Sunday 3 July 2005

Wonders undoubtedly will cease, but not just yet

Because last night, Dorian and I actually went out! to a bar / pub thingy!! with beer and band, and youthful people with intimidating haircuts!!!

The pub thing was the Northcote Social Club and the band was the Midnight Juggernauts.

The good thing about the former is that the back part is no smoking. What a huge huge difference this makes to the enjoyableness of proceedings on the night and to the state of your health when you wake up the next morning. Also, I didn't have to leave my clothes in a reeking pile outside the back door before going to bed. They still smelled, but of beer and sweat only, which is like the finest freshest dewy garden bouquet in comparison to beer+sweat+second-hand smoke.

The good thing about the latter is...I can't think of anything to say except that they were good and I liked them. Eventually, I even danced a little bit, in the time-honoured way that I have always danced at bands:



As we came in I saw a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor against the wall reading a book. The book was hardbacked and it appeared to have a lot of footnotes. This reassured me somewhat though it also made me feel like a tragic since I would never ever have thought it was acceptable to bring a book to the pub. Thankfully nobody had got out their laptop. I looked around enough to completely satisfy myself that we were neither the oldest nor the daggiest-looking people there, a task that took a little while to complete but I felt much better afterward.


The last time we went inside a local beer-drinking establishment to witness a musical performance was about two years previously, so I was delighted to observe how the youth of today are exactly the same, in their band-performance-attendance mode, as were the youth of ten years ago. You can still see the girls bouncing up and down at the front of the stage, the boy having a jolly time wearing his drunk girlfriend's coat, the teenager and his very first outrageous haircut doing eyes-shut writhing movements in a little clearing of his own. I even think I saw a woman wearing an old man's cardigan that i had for a little while in the late 1990s before returning it to the op-shop from whence it came.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there anywhere in public (apart from the library or an aeroplane) you can safely pull out a laptop? I wouldn't take a book into a pub by myself, though. Better off reading it on the footpath.

genevieve said...

I wonder if I'll ever see anyone wearing my old clothes from the op-shop anywhere at all. At all!

Ampersand Duck said...

I once walked down the main street of Orange wearing what I thought was a really cool old tweed jacket (bought the day before from the local op shop), only to have a lady behind me say 'see, it looked awful on you too' to her husband in a falsely low voice.

Scrivener said...

Hey congratulations on getting out. Any plans to try again before another two years passes?

harry said...

The rules with regards to smoking changed in NSW on July 1.
Now, only one area/room of a pub can be Smoking.

And guess where that is? The site of most of their profits: the pokie dens.

lucy tartan said...

Classique story Ampersand!

Genevieve, the other-people-wearing-my-opshop-donations thing has happened more than once to me, though I don't think it counts really if it's in a small country town. The strangest series of events along those lines was as follows:

1. circa 1991: I make illfitting and peculiar winter coat from ancient 1960s orange and red checked wool purchased from Job Warehouse in Bourke Street

2. 1993. Our flat burgled. Among other stuff, robber took all the coats hanging in hall cupboard, leaving in exchange a fake leather bomber jacket with TOP GUN written on the back.

3. to a man, Fitzroy Street pawnbrokers refuse to give me even $5 for said awful jacket, which ends up in bin.

4. Maybe 1996: Saturday morning, Victoria Markets: I see woman wearing badly made orange & red etc coat. Follow her for a little while before losing interest completely. Eat bratwurst.

lucy tartan said...

David, I have a fairly long list of wild hedonisms I plan on indulging in when the you-know-what is you-know-whatted. Picture me playing Tomb Raider in bed until 2pm, eating nothing but chiffon cake and chilli-salt squid and tim tams, chain-reading one Agatha Christie novel after another, picking out the soft centres then throwing away the rest of the box of chocolates, being massaged and pedicured and facialled and seaweed masked by a tiny angry Asian woman, and going out drinking every night for at least a month.

Scrivener said...

I'm so proud of you, Laura, for developing those fantasies. I get about as far as going out to eat at a really nice restaurant after my defense but that's about it.

R.H. said...

I'll go on the boooze with you, but that's all. Fix the rest yourself.

BwcaBrownie said...

Laura there were other bloggers at the NSC that night - the SOLIPSISTS posted about it. no I don't have their link as I am a proud member of the ShittyBloggers.
Back in 1965 I wanted to have a furry bag to I went to the Job of course (trained by my Nana who handled that man by returning his every serve). He produced the skin of a golden cocker spaniel I swear, I protested the price he concocted after appraising my (no-indication) appearance, and he said Ok get it at Georges, go on get out go down to Georges see what they want!. He was right of course and I made that spaniel bag. (wish I still had it).