six-thirty news

Item 1. Twenty-one year old marketing officer fears she may be coming down with a case of the swine flu. Tegan Nuss has had recent contact with multiple carriers of the virus and has started to experience what may be the symptoms of the said illness, including sore throat, aching muscles (particularly in her legs! her legs! she cries), loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting. Although nearly one in five people (as an estimate) have contracted the virus since its onset earlier this year, Tegan said she is no less amused at the prospect of telling people she has the much-mocked virus. She is not worried about death or turning into a pig.

Item 2. Translink’s city buses have been equipped with “Spitting is Prohibited” signs in what can only be an attempt to prevent bus-goers from spitting. Frequent traveller Tegan Nuss said she was bemused when she spotted the sign and wondered who exactly it was directed at. “Clearly Translink want to discourage people from spitting, but I’ve never, ever seen anyone spitting on the bus, and I practically live in buses.” She said if Translink really wants to make their buses are more pleasant ride for their customers they should put up signs prohibiting tinny headphones and loud music, lengthy personal phone calls, and passengers who sweat all over the seat. “Some people,” she said, “are totally revolting.”

Item 3. The awful paradox of waking up exhausted has been experienced by young writer in Brisbane’s northern suburbs. The budding wordsmith has woken up in an exhausted state consistently for the last month. She said it’s no wonder pop-rock band Tegan and Sara wrote a song about it. “At least this makes me feel like I’m not the only one. How bizarre to go to sleep and wake-up as if you haven’t slept at all, because obviously to wake up you must have been asleep.” She said she is considering seeking medical assistance.

Item 4. Bridget Parker of acclaimed Ramsay Street is officially dead, with her funeral having been aired to a television audience last Friday evening. The teenage mother’s death was the result of internal bleedings and surgical complications following a nasty car accident involving trees and swerving and a wild, white stallion. It has further been revealed that the car involved had a faulty steering system . Responsibility has been placed on larrikin, but usually reliable, mechanic Steph Scully. Bridget leaves behind baby India and husband Declan, who will have to now direct his crinkly-nose smiles elsewhere.

No sporting news today.

thursday

Thursday. Not again. It seems like just last week I had a Thursday. Outside, because I’m sitting at the window today, fourteen storeys up, people are swimming in pools. They must be heated, I imagine, because even from inside I can see that the air, if it were coloured, would be blue, for cold, like the arctic. Not to mention that the bare-chested swimmers are in shade, provided by the massive buildings standing, watching over them. A heated pool, I think. Dry towels. I wonder who has such luxuries, and why. It’s Thursday, you should be at work, I say. One man, outside still, is at work, sitting on a metal plate, hanging from a pulley attached to the roof of a building taller even than mine. He is cleaning the windows, erasing the smut that rises from the streets and up off the river, so people like me can watch people in pools. As he swings, the blue air whips, ruptures, turns white and then clear, and I hope he does not fall. From my seat at the window today, fourteen storeys up, I imagine I would see it all, be scarred for life, and the next time Thursday comes and the times after that I would have to think not again, not again.

what makes you happy and then doesn't?

Today I thought: I do want to be happy. I really do.

So then I thought: What will make me happy?

I decided: Boots will make me happy. First at the time of purchase, and then every time I push my feet in and pump up the road with snug toes and calves and people making sideway glances and saying things like ‘Damn, look at those gosh hot darn boots’.

I declined: Nothing will make me happy. Nothing. And I slumped into my swivel chair, hoping that the gas would explode and I would be propelled through the plaster ceiling, just as the Safety Alert email had informed me had happened in a miserable office in Thailand.

But then I thought: Tegan, be proactive. Stop this wallowing. Wake up. Go to the shop. Spend some money, because that’s about the only thing it’s good for. Buy yourself at least some happiness, because God forbid it won’t come about any other way.

So then I went: To the shop. To try on some boots. In fact, I went to many shops and tried on many boots. Probably nine in total, but I wasn’t counting, just getting exhausted and hungry, and the fluorescent lighting and my muscle-less calves and all the girls with their radiant skin and profitable hair and obtuse boyfriends were putting me severely offside.

This should have happened next: Resignation and home in time to watch Neighbours, which I seemed to had forgotten is the only true and reliable source of happiness.

This actually happened next: My foot got stuck. And my foot had no sock, stocking or other lubricant kind, and the boot had no zip, just lengths and lengths of leather and not altogether supple elastic.

So this is what I did: Struggled.

And then came: The upper-lip sweat, because of my ridiculous, duck-down quilted coat, which is built for the icier likes of Switzerland, and not for sitting on a chair trying to lean forward in the shoe-section at Myer in Brisbane, which smells like foot and lots of it.

So I took: Five deep breaths. And I tried again, this time folding the leather body down over my ankle.

This happened next: Nothing.

So I thought: This is too much. This is too, too much.

And then came: The tears.

Followed by: Looks of pity and alarm from other shoppers, who seemed much more content with their boots and where they've been and where they're headed.

And I wondered: Why is this happening? The shoe does not fit. Why am I wearing it?

And I wished: That I had someone to call.

And I felt: Utterly stuffed and flushed, not to mention unbelievably stupid for thinking my notoriously inflexible ankles would work around a lack of zip or flap.

And then: After a few nauseous moments, and with one final push, the boot came off and I was turned off ever having children, and I went on my dejected way home and decided to not try to be happy ever again.

ps

I cannot write. I have been anaesthetised.