1nce, 2wce, 3hree, 4our, 5ive, 6ix, 7even times A September...

It's a hot afternoon in Melbourne. I've drank all the water the liberal bag checkers on Virgin blue have allowed me to carry on, I've worn the battery out of my IPOD and read my football clubs sanctioned account of their latest miserable failure - I've wandered and ambled around an airport terminal until a suitable time for me to leave has passed, and been faintly embarrassed as a minor celebrity has passed her own time in the airport by throwing a ridiculous hissy fit about Subway sandwiches. I briefly think about taking a picture, but there's no value on it, much like eating the sandwich. I'm now in a taxi with a portly Indian cab driver. I've shown him a grubby piece of paper with an address on it, and I've got nothing more to say other than short grunts and nods of direction. To compensate, he puts the acoustic version of Cry For You by September on 7even times in a row on CD repeat, and taps the steering wheel in tune each time with pudgy fingers it comes on as if it's a surprise to him. For all I know that's all he does all day, drive around, not finding where he's supposed to go, letting the sweat stains accumulate on his work shirt while he plays Cry For You for tourists in the hope of creating a convivial atmosphere. He certainly seems happy enough, but I'm relieved I never have to hear the song again by the time he dumps me seemingly miles away from my destination. I'm outside a hospital, forced to ask a scrunchy faced freckly intern for directions. She's helpful, then returns to her Sudoku, her face even more scrunched as she clicks her pen in a frantic motion. Later, I see her out and about free from such cubicle puzzle based restrictions, throwing such strangely odd shapes on the dancefloor her face unscrunches and she almost tears a hamstring. I try and tell my dancing companion about my interest in co-incidence, the strange way in a city of millions I've seen the same person 2wice in a matter of hours but she's not listening. She's not an intellectual, she's not bothered by the notions that I am, the random nature of the universe, just things that are shiny, things that are basic and simple - beats, rings, how some drinks are like so expensive. That's fine, it's not the night for universal discourse. I can't help feeling though she should meet the taxi driver, I could see them together some how, just never letting a thought enter their heads, just eternally listening to September over and over again until the end of time. She asks me what I'm thinking about, eyes gleaming between songs, but I can't articulate fully, and unless I could display it in interpretative dance, she'd get bored with it anyway. So, I simply queue up to get some more drinks, because truthfully, this is my thinking out loud outlet - the rest of the time, I'm as confused as the DJ was when The Vengaboys came on 3hree songs too early, and his entire night seems ruined by a moment of disappointment, his face never 1nce recovering it's early poise, bounce and hope...

I'm weighed down by the eternal notion I can tell when people I'm staying with have had enough of me I should say. I blame my mother. She used to load me up with so many things to worry about any time I stay with someone - from the time I was a kid -I can never really relax. I'm staying with my cousin, 1ne of those people who's link to me through routes of adoption, through quirks of fate and the fickle way someone in Asia picked a particular baby out of a particular cot because Mums sister was their on a particular day are not as thought about as often as they could. I think by day 3hree of my visit, she's had enough of me. I can't be certain about that, but I think so anyway. I at least get a toasted sandwich out of my visit, and am able to pass on several impressive nuggets of popular culture I've gleamed during my time on earth. I can't help but feel as though somehow I'm cramping her style. Maybe I'm being unfair. It's still best to move on though so she can do something more glamourous with her day. There's a bewildering tram junction outside her house, and a mysteriously glamorous but sad looking woman in the pool at her block of flats just swimming up and down all day as if she stops she'll cease to exist. I would ask my cousin, but I've probably exhausted my conversational stock. My cousins flat mate I never see due to poorly matched schedules. He seems to love photos of himself, they adorn the assigned spaces on the wall he owns, the kind of accumulated memories males like to assign themselves. Pubs, cricket, arms around minor celebrities with startled uncomfortable expressions. My cousin has no wall, no photos up, just a Gossip Girl DVD on the table in a sea of cricket books, and a mug on the balcony. Other than that, there's no real evidence she lives here. Maybe she is never here, and I've stuck her inside for a while, and if I had anything to say, I should say it now, should perhaps be a bit deeper in conversation, but I'm too tired. I came, I saw the thing I wanted to see, we had a drink, and it's as far as it can ever go. The lady in the swimming pool shakes all the water from herself and looks utterly morose as she ploughs back into the pool. I have so many questions, and somehow no inclination to ask them. I've mentally checked out, and I don't even realise it. Maybe somehow in 2010 I'll connect with all these dotted around cousins, ask them about their skating trophies, their sexy but depressed looking neighbours, their lack of personal effects inside their own house...maybe...or maybe it's just too late, and I should stick to Lady GaGa talk...it's too much for 1ne backpack lugging tired male in a BK Hacken top to work out on 1ne tram ride...

I'm in some pub by now anyway, by the time my brain works again, some strangely lit pub that uses it's big screens to advertise chicken parmas that look about 8eight foot tall and a strange mix of weird colours on a TV that should be showing rock bands or what the other TV screen in showing, a sporting star on the other side of the world looking disconsolate on the sidelines, having long ago given up on his own team. I'm between friends, 1ne having had to go back to work, the other held up by inefficient hotel standards. The sports star never recovers, looking on the sidelines like he's just been seduced by the giant chicken parma ad and been sorely disappointed. Time is moving very slowly between sparsely sipped drinks, the price prohibitive, the heat discouraging further exploration of other spaces. Most of the conversation is, like my first friends, faux ambitious, dreams, unclosed business deals, secretaries hot for their bosses, men in suits who turn playing on the same course as Tiger Woods 6ix weeks apart into some kind of personal meeting and endorsement from the apparently great man. Women, I suspect, are tolerated in this place, perhaps a table accoutrement stuck up the end, rarely prodded into conversational action while the men break bread. At the next table over from me sits 1ne such girl - she's got a stripey green top on and says nothing for almost an hour while the 2wo guys she is with talk endlessly about their work and their colleagues, and even when she leaves her farewell acknowledgement is clipped and cold, an irritant to the conversational flow. It only dawns on me later that the first guy, a sort of Robson Green a like with a flimsy November moustache, seems to be downplaying all of the office staff and over emphasising their personal flaws if the 2nd guy, a metrosexual in jarringly bright denim, talks them up as a potential girlfriend, and begins telling the 2nd guy without fail how he can do a lot better. It begins to dawn on me after a while the 1st guy is really into the 2nd guy, and is keen to just sit and talk and gaze into his eyes. I wonder if the 2nd guy will ever realise, maybe he likes the attention. Their world is only on show for a moment though - they leave discussing Glee, and their replacement family are as bland and boring as the 10en dollar pizza deal, and never for a second speak, but chew silently and quietly as a parade of Finn brothers replace the Chicken Parma on the big screen, while the sports star sits with his unchanged expression, only moving when the aggressively blonde barmaid decides it's time for the suits to see golf...

A day passes, a night passes, an entire Xmas parade passes before my eyes. I lock eyes with a man in a historical recreation outfit who looks like he's about to die in the heat, a man clearly uncomfortable his passion to dress like a gold miner has been hijacked by corporate stores who employ large men with big megaphones. He disappears from view when a Tweenie leaps in front of him to steal the spotlight and wave frantically to the crowd, while a Japanese man behind me tramples over small children to take a picture. He has a T-shirt which just says AWESOME DAD on it in large black letters, in an eye wateringly large fault. He doesn't seem to have kids with him though, if he did it would probably be bitterly ironic anyway because I think he'd stand of their heads just to get up close and personal with a Tweenie. I immediately become like him though, since I'm in big city mode, pushing grandmas out of the way because if I don't, I'll be trampled, I'll be swallowed up and that book that I've ordered will sit in some1nes pigeon hole forever. I don't feel especially fit, and I'm feeling sorry for myself, damned hay fever, and why did no-1ne appreciate my new Sierra Leone top? I mean I bought it specially. Philistines. There's people all around me, bumping into me, or I'm bumping into them, I can't quite tell. A Myer spruiker heads directly for me with a microphone, I think to ask me for the crowds amusement what I think of the parade, but I sidestep him with a deft swerve, and he's left fumbling in dead air. I think he had to ask the Japanese guy a series of stilted and awkward questions instead, I didn't really have time to work it all out. Meanwhile, outside an abandoned looking cafe, a homeless woman with grey straggly hair in a filthy blue and black tracksuit can't get up in the heat - she just lies in the doorway while a series of corporate messages and floats walk or drift straight past her. I know I feel completely uncomfortable when 1ne of the Tweenies casually waves in her direction, but I don't really have time to register how I feel. It's been that kind of weekend. Things happen, then apace it all changes, and thoughts only register much later, it's too hot, it's not my city, she wasn't that interested, she was too interested, the story was too long, too short, not punchy enough. And now it's all over, and I've ended up nose to jaw with a Tweenie, hand extended for a hi-5. What the hell, come here tiger. There's kids watching, and I'm part of some kind of experience, but I don't know what. I can't make sense of it all. The homeless woman slumps back in her alleyway, the Japanese man has moved on, and Melbourne won't mind if I quietly and subtly move on, back to Hobart, where what I do counts for something, if only because there's people registering my movements. Carefree time is over. Back to work. Maybe 1ne odd regret, but nothing to write home about...txt msgs can always be deleted, can't they?

You'll never see me again...and now who's gonna cry for you...over and over and over again...until the end of time...

The rebranding of Dismal Swamp

There wasn't much to write home about today 0ther than the Asians with the table gave up on cheap socks after one day, returning with cheap jewellery. I can't wait to see if they rock up tomorrow with second hand books - maybe they'll be like that guy in Burnie who had a closing down carpet sale advertised on TV...for three years. Blue eye shadow girl looked sad, perhaps concerned about the random nature of violence in contemporary society (I think she's a deep thinker concerned with the fading nature of humanity when she's probably ruminating on the plot of Beverly Hills Chihuahua), and a body turned up in the water, but it's best not to think about it. No one appears to have been stabbed today, but my Mum, being the worrier that she is, is already planning to lock me in the basement rather than have me queue for a taxi at night. I'm more concerned with being exposed to the musical stylings of Lady GaGa (please god don't let her sing live!) in some Hobart nightspot or the punch happy bouncers than I am random stabbings (although that doesn't apply to Canadian buses). I don't know whether it's my age or my in built cynical fatigue, but out of going out to Hobart nightspots or sitting in a pub at a 75th birthday party (my two social obligations on Saturday) I'm actually more looking forward to the 75th. At least I'll be allowed in and there won't be bouncers. There'll just be stimulating conversation from a man who once nearly drove us into a tree because he thought he saw his brother in another car and veered off the road. Since it's in a Kingston pub, there will inevitably be men in jeans not quite pulled up right, some slightly shady gambling bets and debts, and best of all, a jukebox that no one ever uses that hasn't been updated since the glory days of Magic Dirt, covered in a firm film of dust and grime. Kingston really is crying out for a pub, but of course, with the NIMBYs in the area, that's more of a dream than a reality.

What has upset me today though is the fact that one of the North West Coasts main (and I think Smithtons only) tourist attractions has had a, sigh, "rebranding". There's nothing lamer in this world than a rebranding, and I should know since my company has had one, and someone gets paid a lot of money to redo the logo and nothing changes about the company at all. Anyway, there's a tourist attraction called "Dismal Swamp" - there's a slide, that's all you really need to know. When I went there, some old woman hilariously pretended to have lost her teeth on the slide, which is an awesome prank you must admit if you have false teeth. Some Japanese people took pictures and offered to go down the slide and find her teeth for insurance purposes. The reason it was called Dismal Swamp is because some explorers had a terrible night there and then found a much better swamp and that's Welcome Swamp. A little bit like getting tickets to a Powderfinger gig and then finding out Miley Cyrus is performing instead (erm, maybe not for everyone). However, because some people found the name "offputting", Dismal Swamp has now been rebranded "Tarkine Forest Adventures" - I was absolutely shattered when I found this out. Some kids didn't want to go to a place called "Dismal Swamp?" - I'd have killed when I was a kid to be packed into the car and taken there, it would have made a great change from buying yellow T-shirts at Ulverstone K-Mart being called "an outing". I instantly rang up Dad and said it wasn't right and he said "What are you talking about? What swamp? Who lost their teeth?" which I took as a sign that he was outraged like me. I guess I'm a traditionalist - there's a hairdressers in Penguin called Swannies that just doesn't feel the same now Swanny is dead and they probably don't give out musk sticks to kids after they have their hair cut or their ear slashed in half (depending on Swannies mood)...how can I go into that hairdressers without that 50/50 chance or a musk stick at the end? It's just not the same...

When I moved away from Burnie and came back - I can't quite remember the exact year, but the KMart mall, where I once worked at the magical Coles Supermarkets, they decided to give the front of the mall a bit of a repaint and a facelift and a good old rebranding. This was in response to a massive and evergrowing queue of bogans who stood outside it looking bogany and cool as they wiled away their days until death. One of these bogans incidentally my was my school principal, a fat bloke who always seemed to be outside licking a lollipop. And yes, one of these bogans sometimes was me, although it was usually I was waiting for Mum and got involved by proxy, trying to chat up bogan girls with lines about popular musical acts of the day. From memory, the front of the mall was grey, and pretty faceless, the colour of a Sting solo album really. By the time I came back to Burnie in a terrible attempt to rekindle old dying friendships, the mall had been rebranded a plaza and painted a magical shade of tropical wonder - orange, blue, a different shade of orange, some sort of weird arse pink, then a bit more orange. It was a brilliantly stupid idea, as befits a town that's officially a city but has the population of a town which should disqualify it as a city but since no one in the town can be bothered filling in the paperwork to disqualify it as a city it's not a town but a city (thankyou Dr Seuss). I always remember seeing it painted in those colours and standing looking at it and an old bloke in a pork pie hat and some giant coke bottle glasses sauntered up to me. My natural suspicion of strangers kicked in and I tried to get away, but he was staring at it, and I guess so was I, and he wasn't leaving. He stroked his stubbled chin, nodded and said "Well, they fucked that up then" and wandered off. I was going to chase after him and try and get him to apply for a position on the town planning commission, but he had wandered off to Toyworld, I guess to just have a pop at the big Purple bear...

I guess I have a natural suspicion of rebranding, I think it's just a way of spending money on something that never works. I'm suspicious of people who rebrand and reposition themselves as well - my cousin, one time when I went back to Scotland, he was completely different. When we had known him, he was, in the best sense of the word, a character, by which I don't mean he's been made up for the purposes of narrative construct, because he was real, but let's just say he taught us all how wearing a Scotland soccer tracksuit can be used to pick up, and how not to run into the young Conservatives conference drunk and yell "Up the Unions!", among other stories. When I went back, he had a steady girlfriend called Kathryn (a hairdresser who hated the song "Stayin Alive" by N-Trance, which was quite bad for her that we all knew it, because my cousin just played it louder), was committed to his career, and was trying to get fit by playing five a side soccer on a Friday night. His Mum was really proud of him, telling us how much he had changed and how well he was doing. I felt good for him, especially when I found out he was saving for a boat, although as with most of the holiday 95, I was disappointed that everyone had changed so much in the intervening three years (including me I guess). I went round to his house on Champions League night to watch a game on television, and he was chatting about amicable things - work, pension plans, my job at Coles (got to get to that soon). One of this friends came round, and they talked about much the same things, work, pension plans, the merits of Roy Evans playing Fowler on his own up front. As I hung out in the kitchen pondering my own life and wondering if I should grow up and abandon childish plans for my own late night talk show, his friend casually mentioned that Kathryn wasn't around. "Nah," said my cousin, leaning back in his recliner, "she's no happy wi me - she caught me shaggin the neighbour..." - and with that, a whole year of rebranding collapsed to the ground, and I had my old cousin back. Later, he went looking for hookers outside the train station, and all was right with the world...

Incidentally, despite the paint job, the air of despair, alienation and hopelessness continued to permeate...in Brashs. Man, those people, they hated selling CDs...