cactus

On Sunday night I saw the best band I will ever see playing live. Pixies returned to Melbourne, and although I missed seeing them play the Northcote Social Club in 2005 (despite delivering to a customer at that very venue at the time, in my former life as Purveyor Of Healthy Lunches), this time I was lucky enough to secure a ticket, thanks to my virtual contact with one Peta Pledger.

It had been another exhausting weekend with the family, leaving me with a gaping deficit in personal time, time to write, to reflect and compose. As I washed the dishes I was lamenting my changed work roster; when I booked the ticket, my day off was Monday, but now I was in training for my new role, I had to return to work the next day, and that meant that I was planning to stay up all night if necessary; to write about my experience, and just to claim some of that time that was otherwise so hard to find over any given weekend as a Dad.

I wore the T shirt I had worn earlier in the day for gardening, with my jeans and my $11.95 imitation Crocs sandals from Rivers. I thought only about comfort, and from what I had seen of Pixies from their live DVDs, they didn’t dress fancy themselves. As I slid on my sandals, I imagined hanging with the band backstage after the show, and after I left, Joey Santiago asking someone if they knew who the guy in the Crocs was.

With the iPhone plugged into the car stereo, Hüsker Dü’s Crystal shuffled on, and I selected a Genius playlist to shuffle after it. It revealed a similarity and heritage I hadn’t noticed before, and my mood was tuned for the show:

Hüsker Dü: Crystal
The Replacements: Run It
Paul Westerberg: High Time
Mission Of Burma: Academy Fight Song
Sebadoh: Careful
Archers Of Loaf: Web In Front
Hüsker Dü: Eiffel Tower High
The Jesus & Mary Chain: You Trip Me Up

As I approached Festival Hall to this soundtrack, I passed the gathering crowd on the street – indie chicks in denim skirts and sneakers (unattainable as they will remain), and packs of dudes in black T shirts; their bottles and laughter leaving me nervous, chewing my thumb nail as I drove – right past the venue, and only narrowly avoided heading off on CityLink or Footscray Rd.

I don’t remember when I was last here – it could have been no later than 1996, but possibly even earlier. I guess I saw Archers Of Loaf or Pavement, maybe with Jason from Dream on Queensberry St.

I find a place to park a couple of blocks away, near the Embassy taxi diner and as I head for the venue I hope I can find the car afterward. I pass a grim-looking fella wearing a “Bring Back The Early 90’s” T shirt, and I smile on the inside. Them was the daze, bruvva.

I’m frisked on entry, and as I consider investing in a T shirt (am I not too old? asks the logical side; I am definitely a fan, and I have never yet had a Pixies shirt, the fanboy argues), I hear a girl comment that they still have just that one T shirt design (the Doolittle cover, not surprising given this is the anniversary tour).

Then I’m inside the hall, and it’s already packed. I make my way over to stage right, and although I wish I was six inches taller, my view is OK.

I’m pleased to note that overall the crowd is made up of “normal” looking people, people my age. But the yoof is here as well, in force. And the music means as much to them as it did to me and still does now.

I’m behind a dude with enviable quiff, ear plugs and horn rim glasses, arms crossed, taking it in, nodding like me.

Manta Ray gets the floor shaking, and near me there’s a girl skipping like she’s doing the Riverdance – and I see guys who look like the kind of thugs Kurt Cobain would have despised becoming his fans – but maybe it’s just my perception. Two of them are grooving, swaying romantically to the melody of Here Comes Your Man.

The Riverdancer is a female me: she is my abandoned self, uninhibited, long ginger hair flowing over her face, as she waves her arms in the air and falls back against her man.

The chorus to Tame has me shaking like a man in a straitjacket; and I’m not alone. With floor toms and bass drum pounding, David Lovering rides his kit like no other drummer I know, evoking the image of a stagecoach driver with a runaway cargo, even more riveting because he looks like some kind of geeky science teacher. There are more air drummers than air guitarists – and that’s testament to David Lovering’s presence, his importance in this band.

Dead is awesome too and the floor of the venue is really shaking. Crackity Jones is manic, with the Big Guy out front going crazy and the rhythm section almost too fast for itself.

There’s a tall chick in black doing arty dancing – “no don’t look at me / oh please look at me,” her look suggests. Meanwhile, The Riverdancer is all dramatising the lyrics of Hey – “whores in my head / whores in my bed”, she pleads, with arms in the air.

Joey Santiago, for his musical prowess, draws no attention to himself – other than when he takes off his baseball cap to wipe his shaved head, and during his solo for Into The White (the band’s first encore), when he’s silhouetted against a strobe-lit wall of dry ice. His musical style is minimalist, he sketches impressions, but they are lasting ones.

On the balcony, a guy with close-cropped grey hair and a cowboy shirt who looks like he could be someone’s Dad calls to the stage like he’s a stockbroker giving orders to buy buy buy to Gouge Away.

The signature guitar intro to Planet Of Sound kicks off the band’s second encore. The house lights come on, and I’m rocking as hard as I have yet, smiling too. This is cerebral rock, the crowd’s just noddin’, diggin’ it on the inside, man. Rockin’ out.

Then the band is fiddling around, searching for a guitar tuning – and the intricacies are lost on me since I don’t play any musical instrument, but I wonder how this workmanlike band can be foiled at this stage, and a tiny part of me cynically wonders whether this is staged. Then Velouria comes on, and crowd is on its feet as one, with a kind of beatific glow. There’s a guy behind me, with a black beard, and he’s just smiling with this blissed-out transcendental look that I feel as well, and for a moment we share something unspoken. I had hoped they would play this song.

I fit here. I would have hung around to get my hands on a copy of the live CD of the show, but for the necessity to sleep before getting back to my very non-rock n’ roll job in the morning. You can read about why it was a good thing I didn’t buy that CD here.

The Discreet Charm Of The Bohemian (part one)

I feel I must apologise for diverting from this blog’s supposed focus on Melbourne in all its visual glory and decay. In truth, this site was conceived as a way for me to express myself in another way than the raw cathartic form I had previously explored. I never intended to give away that style of writing – call it navel-gazing, self-absorbed, the thoughts and frustrations of an ordinary indebted Dad trying to make a better future; whatever you like. I’ll admit, it’s primarily for my benefit – but I hope to connect with you in some way in the process of doing it all the same. Which brings us to this post:

Valentine’s Day has passed for another year. Like many a male, I was never really a fan – favouring instead impromptu gestures of my affection, in keeping with my life philosophy of “first thought, best thought”. That all changed after my first Valentine’s Day with the woman who was to become Mrs H, when she arrived at my one bedroom flat in Prahran East with a big bunch of helium balloons, bottle of Amaretto and a card. Nothing was forthcoming from me in return. My excuse being something along the lines of my independent-minded non-sponsorship of the commercialisation of romance. Never again would I make that mistake. And this, our fifteenth Valentine’s Day together, was an especially enjoyable one for us. Seems things are turning for the better.

We had spent a good day together as family, and in the evening our neighbour came around to mind the girls, so Mrs H and I could make a rare outing as a couple again. We had decided to watch Up In The Air, and as we set off toward Carlton’s Cinema Nova, my co-pilot suddenly questioned our destination. She had thought we were going to Hoyts Norflands. So I pulled over a block from our house and consulted iPhone in vain for session times at that institution. Then, inspiration struck: I checked Palace Westgarth, and they had a 7PM session. Perfect.

We parked in Pearl St, parallel to High St, where I had to make a detour on the way to the cinema for a photo session motivated by the spectacle of a dumped Ford Festiva. Parking there on a Sunday summer’s afternoon took me straight back close enough to twenty years ago, when I first saw one of my favourite-ever films, Hal Hartley’s The Unbelievable Truth at the cinema formerly known as the Valhalla.

That fond memory made me think of other films I had enjoyed in the antiquated great hall of a cinema over the decades before its 2006 restoration and reincarnation as a Palace cinema… (I used to work with one of the daughters of the family which I believe still owns the building). Need I add that I never went there for the Rocky Horror Picture Show or Blues Brothers revivals (too popular for me, too cultish for elitist free-thinking serious young me…)

Quietly I found myself dreaming of a simpler time – the tastes of my formative adult years, simple joy over discovering the smell of coriander, watching Les Blank’s 1980 documentary Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, basmati rice, wholefoods, henna hair dye, first exposure to feminism, existentialism, Jungian psychology, Naomi Wolf, indie pop (Clouds, Lemonheads, Falling Joys and Club Hoy, Club Hoy, Club Hoy), Glebe Point Road, drinking coffee black because I could, and more importantly, hope, self-belief, and determination to live a life without compromise.

As we bought our tickets and settled on a combo deal of two glasses of sparkling white and a large popcorn (even though I once worked with a former Village Cinemas manager who had begged me to never buy popcorn at the movies, on account of its grossly inflated margin) – well, the combo deal did save us three dollars – I quietly rubbed my foot on Mrs H’s calf as I gazed at the brunette with Chan Marshall bangs and a black T shirt serving us.

At a table for two we toasted our Valentine’s Day with plastic flutes, and Mrs H confirmed that she could see the attendant was my type, “She looks like she doesn’t want to be here, like she hates her life,” she smiled, and I laughed. On Friday night one of the parents from Little Miss H’s prep group had organised a family dinner at the Croc (Croxton Park Hotel) – most definitely not the kind of venue we’d normally choose to set foot in – and we’d had a good time there all the same. I had taken a photo of Mrs H, and I suggested she could use this photo for her profile picture on eHarmony.com.au. I suggested she could brand herself as a “newly single mum.”

“Newly bereaved mum,” she countered (and I hope she didn’t mean bereft)…

A friend of mine once observed that our exchanges are much like dialogue from a Hal Hartley film, and I took that as a tremendous compliment.

Time came for us to wind up our banter and we ascended to the first floor 150 seat cinema (site of the former balcony, where I had nodded off to narcoleptic late lamented River Phoenix in Private Idaho one lonely night in my misspent early days in Melbourne). No more creaky staircase up – I guess some would say the reincarnation of the Westgarth is uncalled-for; for me at least it’s not a Nando’s (there’s one of them newly opened over the road, regrettably).

So what of the film? Five stars for me. I’m very much one of the believers in George Clooney as the kind of star or actor who women want to watch and men want to be. I laugh just watching his expressions – and like I did when Mrs H and I watched Clooney teamed with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty, I laughed so hard that I got told off.

This film’s story arc – of corporate downsizing specialist Ryan Bingham (Clooney), who finds himself thrust headlong into just the kind of life-changing great unknown he so masterfully positions his subjects – brings to mind the modern male mind’s overriding desire to control, to imprint, and leave behind something of permanence (other than children), to live without compromise, and to be alone, but to have access to a partner of some kind, for support at times of need. Like Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro)’s motto in Michael Mann’s Heat, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner,” Ryan Bingham has his backpack, which he imagines stuffed with all the things we collect in life – starting with all the little material things, then the car, the home – then, heaviest of all, the people we trust with our “most intimate secrets…” He goes on to state that relationships are “the heaviest components” in our life – “all those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises.”

It’s true there have been many heavy experiences in the backpack I carry – and I have shared that burden with Mrs H by rights or not over the years. But the backpack is getting lighter.

Thanks for being here with me. I hope you enjoy the next instalment…

pin cushion

I wondered if I had jinxed the day by proudly boasting about the latest change manifested at work that morning. I left work feeling gutted. My team leader had announced to us that as of next week we would be reporting to another manager, and apart from this bringing a premature end to the working relationship I had developed with her already, and aside from the fact that she was my third manager in just over six months, my main concern was the impact this would have on my planned career progression. I was only starting to believe I could make a step forward in a workplace for the first time in my life, and this felt like a kick in the gut.

The Gigolo Aunts’ track Pin Cushion shuffled on as my homebound tram drew out of the CBD through East Melbourne to Brunswick St, and the afternoon sunshine through the window was a perfect match for that song’s shimmering guitar lines. The song took me back to 1994, sitting in my op shop armchair by the window of my flat in Prahran. And that in turn represented a period in my life when I had a sense of freedom, opportunity and time ahead of me. I realised the memory was a tad rose-tinted – there were certainly elements of my life which were lacking at that point – but there was also an undeniable truth to it at the same time.

I was distracted from my self-absorption by a grumpy-looking scenester stepping on in platform heels. She was someone I should have known by name, I knew she had a reputation in the arts scene, maybe she was on the radio. Or maybe she was in fact a rock star of some repute. I had probably seen her on TV, on a music quiz show – and part of me cursed my faulty memory for not being able to put a name to her face. As she gazed dreamily into the middle distance, it looked as if she was imagining a camera on her. The paranoid narcissist in me imagined she was making mental note of the portly middle-aged square pecking on his iPhone across from her on the tram, and I decided she was a Gemini.

I took a mental inventory of my fellow passengers: the guy with a twelve inch Dixon Records bag and empty plant pot under his arm; down the back, a metrosexual lad camp as a row of army tents in Abe Lincoln beard, gold necklace and big bangles too, wearing a low cut tunic, leggings and Doc Martens, chatting enthusiastically with his female companion. Her body language openly positioned herself to him, but maybe I was wrong – does something as subtle as body language still have currency to today’s yoof?

I picked up Littlest Miss H from day care, and had the privilege of walking home with her alone together for the first time. Big sister had spent the day with Mum at home, in preparation for her first day at prep today. The Littlest One and I held hands and she chatted about her day freely, so different to her bigger sister’s temperamental reserve.

My evening consisted of the ritual of getting the girls to bed; brushing teeth, reading stories, then re-negotiating bedtime after they got out of bed for more food – Weet-Bix and Vegemite toast respectively. It was after eight o’clock, half an hour after their regular bed time, and Little Miss H was dancing around giddily, singing LL Cool J’s Mama Said Knock You Out. I popped two Mersyndol and passed out as soon as we finally got them back into bed for good.

I woke around 1:30AM, and knew there was a cure for my insomnia: I had to write it out. I came to my desk and realised I hadn’t paid our car insurance – it had been due at midnight, and I had made a note to pay it, but after my day and evening, it had slipped my mind. I called and was relieved to be answered right away by a live operator – “we’re obliged to give you three weeks to pay,” she told me.

I listened to her fingers clicking on her keyboard in the quiet space of her office, and I could imagine the space; the black of night outside the windows, the stark white neon-lit interior. Maybe just a handful of operators there to answer the low number of overnight calls. I had worked there once, for a day or two, as a temp six years ago, when I returned from a misguided and costly exercise in relocation to my home of South Africa. That quiet, that solitude of night shift work – it was what I had sought (and found) when I worked as a hotel night manager, in my job before my current one. I wasn’t about to get misty-eyed over that time, but one thing it had given me was the chance to write. I was glad I had been able to make that time mine again tonight. Thanks for being here.

shadows and light – Michael Mann’s “Heat”

Yesterday I had the chance to sit down and watch Michael Mann’s Heat again, uninterrupted. It has been just over two weeks since I first tried to articulate some of this film’s impact on me, and even though I know I won’t get it all out in the limited time available to me now, I’m going to give it a shot.

Here’s what I noted:

It’s engrossing – apart from the way it’s photographed, edited, scored, directed and designed. (I won’t even get into cinematographer Dante Spinotti’s widescreen framing and his use of light and shadow that inspired the title of this post at this point). Apart from the locations and the casting coups… apart from all of that, it’s epic on a human scale. It’s beyond good and bad – both protagonists are flawed humans. It’s existential drama, dressed up as a modern day Western or cops n’ robbers story.

It’s a study of machismo.

Men are men – they have authority, they give orders, they tell women what to do. These men can pull wiring diagrams to banks from the ether (“this stuff is just out there”, Kelso (Tom Noonan) tells Neil), and not only that, they can understand the diagrams, and effectively disable them. (Yours truly, on the other hand, had to take the car to the dealer yesterday – twice – to reset the radio security code, after the battery failed and resulted in a callout and costly membership enrolment to roadside support and the purchase of an expensive new battery on the weekend. The first visit to the dealership resulted in a call back from the service department with the code – once they had emailed an offsite Ford advisor – and the second visit came about because I couldn’t work out how to enter said code).

Real men are not set back by flat batteries and radio pin codes.

Even as the film glorifies masculinity and “overflows with testosterone” (no point attributing that quote to any one writer, it’s so frequently stated in reviews), its male characters lead fractured lives, unable to reconcile the dual demands and responsibilities of work and family. They have succumbed to the lure of mastering work (in itself no easily-done thing, as I know from first-hand experience), at the cost of failed interpersonal relationships. Although both criminal mastermind Neil McCauley (De Niro) and cop Vincent Hanna (Pacino) have committed fully to one kind of discipline – either side of justice – neither of them has mastered the discipline of relationships with the women in their lives.

“That’s the discipline, to be able to walk out,” McCauley tells Hanna in their one scene together in the diner. “All I am is all I’m going after,” Hanna admits to his wife, and I understand this motivation. Later he tells her, “I gotta hold on to my angst, it keeps me sharp, on the edge,” and a cynical part of me smiles. At another point he literally cannot defend himself – he is rendered speechless, without words.

Hanna’s wife accuses him of not “being present, sharing”; his relationship with his step-daughter Lauren (Natalie Portman) is troubled, and the consequences of her lonely cry for attention scare the bejesus out of me as a parent, I’ll tell you that.

In the film’s final scenes, Neil is let down by his shadow, and the Jungian-inspired writer in me thought this was worth noting. I won’t elaborate on an exploration of the shadow metaphor in Hanna and McCauley’s relationship at this point.

In the extra DVD with the film, Mann talks about his film being about “the laws of cause and effect, and what will befall you is a function of how you think about the life you’re in. There’s no such thing as fate.” The emphasis is mine, because it resonates with my personal belief that perception equals reality.

Mann talks about taking a “cosmic microscope” to understand cause and effect, and when Pacino talks about authenticity, I feel a sense of ownership, as if he’s using my name. That is all I can strive to be: authentically me. A banker, a Dad, a husband, a would-be writer, a dreamer etcetera. All of these things combined define me.

good Saturday

Ever since I stopped seven day shift work and returned to a Monday to Friday working week, Saturdays have tended to be the most frustrating day of the week for me; I have been torn between the impulse to relax, unwind, chill, do nothing, and the desire to contemplate, and create (through writing, photography or video). Let alone the necessity to attend to domestic maintenance chores. My spouse has accused me of complaining, and she has a valid point of view, I can’t argue that. I can well imagine how frustrating it must be to be married to me, because I can’t escape myself either.

a small victory

Yesterday morning I made the decision to leave the computer turned off. So my day started with me sitting on the couch, cuddling and playing with my three year old (Littlest Miss H), my most loyal buddy. And I was still there when her sister, who is always the last in our house to wake, joined us.

I made breakfast for the girls, and sat with them while they ate. Then I vacuumed the house and cleaned the bathroom too. These are small victories, to be sure, and if you’re new to this blog, you may wonder why I celebrate them so. But for me they are very significant, given my not so distant history.

Later in the morning we took the girls to a birthday party together, and as Mrs H and I drove off for a couple of hours alone together shopping, I spied a photo op, and backed up the car, excused myself and snapped a couple of images on the iPhone. Compromise made, no complaints.

I made it through the afternoon without turning the computer on, and even had a catnap on the couch, while the girls played their game of “Sharon and Karen”. Sure, I’ll admit there was a little complaining, when I lamented my lack of opportunity for the clarity of mind to read my library book, and/or draft that imminent mini-essay about Michael Mann’s Heat. But I made it through the afternoon en famille.

In the evening, Mrs H and I had some time alone again, when our neighbour came to mind the girls, and we headed down to Lygon St for dinner. When we found Papa Gino’s had a line thirty or so people strong out the door, we explored other options, and ended up at Tiamo 2, where we found ourselves a space alone at the rooftop terrace.

We enjoyed our meal and the chance to talk about our goals together for the year – my aims at work, and my home maintenance tasks of repainting our picket fence, finally fitting a front deck, and finishing a feature wall in the backyard. Small goals, future small victories, but steps forward. And just as I reflect on my inner journey onward and upward, for once Mrs H shared an optimism, which I celebrated. The past was not and is not about to repeat itself. She could remember how I was this time last year – and she recounted the specifics of a scene which I cannot even recall, but do not doubt its veracity. (There’s that word again. I am a fan of it, along with authenticity. What, you noticed?)

I was taking notes on the iPhone, sitting in an armchair at Borders after dinner, while Mrs H browsed, and amid all the colour and the words and the books, books, books, even though I found the “writing for publication” section, and leafed through a couple of books, imagining one of them might help me pursue my dream, or direct me closer to publication, I resisted. And it’s not just because I have forced myself to stop any impulse buying (oh, how many times have I justified book purchases with claims that this book would be the one, the one key to unlock the mystery of my long-simmering story untold – too many times), when suddenly –

– BLACK OUT –

“Ohhh,” a mature age lady says, as if it’s a personal affront. No announcement comes on – “I can’t make a page”, I hear on a walkie talkie as employees move about in the dark – and it’s very quiet. There’s no panic.

I complete my thought: I know all I need is time and discipline. The rest I possess. I don’t mean that I can’t learn from reading more, but I know I possess enough to make a stab of it, to get a first draft out. I just need to make the time.

When the power hadn’t returned after twenty minutes or so, we left the store and passed the dozens of cinemagoers who had been forced out of their viewing at Cinema Nova. Around the corner, Brunetti’s had not lost power, and we found our favourite seats, at the window. And over a long macchiato and shared vanilla panzerotti, my good Saturday drew to an end.

Real Men

Real men don’t take sick days with head colds.

It’s 2.20am. You are awake, and in the dark, looking at your watch on the bedside table without your glasses on, you thought it was 3.20. Your throat was still burning, but at least your head wasn’t aching. You considered your options for a moment, then decided it was providence speaking, inspiration had arrived, and for that you were to be thankful. The wee wee hours were yours, yours for peace of mind, and uninterrupted clarity you could not harness any other time during your waking hours.

You tiptoed through the house toward the kitchen, to fix a glass of black magic, hearing Ryan Adams’ sweet voice singing Sweet Lil Gal in your head. And even after you realised the time was different to your initial reading, you reasoned you could still have a catnap before preparing for work, if necessary. Once your main priority, your task was completed. (Even though you knew you wouldn’t do it). Now, you had to write. You had the opportunity, this was your time. Seize it!

Yesterday morning you woke with a pounding head, still feeling the effects of the head cold or flu you picked up last week, after you were bayside with the family. It was hard to believe that was little more than a week ago. That head cold kicked into gear last Thursday, on New Year’s Eve, when you lost your voice at work, and you were sent home early. Being speechless, without speech, made you redundant in the environment of a contact centre. The metaphor was not lost on you.

On the evening of January 1, you channel surfed to ABC2’s The Re-Inventors, which documented the reconstruction of Ned Kelly’s armour from period materials to see how it stood up to protection against weapons of Kelly’s day as well as modern ballistics. Well, all that gunplay and veracity revved you up for one thing only, and that was a repeat study of Michael Mann’s urban thriller masterpiece film, Heat. And that exercise led to a kind of obsessive inspiration which necessitated updating your Amazon wishlist, as well as making a trip to the local library, and lasted all through the weekend until now, when you have finally made the time available to put some of it together into words. As it is, this piece – overwrought and overwritten thought it may be – is only the proverbial tip of things. You still plan to fully investigate your thoughts and reaction to the movie in detail in a future post.

But where did all this leave you yesterday?

Still at the coal face, that’s where. If not actually kicking shit as such, you were still a generalist, not a specialist. Unlike, say, Heat’s protagonists, or even Michael Mann himself, you were not an authorised executive of things of much consequence at work. The responsibilities of your role were limited.

You took two Mersyndol to start the day, and meditated on this dully, as you ran the water at the sink to wash the dishes from the night before, and your angst was familiar as ever before. You truly had not moved that far from who you were; you could not escape who you were.

Today you were sick, and as you stood at the sink you heard two voices in your head, an internal dialogue, not unlike Built To Spill’s duelling guitarists, though somewhat less pleasant, to your ear at least. One of them argued that you were sick, you should not go to work today. And if you were a believer, you would have then blasphemed. You could even imagine the carefree feeling you had experienced not so very long ago, when you pulled the pin at work, shortly after arrival, and returned home to the quiet, against the inbound flow of commuters. On the tram home that morning, you had even shared a live chat with one of your very few offline Facebook friends, living the other side of the world. Then you had opened the door to the house all quiet – just like now – Mrs H at work, and the girls at daycare. You had retreated to the bedroom and the comfort of your pillow in the dark.

The other voice, speaking from a higher place like a courtside umpire, cautioned that this was the folly of a weakling, and had you not committed to be something more, now that you were in a place where you could honestly make something of a career at last? Besides, your sick leave would be noted, studied for any trend with previous sick leave, and required a medical certificate to boot. There was nothing so simple as a quick call to advise you would not be in today. Even though your responsibilities at work may have been limited, you had duties all the same. You couldn’t easily back out.

You were sweating like a pig at the sink. Even though pigs don’t sweat you were feeling like an oily oinker still. You opened the kitchen window, the back door and even the front door, to breathe some cool black night air.

Outside, a clapped-out Daihatsu Charade sedan drove slowly down the street, the driver tossing newspapers out the window, which landed with a thwop in the gardens and on the doorsteps of your neighbours, and your head throbbed still.

What kind of example would you be setting as a parent, as a man? Real men don’t take sick days with head colds.

You begrudgingly went through the motions to prepare for work. You didn’t muster the motivation to shave, despite having access to your Gillette Fusion With Five Blade Shaving Technology which you had enthusiastically told your colleagues about only the day before at work. You received a free sample shaver in the mail a few weeks ago. It was unsolicited direct mail, addressed to Mrs H, but since she had no use for it, you took it, and stored it in the vanity cupboard until your stock of shaver blades ran out, and then you opened it. Since it was a freebie, you may as well use it, you reasoned. Well. You are no stranger to shaver nicks, but long ago you switched from electric to wet shaver, and despite the nicks you persist. But this shave was the smoothest you had ever known, and it left you all but unblemished. So much so that you had invested in a pack of replacement blades over the weekend, despite their grossly inflated retail mark-up. It was that good. Direct mail had won another committed albeit jaded consumer over.

You were certainly no Rick Deckard. With the stubble, and your hair bouffy sans wax, plus your glasses, you truly looked like your girls’ favourite name for you, big fat Dad, as you trudged toward the tram stop, with your pen tucked into the neck of the short sleeved white shirt you bought from Fletcher Jones. Fletcher Jones? You think of streetwear as your preferred mode of dress still – Vans sneakers and rock Ts. But Fletcher Jones? You used to think that was a matron’s brand. Sure, they have repositioned themselves in recent years. But you looked like a prototypical insurance assessor all the same. Or an adjuster, perhaps. If only.

Once your work day kicked in, in all its structured glory, you entertained your colleagues with your impressions of Young MC and Shaggy, and renditions of the theme from S’Express and The KLF’s Last Train To Transcentral. Oh, you were the light of the party all right. In fact, one of the younger ones said you were so funny, she wished you were her Dad. But still the headache wouldn’t go away. Was it from too much coffee, or just from not enough good coffee? You considered it over another double strength cup of freeze-dried instant.

One man’s bleating, whining endless self-pitying is another man’s existential angst. It’s all a matter of definitions. Isn’t it? On the upside, Humpday has arrived. And that’s to be celebrated. Enjoy your day! I know mine will be better than yesterday.