Sinister: Scribbling all over the Nursery walls with crayon.....

[aale002 at xxx.nz]

Goodness, but I'm excited!  Spilling Ribena 
all over the show!  Can't wait to be let out
of the Nursery, in fact.  So I'm writing this 
in crayon on the wall (hope Mummy doesn't see) 
to keep myself amused.  I probably won't send
this to the list when I get my voice, though.  
Be too embarrassed.  Then again, if you're 
reading this now, it means I decided to prove 
to myself that I didn't really know it all 
after all.  That's pretty odd, when you think 
about it.

Actually, I'm not just writing this because I 
want to send it (or not...)I'm trying to avoid 
doing _real_ work for school.  I'm supposed to 
be working on an essay.  It's called '"Can't 
get enough of your love,baby...": Why Barry 
White could never be an Evolutionary 
Psychologist.'  I study philosophy and 
psychology.  Mostly, I spend a lot of time 
drinking tea and thinking and talking, about 
love and metaphors and brains and possible 
worlds and other cool things.  I want to be a 
rich and famous philosopher when I grow up.  
My mother has lost all hope that I'll ever get 
a real job.

And then there's the library.  I work at the 
university library...oh, by the 
way, I'm in Auckland, New Zealand.  Hi, 
Lawrence!  Congrats on your impending 
matrimonials. Nice to know that when I say 
something like <gruffvoice>'Jesus, Murray and 
Joseph, that's not a fair suck of the sav!' 
</gruffvoice>, someone will understand. ;-}

Anyways, I work at the library.  I have lots 
of jobs there.  One is to sit at a little desk 
by the entrance and exit and make sure people 
aren't stealing books.  I'm pretty crap at 
catching thieves, though, so mostly I just talk
to people and look at the girls.  Another of my 
jobs is working in the book returns room.  I 
have to check in all the books that come through 
the slots.  People put some fairly strange things 
through the slots as well as books.  We 
have a little collection on the wall.

The shifts I work are quiet ones, so there isn't 
really much to do.  No one returns books on 
Wednesday or Thursday nights, or on Saturday 
afternoons.  So I have to find other things to do 
to amuse myself.  Sometimes I wander across the 
road to see my friend Catherine, who works on the 
ticketing desk of the Maidment theatre. I have to 
be careful not to get caught, though.  I'm not 
supposed to leave the book returns room while I'm 
working.  So I pretend I'm a ninja, because no 
matter what movie you're watching, if it's got
ninjas in it, you know it's going to be Quality 
Entertainment.

We also have a competition in the book returns 
room to see who can find the funniest name. Some 
books have holds placed on them by patrons (we're 
not allowed to call them 'punters' anymore.)  
When we get a book with a hold on it, a little 
slip is printed out with the title of the book 
and the person who requested its name.  The best 
one I have found so far is 'Venus Wing Man Mo'.  
But I don't like playing that game, because 
everyone else always brings up my own name.  It 
is <deep breath> Andre Enrico Ciriaco Federico 
Ambrogio Alessi.  My sister's name is Katherine 
Amy Alessi, or just 'Kat'.  Go figure.

Also, one of the other things I do to amuse myself 
is have singalongs.  I call it 'DIY karaoke'.  
Tigermilk (my favourite album) is never far from 
the CD player, nor is If You're Feeling Sinister.  
I have a grand old time singing along to My 
Wandering Days Are Over (my favourite song most 
days) and Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying (my 
favourite song the rest of the time.)  I have to 
make sure no one can hear me, though, because I'm 
a baritone.  And singing B&S in baritone is just 
downright silly.

The story of how I first heard of B&S is a little 
silly, too.  I was living in Gisborne, which is a 
tiny little city that claims to be the first city 
in the world to see the sun each day.  Mostly, 
people just surf.  I had gone there for a birthday 
party one weekend, and spent my return bus ticket 
money on Guinness, so I ended up staying for a 
year.  I couldn't surf, but I had a deep voice,so 
I started working on an 'alternative' radio 
station that was operating out the back of a bar.  
Instead of getting paid in cash, we got free drinks 
at the bar.  One weekend, New Zealand indie legend 
Chris Knox (who does solo stuff and also has a side 
project called the Tall Dwarfs) came to play at the 
bar, and we interviewed him on air before the show.  
In one of the song breaks, he mentioned a "really 
cool band called Belle and Sebastian".  Then he
asked us if he could spend a few minutes alone in 
the studio to run the show his way.  We were all a 
little tiddly from the vodka-and-Red-Bulls at the 
time, so we agreed.  I don't quite know what he did, 
but from that time on, our computer programme with 
all our playlist on it started acting up.  We'd 
programme Bic Runga's Bursting Through and get 
Tool's Stinkfist, or Beck's Loser and get Dean 
Martin's That's Amore.  It made life interesting, 
anyway.

After that, I moved back here to Auckland to start 
uni(again), and while wandering through Borders one day, 
noticed they had a Belle and Sebastian album on 
listening post.  Remembering Chris Knox's enthusiasm, 
I popped on the headphones and...well, it was 
Tigermilk.  'Nuff said, really (except that my 
friends Ben, who's a Morris dancer, and Catherine, 
who isn't, both have copies too, because of my 
enthusiasm/nagging insistence.)

Now I spend my days doing all sorts of things.  
Darcy, who's a friend of mine too, challenges me to a 
beard-growing competition every summer, and wins every 
time, so this year I thought I'd get a head start.  I 
started three weeksago.  People say I look a little 
like a fox with it, because of the lighter patches, and 
the grey. I already had the nickname "Cunning Andre" 
(well, that’s what I call myself, anyways-my friend Mia 
calls me "Machiavellian"), so it seems appropriate, 
somehow.  I guess I'll have to send a picture too, 
because a beard is kind of a body part.

I also spend my weekends dancing like a dervish and 
having more spontaneous DIY karaoke hours.  There 
are a lot of really good local bands, like 
Goldenhorse, Handsome Geoffrey and Goodshirt, who 
are worth going to see when I can't get access to the 
CD player at the flat to play my B&S.  Goldenhorse 
especially are faves of mine, partially because my 
friend Catherine (who works at the Maidment) is friends 
with them, and because they have a name that encourages 
people to shout out "Go the 'horse!" at random moments 
during their gigs.

I'm toning things down a little now, though, because 
I'm getting on a bit (25 in December-eeeek!)  I'm 
trying to be a Good Vegetarian, but I seem to fall off 
the wagon by eating lamb kebabs about three times a week, 
and the occasional Double Whopper.  Darcy says that makes 
me a Bad Vegetarian. My mother is also worried I'll never 
find a serious girlfriend in time to have babies and settle 
down, like all my old friends.  I don't really pay much 
attention to her when she's like that.  Instead I just 
carry on haphazardly pursuing a Sexy Nice Jewellery Making 
Girl that I know and writing my Great New Zealand Novel.  
It's called Losing Hope, and it's about not being in love 
anymore.  Or about how the people that aren't with us 
still affect us.  Or something. I get to use my three 
favourite words, anyway:  susurrus, bungalow and expunge.

Well, I did go on a bit, didn't I?  Bit too self-absorbed, 
too.  Bugger.  Never was very good at editing.  Oh well. 
Must do better next time.

Right-o, that's me,

Cunning Andre

 



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