Friday night at a hotel bar

It’s a writer’s paradise for characters

…

I’m not a night person and even less so a pub person, except perhaps for a Sunday lunch, for what is usually an incomparable steak.

But tonight is different.

We’re meeting people who have come up from Melbourne for a wedding, people we haven’t seen for a long time.

I’m not a conversationalist, so I leave them to it, and go on a character hunt.

And the pickings are rich.

My first victim, If she could be called that, is the one I call the lady in the red dress.

She’s on the other side of 40, with a sort of earthy attractiveness about her. The first thing to notice, for her age, the dress is too short. Maybe that’s the fashion and I’m just an old fogey, but it does say something.

She’s definitely single, or perhaps a player, certainly a flirt. She holds the stage, and talks with her hands, and those around her are captivated.

The untidy hair loosely collected in a hair tie tells me she carries a sort of messy but not messy look, and I wonder at the state of her residence. It’s a leap I know, but small signs indicate bigger things.

I’ve counted two glasses of beer in an hour and a half, so she is sensible, aware of her surroundings, and of the three men she has spent her time with, it’s hard to pick a winner. It’s not hard to captivate a loser.

Next comes the party girls three 20 somethings dressed to be noticed, and overly animated and screams look at us.

Oops, they just parked themselves nearby with the very expensive and exotic-looking matching cocktails. There’s the obligatory selfie together, and then a casual look around to see what’s on offer.

I don’t think there’s a lot, but my standards and their standards are most likely miles apart.

Hang on, news flash, they’re a part of another group nearby, several older office workers who could be the so-called chaperones, or just having a quiet drink before having to go home to any of, a family, a car, an empty flat, or blessed relief the week is finally over.

Next door to us is a family group, the kids are teens, and I’m wondering if the boys are boyfriends. The mother is an older, very attractive version of the daughter.

Perhaps it’s an experience for the girls because I don’t see a man who could act as a husband unless it’s the second time around with a younger version.

Why not. Men do it, why can’t women. But out on the town with your teenage children?

The bar’s entertainment … a single guy playing the guitar, along with backing music that makes him sound better, but people seem to agree that it’s good but not brilliant.

He’s singing covers, which may have made him just so so, perhaps if he sang his own material it might take him to the next level.

But, who cares, no one seems to be listening, the noise level of what seems like a thousand concurrent conversations drowning out any appreciation.

Of course, it’s headache-inducing because he has the volume so high, just to get over the ambient noise, and in doing so, it takes away the intrinsic musicality of it all, and it’s just more noise to contend with.

I suppose it’s better than canned music.

OK, news flash, the red dress had moved down the table and settled on a prospect, about 15 years younger. Her animation has intensified, and yes, there’s the casual brushing against him, like a cat marking its territory.

The night is young, and it’s looking good. I’m not going to pretend I have given a passing thought to spending a few minutes with her, for character creation purposes only.

And yes, we now have a sing-along. At half-past eight, it’s a bit early for the crowd to be too exuberant.

A squeal shatters the, well, not silence, and is one of the groups pretending like someone had dripped ice down the back of a dress that has no back, the next phase of attention-getting.

And, attention directed their way, they do a little dance, skol the drinks, and with all eyes on them, head to the bar for round two, or is that three. Several others join them, but they don’t need to do the dance. The lack of clothes more than makes up for the squeals.

If these are the modern mating rituals a lot has changed in the last 50 years. Or perhaps not, I’m just too old to remember.

In a word: Over

It’s over! What is? Well, almost anything.

A relationship, a bad day, a friendship, a long, monotonous lecture, and dinner.

It’s basically the light at the end of the tunnel, when it’s not the 6:32 express from Clapton, entering the other end of that same tunnel.

You could go over the top, which means, in one sense, over and above the expected, or way beyond the expected but not in a good way.

You could go over the waterfall in a leaky boat. Not advisable, but sometimes a possibility, if someone fails to tell you at the end of the rapids there is a waterfall. Just make sure it’s not the same as Niagara falls.

Still, someone has gone over Niagara in a barrel.

Then we could say that my lodging is over the garage, which simply means someone built it on top of the garage.

Branches of trees quite ofter grow over the roofs of houses, until a severe storm brings them down and suddenly they are in your house, no longer over it.

You can have editorial control over a newspaper

In a fight, the combatants are equally trying to shout over the top of each other

And sometimes, when trying to paint a different picture to what is real, you could say the temperature is sometimes over 40 degrees centigrade when you know for a fact it is usually 56 degrees centigrade. No need for the literal truth here or no one will come.

Then you could say I came over land, assuming that you took a car, or walked when in actual fact you came by plane. And yes, the whole flight was, truthfully, over land.

I don’t accept my lot in fife, nor do I want a small lot on which to build my mansion!

But the oddest use of the word over is when we describe, in cricket, the delivery of 6 balls.

I’ve listened to cricket commentary, and aside from trying to pronounce the names of the players, if you were unfamiliar with the game, being told this ball was outside leg stump, one of several deliveries, the last of which was the end of the over. If the delivery hit the stumps, it is then a wicket, and the batsman is out.

Wow!

In a word: Light

Yes, I see the lighthouse, what’s it doing all the way out there? The thing is, these places are sometimes so remote, I start thinking I should rent one for 6 months and then, without any distractions, I’ll get the blasted book finished.

Until there’s a shipwreck, of course!

Light is of course light, duh. Turn on the switch and let there be light.

Hang on, didn’t someone else say that, millennia ago? Someone famous? It’s on the tip of my tongue.

No! It’s not cyanide…

So, whilst we need it to see everything, it has another meaning…

My, that’s a light load your carrying today, which means not very heavy.

Or, that’s a light-coloured jumper, which means pale.

Oh, and did you light the fire?

And, after you light the fire, do you light out to a safe haven in light traffic because really it was arson, and you got a light sentence the last time enabling you to do it again.

If you are trying to rob someone, then it was a kilo light.

And after a long hard struggle, did you light upon the correct answer?

This is not to be confused with another similar word, lite.

It seems this is only used for describing low-calorie drinks and food, such as lite beer, which seems to me to be a lazy way of not using light

Still, there’s not much other use of the word except as a suffix -lite, but then you’d have to mention -lyte as well.

The message here – just use the damn word light and be done with it.

Children are all the same

They just live in different houses

…

It’s quite remarkable to discover that your children are not unique.

For years I thought that we had spawned monsters that had quite likely come from another planet because the other children in the family seemed so different.

I didn’t realise that the parents had issued death threats if they so much as looked sideways while out.

It was where I suddenly realised that parents of children if taken at their word, could be mass murderers, or at the very best, the worst kind of bullies.

The threats of violence that they used, in any other circumstances would elicit a rather lengthy jail sentence.

I was guilty of it myself, and such threats had come to roll off the tongue so easily that you didn’t really know you were doing it.

If you don’t do this, I’ll kill you. There’s no thought to the significance of this statement, or the consequences if you were to actually do it.

No wonder the children just look at you like you’re deranged.

Of course, there are fewer murderous ways of dealing with the problem, but the sad fact is they have probably driven you into a blind rage and just past into that zone where you really have no idea what you’re saying.

Been there too.

But the revelation that all the other parents are the same, that you see them threatening their children with death or worse.

Then, after they’ve grown up and moved on as all children do, they return on odd occasions for Sunday lunch and there you begin to learn the stuff they did when younger that you never knew about

It’s seeming a rite of passage for all children, and it’s odd to hear others discussing it, especially when you hear someone else referring to their children the same as you do.

Did they come from the same planet too?

That’s when a friend told me the truth of the matter. All children are the same, they just live in different houses.

Ain’t that the truth!

Books, books, and more books

If there is one thing I cannot resist is walking into a book store wherever it might be.

It usually elicits a groan from everyone I’m with because for them, watching grass grow is a more fascinating exercise.

But…

The best bookshops are the pop-up ones that appear in various shopping centres where there are empty spaces, and these have a wide variety of books for just $7 each.

And there are lots of bargains…

As you can see, I have been on a few bargain hunts lately and like any writer’s room, tucked away with the boxes of drinks, gardening equipment and everything else that just doesn’t fit in the house, are the piles of books awaiting being put into the shelves

As you can see, the shelves are almost full so it’s going to be an uphill battle to find spaces for them.

By the way, there are eight such book cases on the surrounding walls, as well as a new one, recently discarded from the lounge room, to house the reference books

Along with a few stuffed bears.

The job of putting books on shelves falls to the grandchildren, whom I am trying to convince that when they get older, they should too embrace the idea of having a reading room, which my writing room will also be when I eventually get to throw out the accumulation of years of discarded homewares.

Perhaps one day next year…