Salami shower (instead of two kinds of classy)

I was feeling kind of pleased with myself because I was planning on having a bubble bath with the bathroom window wide open. I was going to lie back in hot water and watch the rain. I was thinking of smoking one of those long thin cigars and pouring the smoke from my lungs out the window but then I remembered that cigars are made of tobacco and I quit smoking three months ago.

I changed plans and went with a shower in order to avoid not smoking but I must have made a pit stop at the refrigerator. It was one of those thin flat pieces of salami, the kind large enough to cover a piece of bread. I was holding it curled like a cigar in my teeth while I peeled off my clothes. It was freezing in The Peach bathroom this afternoon, cold enough to hurry me straight into the shower with less than three seconds passing from the removal of my last sock until the hot water hit my face. I turned around to let the water warm my back when I realised the rolled up slice of salami was still sitting in place like a meat cigar hanging out of the left side of  my mouth. Today is the day that I ate salami in the shower and I loved it. I'm doing it again tomorrow.

Kind of like a hoppy sort of sideways moonwalk combined with a running man and also some kicking?

This morning I woke up, only very moderately hungover, and decided that today is the day I learn how to do the Melbourne Shuffle. Clearly the music is horrid and the shufflers seem mostly to be men but what the hell it's about time I developed a new hobby. I briefly considered converting my black pyjama pants with yellow electrical tape and downloading horrible music but on reflection have decided to simply perform Slamma style shuffle to Talking Heads wearing my pony dress.

Do a Loni Cha Cha

Him: You should freeze your eggs.

Me:  

It seems to me like this might be the place

Yesterday of course I had twelve tantrums in the rain but everyone arrived at all of the meetings and I believe what I experienced was progress with umbrellas, boots and a magazine. Newtown will in the end deliver what you need whether it's a poetry editor, seven and a half burritos or a permission to reprint something already delivered.

I had thought to sit quietly in a bookshop and lay down one convincing argument after another but as usual I ended pretending to tap dance in the doorway of a Mexican takeaway waving my umbrella and shouting at the rain.

Peter, Paul and Mary seemed to have each other

Everyone knows they've been fucking but not everybody knows that he doesn't know her name. I decided to call her Mary. Last week I heard somebody say 'we lost Mary' and there's not one person in Newtown who looks more lost than her. I was clutching ten records to my chest and walking in the rain when she rolled past me on a bus staring at nothing, not even blank space. I imagine she lets her handbag sag in her lap.

There's no one taller, she's got those toothpick legs hooked on to the end of a floating bone pelvis. Black hair hanging clean and straight. I feel like setting obstacles in her path just to see exactly how much those long legs can step over with breaking their elegant stride. I suppose she looks like a model or something but when you see her in a crowd she seems planted from outer space. I've seen her almost everywhere in Newtown, on buses, street corners, bars, pubs, shops and supermarkets. She is always alone. Last month I saw her picking up teaspoons in Vinnies. She would hold one close to her face, turn it over then put it down again. I never picked her as the type to make off with the silver.

I would have assumed that I had imagined her, conjured out of the viable air space in my head but people talk about her. I'm not the only one that sees in corners and out on the street. I'm going to keep calling her Mary but I think I've decided that instead of watching stand hollow and decorative as a crystal vase I might just walk up to her and say hello.

So why are they saying this isn't true?

I've lost that and now it's gone

Newtown can turn on you, offer one of those knife-edge shoulder blades poking out of the backs of things. I knew this but I don't think Newtown knew that I would turn on her. I saw Gemma today and she said she thought I'd been turning on Newtown for a while now, figured out the code while I slept by night.

He started out speaking words and those stupid proclamations people utter before they realise what the worst is and that it sometimes happens to you, it made more sense than I'd care to admit. He rotated a hung apple until the worm hole hit the light.

Two seconds at The Hopetoun

I don't believe this is the end. There is a big grief behind this denial. I don't suppose I've talked about it before but The Hopetoun is one of the places where I suddenly looked down and found that my feet were standing just precisely where I always hoped they'd be. The other moment I don't talk about is the two seconds where one turned back birthed a god.


They come out of the crowd at The Hopetoun, the one standing next to you suddenly stops at the end of your sentence to look up at the stage. They might make a vague gesture with their head or nod at someone already scrambling onstage. There's always this moment; they breathe unaware of the accordion push of their lungs. They'll stare then at walls or the stage or their last chance to run for the green backlit EXIT. Here's the part that breaks my heart, the first step after they pivot and leave you standing in the crowd.  Barely head and shoulders above us but it's enough to get a clear idea of where they're coming from and just where we're likely to send them. It's how we spread our legs and birth our gods, forty centimetres off the floor.

There is a rumour

That The Hopetoun is shutting down. It might be best to panic after I find out if it is true or not, and not before.

Ponies Are Necessary

I've had one of those ideas that feed themselves and now I have a London correspondent, a fashion editor and a sex columnist. Some days you wake up feeling slightly tired and wishing the blender worked well enough to blend a banana but by the time you go to bed you're the editor of a magazine. Weird how that works.

There will of course be more details, in the future.

Pre-breakfast meeting sitting in underpants after all the guests have left but I am yet to moisturise, did I mention that my hair looks good?

Newtown cracked last night or it rolled over on the mattress and I saw her in clear light for the first time. I'm not blaming Spencer but he was definitely involved. There were empty houses where there was supposed to be Gypsies and somebody blamed Elvis for Kylie Minogue.  I can't recommend that you do this. Don't take a clear youth with intellect and use them as your eyes. If it weren't for my imminent breakfast meeting with Madam Squeeze I would have airlifted The Peach over three bridges and into the sea. I think the red dust rose up for a reason.

Anti-mashwoman at The Kill Devil Hills

It's the wrong side of midnight and I have to be up at 7, I left before the band finished playing but I'm not happy about it. I started the night out as a civilian but as soon as I discovered that The Annandale has installed soap dispensers in the ladies' toilets I decided to turn my notes into a review (which will theoretically be published sometime soon). I think I'm starting to love The Annandale, I used to think it was adequate with periods of shithouse sound but tonight there was soap and a chair with wheels. I managed to suffer only one mild disgrace when talking to members of bands such as Crow and The Mess Hall. I have a feeling The Annandale has taken pity on me, spread her beer-stained legs and offered me some shelter. I had nothing to do with the poor woman who tripped and fell down the stairs and lord knows if I was going to trip over anyone it would have been a Fenton or two. I had an awkward but passable conversation with John Fenton about kitchen stools and family photographs. He is using a scanner from 2001 but his computer is fairly new. I muttered strangely at Jed Kurzel who was interrupting my note-taking, I had to stuff my pen into the pockets of my jeans to shake his hand. I have no idea what he was saying to me, I was trying to grab the tail of a sentence as it flew through my head. I didn't manage to catch that sentence and I've been mourning its loss ever since. I suppose I should console myself with the fact that both he and I were rocking the double denim but mine slightly more stylish because I had made the addition of a silk tie.

Oh yes and the bands were quite good too.



For those people that like information the bands were:
Loene Carmen (solo)
The Holy Soul
The Kill Devil Hills

I have a feeling

That pine green will be making a come back in poetry book spines next year. Oh yes, it will be amazing.