Stress lessened by cordial, increased by sunburn, lessened by MGMT

I don't think it's an oversight to say a bottle of slightly mutated mango cordial is saving my life right now. It's proving an outlet at work when I feel lousy, due to my illness obviously, not due to emotional problems because sandwich white female hasn't been at work the last few days and I've had to eat, god help me, sausage rolls with extra burnt bits, an excuse to go out the back and say I need a cordial break. I'm far from superstitious, but I know this isn't the first time I've relied on an inanimate object to get me through tough times - although cordial isn't an inanimate object, since it's a liquid, but shut up, you don't know me, throw my hands up in blatant posturing etc - as my tonsil surgery when I was 5ive was entirely brightened up by having a Ju Jitsu Heman figure purchased for me to stop my whinging. His karate chopping hand and amusingly sculpted beard certainly kept me sane when the doctor was going to drain my ears in a hilarious operational mix up that's for sure. When Dad, having driven for 2wo hours after work to see me politely asked how I felt I'm rumoured to have pulled a face and screamed how do you think I feel, but I suspect that's my Dads mythology kicking in. After all, he loves a good moan, and if he's sick, all the better. He even has a favourite brand of grape for you to bring him. My friend, the one with the husband who uses her credit card to buy fat girl porn, is sending me e-mails making that my support of Britney Spears through the dark times is some sort of tremendously cool statement of individuality I should be proud of. Well, buying fat girl porn on a credit card is a statement of individuality. I hadn't thought about it - I certainly don't feel like any kind of radical free thinker, especially given my lunch routine is now so predictable a girl in a hat jumps out from the shadows to provide my daily rations like Jesus without the fish. Certainly dizzy from the heat, reliant on cordial to prop me up and in a job that requires the mental capacity of a promotions model to do, I can hardly claim to be charting my own course, but it's nice people think of me in that way from time to time. Certainly, in times of stress, simple thinking and taking a moment to enjoy the simple things in life like an appreciative if flawed e-mail or a glass of sparkling cordial can just about get me through the day as long as I don't end up sounding like some kind of hippy with a tattoo of the sun on my foot.

When I was 8eight, I got badly sunburned during an athletics carnival. I was in the genetically superior yellow house, whipped into a Soviet style frenzy of patriotism and devotion to my colour through the power of one coloured skivvy being handed out from a pile by a surly janitor at random as opposed to another coloured skivvy. We would sit on the hill all day and cheer nominally for our house, at least in theory, because after an hour it felt like it a grass based internment camp, although at least our interest lasted an hour, it was 10en minutes in secondary school before I was working the moves on the more lithe javelin throwers and then going to the shops to buy a chocolate milk. The fact I couldn't move and was essentially was engrossed in egg and spoon warfare meant that one of my rare salad days in athletics - alas I soon discovered cynicism and cake - when I could run properly without looking like a benny ended in skin reddening horror. Even though I won my race, and would later run in front of the Queen (the real one, not our camp PE teacher) that wasn't what everyone remembered about me from that day. I certainly think that the trauma of being turned into a lobster stymied my thoughts of athletic glory, as the visual representation of the phrase if you can't stand the heat get out of the internment camp marked off by ropes and strict teachers wanting to now where you are going. When I went home that night, my Mum immediately plunged me into a cold bath and said nothing, just shaking her head and saving her lectures on wearing a hat for another day. My girlfriend at the time, Sarah, my girlfriend in that you like pencil cases me too lets get married kind of way, wasn't so terribly stoic in the face of my burnt visage. She took one look at me and asked in a manner which bespoke over theatrical text speak if I was going to die. It probably seems a more relevant question now in the skin cancer era, all we knew back then was those birds telling us to slip slop slap sure could hold a tune. Although she was ahead of her time, I felt our relationship never really recovered from a superficial moment. If she couldn't love me in times of crisis when I had a big red bawface, then all the mutual pencil case appreciation in the world couldn't dig us out of the hole. Considering that in the space of roughly a week I had my first memorable experience with genuine pain, not to mention an outright question about my own mortality, been thrown physically into an ice bath and ended up with my first heartbreak (pretty apathetic as it was - we just stopped meeting in the pipe at recess), it was a pretty effective mental lesson that I should cover up in the sun lest bad things happen. Of course, it never sunk in, and to this day I still lumber home, burned to bits, my Mum still lectures me, and I'm still plunging into ice baths...form an orderly queue ladies...

Interestingly, this was my first brush with honest to goodness adult stress. Sure, I hadn't managed to find an egg on an Easter egg hunt, there was that whole debacle when Wide World Of Sports wasn't on one week because some junk called Live Aid was on, and I had probably thrown a hissy fit or two about football cards, but being plunged into singles life and being something of a playground outcast on account of my giant red face was a stressful week - I mean, even Peter Gilligans recap of local football getting the axe for the lead singer of Ultravox wouldn't compare. It was worse than comedy tennis. I couldn't help but feel it was my fault somehow. If only I had stayed pristine and faintly tanned, I'd still be in the pencil case relationship. I had a friend called Nick - somewhere in Risdon now if lore and reputation held up - who was a bit of a scammer, a wheeler dealer. He also told it like it was - and if you needed a man to parody a popular song with a reference to bogeys or snot, he was your go to guy, a Weird Al of the nose and nose related products. He was firm though as we queued for Bubble O Bills in the assembly hall that my social standing was fading and by the way what did I think of his new song, Snot In The First Degree? Amusing as the song parody was, I still wasn't convinced that simply being red made me the social equivalent of comedy tennis, but I took it on board. I shone as hard as I possibly could at Footy Maths - cop that Pilkington - and I tried to impress new ladies with some impressively hard tugs of their pigtails, but I still felt a frost, which while cooling towards my sunburn did little to warm my ill begotten socially adrift heart. As it happened, a girl who's name is lost to history, a Lauren or a Karen or some generic mid 80s Burnie name, fell over and showed most of the playground her knickers, and eventually an entire generation of people would say I was there on the fateful day as she stumbled for loose change and dignity on a bare patch of neatly mowed grass. As my woe passed and she became the story of the day, I was left realising that I didn't understand the game, couldn't play the game, and tried to affect an air that since I didn't understand social rules or playground lore, I would be above them. I wish I had stuck to that, but of course, for the rest of my school days I was always one bout of sunburn away from stress and nervousness...heh, Snot in the First Degree, that's killer material, the inmates must love him...

The stressful day continues - I have to have a nanna nap just to take the pain from my eyes, which I think was a Smiths B Side in the 80s. The trendy radio DJs are blethering empty sentences about tennis, while when I drive home a fight nearly breaks out when a motorbike rides in the same lane as a car, and they exchange jabbing fingers through the window until the motorbike rider has a Harley Davidson cliche seminar to attend and wheels away with his beard fluttering in the breeze. If I lived at home still, Dad would have made me a tasty cup of tea and Mum would have asked an abundance of gently probing but ultimately annoying questions until I could steer the conversation towards great comedy moments. Alas, I come home to an empty house, but there are outlets. Not least of which, the opportunity to make a delicious lime spider, rock in the hammock listening to now apparently acceptable music, the chance to yell at a football manager who doesn't know what a clown I think he is, and shoo a dog out of my front yard with comedy one sided intensity. That is, I'm intense, the dog couldn't give a shit, which is good for my lawn I guess. Most of all though, an advert comes on television - a radio station promo which flashes up the names of three allegedly trendy bands and then the station logo, as some sort of socially acceptable look at us we can name the same 3hree bands as everyone else banner hung over the rafters. Which is how I find myself holding a 1/2 drunk lime spider, doped up on Codril and whatever the hell that blue pill was in the basket (no, it wasn't that one) in my cupboard, screaming at the TV obscenities about MGMT, a band who's noodling I find inoffensive and meh at most stages, but for some reason, and it is my theories wars start because a dictator didn't have his juice in the morning, it has inspired a solitary hulk smash rampage against the machine that had it been recorded would have amused all and sundry with it's over use of the word noodlings (it's been twice in this blog post and it's amused me). For some reason though, it's a cathartic yelling, and I feel immediately better and am able to get some rest. My Mum, if she was here, apart from calling me a twat, would call me on a strange character trait - she always thinks any time I'm angry, it's an act, and soon I'll just get over whats bothering me and carry on with my day. She never really believed my huffs, even after a stint at acting class. Naturally, this comes into my head as I stand in my living room puffed but happy, having unloaded both barrels on an inoffensive advert. Is that all it takes for me to get over stress? A good yell and a lime drink? I'm quite happy if that's the case, I'm quite pleased with myself...

I'm just glad it wasn't the ESPN ad and a mention of Beyonce...I don't want to test the theory to it's outer limits...

The trouble with other peoples parties

Cooksleyplusone
Originally uploaded by JungsPN

OK, so Mary Livesey news is obviously thin on the ground, but this places style icon, the champion of the cheese plate, the filly of the function, the legend of the launch and lunch, Anne Maree Cooksley, was in the paper with a new boyfriend. It was awful that they pointed out she looks like Suzie Wilks, I hate that, she doesn't need to look like anyone else, she looks like AMC and AMC only. She's dating former Mimco owner David Briskin. I have no idea what Mimco is or was, but they seem a lovely couple. There was a reference to the "in crowd" going to some bar called Fog in Prahan, which obviously isn't as good as that bar in Sydney where you sit on milk crates after you get an SMS entry code, but it still seems pretty "in" - I mean, it's got black lacquered columns, gift vouchers and cocktails. I can't imagine it plays Dave Dobbyn at 2am like Hobarts own Syrup, but if it's good enough for my girl, it's good enough for me. I love AMC, because her job, as far as I can tell, is professional partier, and I would love a job like that. I'm amazed more people don't champion her fantastic work. Stephanie Rice this, Leisel Jones that. How did Sonia "they are just getting me to play the dumb blonde, honest, tee hee" get to be famous while AMC toils in relative obscurity. It's a shame I tell you, a damn stinking shame.

Of course, the parties I go to really have relation to those the goddess of the free glass of champagne goes to. I am a really bad party guest, I always have been, particularly at other peoples parties where I have to show an interest in the event. I'm also someone who likes to be home by 2am, which doesn't always endear me to people. And when I say home, I mean my own home, I don't like staying at other peoples houses. I tend to freak out a bit if I'm drunk and can't work out how to get out of a room. As for my own parties, when I lived in Penguin they were always really popular - my Dad would cook sausages, we'd go over to Penguin football oval and kick a football, and my Mum and Dad would play this horrendous vinyl (remember that kids?) disc that you could only play if you put coins on the stars on the disc, and it was an alien singing that it was my birthday and they'd zoomed from the moon. It was just absolutely horrible, and I used to run away whenever it was played, which is an elixir to Scottish parents, who just play it more and more. Then they would run dancing competitions, and give me the prize even though, as we've discussed, I danced like Tamsyn Lewis runs. Crap. There was always a big fight from someone who felt gypped they didn't win a prize, and I'd usually end up in a big huff. My main fear though was, and it is to this day, that no-one would turn up. It's the party equivalent of having no one laugh at your stand up show, of dying on the toilet, of running like Tam...oh you know what I mean. I tend to find in Tasmania, 12 means a Tassie 12, which is about 12:20, so if you don't know that, 12 rocks around, and you're standing there looking down the path thinking no one is turning up and you've made too much fairy bread for one person to eat. Of course, the Tassie 12 wasn't something my parents adhered to - if we had to go a party, a Tassie 12 became a Scottish 11, and we were always there before the setting up had even begun. The number of times I sat alone in a cold rumpus room, watching TV or throwing darts until the other kids came along, it was almost every week growing up. I think my Mum just had a thing for helping set out fairy bread...

However much my own parties were a mass of will they-won't they-how did he win the dancing competition emotions, it was other peoples parties that always seemed to be weird, alien and foreign. I went to school with this kid who's parents served oranges during a break in the sports and games. No cake, just oranges, which was like stepping onto Mars for weirdness in early 80s Tasmania. They were friends of Grant Hackett I think, and they had all the Classical Composers magazine set, even the composers no one knew, unlike us who gave up after Chopin. I stayed with another friend of mine for a week (this was a different friend to the axe wielding family), and he had a Commodore 64 in his basement, and a soccer game on cassette. Naturally, I spent the entire weekend playing the computer and really annoying him because it was his birthday week and he wanted to play volleyball. Crazily, outside in the sunshine volleyball - what a fool. I'd like to think I was selfish and learned a valuable lesson, but obviously, I didn't, I'd do it again if I had to, those soccer games were fantastic. The main thing I remember from other peoples parties when I was growing up was the varying quality of cordial - no one ever got a glass of champagne, just cordial in a paper cup - which would always set aside the future social standing of kids. Kia-Ora was vaguely acceptable, but any kid with Cottees was feted and beloved. Home Brand was a source of death. No one I knew ever threw a fancy dress party, although I was once in the paper, through circumstances I can't explain, dressed at a fancy dress party as The King Of Hearts. Mind you, whatever the theme or quality of juice, I was never a good party guest, I was anxious and nervy as a child, thinking that if I wasn't getting attention or spoken to, I was doing something wrong. Mind you, sometimes being lost in the mix was quite a good thing - this one time, I stayed overnight at this kids house, and all the kids staying over decided that it would be nice, at 3am, to cook the parents of this kid a little breakfast as a thankyou for their generous hospitality and lashings of fairy bread. It was only many years later I realised that when we delivered it to them in their room after a lot of effort, we actually disturbed the process by which a mummy and daddy loved each other very much. When I actually realised that, many years later when I was sitting on a bus, I thought how bad it was that I had disturbed them, and how bad it was that this other kid went back 10 minutes later to ask them if they enjoyed their breakfast...

Of course, by the time I grew up, in mid 90s Burnie, alcohol was thrown into the mix. I was still a terrible party guest, still nervous, but now drunk, and a little bit more relaxed as a result. Instead of being inside eating fairybread we were now outside around a campfire, drinking and doing some rather ungentlemanly spews in the back garden. Completing the circle fully, I was often chastised for sitting inside watching TV instead of going outside and getting smashed. There were girls at the parties, often huddled around the fire singing Alanis Morrisette songs, and there was always something really dramatic going on - I don't know exactly when the drama at parties changed from quality of cordial to X and Y broke up because Y was found on top of Z, but it was a fairly sudden lurch, almost overnight. Burnie being a small town, you had to tread carefully at these parties, lest some kind of scandal get out involving the daughter of a prominent shop owner, a boy, a bathtub and slatherings of baby oil, just to pick something at random. Nothing like this ever happened to me - mores the pity. Although, I did once go to a party with Burnies social elite, in a downstairs part of a nightclub, for one of my friends birthday. It was so exclusive, I was the only person from our little social group to score an invite, and to this day, i have no idea why that is. Given my previous adventures in Ayrshire with the weird downstairs poker den, I was incredibly excited to finally make it past the velvet ropes and see what was in the VIP room of a nightclub. As it turned out, they had kitted out the entire room to look like this persons bedroom, with My Little Pony posters. Naturally, I was freaked out by this, and really didn't have a good night, and it wasn't my kind of demographic. It was a lot of rich people, snobby families and people into Air Supply. I struck up a long and tedious conversation with a used car dealer (that might make it sound common and earthy, but it was used BMWs, and I still remember how bored I was, and how much my head hurt) and his son, who I think fancied me. Anyway, I was just about to go home, when for reasons I can't quite explain, someone (well, obviously the DJ, but someone requested it) put on the Nutbush, and all the old uncles and aunties got up and danced around, and I realised you can set up a party as snobby as you want, you can put on the fanciest parties, but at heart, people always want to do the Nutbush and get pissed and pick up. I felt better about my social standing at that point, and as I walked home through the cold Burnie air, I thought, you know what, if I could just a lucky break, get some confidence in myself, maybe, just maybe I could get invited to the Fog nightclub in Prahan...

Of course, my dear AMC, I could never fit in your world - I went to a club in London and was thrown out, a club that two hours previously had ejected Peaches Geldolf...I know that you would never go somewhere so common...no free champagne for one thing...