Did he realise how quick it had all been? Not at all, not until he saw the sign...

I've been a hostage to by shoes in the last few days - not that they've lead me to some special place via an enchanted spell, just that they are new, and painful, and make me shuffle awkwardly like a grumpy penguin until I need to sit down. They've been like wheel clamps these things, little leather wheel clamps clinging to my heels. Whats been interesting about these shoes - what wasn't interesting and unable to be paragraphed with proper phrasing was the weird hypnotically evil looking eyes of the girl who sold me the shoes in Harris Scarfe which twinkled with some kind of strange mischief like she was about to tell me the shoes opened up a magic portal - is that in my full on shuffle stage, I've become everything I hate, that is a slow walker holding everyone up. As I wandered through the midst of the single mothers and the cigarette stained shop girls, I couldn't help but notice that I was ambling at a pace that was well below my usual stride, and several groups of kids brushed past me as they excitedly discussed some girl named Sharon. Sharon seemed to have a hell of a weekend. Anyway, things got so bad today that I had to go and sit down opposite a sports shop. Most of the shops in Hobart these days have a depressing air about them, Harris Scarfe for instance has long faded from it's glory days when it was Fitzgeralds and hired creepy Santas by the dozen. Most shops I go into in Hobart have a warehouse feel, like the ones that cropped up in Ayrshire on the edge of town, the big shed ones where cordial was a gallon for a pound. Plastered all over the walls are signs with big percentages off, and shop girls mill around aimlessly. I swear my grey headed curly nemesis in KMart has been pricing the same book for the last 6ix months, just no one has noticed. My mate lost her photography shop, an achingly poignant thankyou note pinned to the window in one final act before it's swept to the history books. I'm considering telling her it would be ironic if she took a prize winning photo of a failed photography shop, but she totally wouldn't get it. Inside the sports shop, a woman haggles over the price of a hockey stick. I'd say from her size it's not for her, but it might be, I'm certainly not going to judge a woman entirely on her taste in big baggy pants. Maybe amidst Hobartian gloom, a larger lady is reclaiming her glory days through the power of hockey. Or she's planning to rob a bank. When I look, I notice an old man has sat next to me, and he's got his mouth half open as if he's about to speak. What's frightening is that I'm basically resting my feet just as he is, and it's a stimulus to leave the hockey stick question aside to a 3am moment when I'm sure it will come screaming back into my head, and move away, in what should be some sort of defiant get out of my way old age I'm not dead yet leap from the horrible vinyl seats, but instead becomes a terrible awkward shuffle and if the old guy really wanted to, he could catch me, and tell me all about how his grandson is far more successful than me - he just doesn't want to, because he's sitting in the old man squirrel pose...you don't me to tell you what he's fossicking for...

My time spent on the bench pondering just how stretchy some material is wasn't in vain though. I realised in those 5ive desperate minutes that not only is my entire week defined by tight leather clamps, and not only depressingly that there's probably no cobblers left in the world, but that this kind of thing - that I've got tight shoes - is somehow likely to affect me more than a terminal illness. There's no question in my mind that I could take a major inconvenience with a greater stride than something trivial. My main injury in life was a serious knee injury - it was the summer of 92, the sun was shining, the spunky band Girlfriend were inspiring the nation, and Collingwood obviously didn't win any games. Probably. I was playing cricket in the backyard with my Dad, a notorious competitive with a fine line in post match sledging, and our backyard was pretty pathetic. It was when we rented the house in Penguin, the depressing one next to the bakery that Vicki, my pash buddy, called quaint. We sometimes sat on the train tracks and just bagged it out, which was a little unfair. Anyway, I took a desperate spilling catch low to the ground to get Dad out, went to celebrate, then noticed I had gashed and smashed my knee into oblivion on a little hammered into the ground metal base for a garden shed. As I looked at it, I went, wow, that's going to smart, and I had a big needle ploughed into the middle of it, and then I went home. I had a limp, and Vicki dug the scar, but Mum was hysterical, and then thought that I all did was cope because the nurse was cute. The kicker in all this is this - I mashed my knee up good and proper, needed 16 stitches, and what do I remember about that day? The local milk bar was out of Banana Big Ms. I remember that really shook me out of stride. The shoes are like that - work is awful, the economy is crumbling, depression is everywhere, blue eye shadow girl looks incredibly stressed and it makes me sad, and the only DVD I can find is Friends, and yet, this week is a write off because I have horribly tight shoes. Are they excuses? If only I had long flowing hair instead of page 6ix of the army handbook, maybe things...I think I spend too much thinking about things I can't change, and a giant drama just is easier to cope with. If a world crumbles, I'll be the guy wondering why the liferaft isn't inflating and why the Chokitos taste different to how they did in the 80s...

The bookstore is the most depressing of all the stores around Eastlands, since the 50% off stores are in massively giant letters, and the bearded guy who has quite happy listening to his IPOD is now dressed in casual clothes, just waiting to push the boxes into the truck and shove off for the sunset. I can't even go in there anymore, it's just too poignant. The only two books left are the Popbitch book and some Manning Clark book that just seems to be the last book standing. I'd love for something illuminating and sparkling to just light up Tasmania - an event, some big development, anything, but it's just not happening. My home town in Scotland is now, if you'll let me invent a word, entirely rubbled - reduced to nothing but rubble and faded dreams and faded posters stuck to walls that no one came back and peeled off advertising much better events from the past. When I walked around Irvine, there were posters stuck to the walls advertising a big night of ladies wrestling, championship ice skating, Kim Wilde (yes!) live in concert, and just two steps away a shambling old jakie shuffled down the street and spat at the space where Woolworths used to be. Then again, I could do with a spark myself. I find it strange sometimes that I get a spark from sports, or from hearing Lily Allen on the radio - I question my own ambitions on days like this. There's a book on my floor by a sports star, all about how he wouldn't lose at marbles without a fight and how he held up a party once because something about him in the paper was wrong - I don't find this admirable. Should I? Should I be more like that? I don't have the time, I've got an IPOD to fill. There's a girl with a face like the proverbial bulldog chewing a wasp walks past me as I look at the IPOD trying to flick through the songs in a hurry, a hurry converse to my gait. I'm so stereotypical, I presume because she looks like Miss Warrane 2009 she has no ambition - her absolute resolute hurry to grab chips and then more chips seems to confirm this, but I musn't judge. My spark could come from an absolute moment of unpredictability, someone not being as they seem. You never know, this time next week Rodney, we could all be millionaires. Or at least, get some chips from the shop, before my new snarling friend gobbles them up in a frenzied assault...

Vicki and I had a conversation once about ambition. It was late in the day after she'd got off from the bakery - it was early in our pash based relationship, and we sat on the train tracks and had a conversation about Penguin. I was in my full on snobbery mode which was charming for a while, but ultimately if you carry on like that you end up with that whole stand for something or stand for nothing issue based conversation. I wish that I had been a bit more attentive, since it was an attempt at an adult conversation, but I don't even really remember it that well, but I know she was trying to think about the future and I was entirely caught in the present, devoid of energy and hope in a town foreign and alien - maybe I should have said what I thought, that I was just terrified of being so far away from my family, but I didn't, I said I hated that I had to wait until Monday morning to get the St Mirren score...I'm sure my Dad would want me to bowl in one day with a detailed plan to find a missus, a better job and not have to hear about Lily Allen and Megan Corkrey for once, but that part of my mind is a closed shop, the sign on the window very much thanking the past patrons. Can I change? Not sure - my mate is getting a tattoo of a hummingbird on her neck apparently. I have no idea why, but it'll pass the time - interestingly, in a major moment of status, the guy behind me at THAT party who said celebrities were only people was trying to shout to the minor celebrity about the size of his tattoo comparitive to the minor celebrities. Like a star struck child, he then chided himself in a one sided conversation that he wasn't impressed to be there at all. I smile at the memory of how much he was a tosser, and send my friend an e-mail with a shared private memory of the whole debacle. The surrounds aren't the best, but the people are good - that is something I value, and will when the world falls off the cliff, and people are huddled in Village Cinemas receiving crisis briefings. Trust me, some days if you squint just right, it can look like the car park is already preparing, such is it's horrible visage and lack of glamour...

I'll be the guy up the back of those crisis briefings saying the coffee is a little too cold...

The cyclone and the Capp (Robert Tepper remix)

My house, apart from the lack of two cats in the yard, is connected to the city by a road called The Southern Outlet. Hardly evocative in name, it is a depressing stretch of road, especially at night where it's just long enough so you can't sneak home easily but just short enough so all those thoughts that gather in your brain don't really have time to develop before you are thrown out at your own doorstep. There's no beautiful scenery to take your mind off things, no glamorous end point to the road, nothing you could write a poem about, unless you have a rhyme for roundabout. When a night out proves to be utterly disappointing, like last night though, you can feel some poignancy. After all, you have to drive down the road, with spirits high and then drive back up the same road blinking into the less than bright lights and wondering what happened to your sense of adventure. Don't put your hands in the life of a rock and roll band? Don't put it in the hands of two minor celebrities. I knew I shouldn't have stopped watching Rocky IV to go out anyway, but I was taken in by a lure, the lure of having a ticket no one else did. Like some horribly grim socialist fairytale, the other side of the fence was horrible, disappointing, and the only reward for this so called privilege was a free packet of lime and cracked pepper chips, and having a minor perve on someone, but then regressing because she doesn't have blue eye shadow. Large boobs, but not blue eye shadow. What I do like about her though is her sense of importance - I like watching people, receptionists say, rewarded with a night out, a freebie, the joy as they get a moment of appreciation, even though this appreciation is tempered by the fact she still has to give away free chips from a box, and make small talk with patrons, mostly about the chips, but sometimes bitingly scathing little bites of cynicism, which seem out of tune with her pregnant companion, who couldn't be more gleeful if she wasn't pregnant and could leap around to Dave Dobbyn at Syrup like it was 1999...

It's cold in Hobart at the moment, it's biting a bit more, right into the skin, the wind it's clamping teeth, the rain it's dispiritingly soggy gums. As I stand in the cold, when spirits were still high, a man in a skin tight T-shirt a shade of browny green you only see on serial killers and army men is holding court. His ticket - more valuable than mine since it's spare - is his weapon of choice, and he's using it to, well, lure young girls into the party with him. I'm decidedly uncomfortable with this, seriously uncomfortable by the time one young girl with stringy blonde hair and a purple top all shades of Cadbury is offering a hundred dollars for the ticket. He begins lording this spare ticket over a gaggle of disappointed and shivering youngsters, raffling it off via a quiz question about rugby league. Of course, when he selects his vic...I'm sorry, the lucky girl who gets his ticket, a plumpish girl in grey who reacts as if she's won the lottery, he enters and begins a process of bemoaning the entire event, from start to finish. After all, he thunders, famous people are just people too, they just have advantaged circumstances, and better taste in T-shirts...OK, I made that bit up. Which doesn't preclude him from some excited whooping at the appropriate moment. He quickly loses his intended and frankly illegal date with his witless wonderings, since the novelty of a guy who finds everything shit can be culturally cute at first but loses lustre. Down three metres in front of me, a little kid is seriously body popping to John Mayer. He's throwing shapes at such a mad rate, he comprehensively qualifies as serving somebody. The kid has no comprehension of what's supposed to be cool and what's supposed to be in, he's just enjoying the music and letting himself go, even if it is John Mayer. I hope that kid never turns into the guy behind me, who's complaining about the pizza now, making sure everyone can hear him, the centre of the crust. His date stares outside the fence, down towards where her friends are sitting outside the fence, and although her face is a mix of contempt and loathing and indifference and little chipmunk cheeks from eating far too many mallows, as she perches high above them sending them text messages, she looks like she feels she made the right choice. Meanwhile, my friend and I, taking on board the lessons of the man behind us, loudly to annoy him declare things like why are people so excited about the Pyramids, they are only buildings, no better than the Hobart Silos...his confidence as fragile as pick up tactics are illegal, he eventually quiets, munching on a chip as the little kid takes centre stage again, dancing up a storm to some 80s tune he couldn't possibly know, just, you know, cos...

The party is dull, lifeless, people are beginning to feel a bit disappointed, so they flick everyone a drink and hope no one notices that the promises on the tickets aren't being lived up to. The party hosts are congenial, but they don't mean it, it's work for them, another crowd to work and then leave. It distracts me that a long time ago I learned to read eyes, learned to study people, or did I just become Scottish and not trust anyone? I was reassured that when spirits were still high, the lone voice of dissention was this Scottish bloke complaining all the roads were closed. Bored, I begin humming various movie themes to myself as the cold continues to bite. They film a TV segment right through us - delighting receptionists everywhere but leaving me massively non plussed. Nothing much happens, time passes slowly, uncomfortable glances are being shared, and so they turn the music up to drown out independent thought, move some lights around to ramp up the feeling of excitement like when my Mum used to put on a record at my early birthday parties whenever the excitement of pin the tail on the donkey lapsed or some kid was chewing lego. In the midst of this alleged minor celebrity induced thump thump tsh tsh excitement, it's no surprise two middle age women begin a conversation that seems to be entirely about knitting needles. As The Presets thump ever more poundingly, they retreat even more into domestic tedium, covering scones and jam as desperation sets in on the ground floor. A big TV screen tries to hum into life, but then cuts out about the same time my interest does. Strangely, even after the receptionist with the big boos has gone bored and the John Mayer kid has long ceased to be Youtube friendly, our cynical mate behind us is still screaming out affectionately to be noticed, trying to engage the minor celebrity in conversation, and then claiming it to be horribly shit that he bothered to reply. His date has long since abandoned her pretence, and is shuffling to the left, as subtly as her weighty self possibly can, enjoying a lolly snake and using all her hearing to listen to the Presets, making sure she doesn't catch our hero getting onto the topics of how lolly snakes aren't as good as Chokitos...

Eventually, our so called party hosts leave, without saying goodbye, simply turning tail and leaving. They promised us their heaven to hold on the invitation, and then made us feel uncomfortable for hoping for something more. One poorly constructed video later, and it's all over, leaving everyone to shuffle around like livestock in danger until we all leave and go our seperate ways. For some, this disappointing evening is ruinous and instead of triumphant post party drinks at the Observatory as Rihanna thumps on the big screen, it's straight to the car and a drive home. Others are more sanguine, although the guy behind me of course has an opinion on it all, a very loud opinion. I'm patently not cut out for this alleged VIP treatment. Last year, I took Dad to a reception at St Mirren, and we sat around a table talking to two businessmen who were very nice, but it was networking for them, they were there to hand out cards and try and win the bingo. By the time I get home, I'm over the disappointment, a flickering film and a jam sandwich enough to make sure that the night isn't a total wash. There's no way I should have expected anything else, but they sure bumped up the party on the ticket as thumpingly good, and then delivered a packet of chips. It won't stop me though - disappointing as it was, no matter how the minor celebrities behaved, there were still things to be learned, experiences to gather, girls to fancy, people not to emulate...famous and not so famous. Charm, the it factor, well, close up, it's not there. If you get out your highschool yearbook, it's surprising how lame people you aspired to be can look, how the hot girl just seems utterly ordinary and, well, Burnie. Charming smiles, and then, they just left, back to their own lives without a thought. Well, my thoughts mostly revolve around a receptionist, about a kid who lived for the moment and a skeezy guy who lived to criticise, and just exactly how lime became a chip flavour but tomato sauce isn't...it won't be about how the other half live, because tonight, I saw how the other half live, and it was horrendously disappointing...the last I saw the receptionist, her smile had faded, and she was lugging a box, head down, talking to the pregnant girl, nudging her gently and shaking her head, a mass of non verbal communication, much better than me at direct emotions...

Peoples show my ass...

Whats so funny about peace, love and Big Ms (not to mention old school ruefulness)

Towards the end of 1996, I had become disenfranchised from my own life. Amid a blizzard of pop culture references, days idled away pretending to write a pile of poems for Writers Workshop - most of them referencing Kurt Cobain and fish - and being surrounded by terribly fractured friendships, most of my days were spent thinking about anything that wasn't my own impending future. In fairness, Grade 12 was a confusing mix of emotions for me - after all, I suddenly friends, social commitments, rock climbing on a Tuesday night, a job that was just awful, girl problems, hangovers and my horrific life long problem where I always think about how rapidly time has passed and philosophise on it way too much all combined to ensure that I was in a constant state of flux. 12 months earlier all I had was a job and 48 solid weekend hours of me time, even down to the fact that my alleged job at Coles had become a solitary vigil of cleaning meat trays and collecting trolleys. If it wasn't for the hookers in the car park that year, there'd be no one to talk to at all. They would gather in intermittent bunches and be disgusted with their station in life, which made them far more relatable to me than any supposed cool kid role model. Much of that year, as much as it all went sour, was pretty great - for one thing, they never teach you properly about the sheer joy of having no responsibility, the freedom to just sit in the park all day heckling people walking past trying to have a sneaky office formed lunch break timed pash in the middle of their middle aged May to December affairs. I was always entranced by one couple - he 40s, she mid 20s, they would stroll around the perimeter of the park in Burnie, never anywhere the main area or where we sat, in perpetual shiftiness, a holding of hands as surreptitious an action as they could imagine. I felt bad for her, because she always looked uneasy, while he just strolled around with his hands mostly in the pockets of his big black overcoat, smiling like Michigan J Frog released from his box. I had a mate who composed this entire back story for the two of them that was so poetic it was sepia toned and had rhyming couplets by the end of the year. Of course, we would sit and believe we would never be middle aged or let the grass grow under our feet. Ironically, that's what we were doing obviously - idly standing around in a park at a pre drought time when grass actually still managed to grow. Eventually the couple stopped their lunch time walks, so he either went back to his wife, or left his wife and skipped town with her, or the wife killed them both and whistled as she did it. No one I've ever seen holding hands did it in quite the way that she did it - when he took her hand, she would just beam, like she had tied all her hopes and dreams tied entirely to this guy. Maybe in the end she chopped him up and put him in a bin, such was her intensity every time they walked. Her sense of purpose just put me to shame, every step mattered, every syllable deliberate...she was the opposite to me, where every step was awkward, every syllable irrelevant to anything that mattered...if you wanted someone to tell you the names of the members of Garbage that weren't Shirley Manson was...

When the Kylie situation - unrequited love, no yes or no answer, angry exchange of view points - ground me down the most, I turned mostly to my hairdresser. I had a crush on my hairdresser because I thought she was pretty deep. She had a hippy style single person salon in the middle of Burnie, and we would talk long into the, well, haircut, about all manner of things. Sure, my Mum ruined one of our chats by coming in and interrupting one of my monologues on religion, but otherwise, our relationship was intense. Mind, my previous hairdresser was a Slavic guy called Swannee who when we lived in Penguin would put on Harry Lauder Donald wheres yer troosers for gods sake kill me now shortbread tin vinyl LPs of Scottish music, and who once nearly cut my ear off, so she didn't have to leap over too high a bar to impress me with her hair cutting, but she had cool things like fashion magazines from other countries and a little chamber with a beaded door you had to step through to get your locks trimmed. I think I liked her because she was older, and smarter, and made a trip to Egypt and damn the consequences, and she had a whole Megan Corkrey vibe to her that I just really liked. That was, until Aaron entered our chats. Ah, Aaron, her new boyfriend, who she was going to move on Adelaide with and sell the business to be with. I couldn't compete with Aaron - I mean, he drove a van for gods sake. I was ferried around by my Mother in a red car that had a smily face sticker on it. I had to concede defeat, but our conversations thus became depressingly one sided, and I had to make the grown up move in the end to go to a more Male hairdresser where the only conversation came when money was exchanged for goods and services. Our final encounter was plainly unsatisfactory. She looked incredibly tired, and bought Sprite and a yoghurt, a haul which didn't deserve the basket. I'm sure she eyed my haircut with some suspicion - there's every chance she was just stoned or something - and I really had nothing to say. It was very strange, and I believe, truly believe to this day she wanted to tell me something and didn't. I'm sure it wasn't I love you run away with me you'll never have an unevenly shaved head again, but it was something, and no words came out other than 7.99 and goodbye, and by the time I had printed off a receipt and begun to serve one of societies dregs who was taking advantage of the 50% off chickens, she was off. No one needs that kind of finality issue over a Coles conveyor belt under a dimly flickering light with a red and white next server please getting caught up in the end of the belt. It somehow seems like the story of my life - instead of fixing up my proper life, I get distracted by some problem like a conveyor belt getting stuck. And if you think this paragraph was confused, it was mostly because once I mentioned my hairdresser in Penguin, I got a real craving for a musk stick, so basically regret bites deep at me sometimes, but in small ways...beautiful Megan Corkrey style girl, or a craving for a musk stick? This is going to kill me at 3am...

By November, when I should have been hitting my study schedule, I just lost all interest in my own life and in making an effort in anything. David Boon day probably summed up my malaise, my mental ennui that grounded me making a tribute day to a cricket player - officially decreed by the government no less - more eagerly anticipated to me than any exam or final decision on my life. Instead of studying or smartening myself up with a sensible haircut, I was on a couch at a party in honour of Mr Boon drinking beer in a futile attempt to get drunk, with about four people and we sat in a dimly lit living room which didn't match the promised cricket and BBQ brochure at all. The turn out was something of a disappointment, since no one seemed willing to make the effort to party on this particular day. The beer was drunk by the gallon, but nobody really got drunk, so it was a strangely middle aged party, the host reflecting on his life like some Bold and the Beautiful character emboldened to make one last speech to camera before his reign on the show was ended. The reminisces were a little uncomfortable, and I tried to lighten the mood a little not just by pointing out how, like, some bands have, like, funny clothes in music videos - what a wag I was - but also the comedy genius of Benny Hill. Strangely, later we would watch a Benny Hill video, and it really wasn't that genius, I think I just liked Yackety Sax. As far as I am aware, it was the first time I noticed there was a schism in our friendship group...well, I noticed it when I thought about in 1999 when I was making a sandwich. People didn't attend the party because other people were attending it because they were uncomfortable and it really sticks in my mind as quite an upsetting day. I was relatively inoffensive, nice to talk to, and still lost friends through my actions, so the jerks were really screwed. I don't remember pondering the temporal nature of friendship at the time though - more like the qualities of Space Jam and the decline of Bill Murrays career with some girl in a garden and then falling asleep in a garden and waking up somehow having got to a couch. I think the problem with my writing is that sometimes it's all hangover and not enough drunk. In this case, the fact is, the party was, ultimately, depressing, but there was still beer and I would still say I had a great time, although perhaps I overstated Michael Jordans acting ability in all the excitement. I think Oscar winning stretched it...

So ultimately, my Grade 12 experiences were far more educational about life than maths and science - it wasn't every year I had a friend excommunicated by a church he didn't belong to just for taking communion when he shouldn't have. Today, things like that - trendy parties excepted - don't seem to happen. My hairdresser today was a slightly dumpy girl with, ironically, a bad haircut, although I'm debating now whether I've broken my own rule of mis use of irony. There really wasn't any mystery to her, no philosophical conversations, although in a strange and eerie twist, she nicked my ear with the shaver. If she'd given me a musk stick at the end, well, that would have sealed the deal, although I think she'd eat it herself. I'm not much help either, my childlike sense of wonder died a long time ago. Besides which, it's a factory hairdressers, multiple seats, cherub cheeked youth next to me discussing product and fringe adjustment gel and such like young people nonsense while I'm getting page 6 of the army handbook. As I make my way back to the car - through the car park where I was offered crack once by a genteel Amnesty schoolgirl - a slightly depressed looking pregnant woman in an orange T lopes towards me, looking as weary and depressed as I've ever seen anyone. She's been to Chickenfeed but she's never been to me. Her other kids are milling around the trolleys and running amok and she can't even muster the most basic life in her eyes and she stumbles with her bags towards me. Her unwashed hair blows in the wind, and every step looks like it hurts. I drink my Big M - now called Big M edge - and feel compellingly moved by how sad and broken she looks. If good things do happen to me - and contrary to how depressed I get when Collingwood lose, they do - I'm not taking the time to appreciate them, for different reasons than Grade 12. I can feel old sometimes, and like I've seen it all before, but sometimes suburban despair still gets to me. If she has a blog, it'll all be depressing twists in her life, weary paragraphs and bemoans loud and proud. Still, as she carries her bag, she still takes the moment to lift her head in the rain and muster as much dignity as she can, just in time to swear loudly at her offspring, piercing the grey sky with words you couldn't print in a family friendly blog...

Maybe I need 6ix weeks off from doing this, it just makes me hungry and thirsty and in need of getting a haircut...

The diamond that wanted to be a lump of coal

Around my neck hangs an invitation, an invitation that has apparently made me a much more interesting person according to my people on the ground. Although I feel the same - I still want to join Twitter and post updates like I'm throwing cats at a pencil case until the authorities investigate - it is provoking envy and offers of cash for me to relinquish. I'm rarely in this position of envy, and habitually throughout my day I have thrown it into conversation, just because it annoys people I am going to something they can't. It's made me think that if I was somehow in a position of real power, I'd be insufferable, I'd be constantly flicking the ears of underlings and firing them if they didn't know how many games Graham Yallop captained Australia for. Maybe. Certainly articulating this invitation and what it entails makes it seem a little silly, but it's fun to taunt, even just a little. Such festive thoughts of social bettering were a little disrupted as I gambolled carefree past a sandwich shop, and a bearded guy in a camel coat was praying. Or he was possessed, I'm not quite sure. He was facing away from his dining companions, and he had his eyes shut, and his hands clasped, and in the outdoor setting he seemed oblivious to how uncomfortable he was making the female who wasn't his girlfriend, and eventually she shuffled off to buy some rather unreligious T-shirts from the T-shirt shop that blasts pumping techno out all day long but still seems depressing. There really isn't anyone to envy at midday in Rosny shopping centre, no aspirational figures, no social leaders to look up to. Shuffling bogans, bewildered old people, shop keeps with a do not touch that merchandise folded arms stance, tinkling Lily Allen in the background not loud enough to hear. Fat Sweaty Girl is back working, exhausted as ever. She's taken a younger girl under her meaty wing, and she's pointing out all the features of Big W. The younger girl has this horrible frozen expression on her face, as if the horror of her starched blue and white stripey shirt has begun to imprison her soul. Her mind, wherever it is, is already dreaming of Syrup, of the weekend, of escape...I want to tell her, just to really get at her a bit more, about my exciting social event, but her eyes are rolled so far back into her head as fat sweaty girl shows her how to use a pricing gun that, well, it would just be cruel...

There weren't many aspirational figures to follow in mid 90s Burnie - a girl who's Dad owned the furniture store here, a firey brimstone football coach with spittle flecked tones there, but they were merely aspirational figures for those who wanted to stay in Burnie and while away their lives toiling outside KMart and pondering the fate of the South Burnie Hawks over chocolate milkshakes. In the library room where we sat and pondered our fates, me with pen in hand making notations in a tattered notebook that ended up being far more gossip riddled than I had intended, we would ponder what was to become of our youthful selves, and when the pondering became too ponderous, we'd go out and drink beer instead. I was enrolled in the slightly facistic sounding Young Achievers group around about this time - not just for the irony - but because well everyone else was doing it, it being some sort of after school project which was supposed to teach you how to run a business, and it was a good excuse to hang out at the Pulp Mill every Tuesday and eat free Mars Bars and hit on girls with nary more than the odd quip about Spiderbait. In truth, my enthusiasm dimmed for the project on night one when I wasn't voted the group treasurer - who knew that basically coasting through life was uninspiring to the electorate? Damn girls with enthusiasm and ambition and, quote, plans, unquote. Ah well, it just gave me more time to eat Mars Bars and come up with slogans for our bumper stickers. Since I couldn't treasure and I couldn't sew, I wasn't much use to the business project, so I became social co-ordinator. To boost morale I would come up with time killing games such as throw the rubberband over the spike, whatever happened to LL Cool J, and plan far off parties and social events that never really got off the ground. I think they gave me an office, thought I suspect that I've made this up, and I actually just went into someones office to play Solitaire on the computer. The glimmer of light in all this though was our planned trip to Hobart, the big city, to allegedly sell our product at Salamanca Market, but which really was just an excuse to stay at older girls house and get smashed on alcopops and then go out and smash Hobart to bits - which were new in 1996, I read it in Select. This trip was talked about in hushed tones in the library and it began to take on a life of it's own, it was talked as if it was going to make Satyricon look like an episode of Keynotes with Richard Wilkins. Even Kylie, the girl I really liked, took the time out from her busy schedule of indecision and confusion to ask me to take care...take care? What was I getting into? Well, the classroom for Maths if you don't hold me up for much longer. Like chinese whispers - or like Chinese Democracy - I had no idea if this trip to Hobart was going to be my wild road to ruin, but it sure was going to be fun finding out...bring on the achievement I said, for young and for old...

It was 10:30, when I was in a sleeping bag since the older girl and her friends had all gone to bed and no one else was up that I realised - as I would be with Chinese Democracy - I had been rather mis-informed. It's part of why I hate Robbie Williams, because his cover of Freedom was the first thing I heard that morning, as the girls milled our with perky glows and made breakfast and said that last night had been awesome. I felt that they had rather missed the point. I felt incredibly deflated that such a massive build up and only delivered an early night, intermittent disturbances from a ticking clock, Robbie Williams and muesli congealed in a bowl. Deflated, I had to get out of the house, and got hopelessly lost in some sort of decrepit broken down sing park with jutted metal corners on the swings and where the kids learned hard lessons about life as drunken hobos slumped against walls that seemed to go on forever. Where was I? Somewhere, some suburb, with a drunken feeling in spite of my alleged sobriety. A dog was looking at me suspiciously, but I didn't feel like engaging him in a stare off and he shuffled off to sniff a rogue frisbee just because it felt like the right thing for him to do at that moment. Pondering what went wrong, I began to think things had possibly gone wrong when my friend - perpetual motion machine, maths calculations, that guy - had taken as false ID a photocopy of a passport page with one of the numbers crossed out in pen. By the time I realised I was hopelessly lost, I really didn't have the energy to debate it in my head. By the time it started to rain, I really pondered the temporal nature of cool. To take the taste of muesli out of my mouth, I ended up in a local shop scrambling around for change in my pocket trying to find enough to be able to scramble up a bag of Twisties, and as I mused whether pocket fluff still counted as currency, the shop keeper looked deep into my bloodshot eyes and made the universal fnuh fnuh gesture which one male makes to another to indicate he knows what you got up to last night. Yes mate, muesli for breakfast, it was one bacchanalian delight after another...but there was something about his little gerbil face that compelled me to lie. I don't know why I did it, but the party I made up in my head just to tell him about was an absolute riot. So deeply did I immerse myself in my story - I bet it didn't have paragraph breaks - that it took me a full minute after I left the shop to reconcile with the truth of the evening, maybe when a piece of muesli caught the back of my throat. It was nothing compared to the story I told Kylie though - that one had live music and depravity you couldn't dream of. Yes, someone ate Fruit Loops...the horror...the horror...

Back in the present, I've got Lily Allen on, and my sense of social importance has well and truly dimmed as I mill about in my slippers reading books on Dream Team Football. I often, just as I drift to sleep and when I don't have Jennifer Adams dreams, think about the nature of envy, the exaggerations slipped in to my life like pills in the cereal. Not just the never to be named Tasmanian celebrity in Sandy Bay who had a party going in his house with flashing lights and loud music while he sat in the living room on his own eating mac and cheese, but every day. Will my much hyped social event be another disappointment I'm forced to cover up with tall tales and cheeky winks? Who knows? In KMart, a gang of giggling bike panted girls - and again, I'm at that age where my reaction is less of a Sid James cwor and more of a why aren't you in school finger wag - are eyeing off one of the shop assistants. Shame on them for fancying shop assistants...anyway, as they check out that way he puts the toys on the shelf, one of them casually walks past and says hi. Oblivious to the scene he's causing, he says hi back with no real grace and certainly no cwor, but the girls take it as if he zomg totally loves them, and go off giggling into the sunset - or the electronics department if you are less poetic. I would imagine this call and Kmaresponse will become massively exaggerated on Twitter tonight, especially by the girl scowling at the back with her imitation Fisher Price My First purse and store bought pout who no doubt is convinced that zomg he totally likes me. Ahead of them will lie the same experiences I went through, the crushing disappointments of over hyped parties and the surprisingly amazing oh my god we said we were just having one beer what happened to my keys why have we been hugging for an hour parties that have no hype at all. I'm sure they'll figure it out, and I'm sure they'll move on from Twitter to something else, and I'm sure they'll realise in time that it's not worth chasing some boy with slicked back hair who can't even hook a Randy Orton WWE figure onto a hook at the first attempt. As for me, my phone is still twittering with text messages from a friend trying to get into the party - I turn it off, turn it off so I can swear at Max Sharam on the TV, and then go to bed aware that tomorrow, I do it all again...

And by again, I don't mean learning to use a pricing gun...that poor, poor young girl...

Birds that sing for territory can learn to scream euphorically - unless impeded by tracksuits

Her face is a contorted mask of ugly rage, her cheeks blistered and minimum wage afflicated, her fists pounding in the air as she chases her prey, her 5.99 heels from Big W almost snapping as she stalks another girl down the road. Her victim - a skinny girl with badly dyed hair, who is hearing variations on the theme that she's sexually loose over and over again. They fight a meaningless and one sided battle with swinging arms and punches and terrible girly kicks, stumbling around outside the sandwich shop where I'm stuck in a one lane queue, and it's over the top, brief, one that features the throwing of a mobile phone, until a man with so much brylcreem on he's dripping the 50s all over the pavement steps in and intervenes - whether he's seeking to be the hero or just hoping to take advantage of a vulnerable young girl, there seems something unsavoury about his motives in solving the problems of the world, his arms spread like he's describing a fish he never caught as he holds the warring parties at bay just with his Perry Como cardigan and a few old person phrases and the word hoi. He's like a white knight if instead of a horse he rode in in a Mitsubishi Magna and his hands were too calloused to really hold a sword. Suitable for his surrounds, but no girls dream really - unless you dig the slick. He should go to the middle east. It all seems so pointless, the quarrels of two tracksuited scrags fighting over a nursed grievance I barely look up from the newspaper as I munch on my sandwich, barely even move the IPOD off Lily Allen to listen to their screaming complaints. I have my own concerns, my own mood is shrouding every aspect of today, making it feel like as thought I'm under pressure when in fact I'm completely safe and away from harm. Empathy is in as short supply as edible sausage rolls in this corporate franchised bakery, and by the time a plainly bored police woman with gym built shoulders uses all the training to try and re-assure a victim who must know by now she's not that far away from hearing the phrase let off with a caution, Lily has faded from my ears and the fight has faded from my memories. I don't think I have it in me to be a have a go hero anyway - maybe if I had more hair, maybe if I was coated in brylcreem and willing to play a role of over exaggerated interest to try and get to see poor white girl boobs. He's got an arm around her, and he's whispering consolation. The whole thing seems unbearingly sleazy and depressing, I suggest I'm not watching out of aching poignancy as much as distraction from Lilys newly toned down and less spiky 2nd album musings. I'm not the only one skirting the issue though - a Kris Kristoferson lookalike takes a look at the girl, goes to say something, something comforting, but decides against it, taking refuge in the sanctity of a raspberry housecake as he two steps his way into the day, without a backwards glance or a hair in his beard out of place...

I don't think I've been put in too many positions where my gallantry has been questioned. I think it was an accepted part of my one serious relationship that I was never really going to be laying any coats on puddles or fighting any black knights unless it was part of a level on ATARI. My girlfriend was a lot more gallant than me, she was interested in all these crazy ideas like, you know, helping people and being tolerant, like Ghandi in a netball skirt. We'd argue about it in the mornings sometimes, we'd pretend it was part of an intellectual argument instead of just another fight. Students - well, I'd failed, so ex students as well - will often do that. It put me off uni bars for life, stupifylingly awful arguments baseless and groundless turning in on themselves under the guise of open debate. Oddly, from such alleged intellectual beginnings, 1/2 the time you'd end up seeing the same end result as you got from discussions about sport or television at The Mayfair - badly thrown punches and some girl holding her shoes screaming at her boyfriend alternate phrases of encouragement and disgust. My girlfriend would grab herself a pop tart and rush out the door leaving me behind, and she'd throw in some alleged zinger that I would bat back with a crushing insult, and I thought that's just how people existed in relationships. I was never put in a position to defend her honour - never had to do that for anyone. There was a girl on her netball team who was festively plump, and she was sort of the team victim, the one the rest of the team blamed for all the ills of the world - and those ills sure piled up on windy days at Creek Road when the chill would be biting and a C Grade netball game was in the balance. One day, my girlfriend snapped, and had a go at her team for the constant piling into this girl, and as the team victim lifted up her chins proudly, I honestly never thought my girlfriend looked more beautiful, her ponytail billowing in the breeze, like some symbol of liberty and personal dignity an American could better articulate. I guess I should have told her how proud I was of her for sticking up for that girl, but it just wasn't that sort of relationship. I'm guessing we went home, and under the guise of pretending to discuss the nights television, we would have an argument, and then I'd go home after I'd gone to the shops and picked up some milk for her from the local shops. I guess that was about as gallant as it got for us. She bought me an ATARI and I'd pick up milk, and at certain points throughout the year, we be immensely proud of one and another, and the best our relationship ever got was when no one spoke and lights were dim and the television was flickering with some nonsensical trash that was in at the time, which if you know me in the non blog sense is probably the single most gallant thing I can ever do for someone...I gots stuff to say you know...

In the dying days of Grade 12 - hazy summers, crumbling personal relationships, too much bear, what do you mean I only got a B, it was probably the same for you - we went to the local school to play cricket. I seem to remember there was some tension about the trip, some sort of post modern angst as to exactly who was playing and who was fielding and that it was a ridiculously hot day. In Burnie? Does that sound right? Some days it was hot enough we got Melbourne TV - man those were good days. Anyway, for reasons I've never been able to explain, we decided to use a real cricket ball, and of course, as sure as that guy never got his food from Grover the waiter, the cricket ball as bowled to a girl hit her in the face and the game was abandoned after about two deliveries. The girl in question was the one I referenced before, the one who I fell in love with when she gave me a Beth Orton CD with the boyfriend who was a tool in retrospect who was trying to invent a perpetual motion machine - this was the year before, or else I might have brylcreemed up my hair and been medically helpful, fnar fnar fnar - if people still fnar in this day and age. Not really, I'm just that kind of person, I don't hit on the vulnerable or the concussed. She was basically OK after a few moments of concern, but her boyfriend seemed oblivious to the drama. He was on the boundary rope doing mathematical calculations, eventually wandering over to put a flimsy arm around her then go back to his own thoughts. She was always impressed by his intellectual side, a side I could have cultivated more, but he seemed less like a deep thinker at this moment than just a tosser. Interestingly, she didn't seem to mind - he had ambition I guess, which made up for his romantic shortcomings, a power couple in the makings as long as they didn't fuck it up with too much time spent worrying about Tazos (who would do such a thing?). It all seems quite strange in hindsight though - I don't think I ever saw them kiss. Their relationship had little time for gallantry as they both hit the books. I've lost touch with them of course and this has become my last memory of them. One of my friends that day wandered past and said thank fuck we weren't like them, but in some ways, I did, briefly, end up like that...unable to get my head out of the clouds, unable to articulate any kind of loving words, maybe I was as bad as him...well, not quite as bad, but things only become clear with the 3am stabs of realisation...as the 6th goal for Celtic bounces through Chris Smiths legs, your mind tends to need things to think about...is ATARI not just as bad as mathematical calculations in time of need...oh dear, another goal, they just aren't even trying now...quick brain...think of some other mistake it's ten years too late to fix, I'm sure there's one in there...

The victim is still there when I skip down the road much later as Lily Allen would prescribe - not that I can skip, my 3rd place behind Scott Matheson in a Grade 2 skip off would suggest that - now sitting on a pavement with desolation in every inch of her personal space while her personal protector begins a personal briefing to the ambulance man, a chunky man who has the physique of a stretcher bearer. If he pushed on a chest to try and get some breath he'd crush a brother. He has the bedside manner of a man deprived of a hot chip, and the girls exaggerated sobs are, well, exaggerated, agonised but devoid of real emotion, an act, and I know because when I was little I invented those sobs. Oh how many times I would sit behind a door with my green cotton sheets with the floral pattern - is it just me or was cotton a lot more comfortable in the 80s - in a huff sobbing but really hoping someone would open the door and ask how I was, and then I'd have to make the embarrassing shuffle into the living room because I was hungry or I wanted to see A Country Practice...her assailant has been rounded up by now, and had I been more on the ball perhaps I could have got a chorus of you're going home in the back of a divvy van going. I'm sure Kris Kristoferson would have joined in. She's really milking it now, driving that poor cow mental as she mouths the word why. I expect her to swoon sometime soon, but as compelling as this piece of street theatre is, the Advocate newspaper in the library won't read itself. I walk away - the brylcreemed man is back with his arm around the girl, who is still in the throes of Pia Zadora syndrome. I leave them to their moment - I guess having a mobile phone thrown at you is bad enough without the creepy intentions of an old man saving the day, unable to get the superhero custome over his head with all the grease. I move away, unsure of what the ending will be to the saga, and just as I get into the bus mall I see Kris Kristoferson again. He lifts an eyebrow in a masterful piece of non verbal communication, then shifts off to get his bus home, sitting down, burying his head in the paper, moving away and leaving everything behind as he heads home to write a simple country ballad with more depth in the lyrics than you first realise...

And time, as always, just continues to pass in ever decreasing circles...

The four ages of man - punch in the arm, prank to impress girls, all pubs are shit, what are you looking at

The Sundays - Wild Horses
Uploaded by djoik

It's early morning - I wonder what I'm doing up to be honest, and I share my space with several other muddled and confused workers of various businesses who are struggling with the problems of sliding doors, holding a coffee while they open a sliding door, or just drinking enough coffee to make sure that they have enough motivation to get through another day of dealing with the public and that damned sliding door. I can see on their faces years of disgruntlement, minor annoyances now cascading onto them like torrents, the every day death by a thousand cuts not soothed by javas. I'm on the down escalator, which I'm sure is a metaphor for something. One of my quirks is more all my intellect or perceived one, I always get escalators and elevators mixed up when I say the word and like the day I kept calling Jamie Shanahan Jamie Shanashanan and couldn't stop no matter how much I concentrated such a mental blind spot has ceased to be cute. On the up escalator, two schoolboys sit on the ground and go up seated and unmoving, their hair a shaggy mess, their grins broad. I realise at some point that they seem a bit upset there's no one around to impress with their zaniness - the only female anywhere near us is a lady who would have made a great bad girl wrestler in the 80s, sturdy of thigh with a good effort in the clean and shopping bag jerk. Too young to contemplate any port in a storm, they begin shifting uneasily as they wonder where the little blonde girl from Zamels is that they all fancy. Disappointed at the lack of audience for their alleged hilarious as usual cheek - I mean, who sits on an escalator, those mad kooks - they begin grinning at me. I'm expected to acknowledge their superior comedy skills by way of a mutual grin, although I expect it will follow with some sort of mocking coda, and to be honest, there's no one else around, so if they believe they can embarrass me with mockery, only the lady wrestler would hear it and she's got her own problems, a bulging bag causing her tracksuit trousers to be less than Rocky like in their defiance of the laws of gravity. So I move on, sipping my water, listening to my IPOD and knowing what they don't, that no one is as cool as their showing off no matter who much it is backed up by a third lingering friend guffawing at the outrageousness. As they get to the top of the escalator and have to get up, Panda Eyed girl walks by - whatever her faults, she walks with an outrageous sense of cool, a disdainful hundred yard stare backed up with a strut that comes entirely from the hips. As she walks past, the boys are suddenly stricken with nervous hormonal lust that no amount of hair gel or puffed up surf jumpers can mask. They shuffle off awkwardly into the distance, and I feel like telling them it wouldn't matter. Panda Eyed Girl wouldn't notice. She's punching numbers into her phone, probably Twittering, her self absorbtion so absolute, she barely notices she nearly collides with an only slightly opened shutter, limboing under it, not a blonde hair nor newly plaited pigtail out of place...

My car, just before this exchange, had puttered through Kingston at less than warp speed. Once in my car, a guy in a blue ute with Revving Bastard on the back of his car pulled up next to me in Sandy Bay, revved his revving bastard engine to try and drag me, and then stalled as I drove off with solid efficiency. Today, I am a driving model of solid efficiency, negotiating road works and the arrogant lollipop lady I fight with every day, in her silly oversized coat and Kato like ability to jump out in front of me and hold me up whenever a student might, just might, be somewhere in the region. There's two kids at the bus stop - one is a small, slightly geeky ginger kid with cokebottle glasses and a sinister smile, the other a smaller blonde boy who looks a bit like Michael Christian, and who is always wearing some kind of hat. Whenever I drive past, with a brief glimpse into their self created sitting around at the bus stop world, they are always fighting. At first, it seemed playful, but today at the morning moment when I passed the smaller child was fully, forgive the lapse into Penguinese here, cutting sick with his punches to the ginger kids arm. Maybe he was pushed too far, the hat to the back jokes just mounted up. Mum would probably have got out and stopped them - she's like that, although even she's been dissuaded from that action by too many Mercury horror stories. I drive on. A long time ago, in a draughty scout hall, as the KLF pulsated and a DJ pondered whether flirtacious conversation with a 13 year old girl would get him fired, there was a fight broke out in the corner although since the music was pulsating at an alarming rate of wicked beats over phat choruses not many people saw it - two friends fighting over a girl and where once their fighting had been playful, nay, phat, this was different. The girl in question I had always found quite vulgar - interestingly, she had a quite a posh elongated name but short snappy wee ned vocals that didn't seem to fit, like some strange composite character rebelling against her hyphen. She didn't seem especially phased by the fight, and copped off with the DJ at the back of the stage by the time the teachers had suspended both the brawlers. Obviously the ginger kid is too young to be fighting over girls - unless there's some memo I missed girls are suddenly into cokebottle glasses. I round the corner just in time to nearly hit some ambling kid who is taking his time crossing the road. He's in full on slouching pose, too cool for school but I suspect from my judgemntally clouded windscreen - no wait, it's just dirt - that he will be one day, sadly, not be too cool to be flipping burgers at a popular chain restaurant with a litigious bent. That's the restaurant that has a litigious bent, not his burger flipping style. He's so lazy and apathetic as he holds up my usually frantic mid morning drive, I want to go round the corner and get the hat kid to beat him in the arm just to wake him up. Whatever you could say about the kid in the hat, but he's certainly got spirit...

Laziness has crept into my Saturday - not old enough to give up, not old enough to be tired without it being commented on, but not young enough to be truly hip apparently, but then again not old enough to need a truly new hip - but so has a hangover, something I didn't used to get. On David Boon Day all those years ago - I've got to get to that - I sat on a couch drinking entire cartons of beer with no more than a casual shrug and still retained my ability to suggest that Regurgitator would be a musical force for years to come, just like The Sundays. There's a lack of pulsating music in this pub tonight - no atmosphere, a detached restraunteur in the far corner talking about his business being in decline, a television with Rihanna and the sound off on in the background. I go to come up with some sort of witty Observatory/observing that it's shit in Hobart line, but it'd be wasted on my friends. Besides, I'm drunk, curse it all, and I'm probably babbling on my default topics of sport and music. I know I at least brought up music - if I bring up sport, such is my surety my team will beat Dads team at AFL on Friday night he has taken to calling me smug and it's made me feel I'm jinxing the Pies in the Sky - because I mention the reformation of an allegedly trendy band. A cool girl in short shorts with blonde hair and overly orange make up - I'd say Tangello as a shade but such was my lack of knowledge about fruit at Coles was so poor it's almost certainly not - hears our conversation and asks excitedly if it is true. When I affirm that it is true, she asks if I am a fan of said allegedly trendy band. Now, had I been younger, and been in a desirous position to be amorous with said girl and wake up to a face that made me think of an amber traffic light once it had faded in slightly, and lets face it, we've all been there, I would have said yes, great band, their Led Zeppelin tribute act is truly a marvel of modern invention, I have tickets...alas, I cannot lie, and she skulks off once I say that I am not. I'm accutely aware that I am now too old for such one night stands and lies about music or what I do for a living - no one buys I'm a gad about Scottish playboy anymore, I've lived here too long and probably everyone has seen me at one point or another out and about doing the Tassie two step and word has got around. Besides which, I'm old enough to believe that these nights are fundamentally depressing. In my own hypocritical way, I still go and get drunk and such like things, but less than I used to. On my e-mail, the reasons why no one can go out tonight are getting more and more desperate. Who moves house at 8 at night? Truthfully, we're just at the age where the noisy thump of techno has given way to the quiet strains of Channel 7s football coverage, and instead of sleeping in someone elses bed and trying to sneak out the window, we're sleeping in our own in the afternoon cos we need a nap - or at least, some of us are, my friend of similar age was more than happy to declare himself a fan of said band, which is patently untrue, and if he was confronted in the morning with a face that neither indicates stop or go, I'm happy to leave it between him and his god, which last time I checked wasn't the least singer of that trendy band, and I'm happy to have a long boring talk with my taxi driver about the declining nature of Friday night entertainment...

I have an ambition when I'm old - it's not a noble one - to find a local pub and essentially retire there, flirting with the barmaids, calling them darl, rolling out of bed in my slippers and going straight to the pub to have opinionated chats about sport and glare angrily at locals in my chair. My chair of course will arbitraliry change depending on who's sitting where and I will be truly annoying within the confines of my own narrow world, floating emphatic opinions with absolute certainty and then changing my mind when people agree. Mind you, there is a recession on, so there might be no pubs, we might all live like the Reagan era trolls Michael Stipe used to be obsessed about before he discovered Buddhism and Sesame Street. There's an old man who's taken my desires and acted them out for me as some sort of street theatre involving the returning of biscuits. Such is his unhappiness with some aspect of the exchanging of money for goods and services and a big chocolate cookie, he threatens to bring the alleged biscuit infraction up in parliament. The girl behind the counter looks weary, even older than him, as she grapples with page 82 of the customer service manual provided on induction day - what to do when you really want to say fuck off old man and take your bushy eyebrows with you. She smiles politely but her lips still somehow drip with acid, aware that the ravages of time and the eternal pull of the grave will take care of her grey haired foe. Eventually, she just gives him another cookie and he smiles directly at me with some undeserved triumph, I shuffle uneasily from foot to foot. I think for one moment he's going to demand an up top. There's really nothing to up top about. I know Tasmanian parliament doesn't much to discuss other than how not to give Hamish and Andy a key to the city or problems with chickens, but I can't see them sparing too much time to a biscuit crisis. The girl watches him go, never taking her eyes off him as he walks off to a shop called What's New (not the decor! Am I right folks? Am I...is this thing on?) to complain about something else. I know from her overly pursed lips that she's thinking she'll never be like that, doddering and old and completely pedantic as to worry and complain and harangue about a biscuit because she's young and cool and carefree and won't let things get her down - but of course she will be, and besides, the anxious look on her face when she can't find her tongs and the over exasperated concern on her visage when she forgets where the hedgehog slice is in the stall seems to indicate the process has already started. It happens to the best of us, I feel like saying, maybe putting an arm around her in consolation and pointing out that she's using the tongs to pick up an almond slice...it happened to me the day I began really finding myself hating people mis-using the word ironic...

So very much....

The boy who sat in a jail cell and thought you know I have this idea for something called Twitter

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Taxes
Uploaded by Van_Lock

I had this acid style flashback last night while reclining in my hammock, although my perception of acid flashbacks would be different if I had ever taken acid - who takes acid these days? Is there a pile of Altern 8 fans out there dying for the days of Ayr Pavillion? And yet it's vivid, hypnotically calm. It goes like this. My first ever school outing was in kindergarten to the Penguin police station. Penguin wasn't a hotbed of crime - as I've said before, one time the Penguin police chief took an ad out in the local paper saying he was going on holiday and could all crime related enquiries be directed to Burnie. Sure, occassionally some surly know it all youth would be rude to a tourist or put chewing gum in the collection plate, but the law was respected, respected enough to make sure that quibbling Tom the quibbler wasn't complaining or quibbling for once and he quibbled a lot for a kindergartener - the crayola castle was a constant source of dispute. As the cooing children were shown the joys of a workplace that had less than athletic staff, some of those really impressive 80s phones that were all that kind of yellowy colour with the big finger holes, mugs that had ironic slogans that would be funny once we learned what irony was, and naked ladies since no one had invented sexual harassment yet, eventually some of us were put in one of the cells and in an amusing twist - we hadn't learned what amus...oh never mind - they, they being Chief Wiggum with worse knees and my teacher and her owl like tense faced self, shut the door to the jail cell, locked it, and left us in the cell for a moment. It was a special treat I guess, they hadn't invented SBS yet, they had to give us something. Some of the kids began to cry, some of them got a bit freaked out, some of them simply didn't work out what was happening and began discussing the future and the rise of Tiger economies - OK, they mostly discussed why aquamarine crayons were better than silver ones and anyone who didn't think so was just a quibbler. All around me was chaos and immaturity and kindergarten logic. And I distinctly see myself sitting calmly on one on the available benches, sitting down, shrugging my shoulders and waiting for the fuss to die down like a guy at an airport resigned to the imperative realisation that something will inevitably delay the Jetstar. There was one girl called Georgina who I always remember smelled like Kleenex who was hysterical, wailing on the bars like some overacting benny in the Shawshank Redemption, convinced no one was ever going to let us out of the cell we had been locked in for tour related purposes. I felt different to them - not better maybe, but definitely blessed with enough perspicacity to ensure that I felt no more in danger than I would be for suggesting the real crayon of choice was burnt sienna. That was one magical crayon. Of course, it was also the first moment of alienation I can remember, a seperation of myself from the herd that no amount of shared lego can ever bridge. And then there's the realisation that I may have imagined the whole thing in that way that TV repeats prove that, say, John Farnham didn't sing at a charity concert at the Diner in Home and Away even though you can see it. It may be an amalgam of emotions, of feelings...but then, you know what, I pick up a Kleenex, and the whole thing seems so re...

Sorry, I lost track, you are right, it's fascinating this occupational health and safety lecture, I think I answered that question right, I think I got away with it. It really is fascinating the way the world is now a potential death trap, I mean I slashed my leg open on an Ulverstone slide that someone had left a razor blade on in 1984 and it was brushed off as amusing but sobering anecdote by my Mother, where as now we'd sue their ass - it's a cell of another kind that they put me in today, windowless, lakcing in depth, but obviously very safe. The James O'Loughlin style moderator seems obsessed with the dangers of those wheels on the bottom of chairs - are they called carstairs? Or am I mental? When I drift outside the window, wishing I had the same abilities as my old Swiss nemesis Colin who allegedly could have mid air sex with fellow spirits, I see two underagers kissing in the car park. He's clearly lustful, she's clearly loving. The dichotomies of teenage life summed up in a moment. She thinks he's Clark Gable, he wants to get some. That I say Clark Gable marks me out as old obviously - does she think he's a Jonas Brother? Josh Lawson? Who do the kids like these days? Sorry, um, carstairs? Good guess. James O'Loughlin is trying for a lightness of touch now - he's clearly trying to pad his routine out with a few gags, a peppy step or two, but ironically and somewhat strangely for an OH&S guru, he's falling between two stools - comedy and seriousness. There's a crucial e-mail on my computer I can't get to. It's going to pretty much decide the kind of year I have, my football team on the brink of collapse, apparently because no one in the community, frankly, gives a shit. There's a video playing now - it's hissy and full of static and tracking noises. Who plays a video these days? The 80s fashions are hurting my eyes, a girl with kaleidoscope tights walking awkwardly through a series of minorly hazardous mid 80s dangers with a gallus swagger. The kissers are gone - I used to think comedy was based entirely in repetition, the shared knowledge of what a particular person was referencing, but in this car park, if my instincts and knowledge of barn dances from a million years ago are correct where Southern Sons blinked on the PA system and no one had the courage to pucker up, there's nothing funny about the misguided intentions of a teenage boy pulling that face as he kisses. It's going to be a hell of a bad week for her on Facebook if she puts out I think. Well, wishing her well is probably a form of health and safety. Eventually, the tape we are watching grinds to an ugly halt - the man at the end was once a powerful CEO laid low by economic problems. In the video, he proudly holds up a manual or a file, a document by which to live. He's so proud - that's why I hate video tapes, hate photographs...they capture the moment before you know what the next moment will bring. If only he'd put down the 600 foolscap document and spent more time crossing his ts and dotting his i's, maybe, just maybe, the smile on his face would still be there...

Someone e-mails me a picture - someone I knew in Burnie, someone who's now bald as a bat. He used to walk with suave intentions, but the suaveness has taken it's toll on his noggin. I study the picture for some sense that his lustre and self assuredness has dimmed, but it's not there, he still seems confident and smiling on the arm of a bewildered looking femme, discomforted from every angle. Out of sheer boredom, I rotate the picture on a series of amusing photoshopped angles, upside down and hexagonal, and then delete it. They were such a proud family, and then...well it's funny how we are as people, how we seek to demolish sound family structures one gossipy phone call at a time. God, was it that long ago that I was in his house, playing with Voltrons on the carpet while he offered me the kind of sage advice about girls only a ten year old can dispense to an 8 year old? Uncomfortable, my lunch break is spent with more trivial concerns, the way the girl behind the counter can suddenly look like Guy Smiley, the strange new recipe that's befallen on my sandwich, and the way the other girl behind the counter - not sandwich white female, another one, nose ring and eye shadow, no time for chit chat - is forced by corporate guidance to hand out free frequent sipper cards. I loathe loyalty cards, I can't explain why, they strike me the same way I felt when I was 8 and Mum threatened to cut my hair, like I had become some sort of decrepit hillbilly, punching holes in a card to get the ultimate hillbilly dream of free java, then lining up for my haircut before it was whittling wood hour. Social snobbery has clouded my life for too long. The girl hands it to a guy in a suit, who looks at it and hands it back. He doesn't do as I do, take it and throw it in the bin, he outright rejects it, with a dismissive wave of his meaty paw, as if Nemesis herself had brought retribution on the corporate industry through the returning of a free offer. Score mighty little man. The girl looks as bemused as her mother probably did when she first saw her nose ring, and for a moment looks genuinely crushed. The suited man walks off with purchase with such an undeserved swagger that I feel it would be entirely justified of me to stick my leg out and trip him up. The girl meanwhile returns the card to the deck, and seems to me to be biting her bottom lip - like of all us, she takes the rejection personally, and the acid flashback in my brain seems to take me back to Grade 8, reading a hand written note from a girl that simply said no on it. Either that, or her nose ring just really hurts, it's at a jaunty angle and it looks a bit red. She needs to take a moment just to key in the price of my sandwich. If I could, I'd take her back 10 seconds, when she was still confident about herself and her handouts, but it's a minor moment, she'll get over it. Maybe she'll Twitter about it tonight...I wish sometimes I was on Twitter...those short posts seem mighty tempting, much more tempting than this lousy recipe changed sandwich...I'd complain, but she's suffered enough...

Time passed slowly in that jail cell. It was 5ive minutes tops, but a long 5ive minutes. I needed a book I think. No one had invented the IPOD yet, so I couldn't listen to music like I am now - here I am writing about the passage of time and how uncomfortable it makes me feel and I'm watching a clip where Sharon Jones is dissing George Bush, I mean that's SO 2005 - and the hubbub and the emotion and the fury is boiling. Eventually they let us out - Georgina had a stutter, or else she's be noisily furious - and gave us a talk about how if he committed a crime, we'd end up straight back in there. Seemed fine to me, it was the best rest I'd had in a long time. Of course, not only did officer Wiggum not have any conviction in his speech, but it was far too cute a trick to play on five year olds. Even Georgina one hour later was in the sandpit with lego up her nose. It sort of worked on me a bit - I took at least three hours to reflect before the lesson was dirt on my shoulder that I brushed off like some young Jay Z, and was freely playing with my Whiplash and Power Punch He-Men in the back garden. My Mum always says if I go to jail, she's sending Dad instead. I of course took a moment to put Whiplash down and think briefly about where my life may take me on that wintery Penguin evening - the possibilities were limitless when I was 5ive, a backyard with pampas grass (pampas grass!) a treasure chest of wonder in itself never mind the excitement that another street a block away like Hayward St could provide. I mean, that street was on a hill, imagine! My time in the jail cell had been well spent - it was good thinking time I feel, if the memory hasn't betrayed me. Knowing me, I probably brought up some profound point to someone like quibbling Tom and got called weird and then he would say aquamarine and another tangent would begin. I don't know the meaning of life anymore now than I did then though, and it frustrates me that I don't a little. I know it's not worrying about carstairs though, and I know it's not arguing loudly like the neighbours are about the price of an oven they are selling on their front lawn. Their shrieking is so loud, I have to turn the television up to drown them out, but the last thing I hear is the shreiking sheik of food preparation - the wife always makes immaculate lunches, trust me - telling her husband that wasting her time is a crime. Maybe, I feel like telling him, a night in the cells is in order, good for thinking...I smile as I put my feet up and watch some American comedian bounding around his set to Hanson...time is accelerating ever more rapidly, it's confusing my thoughts, the sky seems to be falling in, everyone seems to be obsessed with OH&S, I'm getting ever older and less ambitious and more sleepy, but just like the kid in that jail cell, in spite of all the hubbub, I just can't bring myself to care...

Oh, and quibbling Tom, it's ALWAYS Burnt Sienna my friend...always...the crayon of champions...