hefners couch - marked customer service, in silver letters spread across the front with no concession to humour. I don't know if she's ever read it, or noticed it to be honest. She swipes my card and hands me my bag and resumes staring into the middle distance right through me, as a student with a patchy beard and his home allowance to spend shells out for the new M.I.A album. He must wait, of course, to pay for his soon to be returned CD. I feel that if I was a character at the end of 6ix Feet Under, as I take my final breaths and a white graphic appears soundtracked by Sia that strips my time on earth to a point totally devoid of meaning other than 2wo random years seperated by a dash, I will reflect on many hours spent idling in queues while Hobart shop girls burden themselves with my purchases. Or I'll shake an angry fist at whatever reality TV show irks me at the time, it's really up for grabs...

In contrast to the corporate honey pot that is JB-HiFi, Fullers Bookshop is an oasis of calm. There's almost too much time to think, too much time to ponder. They play soothing music, calming music for the soul. I'm staring at a blue sign up sheet next to 1ne of the windows. It's a sign up sheet for the Fullers bookclub. I have in my hand a book about the history and origins of Sesame Street, because the story behind that show is incredible, but it's not really Fullers book club material. They underline suspiciously the low levels of commitment required in this book club, which just puts me off. Why start a book club and not commit? There's a coffee shop over the music book shelves, in a valley of psychology books. There's 2wo old ducks dressed like Miss Marple sipping coffee and having a conversation in short clipped sentences that seems to invoke nothing but giggles from them. I've never been in a book club, because there used to be 1ne in Scotland that always put me off. They used to meet in our school library in Scotland - we would see them if our Mums were late getting ASDA shopping to pick us up - a rum bunch of bored single women, the odd slightly demented pervert looking man with egg shaped head and dirty coat, 2wo of our own librarians making cash on the side, and a beautiful blonde with shiny blue eyes who always looked desperately out of place in her beanbag, legs crossed, as if assigned to the group by court order. She used to have to sit there with a sad smile, and we would hear her make what I felt were distinctly intellectual points, only to be drowned out by a chorus of battiness, attention seeking and demented ramblings about Star Wars novels. It was less a book club, other than her, than a care in the community program. We only shared eye contact once, as the pervy man stood to read his poem about the sun in an exaggerated Raymond J Bartholomew voice, every word either rhyming with sun or spoon oddly enough. I smiled at her from behind the reference section, and she winced visibly in a comic way before refocusing on the group. She never came again, and I never found out what happened to her. The man who wrote the poem about the spoon turned up the following week in a wig like the 1ne Phil Collins wore in the Illegal Alien clip, but that's quite another story...

I don't sign up for the book club. The girl behind the counter tries to get me to join - she has thick librarian glasses, and a tooth that sparkles in the fading daylight, a twisted gnarler that looks like it would hurt every moment of the day. Her boss tells me the credit card function isn't working, and she smiles so apologetically it's painful. I pay for my books, and add it to my ever expanding pile of things I don't really need. I nearly leave the little pile behind at the pub. The table across from me is positively raucous, as a middle aged brunette excitedly and knowingly talks about cricket to a Male accountant who won't stop staring at her breasts whenever she gets drinks. Propped up on the edge of a stool is a middle aged man with a pressed shirt and a double chin who couldn't look more uncomfortable if a fat-o-gram just popped out of a cake. I think he's leaving this particular workforce and he doesn't look happy about it. Or maybe he is happy - his tie is certainly happy, a gregarious swirl of colours and patterns, a visual representation of the maxim about not having to be crazy to work here etc - and he just can't wait to get away from these people. Given my own personal endless fretting about the nature of mortality and the finite nature of time on earth - and I accept these are not issues for discussion in a Sandy Bay pub blaring Fox Sports News to everyone - there's something painfully sad about the farewell drinks, something I usually avert my eyes to. Could I discuss the closing of chapters in life at a bookclub? Maybe. I instead of now finish my beer and move on, walking past the farewelled employee as he stares with unblinking eyes at his scrawled on farewell card, which is large and boisterous and contains a brassy blonde on the cover doing brassy blonde things. His present sits on the edge of the table un-opened, and the cricket fan brunette, perhaps sensing a lull in the conversation, begins to tell a joke. It's a shame that I will never find out the outcome of the crashing plane suspiciously containing 1ne man from Ireland, 1ne man from England and 1ne from Scotland - and of course, no pilot, crew or other passengers - but it's something I'm willing to live with...

So I end up after all this - books and DVD in tow - at the inapropriately named Welcome Stranger pub in Hobart. Oddly enough, the video jukebox is playing exactly the same songs as JB HiFi, although the place is deserted other than some stragglers playing pool badly, sending pool balls flying around the cavernous construct with careless abandon. 1ne girl outside almost vomits, but composes herself, gets into her Toyota Camry, and high 5ives her passanger as if she's accomplished a rich and rewarding feat. I saunter up the bar, where a small girl in a green shirt, no bigger than the glass she pours my beer into, asks me how my day has been, and whether it's cold outside. How to answer - glibly in both cases I should imagine. The strangest thing of all is I've stumbled into new friends, quite by accident. How to explain the strangeness of the new friend outing to a barmaid who says beer is "frothalicious"...I mean, new friends are strange things at my age, especially 1nes with kids and stories that I haven't heard before...I suspect though from the age of the barmaid that if I stick around we'll be talking about Twilight soon, so I move on. At least the Welcome Stranger gargoyle isn't here, Igor the uncommunicative from behind the bar, who they only let out of the cellar to ruin special occasions. I go back eventually to my new friends, just as a pool fight breaks out. Someone has nudged a black ball in with their elbow, and to the swooning sounds of some marble mouthed rapper, the protagonists swing blindly at each other, pulling each others semi expensive jumpers and flailing wildly as their screaming partners aren't sure whether to step in or try their mutually disgusting black and brown drink concoctions. We take it as a cue to leave, climbing into a taxi cab and heading home. As I put my foot and toe just outside the door, the music on the video screen makes a horrible hissing noise and sounds like it's about to break, and a single, aimless pensioner with a thick staticy cardigan and a moustache thick and hearty walks past mumbling to himself, a plastic cup full of coins, his eyes bereft of life, his shoulders slumped, as he walks like death to the poker machine, under which are his shoes, on top of which is his wallet...he may have settled in for the night, but for us, the night is well and truly over...

I sleep so soundly, I don't even think a marble mouthed rapper rapping at full speed with sick beats per minute is likely to wake me up...