As you may have noticed, I spent a lot of time during my law degree being more fascinated by the language of law than the content. Hence some of my favourite phrases from law. Including the concept of "a cooling off period" and an "opt out" clause.

 

If only those existed in real life situations.

 

Well, here's a little announcement: Standing There Productions is opting out of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year, in so far as writing, producing, directing, designing, auditioning, rehearsing, organising, financing and performing a show of our own goes.

 

We have so many projects we're working on at the moment that one large-scale project involving such an enormous amount of work in the middle of April is actually distracting from our (sometimes painfully) long-term goals.

 

It's a bittersweet feeling: no scurvy, but on the other hand no exciting opening night frenzy of excitement. No 2pm breakfasts and 1am dinners, but on the other hand no sitting in the audience as it fills up. No 70-people-in-a-day auditions that last all day in forty degree heat, but on the other hand no hilarious auditions with brilliant people we've never heard of. None of that school camp feeling of we're all in this together, but on the other hand no alcohol poisoning and accidentally offending people in the foyer. It means I don't have to submit an entirely fictional "summary of show" to the festival when I haven't written the show, and it means I don't have to edit together a photograph for the program guide when there aren't any actors yet. It also means I won't be doing the part I love the most: watching other people turn my writing into something far more interesting, merely by moving their faces.

 

For me, it means I have to knuckle down and write, to make it worth missing out on the festival. It means I will see April in daylight, but not much. It means Stew will celebrate his birthday somewhere other than Trades Hall bar, but I will have to get up earlier in the morning to deserve that piece of cake. It's less terrifying, but more grown-up.

 

In this way, it is a metaphor. Discuss.

 

So Rita and Stewart and I are united again.

 

Our two hour meeting turned into a three hour meeting and Stew and I left Rita - slightly overcaffinated - in a cafe in North Fitzroy, whereupon she began another meeting with someone else. Stew had two massive mochas in quick succession and is now speaking in tongues. I have a brain ache, a stomach ache, a back ache, and, thanks to a late night, a condition I have diagnosed as "droop eye".

 

Standing There united will never be defeated * except for maybe sometimes.

 

In other news...

 

We have many alert readers here at the Standing There Diary. One particularly alert reader deserves a specific mention, however, not merely because she managed to spend a day in the Olympic village disguised as an albino Tongan (seriously) but also because she has emailed me a wombat-related-fact of the utmost importance. Given my time at Bundanon and obsession with all things wombat-related, I am particularly grateful to know this fact, and I share it with you now as a service to the public.

 

Wombats are the only creatures who poo squares.

 

Have a nice weekend. xxx

Look, I know this has nothing to do with anything but sometimes the comedy just writes itself.

 

Check this out.

 

My favourite bit is the last line: "It remains unclear why Gracie put her head in the gap".

 

Poor Gracie.

If Life were a database, you would currently find me under "Vicissitudes of life, activities pertaining to".

 

In law, which I studied in order to understand the ways in which the world doesn't quite work no matter how hard people try, the word "vicissitudes" is used to describe the unquantifiable, unpredictable events that occur in life by chance. In a budget, they'd be called contingencies. It's a way of trying to quantify the unquantifiable. Like, how much should we compensate this woman for her injury? Well, how much does she earn? Wow, that's quite a lot. So she's a highly-paid business executive then, is she? Good for her. Now, she's still young enough to have a child, so let's factor in five years of her not earning any money whatsoever. There you go lady, have a nice life!

 

There are many presumptions made, as you can imagine, about how your life is likely to pan out. I often wondered what a court of law would decide the vicissiitudes of my life would be. Personally, I find them quite hard to predict.

 

The other day, for instance, I was in a parked car, waiting for someone. It's interesting how people don't look into parked cars. They walk past picking their noses or having loud conversations, and nobody looks at the huge chunk of metal with the person sitting inside it. Some of them even slide their fingers along the bonnet.

 

One guy, in Adidas tracksuit pants and a long-sleeved top, walked briskly past my car towards the rubbish bin I had parked in front of. I waited to see what he was putting in the bin. He was carrying a plastic bag full of shopping. He put it on the ground. He took out a litre of no frills long-life skim milk. He opened it. He put the tab from under the lid in the rubbish bin. He reached back into the bag and produced a white bread sandwich wrapped in gladwrap. Had he bought it? Had he prepared it earlier? Had someone else prepared it for him?

 

He put the sandwich on the plastic, on the rubbish bin, next to the milk. He didn't notice me. He noticed other people, peered at them through his thick glasses. Hungry, organised, pedantic, he alternated the drink and the sandwich, the drink, the sandwich, all the time watching the people crossing the street, walking past the bin, chatting in the shopfront. Having a private moment, lunch on the rubbish bin, right in the middle of a thoroughfare. He touched his glasses at odd intervals, a gesture I associated with a professor, a smart kid, somebody Trying His Best.

 

When he finished, he folded the gladwrap and posted it into the bin. He finished the litre of skim milk and posted that too. He cleared his throat, touched his glasses in the direction of a man walking a rather large dog, and walked in the opposite direction.

 

If the court ever needed to, I daresay it would be fair enough of them to factor in great chunks of time during which I would be well expected to sit around in parked cars watching people watching other people, thus detracting from my life's value.

 

Interesting set of priorities we live to, isn't it.

 

This morning, in the pretendy-cafe that used to be a locker room at the State Library, a young man with mop hair half-smiled at me as he took my order.

 

Young Man With Mop Hair is somewhat superior in the pretendy-cafe hierarchy. I've seen him giving orders before and telling people to go and clean up table four please and looking harried while reading rosters on clipboards and so forth. Young Man With Mop Hair is not nearly as lovely as the Cute Young Thangs who used to serve me coffee and complain about their hangovers and then go missing when the RMIT design course started back up again. He seems nice, Mop, but he's not exactly engaging. You kind of get the feeling he might be thinking he's heaps better than you.

 

Now, I know from experience that when you think someone thinks they're better than you, they're usually deeply self-critical and later, at the work Christmas party or whatever, you turn out to be best friends and they've liked you all along and it reveals only one thing: how shallow and stupid and self-obsessed you must have been to have taken offence at their entirely innocent and sometimes even affectionate gaze in the first place.

 

Having said that, Mop Hair is clearly Captain Cool. Now, usually, when I go to work or go out in the evening or whatever, I wear normal clothes. Nice clothes. Not, you know, fashionable clothes exactly, but I look okay. When I come to the library, and hence the pretendy-cafe, I wear tracksuit pants and a hooded jumper. I want to be comfortable while I work. Also, as I have stated many times, I would be happy to wear one of those stud-buttoned full body suits that babies wear if I didn't think it would embarrass my loved ones and bring shame upon my family. HOWEVER, I do not wear these things, and I only wear tracksuit pants and hooded tops when I'm writing or going to gym.

 

Last night, I was going to gym. A guy rode past on a bike. I kind of wasn't concentrating but was looking at Guy On Bike because I wanted to cross the road and had to wait for Guy On Bike to ride past. At the last second, Guy On Bike pretendy-smiled at me and I realised: Guy On Bike was Captain Cool Mop Hair Guy from the Pretendy-Cafe! For a few seconds I felt like a pillock for wearing tracksuit pants and a hooded top in the street as well as in the library and hoped vainly that he didn't think it was some kind of uniform, and then I wondered whether he thought I'd been staring at him on the bike, and then I realised I was an idiot for even purporting to care.

 

This morning, in the pretendy cafe, I deliberately went up to the other guy, who smiles a lot, and waited in line for him to serve me.

 

Suddenly, out of nowhere:

 

NEXT PLEASE!

 

It was Captain Mop.

 

Hello, he said. (Did I detect a bit of a tone of "I saw you last night in a different context - what an interesting development in our arms-length coffee-based social ritual"?)

 

Hello, I said.

 

What's your name? He asked.

 

I told him.

 

What's yours? I asked.

 

He told me, with a half-smile. If we weren't right in the midst of becoming friends, I would have sworn that smile was slightly mocking.

 

He gave me my change. I thanked him.

 

There being a big queue, he shouted NEXT PLEASE again and on he went.

 

The next customer ordered a coffee.

 

What's your name? He asked.

 

She told him.

 

He wrote it on a cup and handed it to smiley guy. Smiley guy called out my name. My coffee was ready. It's how they determine who gets what coffee, you see. Makes a lot of sense, actually.

 

I am, it is now painfully clear, a massive loser. Captain Mop has won.

 

Still, and I know I have a vested interest in this, regardless of how much sense it makes, it does somewhat devalue the experience of ordinary discourse, don't you think? What's your name? It's kind of a personal question, too. It's revealing. It establishes a new connection. A new level of intimacy. In certain contexts, it means a great deal.

You're in a cop car. "What's your name?"

You're chatting to someone who seems rather nice. "What's your name?"

You're sure you've seen this person before but you can't quite figure it out. "What's your name?"

 

They can't take What's Your Name. Can they? Can they do that?

 

It started with Huge Icey Juice in A Bucket With A Straw shops. That was okay, I could see there was (as we say in theatre) a fourth wall there - a kind of commercial buffer that made the question less intimate. But in real life? In a pretendy cafe? With a grumpy dude who thinks you live in a tracksuit? I don't know. I feel conversationally violated.

 

The big test will be if he remembers it tomorrow. Yes, I know, I know. I shouldn't go back. But hell, for a pretentious grumpy pants, he makes a good coffee.

I haven't written much lately.

 

It's like Life knew that I was escaping it during Bundanon and now it's catching me up.

 

Talk amongst yourself. I'll be back in a minute.