When the second hand doesn't know the first hand is doing (matron)

So I've woken up today, and it's my parents anniversary - 34 years and counting. That's quite the effort, and I like to think how I would have survived in 1970s Britain, debating whether T-Rex was better than Wizzard. By all accounts, it was quite a rough place, where survival relied on either a quick wit or the ownership of a butchers knife. I've got to stop reading Rebus - anyway, I'm pretty proud of them, I know people who give up on their marriage after two days. The last wedding I went to, I'd say that marriage is going to last a few years and then dissolve - I certainly don't mean to make a rash judgement, but when the highlight of the wedding isn't any kind of heartfelt declaration of love (because they are spending all day fighting) but when the drunken snob girl in the wedding party who thinks she's so much better than you goes outside, drunk, and rides a golf flag around a putting green like a horse, you know things aren't exactly lighting up the sky. My Mum and Dad had their honeymoon roughly about 3 towns along from where the lived - they saw my auntie at the bus stop. Considering the easy life I've had, where the only thing I have to worry about is finally seeing the episode where Wile E Coyote finally catches Road Runner, I really appreciate their sacrifice in bringing me up. Of course, my Dad keeps referring to my big stupid coupon...so what am I sticking up for him for?

So anyway, I've been throwing all my old CDs - yes, young people, we once had to buy CDs, just like people older than me had to buy cassingles by bands like Ratcat - into a skip, if for no reason than I can't stand Cash Converters. Furreners, Cash Converters is essentially the easy way for bogans to swap items for cash, and once upon a time I had the misfortune to need money and took a bunch of CDs down there (OK, they weren't great - I still don't know why I spent 29.95 on a Simpsons album, but it probably explains my lack of cash) and was rewarded handsomely for my efforts in packaging up the box nicely with...six bucks, take it or leave it. My local Cash Converters also has about 7 security guards per person, as if you are going to make a bolt for it with an armful of Joanne singles and Cop and Half with Burt Reynolds tucked under your shirt. Seriously, the putters are in a locked glass case. How hard would it be to steal a putter, what's the security systems obsession with speciality golf clubs? The main security guard also doubles as someone behind the counter, and he has this really fearsome monobrow, which I think affects his mood. Whenever you go and buy something, he seems to be making a personal assessment on your social standing, and he seems to take an age making a judgement on it. The last time I actually bought something without running out of the store feeling like I was about to be nabbed around the collar just for stealing oxygen, it was a copy of a CD I bought for a friend for her birthday, let's say Sophie Lee and The Freaked Out Flower Children, he seemed to spend an age contemplating just how freaked out those flower children were, furrowing his monobrow in sheer confusion as if he was a drowning man who saw a life raft and contemplated whether life was worth going on with. Eventually, he put the CD into a small plastic bag, and as handed it to be me, his face lit into a (for him) animated mask of excitement. "Sophie Lee...she went out with Mick Molloy" he said with as much enthusiasm and emotion as a minimum wage employee of Cash Converters could muster. Yes, I said, she sure did, if you believed the 8th page of New Idea in May 1992 that had them both on a yacht - at which point, as I was about to leave the store, he has concluded his midday musings simply by saying "Fnh, she could have done better" - having seen Boytown, yes, yes she certainly could have...

Had this been a few years ago, I would have taken this box of CDs to "I Like" Aeroplane Records, the much missed second hand record and filthy old magazine store in the middle of Hobart, just next to the car park and the milkshake drinkers. There was always a wonderful staff synergy to Aeroplane Records - a very special man (and I mean special) and a parade of different attractive women. I think the attractive women had to work there with him as part of community service or some kind of witness protection program. There was always this feeling in Aeroplane Records that the attractive woman was shackled to the cash register or was wearing a tagging bracelet. What was always good about Aeroplane Records as well was that it was right next to the pervert shop, the Adult Basement, which was as subtle in hiding perverts as the fact my local video shop used to have the porn tapes on a shelf facing the window, so everyone could see the porn getters just as they drove their car in to park. There was always a wonderful juxtaposition between nerdy record buyers scanning the tables outside the door and the adult shoppers trying to get out of the pervert shop with their shifty purchases. I know that I could certainly spin my second hand CD collection into spun gold with the simple man - he had a stall at Salamanca, and E-bay style, if you were selling him CDs, so someone told me, if you had some kind of interesting story to go along with the CD, he would pay you more for the CD. For instance, this person told me that he had sold a CD to the guy and was offered two bucks for it, at which point, based on the urban legend, he began a long winded story about how the CD had been his mothers and when she passed away she left to him but a high HECs debt had left him unable to pay his bills and his mother had always said...at which point, the great man from Aeroplane records held up his mighty hand and shook his head. "Two fifty", he said, muttering for everyone to hear, "and next time, come up with better shit than that..."

However, the ultimate second hand shop experience was Burnies maginificent palais du wonder (that's probably atrocious French grammar) Collectors Corner. Now, my local KMart used to be the single worst storers of stock I had ever seen, simply DVDs stacked on top of each other as a small child might when told he can't get outside until he's cleaned his room. Collectors Corner was, in it's infancy, a place where a lot of stuff was just thrown into a grey compact warehouse and left in bundles on the ground, so you really had no idea what you were looking at until you began digging. The staff were just massively indifferent to side issues like theft and vandalism, and spent most of their time pottering around on the Internet looking up the value of old Cher vinyl. If you were a collector of stamps, you were absolutely stuffed, as under the stamp sign in the shop (handwritten on a big piece of cardboard) there were indeed stamps, but they were under the coins which were under the old copies of the New Idea which were under some old fossils. Oddly, the only thing they had taken their time to properly organise was the porn magazines, which were neatly stacked, chronologically ordered, and given roughly a 1/4 of the store, tucked away behind some pretty flimsy saloon doors, which was always pretty embarrassing for any passing cowboys who got confused. Brilliantly, this was the front corner of the store, at least initially, so the saloon doors and the apathetic staff weren't stopping any young men not quite of age from wandering in there to have a cheeky peek - which was bad news for a kid who went to our school, who one day wandered into the saloon to have a quick look at some Playboys (the same kid who later went out with the Centrepoint Jeans girl, bastard) and was so engrossed with the sights, he didn't notice a large group of school friends had spotted him and stood behind him as he perused the articles. When he turned around, they gave him a massive round of applause and some encouragement. Fair play to the lad though - rather than being embarrassed, he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Well, your Mum was busy today"...

And for Burnie, that's practically Oscar Wilde...

Sales Pressure

When I go and see if blue eye shadow girl is working (she was today, she looked lovely and happy) I always make sure to avoid the book section. This is, as I said before, because there's an old woman there with glasses who seems to spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week working with her book mobile to restock the bookshelves. This means that if I was to pick up a book, she would probably ensure that I couldn't read it, glance at it or even pick it up without picking up on it and saying something like "wow, must be a good book!" - I really hate sales pressure in a store, you know when someone in a store makes sure you are buying not browsing, and it means that I will never go into that store again. Which is weird because my glorious job in the bank I'm constantly pressured to sell, sell, sell, so maybe I just don't like it in real life. I hate anyone trying to sell me anything, and I don't care how rude it appears. Yesterday was the pits. I was walking through the shopping mall and this woman went "Hi! I was just waiting for you! Like you were for me! What's your name!" - I just kept on walking. She was from the WWF (not the organisation my beloved and beautiful Leilani Kai wrestled for, the panda one) and it just so awful and cheesy, it really annoyed me. Unless she really was chatting me up, in which case...never mind. What kind of future would we have - throwing red paint on animal haters? No thankyou.

The worst store for sales pressure here in Tasmania, apart from JBHIFI chasing people trying to watch the football out, has always been Angus and Robertson in Hobart. I suppose the one thing you can say about them is at least they are subtle about it, and I suppose it is very annoying that people are looking at magazines with Ana Ivanovic on the front and then leaving without buying so much as a piece of crepe paper or a highlighter. However, how they do it, whether you are in the bookstore or the newsagent part, is to suddenly appear, almost but not quite push you out of the way, and then start stocking the shelves right next to you and almost pressing against your elbow until you leave. It's really awkward and uncomfortable, more than you would know unless you've gone through it. And they never send the attractive staff, it's always the the oldest staff or the mingers or fat blokes they send. I remember (and I apologize for this) when I was about 16, I bought a Playboy (I'd like to think it was irony) and the woman audibly grunted in disgust. Way to make feel me less self conscious. That's probably real sales pressure, when you take a magazine up to the counter and they don't want to sell you it, they'd rather you bought something else. It must be a newsagency thing - my local newsagent where I work actually will come and put magazines around you in plastic as a demonstration that magazines are for buying, not reading. I hope Blue Eye Shadow Girl doesn't do this...

At Melbourne Airport, the worst job in the entire world has to be being the guy who has to shout at people to try and get them to buy credit cards. This is sales pressure where I feel sorry for the person who has that job, and not just annoying sales pressure like the girl at Guess What puts on you just because she's annoying and wants you to leave so she can get back to New Idea and her Kit Kat. It must be a terrible job to yell at people as they go down a concourse, with harassed kids and luggage that hasn't arrived, to try and get them to sign up for an AMEX card. At least the girl who yells at people to offer them free wine has a gimmick - free wine. This guy doesn't even have a free pen to offer people. I can imagine him psyching himself up in the changing area, taking deep breaths, trying to convince himself that today, if he's really on song, he can sell one, just one credit card. I actually spent some of my unemployed time (when I wasn't sleeping with a netballer and watching daytime TV) pissing around on a course that was going to teach me how to sell knives and the people at this course got really, really fired up by the motivational host, and were actually chanting "sell, sell, sell!" - I did too, in fairness, because it meant I got a paycheck that I got to spend on gifts for her, but I wondered how these people were so conned. You were going to sell knifes door to door? Safely? And make millions? Yeah, and I'm dating Jodie Low...

I've mentioned before about the park in Penguin and how after dark before they cleaned it up you could pretty much get anything you wanted from drugs to hardware from the local "youths" - however, in Burnie, it was the opposite, the sales pressure in the park came from people trying to take things off you, the local muggers. That's a pretty extreme form of sales pressure, people trying to take your wallet off you. Burnie wasn't rough by any means, but it had a large, winding track that had no lights at all, perfect for your workaday mugger, pressuring you into selling your wallet or wedding ring, with none of the charm of the local Penguin kids. I remember seeing someone mugged at Carols by Candelight, the last place you would expect anyone to get mugged. Friendly carollers, school kids with candels, probably a performance by Julie Anthony, and knife crime. Don't they all go together? I saw this guy try and mug a woman for her purse but thankfully for everyone, he didn't get it, and I swear the reason he didn't get it was because people who were walking past stopped and went "Awww...don't" and he was all "Shut up" and trying to look menacing and they were all "Come on, it's Xmas!" and he just sort of wandered off bored and a bit bewildered. In the end, he just wasn't good at putting sales pressure on - he'd have lasted one day selling credit cards at the airport...

You don't think he got the knife though off a knife selling course do you?

The worlds loneliest piano player

I am basically, in societys eyes, an old man, which allows me to reflect nostagically on a bunch of things that no one else seems to remember - Egg Flip Big Ms, Jaffa Orange Big Ms (as opposed to Jaffa Big Ms or Orange Big Ms, completely different Big Ms), Blackberry Cadbury Creme Eggs, Caramel Milky Ways, big chunky Jaffas, DMCs (the forerunner to M&Ms, but bigger and the size of a dinner plate), and best of all, lime Spiders. I'm not all that far away from writing some kind of horrendously awful childhood memoir all about Golden Gaytimes (an ice cream foreigners), Phil Maney Pies, Bubble O Bills and whatever happened to proper Butterscotch Ice Cream, with a proper butterscotch flavour and proper butterscotch colouring (I think caramel ruined the ice cream industry) but really, I've just realised I'm really, really hungry, and it's time for some toast. Mind you, even that isn't as good as it used to be, what with them thinning down the bread and the quality of bakers being on the decl...

Anyway, today I was talking to someone about Lime Spiders today, which if you don't know is lime syrup, ice cream, lemonade, sugar and probably whisky mashed up in a big giant glass of fun. Some people will try and tell you that Lime Spiders were the poor relation of the coke Spider, which is an area of great contention in certain Australia discussion circles. However, I would say that anyone who preferes a Coke Spider to a Lime Spider might as well prefer Velvet McIntyre to Leilani Kai, a Sega Genesis to an ATARI, Glenn Ridge to Tony Barber, Shane Woewodin to Dale Thomas, Ulverstone to Penguin or Darren Kappler to Gavin Brown. You could probably make a very sound argument for your position, you could debate to the ends of time, but you would be completely and utterly wrong. Families were basically only together in the 80s for the one day a week they could send the kids to the shops or the milk bar for a lime spider. No family was ever, ever kept together by a trip for a coke spider. And that is absolutely and completely true, so take your coke spider and go to the corner.

Penguin in Tasmania was just up the road from the city of Burnie, which, given the limited nature of shopping in Penguin (apart from the Soapbox) was like a trip to Paris, New York or Launceston. Now, we hated Burnie, not as much as we hated Ulverstone of course, but we still hated Burnie, made Burnie jokes, mocked the locals and their arrogance, and then ploughed into the car anyway and went off to Fitzgeralds or K-Mart to gawp in awe at racks of slacks or the latest games for the Commodore 64 and the great array of shops. Really, you can't overstate when you grow up in a small town the joys of going to a bigger town (or in Burnies case, a slightly bigger city) to do your shopping. Burnie really isn't a remarkable shopping metropolis now I've seen some of the world, but did I mention it had a K-Mart? Fitzgeralds was probably the most exciting shop though, it had a top floor that you could get at with a ramp. A ramp! It had an entire shelf full of He-Man figures so you always came back to Penguin with something good that you could show your friends. And of course you would go back to Penguin and tell all your friends that even though you had a great time, and brought a Ju-Jitsu Heman figure, the locals in Burnie were complete idiots and you wouldn't live there if they paid you. In Heman figures.

At the end of the day, or the end of the trip when your Mum had finally stopped looking at boring dresses, it was off to the Fitzgeralds cafe for a lime spider. Now, Fitzgeralds cafe was the worst cafe in the entire world. Worse even than the store Santas. The Sausage Rolls were awful, the biscuits tasted like sausage rolls, god knows what was in the macaroni and cheese (the only things ruled out were the macaroni and the cheese), and there was a strong smell of old people. And yet, I loved going there. It wasn't just the lime spiders, the best in the entire world bar none, but also even though I was really young, I spent hours studying the worlds loneliest piano player. In the midst of this dreck of a cafe, full of pissed off kids, dis-integrating families, old people waiting to die and canteen staff wondering where the goat meat sandwich was, was an old man sitting in the corner in a dinner suit and tux, playing classical music on a grand piano. His face was a mask of emotions, on the one hand utter professionalism as he concentrated on his Beethoven and Bach played from a sheet music rendition out of the middle of the Classical Composers series. On the other, contempt, no, not quite contempt...despair? Wondering where his life went? Why his classical training had him playing Bach to 6 year olds? He always looked sad, but stoic, like a captain leading his men to certain doom, but still pretending he could turn it all around.

You can see, I don't know many composers.

I always remember once, I was trying to pretend the chips were made of potatoes, when I caught his eye. With an imperceptible flash of his eyes and a shake of his head, he said a lot with his expression. He looked like the worlds loneliest man, and I've always remembered his face, his sad, desperate face, and then the stoicism he showed as he puffed out his cheeks, caught the eye of an old granny, and clammed up with a professional entertainment smile. I think he got away with it, but only just. I was proud of him, and learned a lot from him about the professionalism of doing your job, in the midst of a personal hell.

I'll try and be like him tomorrow, when I face the general public...like him, and blue eye shadow girl...