Midnight til Dawn

Fin.

2006-09-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Fourteen weeks later, I can officially say:
Midnights and I are finito. And like the end of any good relationship, the time has come to take stock and idealise everything about it. By way of a list. Not that I do that every time a relationship ends. That would be weird.

Things I have learnt:

1/ You can get food after midnight in Melbourne. But that doesn't mean you should eat it. That said, I didn't make the effort to go to the 24-hour Pancake Palour in Doncaster. I'm not sorry.

2/ That P. Diddy "don't want no bumps on his face", because he "gotta have his sexy all right". And that I could have a worse job. But at least I'd have stalkers. (I'm never watching late-night television again.)

3/ Pony is my favourite place in Melbourne. Between the hours of 2am and 5am, I have a 100 per cent strike rate of running into someone I know. And an 82 per cent chance that they'll try to sell me drugs. AND I'm very upset to be missing Cult of the Placenta Head playing there right now.

4/ Even if you chase cop cars and ambulances for three months, you're probably more likely to see the most blood on the hands of a tattooist.

5/ There are other people like me. But those particular children of the night seem to be more commited to activism about their condition. And they're right - NONE of our elected representatives are nocturnal! I'm fighting the urge to run for the senate on a nocturnal platform.. must.. resist.

6/ Overnight talkback radio is an addiction (and I am slightly in love with this man.) It's cool, I feel alive.. and it doesn't make me old. I swear. Even if 774 is currently taking talkback about "times you've had a fall". I mean, I fall over all the time!

7/ I am too tired to have any wisdom to impart. After three months of forced introspection, that's probably just as well.

So when all is said and done, I'm glad midnights are over. See, I am le tired.

I'm off to bed. (You can follow me here. If you want.)

Carpe noctem!

Tough times and hard rubbish

2006-09-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

Three nights to go, and my roster is up for my triumphant return to the office. I have two weeks of 8am starts. After three months of not getting up until 2pm. Life is too cruel.

But rather than reflect on my impending doom, I am looking forward to happier times. Like, hard rubbish in North Carlton on September 25!

The dazzling array of treasure that is hard rubbish last came around for me about five months ago. I didn't have a car at the time, and had resigned myself to missing out on the week-long scavenger hunt.

BUT LO! Riding on my BIKE during the happy secondhand festival, just around the corner from my house I found a PLANK. (And do you know who else has planks, children? That's right, PIRATES have planks. Oh, and these guys:)

Planks are also funny..

Made, typically, of wood, this plank was not your average splintery spider-fest type plank. It was painted white, and perfectly flat, and long enough to.. be taller than me. Maybe it was 7'?

Sometimes, understandably, hard rubbish hunters - and their housemates - are reluctant to welcome certain items into their homes. Fair enough, I didn't actually ask my houseys on this one, but I had no such qualms. It was perfect.

My perfect plank now lives in my loft-bedroom, sitting across two book cases and forming a shelf above my ladder-hatch. It is the most functional and yet piratic thing I have ever got for free. Cool, huh?

Like this is cool:

Sometimes even pirates need to be told "no"..

It's going to be 21 degrees in the next 24 hours, and I am off to buy Meredith Music Festival tickets. Today is going to be a good day.

Countdown

2006-09-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

(Not the kind that involves Molly Meldrum. I was all excited about the prospect of Countdown reunions, because it made me think that yeah, perhaps it will inspire a new almighty force of music shows that will be cutting edge and that I can be involved in. However, jtv does not fit that description in any way. And Australian Idol is back, and making me cranky.)

The countdown I am talking about is the four nights I have left of midnights. Which is not totally unlike counting down to an inter-planetary mission to Mars, I guess. I would post further about this momentous occasion, but I am too busy thinking about all the ways to celebrate my final week/ impending freedom.

It is kind of sad in a way. I think there may be even some things I miss.

Hmm, can a girl get Stockholm's Syndrome from night shift?

(I was about to justify this pic with some sort of prisoner-Stockholm link, but I have decided the whole thing is self-evident. Wonder Woman rocks. Way more than jtv.)

Spring Fashion Week and don't we both look lovely..

2006-09-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

Public announcement: I am in love with Jennifer "Miss Universe" Hawkins. Or Miss Jennifer Universe Hawkins?

Either way, I had my initial doubts about her, she of the a-little-bit-too-cute-skirt-losing-episodes and cruising-into-jobs-I-wouldn't-mind-having tendencies.

But in a testament to saturation promotion, the more I see of her, the more I like. Her shrieking during dives with sharks on The Great Outdoors is cute yet convincing. And the Myer ad where her single line, "agreed" (tilt head, girl-next-door smile), justifies all those hours of acting classes? I actually want the dress she's wearing (but apparently, thanks to all her other fans being more organised than me, it's already sold out.) And, I don't mind this billboard:

Aww.. it's a TIGER!

And Jenniverse is not the only model in overabundance in town. Thanks to Spring Fashion Week, farm-girl-turned-catwalk-queenTM Jessica Farrell is everywhere, and I don't mind.

Any girl that wears gumboots - even in a fairly lame set-up shot - is alright in my book. And actually, Spring Fashion Week generally is finding its way into my Book of Alrights. It's all fun and bright and stuff that I would actually consider wearing.

More frighteningly, I was heading down Chapel St about 3am the other day to get a coffee (Chapellis - They Never Close). And shop after shop had window displays that were actually stirring some sort of urge to participate in capitalist, advertising-driven society. I nearly crashed into a taxi I was so distracted. And then I thought, wow, why don't I shop around this Chapel St place? Oh, right. Because the shops being open for shopping only ever coincides with the Chapel St-erati being all-present. And all-orange. Suddenly less appealing.

Springing into stereotypes

2006-09-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

These are camellias - my grandmother would be proud that I know this.

(However, hopefully she doesn't read it here.. I wasn't planning to let her know about the whole tatt thing.)

Spring has sprung. So on Friday, I got home from work, found my bikini, and set up camp in the 23 degree sun. In our backyard, the pink camellia is flowering. Pink petals drift down in the breeze, and turn into mulch all over our paving. If I put a blanket over it first, I can lie on our (rotting) outdoor couch in dappled sun. And when I was forced to realise that neighbours were playing a John Meyer CD at inappropriate levels (i.e audibly), I was feeling too benevolent to go over there and start something.

By Saturday, I had joined the "get your body in shape for summer" brigade, and handed over hard-earned to a gym.

On Sunday, I cleaned the house. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that I "spring-cleaned" the house.

Then I realised.. my reaction to the pre-summer season could not be any more stereotypical. I AM A SEASONAL CONFORMIST.

It is reasonably distressing to discover that an extra five degrees on the themometer can turn me into a cellulite-aware, dust-conscious, non-agressive human being. You know who else fits this description? DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, THAT'S WHO. (Except for the non-agressive bit. Those chicks are biatches. From what I can tell from overly-long Channel 7 ads.) I AM NOT READY TO BE CONTEMPLATING THAT KIND OF DESPERATION. Let alone ANY housewifery.

But fear not - my downward spiral has been given reprieve. By Sunday night, the rain was pelting down on 9 degree Melbourne, and I was happily running through it to buy chocolate humming Four Seasons in One Day. (I saw the Finn brothers do that song live last year, acoustically and as a tribute to Paul Hester. Gig of the year. Distractingly, the song ALSO reminds me of personal products of the same name. It has always made me wonder - is that particular Australian producer taking inspiration from that particular song? Or is it more a Vivaldi reference? And how does the activity line up with the four seasons, anyway? Or perhaps they're the preferred product of Four Seasons Hotel patrons. Anyway, these are the issues that concern someone who works my hours.)

Anyway, the point is: Melbourne is reliable in the unreliability of its weather. And sometimes, that is a good thing.

And I have two weeks to go on midnights. Then I will have a week off, and will be able to re-approach spring with another selection of stereotypes: road trips, heavy drinking, classic albums, sitting on a beach, and more drinking. I will avoid, however, any temptation to combine punk rocking and the placement of flowers in my hair. That is just stupid.

Things are looking up..

2006-08-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

I now have two weeks, and two days, until my midnight life is done and dusted. THAT IS 96 HOURS, PEOPLE!!!! And even before that happy event, FRIDAY IS THE START OF SEPTEMBER AND SPRING!!! Believe me, this is exciting - MY USE OF CAPITALS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS IS NOT USUALLY THIS EXTENSIVE!!!!! (But only because Danny Katz got in first - damn you, Katz!)

There is much to be achieved in my final days. Hopefully something that actually involves a decent story. Possibly some other things too, suggesting I should probably make a list. And not least on that list, I might have to clean my desk before I hand it back.

Hmm, maybe I should just stay for good...

Punt Rd philosophies

2006-08-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

When one is broadening one's mind in the appreciation of culture, it's always nice to be able to relate to the artist. And not just in a Black-Eyed Peas, "hey, I DO have humps - in the back AND in the front!" way.

I'm talking more about Punt Rd. In Elliot Perlman's book Three Dollars, Eddie panics that he'll have no knowledge to impart to his yet-to-be-born daughter. Except that, no matter what time of the day or night, at all costs avoid Punt Rd.

As I sat in bumper to bumper traffic heading south along that particular wayfare today, I knew exactly what he meant. Along with probably the whole of car-driving Melbourne, I knew it before he wrote it, I acknowleged it when I read it, and I carry the knowledge with me.

Presumably Punt Rd is so busy because it's hard for a north-south traveller to avoid directionally. And because cars are allowed to park at the kerb - BOTH WAYS!! - for almost the entire stretch. One lane of traffic each way on a major arterial with a school on it, brilliant work there Melbourne/Stonnington councils.

But the reason I keep returning to its needlessly slow-flowing traffic is actually because I LIKE PUNT RD. I feel HUGE affection for the hard-fought-for Nylex clock, and it's complicated four-step colour-change programming. (It reminds me of driving through Melbourne at night after a family trip visiting grandparents, and passing the huge green Victoria Bitter sign on the left on St Kilda Rd, which would mean there was still lots of fascinating city to go, and then getting to the huge red Canon sign, which was I don't know where, but it meant we were nearly out of the city and I could fall asleep without fear of missing any more wondrous sights. Imagine if I ever went to Vegas, I think I'd pass out from happiness just at all the signs.)

I also feel ridiculously grateful if the temperature on the Nylex clock is anything above 10 degrees. I like going past the MCG and being so expertly Melburnian that I know which is the Punt Rd end (as opposed to listening to ABC Grandstand as a young country thing, and not really being too sure).

Moving to Melbourne five years ago was a revalation to this country kid. It's best illustrated by Greg Champion's song about the fallout that would occur if/when Richmond won a premiership. Including the lines (and to tune of Green Green Grass of Home):

Old Swan St looks the same, as I go by on the train,

And there's Dimmey's and the grunge pub on the corner...

Well Church St will explode, and they'll have to close Bridge Rd,

On Victoria St the Vietnamese will party.

And the Skipping Girl will dance all night,

Punt Rd ground will be a dreadful sight,

On the day that Richmond win the flag.

.. it was VERY exciting to move to Melbourne, and not only discover where all those places were, but TO ACTUALLY FREQUENT THEM. Oh, and to discover that the Corner Hotel of all my frustrated TripleJ gig-guide listenings, where I actually wanted to LIVE when I eventually moved to Melbourne, was actually one in the same as "the grunge pub on the corner". Who'd have thought it?!

Anyway, the whole point is that I'm muchly cosmopolitan now. And back to relating to high literature, this needed to be on the internet somewhere.

The world is too big for love to be real. There are too many people in the world to ever know, beyond everything, that you are with the right person. That your heart is as swollen as it can be. Think of all the people in China. It is unlikely anyone will ever meet all of them. How can we know for certain, for absolute certain, that trapped inside a foreign language and thumping in a foreign heart there isn't a love that is meant for us. The infinite possibility of existence, its limitless potential, is the proof that we need that love is nothing more than an imagination, a human folly, friendship swollen with self-importance, a final retreat from the storm of possbility. The love of our life could so easily have been someone else. It is random and accidental, haphazard and unsystematic. That which we feel for one person, clinging on to the delusion of destiny, could so easily be felt for a million people should the timeing and the meetings and the mutual readiness have coalesced at some other time in some other place. Should someone else have accepted us or rejected us then everything would have been different. And once we know this, we know that all love is a lie. Not honesty but deception. Not heroism but cowardice. An unspoken agreement of mutual consolidation and compromise, a shield from possibility and a bed in which to sleep, nothing more than that.
But I do still miss her.
- Daniel Kitson, London, 2006

Lazing on a sunny(ish) afternoon

2006-08-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

When a girl works from midnight til 8am, then sleeps from 8.05am til about 3pm, it follows that afternoons are potentially the girl's favourite time of the day. And when it is sunny, they definitely are.

On Monday, I managed to wake up around 12.30pm, due to sun pouring through my window. The proceeding afternoon then led me to:

- My backyard, to hang out two loads of washing,

- The grassy median strip on Canning St, around the corner from my place. Me and my book lasted for about 20 minutes before the wind considerations outweighed the sun.

- A couple laps of Princes Park on my trusty/neglected bike.

The final activity was particularly worthwhile. Apart from a pretence at healthiness, I think Princes Park is good for the soul. The people there are HAPPY, in the pushing-a-pram, walking-a-dog, flirting-with-their-personal-trainer kind of way. When an old guy rides along like he's on a pennyfarthing, with his little fluffball dog going flat chat behind him just to keep up, it causes passing witnesses to actually SMILE at each other at the cuteness of it all.

Oh, and I left my iRiver AT HOME. So I could ride along and it wasn't like a video-camera-on-the-handlebars-real-time-meandering-video-clip - the happy people were REAL people. Yay for real happy people!

All this hanging out in dappled sunshine led me to realise - Victoria is appropriately called the Garden State (insofar as the definition doesn't extend to drought-affected two-thirds of the state who can't actually water their gardens. They don't count.) And being on the move through said garden state really is the place to be! (Groan.)

Come sail your ships around me

2006-08-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

The more I think about it, the more are the reasons that I like ships. Which is just as well really.

Reasons why I like ships:

1/ As much as I'd like to claim that my name is a tribute to Captain Mary Read, it's actually less to do with hot lesbian pirates and more to do with virgin mothers. Which is also fine, because THAT Mary is also known as Stella Maris, or Star of the Sea. Being thus religiously connected, I'm happily a Latin freak. Further, "Mare" means "sea" in Latin. And where there's sea, there's ships! Facta non verba.. I wonder if "facta" extends to tattoos..

2/ Shakespeare's 16th sonnet is my favourite one. While I particularly like marriages of true minds, even better is the fact that love is the star to ev'ry wandering bark. Like MY wandering bark!

3/ Not only piratic in demeanour, Nick Cave also sings songs about ships. And burning bridges down.. so he's a pirate AND a pyro! What a guy.. I'm more than happy to line up with him in the ship-appreciation stakes.

4/ "Ship" rhymes with "chip". So I can say, "I've got a ship on my shoulder". It's a PUN. And FUNNY. And I am going to get so much mileage out of it.. (It's official, this shift has warped my humour.)

5/ Pirates. And particularly Captain Jack: "That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and sails; that's what a ship needs. Not what a ship is. What the Black Pearl really is, is freedom."

Okay, so a third of my back is now irrevocably taken up by a huge black thing on the basis of questionable religious links, corny movies and even cornier jokes. But considering said irrevocability, I'm going to stick with the argument - ships make me happy.

Where there's smoke..

2006-08-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

By this stage of cosmic development, it is fairly well documented that the Christian deity works in mysterious ways. And most other deities, for that matter - those Roman omnipotents were CRAZY for some mysteriousness!

But I digress - it's the Christian God that I'm talking about now, because it's the Christian God that's responsibly for THIS:

Well, it's actually a Chelsea firebug that did the burning, but a HIGHER POWER left the four crucifix-shapes on the walls.

While this little Catholic girl certainly believes in the all-powerful hand of God, she's not entirely sure that He's big on speaking through smokey crosses on walls. There were ALREADY crosses on the wall, after all. I'm not sure divine omnipotence would waste time with needless duplication. On the other hand, I guess we're not all cyclopes, so my argument could be flawed.

Regardless of these arguments, however, it should be noted that I was PRESENT as the church burned down. And hence, if there was indeed a miracle, I WITNESSED the hand of God at work. Woot!

Batmania

2006-08-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

On cloudy nights in Melbourne, look up at the sky above the city and you'll see circling spotlights. And it brings me great displeasure to report - they are not Bat Signals.

I know this because, this time last year, I was at a Prime Ministerial function. And Johnny said they weren't. So that decided that.

HA, kidding, like I'd believe anything he said. ACTUALLY, I was camped outside with the protesting rabble. And also camped outside were a couple of spotlight operators, who have been hired by some misguided soul who thought great shafts of light were appropriate to indicate the PM's presence. So I took the only reasonable course - I asked these operators if they ever projected Bat Signals. They said no.. but that they had AT LEAST ONE CALL A DAY ASKING IF THEY COULD.

So explain to me this. I sit in my office overnight, everynight, and the cops consistently tell me that there's no crime for me to be worrying my head about. BUT, there's obviously enough crime for Melbourne citizens to be thinking about summoning the assistance of a crime-fighting superhero, ON A DAILY BASIS. Yet the cops don't know about it. Shakes head. This is EXACTLY how things in Gotham City went downhill.

While I have no solution for that dire situation, the whole thing brings me to an amazing business opportunity. How hard could it be to buy a spotlight, put a bat-shaped cut-out over it, and hire it out as a Bat Signal?

I mean, the demand is obviously there!

**The probable reason that the demand is there, is because Melbourne was going to be called Batmania. I still kind of wish it was.

Wherever I hang my (appropriately ironic) trucker caps..

2006-08-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

When one lives in Melbourne's inner north, it is only a matter of time before one does as all the other inner northians, and professes they will never live anywhere else. And really, why would one? As we all know, the river has a right side and a wrong side. All the best bands are linked with that right side. As well as all the best pubs, football clubs, bike paths, radio stations, pizza and beer and beer gardens, and pretty much anything else you could need. Like, what else could you need? Before you say it, I already have an amazing view of the city down Amess St, and I live in a loft. There. I win.

However, I trekked to an inner CITY location during the week, and started to question my unshakeable faith in the inner north. (Don't worry, I'm Catholic - questioning unshakeable faith is all par for the course.) This is the view from my mate's window:

It's considerably more impressive when you're actually looking out from the Whiteman St 21st floor. But then the mate pointed out I could see my workplace from the window. And that was much less impressive. But THEN, I realised that I could hook up a huge flying fox and fly across the city to work every day. And THAT would be impressive.

As an earlier version of me, a large amount of my time was spent working out the best potential routes for flying foxes. This is possibly because I spent so much time in old country churches, which had IDEAL flying-fox-supporting rafters. At least, hundreds of hours of looking up at them led me to believe they would be ideal. I never got to test it. Oh, and I always intended that eventually flying foxing would be very reverent.

So THEN I thought maybe I would leave the inner north if it could be for an old church. Cool, yes? But not if I had to live outside Castlemaine.. considering I'm struggling with the idea of outside Fitzroy, I think it's a case of baby steps.

If I had to move away from my safe haven, methinks it would have to be for something very special. Like, I could cope if I had this view:

But I would also have to have the chairs. And the cat, who would be called TS. I'm not so keen on the platypus, depending on whether or not that is a life-supporting fish tank, or whether the platypus is in fact pickled. Ugh. But I would definitely live up to living there, by doing my hair all cute and mod as in the front of picture. Yay!

Unfortunately, the Richmond apartment of my dreams may have already been snapped up.

The converted warehouse apartment of Nathan Brown sold on the weekend for "a little over a million dollars". Damn, you have to be so quick to get the good places..

Maybe I should just stick with my lovely inner north for a bit longer. Imagine if I moved - all my favourite songs would be about a place I didn't even live. That would suck.

But I COULD suss out some sort of flying fox out of my loft... hmmm.

Seven weeks to go

2006-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

Ha!

Seven weeks to go. And you can achieve a lot in seven weeks, apparently. Like sobriety. Through NUTRITION. Ha. Sounds totally up my alley.

Equally unlikely is 49-day riding plan from he who invented yellow wristbands.

So having ruled out riding around hungry and sober all day, I think I need to come up with my own plans. Like:

- Learn 200 words in Spanish (I figure that's about four a day - and I already know ole!, so how hard can another 199 be?)

- Go to the gym.. at least once. (Hey, goals are all about being realistic!)

- Wean myself off Red Bull: just because I can't start my shift without one at the moment, I'm not an addict, right? It's cool, I feel alive...

- Get my new tatt: it's booked in! August 16, my back becomes a new shipping port.. hmm, I think I need a better way of expressing that. Pics to come.

- Find something exciting and yet work-related to do once I get off this shift.. okay, I've ditched the realistic goal thing now.

- Swot up on enough music knowledge to win Hair of the Dog trivia. JUST ONCE, THAT'S ALL I WANT!!

- Plan an end-of-midnights party for September 15..

And then, have that party! In only seven weeks.. la!

The sunny side of the street

2006-08-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

I think 3AW's overnight music people are trying to mock me. WHERE, exactly, is does one find the "sunny side of the street" at 1.58am on a Wednesday in the middle of winter? WHERE?!? Yet that's the song they think is appropriate to lead into the 2am news. HOW DO THEY EXPECT ME TO MAKE MY LIFE SO SWEET AND/OR COMPLETE?!

After two swinging-piano tap-dancey verses, however, I was actually feeling quite sunny.

The lesson? HAPPY MUSIC MAKES YOU HAPPY! If only I'd realised that as an angst-ridden 14-year-old, staying up late to listen to Matchbox 20 moping about the 3am hour. A few more handclaps and less anguished whining, and I could have turned out a very different girl.

*STOP PRESS: My recipe for instant happiness isn't quite foolproof. After hanging outside a murder scene in Lara for four freezing hours on Thursday morning, my frame of mind was definitely not on the sunny side of the street. As I finally pulled away and onto the highway home, 774 started playing Here Comes the Sun. Happy song, yes? I burst into tears.

Damn, just when you think you've found the path for world peace.. it's just never that simple, is it?

Pirate horses one year older

2006-07-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've always known that horses were all designated the same birthday date. But it's taken 24 years, and listening to very early morning radio, to find out that it's on August 1. So, happy birthday horses.

And while on the topic of equine learning, an update from the ABC overnight trivia quiz. In the Elizabeth Taylor film National Velvet, the horse that Lizzie's character rode was called The Pie. But that was the nickname she gave him - short for THE MURDEROUS PIRATE. Yay!

So, PARTICULAR happy birthday to The Murderous Pirate. Long may he gallop/plunder.

Snappers not happy.. but think of the birds

2006-07-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

Melbourne news that's distressing the Prime Minister this week is the efforts by management at glorified shopping strip Southgate crack down on happy snappers.

Fair enough, it is amusing that Victorian A-G Rob Hulls considers Southgate to be a "tourist attraction". Believe me, it wouldn't be a tourist attraction if the food court was turned into a theme park, like, Salmonella World. The facts that parents drag their screaming kids there on the weekend, or that on Sundays it hosts the lamest of lame "craft market", will not sway me on the issue.

Anyway, the management at Southgate are cursing the fact that offices of Rupert's Empire are in the complex, and that an intrepid journo trekked all the way downstairs to get the story.

But we're missing out on the real story, people! Banning photos is one thing. But for the past three years, the evil totalitarians at Southgate have had signs on the food court tables saying "DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS". With a picture of a bird WITH A LINE THROUGH IT. The poor bird! And this is INSIDE the complex. We're not talking about fat, flea-ridden pigeons here. We're talking about half a dozen cute little sparrows that are plucky enough to make it through the automatic doors. HAVEN'T THESE PSYCHOS SEEN MARY POPPINS?!? It's meant to be 'TUPPENCE A BAG', not 'FEEDERS WILL BE PROSECUTED'!

Let it be noted, this is not one of the signs from Southgate. You're not allowed to take photos there.

It's 2 degrees in Melbourne..

2006-07-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Bet you didn't know that.

Here's some other things you non-nocturns may not know:

1/ When you're driving out of the city towards the Westgate Bridge, you past the Vegemite factory on your right. If it's night-time and it's raining, you can smell Vegemite in your car. If the heater is on, and it always is, you can smell Vegemite toast in your car. And then, even though by this stage you're on the Westgate, you have to pull off at the next exit, turn around, and drive back home to make Vegemite toast. It's pretty imperative at 3am.

2/ Brunetti on Faraday St is open until 11pm. But until 11.10pm, you can still get a takeaway Italian hot chocolate. Even though this stop-off means you're about 20 minutes early for work, it's worth it to start the shift with a thick, creamy, chocolatey cup of thick, creamy chocolate. However, if you can't drag yourself away from the couch and the Miss Universe telecast and you get there at 11.15pm, no chocolate for you. Bitches.

3/At Melbourne Airport, if you drive in and follow the signs to the Hilton, there is a long, LONG row of car parks. So many that all the permit-only cars-that-are-supposed-to-park-there in the whole of Melbourne couldn't possibly fill them. And if you put a sign that says "MEDIA" on your dashboard, no one questions you. I'm never paying for parking at Melbourne Airport ever again.
4/ Not as many pubs as you'd expect are open for substantial hours between midnight and 8am. When I get enough for a list, I'll post them. I'm not counting the Burvale.

There's so much to know.

Bloodlust..

2006-07-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first
person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill
again."

- Dorothy and Toto get a tough wrap

"Frustrated by the lack of large-scale murder, death and
destruction in her city, unslaked bloodlust drives a young reporter to the internet."

- Don't laugh, it's real..

After a month on the job, the charms of Melbourne's middle-of-the-night-life are still almost wholly a mystery. But the time has not been totally wasted.

THINGS I NOW KNOW

1/ You can't live your life between 3pm and 8am five days a week, then try to keep normal hours on weekends. If you do, you'll wake up in a cold sweat at 3am on a Sunday morning, with the plot from While You Were Sleeping playing over and over in your head. If Sandra Bullock ever comes to Melbourne, there will be crime on these streets, YOU GOT THAT, SHE-WHO-GIVES-BRUNETTES-A-BAD-NAME?!?

2/ There is a reason that taxi drivers are all fat. The reason is called: a combination of service stations, the Maccas on City Rd, and the Hungry Jacks on Kings Way. At 3am, the product of all of these outlets can deliriously be considered delicious. Mmm, delirious delicious.

3/ There is at least one high school in Melbourne that thinks an appropriate educational, mid-term school excursion is to put 50 kids on a bus, take it into the city at midnight, then go to see a late movie at Crown, followed by "dinner" at Maccas on City Rd, followed by bowling at Crown until 6am. Hi to the year 10 kids at St Leonard's in Brighton - I hope your parents know that they're forking out for a private school education just so you can know the city well enough to run away from home and be street kids. But thanks for letting me jump the queue to get my Quarter Pounder. I'll not hear a bad word about the kids of today.

4/ People who call up overnight radio are not human. Unless it is the ABC, and it's the trivia quiz. In which case, it's not my fault I know all the answers. Oh lord, I really have changed...

"Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

**Postscript - looking for reproductions of Ms Garland, came across this classic interpretation that insists it is a "sexy Dorothy costume".. hence proving that if nothing else, I'm learning a lot about the charms of the internet. Thank you, www.hustlerpanties.com...

It goes on..

2006-07-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes
on."

- Robert Frost

Week three, and those three words seem appropriate - life on midnights goes on and on and on...

But I have found the key to staying awake all night.

First. Have a plan. It must be intricate, and all-consuming. And completely unachievable. For instance, starting a blog and get a ten-book publishing deal.

Second. Tirelessly investigate every possible way this plan can be achieved. All these ways must be discoverable on Google - for instance, table-top dancing training centres in Melbourne for an undercover feature for Ralph.

Third. Come to 4am. Be entirely overcome with exhaustion. Abandon plan - stare at screen for next two hours.

Fourth: Go home.

Fifth: Return to work following night with new plan. Repeat steps one to five.

Ah, life is so meaningful.

Keepin' on truckin'

2006-06-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

What do you mean "low clearance"?

This poor guy had the unfortunate privilege of keeping me entertained all Monday morning. The B-double driver managed to clip the bridge with the top of his rig, which somehow tipped it over. And then, JOY, he got to stand around for about 12 hours. While fine representatives of our police force, Yarra Trams, Connex, and enough towing companies to have some sort of towing convention.. all stood around trying to work out what to do.

Although he'd just managed to flip 42 tonnes, truck-driver-guy seemed mainly unconcerned. Which pretty much fits my image of the iconic, laconic, survivor (damn! nothing else rhymed!) truck driver type. (I happily ignore the speed-chowing peaking-crazy truckie image - contemplation makes it too scary to drive.)

Anyway, in the course of our conversation truck-driver-guy noticed my skull and crossbones brooch... and nearly fell over himself trying to show me his skull and crossbones ring. "I'm a biker!" he explains.

"NO WAY, I'M A PIRATE!!!"

You can bond with people in the strangest situations...

I did not bond with any of the hundreds of nuff-nuffs who came up to me to ask, "Hey, what happened?" in the course of the night.

"A TRUCK FELL OVER!"

Oh, right.

Boredom and round balls

2006-06-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

I do not understand why people would want to travel into the city in the dead of night, stand around in freezing conditions, and wait hours for possibly one or two exciting things to happen. I GET PAID FOR FITTING THAT JOB DESCRIPTION, AND I STILL DON'T LIKE IT!

But apparently, that foreign round football has makes people crazy for all of that. Plus the added attraction of twenty-minute line-ups for beer. (Unless your preference is for carrying a two-litre bottle of cola mixed with bourbon. For about one-third of 12,000 people at Fed Square this morning, it was.)

But I have no complaints - their stupidity made my gig slightly less meaningless. I staked out the city soccer celebrations, and saw plenty of cute and devoted Aussie fans. But as hundreds of people who couldn't see the screens had to go screaming to their mobiles to find out that Brazil had scored a goal, you had to wonder - why bother?

It's hard to be united by the moment when you're the only sober soul in midst of 12,000 drunken ones.

Ok, I'm awake..

2006-06-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

But I'm going to be struggling to keep it that way.

On Sunday I start working midnight til 8am, five nights a week. Now, I've been nocturnal before - but it's usually for good reason. Like DRINKING. For the next sixteen weeks, it will just be me, my car, graveyard shift radio and overnight coppers. And whatever else happens after midnight in cold Melbourne town.

Staying awake will be the big challenge. Oh, apart from staying warm. While I might - very occasionally - be required to do some work, for the most part it will be eight hours of keeping myself amused. I'll be collecting stories, addresses of 24-hour hangouts, and the types of shady aquaintences that you usually meet in the small hours of the morning. And I guess I'll be one of those shady types too.