DuSSSty Extra

And almost a year later, the Being of Earth reached Sydney from the Hay Plane where it had been washing travellers with the dust of the ages.

She said "Yeah?" I said "Aw Yeah."

I godda jawb.
Ahm gonna payda reynt.
An then she wuz so nais!
Lawd she wa' lubbydubby.

The sound of my phone ringing has always made me apprehensive. I hate to be the one without the info. I hate it when the tingle goes up and it could change your life. The wait after a job interview is in the top ten worst times for a phone to ring. At least when you get the little white letter, you know what's up before you answer the call.
But when the phone rings it could go either way.
Or it could also be a telemarketer. Especially at 5:15pm on a Wednesday.

"Hello, Franzy speaking."
"Hello Franzy, it's Mr Employer here. How are you?"
"I'm well." (gather strength, take deep breath). "How are you?"
"I'm fine, thank you. Would you like the good news, or the bad news?"
(Cover mouthpiece to muffle audible groan. Fail to muffle audible groan). "Uhmn. Gimme the bad news."
"The bad news is, my friend ... that you have the job."
(Access mental replay. Confirm information. Thrust fist in air). "What? That's great! Fantastic! Thank you!"
"No problem."
"What's the good news?"
"The good news is ... that you have the job! Aha!"

So, yes. The transformation is complete. We have moved back from Queensland and I am now employed at somewhere far less useless and more productive than The Coffee Club on Bribie Island. Now I'm drinking the coffee, motherfuckers!



Well - not quite. I start in January. And I'm apparently working for quite a prankster.
Thanks to Shippy for the job-search help. Points for you, buddy.

***

Everyone who was madly searching for The Mysterious Seven Story Structures can take a clue from a wonderful series I recently read called Action Philosophers! Joseph Campbell did many interesting things, but one of them was to analyse stories and myths from a lot of cultures and came up with A Definitive Story Structure, otherwise known as The Hero's Journey. I have scanned it in with complete disregard for copyright below, but please, click the image and have a good look.



That should settle a few arguments.
Or start them.

Update - Ryan Dunlavey, Illustrator of Action Philosophers! has somehow found me! And directed me towards the real deal full colour Hero's Journey poster available for just US$3 (plus postage) (which makes it about $AUS4,507) from the Action Philosopher's website (please click on the image above). I urge everyone to either buy a poster or get their hands on Action Philosophers!

***
Far be it from me to heap scorn upon my learned brothers and sisters but mostly brothers in the sciences, but these two news items couldn't have popped into my reader with finer congruity or better timing.
The first "From nerd to word: maths geeks reclaim their cool" is about a new campaign by the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers to boost the previously "dorky" image of maths. They are attempting to sell the many exciting and lucrative careers options offered by maths.

"It's all to do with imagination," says mathematical stand-up Simon Pampena.
"Most people if you say, `What attracts you to maths?', they wouldn't say, `Imagination'.
"It's usually what repels you from maths and they'd say `Because it's not cool, I'm not going to get a girlfriend doing maths'."

Which brings us neatly to news item number two:
"Male science students uni's most likely virgins: study"

Apparently maths can teach you many things, but good timing isn't one of them.

***
Enthusiasm for last week's movie clippette was so dramatically blunt that I have decided to take my revenge upon you readers who refused to inundate me with copy about your memorable movie moments so that I could rest upon my laurels.
What would you call the scariest movie you've ever seen?
The Grudge?
Saw?
War of the Worlds?
The Ring?
The Omen?
The Sixth Sense?
Scary Movie?

Nuh-uh. Be prepared for a new champion. It is only three and a half minutes long, but trust me on this: you will be curled up in horror as you watch. Many of you may not even make it through. Some of you may actually throw up.
It's safe for work and there's no gore. Just an ill feeling about your entire existence.
Think I'm joking? There's no punchline.
Just watch The World's Scariest Movie.



***

GTH - Points to Kath for the mental image of me busting a shit capoeira-style over a rural French toilet. Or 'toilette'.

Hello sunshine

In case this wasn't clue enough (and it isn't - obtuse, artsy bullshit that it is):


Should be good.

***
GTH - There were lots of excellent comments on two of the most commented-upon blogs I've written in recent times, and everyone who commented made interesting points and insightful remarks. But there can only be one. Or, in this case: two. Miles, for appropriately guessing what I was thinking when I put the rubble-filled tunnel as a header for a post about the woes of Kew's working poor (he misses out on an extra point for refusing to put a proper apostrophe in his blog title). And Third Cat, for swooping in at the end and rendering everybody's careful research and consideration into story structure useless with a funny joke.

The Coffee Club on Bribie Island does not distribute the tips dropped by customers into the bulbous green tip jar to its employees.

On Bribie Island if someone is wearing a company-issued name tag it is perfectly acceptable to call them by their first name every day for over a month without ever introducing yourself.

You know you're on Bribie Island when ... (No. 3)

... getting hospital treatment for eczema is an all-weekend merry-go-round.

Comparisons: Adelaide vs Bribie Island

Adelaide: Fully-operational day-time outpatient dermatology clinic specialising in eczema and psoriasis. Check in at 8am. Check out at 3pm, home in time for tea and biscuits. Experienced staff, etc.

Bribie Island: Hour-long drive down to the Royal Brisbane Hospital on a Friday afternoon after being told that the best chance of securing the state's single dermatology bed (yes! One!) is to be admitted via the emergency department and weasel in from there. Wait in emergency department breathing in that sterile fug of boredom, depression and pain, scratching your skin off, while every type human being limps in with a sore foot and gets called up. Immediately. No waiting. At least half of whom seem to have your first name so that when they call out you get hopeful for about three tenths of a second. No liquids because the drink machines have been inexplicably switched off. As the evening wears on, the dregs of the Ekka start waddling in. 'Got pissed, fell down'ers start taking up the few seats with their showbags and over-sized plush toys.
Finally get an emergency short-stay bed, four hours after arriving. Walk past literally dozens of empty beds on the way to an empty ward. Restrain yourself from asking why the fuck we couldn't have had one of those beds three hours ago. Have your prescription medication taken from you without question by nursing staff. Get uneasy night's sleep while husband drives home.
Visited by husband next day and the two of you manage to convince everybody that they should probably give the prescription meds back. Pay $45 for four days of "free to air" television to pass the time in between refusing the "food" and running eczema-care tutorials for nursing staff until Monday when all the dermatology consultants return from golf.

Did you spot the difference?

***
Been watching the Olympics? Have I got an amazing Olympic fact for you. Inspired and infected by Blue Milk's excellent post "White babies saving the world, one nappy at a time", I've started watching a lot of other ads for that kind of assumption. No, I haven't even been watching The Gruen Transfer because we don't get Channel Two. Anyway, I digress. Olympic fact:

Did you know that middle-class white women are the only reason we play sports as children?



I'm sure that if you looked into it, they probably would be a driving factor behind a lot of Australian Olympic medals, but does this ad make anyone else roll their eyes and stomach linings? Where are the dads? Where are the kids who aren't too retarded to make their own fruit smoothies at 4am? Where are the coloured people? And when that clumsy buttface bumps his own breakfast-making mother aside while she's preparing his breakfast, why the fuck doesn't she grab him by the scruff of the neck, pull his ear off and chuck that in with the team's fresh geggies? A smile too much for an over-grown, over-indulged penis in a leotard? Let's see how hard you row with a pair of tongs up your tights.

I suspect this commercial has a lot to answer for where modern feminism is concerned. As far as I can read it, all of these mothers are the unsung heroes. However, they are heroes because of the things they are doing (preparing meals, playing taxi, putting up with insolent children) and definitely not because of the things they aren't (forging careers, sleeping in while male parent does the driving, teaching junior how to prepare their own meals, doling out some lessons in manners, actually winning medals themselves, etc). As far as Coles is concerned, women are there to cook the meals, drive the car, get trampled on and clap about it. None of the women in this film are depicted even talking. ie. "Jesus H. Christ, Charlene, it's fucking freezing out here! Let's go an get a coffee and a paper and come back when the girls have finished training."
No, according to Coles, acquiescent motherhood is the highest possible peak of achievement a woman can reach, and the only one.

***

In other news ... I have removed all references to my place of work (hereafter known as "CC") after a man came in on one of my days off mentioning this blog. Didn't know the guy, didn't want to. Went home, googled, deleted, prayed. Their are still a few cached pages around, but they don't return as high a search ranking as previously. I will ask all commenters to refrain from mentioning the CC by its fully searchable name from now on. Thanks.

***
GTH - Points go to Neil for the mental image of Mavis the Masked Midget going through or garbage and to Ninja for a) referencing The Wombats so stylishly and b) having a kid. New GTH rule: Have a kid, get a point. From now on. No retrospective children allowed.

Even those homicidal reality show contestants had heard it

This is what I wore today on our scheduled appointment with the high priestesses of skin (dermatologists) at the Royal Brisbane Hospital. This isn't a post about Mele's Medical Mayhem. This is about ... well ... The Juxtapositional Nature of Elitist Humour in an Australian Regional Setting (see Adam? The Flowfield Unity affects all!). And snobbery.

The difference between The Island and the Royal Brisbane Hospital is that on Bribie, everyone just reads the shirt and continues staring blankly ahead. At the Royal Brisbane, people stare, frown, double-take, even smile. The lady at the newsagent who sold me our copies of New Weekly and Australian Top Gear drew the ire of her boss for cackling so loudly.
"No happiness at work," grunted her superior, in semi-seriousness.
"But it's! You see! The llama! And the little picture!" hooted the young lady before releasing a satisfied sigh. "Ahh ... it's just funny to me on so many levels ... that these people ... they just ... they just don't appreciate ..."

I know that there have already been a couple of posts that point towards two increasingly obvious facts:
1) Bribie Island is a cultural wasteland, populated by gentle, white folk whose whole lives are shaped by bland food and commercial television.
2) Mele and I are massive toff-nosed, chin-in-the-air, holier-than-though, elitist snobs and living on the island has thrown this endearing little foible into sharp relief.
Everything is groan-worthy, if not sneertastic in its drollery.
The two-screen, tin-shed cinema, the adorable Bribie Twin, is little more than a creche for the elderly with its infuriating policy of "Nothing Over M 15, Nothing Later Than 7pm".
The pub food is all prepared from the same recipe book: "Deep Frying on a Budget".
There are no decent book stores within cycling distance (the one book store deals mostly in gardening, new age and war).
There are no ethnic restaurants anywhere. Indian Brothers doesn't count because the proprietors appear to be neither Indian, nor brothers. The Chinese restaurants definitely do not count because the Chinese food here is so bad it peels little splinters from your very soul. I had it once. The lemon chicken was like a deep-fried thong covered in fluorescent yellow treacle. Never again.
The fish is all off.
The monthly markets all sell detective novels and carefully-archived lever-arch files of thirty-year-old Grass Roots magazines (sorry, Mum, I would have bought it and mailed it to you, but I was already too deeply into the role of Bad Husband - refusing Mele a house plant by citing the pre-eminence of edible versus decorative household greenery on our weekly budget).
Everybody smokes all over their kids. Even the unborn ones. No one bats an eye-lid at the dozens of heavily pregnant women buying cigarettes, smoking cigarettes, giving cigarettes and lighters to their surprisingly-dexterous-for-sufferers-of-foetal-nicotine-poisoning offspring to hold while they waddle into the supermarket to buy more cigarettes.
The local IGA doesn't stock mustard. They will sell a pregnant woman three packs of Holiday 50s, but I can't get anything spicy to put on my luncheon meat.
As my boss at The Club declared on a recent slow Saturday night: "This is a bloody hick-town, isn't it?"
I bitterly agreed.

That said, bear in mind that these are the ginned-up musings of a middle-class humanities post-grad student who has never lived outside a capital city or experienced anything other than privilege, love and luck for his entire life. All hardships have been overcome, all heartbreaks have been educational, all worst moments are slowly being converted into cash. I even order lattes with nary shudder nor shame.
I know the snobbishness and colonial sniggering will undoubtedly continue ("I say, Mele! Look! That one's using a fork!"), but I was a little surprised recently when one of my work-mates hadn't heard of post-punk rockers, Joy Division. No, don't nip off to Wikipedia just yet, bear with me.
Before I go on, I have an important question to ask of you, the reader. You. Reading this sentence right now. I'm asking you:
Have YOU heard of Joy Division? Think carefully. Yes or no.
Got your answer?
Good.
Now click on these blue words and journey to the very bottom of this page where I keep all the links and histories that you've probably never even seen before because I like this blog to read like a wide book, rather than an easy-to-scan blog. Silly me. I'll change it soon enough.
Now VOTE. I'll wait for you.

Back? Great.
I want to see how well-known they really are. I assumed that everybody had at least heard of them or were familiar with their most popular song 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. It's even included on The CC's blandtacular musak CD. But no one, in a staff of at least ten people ranging in age from 16 to 46, had heard of the band or could identify my off-key, Kermit-The-Frog-on-cream-chargers warble version of Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Be honest now. If you've never heard of Joy Division, but are familiar with Love Will Tear Us Apart, I will count that as a "yes". If you have no idea what the fuck I am banging on about, even after clicking on the sample, then you are a "no".

***

And, speaking of culture, here is a little ditty for you along the lines of 'Bananaphone'. If you have heard 'Sorta Dunno Nuthin' before, but haven't heard 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' you are a very confused personality with many questionable priorities. Call your mother. She is worried. Either that, or stop calling her so much, she needs her personal space.

You know you're on Bribie Island when ... (No. 2)

(CC front counter)

Old lady with colourful jumper: Hello. I'd like to pay please.
Me: What table were you sitting at?
Old lady with colourful jumper: That one just there.
Me (checking the table number): Ahhh ... number seven.
Old lady with colourful jumper: Oh! I'm seven in numerology!
Me: ....... Huh. What a coincidence.

You also know you're on Bribie Island when this gets hand-delivered to your mailbox by an old man with a pink shopping bag:

It turns out that popular music is a very flexible term.

***

The journey towards better coffee is slowly happening. I was allowed onto the ever-busy morning shift this morning, where the dockets pile up like autumn leaves and lesser baristas fall by the wayside in floods of tears and poorly-packed coffee grounds. It was pretty much fine. Nothing happened except that every now and then it would get busy and the boss would step in to show me what to do and/or help me out. That's always fine by me because he ends up doing most of the work. I'm getting pretty good at reproducing the same coffee over and over, plus or minus the various froths, caffeine-levels and syrupy additives. But I'm no barista ninja just yet.
What I need is

A MONTAGE




***
GTH - Points go to Neil for not rubbing it in.

You know you live on Bribie Island when ...

You help out not one, but two little old ladies before lunch.

First off, Mavis from next door with her telephone. She sits politely in the living room and shouts in her Deaf Old Dearie voice while I call Telstra about her dead phoneline.

Me: I'm calling on behalf of the old lady next door. Her phone line is dead. She needs the phone so that her emergency "I've fallen and can't get up" button that she wears around her neck works in case she falls and can't get up.
Telstra: We are evil bastards, but we will run a line test, just to be sure you are not lying.
Me: Thank you.
Mavis: The line is dead! My emergency button needs the phone to work!
Me: I'm telling them, Mavis.
Telstra: We eat toasted babies and we can see that her line is dead.
Me: Great. So you'll come and fix it, eh?
Mavis: I had to unplug my button! It needs the phone to work!
Telstra: We defecate in hospital beds on our days off and we are just wondering, is her having the phone off all weekend life-threatening?
Me: Well, she's got this button she can push if she falls, which she has done before and she needs the telephone on for it to work.
Telstra: We kidnap African orphans and sell them to Chinese medical companies for vivisection and we were just asking because if it is life-threatening then we can have it fixed within 24 hours ...
Me: Great. Do that then.
Mavis: I fell over before and that's why I got the bloody button installed!
Telstra: ... but she has to get a letter from her doctor saying that she is in a life-threatening situation and that she needs a phone, because if we do send out a team to fix it within 24 hours and then we deem her condition not to be life-threatening then we charge a one hundred and thirty dollar call-out fee.
Me: You evil fucks.
Telstra: Thank you! (We burn household pets alive!)
Mavis: Are they coming to fix it?
Me: No, Mavis. Since it's Friday morning, now you have to wait until Monday or run the risk of being charged $130.
Mavis: Oh.

The second old lady was my own grandmother, who needed the channels set on her digital box at her brand new house in the Red Rooster Retirement Home* (isn't Queensland just shameless?). I managed to get ABC, SBS and Nine, but no Ten or Seven. Overall, I'd say she's probably better off.

*It's actually just next to a Red Rooster, but the tall Red Rooster sign towers above the new elderly living estate so much that I'm sure they must be drumming up some kind of subliminal business from the new elderly tenants.

Tonight's guest is a lovely lady from Bongaree ...

I rarely allow guests on this blog. Usually I'm either stealing someone's quotes who I like, or linking someone's comic who I'm a fan of. Today, however, comes a brief missive from Mele so you can all get a bit of perspective on what it's like to live on Bribie, other than my almost full-stop-free, smart-arsed, semi-true complaining.
Take it away, baby.

Culture Shocked
with Mele

1. Sam is acquiring a Queensland accent. He is not saying 'pewl' for pool or 'kewl' for cool yet, but his 'yeah' is getting longer and he has started talking through his nose.

2. The RSLs of this place are loaded. They have more money in them than the normal pubs. State of the art furnishings and mod cons for the old fashioned at heart. Weird.

3. South Australia is barren and savage in terms of wildlife. Dead kangaroos, galahs, pigeons, feral rabbits, stumpy lizards and magpies are the usual go back home, but here there are sand frogs-yes, frogs in sand!-pods of dolphins, fish that actually JUMP out of the water, sting rays, geckos (Sam found one in my bra the other day), butterflies that are yellow, brown and white (rather than the standard white cabbage butterfly back home), pelicans (without thousands of seagulls in tow) eagles, ibises that strut across our lawn, soldier crabs and slugs that take up residence on bedroom doors. Most amazingly, we live 200 m from the channel between the mainland and the island, and every night at dusk thousands of bats (yes, kids, thousands) stream across the channel turning the sky black. Oh, and when you throw a line in the water, things actually bite.

4. Queenslanders are about ten years behind in food culture. I once ordered a pub meal from a fancy island pub that was deep fried with old oil and served with a salad of iceberg lettuce, tomato and shredded cheddar cheese with no dressing. I actually cried from culture shock. This kitchen was so bad it made Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares look good. Adelaide's cheap, genuine ethnic food is sorely missed, and I'd give my right arm for a meal at Ying Chow or some of my nonna's melanzane.

5. Everyone here is whitey whitey WHITE. No wogs. Literally. There is half a wog on the island, but not a whole one. That half comes from me.

6. Nothing ever dries. I am never dry. My bathrobes stay wet for days, and I'm partially damp due to skin lotions, wet bandaging and oil baths. I go to bed at night with my t-shirt clinging to my skin and wake up the same way.

7. The tap water here is marginally better than Adelaide tap water. The bottled water here comes in plastic containers that make the water taste plasticky. Gross. Have given up and am currently drinking from the tap.

8. QLD media is quite insular in an American scary way. There is little world news on any commercial channel (aside from brief mentions of Obama and Mugabe). The news is all about infrastructure and the Gold Coast. Whoop-de-fuckin-doo.

9. People on the island are friendlier and more laid back than in Adelaide, and the driving culture is amazing. You can idle at roundabouts, forget to signal, do 20 ks under the speed limit and never get beeped by other drivers. All you have to do is give way to pedestrians, whether they are walking with frames or stopping at stop signs in front of you with their gophers. No kidding. A station wagon (me) and a four wheel drive (behind me) was stuck waiting for an old man and his gopher to stop at the sign, drive on at 5 k to the next give way and then move out to the main road. Nobody beeped. The island's average age is 55, so old people rule here.

10. The library is the hub of the locals. It might not be cool but I'm pretty nerdy so it's strangely comforting.

11. It's hard to make friends when you spend all day writing and treating your skin, can't get a job and be part of the normal world. I'm just like a lot of old folk here, and it's nice to be the youngest pensioner on the island as well as the only half-wog.

WUKKA WUKKA

It's on it's on!

Internet is flowing through the wires and the air on Bribie! As is the milk froth down at the local CC ... I am perfecting my previously flawed technique of frothing the milk and learning what the buttons do. It's not as difficult as you might think, there are only two. I will blog further about coffee making techniques and follies in the future when I have more phd work to do.

In celebration of my impending internet connection I am writing a meme blog on Word to save and post later when (if) the internet happens. If you are reading this on my blog then it has either a) happened or b) I am at the library furiously clicking ‘Post Blog’ while trying to multitask my bank account, my email and blogger in the fervent hope that it doesn’t all efficiently shut down before I can save my work.

Anyway, I’ve been tagged by Myninjacockle and the meme seems appropriately self-indulgent for someone looking to avoid the dreaded first steps of a second draft, so here flows nothing:

What Was I doing Ten Years Ago?

I was discovering that starting first year uni directly after completing year twelve is so much the same as makes no discernable difference. That said, the discernable differences were:

• All the people I hung around with in year twelve were no longer half as interesting as the massive swathe of new people I could have hung around with if only I had more than one class a week with them. Bachelor of Arts means hanging onto your peer group for dear life. I had yet to discover an in at the student newspaper.
  
• Being the biggest fish in the English pond in high school made you highly useless at university English where they expected you to have read an entire book, every week, before the Tuesday tutorial. Every week. I don’t think I ever came out with more than a credit.

I was also entering a stint of mad crazy employment in order to save for a large overseas trip that was going to save me from university. By the time uni finished in around August (or whatever stupid-early time of year it finishes) I was working around 40 hours a week in four or five separate places of employment. I was a telemarketer for a fly-by-night rental-listing company, a drinks carrier for the corporate perverts at Footy Park (never had my arse pinched by so many drunk businessmen), a waiter at a gypsy restaurant and a watch salesman to name just a few.

Five Snacks I Enjoy in a Perfect, Non-Weight-Gaining World

1. Fancy potato chips.
2. Salt’n’vinegar beer nuts.
3. Fresh nashi pears.
4. Homemade salami.
5. Big slices of parmesan cheese.

Five Snacks I Enjoy in the Real World

Sorry, girls. It’s the same as above. I don’t buy into food-based guilt trips because I firmly believe that they are a psychological trick designed by corporations to manufacture desire for the products that they sell and to fuel support for capitalism in general as the new religion. You eat and then you feel guilty and so then you shop and so then you feel guilty and so you eat etc. And, if you don’t believe that, I don’t really snack. I eat a really fucking big meal and then wait until the next one.

Five Things I Would Do if I were a Billionaire

1. Build dream house. It’s got a lot of wood, antiques, plants, chrome and art deco shit. Surrounding it is a large garden with a two-level octagonal greenhouse for Mele. Way out the back is the secret cave where I keep the cars.
2. Contact all friends and family. Force monetary kindness upon them. This sounds philanthropic, but is actually on moral par with the secret car cave – I just really get my jollies from spending money on people.
3. Charities. This includes setting up literature scholarships for poor kids.
4. Travel. Trains in Europe. Cars in the US. Chauffeurs in Asia – I’ve seen them crazy roads. Pick a place to write in and do it.
5. Food and drink. Only the best, for everyone, all the time.

Five jobs that I have had.

Hmm. See above, but I’ll elaborate.

1. Fly-by-night telemarketer. Here’s how it worked: every Wednesday and Saturday morning at 4am some poor dude would come in to the office with the first papers hot off the press. He would go through the real estate section and copy out the rental ads by hand onto neat little cards. At 8am me and two other shifty types would come in, divide the cards between us and set about calling the people renting properties and asking them if they would like to include their properties on our ‘free listing service’. It was essentially free advertising for rental property owners. The money came from the poor bastards who were so desperate to find accommodation that they would pay $120 for a three month ‘membership’ which allowed them to come in every Saturday morning and ask if there were any properties that matched their chosen specifications (five bedrooms, allows dogs, smokers okay, etc). Think realestate.com.au but you’re paying $120 for some 18-year-old to look it up and tell you there’s nothing available.
2. Selling watches, pens and sunnies. A mate of my dad’s has always had businesses going that involved me shaving, wearing a shirt and turning up on time in order to fast-talk people with loose cash into buying an engraved pen or a gimmicky watch. I mostly managed to complete all three tasks. They even opened a store in the Myer Centre called Trenz which might be still there in the basement next to the toilets.
3. The Easter Bunny. Kids, go to bed. I was the Easter Bunny on numerous occasions. Basically this meant getting into a full rabbit costume and hugging semi-terrified toddlers and, for some reason, a lot of teenaged girls. My favourite one was the Cadbury Easter Bunny because it was at the Myer Centre and there are a lot of bored teenagers dying for an excuse to stop acting so cool all the time. My least favourite was the Bunnings Easter Bunny because the suit involved a complicated air-conditioning system that, when it was working, kept me cool and the suit inflated. When the batteries died the whole thing turned into a large, heavy, sealed plastic bag and made me faint.
4. RQF Report Writer. My most grown up job ever. Lots of money. Big grown-up meetings with important grown-up academics. Unending frustration at having to tease a sales angle out of two decades of someone else’s research for an outgoing federal government.
5. Brewster. See previous post.

Three of my habits:

1. Scratching scabs on my scalp when I’m thinking which makes scabs which I scratch when I’m thinking. It’s disgusting. I want to stop. I wear a lot of hats when I’m writing.
2. Correcting people’s speech. ‘No, it’s “Lap-ell”, not “layple”.’ What an annoying prick.
3. I was going to put ‘picking my nose’, but that’s more like a necessity rather than a habit, so I’ll go with ‘laughing at my own jokes’. Someone has to, even if it’s just that tiny exhalation of breath to let listeners know that I’ve made a funny, I can’t help it.

Five Places I Have Lived

1. Millswood. Treasured childhood home.
2. Collinswood. First home away from home.
3. Maylands. Worst hole ever.
4. Belfast. Long term hostel sharing room with masturbating Scotsman.
5. Bribie Island. Stay tuned …

****
GTH - Ah kids, it's been a while and I'm sorry. But anticipation makes sweet the fruit that returns from the blah blah blah Murphy gets the point for his extremely accurate summation of last entry's header. It is indeed the only road out of and off of Bribie Island and the one we'll be dynamiting when the mainland zombies start running amok. River also had a red hot go but struck out with the guess about the ships - those misty shapes are in fact the Glass House Mountains. Not as spectacular as they look at sunset, but still a pretty nice little view compared to the carpark and the corrugated iron fence we used to have in Maylands.

I am also instituting a new Guess The Header policy, or feature, if you will. I'm going to post the complete picture in the following entry so that you can gain some perspective, if not over your lives, then at least over what ever I have cut a slice from the previous week. But only if I remember.

Reasons Greetings

Hold on tight, sweetheart. It's going to be a quickie.

Finally, after weeks if writing, fishing, riding bikes and gazing contemplatively at sunsets, I think we've finally settling ourselves down in Bribie Island. A bit. The reason you are reading this is because I've treated myself to an HOUR of internet down at the local library instead of the half and hour dash we tend to get into because of guilt and the increasing desire to save cash. The reason I'm on for an hour is because I've spent a good deal of it checking out internet plans. I've narrowed it down to two companies: Chariot appears more reliable but gives less Gigaboobies, but aaNet provides 50% more wunzenzeros and around 75% more posts on its message boards decrying it as The. Worst. ISP. Ever. For slightly cheaper. Hmm.

Whatever happens, rest assured that I will soon be downloading TV shows and blogging every half an hour with panicked recountings of how true heavy the fracking rain falls around here. In all seriousness, Mele and I actually stood at the front door gazing at the car with furrowed brows, wondering if we should move the car inside to stop it from washing away. That's South Australians for you.

The reason I am even able to consider going on an internet plan is because (drum roll please) ... I have a job. High five? High five?

You're probably right to leave me hanging there because it's not exactly a job filled with honour and career opportunity as the previous ones I've had have been. I'm making coffees at CC on Bribie. I sent in a wanky application letter and they hired me. Even after I went in there and marvelled at the modern technology like pressure gauges and thermometers that go with today's modern coffee bistro. Back in The Day when I used to make coffees for bushwalkers at Eagle On The Hill (now defunct) I used to make it so it looked right and re-make it if anyone complained very very loudly. Apparently feeling how hot the milk needs to be with your finger doesn't really fly in the big leagues. Nonetheless, I start on Thursday.

I almost didn't. In a shocking display of tact and restraint I neglected to ask if 'brewster' was The CC's corporatised version of the very specialised, professional ethnic-sounding title 'barista'. When everyone I met at the place on my training day referred to me as working as the new 'brewster', I felt that this was certain and was about to ask why they didn't just call it 'barista', like the rest of the world. Only a small voice stopped me. The small voice said:

'It's their accents, you over-educated South Australian nonce. They are saying "barista". You're not in fucking Kansas any more.'

Phew.

So, I start on Thursday. If you're in Bribie, don't come and have a coffee for a few weeks until I've gotten out of the habit of sticking my finger in the milk jug to see if it's just right.

Lies, Damned Lies and BARGAINS!!

‘It’s frost-free!’
‘These machines keep going and going!’
‘Those oil-leaks are all fixed!’

I promised lies and these are three of the whoppers I have been living with since we arrived on Bribie Island. But first:

‘The previous tenants were a bit feral.’

This is one that I wish was a lie, instead of simply a calculated understatement. The previous tenants either had a passion for art and wall hangings or a poorly-supervised four-year-old with a set of poster paints and a nail gun. The once-white carpet, apart from the staining and browning and wearing one would expect from a rental property wall-to-wall, is speckled with red, pink, orange and brown dots and stripes. The walls are pocked with literally dozens of holes, often grouped, sometimes out there in the middle, all alone. One imagines an indecisive home decorator working with a cock-eyed spouse.
‘Hold it up higher! That’s it. Okay, now I’ll hold it and you tell me if it’s in the middle.’
‘Yep, she’s dead centre, love.’
‘Great, pass me the nail gun.’
Bam!
‘Oh no! It’s over to one side!’
‘Sorry, love. It looked good to me.’
‘Yes, well, hmph. Actually, now that I look at it … no, no, it doesn’t work. It needs to be balanced out with this mask. Are these equally spaced when I hold them here?’
‘Dead cert’.’
Bam! Bam!
‘Whoopsy! I slipped!
Bam!
‘Right on! Time for some finger-painting! Does this drop-sheet cover everything?’
‘Right to the edges, sweetheart.’

You get the picture. And that was just the stuff that wasn’t on the inspection report. Whoever was in charge of cleaning the house last obviously had a thing about not using harsh chemicals. Like ‘water’, for example. The crap still pushed into every corner and left on most every surface was perplexingly easy to remove. Not for us, mind you. It was easy for the professional cleaner who was hired after we dropped into the real estate agents and pointed out a few things. Like the fact that their inspection report had been performed by a seeing-eye dog whose owner was in a hurry and didn’t mind skipping the small stuff like a hole kicked in the laundry door. Like an oven with the last meal it cooked still waiting to be scraped off the sides and kitchen cabinets with the grit and dust and lip-balm-based migraine medications that the previous tenant had neglected to take with them.

‘It’s frost-free!’
The garage sale was no ordinary garage sale. No simple thinning the years of junk that can easily accumulate in the generous humidity of Bribie. This was a house clearance for an old lady who was selling up and getting rid of decades worth of precious possessions so that she could shift one chair closer to the door in God’s Waiting Room. Her family was moving her into a retirement village on the island and the garage sale was about condensing a sprawling three-bedroom house full of treasure into a compact two-bedroom unit that would probably need to leave room for a wheelchair.
A tiny little blackboard caught my eye. It was leaning against a tired pot plant and on it was written: ‘Upside Down Fridge’. I don’t mind saying that my heart leapt as much as a heart can leap after so many days of drinking UHT milk. The kitchen sink full of party ice lost its bachelor boy appeal (and its ice) after the first night and a fridge was numero uno on the shopping list.
Eighty bucks.
Massive freezer. Seals intact. All in working order.
Eighty bucks.
‘Is it frost free?’
‘Yep.’ The old lady’s daughter had actually come up from Adelaide herself to help Old Ma Sunhat move out. ‘It’s frost-free, isn’t it, Mum?’
‘What?’
‘Is it frost-free?’
‘Oh yes! Very frosty!’
‘No – frost-free, is it frost-free?’
‘I think so – yes.’ Smiles all round.
‘You stinkin’ liars! How dare you drool your sticky, rancid lies all over my head while I come here in good conscience to buy your fridge!’ is what I should have yelled in their faces. In retrospect. I actually nodded, threw my nice-young-man smile at them both and asked about the beds they had mentioned earlier (Nb. This is a bargaining trick. Never appear interested in the thing you are interested in. Ask about other items. Compare prices. Talk openly about how little money you were planning on spending and how you’d probably better pay that bill first. Then make your offer). The beds turned out to be fairly suitable. A double and a single, both felt reasonably sleepable to my pressing hands. The double had a home-made frame built by just the brand of old feller who has lots of his own tools and an eye for quality wood (read: solid, heavy wood). Most bed frames have either slats, a tightly woven net of springs or just a strong, flat slab of timber to hold the mattress between head and foot.
This one had all three.
The thick wooden slats were overlaid with springy mesh to which was wired a large wooden sign advertising land for sale outside of Lismore. The thing weighed a metric tonne. Slaves and rolling logs were the only way to move it anywhere.
I made them an offer for the lot and they accepted.
The single turned out to smell a lot more like a back-of-the-shed special than I had suspected when we turned up with our teams of oxen and Egyptians to take it home. We were able to knock a further fifty bucks off through a combination of Mele playing the allergy-sufferers card and the fact that since we had said we would take the beds but not yet paid, we were able to hand over what we wanted because what were they going to do with a single bed that smelled like the late-fifties anyway? We gave the son a lift to home, but only after he had helped me move the fridge into our house. No wonder he kept cheerfully insisting that it was frost-free.

‘These machines keep going and going!’
Phil down at Sunshine Fridges, Freezers and Washers has a problem. It’s his recently-purchased 2nd hand whitegoods business. Small store. Expensive rent. A tight cluster of heavy household machinery, some of which works, lots of which doesn’t. The showroom looks like a bad used car salesman’s mouth: all stained and crowded with hope and desperation. The workshop out the back looks like the floor of the dentist where all the chain-smoking used car salesmen go after they’ve had a lean time of it flogging Camrys with oil leaks. Lots of dented white cubes everywhere, rusting in the rain.
Phil’s business partner, Barry, is a talker and talked us right into a fairly cheap but fairly fool-proof Simpson. We had both smelled a whiff of something as we chatted with Baz about washing machines we have seen fail in our time (it’s good to see Fisher and Paykel are still frying their motherboards across Australia). I thought it was over-enthusiasm from the new owner of a business and Mele thought it was fear from the lip-biting, jumpy young woman who took our credit card and wrote out our warranty with a tightly-gripped pen.
Turned out the nerves were just women’s intuition about selling a washing machine that didn’t wash. It filled, drained and spun just fine, but the only thing it agitated was me, after I stood there for half an hour, listening to a nothing-happening buzz and peering under the lid like a kid trying to see if the fridge light stays on when you shut the door.
Good old Phil. He replaced the machine with no questions asked. He engaged me in polite-yet-worried conversation while we waited for the replacement machine to run through the complete cycle I had insisted I see before removing it to my place of residence. It seems buying a 2nd hand whitegoods business isn’t the great little earner one might imagine. Especially if one is honest, provides warranties and knows next to nothing about whitegoods and whitegood repair.

‘Those oil-leaks are all fixed!’
Well, my dears, after spending eighty-eight bucks at the local mechanic finding out that this was much less than the iron-clad truth one comes to expect from used car salesmen, I come to the less-heartening part of getting a “good deal” on a car whose company I’ve come to enjoy.
Country miles is still country miles and warranties is still warranties, but how much of each playing into the other is another matter and another lie for another day.

Bargains!!

The wonderful thing about couches is that they don’t leak oil, frost over, fail to agitate or require ongoing subscription, maintenance and/or lubrication. They are, however, difficult to find when two people are looking for the same couch.
‘I like this one.’
‘I don’t.’
End of conversation. Find new furniture shop. Repeat.
Couches are extremely important to setting up a new house. One might even say that they come directly beneath the fridge on the afore-mentioned shopping list. Because, after one has removed the cold beer from the fridge, where does one then sit to drink it? We had spent a good day or so in search of a couch and had come away with only a dish-rack, a faulty washing machine and the complete hard-cover works of Neville Shute. See? Difficult.
A little house re-stocking tip for you: ignore Ikea. Psuedo-Swedish product names and competitively-priced Euro-mod flat pack is søøø nŭt koöl! The supermarket noticeboard is king forever. That’s where Fabulous Auntie Brenda found the not-really frost-free garage sale and that’s where Mele spotted The Couch.
3-seater plus two stripy armchairs.
We still had the trailer I mean the ox carts and Egyptians from moving the fridge and double bed and so we called Fay and dropped in on the fancier part of Bribie: Banksia Beach. The Couch was, and still is, a jaw dropper. Cream-coloured to match the house, deep enough to swing your feet off and the three seats in question are reserved for people who can no longer wear pants comfortably. We ummed. We ahhed. We asked if she would separate the armchairs and take fifty bucks off of her original price. We looked at each other in a worried manner and wondered aloud if perhaps this wasn’t out of our price range.
She knocked fifty off and insisted the armchairs went too. We returned the trailer with seconds to spare and now we have somewhere to watch TV, drink beer and sleep on.

We're getting something ... it's faint ... but ...

The communication below is over a week old. I feel like that Mars lander, sending messages and telling stories that won’t be heard until much later. The little log book below was written in real time on my four-day journey across Australia. Each evening I would pull out the computer and exercise my fingers remembering the little things that float around in your head when you’re alone and driving long distances. I’m trying to avoid writing a daily diary-style blog because it’s a bit indulgent and really, the tales of setting up a house are probably best left to one gloating tale of deals and rip-offs which will be called Lies, Damn Lies and Bargains!! Coming soon to a blog near you.

19th May 2008
Adelaide to Balranald
553 kms

Driving along at 100 km/h yelping with laughter and dribbling chewed up chocolate biscuit down my chin.

That’s what driving across Australia means in 2008. The Red Rocket (as tastefully christened by Trent) is utterly comfortable and I could probably drive across the planet in it if I didn’t have to make it to Bribie Island by Friday in order to be there for the electricity man who promises that he will turn the power on between 2pm and 6pm. That’s going to be a fun afternoon. Sitting around in an empty house, waiting for some business-like chap with an AGL polo shirt and a laptop in his pocket to flick a switch. Willie Nelson didn’t include that in his many odes to travel.

But back to the chocolate biscuits. I’m currently in a cabin in the Balranald Caravan Park. I have just watched The Simpsons Movie on my laptop and knocked the top off of my third Toohey’s New (having refused a plastic carry bag to the approval of The Thirsty Camel bottle-o proprietor – they value environmentalism in rural Oz), so it’s going to be the long version.

It begins with selling the Honda.

Yes, quell your gushing tears, the Honda is gone. I bought her (I’m fairly confident it was a girl) on September the 11th, 2001, about an hour before the first plane hit. We travelled far and wide together, on road trips and sumo gigs. I was given some oversized speakers to install, which were stolen. I replaced them with even larger speakers, on which I spent many hours playing music with complex and well-structured bass-lines and ensuring that I will spend the rest of my years yelling ‘What?’ to anyone who talks to me in anything but a loud, clear voice in a sound-proof booth. I never got a speeding ticket. The other various treasured memories I have of that car aren’t ones I’m willing to put on record, partly for fear of prosecution, and partly because it was purchased by another blogger who shall remain anonymous unless they choose to reveal themselves here or elsewhere. I am not in the business of outing people who wish to remain in closets automotive or otherwise. They also probably don’t want to know.

The reason the Honda had to go is that, although my beloved Civic was able to fit (via my bloody-minded mania for efficient packing) four sumo suits and a 4 x 4m foam wrestling ring in the back seat, it lacked any real suitability as an interstate haulage vehicle. It was time for a new car. If you’re a regular reader, you will know that story already. The untold portion is the one in which I pulled out my mp3-playing stereo from the Honda and had it installed in The Red Rocket.

(Nb. I also installed my old non-mp3-playing stereo back into the Honda all by myself, just like a real man! I did ask my mechanic for advice and that advice did turn out to be ‘Connect the same coloured wires together’, but still – in is in and it didn’t melt the car when I turned it on, which I believe is a common problem).

Enter Bill Hicks. Bill Hicks is one of those rare comedians whose material remains relevant 20 years after it was written. Not to mention hilarious. The jokes he was making about the first Gulf War could easily be told onstage today for just the same impact. Even his anti-PC tirades in which non-smokers and anti-abortion lobbyists are grouped together in an extended stream-of-consciousness free verse poem involving Barbara Bush and a scat-munching right-wing US senator still trick you into loud, honest hoots of laughter, despite the unwelcome mental images he coerces into your mind. I had decided on a second chocolate chip fudge biscuit (packed by Mele with love and care) when Hicks began his bit about teenage white-girl American popstars who make money selling a product which has the gall to call itself music. He pushes the appropriately sweet-sounding Little Debbie (vaguely heard of her – think Strawbery Kisses-era Nicki Webster if you need to visualise) into a locked recording studio with the still-living Jimi Hendrix, an electric guitar and a lot of sexually-charged feedback. His impersonations of her screaming for her mother while Jimi plays Voodoo Chile all over the top of any of the pretensions to musical insight and, ahem, innocence she may still possess are the true meaning of comedy. As is me, squealing with goose-like laughter while trying to catch a fountain of mostly-chewed, liquid chocolate fudge tumbling from my lips.

(Nb. Sadly, Bill Hicks is dead. In an ironic twist, which would have been best appreciated by a man who mocked the jogging guru Jim Fixx for dying while jogging and then followed it up with a counter-bit in which he himself speculates about his own death at the hands of cigarettes, Hicks actually died from cigarette smoking. Although Hicks died from cancer, and not, as in his routine, at hands of a pack of rancorous anti-smokers: ‘I tried to run, they were too fit! I tried to hide, they heard me wheezing!’).

I’ve been cruising along all day in 21st Century mode. The iPod is plugged into the stereo, the mobile phone has been on (but out of service – thanks Telstra), the cup-holder (a cup holder! Such a modern conveyance!) has been cradling the best lattes the Murray region’s four baristas-in-training have to offer and the digital camera has been taking photos of road signs and curious pubs – all by itself, mind you. Both hands on the wheel for me. Oh yes. I lunched upon polish sausage and cheese from the Central Market and ate fruit from Mele’s Nonna’s trees.

I’m not shot of Adelaide just yet.

20th May 2008
Balranald to Dubbo
674 kms

Today I had an auditory-visual co-experience. That means that I experienced exactly the same sensation through my ears as I did through my eyes. I crossed the Hay Plane while listening to Melbourne talkback 3AW with Neil Mitchell. The Hay Plane has been accused of many things, but I think the intellectual curiosities and broader cultural and philosophical challenges posed by talkback radio (mixed 50/50 with advertising) are the most accurate comparison I can make to the neural stimuli that the Hay Plane presents. I don’t know which was more bored, my eyes staring at the same piece of road rolling under the Red Rocket or my ears, sagging with the drones of people who would rather complain about road-works than the Burmese junta euthanasing its own people.

Other than 700 kilometres of fairly similar driving, the only other highlight was dropping into the Parkes Radio Telescope (otherwise known as The Dish) a slick 15 minutes after they had closed the visitors centre for the day. Nice timing, dingus. I did still get to have a good look at the thing, take some iffy photos and see it moving! I’m pretty sure (although not 100% certain) that they were receiving alien communication transmissions!

21st May 2008
Dubbo to Glen Innes
556 kms

Ho. Ly. Shit. The New England Highway is fucking beautiful. Scooting through it in the Red Rocket in late late autumn is just as wondrous and wonderful as the Hay Plane with Neil Mitchell was unenlightening. Every town has rows of tall trees leaving ridiculously gay piles of leaves on the highway. Rock formations abound. I practised much restraint by only going to one lookout outside Tamworth and discovering that it had been spray-painted with racist slogans and swastikas. Just as I was leaving, a gentleman who Nick Earls would describe as a man who puts on a hat to go driving pulled up in the empty car park. He had a younger passenger who grinned at me and looked vaguely glad to be able to race up the steps to the lookout ahead of his chauffeur.
‘Which way are you going?’ our bespectacled driver asked, absently patting an oblong bulge in his brown wool jumper which could have been either a glasses case or a pacemaker. I explained that I was driving to Bribie Island and he responded, as 75% of people do, that he knew it and had been there on holiday (the other 25% screw up their noses, declare cheerily that they’ve never heard of it and ask questions about ferries). He then took a full five minutes to explain an activity to me which I simply had to try. I didn’t understand it, nodded and smiled anyway and drove off to piece together in my mind what the hell it was he was actually talking about. I eventually worked out that he was telling me about an amazing thing I must see which would involve me turning around and heading back towards Tamworth. I was to search for an exit very similar to the turn-off which lead to the lookout, drive up it a short distance, turn around again (got me? Heading back towards the highway), put my car in neutral and let it roll towards the main road, touching neither gas nor brake peddle. He insisted that I try this complicated stunt because once I reached the flat ground just before the highway, which sloped gently uphill, my car would still keep rolling through some mysterious magical and/or magnetic force which would pull it uphill against gravity for a distance of ten to fifteen metres!
Sadly, dear reader, I was most of the way to Armidale before I figured that out and so left the magnetic miracles of the New England to those who are chosen to experience them.

Glen Innes, however is an excellent place to have stopped. I’m glad I was enthusiastic enough to shop around caravan parks for a decent price because the first one I wandered into seemed very impressive, but for such a delightful dorf I was a bit Big Bottom Lip about staying at a place which doubled as a service station off the main highway. The place I chose (Blue Sapphire) was cheaper and looked like a country cottage which decided to throw up a few cosy cabins and call itself a caravan park. In fact I suspect that’s just what it is. No one was attending the front office, which was left with its money-laden till wide open and a note instructing visitors to call a number on the phone provided because the owners had just popped into town for some shopping. I thought about pocketing every last cent and getting a B&B with a spa, but picked up the phone instead, just in time for the chatty owner to come in from preparing a roast lamb with rosemary.
‘And a bit of lemon and garlic, eh?’ I enquired, ever the culinary enthusiast.
‘No. Just rosemary.’
Mele will tell you that this ambivalence about garlic is indicative of our move, but to that I say fiddlesticks. We shall bring garlic to these people, whether they want it or not.

And now, I am off to eat a counter meal and watch the first State of Origin contest because I am a northerner now and that’s what we do. Right Benny?

22nd May 2008
Glen Innes to Bribie Island
439 kms

After a burger, a few pints of New (that’s Toohey’s New, for the uninitiated, the increasingly misnamed beer of the eastern states), some light abuse at the hands of some New South Wales supporters at the Glen Innes pub and a cosy old night in my cosy old cabin, I struck out on the home-away-from-home stretch.

The themes of inordinate beauty combined with ABC radio continued as I crossed the Main Ranges. I pulled over on a gravel park to throw out some garbage and have a slash. Right next to the garbage bin were two peacocks. Not nesting, and not exactly feasting on McDonald’s wrappers either. Just standing in the bushes, taking me in. Checking me out. I took it as a Good Sign and took Many Photos, which made me realise that I Want A New SLR Camera.

Seriously though: peacocks. A pair. Big and strong and healthy. And on the other side of the gravel truck park zone? Someone had tossed a large television into the thick vines and scrub which grew over the side of the drop-off. I think that sums up Queensland for me so far: surprising natural beauty frequently punctuated with examples of humanity’s need for thoughtless consumption. Or, if you prefer, lush rainforests and gargantuan shopping malls. Often side by side.

Thankfully, Bribie Island is easy to find and the freeways are easy to negotiate. There are monolithic signs everywhere that unmistakably lead you to where you want to go. You also get about three or four acre-sized warning signs for when your turn-off is coming up.

NORTHERN SUBURBS AND SUNSHINE COAST
LEFT LANE

your gargantuan sign will read.
‘Does that mean I get into the left lane to get to the Sunshine Coast?’ you ask, squinting into the ubiquitous sun.

YES
JUST GET INTO THE LEFT LANE
WE WILL DO THE REST

‘Aaaah!’ you scream. ‘Fuck!’ you yell. ‘Get out of my way! I am going to miss my turn-off, you arseholes!’

YOU HAVE 6 WHOLE MINUTES TO CHANGE LANES
JUST INDICATE AND SLOWLY DRIFT OVER
RELAX

So the freeways are large and fast, but easy to handle in a bright red car with South Australian number-plates stuffed to the air-vents with linen, books and cooking equipment.

Bribie Island itself is just as lovely and picturesque as it was when we visited in January. And if our car manages to avoid getting keyed, we will be ahead on points already.

As soon as I was over the bridge, I couldn’t help myself. I drove straight to the house. It’s a semi-detached jobby, connecting garages with an identical house next door which is owned by the landlord. Something the real estate agents conveniently left out until I had signed the lease for real and handed over our deposit … However, it’s not all that big a deal because as I pulled into the (deceptively steep) driveway, scraping the nutsack out of my loaded-to-the-springs new car, Mavis the Midget appeared and welcomed me to Bribie Island. Mavis is a lovely little old lady who can’t be an inch over four feet tall. Lives by herself with a little dog named Bess (or Jess) and enjoys a chat. So much so that she followed me through the house as I performed an initial inspection. Thanks, Mavis. I’ve got it from here. I might actually take a piss now, if you’ve finished showing me the window-locks.

How is it? The Tribe has chosen well. Big north-, south- and west-facing windows, large rooms, gas cooking (as I may have mentioned) and you can see the ocean from the front garden. I have unwittingly engaged in a sea-change lifestyle and really, baby-boomer-bashing aside, it has much to recommend it. The sea, for example. And the tropical birdsong, which I’m sure will have me in the Bribie Gun Shop within the week pricing scattershot rifles, but for now, it’s quite uplifting. There is a church directly across the street, which is more amusing than anything for a person who holds the views on organised religion I do. I’m sure we’ll get along just fine, just as long as no-one tries to welcome anybody else to the neighbourhood with pamphlets and hymns.

The only problem with this place is the smell. It holds the musky scent of holidays. Of exciting plane journeys, visiting relatives, sleeping on the beach, walking through rainforests, swimming in waterfalls, fishing at sunset and sleeping to the breathing of palm trees outside the window at night.
Not the most conducive environment for completing a Phd. Wish us luck and lots of it.