DAY 135: Becoming a psycho Chiko chick

13 Jan

I’M going for my citizenship test soon, so I’m keen to immerse myself in as much Australian culture as possible – particularly since a question on this national delicacy is bound to come up in the test.

“A cheeko roll please,” I toothily bid the good man at Wanna Pizza Me on Elizabeth Street.

He scrapes a saturated cylinder off the bain marie, puts it in a little paper jacket and hands it over. I peruse it sombrely, weighing its sinister, leaden mass in my hand. The best thing to come out of Wagga Wagga since the Sturt Highway, this is, and already it reeks like yesterday’s regrets.

Together with two giant coffees, the Chiko Roll is to make up today’s breakfast… but five minutes in I’m like a kid amped up on orange squash. I make a few regrettable phone calls that should have gone well, before realising I’m so flushed with adrenalin-pumping food-rage I actually want to punch on. Cor – that’s after just three inches, imagine what the full seven would do.

I back away from my inbox and telephone for a bit, and instead have a quick Google of the snack. On eBay there’s a Chiko Roll chick sticker going for $76.

There have been some surfy, Roxy-style updates, but you can't really top this ad. The angles are poetic.

Keeper? If I’m planning on making an emphatic point I might snort one of these down first.

Day 134: Laughing solo

12 Jan

HAVING a good guffaw is supposed to release all sorts of endorphins and feel-good chemicals, lower blood pressure and boost immune function.

I can’t quite bring myself to do group laughter therapy just yet, so I try two minutes on my own this morning.

It sounds proper sinister, sniggering and wheezing alone, but eventually your stomach muscles sort of take over, in an involuntary spasm. The rabbit comes to investigate, as he always does when I make strange noises, which only adds to my discomfort… but by the time I’ve finished I feel kind of dizzy, which is good.

Amusing incidents from the back catalogue to draw upon:

The time I ran my driving instructor’s car off the road and he screamed like a girl.

The time Mum started howling at one of Dad’s dead-serious “it was the winter of my discontent” ruminations and couldn’t stop.

The time that guy in the pub introduced himself as Phil McGuinness.

Keeper? I like that you have to stand with your hands on your hips. I am going to stand with my hands on my hips next time I laugh at someone.

DAY 133: Putting my life in the hands of weak-wristed amateurs

11 Jan

I’M determined to thrash my vertigo into submission, so I’ve signed myself up for a load of trapeze and aerial rope tomfoolery over the next few months.

Instead of hoisting us atop a platform and screaming GO! like the last place, this school coaches you in everything from working out, to throwing shapes, to take offs, to landing. Seems sensible.

On the static trapeze we work through pikes, hocks, hangs and beats, in what’s supposed to be a fluid motion – and probably would be if you were cursed with short, stumpy legs. For the lithe-limbed, it’s quite difficult not to entirely flip oneself over when asked merely to hover upside down in the air.

At the last school there were hoards of acrospunks coaching a big class, but this time there are five girls and one acrodude, whose arms aren’t quite built up enough for my liking. We’re not doing catches this week though, so I won’t worry about it now.

Last time, we swung about over a big rig, but this time it’s a ‘Petit Volant’, which basically means you’re trying to land on your feet on a crash pad instead of on your arse on a net. More worryingly, the girls in the class are expected to hold each other’s weight atop the platform and trust each other to let go/not wobble at pertinent times. Between us there are two cases of vertigo, two of myopia, and one of unbelievable stupidity, but these kinks are presumably hammered out over time.

Keeper: Yep, working on those developing those calluses before I attempt moves like “rear-mount”, “suicide” and “reverse suicide”.

DAY 132: Joining the Country Women’s Association

10 Jan

AN exciting development for a girl from the biggest industrial park in Europe. Watch this space for further action.

Keeper? Ooh! Lee Kernaghan’s playing soon!

DAY 131: A spot of Sunday afternoon circle work

9 Jan

It's even more dangerous with a black bar over your eyes.

“CIRCLE work” is as integral a part of country life as harassing rabbits and hanging around outside the one fast-food franchise in town, so it’s next on my agenda as a wet-behind-the-ears bush cookie. At first I assumed it to be some kind of embroidery stitch, but no – it involves a 120 degree fishtail, preferably of a “utility vehicle”.

I enlist the help of a friend from the hoon capital of Australia to run me through the motions. “I think it’s really important a learner knows how to do donuts,” Emerson hypothesises. “It’s a national pastime.”

The first time we met, my grease-monking guide pronounced, “I like to just go outside, spit, and then drive till my ears hurt,” in a peculiar, vowelly timbre. Despite having no clue what he was on about, I readily accept most things people tell me, and this seemed a reasonable enough statement. But when I was introduced to his ute, it all made sense for real. A 6.5-litre V8 engine in a modified 1979 Ford makes a mighty ear-hurtin’ racket indeed. Get the wind behind you (hence the explorative spitting), and it makes a mighty fast ear-hurtin’ racket.

My first challenge, however, is getting the old bastard to start (the ute, that is). After tooling away at the ignition and jiggling the wheel for five minutes, we’re off. “If the throttle sticks when you’re going down the freeway, punch it hard,” comes the next instruction, followed by a stream of technical jargon that makes no sense whatsoever and thus is entirely superfluous, in my opinion.

The stonking engine’s so restless that whenever I take off at a green light I perform a screeching burnout without even intending to, to the admiration of teenage boys all over Victoria.

After a pie stop, we find an idyllic lane (on Emerson’s private estate) and it’s time for my stylish manoeuvre. It’s a bit intimidating with Emmo in the passenger seat – a bit like a grade two guitarist trying to impress Brian May. Still, I stick the shonkbox in second, hit the accelerator and pull a hard right. Hellzapoppin! And hard left. Argh!!

It’s hard to stop at one, isn’t it? I stall the thing three times by getting cold feet and then taking one of those feet off the throttle. Funny – my tootsies had not long before been aflame from the oddly placed exhaust. I’m not saying it’s deliberate that I later smack said exhaust into a speed hump at 70km/h… but I’m not saying it isn’t, either.

Keeper? Tackling Mount Tarrengower as navigator next! If one can navigate with one’s eyeballs burrowed into one’s knees.

DAY 130: Nosing around the Castlemaine Museum

8 Jan

Have seen NONE of these in the backyard.

TODAY I was supposed to be picking maggots out of sheeps’ bums, but devastatingly, the weather is too hot for it to go ahead. Instead I go along to the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum.

Castlemaine’s not just famous for bacon, XXXX beer, treechangers and roo bothering. Robert O’Hara Burke was once a police inspector in the town, and an exhibition in the museum marks 150 years since the bungled Burke and Wills expedition that led to his death. 

I am powerless to resist having a sniff of an 1860s police uniform that’s on display, but there are no interesting smells to report. The summer uniform is particularly jazzy: navy jacket, no shirt, white neckerchief and trousers. Better suited for a punt around Henley, really.

I also find a photo of the Garfield Water Wheel, the remains of which I nearly drove into when on a driving lesson jaunt.

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 129: Peering at crime scenes

7 Jan

HEDY Lamarr’s The Conspirators (“they shared a love too exciting to last”) is showing at the Esquire Theatre on Bourke Street, but there are no clues in this crime scene photo as to what else is going down.

The exhibition at North Melbourne’s Victorian Archives Centre of photos for police and juries, dating between the 1920s and 1930s, is presented with no explanations, and often, no visible corpses. It’s up to the beholder to note the direction of the detectives’ eyes and try to fathom a mystery with few clues.

The Eastern Arcade, for instance, was one of the last locations at which 12-year-old murder victim Alma Tirtschke was spotted in 1921, while an unrecognisable Flinders Street might equally be party to a crime of passion or a gangland shooting. In a close-up of a rumpled bedroom, a dressing-gown hangs on the door; photos are framed messily on a stand; booze clutters the dresser; and each bullet hole on the wall is marked with a red ‘x’.

Eastern Arcade

Keeper? Done this one.

DAY 128: Going to see a psychic

6 Jan

MY MIND’S been awash with flotsam and jetsam this week, hence the tardy upkeep of the Daily Waffle. While I’ve had my tea leaves read before, I’ve never sat down for a psychic reading – main reason being I don’t believe in them – so I decide that now is as good a time as any to at least have a good offload onto someone. Marnie has a kind voice on the phone, so she seems like a top choice.

At Marnie’s psychic boudoir in Bendigo, though, surrounded by flashing angel paraphernalia, I wind up saying little more than “mm” in an increasingly weighty tone. I want to believe, I really do, but the more she talks, filling my silences with a decisive “…yes, that’s what you’re going to do”, “…that’s what that’s about”, “…that’s what’s going to happen”, in a tic-like fashion, the more I keep loudly thinking, “Crook!”

Naturally, I then have a guilty fear that she’s heard me – kind of like when you boldly claim not to believe in God as a kid, and then mutter a little “I didn’t really mean it,” while tapping out an almost imperceptive cross upon your sternum.

This in turn makes it hard for me to control my face from laughing, so that I’m seemingly doing a samba of emotion to every point she makes.

Stoically, Marnie peruses the angel oracle cards. Every time I pick one, she punctuates the moment with a throaty, knowing chuckle.

Things I learned:

* “Your hair is going to get longer.”

* “You’re good with words.” (NB: Marnie did ask me my profession before we started, and before she pressed record. This is where the chorus of “crook” started up.)

* “I’m being told ‘France’ quite strongly. You’re going to move to France…” (I am an English, so obviously this is NEVER going to happen.)

* “…or New Orleans. You’re going to study the history of black music. And there will be costumes. Mm.”

* “You’re a great talker. I can see you in lecture halls. Mm, definitely.” (Please see Day 42 – Shaking at a Detox – for the likelihood of this.)

Keeper? I was focusing on the words “Can I go now?” for three-quarters of the reading… but still there’s that unquenchable desire to be understood; the hope that the next psychic would utter some specific name, phrase or date that implies they have insight into your hopes, fears and experiences, can hear the low, rumbling moan of your psyche, and can validate it all. Maybe I should just work harder on those interpersonal relationships, eh?

DAY 127: Gambling alone

5 Jan

I’M in an ugly mood today, and up for a spot of Charlie Sheen behaviour. I can’t coax anyone into a strip club in daylight hours, so I decide to spunk some money in the pokies at the Cumberland.

By rights it should make me feel better, but instead I become more irritated as I can’t fathom the rules. I’m just randomly punching buttons, and it keeps telling me the game’s over while urging me to play my seven cents. So which is it? Everyone else in here seems to be managing, which is mortifying, given the state of them. I give up and go home to watch Two and a Half Men. Yeah, how do you like that?

Keeper? I get bored after losing just three dollars – not my vice. Next time I’ll try and do something nice for someone to quicken my pulse.

DAY 126: Getting spooked

4 Jan

A graveyard of shitboxes. And the Coach & Horses. And that's Clarkfield, really.

ON THE way home today, I make a pit stop at Clarkfield’s Coach & Horses, an 1857 bluestone pub said to be spooked by myriad ghosts. The only things haunting the public bar today, though, are a couple of old geezers watching Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, under the watchful eye of a musty moose head.

A strange thing happens when I get home and I go to put the kettle on… and it’s already hot. My comrade arms himself with a kitchen knife and does the rounds, but nothing leaps out at us. I get a flashback to the psychic from Day 8 telling me about an 80-year-old lady still squatting the house. I guess that puts paid to any future “me time”.

Keeper? An exorcism might be in order. That’s not a euphemism.

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