Yesterday was the day for loud conversations on public transport. In the morning it was a LOUD discussion of how teens/20s conversant was so drunk (on the weekend, I’m guessing, or some time in the recent past), she was ‘lying vertical to the stairs’ (I’m not sure how that works) and had ‘a huge bruise from my hip to my arse, I’ll show you when I get to school’. Also how, although she had been working in the same job on a Friday evening for 18 months, she forgot last Friday that she had to work. OMG. The man opposite her was wincing at her moronic pronouncements I tried to catch his eye in sympathy but he was wincing too much to want to notice.
On the way back it was a woman probably my age talking to ‘Darl’ – her cockatoo I suppose – regarding ‘are you on this train?’ I mean, really, where would we be without mobile phones? Hamstrung, in limbo, frustrated, unable to talk to people 20 minutes before we see them face-to-face.
Watching
Underbelly the last few nights I have been interested to note the one big important way that you can tell the story takes place in the recent past is the size of their mobiles. It must have been hard to pick the right-sized mobile that would have credibility yet not bring forth howls of contempt and derision from the viewing audience. Oh my god, a brick! The guy that plays Carl Williams is tremendous, in fact most of the cast is really good; so nice to see Les Hill back in action after all this time. I am mildly aggrieved by the gratuitous breast shots (not Les’s) which seem terribly 70s but I guess the alternative – discreetly placed sheets etc – might also seem contrived, it’s hard to be sure. I am also not entirely sure what to make of the sex scene in the ecstacy pill kitchen with the embracing couple and the pill press popping out pink tabs – is this a metaphor or just something that happened? The eternal question in all textual analysis (as we used to beseech our long-suffering though not really to be sympathised with literature teacher at the end of high school,
why can’t a story just be a story???). Last night April came over to wreak a bit of jovial havoc, so it’s lucky we love her. The noodle soup Mia made was too spicy (she added two small chillies from the garden, which packed an amazing punch) for a -2 year old, so I made her a bagel with Slovakian plum jam on it which I ended up eating most of, which suited me though I was interested in how you can make a child eat something at least temporarily in small bursts just by showing her that
you’re eating it. That has to be primal. Then we went through many funny charades, many of which revolved around picking up things, identifying whose they were and then passing them to that person. I don’t unenjoy this rather safe play, though you do end up with a bit of a pile of ‘your’ stuff before long. I always feel selfconscious playing with a small child, I think because when I was a small child I always felt patronised and let down by adults generally, there was a miscommunication overall. That’s how I remember it anyway. Probably these were only isolated incidents.
The new Verlaines album
Potboiler is really, really good. I played it once a week or so ago and liked the music. When April and her parents whatstheirnames came over last night we had it on and it sounded even better. I think the much less provocative/oblique lyrics Graeme Downes produces these days compared with early Verlaines take some getting used to for some of us but on the whole, the thing sounds terrific and third listening will, I suspect, have me totally hooked. Also we played a bit of Fairport Convention beforehand which was probably the best kind of appetiser you could have. Mia is now reading Joe Boyd’s
White Bicycles.
I went to the library yesterday for the first time in yonks (I had a big fine there, which I came to realise on facing up to it was much less big than I had thought it would be) and borrowed the life of Jade Hurley (he can’t have it back till I’m finished with it), Barry Crocker, Silverchair (Jeff Apter’s book which came out before
Young Modern) and a book by the humorist Tony Martin whose work I have often admired. Martin is an interesting individual in lots of ways and one of those ways is that his humour is (usually or often) subtle and in another country he might be a kind of David Sedaris contemporary, yet for us he works in the mainstream. I suppose in the US, DS works in the mainstream too so what am I talking about. What I mean is Martin – like a lot of people in Australian showbiz – gets away with pretty sophisticated work and does very well in very mainstream areas up against much dumber humour just by not making a big thing of it.
Trip to work this morning (on which I wrote the above) was under an hour door-to-door, which is a good result in my opinion. The only irritant was attempting to buy a ticket in three different places (this is not an exaggeration) and only managing it on the fourth. No skin off my nose though in the final analysis.
PS Later 19/3: I finished reading the Martin book, called Lolly Scramble,
and was most impressed. There is a backdrop of, if not tragedy, then something close to it, behind a lot of these somewhat mundane, but humorously told, anecdotes. And I sure identify with Martin's nerdy, fannish inclinations.
