Head in hands

Against my better nature I am making tentative moves towards that bloody day towards the end of the month. I hate Christmas!

And the thanks I get is this: flush with his mini triumph in filching a $500 book from the doddery old dears running the local charity shop he's bought and brought into my home another armful of tatty, dusty, foxed and falling apart old books.

The deluded sloth believes old = valuable. 1840 must therefore be Very Valuable. Possibly. But not when it is a hackneyed reprint of a work first published in 1621. Now the 1621 edition would pay off the mortgage. The 1840 reprint might pay for a big nosh up at the local Indian on a cold, wet and miserable Sunday night.

I am annoyed. He is unaware of this. If I throw these out or give them back he will find out and be annoyed. And I will be very aware of that.

Bastard.

I am going to write a story for children about ....

Ha! But it is better than re-writing my dreary Gothic Horror. I hated the first two paragraphs of that so much I carried out chemical warfare on the oven instead and gave myself an altogether different sort of headache. This has been that sort of day.

I had a drink a few days ago. Just a drink, just one. It was such a non-event and there were no ramifications so I didn't bother you with the news. What a good girl I can be. And gee, patronising myself is almost as much fun being patronised by my trainee teenager.

Look at me

It is a very scary possibilty that the recent display of public disorder by a very small and probably excrutiatingly polite rabble of about 20 objectors to anyone debating the possibility of considering raising the question removing the requirement for priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic set up is the most exciting thing to happen inside or round about the Camberwell Civic Centre since ... the year I did my HSC and had to dig my blazer out and put it on to attend one last long dreary Speech Night.

I can't remember a word anyone said at us last night, but such is the impact of the poisonous environment I can still, after all these years, murder the school anthem with great gusto, lyrical accuracy and all the tunelessness one would expect of the tone-deaf.

It isn't a very exciting part of the world.

I read other people's blogs, and the list I read is not confined to those for which links are provided. I browse other people's work out of curiosity. I return to those that challenge or reaassure, entertain or in some way touch me.

I write this one as a form of release, albeit well disguised a lot of the time. Things are less than absolutely wonderful, and it wouldn't be a good idea to put the less than wonderfulness of things on paper, for paper has a tendency to finish up in the wrong hands. I'm not well placed at present to allow things to get out of control. So I ditch the baggage on the ether and soldier on.

Well a couple of those who write and whose work I read have meditated very recently, each in their own way, on the morality and danger of blogging. So now I have something else to worry about.

It will be three weeks on Sunday. Some really good words, though not enough, have flown from my finger tips this morning. After this brief interlude I must return to that work; the weekend will be practically a wash out, so I must make an impression on my target today.

Painful truth

Might otherwise have missed this one but the Beeb can be relied upon to keep me abreast of crucial news emanating from 'back home', such as this story. I'm not making it up, honest and to prove it the story is lifted from The Age, the least disreputable Victorian rag; and frankly the story is a bit of a hoot and light relief after the previous post:

Showing patrons she could crush beer cans between her exposed breasts has cost a West Australian barmaid $1,000.

Hanging spoons on the barmaid's nipples also cost one of her co-workers $500, while their bar manager was fined $1,000 for failing to stop the pair, police said in a statement.

Luana De Faveri, 31, was fined $1,000 in the Mandurah Magistrates Court on Wednesday after pleading guilty to two breaches of Licence Conditions under the Liquor Control Act.

Police said in June this year, De Faveri twice exposed her breasts to patrons in the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, 87km south of Perth. "She was alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," police said.

Another bar worker, Tracey Amanda Leslie, 43, was fined $500 after pleading guilty to assisting the commission of a breach of the act by helping hang spoons from De Faver's nipples.

The pub manager, Roy Williams, 43, was fined $1,000 after pleading guilty to a breach of the act by failing to stop the women's behaviour.

Superintendent David Parkinson of the Peel Police District said: "It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of behaviour in our licensed premises."

Apart from bringing to mind that scene involving ping pong balls in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert I think it must be said that since Perth is the most remote Capital city in the world (or so residents will have it) and the place where these shocking events took place is a deal further from civilisation than that the people who live there deserve a medal and the police who are essentially employed to deal with matters arising when people who can't cope with the isolation go bonkers and start attempting to get off with kangaroos and other wildlife need to get a better perspective.

As to how much envy is involved, well that's another question. I wouldn't like to attempt to do this. The very idea makes my eyes water.

Geelong: A Clarification

I made an unpleasant remark in a recent post about the town of Geelong and feel a few points providing clarification are in order.

• I have never visited Geelong, not even for an afternoon tea
  
• I do not know one individual personally and directly who lives or ever has lived in Geelong
  
• I DO have family connections to Geelong
  
• Blogger's spell checker insists on replacing Geelong with Gee Long, which makes the place sound like a porn star
  
• The club's nickname is The Cats, though that kitty does look particularly ferocious.
  
• Geelong is a dump of a town to the south and west of Melbourne.^*

Geelong is one of those thrusting regional centres that thinks throwing a few million tax payer dollars at a bright colour, chrome, steel, glass and modern art festooned Waterfront Development [yawn] is an adequate substitute for developing a sustainable economy.

That sort of sloppy thinking is all of a piece with having a Visit Geelong website continuing to promote the Christmas in July Black Tie Dinner as at the 30th September. Perhaps they haven't sold enough tickets yet?

* Oh, did I say that already?

Folks will talk

The Big Swinging Dick has asked another favour of me. He still owes me at least one bottle arising from our last jolly to XVille. Now he wants me to go with him again for the follow up meeting HR have asked us to have with the defendant; effectively a sentencing hearing since we're to deliver our judgement. All this is a lot of fuss to go to in order to let someone know that we've effectively decided to do nothing and give the whole scenario further time to develop.

He's offered a cup of coffee, but I'm going to hold out for the plonk even if that does me falling off the wagon I've just about got my self securely strapped onto.

Oh by the way

Yesterday's jolly took a sombre turn. Not quite at first. We left late, so the Big Swinging Dick inevitably put his foot down; something that was quite interesting while we were travelling some of the narrow and curvaceous country roads between here and the big smoke. No mishaps and on the bigger roads with greater risk of mobile or fixed speed trap we decelerated and re-entered the atmosphere shortly thereafter.

Then we got to Xville. One of those mid-sized towns dotted about the country that is linked to another place by a dead straight road that might or might not still be visible (or even the main drag). Wall, castle, shambles, gables, solid red brick. Roman, Norman, Tudor, Georgian.

Then after dumping the getaway vehicle we legged it to the office. Historically Victorian, decor by post-war bureaucrat. Institutional grey as far as the eye can see. Except it is almost empty, because all the meaningful staff have been relocated to the new head office. Electricians were crawling all over the place, bringing the wiring into the 21st century before we farm the real estate out to some schmuck.

Our contact lives in a grotty little cubby-hole with a few mod-cons (PVC window frames, return desk with laptop, pencil holder and multi-coloured sticky-note pad). After a recap during which we drew out of her (with painful slowness) the objective of the meeting we proceeded in a capacious training room.

The Big Swinging Dick might be a gifted retailer, he gets results in meetings such as the one he conducted yesterday but via a painfully circuitous route that probably baffled the Union Rep as much as it frustrated me. With one half of my brain I concentrated furiously and scribbled frantically; meanwhile the other half of my brain kept wanting to wander away and restructure what was happening around me into a shape at least somewhat resembling a text book interview.

After an hour we took an adjournment, then after the break we got to the nub of the matter, which is where things got rather sombre. It's what happens when you delve into the darkest recesses of the private life of an employee. Turn over that rock by all means but be prepared for what might crawl out into the light. It might be a violent partner.