The myriad ups and downs of esclators, the knife game and rejection

My main room, my room that I do my typing and my writing exercises in, is something of a pop cultural hoarding cell that I keep everything in that relates to my life and my tastes. For instance, there's a deflated Melbourne Demons football on tip of a white multi shelfed plastic thing, a Ross Noble DVD just to the left of that, a full set of 1991 Stimorol football cards in the little shelf in my TV cabinet, and the CD Future Pop lying in bits on the floor, booklet, case, CD, more booklet, more case and then 2nd disc, just waiting for a motherly type to put it back together. My Mum, if I still lived at home, would just sweep through the place. She used to throw the paper out about twenty minutes after you brought it in, and since nineteen of those minutes were spent unwrapping the complex plastic coating of the Advocate, you didn't have much time to work out the joke in Snake before it was into the bin. However today, as I was looking through my CD case to find some Jebediah CDs to throw at Cash Converters, I found something quite terrifying. My old phone book. No, it's not the one I was on the cover of, I mean my old little hand written 1997 address and phone book, a tiny palm pilot sized book with a god awful retro hypnotic floruo cover that contains the mailing addresses and several private jokes from all the people I left behind in my life, all my friends from Grade 12. I'm terrified to open it, I think it will just make me wistful or at least confused as to who 1/2 the people in it are, and that can never be a good thing. I don't have any mementos from my friendships in Grade 12 - I have a massive aversion to photos, no one had Facebook, my leavers top is now being used by an orphan who stole it from the tip, and my diary is the most sketchy and horrific in joke piece of nonsense especially now as I've forgotten my own shorthand. I can't quite follow why this address book isn't inspiring to some kind of amusing Danny Wallace style get back in touch with everyone adventure, especially since I'm painfully self aware of my own embarrassing legacy and obsessed with the old school (the figurative old school, I don't want to go back and go on the monkey bars again) but I am terribly afraid of rejection, and terribly afraid of shoe horning myself into other peoples life, which would confuse the narrative of my own life and disrupt the pleasant routine of torpor and hammock thinking that I live in. It certainly got me thinking though, which is more than the Melbourne football did, that just reminded me of lying about being a Melbourne member to get into a horrifically awful 2002 function where the DJ kept playing The Smiths...must get to that, at least, one day...

I was on the escalator today, minding my own business, trying to avoid a small child attempting to knock my ankles out of their sockets, when a little mini three act play took place in roughly 16 seconds as we proceeded up towards Big W at a glacial pace. Going downwards were two girls in funky fun school leavers tops covered with autographs were sipping Boost Juices (I'm sure served with love), girls with multi coloured dyed hair and ignorance as a badge of honour, they were going down towards the Magic Pens booth while a girl behind me going upwards across from them tried to get them to go to McDonalds as they passed in the night. What the girl going up didn't see was that the girls going down were bagging her out and calling her a skank behind her back. I didn't notice at first since the Magic Pens booth was singing Magic Pens to the tune of Magic Bus and I was just embarrassed for everyone, but once I heard the word skank, I was paying attention, aware that I was watching a glacially moving piece of pure street theatre, but I did feel desperately old considering the girl who did the skanking call looked like a tiny hamster barely old enough to pick a flavour of Boost Juice let alone be draped in a school leavers top. There was something quite poignant though in imaginging the plaintive way the up girl (desperately black hair, chubby cheeks, swishy skirt that didn't look safe in the wind) would have been sitting in McDonalds waiting for her friends to turn up for a goss and a chat and a chocolate whatever that dessert is and sitting there despondent when they didn't show up. She looked quite happy as well as she bounded up with pre pubescent (why does everyone look so young these days) enthusiasm for her day and looked forward to her burger. Meanwhile, as we stood behind an old woman who mistook the escalator for a ride and held us all up, and the kid began to lash out round about my ankles in frustration, the skank police walked off with an undeserved air of superiority, little hamster cheeks puffed in mutual agreement, which reminded me of all the little cliques and moral judgements that every day would bring at school. Part of me wanted to go and chase them down and make a moral judgement on them for the way they walked and their flavour of Boost Juice (and their poor choice of store to support), part of me wanted to follow swishy skirt girl to McDonalds to let her know she wasn't wanted, but part of me wanted to just get off the escalator, get to Big W, get a 6.99 copy of Days Of Thunder and my free paring knife and pretend the whole day was all over, so I could escape my migraine, my boredom and my increasing sense of bewilderment that a girl I thought was hot outside Blockbuster Video was now using her time to buy a horrifically spangly pink jumper from Jay Jays...it was not, from a distance, a suitable use of her gift voucher...

Interestingly, the paring knife has become something of a status symbol in Big W where I work. Although the continual turnover of staff at Big W means that panda eyed girl, the girl with the great diction who is always fat and sweaty and puffed out, and the tiny midget lady on the door who doesn't really inspect your bags are all strangely absent or possibly on other duties (panda eyed girl would make a great promotions model) the continuing atmosphere in Big W is one of immense business without anything seeming to be accomplished. There are staff (well, panda eyed girl mostly) who seemingly just walk about the store doing nothing, and entire families of fat parents and retarded children who don't seem to buy anything. They lurch around despondently picking up cheap DVDs, and then putting them down, set to rhythmic stupidity. Anyway, as I was, and this is somewhat hypocritical, looking at a Britney DVD that was 6.88 without any intention of buying it, an announcement came over the PA system that every shopper (and the guy had this amazingly camp voice, like the kid in the last series of Hamish MacBeth but more Aussie) in Big W was now entitled to a free paring knife. Normally the thought of something free would send the free money from Kevin Rudd generation stampeding straight over fat sweaty girl to get whatever was going, but despite quite specific (and camp) instructions, I looked at where the red covered stand was, and the bloke in charge of giving out the knives was completely untrampled. In fact, in his little company shirt and behind his rictus stage left grin, it was possible even from a distance to see anxiety spread over his face. He had, in fact, to my eyes, trained as they were on him and not on the moral complexities and judgements on a DVD cover with Britney in an Elvis jump suit, taken the lack of knife related trampling as a significant personal rejection. He then decided to look at me plaintively from down the aisle, trying to Jedi mind meld with me so I would take a knife for myself or at least so it seemed, or maybe he was looking for assistance. It was incredibly awkward as he sat there under his little pre-pared (no pun intended) paring knife stand, adjusted his bow tie and give the cue for his camp assistant to put the call out again. I don't know why he took the work rejection so personally, but I did feel bad for him, as he shuffled from left foot to right foot waiting for custom. At least no one called him a skank. I could have given him my personal experience as a knife salesman if I hadn't escaped the cult I was in when I was looking for work. Point out the handle, always remember that. I felt a lot better when I walked back from the perilous book section of Big W (crawling with staff, kids and bewildered elderly couples who love Lynda La Plante) and he was surrounded by shoppers, so many shoppers that he couldn't stop grinning, and was proud to point out that he wouldn't be giving out any knifes to anyone under 21, while panda eyed girl chewed a biscotti wafer in the biscuit aisle and blinked only occasionally...

The two things, the phone book and the social rejection (not the free paring knife, which wasn't worth the effort to gather) just reminded me of the Kylie saga all over again. I mentioned that Kylie had been my main crush before, although it wasn't until after a distinctly emotional chat in a wooden row boat on a lawn on the eve of my 18th birthday party that I realised I liked her, although it may have also been after she went out with Mark and they split up, my diaries are not crystal clear on the matter. I don't even know if I liked her or I just felt like I should have a girlfriend or contribute something to the emotional destruction of our social group. It was a very confusing time - I should explain there was quite a leap between my 18th birthday party, and me sitting anxiously on a fort at Stella Maris Primary School (lots of grass, slight smell of dog shit) listening to Julee Cruse (as an 18year old I was a great 46 year old) on my walkman waiting for Kylie to turn up so I could ask her out. I will address that leap in due course, but I had asked Kylie to join me on the fort and the implication was clear, well, I thought it was clear, until she didn't show up for 32 agonizing minutes. I know this because I kept looking at my watch anxiously. Also, this was a Sunday morning, so I was accutely lonely and possibly the only person in Burnie who was awake. And it was cold, bitterly, bitterly cold, and at one point a jogger on the footy oval did quite an elaborate 36 second warm up (timed that too, what else was I going to do) only to woos out at the last minute and sprint back into his Ford Capri and go home. If I could have done the same I probably would have - it was such an agonizing wait, I wondered if all across the world boys and girls were doing this out of a sense of bored distraction and confused hormonal feelings, just sitting around waiting to see if their life was about to change. I was sure no one else was sitting on a fort throwing a 20c piece off the rampart and trying to catch it. I was young, I was nervous, I had a speech rehearsed in my head, a speech that sounded too rehearsed, then not rehearsed enough, then there was something about not being as brave as custard, then I thought what the band then I thought well they aren't very mainstream she might not get the...it was just a horrible moment in my life, when I couldn't just get out of a situation with a pop cultural quip or a safety first approach. I had built my fort, and now I had to lie on top of it, almost falling asleep, lonely, misunderstood, confused and above all else, completely unsure of my own motives or thought patterns. When I do think of loneliness, that's where I go to, even before the horrible first few months in Ayrshire travelling to school on the bus like a ghost. And then, after 32 minutes and 26 seconds, Kylie showed up, in her little red car, and it was time to pretend that my mental state had been entirely positive, that all along I knew she would turn up, and by the way, that band Custard...

She said no, of course, well, she didn't say anything, which, you know, was kind of the problem, and of course, where most of the trouble started, but that, as they say, is another page in the address book...

Multiculturalism comes to Burnie

Even though today was largely boring and uneventful, and to be honest some days lately it's felt like a greatest hits compilation of the rest of my year (pram in the ankles, overbearing staff, too few sandwiches, Barry Tosser outside the house mincing) there was at least some mental stimulation. I realised today that without knowing it I've made up a complete story about the silver rings I wear on my hand. I caught myself telling someone today that I'd got them in Ireland, which is just complete nonsense. I've never been to Ireland I don't think, but I must just have got sick with people liking my rings and asking where I got them and I've invented a rigorous back story. It's far more interesting how drunk I got when I lost half of them vomiting over a railing at the side of the Southern Outlet road, while my Tasmanian Auntie (that is we just call her Auntie) was talking joyfully to a hitch hiker. Good times. It's stupid because I am impeccably truthful otherwise, so I guess my lying gene comes out through my rings. Matron. The automon let out a strangely human whimper today that her husband (the one who looks like Mark Ridgeway) lost his job, which was quite bewildering that she would let the Sharleen 3000 robotic persona drop to drop that into conversation. I didn't know what to say after several battles of paragraph subsection C regulatory debate melted away to human Xmas sympathy. I moved the conversation on to my stand by conversation position today, that kid they called Adolf Hitler. Like I said, I'm awkwardly inept at polite conversation, never mind dealing with a man telling me his legs had shut down due to fluid build up, and I couldn't quite see Blue Eye Shadow Girl because some boof headed newcomer was in the way. Most if not of all though of my mental stimulation came though from my Dad, who used our daily phone call to not just talk about how terrible his workplace is (budget cuts means all he can do all day is read his book) but to give me a potted history of the number of times he's tried to shatter my illusions and tell me things aren't real - Santa Claus, wrestling, reality TV shows. It was like a potted history of my life, the number of times my Dad has taken me aside to tell me things aren't true...I guess you could do worse for a Dad, for even though he hugs with his shoulder charged (he's not big on affection) he's a fairly faithful companion...and you could have a worse Dad...for instance, his Dad, who told him at 5ive years old that there would be no more hugs because he was too old for them...and he never tried to give me a religious text for Xmas...good Dad...very good Dad...

I've mentioned before that my holiday back to Penguin from the lovely wilderness of Ayrshire (no hooker too ugly, no bus on time) at Xmas 89 was a complete disaster. My friends and I didn't manage to co-ordinate a single outing that wasn't just bumping into each other at K-Mart so I spent a month sitting on a wooden floor eating Rice Bubbles and watching cricket and sulking around the house. However just like the invented story about my rings, when I went back to Scotland I was honor bound to tell my roughly three friends that I'd had a great time, and had done all kinds of crazy and fun things in a series of crazy locales. If a wooden room with a single bed, a slightly risque copy of People Magazine (like Ralph Magazine but with a Maurie Fields column) with my first magazine girl crush on the front and a TV which was all Craig McDermott all the time kinds as a crazy locale and Rice Bubbles loaded with sugar counts as partying fun, then I guess it was accurate. It was especially disappointing that I never made it up to Burnie to join in the school activities because I still had a massive crush on a particular girl, however there was a quite distressing feeling that no one came to me (and in light of what happened, the mountain Mohammed analogy seems appropriate) and of course, story of my life, had completely moved on in the 18 months I'd been away, and some other kid probably took my place in the social calendar (probably even had a stopwatch and was good at Footy Maths). This realisation came I sat and watched Rage baffled by the hot new acts Collette and Indecent Obsession and the hot new show The Comedy Company, and was baffled as to what was going on. The only person who hadn't moved on was the local hairdresser Swanny, who still had pink musk sticks in the window and still played horrifically stereotypical Scottish records when I went in to get my bowl cut. Eleven is far too old to feel so dis-spiritingly old and depressed and like life is rapidly fading before my eyes, let alone do it while sitting cross legged on a carpet confused as to why Kylie Mole is getting big yucks, waiting for the phone to ring and feeling incredibly discontented that I was lost between countries and didn't seem to fit in anywhere. Mind you, I had a whole tortured poet thing going on that I feel I may have loved a little bit too much, and by the end, even the girl in the People bikini got sick of me, and turned away from the cover of the magazine to watch the cricket. Frankly, given my limited conversation, it was better that since I loved her, I set her free...and let her run into the arms of Craig McDermott...

That was all before me though, as the holiday actually started quite well. On the first weekend I was there, I was taken by my uncle to the Tioxide (a company dedicated to pollution and smoke I mostly remember) Childrens Xmas party at West Park, the football oval which I always remember as being incredibly freezing apart from this one day when it was a three jumper day (tops), which was a tops as old time. The sun was beating down on my newly pasty complexion, we were just old enough to impress girls with cynicism and weary comments but still young enough to get lollies and freebies from Santa. Girls who it should be noted were using Kylie Moles Comedy Company hilarious character catchphrases like ya reckon and twirling bubble gum but doing it with just enough of a flirtacious smile to let you think you had a chance. Tiger Dowling, our local hero, was on the microphone making jokes an 11 year old couldn't understand, I mean I didn't understand what a cowgrip was supposed to be. However, most of the hilarity came from a terrifically drunk Santa controversy. There was a Samoan Santa on a throne with a giant beer gut who was emerging from the land of mass confusion and twenty eight Fosters to terrify the kiddies who had found him slumped against a round green bin swearing and mouthing off while other kids poked him with sticks. There was some debate among some of the portlier gentlemen as to whether of not Samoa KO was the official Santa or just an indistinct and unrequired intruder. None of the kids believed he was an interloper, and our suspicions that Santa had let everyone down came when a suddenly much jollier and much whiter Santa appeared out of nowhere in a Red Santa Top and jeans. Denim Santa really loved children, and was far too pleased to be spreading Xmas cheer, while being completely unaware that Samoa Santa was giving him the finger before a curtain was closed and he vanished from view. Denim Santa even got a kick in the shins at one point from a bratty girl and didn't even miss a beat as he tousled her hair and ho ho hoed (a commentary on her mother in fairness) and due to his lack of moodiness, drunkiness and his high quotient of creepiness, we ended up running around the middle of West Park playing a terrible game of Catch and Kiss (there wasn't a lot of catching) in the muddy middle of West Park, gleefully sinking into the mud while Tiger Dowling moved, Max Miller style, from his red book of jokes to his blue book of jokes...it was time to shut our ears to the ribald material that was eminating from the PA, and focus on the fact that if we sunk to the bottom of the bog, we might never come back to the top...compared to that, the lack of bored blonde girls chasing me to try and kiss me was the least of my problems...

The highlight of the Xmas party, as you might imagine, was lining up in the mud (it was drying mud, so that was familiar) to get a present from denim Santa, who continued his dazzling eyes and teeth smile. The queues were re-assuringly 1950s, as the girls queued up for a doll and we queued up for a torch. The dolls were flimsy and plastic and sub Barbie quality (Cindy?) but the torches were sensational, sturdy orange strong technical models that I think were just rounded up from the Tioxide storage basement. It was definitely quite a magnificent present. However, there was one boy who wasn't getting a torch, a Muslim kid called Imran who was dolled up the nines like I was at my Communion when I virtually married Jenny. Even though it was a cultural mish mash nightmare, Imran was lining up to see Santa to get a copy of the Koran as a sort of wonderful moment of significance for him. However, even though you'd think it was physically impossible to not be able to differentiate between a gift wrapped torch and a gift wrapped book, Denim Santa had given the Koran that was in the sack out to some other white kid, who was culturally dissing it as a stupid book and bemoaning the fact that he hadn't got a torch. There was a flurry of desperate activity to not only get Imran his Koran, apologize for the horrifically upsetting mix up, and to try and convince Imran he should have got a torch, while all the while the other kids in the line were trying to blind each other with their torch and the girls were finding out their dolls had legs that snapped off a bit too easily. Imran eventually got his Koran after plenty of haggling to try and convince all parties that this was a good transaction, and I last saw him looking quite morosely at it while the kid who got his torch was gleefully trying to hit his brother over the head with it. I didn't quite get the multicultural significance of what had happened, I just enjoyed Imrans dad chewing out the Denim clad Santa for his infidelic foolhardiness. However, just as I was about to contemplate the sheer majesty of such a scene and Tiger Dowling was working up to his three nuns and a donkey joke, I looked across the West Park slush, and Pippa, my Grade Two crush, was hand in hand with a boy with a spikey haircut and a pair of fearsomely blue boots. She looked at me, appeared to acknowledge faint recognition as if she was a coma patient awakening, and then continued her conversation while her dainty ballerina style slippers got more and more encased in mud...the first sign of many in the next few weeks that things had changed, and it wasn't subtle...

Einstein said life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving, however, I can't ride a bike, and to learn at 11 that life is a continually moving process without you in it, well, it was time to load up on the Rice Krispies...

Muffins and Edinburgh, the Discomforting Duo

The automon who's running my workplace is being, ugh, festive. I wish I could feel comfortable with muffins on a tray and offers for a few hours off, but I'm not. I'm nothing if not wary and far from complacent in my mood. Sure there might be muffins today but tomorrow there could be a tedious meeting about regulatory compliance. To explain it, it's little bit like I used to have a tape (Now 12 Australia) that had Wendy Matthews The Day You Went Away on it, which is a lovely song, and then straight after it was Achy Breaky Heart so you had to race across the room in a panic to turn it off - my moods are like that, if I'm sitting in a good pleasant mood I feel like an Achy Breaky Heart kick in the head is coming soon. To be honest, it might just be the muffins to blame today, they make me nervous. At Coles, if they were displeased with someone, always at the meetings there were muffins. They dragged me in one day because my little cash till was always out, and sure enough, fluffy muffins, the more serious the offence the fluffier I found. I also find the protracted nature of 2009 already being planned out for me to quite terrifying. Today my computer fizzed like a Sodastream with e-mails all day with invites to events as far ahead as June, so that was quite odd and scary, as I have no idea what I'm doing in June, except probably watching repeats of The Simpsons. Actually, I know why I'm edgy today. I went to jump in Pepa (my car) this morning and Barry Tosser was standing directly at the side of my car, daring me to talk to him, as he walked his dog in the camp geography teacher fashion he loves so much. Even his dog was drunk on neighbourly nosiness. Everything is already festively upside down, my sociable friend is now an allegedly poverty stricken domestic recluse I'll see twice a year, and my unsociable friends are going to take me to Avoca and get drunk in a pub and teach me about the local ambulance services. I have enough on my plate without the edges being crammed figuratively with people acting strangely and out of character, and literally with muffins that look sweet but have a suspiciously bitter aftertaste...

Such ennui and poetic discomfort always makes me think of Edinburgh. Edinburgh always had a strange feel to me, if for no other reason than my Mum always told me Glasgow was the real capital and everyone in Edinburgh had two heads. That and the fact that from Ayrshire the only way you could get there was on an old Nanna bus, which took tourists and the terminally bewildered to Edinburgh on a day trip, thus lending it a slightly Only Fool and Horses go to Margate feel. You couldn't just go to Edinburgh, you had to queue up for a touristy minibus with curtains and drapes and you had to stop at a toffee factory and a pottery barn just to buy the same tracksuits you could buy in Glasgow but at greater expense and with more tales about the war. On one trip to Edinburgh, we got on with three pre pubescent roller skating champions. None of them liked me. The first time I went to Edinburgh with my Dad, he took me to a putt putt golf course, and I got a hole in one at the wrong hole. Then there was a giant panic at Wimpey burger because they'd run out of pineapple. People were outraged. My quiz team (form an orderly queue ladies) went to Edinburgh as a treat after we made nationals, and the whole day just descended into a dead arm punching competition and a series of horrendously rude puns that meant we didn't get our free white chocolate bars. So whenever I've gone to Scotlands capital city, strange things have happened. I've usually ended up sitting on my own on a step or a bus stop bench or outside a shop while someone was arrested or dragged away by security, just as it started to rain, or I wondered why I'd blown 500 pounds on a pair of shoes, or wondering why I didn't just stay at home. And the cannon and the castle, that's an equally depressing but completely different melancholy mood. I was kind of dumped just before a trip to the cannon. I say dumped, it was just plain bourneville (the plainest of all the chocolates) rejection. So while everyone was sitting around oohing and aahing about the wonderful historic nature of the cannon and the castle I was sitting at the back of tour group trying to turn a letter written with quite specific rejection instructions and few redeeming of hopeful paragraphs into some kind of she might still like me jolly note. Not even the jolly dog at the top of note paper however could manage to make it a positive experience...

To throw all these things together, about September 2001, most peoples memories would be of the world seemingly coming to an end. My memories are standing at Largs train station utterly convinced any minute now Muslim terrorists would be invading, a possibly libellous Geri Halliwell story, and a trip to Edinburgh. The trip to Edinburgh was it's usual uninspiring self, enlivened only by the bus drivers choice of Barry White tapes to entice and allure the single mothers up the front for flirtacious chats, and my Mum demanding that I give up my seat for people who were palpably capable of a long term stand near the bag rack (they didn't look elderly or infirm to me). My Mum was quite probably telling me a lot about how much better Glasgow was than Edinburgh, and we probably had a stop off to get some form of disgusting truck stop jelly but I can't remember. I can remember the ending to Meatballs 4, that's in the space in my brain I would otherwise remember what I had in the truck stop. Mum and I had a massive argument early in the holiday about how much I had tipped the taxi driver and my failure to give my seat on a train to an old woman and, if I'm honest, my face tripping me due to jet lag. We decided to go our seperate ways in the holiday until a re-conciliation later in the holiday when someone else annoyed us even more. What this meant for me was reckless irresponsible spending without the voice of my conscience on my shoulder asking if I really needed 22 pairs of denims. I was loaded up with cash, was distressingly free of friends and girlfriend, and I had things to buy, and sure, my life wasn't yet in the positive direction that it would soon take, but if I had a jumper with an ironic cartoon character on it, how could it not improve? As the bus bunny hopped into an Edinburgh car park at about 11 in the morning, the heavens opened and we realised that the bus had actually broken down in quite a dismal carpet warehouse backlot, and several quite greasy men with dirty faces and business cards that said dodgy on them were loitering around trying to sell us carpet and deceipt. Needless to say that we weren't best impressed that our glamourous trip to Edinburgh hadn't rewarded us with sights and sounds (but definitely smells), and we made our way sharply to where the action was, at least, before we got carpet samples to go with our soaked clothes...

Now, my two aunties are disparate personalities from the same large family - one footloose and fancy free despite the depressing grumpiness of her husband (he's the one who won't see his grand-daughter before 8:07 am because up to then is porridge time), and legitimately very funny (her doctor said she had put on weight due to an overactive thyroid and she said, no son, it's an overactive knife and fork) and the other the one who sits at her table doing Thats Life style puzzles and saying that her life doesn't extend much beyond the table and her bed, who also said once she hates laughing. We kept them seperate on the bus as they had both decided to come with us to Edinburgh on this particular day, sending them to opposite ends of the bus armed with a bag of Werthers Originals each. Once we got to Edinburgh, the carefree and happy auntie took me shopping while the surly auntie decided to get some lunch. She (happy auntie) was incredibly patient and in her carefree happy styling way said everything I bought was brilliant. I had lost Mum to the charms of a shop that sold sensibly priced jumpers, so I was happy. After a day of trying things on that I couldn't really afford then buying them, we came out of the last shop and there, leaning against the bus stop like a surly teenager, was my miserable auntie. The curious part was, she wasn't just waiting for us, she had adopted all the characteristics of a surly teenage girl, when she was really 55. She had one leg on the ground, one against the bus stop, was smoking a cigarette, had a face like fizz, and best of all, had gathered herself a posse. Around her were several genuinely surly teenagers who were staring at the ground and cursing their Scottishness. What had happened in the interim to cause this situation god only knows, but it was very strange. While I had bought some jumpers my auntie had become the pied piper of despair, an epicentre around which Edinburghs most pasty faced ginger plooky weans could gravitate. When we went over to ask her what she was doing, she didn't reply, so we asked her again. She said something akin to cos I feel like it, even though that wasn't the question. The gingerest plookiest of all the weans then hissed (hissed!) in my direction. Such was the fierceness of their group disdain that I felt very uncomfortable and was about to back off and take my Auntie and anyone smiling (they didn't like smiling) away to safety when one of the girls (who was strawberry blonde) asked if she could have twos on my can (which means could she have a drink of coke, in early 90s Ayrshire speak). I gave her a drink, and the gathered apprentices seemed to lighten up after that, since they milled with a little less intensity. To the disgust of my auntie, who snatched the can out of their hand and wandered off down the round, with us in puddle splashing pursuit, trying to work out what the hell was going on, and why we were suddenly in pursuit of the worlds most sulky 55 year old coat wearing gangsta in the hood pouting teenager who had nicked off with my can of coke...

Like a lot of things though, it was Edinburgh, and I just chalked it up to that...

Steak chewy, tape chewed, Cathy Godbold uncontacted, Beach Boys in your face

My next door neighbour, Barry Tosser, is really in the Xmas spirit at the moment. He hasn't got to the stage where he's invested in 20K worth of Xmas lights, but that will come a little bit later. He continually plays this tape from about 5 until 8 of this horrible Disco Xmas music (and if it's not The Ethel Merman Disco Album, don't talk to me about Disco) that is even more camp than the collarless sweaters and Tom Selleck moustache he sports on a daily basis. Barry Tosser is not my favourite person since he trampled into my lawn to change the direction of the hose from one flower bed to another and tried constantly to get into my house, after the last people continually let him in to join in with swinger parties. He's also constantly got things for sale on the front lawn, washing machines and bits of engine, but today when I drove into the carport he was looking distraught, moustache drooping to the ground in distress. From what I could gather the tape deck had chewed up a Very Swishy Xmas and he was trying desperately to repair it with a pencil and a sense of increasingly camp desperation. As I got into the house, I had a single text message on my phone (the one that was sold to me by the dis-interested girl in Big W as, quote, it's so cool is was a prize on Big Brother) saying that at the work Xmas party, the steak was chewy - I'm glad someone let me know that, it's good to know. I don't think Barry Tosser is going to be able to fix the tape, so I might be neighbourly and go and talk to him about the poor quality steak at The Queens Head, and how they got tea at 10:07. I do consider my life sometimes hasn't really turned out to be the glittering all conquering success that I planned out in diaries with 93on them in big gold letters, and that Cathy Godbold is not going to suddenly develop an irrestible crush on me, but there are certain comforts that keep me sane - my hammock, my IPOD, my lime spiders and most of all the fact that I'm not some guy who's kneeling in his driveway almost in despair that his Xmas is ruined by the fact that he can't get a tape of camp disco standards to play for the entertainment of everyone, while my wife taps her foot impatiently at the back of the driveway and pulls a disgusted face, and dreams of a much better world...she wants to get herself a hammock that woman, great place to lie and dream about better worlds, or at least, warmer worlds...

One of my pet hates (apart from Cathy Godbold not returning my calls) is being trapped in places playing music that I can't stand, although luckily my experiences in nightclubs playing Powderfinger are limited. Not just the hammock being interrupted by camp Xmas tunes, although Xmas has long been a particular bugbear of mine. Today when I was walking and stalking blue eye shadow girl (they had her stocking shelves yesterday, terrible) I stopped into everyones favourite CD shop Sanity in my particularly disastrous continuing search for Weeds Series 3 that always leads me to be trapped in an aisle with a baby and a sales staff member desperate to inflict sales pressure on me. As I wandered with writing excercises in my head, I realised that I had wondered in on a Beyonce Xmas album day, and there was a staff girl in the DVD aisle with a Santa hat on, so I had made a mental note to avoid her and I was going about my day when I realised that I had been entrapped by a staff bloke in a Santa hat who had come out of my blind spot who was determined to impart some great sales pressure wisdom on me and there was no way out because I was blocked in by a pram on the other side (damn free government money) which was being pushed by a tattooed single mother with one of those tattoos that are supposed to be Celtic and symbolic but which just look a bit rubbish, like you've leant up against some black ink, smudged it and tried to pretend it means hope in Gaelic. Anyway, I realised he was coming towards me and I was trapped with a very Beyonce Xmas in my ears, and I wasn't best pleased, since I couldn't fumble with my IPOD in time to block him out. As the single mum deliberated as to whether or not an Arj Barker stand up DVD was a sound purchase in these troubled economic times, and Sasha Fierce tortured my ear-drums, Santas little helper came up to me and instead of asking me how my day was going, he decided to engage me in a more cerebral zen conversation. He said something akin, in a dreamy voice, to wow, really makes you think. I didn't know if he was talking about Beyonce (she makes me think of violence) or the copy of Casino I was holding in my hand, but he had his eyes closed and whatever he was talking about he was absolutely certain in his declaration. Luckily just as I was expected to respond to such a bizarre non sequitur, the single mother decided the most prudent way to invest her money was in Flight Of The Conchords and gave me an escape route when she waddled up to the counter. I have no idea what he meant, but just like being trapped in the taxi back to Hobart with the taxi driver playing all eighteen verses of Bob Dylans the Hurricane and telling me that music had never topped Bob Dylan and anyone who hated Bob Dylan was a poof and by the way what was my opinion on Bob Dylan, I really didn't know how to respond or what to say, and just like when I was in that damn taxi it was time to flee (although, unlike the taxi, at least I didn't physically endanger myself trying to step out in a hurry).

My work place about two years ago had a day where they had a promotion to win a holiday on a beach if you, I don't know, coloured in a picture of Gwen Stefani or something. Naturallly this lead to some devastatingly poor ideas in a company thinkstorm (the ideas basketball stayed in the cupboard) such as spreading sand all over the floor, cladding everyone in beach wear and worst of all, playing The Beach Boys on a tape deck loudly for everyone to hear. It's fair to say I can't stand The Beach Boys, they were just a poor mans Jan and Dean I think you'll all agree. I was in a bad mood as it was, as I don't like the beach (the place, the film or the book) very much, as I'm Scottish and we don't do beaches very well (take Danny Boyle). My experiences on Penguin beach as a child generally involved either me nearly drowning in medium sized waves, having people question the way I ran or having a dog bite on my the deck, and since my skin tone is either damn that's white or dude I think you're sunburnt, it's not somewhere I frequent. Once I realised there was going to be Good Vibrations (and not the Marky Mark song) I was in a terrible mood, and I was far too vocal in my complaint. I should have realised that everyone was miserable in board shorts and humourous colours of zinc cream and I shouldn't have been quite so whingy, but I wouldn't be stopped. When someone took a photo of us a dickhead clad group, I was back and to the left with a fierce pout, and it wasn't just because no one got my joke about going to play in the sandbox (see it was a Brian Wilson ref...ah forget it). I don't even think that anyone won the competition, as the alleged winner appeared to have some sort of generic name like Smith or Brown and didn't appear to claim their prize, so I apparently wore a Hawaiian shirt for no apparent reason. And in true Tasmanian style, all that happened was we copped abuse from people who quite rightly told us we looked like tools. Even the best travel agent in the world couldn't have sold this holiday to a series of increasingly drunk bogans complaining about sand on their ugh boots and the increasingly frantic desperate attempts to get them to fill in the 25 words or less entry form were getting into more and more abusive response territory. All the while, the good time tunes of the Beach Boys continued to inspire and infuriate the masses, the inspire part mostly inspiring them to say can you turn that crap off and play some Powderfinger. And of course, the cherry on the cake of my mood of my melancholy of my flag on my mountain was that it was absolutely pissing down with rain. I'm picking up good vibrations...everybody...

There was one problem though, and that was Natasha. Natasha was an impossibly hot and unattainable girl who would wander into work every so often and sadly lost her unattainable goddess status when I saw her in Syrup one night sculling a jug of Midori and having it dribble down her top. Anyway that was all before us, and she was still impressively beautiful compared to the rest of Tasmania, and I was still interested in her enough to make sure that after lunch I didn't have Golden Gaytime dribbled down my chin or bits of eggs on my shirt. That's commitment. Natashas hair colour was perfect hazelnut, her most attractive and memorable feature of her good self at least until the jug of Midori sculling. Natasha seemed to be one of the few people who was interested in entering the competition and I was idly standing around doing nothing but scowling while she composed her blissful entry form sonnet. At least her entry didn't start with "on this entry I'll take a punt, you really are a stupid...", and so on. Natasha then intuitively gathered that there was noise coming from the tape deck and asked if it was The Beach Boys playing. I confirmed that it was and then she asked me what I thought of the poor mans Jan and Dean. This was obviously an awkward moment in any burgeoning relationship between perfectly hazelnutted hair dream girls and a Scottish slacker in a huff. I didn't know how to read the conversation, and I didn't know which way to go, after all if she was a mega fan of Mr Wilson, I could lose her mild interest in me. So, I told the truth, and said that I thought they were a poor mans Jan and Dean. However, what I didn't expect was a man with a beard to lurch into the conversation and start defending them quite loudly. As he jabbed his pudgy middle aged finger in my direction and started wanting to know what bands I liked (well Sir, I quite like the music of Jan and Dean, maybe we could get a dialogue going) without a hint of playfulness or a touch of good humour, Natasha walked off into the rain, quite poetically and dramatically, without registering an opinion either way, leaving me not only pondering what might have been but trapped in an airless room devoid of good music and hope while the phrase Carl Wilson is a musical genius was repeated into my ear with gusto and elan and passion...I didn't even get the chance to interrupt him with an entry coupon or a sip of a beach mocktail you know...

Of course, he came in quite regularly that bloke, and to be honest, if I had egg on my shirt, I wasn't that bothered...

Polite conversation and Xmas Cheer

Maybe it's a male thing, but I'm not particularly impressed by baby photos. Not that people showing me them I rip them out of their hand and throw them at them, but I don't find it particularly wow amazing to look at a small infant in a hospital. To wit, I was putting together my writing exercises this morning which are in a giant black folder in my house (I'm thinking of putting them on a blog, it seems more 2009) when my e-mail churned with pictures of my cousin (the one I don't like) and his wifes (the one his Mum doesn't like) baby. Fine, that's nice, good for him, all is in working order, but then the e-mails kept churning until there were 17 relatively indistinguishable photos of the same infant lying in the same crib differentiated only by photo number and position of the chubby nurses arm. At least it wasn't mobile phone cats. I'm a terrible friend, I'm a terrible listener, but I can fake it until someone gets out the mobile phone cat photos. I'm not interested in my own life 1/2 the time never mind my family. I've got a friend who rang me up yesterday to see if I wanted to go to the works Xmas do and I realised mid way through the phone call once I'd got through my pop culture references and how my day was, he'd stopped talking and I was meant to re-ciprocate and ask him how his day was. If I'd had some mobile phone cats to show him, maybe that would have helped. Tumbleweed passed from phone to phone. I think it should be a new years resolution to pay more attention to people and their day, but as an only child I never really had to compete for attention so it was always all eyes on me (before 2Pac came along) and I didn't really need to ask anyone how their day was. On the plus side, I didn't have to go to the work Xmas party and ask peoples how their work day was. A Samoan man with a Kevin Bloody Wilson beard and an un-necessary hat with a light (maybe it was Brant) fixed my DVD player, so I could go out, and I could ring my cousin and say congratulations on the baby, and I could...but I've still got Stand By Me and Weekend at Bernies to watch on DVD so I just don't have the time. I couldn't look after my sea monkeys let alone a baby. What makes me incredibly contrary is I love listening to other peoples polite inane conversation if I don't know them. As I continue to scrape together my writing exercises, another 28 photos of this same baby in the same crib have come into my e-mail box, as well as an e-mail summation of my lack of quality as a friend for not going to the Xmas party...it's truly the circle of life Simba my e-mail box...no wonder I watch Stand By Me...

Work Xmas parties scare me more than the prospect of a convincing string of platitudes for my cousins baby. I must admit that it's pretty much all to do with the fact that I'm terrified of polite inane conversation and the fact I have nothing to contribute. One of the very few dates that I went on with my girlfriend was when, in lieu of an alleged job interview that I fooled the pares with, we drove to a particular Tasmanian town for a picnic. She planned this picnic incredibly well, and we were on our way to talk in a disarming manner about feelings and spreads, when she pulled the car over sharply into a general store car park to get some smokes. Interestingly, she also pulled over because U2s One on the radio was making her feel unwell, so with those kind of opinions it's a shame our love didn't blossom. The shop keeper had giant round glasses and sounded like the squeaky voiced teen from The Simpsons so she wasn't the hottest girl in the world. My girlfriend took the exact moment I had my hand on a carton of Banana milk to launch into a seventeen minute story about how her cousin, a girl called Shauna with bad teeth and a continuing string of menial jobs, had started going out with a guy called Brad (I presume) who had a job mowing lawns but it was only until h...I'm bored even typing it. I did my best to feign interest but my eyeline was distracted by the fact that this shop had the Actua Soccer video game in the corner sitting unplayed, and then by the fact that squeaky voiced teen appeared to be stealing strawberry chocolates from a tin and eating them by the dozen. I knew I was in huge trouble when after twelve minutes alternating between pondering the possibilities of another glorious run as Morocco on the computer game and trying to grab a security guard to alert them that if the shop owner came tomorrow they would make no profit on strawberry chocolates, my girlfriend stopped talking and asked, maths teacher style, what I thought of her Bradplan. I was about to panic and flail and make something up when squeaky voiced teen decided to step in and say without thinking, quote, Brad sounds like a dick. She even surprised herself with the stridency of her opinion, but at least it dug me out of a giant hole. My girlfriend drew her a filthy opinionated look and left the shop without talking, but me and squeaky voiced teen shared a moment of mutual relief before she had some opinions on Dannii Minogue to get back to in the New Idea. My girlfriend said in the car she was completely and utterly disgusted at the poor service in the store, and as she pulled off and changed radio stations and began to launch into the kind of rant about the decline in standards that you only otherwise read about in newspaper letters pages, she changed radio stations and a completely different radio station decided to play U2s One...needless to say the spreads weren't as spread with as much love as was promised in the verbal picnic brochure...

My worst work Xmas party experience though was a couple of years ago at an event that was booked in a restaurant that I believe had a bucket of sea trash as it's prime menu feature. This was in the transitional period between the boss who simply rubbish and the really evil boss who spent his Sunday nights stroking a white cat and plotting evilly how to alienate our work place one disciplinary regulation breach at a time. I had nothing to contribute to the displaced masses of our workplace in conversation because I had been completely drunk all day, due to the horrific nature of early morning drinks at a pub with a girl who refused point blank all day to believe Meredith Brooks and Tracey Bonham were different people but who certainly liked to get the wallet out to buy shots. By the time it came to sitting down and picking between the bucket of sea trash and the mega bucket of sea trash, I was completely and utterly wasted, and not in the self aware way that fifteen year old girls on a shandy on a netball trip will say, I mean if there was a seat and someone stole it, I'd still try and sit down. Which made it a wonderful moment when one of my friends stole my seat and I did try and sit down and fell on my arse. I didn't even make it to the bucket of sea trash course, as my other friend, the one who isn't talking to me at the moment because he's allegedly too scared to face us due to the poor state of his finances and our judgemental faces, told me where to go after we had an argument about, something, I don't know, prawns, and then I stormed out in anger and disgust. Now, even in my drunken state I was aware that storming out pre sea trash wasn't a good look, but my feet wouldn't stop their outraged walking...I stopped walking one and a half 1/2 an hours later outside a second hand book shop and I have no idea how I ended up there (well I walked obviously, but you know what I mean), but even more strangely I was reading a newspaper and had a packet of Hubba Bubba. It was such a wonderful hobo moment I wish I had a brown paper bag and could grow some stubble. Still, there was a pretty shameful walk back to town when I realised that my embarrassingly camp flounce off was going to be a cause of fevered water cooler discussion. I've got a cheek pointing out everyone else off for flouncing off when I walked off like that. Meanwhile, back at the party, 1/2 the people didn't have their sea trash either as they formed an awkwardly triangular search party to try and find me. Obviously, they never did, as I was unable to be found until I wandered through the door on Monday morning to a barrage of text messages, indolent stares and people with strong opinions on the fact they didn't get to eat their sea trash. All I could was ride out the embarrassment one abusive e-mail at a time, smile politely, and wait until everyone had got the taste of camp flouncing (and not sea trash) out of their morally judgemental teeth...

Two years before that, I had a much better experience, albeit one that didn't start too promisingly. This was at an unofficial work Xmas party, which in our case means moral judgement goes out the window. I knew I was in trouble when an elaborately placed and I presume lovingly tended to plastic reindeer the venue shared with our group ended up being stolen and put in someones car. The party dis-integrated quite quickly once it was realised the lightest alcohol available was a three drink cocktail and the most serious song the DJ had was Dancing Queen, and after an hour everything was just horribly wrong. Ordives were flying through the room, bald men where having drinks bored over their head by housewives, and the DJ was getting heat on himself for turning down requests to play more 80s songs and continuing to stick doggedly to his list of camp 70s standards. Then he had an olive thrown at him and it was on for young, old, drunk housewives and camp. By the time I has nose to nose with a flying fishstick, it was time to go home. Luckily, this time I didn't flounce out, I preferred a quiet sneak down the stairs, but I realised when I tried to sneak out that I didn't have any money for a taxi and no way to get home until someone else went in my direction, at which point I sat on a couch at which point people began throwing sugar packets at me. However, as I sat there rolling my eyes at immaturity I was far too sober to join in with, a woman with hypnotically bouncing eyes and a hairstyle of mass confusion came and sat next to me and began talking to me based entirely on the principle that her own work function had descended into similarly immature chaos. The conversation seemed like pointless moralising until I realised this was a flirtacious conversation based around the fact that only her and I had the moral character to rise above the immaturity of throwing food around and Peter Allen songs from the DJ. Her killer pick up line, and you might need to Google this to appreciate the full hilarity of this but it was delivered in full flirtacious breathiness, was that she had the biggest house in Mount Nelson...a line that was so patently silly and hilarious that I had to go back to her place just to check the veracity of the line fully and confirm that actually she did have the biggest house in Mount Nelson.

As Peter Allen might have said, when my baby morally judges at me, I go to Mount Nelson...

Hop Swiss Part 5ive - The Dancing Coke Can Debacle

Manchester airport isn't the place to be at 3 in the morning regardless of your mental state, never mind if you are gathered as a tired and sarcastic group of travellers who had been plied with vending machine coke and powdered toast in the never ending interim while a replacement vehicle for the broken down pick up bus was allegedly on it's way from the planet Venus to pick us up, and we stood around kicking and punching each other just to alleviate the boredom. There was a cold frosty atmosphere amongst everyone, never mind having to wait around in the drizzle for a bus that, when it did turn up, was driven by a massive cockney bloke who seemed to personally blame us for not only the bus breaking down but for the existence of the plague, racism and the decline of communism. As we waited munching on whatever mid priced snacks we could find or steal around the airport, and at one point had to change our holding pen because they turned all the lights off on us, a Chilean vagrant came by huddled over begging for scraps. As he begged in our general direction without looking directly at us, two burly security guards to my eyes jumped out from behind a bin (they were undercover, or asleep, either or) and, without putting too fine a point on it, kicked the shit of him and dragged him away. It barely registered on anyone though, least of all me, since I was thoroughly distracted by one of ourparty, a girl who's name is lost to history, standing on a plastic bucket seat eating Coco Pops out of a bowl and taking photos of the homeless man being frogmarched into what George Bush might call a conversation room. There were so many questions, and none of them involved her lack of humanity towards the dispossessed and none of them were where she had managed to get a bowl, spoon, milk and napkin as a bib while the rest of us were eating bits of gristle (or a Galaxy Milk, which was even worse). My main question was where did she get her Sinitta T-shirt, it was really nice. Bright colours. Anyway, she then Mariah Carey put the bowl in the bin, but kept the spoon just in case. She had lost my interest by then anyway, not just because of her subtle but frightening moustache, but because she had a single coco pop on her face hanging there like a Cindy Crawford mole, and by then it had started pouring, so we as a group peered despairingly into an abyss of poorly illuminated airport forecourts, questionable policies towards immigrants and loud noisy angry drizzle that smacked off the ground violently, certain that we would never see our beds again, and this was eternity, Manchester Airport, the last resting place of the terminally spoiled...

From my own point of view, my mood was now one of deep anxiety and melancholy. Not just in the absence of Gaby, and in that teenage years surety laden way that love lasts forever and is a sonnet of beauty, I was sure I was meant to be with her based on just an intense 17 minute conversation and now it was gone, and not just because I was beginning to feel deep pain in my arm, and not just because I had got a melted Twix out of the vending machine all over my Joe Bloggs jacket. It had been a terse and tense flight for me, as anyone who has been flying with a busted ear would know. Take off and landing had been particularly difficult, and I'm hardly stoic at the best of times. I had requested a magazine but was rebuffed by an indifferent stewardess who appeared to be more interested in flirting with the guy the row in front of me and then watching the movie than getting a customer something they wanted. She had nice hips but a surly attitude and it was somewhat amusing when a sudden jolt of turbulence cause a sudden loss of dignity. Still that didn't help me as we sailed effortlessly over the channel with my ear sounding like a Trent Reznor out-take. And the movie with My Blue Heaven, a film I had already seen with Steve Martin that when I saw it had so few jokes that when it got a laugh some bloke ran down the front and dropped to his knees and yelled out thank god we finally got a joke. One of the male stewards decided that in light of the indifferent efforts of the butterface towards customer service, that he would endeavour to give everyone a free individual fruit cup to make up for her, but sadly for him he woke me up when I was in the middle of a beautiful dream about morphine...lovely, lovely morphine. With my ear on the verge of a strike, being woken up by a camp man with a Dave Grohl moustache and an over pronunciation of the word cup that stretched it beyond five syllables wasn't my idea of a good time. It took all my efforts not hit him with an equally camp and tired punch to the moustache. My punches are certainly threatening in type, but not in actuality, so it was lucky that I stuck to a disdainful glare. As he swished off down the aisle, having to round the butterface who was in the aisle yucking along to Rick Moranis, I suddenly realised that he was heading in Colins direction. Colin having been long ago sedated due to his mid Swiss meltdown was sound asleep, with his feet spread either side of the chair in quite the spread, and there was our camp fella, heading in Colins direction swishing gamely in his direction with a fruit cup held between thumb and forefinger and an absolute determination to inflict his customer service on passengers. I went back to sleep more out of terror as much out of terror as to what was coming as any desire to dream again, and that was lucky since I had a weird Ally Sheedy dream, but I'm told that had I been awake, it fairly likely that I'd have lost hearing in my other ear...it was apparently an interesting suggestion as to what you could do with a fruit cup, one that I hadn't considered...such imaginative use of the pineapple...

Of course, the bus trip home was immensely tense, as a combination of imitation brand chocolate (it was more of a Twixt) and lack of sleep ensured that as our bus rode through the night and morning and was held up by several non moving milk floats, something was always going to happen. I didn't expect it to be my fault was all. As it happened, I had invested some of my CHF in a dancing coke can from the airport, figuring that at a relatively cheap price, I could pass it off as a present to one of my lesser cousins (I'm thinking Madeleine, she was always a stuck up pain) and get some brownie points from the pares. I wouldn't have thought a dancing coke can would cause trouble, but given everything that had happened, I shouldn't have been surprised. The Gene Hackman had seen my dancing coke can in a previous life when I had espoused my inferior cousin theory, and had decided to try and impress a girl called Mary with it, so I got it out of my Super Saver Squirrel backpack and gave him it. I did consider as I drifted off the sleep that if it was so easy to see boob with a dancing coke can I'd have taken with me to the swimming pool and got Gabys opinion on it, but I thought nothing more of it. I never find out how that Ally Sheedy dream ended though, because I was woken up by the distinct sound of what is quaintly referred to in Tasmania as a scrag fight. Apparently one of the girls had been so jealous of Mary being wooed by the magic of the dancing coke can (or she was more of a fan of the dancing sunflower, and fair enough) that she decided to ark up and after words were exchanged, things descended into fisticuffs, torn jumpers and pulled hair, not to mention even more harsh words from the gutter to my one ear. Eventually, as the bus veered sharply to the right and they rolled down the aisle like a bag pushed by a bully, they were torn apart by a mutual realisation of their ridiculousness (who fights over the Gene Hackman?), a bus driver who threatened to turn the bus right back round to Switzerland (oh God no) and a teacher who took a little bit too long to seperate them. I presume this to this day explains The Gene Hackmans love of womens wrestling. The teacher sat back down in his comfortable chair of moral judgement, the bus driver rolled akwardly down the motorway, and the girls had to shake hands...at least until Mary slipped in a violent rabbit punch, and the whole thing began again...to my eternal amusement, the coke can was continuing to dance along to the violence, illuminated by the bus flouro, with it's opinions and moral judgements on the battles of two girls from Dalry over a boy from Beith luckily, like the cows, unrecorded...

Eventually, we parted as a group, clambering off the bus into a Kilwinning garage forecourt mid morning to be picked up by our parents. I got into a car pooled car with my Mum and Dad, their rosy cheeks aglow that their prodigy (not Keith Fl...oh, done that joke) had made it home, safe, but hardly sound. Dads hug strayed suspiciously close to the horrific war wound on my arm, but luckily, that was a secret to share in the mornings to come. Given that my parents, who weren't flush with cash but who always provided above and beyond for me, had shelled out a fair snack on the holiday, so I gave them a break and at least for the morning nodded politely and said everything was great - my travelling companion was a lot less subtle and complimentary. She, the daughter of the teacher who didn't give my Dad a job, sat with arms folded in the front of her less than ample boyish chest (she looked like Jim from Eastenders as a boy) and stared down the sun with an increasingly fevered and demented rant on what a lousy and terrible holiday she had, that bordered on fascist and racist against the Swiss and seemed to be particularly offensive against the very notion that another country would have a culture evolved beyond shell suits and opinions on Wet Wet Wet. We let her go, sitting in uncomfortable silence and certainly not wishing to subscribe to her newsletter, until eventually her Dad asked her, quite gently and wondering about how easily an adoption certificate could be gathered, if she had enjoyed anything about her holiday. She thought for a full minute, and then said, quite quietly but with full determination that she liked the toast. Her Dad put the radio at that point, thinking he could have saved his moolah and just locked her in the basement with a toaster, while my Mum and Dad exchanged knowing glances, and eventually, we arrived at our house, and eventually I would start my own rant, I would exchange disappointing and mediocre presents, and I would roll up my sleeve in a special lounge room game of what looks dodgy to show them my infection, but for now, I gave my parents a hug, and went to my room to unpack my case, finally let out the agonising god my ear hurts scream that I'd been holding in since Tuesday and have the more traditional Scottish holiday of TV and chips...

And that's when things...no, actually, that's when I went straight to sleep, and didn't wake for four blissful beautiful days, without a single stress that my eyebrows would leave my body...

Hop Swiss Part Four - This kind of moment is only on loan

Our suspicions that the hotel staff had taken against us were confirmed, not just by the paranoid listening for desert approval from the waiters, but because we had been promised a treat, if that's not too strong a word, in which the staff (and presumably us) would participate in an end of trip talent show. I have no idea what this talent show would have included (certainly not making custard) but at the last minute just when I was about to get out the straw boater and prepare to join in, it was rather politely suggested that we might like to sample the delights of the local pool instead. In other words, get out of here you stupid Kilwinning kids, you are polluting up our wooden hotel of mystery. No pinball for you. It was suggested with a little too much force and so much force that the pool was talked up, so much that you'd have expected an Olympic style pool with mermaids and waterslides and lakes of chocolate to wade in, rather than a swimming pool with faintly alarming warnings about veruccas on the door in German and techno blaring through the change rooms. When we got there, it was the Swiss equivalent of Mommy and me night, so we had to share the pool with several mewling spewing infants, and one of our party called Ben who was desperate to locate a kickboard to hit people over the head with. I'm not entirely cut out for swimming, and it was unlikely the pale white Ayrshire swimming bodies would entrance fair Interlaken maidens, especially considering they were either with a child or carrying a child (lazy fucker was eight, you'd think he'd be walking by now) and their husbands formed an intimidating corridor of suspicion and strangely fabriced shirts along the pool deck. However, I did manage to isolate one middle aged beauty from the herd as we say in my part of the world - her name was Gaby, she had eyes (which was good) that you could lose yourself in, she had a skintight swimsuit, she had a body that put Elaines to shame, she had a gorgeously disdainful way of saying Ayrshire, she vaguely knew that Paula Abdul had gone off the boil, and she was interested in me. Yes, it was illegal, but we could have talked for ages, such was our mutual interests...if only her kid hadn't been violently ill over the shoes of a particularly pompous fraulein (who wears a fur coat to the pool?), and in the interim Ben hadn't emerged from the deep to hit me over the head with a kickboard (he didn't find it so funny when I choked him with a lane rope) and give me a mild concussion. And so like a Hobart nightclub at 3am, our potential (again deeply illegal) blossoming love had been torn asunder by a combination of vomit, concussion and pointless violence between friends. If someone had played OMC, it would have been my future all mapped out. I didn't even get to see Gaby leave, as she was whisked away by pool security with her wretched offspring in toe. As I looked across the pool, I thought I saw her blowing me a farewell kiss, but it turns out it was concussion induced mirage, and the fat lifefraulein girl in the tight red shorts was just blowing a whistle. She threw Ben out of the pool, and we all followed, unwinched, undressed, and freezing cold, back to the hotel for another night of guess who burped around the dinner table...

I had been determined that I would take one positive out of Switzerland, and had I managed to finagle a cheeky snog off a surprisingly hot middle aged woman, well, this tale might be very different. Unfortunately, all that happened was the pool made me incredibly ill. I had super conscious of not putting my head underwater, since I figured that putting a completely shut down ear underwater wouldn't necessarily be a good idea. Sadly though, such medical dilligence didn't apply to my TB shot - to wind back a bit, I was convinced to have a TB shot by a medic who told me that Nelson Mandela had TB and if it wasn't for his shots, he wouldn't have lead South Africa to greatness. I didn't want to be about to lead Scotland to independence from The Yenglsh and come down with TV so I said roll up my arms and make me patriotic. Sadly, at some point it had got infected hence (you guessed it) the loss of hearing, the lack of balance and the vomiting into a crisp packed on the mini bus. I didn't realise at the time that it was infected, so I jumped into a swimming pool with nary a concern and didn't put a bandage on it, and instantly fell ill and within weeks had a 20cm hole in my arm. On my last day in Switzerland though, all I had was a nagging itch and the feeling I'd forgotten something. There was a determination in all of us that we would enjoy our last day. They even let Colin out of sedation to go and have a wander around. As I walked around Interlaken for one final day in blistering sunshine, once more past the indifferent cows who now I looked just seemed to be wild cows without any kind of owner, I thought to myself that I owed it to myself to go and have some kind of crazy Swiss adventure. Sure, I thought, I could go home with epic tales of woe, custard and robbery but...and just as I was in the middle of the kind of speech you hear at the end of Disney films, one of the cows fainted in the heat, and just went straight over onto it's back. I looked around and no one else was there, which was kind of when I realised that I hadn't involved myself with the group enough, and spent too much time on my own. Not that anyone else had involved themselves in the group, as when I went into town I saw one of my travelling companions, a girl called Ella (ey ey ey) who liked denim a little too much, and as a result she was incredibly sweaty and looked puffed out like the girl who works in Big W, but a lot thinner. I decided in the spirit of companionship to start a conversation with Ella (ey ey ey) but her mood was sour. Even though she had a bag full of delicious chocolate treats, had bought an expensive and gleaming watch and had spent most of the week sneaking out of the hotel to go and chat up (that's one of way of putting it) the baggage boy Irfan, and yet, in one of natures most beautiful settings, she felt compelled to tell me with a scowling face what a shithole it was. And she was from Beith (little Ayrshire joke there). And she was getting some...and she had perfect hearing...the woe, I felt, was mine alone to feel...

Luckily for any Beithugees who found pure streams and rolling fields not to their liking, the time for us to leave had come. Our final group breakfast was, somewhat surprisingly, made and prepared by Fredrik, who we hadn't seen since the custard diplomacy debacle early in the trip. Urs had long since abandoned us after we failed to appreciate the nuances of his "ski...me" joke. As soon as he came out of his kitchen with his chefs hat and his imposingly manly moustache, we were concerned. I wouldn't say he was jolly as he dished up his idea of breakfast, but he was certainly indifferent, which was a step up from the boiling rage of earlier. I wasn't eating because I wasn't well, and because he had decided to send us on our way with porridge, after all, what is a more stereotypical Scottish breakfast than porridge? Unfortunately, and perhaps it was deliberate, he had once again completely botched it, and I'm assured that it tasted far more of egg than any porridge really should. I was never so glad to reject a breakfast on the grounds of racial profiling in my life. The strange thing was, no one complained, so terrified was everyone by the rejection of the custard, that not a drop of this horrible eggy porridge was wasted. Still Fredrik seemed happy that his breakfast had gone over well and actually smiled. It might have been an evil smile, but it was definitely a smile. Never complain about a chef I say. I decided to leave everyone to their breakfast have long abandoned any kind of Partridge family dreams that we would all get on the bus together singing with Rubin Kincaid leading the way. I mean our bus driver was called Dave and he smelled of gin for one thing. As I went up to my room, and stood on the balcony where Colin had had his fit, I swear off in the distance I saw Gaby, just for a fleeting moment, but she was getting into the car with a man and looking distinctly unhappy. The man driving the car looked like Irfan, so that just made things worse. As I stood on the balcony, a strangley melancholy Colin came into the room and said "who's the bird", and I presumed he had seen Gaby as well, and I could have poured my heart out to my heavily sedated companion, oh I could have poured my heart out to him, poured us both a glass of mini bar Pepsi and told her about the connection I h...but what would be the point? Instead, I said it was Gaby, and left it at that. Craning his neck in the direction of the car, he said "nice tits" and walked away. Although he was entirely right, it wasn't the intellectual stimulation and understanding that I was looking for. The Gene Hackman was next into the room, and he said absolutely nothing, except to swipe the last Toblerone and tell me that Colin was a spoon...oh, for a sympathetic ear...well, a sympathetic ear that wasn't hissing I guess...

With a suspiciously sore arm and an ear that continued to sound like the beginning of a Max Headroom sketch, having to carry my suitcase down the stairs past staff giving each other high fives that we were leaving was not the way I wanted to end my holiday. I had such high hopes when I left the BP station at Kilwinning, and it felt like none of us had seized the day...none of us had seized anything, well, I'd seized a potentially arm threatening infection, Colin had seized a large amount of class A drugs and Ella (ey ey ey) had seized Irfans...um...anyway, as I was dragging my suitcase down to the bus and it's distinctive smell of gin, I realised that the staff at the hotel were engaged in a bit of argument. It was a heated argument, as one of the Germans had fists cocked and was ready to strike. I shrugged it off until I distinctly heard the phrase "Nintendo"...Nintendo? What, like the one in the staff room where I had been secretly sleeping and stealing the cigarettes? I hadn't broken it had I? The staff hadn't gone to have a cheeky game of Goldeneye and it hadn't turned itself on? I turned my good ear to the conversation, which was in German and broken English. From what little I could gather, there was definitely something wrong with the staff room - what, I'm not sure, but it definitely involved the Nintendo and something to do with a slit in the couch. Slit? That definitely wasn't me, it was possibly the security guard. Then the word cigarette came into the conversation...now that definitely was me, I was so stressed I gone through about fifty Malboros the night after I was snowballed alone. If I'd had my proper hearing I would have missed the conversation because I would have had my Walkman clamped to my ears listening to the KLF and Hammer (he dropped the MC in 92) but this was definitely something I needed to pay attention to. The campest of all the hotel staff, a man who could make the most manly activities look camp (he could dig a ditch or chop down a tree with a hip swish) then said the phrase "security tapes"...oh shit. Yes, there was a security camera. Of course there was. And I was quite probably on it, stealing their pina coladas and dismissively critiquing their television. And who would have thought a little breaking and entering and theft and casual television criticism would have been illegal huh? Anyone? I was in a sense a little bit lucky because it was our last night, and just as the argument threatened to involve an all in review of the security tapes, Urs wandered past with chocolate on a tray and everyone calmed down and had a good old laugh...to this day, I wonder if anyone ever watched tapes and realised I was stealing sponges...sweating, and incredibly nervous, I boarded the bus with a heavy heart, an anxious heart, and a heart that was beating at about 200mphs because of the infection. The Gene Hackman bounded onto the bus, smiled as he sat next to me and said something akin to Switzerland being the single greatest country he had ever been in and he'd had the night of his life, and to a quiet murmur of indifference and the odd pelted Fruit Cream, we were off down the mountain, while I stared out the window, hoping for one last glimpse of Gabys bountiful bosom, and trying to work out exactly what the hotel staff were miming in the direction of our bus, and specifically, at me...

And that, incidentally, is when things went horribly wrong...again...