Jack Frost nipping at your Internet Kiosk

Xmas, or as I call it hell on earth with Bing Crosby songs, is upon us. I'd like to say it's on the faces of people walking by, but all it's meant lately is more people wandering around slowly clutching bags and turning left when all indications are they should be turning right. The boxes in the book store are still all over the floor, although in a nice festive touch there was a 1/2lf eaten Xmas cookie on top of 1ne of them. I think parking is a major problem at Xmas. No wait, I know it is because a woman told me today even though our only established relationship had been to sit back to back with each other on 1ne of those mall couches so beloved of the infirm and elderly and the lazy and bewildered who need somewhere to sit down and read the latest antics of Brynne Gordon in a newspaper. I don't know what this woman expects me to say. She's got a veiny, ruddy face, which is scrunched up in festive anger - her cheeks are the colour of the fire engine that used to roll down the street in Penguin and spray the kids with water, which is ironic because she spits when she talks. Is that ironic? I hate mis-using the word, and my linguistic mental muddle is enough to keep me from fully engaging in the problems she faces making her car fit into a space. She trails off in the middle and turns her attention to a passing elderly gentleman, and he understands instinctively. He has a passionate response which seems to involve blaming David Bartlett for everything not nailed down. I leave them to it, having their mutual bitch fest outside of Big W. A young girl with a horrifically botched pony tail - and 1ne eye going to the shops while the other 1ne is coming home with the change - just stares at them. I think that's what she's staring at. It's so fantastically Deliverance to watch a skelly eyed youngster opening up Big W while 2wo old people have duelling bitches over the issue of car parking, I completely forget I'm supposed to be at brunch...and that's even before Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer soundtracks their moment in my eyesight, and I feel as though my human observation day is going to pan out so richly, I might just sit here, miss brunch, and maybe even miss flupper...

There's no getting away from the Xmas music wherever I go. The only break is a mild Lily Allen interlude, although since it's selling her needlessly repackaged album, I think even that's in the Xmas spirit - the spirit of tat flogging. Sorry Lils. Even the appointed venue for brunch has got into the Xmas spirit, if you call giving a bartender younger than the scotch a red nose the Xmas spirit. Poor girl has to keep pushing it back on every 5ive minutes when she isn't overburdened with steaks and chips. She's so young, I feel compelled to ask her for ID. I don't really, I suspect on this particular day she wouldn't laugh, and in fairness, she's not having the best of days, since a very large, very sweaty man has taken it upon himself to flirt with her in front of his friends. He's decided the best way to go is to stick out the gut Russ Hinze style and start a dialogue about his summer home in Queensland. His eyebrows are raised to the ceiling in perpetual animation, moving and twitching in time with his anecdote. He speaks in a thick pompous accent, letting his steak cool and congeal as he elaborates on the fabulous porch and the anecdotal evidence that he's a tosser gather for everyone to hear. She's frozen in a mix of pity and distraction, and to be honest, a need by the terms and conditions of her employment to wait for his drinks order. After a nervous tap of her pencil, she walks back to the kitchen while the man with the beergut chuckles uproariously at his wheeling and dealing, his fantastic ability to woo a lady. Sitting entirely in tight pants and self indulgent laughter, I wonder if he notices that a large and ugly slab of tomato sauce - so thick it would take your eye out - has slowly and utterly landed on his shirt. It's dribbling down, but he hasn't noticed, and is busy telling an ever bigger lie about some girl he picked up at Syrup...but she's noticed, and stands behind the bar with a big smile on her face as she stares entirely at the sauce stain, and points it out to a fellow waitress. And all is well with her world. A little too well of course, because no 1ne seems to want to bring me my toasted whatever the hell it was I ordered. Instead, I sat back, stuck in my own conversation about cloud computers or some such nonsense, emperilled to watch a clock spin around, maybe until the end of time...or the end of toasting, whatever comes sooner...

They've plonked an internet pay kiosk in the middle of the mall. Pasty faced youths were clamouring all over it today like prisoners would attack their last meal, lost unyielding souls in need of something to do between cursing out poor Sharon. I don't know who Sharon is, but the people at the bus stop really don't seem to like her. I wish that there was a stylish way to spend some of your lunch break sitting in the middle of a shopping mall with a gold coin Internet session entirely yours to enjoy, but needs be as the e-mail must. The kid next to me was entirely engaged in his session, failing to turn around when his Mum wanted him to take some perilously balanced yoghurt off his hands. He was an interesting fellow, long sleeved, stubbly and stubby, sort of Movemberish in a whispy sort of way, laughing in between long sessions of typing, clutching an entire six pack of Honey Banana Up and Go in his paw. Mans reduction from hunter and gatherer to Up and Go drinker has possibly been a disappointment to any would be but as yet unproven God and creator, but what have I hunted and gathered in my life - M&MS? DMCs? Bubble O Bills? His laugh is airless, and a woman in a pink overcoat tuts as she walks past, click clacking her heels on the ground in a show of disappointment that anyone would dare to make noises. She is so busy looking disapproving she almost bowls over a tinsel clad child pretending to be an airplane. Eventually the kid got up and left, kissing his fingers and pressing them to the screen. I presume he has an Internet girlfriend, such was his ardour towards to the screen when he wasn't engaged in reading the ingredients of his nutritious breakfast drink. When I walk past his screen though after he hasn't logged off, and left the little clock on the screen frowning as the time runs down, I can't help notice the picture in his little Internet chat window isn't a picture of him, but of a much better looking person with a much less patchy beard. I wonder if they'll ever meet, and why there's such over-use of the word schnookums. The person after him doesn't notice though, logging off and then engaging in a violent set to with the coin slot that ends with so many curse words, the kid who was pretending to be a airplane stops, asks his mother what a certain word means, and probably ruins any chance he has of getting of that Monopoly game in his Mums bag any time soon...

At dinner my friend tells me they closed Sirocco's, the big nightclub in Burnie, a relative term I suppose, but I wonder what people do up there now. I spent a Xmas there once, back against the wall in an empty warehouse while people I went to school with pashed each other to festive tunes. To say the night lacked opulance and decadance would be to undersell it. Some girl was sick on the DJ. Maybe it wasn't Xmas, maybe mobile disco style all he had brought was Xmas music in a crate filled with vinyl. A crate he later turned upside down and sat on in utter misery while a fight broke out around him, a fight between ho and ho and ho, somewhat fittingly. Such a fragmented moment in my life. I pick at my chips with fitful restlessness, aware that nightclub anecdote is wasted on my friend, a Sunday napping, DVD watching girl who never goes out and is well on her way to being crazy dog lady at some point in her future. I don't think I could sell her on a story about nightclub fights, it's clumsy of me to even try. Across from us a family sit in utter sullen silence. The dad stares at his pate as if he can turn it to ash through baleful staring, the mother is craning her neck to stare over her own shoulder out the window, a piece of chicken on her fork utterly unconsumed, a solitary piece of jewellery on her finger glinting in the fading sunlight, a terribly hair dye job rounding out her misery. The kid is gingery and freckly, trying to smile, but aware something is terribly wrong - he wants to talk about whatever piece of paper he has in his hand, thinks about it, then shoves it back in his pocked lest he melts the familial frost with some good news. They sit like that for an age, not eating, not really doing anything, just stabbing their food then refusing to eat it. My friend doesn't really notice - she's spied a state cricketer in the corner of the restaurant and is trying to flirt entirely through the flirty eating of a carrot and a raised eyebrow or 2wo. I at least get to enjoy some peace and quiet as I nibble at my chips, and let Paul McCartney sing me into a sort of late afternoon nap, while the family at the table across compete in a never ending staring contest with their meals that somehow seems to me to so authentically Xmas, I can only wish them the compliments of the season...

My own house hasn't got anything Xmassy up at all...a terrible Xmas album, but at least I can sleep peacefully without the rustle of tinsel...

Just another beautiful Sunday in the city that's nothing like Middlesbrough

Hobarts Food Court in the middle of the shopping mall is deserted. It's early morning and aside from the odd stray and those pressed into service in the search for shoes sit miles apart at deserted tables. I had arrived into the shopping mall early, the car park deserted, travelling back to humanity in a lift under construction, where the lift voice gives Ground Floor a sexy elongated twist. I imagine lonely men hang on that voice for ages, as they buy their toothpaste and while away the hours until senility. My beverage of choice is a badly frozen coke that drips disdain for the laws of physics. Around me, small Asian teenagers fitfully pick at early morning concoctions simmering in vats, somehow becoming things of promise and disappointment at the same time, almost Buddhist in their complexity. The smell of stew overwhelms them as they rub their sleepy eyes and drink water by the gallon. 1ne girl is smiling a tired smile in my direction while she clutches a bottle of iced tea in her shaking hand, while a cleaner pushes around a cart smelling of Ammonia with no sense of direction, banging it into table legs and chairs and cursing the inventor of the trolley wheel loudly and furiously. It's an unromantic and desperate setting, as vendors arrive to unpack boxes and look busy ahead of a meagre Sunday trade. I've got Bomb The Bass on my IPOD and have shut out most of the worldly distractions. The only other person still eating when I throw my Coke away is a burly Samoan man - my racial profiling is only sound because he has a Samoan rugby top on - with a coke gripped tightly in his clenched fist. He sits his large frame entirely on the edge of his chair, ready to spring off it at the slightest ethnic slight, and I'm certainly not going to give him an opportunity to unfurl his tension on me. As I leave, his mobile phone rings - his ringtone is a Justin Timberlake song, 1ne of the camper 1nes, hard as that is to pick. He grunts Samoanly into the air, and says in a stern lifeless voice the phone belongs to his girlfriend. I believe him, but I feel sorry for the poor coke can, which suffers for the ringtone by being dispatched with a hefty rugby style kick into the bin, as the Samoan walks off steaming, which is more than can be said for the average dim sim coming out of stall no 5...

I take my drink away from the scene of the crime. I wander for a bit past a hot dog stand. I used to eat a hot dog every day from this particular establishment, and still don't quite no why. There's a girl with early morning hair and a black netball skirt draped over the counter of the hot dog stand like a trade show model would drape herself over the bonnet of a car, face down on her elbows smiling sweetly. I suspect she's simply decided to be wacky and outrageous, and she shoots me an arched eyebrow and a wink which suggests as much. I'm not in the mood for wacky and outrageous though, and when I walk off she's trying to show a bit of thigh to an elderly passing gentleman who's holding a pack of Band Aids and walking at a glacial pace. He doesn't even stop to look at the rogue thigh, or if he does, he's used more subtle perving techniques than the average passer by. He's very protective of his band aids though. He holds them in the palm of his hand and hisses angrily at any passer by who comes near him, his tight jeans, his slicked back poster boy for brylcreem hair, but most of all his Band Aids. The girl on the counter of the hot dog stand is undeterred at being turned down and continues to try and throw sexy shapes underneath an illuminated cartoon boy holding a hotdog who's smile and expression never changes. The old man with the Band Aids pushes a baseball cap tightly onto his head with all the care and style of a true Syrup patron trying to look young under a strobe light and begins muttering to his companion about what a terrible day he's had. She holds up her left hand, a wrinkled stop sign, and asks for the Band Aids. It breaks the old mans spirit to be nagged and dismissed, his face and standard of hair care visibly wilting, so he looks back for a glimpse of thigh, and then turns in the direction of the sexy lift, condemned to a life of Sunday shopping until death do them part...

I'm in Harris Scarfe. 1nce Fitzgeralds, a jewelled hubbub of Xmas decorations, strangely piled up toys and things with horribly incorrect price tags - look ma! A kettle for 4c - it's now just a glorified cavernous warehouse, sale signs stuck to the floor and middle aged mothers swishing cougar like through the rack of affordable but fashionable jumpers. 1ne of them, glammed up to the 9nes, proudly holds up a kimono style nightgown, audibly saying Ta-Da in the direction of some confused Indian students who had hopped in for batteries. Do they say Ta-Da in India or is it just her shimmering middle aged silver eyeliner that has confused them, who could say, but they are entranced at the gaudy display regardless. She hams it up of course, saying in the direction of no-1ne in particular I'll take it, and then putting her hands on her hips like Anne Maree Cooksley would have done on the fringes of a Price Is Right set, straddling the showcase. Trouble is of course, there's no staff to ring up the purchase. So we all form 1ne elongated queue, the Indians at the back arguing about why he didn't just buy batteries at the garage, me, rocked by an ice cream headache as the Frozen Coke kicks in like anarchy at a rock festival, the silver woman, who I realise has a tattoo on her hand in Japanese writing that bends and twists and sags through her wrinkles, that unfortunately I stare at a little bit too long until she catches me and almost, but thankfully doesn't, engage me in conversation about. At the head of the queue are a party of elderly English grumblers, all tweed, grey hair and walking canes, hunting the biggest game of all - a shopkeep. The senior member of the hunting party leans on his elbow at the counter like they he's propping up the bar and says it was never like this in Middlesbrough. As I like at the queue and a red faced puffy girl in tight black pants sprinting from the remnants of homeware to serve us, I can only, albeit quietly, concur...

The lift back to the car is sadly voiced by an aggressive, sullen German sounding woman who sighs audibly at the arrival on Car Park Level 3hree. I only share the disembodied voices disappointment because my car is still there intact and not taken by urchins for scrap - the insurance payout is surprisingly tasty. I left most of my melancholy behind at lunch anyway, picking and nibbling at a cold chicken parma while 2wo bogans broke up behind me and a barmaid of a nervous disposition let out an audible obsencity when she dropped a glass. My mood is not especially bouyant on this particular Sunday anyway - sports are not your friend my son and neither are the encroaching black eyes of middle age. A barmaid who missed her calling to play a panto dwarf makes amiable mid lunch conversation as she wipes the crumbs from a previous occupant off the table with a sweeping motion of her jaycloth. She tells me about her life, as if I asked, as the crumbs, when I look closer, aren't swept at all, but huddled in the corner like naughty schoolchildren late back from lunch. I haven't been so penned into a corner since I was offered a screenplay by a crazy man on a bus. She isn't in a particularly cheerful mood either, all bangs and curls and incomplete sentences that end in that Australian way where it sounds like a definitive statement is somehow also a question. She isn't happy with her life, she isn't happy with her jaycloth, her chunky bangles clang off the edge of a table as the steam from my chips threatens to fog up her glasses. Most of all she isn't happy about Hobart. She begins tearing the place to shreds as she wipes nothing in particular. I think about my morning and wonder if this is what I sound like to my particular sounding boards, but in the end I say nothing other than to tell her Hobart has it's flaws, but it's nothing like Middlesbrough, and she disappears into the kitchen confused as the bogans eat a make up chip, reconciled as quickly as they broke up, the issue of what the lead singer of Nickelbacks real name is finally and utterably settled...

I would like to go to Middlesbrough 1ne day for what it's worth...if I'm stuck in a queue, I'll know they are lying...