all change, all change, we have now reached the end of the 2012 line

As with armageddon, I fail to understand the significance of New Year’s Day. At best, it means I will spend January, February and March writing the wrong date on everything.

At it’s worst, it means being kept awake til 4 a.m. or thereabouts by neighbours playing what they think is music at increasingly competitive volumes. At midnight there is also a brief increase in noise while some shout in the street, demonstrating that despite living in Frankston they are able to count backwards from ten.

This is actually a welcome respite from the usual street brawls occurring when one of the occupants of a nearby house [choose any house at random] seeks to evict another. Reasons for attempted evictions range from “You *****ing *****ed **** you ***”,       to       “***** you, you *****ing ****”.

The bright people two blocks away do not join in the pyrotechnic activity on New Year’s Eve, preferring to keep their marine flares for the other 51 weekends of the year.

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You say you’ve made a resolution

Well, you know

We all want to change ourselves

You tell me that it’s self improvement

Well, you know

We all want to be our best

But when you talk about giving up [insert vice here]

Don’t you know that you can count me out…

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Yet another YouTube video mentioning Frankston has gone viral. Last time the press insisted the racist abuse was ‘on the Frankston line’. It was, in fact, perpetrated by some creep from a more eastern suburb who was travelling on the Frankston line but neither to nor from Frankston itself.

The latest shows an incident of gross violence [a tautology, surely] also occurring on the Frankston line. Please note the creep charged was from Chelsea.

The Frankston foreshore, statistically, was the most popular family beach in Victoria, for the calendar year 2012.

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Oh, I know I scoff and denigrate Frankston but I am comforted by the knowledge this could not possibly lower house values here. I’m just making cheap use of a stereotype. If I replaced the location names Frankston, Franger or Frankghanistan with placenames like Upotipotpon or Tittybong [real place names, BTW] you would think I was talking about Dad and Dave, wouldn’t you?

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On our way home from Corowa yesterday, we dropped one of TO’s relos in Coburg after which I crossed the Sydney Road to drop in on some of my own relos in Brunswick. Having lived most of my citified years in the inner suburbs, revisiting streets and houses and landmarks I have known intimately left me saddened to think of how much it would cost to move back. Sigh, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

Coburg [once a suburb named Pentridge and then later simply home to a prison named Pentridge] was my home for a few years. State governments being what they are, there seemed to be a problem keeping gates locked from the inside.

Many times I was awakened at night, not by the sounds of the police choppers swooping rooftops like grumpy magpies, but the bloody bright beams of chopper-lights illuminating the hairs up my nose.

One particularly memorable night I was awakened before the choppers and lights arrived by a very loud explosion 3 houses away over the back fence.

“Oh ****", said a woman, in tones not unlike those one often hears in Frankston. “Oh, now you’ve done it you ****, you’re in real ****ing trouble now. You’ve really ****ing done it this time!”

Some bloke’s only but repeated response was a great deal of loud groaning.

The sounds of ambulance and police sirens added to the yelling and chopping.

Dressed in appropriate evening wear [jimjams and slippers] we went out to watch the entertainment from a distance safe enough to avoid annoying our fearless peacekeepers.

The groaning moaning bloke, it transpired, had tried to rig a bomb to the car of his ex-Mrs but stupidly touched the car himself before leaving the scene of intended crime. One can only hope he was not left handed.

There was no report in the next day’s paper, nor was there any such thing as YouTube nor even, apparently, a Frankston Line involved.

As we wended our way through these inner suburbs yesterday it occurred to me that if Frankstonians migrated to Coburg, perhaps the average IQ in both areas would be elevated.

Oh well. I miss the inner suburbs, but miss the peace and quiet of a country town more.

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WARNING – A RUDE BIT

Mary had a little skirt

With a slit along each side

And everywhere that Mary went

The boys could see her thighs

Mary had another skirt

With a slit right in the front

But she doesn’t wear it very often