Fin.

Fourteen weeks later, I can officially say:
Midnights and I are finito. And like the end of any good relationship, the time has come to take stock and idealise everything about it. By way of a list. Not that I do that every time a relationship ends. That would be weird.

Things I have learnt:

1/ You can get food after midnight in Melbourne. But that doesn't mean you should eat it. That said, I didn't make the effort to go to the 24-hour Pancake Palour in Doncaster. I'm not sorry.

2/ That P. Diddy "don't want no bumps on his face", because he "gotta have his sexy all right". And that I could have a worse job. But at least I'd have stalkers. (I'm never watching late-night television again.)

3/ Pony is my favourite place in Melbourne. Between the hours of 2am and 5am, I have a 100 per cent strike rate of running into someone I know. And an 82 per cent chance that they'll try to sell me drugs. AND I'm very upset to be missing Cult of the Placenta Head playing there right now.

4/ Even if you chase cop cars and ambulances for three months, you're probably more likely to see the most blood on the hands of a tattooist.

5/ There are other people like me. But those particular children of the night seem to be more commited to activism about their condition. And they're right - NONE of our elected representatives are nocturnal! I'm fighting the urge to run for the senate on a nocturnal platform.. must.. resist.

6/ Overnight talkback radio is an addiction (and I am slightly in love with this man.) It's cool, I feel alive.. and it doesn't make me old. I swear. Even if 774 is currently taking talkback about "times you've had a fall". I mean, I fall over all the time!

7/ I am too tired to have any wisdom to impart. After three months of forced introspection, that's probably just as well.

So when all is said and done, I'm glad midnights are over. See, I am le tired.


I'm off to bed. (You can follow me here. If you want.)

Carpe noctem!

Tough times and hard rubbish

Three nights to go, and my roster is up for my triumphant return to the office. I have two weeks of 8am starts. After three months of not getting up until 2pm. Life is too cruel.

But rather than reflect on my impending doom, I am looking forward to happier times. Like, hard rubbish in North Carlton on September 25!

The dazzling array of treasure that is hard rubbish last came around for me about five months ago. I didn't have a car at the time, and had resigned myself to missing out on the week-long scavenger hunt.

BUT LO! Riding on my BIKE during the happy secondhand festival, just around the corner from my house I found a PLANK. (And do you know who else has planks, children? That's right, PIRATES have planks. Oh, and these guys:)

Planks are also funny..

Made, typically, of wood, this plank was not your average splintery spider-fest type plank. It was painted white, and perfectly flat, and long enough to.. be taller than me. Maybe it was 7'?

Sometimes, understandably, hard rubbish hunters - and their housemates - are reluctant to welcome certain items into their homes. Fair enough, I didn't actually ask my houseys on this one, but I had no such qualms. It was perfect.

My perfect plank now lives in my loft-bedroom, sitting across two book cases and forming a shelf above my ladder-hatch. It is the most functional and yet piratic thing I have ever got for free. Cool, huh?

Like this is cool:

Sometimes even pirates need to be told "no"..

It's going to be 21 degrees in the next 24 hours, and I am off to buy Meredith Music Festival tickets. Today is going to be a good day.

Countdown

(Not the kind that involves Molly Meldrum. I was all excited about the prospect of Countdown reunions, because it made me think that yeah, perhaps it will inspire a new almighty force of music shows that will be cutting edge and that I can be involved in. However, jtv does not fit that description in any way. And Australian Idol is back, and making me cranky.)

The countdown I am talking about is the four nights I have left of midnights. Which is not totally unlike counting down to an inter-planetary mission to Mars, I guess. I would post further about this momentous occasion, but I am too busy thinking about all the ways to celebrate my final week/ impending freedom.

It is kind of sad in a way. I think there may be even some things I miss.

Hmm, can a girl get Stockholm's Syndrome from night shift?

(I was about to justify this pic with some sort of prisoner-Stockholm link, but I have decided the whole thing is self-evident. Wonder Woman rocks. Way more than jtv.)

Spring Fashion Week and don't we both look lovely..

Public announcement: I am in love with Jennifer "Miss Universe" Hawkins. Or Miss Jennifer Universe Hawkins?

Either way, I had my initial doubts about her, she of the a-little-bit-too-cute-skirt-losing-episodes and cruising-into-jobs-I-wouldn't-mind-having tendencies.

But in a testament to saturation promotion, the more I see of her, the more I like. Her shrieking during dives with sharks on The Great Outdoors is cute yet convincing. And the Myer ad where her single line, "agreed" (tilt head, girl-next-door smile), justifies all those hours of acting classes? I actually want the dress she's wearing (but apparently, thanks to all her other fans being more organised than me, it's already sold out.) And, I don't mind this billboard:

Aww.. it's a TIGER!

And Jenniverse is not the only model in overabundance in town. Thanks to Spring Fashion Week, farm-girl-turned-catwalk-queenTM Jessica Farrell is everywhere, and I don't mind.

Any girl that wears gumboots - even in a fairly lame set-up shot - is alright in my book. And actually, Spring Fashion Week generally is finding its way into my Book of Alrights. It's all fun and bright and stuff that I would actually consider wearing.

More frighteningly, I was heading down Chapel St about 3am the other day to get a coffee (Chapellis - They Never Close). And shop after shop had window displays that were actually stirring some sort of urge to participate in capitalist, advertising-driven society. I nearly crashed into a taxi I was so distracted. And then I thought, wow, why don't I shop around this Chapel St place? Oh, right. Because the shops being open for shopping only ever coincides with the Chapel St-erati being all-present. And all-orange. Suddenly less appealing.

Springing into stereotypes

These are camellias - my grandmother would be proud that I know this.

(However, hopefully she doesn't read it here.. I wasn't planning to let her know about the whole tatt thing.)

Spring has sprung. So on Friday, I got home from work, found my bikini, and set up camp in the 23 degree sun. In our backyard, the pink camellia is flowering. Pink petals drift down in the breeze, and turn into mulch all over our paving. If I put a blanket over it first, I can lie on our (rotting) outdoor couch in dappled sun. And when I was forced to realise that neighbours were playing a John Meyer CD at inappropriate levels (i.e audibly), I was feeling too benevolent to go over there and start something.

By Saturday, I had joined the "get your body in shape for summer" brigade, and handed over hard-earned to a gym.

On Sunday, I cleaned the house. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that I "spring-cleaned" the house.

Then I realised.. my reaction to the pre-summer season could not be any more stereotypical. I AM A SEASONAL CONFORMIST.

It is reasonably distressing to discover that an extra five degrees on the themometer can turn me into a cellulite-aware, dust-conscious, non-agressive human being. You know who else fits this description? DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, THAT'S WHO. (Except for the non-agressive bit. Those chicks are biatches. From what I can tell from overly-long Channel 7 ads.) I AM NOT READY TO BE CONTEMPLATING THAT KIND OF DESPERATION. Let alone ANY housewifery.

But fear not - my downward spiral has been given reprieve. By Sunday night, the rain was pelting down on 9 degree Melbourne, and I was happily running through it to buy chocolate humming Four Seasons in One Day. (I saw the Finn brothers do that song live last year, acoustically and as a tribute to Paul Hester. Gig of the year. Distractingly, the song ALSO reminds me of personal products of the same name. It has always made me wonder - is that particular Australian producer taking inspiration from that particular song? Or is it more a Vivaldi reference? And how does the activity line up with the four seasons, anyway? Or perhaps they're the preferred product of Four Seasons Hotel patrons. Anyway, these are the issues that concern someone who works my hours.)

Anyway, the point is: Melbourne is reliable in the unreliability of its weather. And sometimes, that is a good thing.

And I have two weeks to go on midnights. Then I will have a week off, and will be able to re-approach spring with another selection of stereotypes: road trips, heavy drinking, classic albums, sitting on a beach, and more drinking. I will avoid, however, any temptation to combine punk rocking and the placement of flowers in my hair. That is just stupid.

Things are looking up..

I now have two weeks, and two days, until my midnight life is done and dusted. THAT IS 96 HOURS, PEOPLE!!!! And even before that happy event, FRIDAY IS THE START OF SEPTEMBER AND SPRING!!! Believe me, this is exciting - MY USE OF CAPITALS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS IS NOT USUALLY THIS EXTENSIVE!!!!! (But only because Danny Katz got in first - damn you, Katz!)

There is much to be achieved in my final days. Hopefully something that actually involves a decent story. Possibly some other things too, suggesting I should probably make a list. And not least on that list, I might have to clean my desk before I hand it back.



Hmm, maybe I should just stay for good...

Punt Rd philosophies

When one is broadening one's mind in the appreciation of culture, it's always nice to be able to relate to the artist. And not just in a Black-Eyed Peas, "hey, I DO have humps - in the back AND in the front!" way.

I'm talking more about Punt Rd. In Elliot Perlman's book Three Dollars, Eddie panics that he'll have no knowledge to impart to his yet-to-be-born daughter. Except that, no matter what time of the day or night, at all costs avoid Punt Rd.

As I sat in bumper to bumper traffic heading south along that particular wayfare today, I knew exactly what he meant. Along with probably the whole of car-driving Melbourne, I knew it before he wrote it, I acknowleged it when I read it, and I carry the knowledge with me.

Presumably Punt Rd is so busy because it's hard for a north-south traveller to avoid directionally. And because cars are allowed to park at the kerb - BOTH WAYS!! - for almost the entire stretch. One lane of traffic each way on a major arterial with a school on it, brilliant work there Melbourne/Stonnington councils.

But the reason I keep returning to its needlessly slow-flowing traffic is actually because I LIKE PUNT RD. I feel HUGE affection for the hard-fought-for Nylex clock, and it's complicated four-step colour-change programming. (It reminds me of driving through Melbourne at night after a family trip visiting grandparents, and passing the huge green Victoria Bitter sign on the left on St Kilda Rd, which would mean there was still lots of fascinating city to go, and then getting to the huge red Canon sign, which was I don't know where, but it meant we were nearly out of the city and I could fall asleep without fear of missing any more wondrous sights. Imagine if I ever went to Vegas, I think I'd pass out from happiness just at all the signs.)


I also feel ridiculously grateful if the temperature on the Nylex clock is anything above 10 degrees. I like going past the MCG and being so expertly Melburnian that I know which is the Punt Rd end (as opposed to listening to ABC Grandstand as a young country thing, and not really being too sure).

Moving to Melbourne five years ago was a revalation to this country kid. It's best illustrated by Greg Champion's song about the fallout that would occur if/when Richmond won a premiership. Including the lines (and to tune of Green Green Grass of Home):

Old Swan St looks the same, as I go by on the train,

And there's Dimmey's and the grunge pub on the corner...

Well Church St will explode, and they'll have to close Bridge Rd,

On Victoria St the Vietnamese will party.

And the Skipping Girl will dance all night,

Punt Rd ground will be a dreadful sight,

On the day that Richmond win the flag.

.. it was VERY exciting to move to Melbourne, and not only discover where all those places were, but TO ACTUALLY FREQUENT THEM. Oh, and to discover that the Corner Hotel of all my frustrated TripleJ gig-guide listenings, where I actually wanted to LIVE when I eventually moved to Melbourne, was actually one in the same as "the grunge pub on the corner". Who'd have thought it?!

Anyway, the whole point is that I'm muchly cosmopolitan now. And back to relating to high literature, this needed to be on the internet somewhere.

The world is too big for love to be real. There are too many people in the world to ever know, beyond everything, that you are with the right person. That your heart is as swollen as it can be. Think of all the people in China. It is unlikely anyone will ever meet all of them. How can we know for certain, for absolute certain, that trapped inside a foreign language and thumping in a foreign heart there isn't a love that is meant for us. The infinite possibility of existence, its limitless potential, is the proof that we need that love is nothing more than an imagination, a human folly, friendship swollen with self-importance, a final retreat from the storm of possbility. The love of our life could so easily have been someone else. It is random and accidental, haphazard and unsystematic. That which we feel for one person, clinging on to the delusion of destiny, could so easily be felt for a million people should the timeing and the meetings and the mutual readiness have coalesced at some other time in some other place. Should someone else have accepted us or rejected us then everything would have been different. And once we know this, we know that all love is a lie. Not honesty but deception. Not heroism but cowardice. An unspoken agreement of mutual consolidation and compromise, a shield from possibility and a bed in which to sleep, nothing more than that.
But I do still miss her.
- Daniel Kitson, London, 2006