White picket fences

Q. How would you be if you threw a street party and no-one came?
A. Meh, fuck knows. You think I'm that needy? Ask my loser neighbours.

A very classy A4 sheet, surrounded by a standard Microsoft Office holly border, arrived in our letterbox on the weekend. (We live in a street with the same name as a poet, though the spelling is slightly different. So let's call our street Tennison St. I've always rather liked Tennyson. My high school's motto even came from one of his poems.) So here we go with the invite (sics included):

"You're invited!"

(I am! Really? Whacko! Someone likes me!)

"What: You are invited to the Tennison St street party for an informal get together, chat, bite to eat, and game of street cricket" (Oh, bloody hell - my neighbours use Oxford commas. I hate those!)

"Where: On Number X's driveway and front lawn

"When: 21st of December, from 6.30pm onwards

"Bring: Some drinks and nibbles to share, a chair and your festive cheer!"

"Oh, Christ", I thought. "Festive fucking cheer? I used all that up decorating the tree on Sunday!"

They did it last year and, living in fear of Christmas laying seige to our door, we went out. This year, I have successfully avoided most aspects of the festive season and had absolutely nowhere to go this evening but the couch. Hurrah for me, yeah?

Nevertheless, I was prepared. The bins went out early, as did Bloke. I came home just before the start of the "street party" and noticed that (since rain was expected - rain? pah!) they had put out a couple of lovely blue tarpaulins to protect the expected revellers, their drinks and their nibbles from the hoped-for Biblical downpour. (Edit: we did actually have rather a lot of rain and a pretty decent thunder storm, but I doubt it was enough to put anything in the reservoirs.)

Naturally, being a crabby, unneighbourly and antisocial harridan, I was determined to ignore it. But I couldn't help it. It was so ominously quiet. When I let Mr Furpants in, I poked my nose around the corner of the house. No adults, four children, standing in the street.

The people at Number X have somewhere in the vicinity of four children. I've never quite worked out exactly how many kids they do have. When we moved in, said kids were remarkably like the ducks in a shooting gallery. I'd be sanding window frames and, distracted by the screaming of ickle durls, would look up. Ickle durls on bikes and roller blades would barrel back and forth through my line of sight, turn around and barrel back again. They were always screaming. Bloke used to refer to them as The Spice Girls, since they always seemed to be scream-singing something incomprehensible and in the hope there were talent scouts living in nearby homes.

So, there seems to be an immensely amusing Tennison St street party going on without me. Or, indeed, without most of the people in Tennison St. About now, I probably should point out exactly how thick the guy at number X is.

His name is John*. For a while, about three of the guys across the road were called John, but then a couple of them moved, leaving Dumb Ass John as Only John.

I'm not sure that Only John has a profession, or even that he works. For all I know, he's Thomas Pynchon in disguise, but I think not. Why? Because I have had three conversationswith Only John and I doubt Thomas Pynchon would have talked to me at all. I'm not Ian McEwan, after all.

Conversation one:
(Soon after Bloke and I move in)
OJ: Hi, I live across the road.
Me: Oh, hi.
OJ: Notice you're renovating.
Me: Er, yeah.
OJ: Got any old scrap metal? I'm building a dog house.
Me: Er, no.
OJ: Oh, OK. Bye.

Conversation two:
OJ: Hi, I live across the road.
Me: Yeah, I remember.
OJ: Notice you're getting your floors sanded.
Me: Er, yeah.
OJ: Can I have the name of the people doing it?
Me: Er, yeah. Here's their card.
OJ: Oh, OK. Bye.

Conversation three:
OJ: Hi! I had a big swarm of bees in my carport about two weeks ago!
Me: Oh, did you now?
OJ: Yeah. And you know what?
Me: Hmm, I think I can guess. What?
OJ: They all flew out of my carport and DOWN YOUR CHIMNEY!
Me: Oh, really?
OJ: Yeah.
Me: Guess that would explain why I just had to get an apiarist in to remove the BEEHIVE FROM MY CHIMNEY, then, yeah?
OJ: Oh, yeah, probably. Bye.

What can I say? Really? Would you want to take a plate of cheese cubes and kabana and a bottle of Fruity Lexia and have a game of street cricket with this guy?

Plus, I'm a sarky harridan with no community spirit, so you wouldn't really have expected anything else of me.

*Names altered to protect ME. Yes, me. Bugger everyone else.

Failure City

Jeez, I've had an arse day. I just don't seem to be able to get a damned thing right.

(1) I'm a news-free zone. I'm doing a bit of news instead of my usual fluff, but news has escaped me. The prospect of a return to the Real Thing excited me for about a day, but then the wheels fell off, as they were bound to. I've called my old contacts, stirred my usual pots, but nada, nyet, fuck all. Even for a half-hearted hack, this is really pathetic. Every idea I've had has crashed and burned or been worthy of nothing more than a five sentence brief. Yes, I'm a failure. Bartender! Double vodka and soda on the rocks, hold the soda, hold the rocks. But bring some crisps, OK? I like crisps.

(2) Trick-or-treaters continue to shun me. I realise it's about four days past Hallowe'en, but the kiddles in my street have finally decided to go trick-or-treating. I suspect this is because their parents are stupid and don't realise you are supposed to knock on doors on 31 October rather than 4 November. But halle-bloody-lujah anyway, eh? I made the effort to buy the chocolate, after all. So, I wandered in from the pub and found four witches, a pantomime horse and a couple of ghosts pootling up and down my street along with a couple of parents (one of whom was wheeling a pusher - was the baby dressed as Beelzebub?) "Yay!" I thought. "I won't have to eat all of the fun-sized Mars Bars myself!" I turned on my front light, put the Mars Bars on the hall table and thought about my doorbell some more, but STILL no-one rang it. I've now been rejected by six-year-olds in manky costumes. Fine, you little shits. I'm having a Mars Bar RIGHT NOW. Do you think it's because they can sense that I don't like children?

(3) I made myself a lazy-arse pizza margherita. "Nuffin' wrong wiv a lazy-arse margheri'a," I 'ear you say (in your fake Cockney accent). Yes, yes, there is. If you drop the fucking thing on the floor, there's a world of misery associated with it. I have no idea how this happened. Toast falls butter-side down. Bread falls peanut butter-side down. This is a well-understood phenomenon - it's just gravity, yeah? Peanut butter is heavier than toast. I'm an Arts graduate, but I can understand that. It happens all the time. How, then, did my pitta-bread-with-tomato-puree-and-oregano-and-grated-cheese-put-under-the-griller-and-toasted-nicely manage to fall PITTA-side down on the kitchen floor? And how the hell did I manage to drop it in the first place? One minute I was unsticking the slightly crusty (and therefore yummy) bits of cheese from the baking tray and the next, hey presto! Floor pizza. Sigh. Somehow it's worse if it looks perfectly normal apart from the fact it's sitting on the floorboards instead of a plate. After all, if it fell cheese-side down, you'd never even contemplate eating it.

And no, I didn't. I'm not that desperate. I've got Mars Bars, remember?

I'm thinkin' about my doorbell

It's Hallowe'en again. Boo yah. Every year, ABC Radio and The Traumatiser join together in banging on about the Americanisation of our culture and overseas traditions becoming a part of Australian life, isn't-it-awful-blah-blah-blah. Naturally, driven by the media frenzy, I expect hoards of children to come trick-or-treating.

So as not to disappoint said midgets, every year I buy individually-wrapped chocolate bars. When I first started preparing for crowds of ankle-biters dressed as ghouls and Spice Girls, I used to put the chocolates in a little bowl by the front door. You know, so I'd be ready. I'd even buy two sorts.

Naturally, the only time swarms of children have beseiged our door is when I have forgotten about Hallowe'en. Like last year. Completely forgot it. We didn't have so much as a Tim Tam in the house, so of course, we had trick-or-treaters.

Of course, they were opportunistic little bastards, but the whole thing was done in such a bloody half-arsed Australian way that if we'd had chocolate, they would have scored the lot. Here's how it played out:

(Ding dong)

Bloke: Uh, yeah?
Three lads: Trick or treat!
Bloke: (sceptical) Where are your costumes?
Lad number one: We've only got this fake arse (turns around, displays plastic buttocks worn over shorts)
Bloke: Hmm, fake arse, eh?
Lad one: (scratching) It's itchy, too. It's pretty hot out.
Bloke: (yelling) Red, there are trick-or-treaters here with a fake arse. Do we have any chocolate?
Me: (interested) A fake arse, you say?
Bloke: Yeah.
Me: Hmm, I'd pay that one. Sadly (and uncharacteristically), we're a chocolate-free zone.
Bloke: (sees random snack-sized box of sultantas on kitchen bench) What about this box of sultanas?
Three lads: Yeah, whatever.

Seems like a hell of a lot of work for a box of sultanas, but that's just me. I'm inherently lazy.

After last year's Fake Arse Incident, I made sure there were mini Mars Bars in the fridge tonight. But no matter how much I thought about my doorbell, no-one rang it.

Guess we'll have to eat the Mars Bars ourselves, then. (Hallowe'en rule of thumb: never buy chocolate you don't like.)