sawtell.org.au

Oh my everything. Not at all well, or entirely clear on what I've been doing for the last 48 hours. I'll try to work backwards.

Allison's parents are up here for a couple of days, arriving late yesterday after long periods spent completely stationary in appalling traffic. For that matter, I've never seen Sawtell so busy. There's a permanent line of parked cars up to our house from the First Avenue shops.

Looking for a place to eat, we found an hour-long queue to the bistro counter at the pub, and presumably another hour or two before orders found their way to the plate stage. With pretty much every place in the street either packed to overflowing, mind-bendingly noisy, cardiac-arrestingly expensive, or some combination of the above, we settled on the RSL.

RSL clubs benefit tremendously from lowered expectations. If they're anything less than repellently ugly, noisy, and populated entirely by unfortunate souls who look more like patients than members, you're pleasantly surprised. By this standard, the Sawtell RSL club is rather fine; the sort of place you'd be embarrassed, but not quite ashamed, to take your in-laws for dinner.

Having made our selections from the menu of crumbed and fried things, we ordered a bottle of wine which Allison promptly declared "too passionfruity". Not to worry; I volunteered to polish off the remainder of that bottle (I think setting the stage for the current haziness of memory) and find an alternative.

It is a universal truth that the management of any large organisation will have a very clear and detailed understanding of what is going on, and that this will be completely wrong in every important respect. A few weeks ago Allison and I were in the RSL and found that of our first few preferences on the wine list, none were to be found in the refrigerator at the bar. It was a new wine list, we were told, so the stock hadn't yet rotated into sync with it. That sounded persuasive, but was of course false. Our first bottle of wine last night came from a blackboard recommendation and was not on the wine list. Our second choice was not available in the fridge of the bistro bar, so I was sent to try another bar, where not only did they not have it, or my third choice, but swore blind they'd never even heard of them. However they were able to recommend something similar which was of course not on the wine list.

Here's the thing: the wine list exists only in the imagination of the RSL club management. It will never correspond more than marginally to what's available at the bar, and then only by coincidence. To qualify for management of an RSL club you not only have to be capable of epic self-delusion, you have to be incapable of seeing the world even remotely as it is. This is the only way you can live with yourself in such a role.

In the mind of an RSL club manager, his clientele are well-heeled, refined, and discerning, rather than foul-mouthed, small-minded elderly gambling addicts who don't quite yet qualify for meals on wheels. He can claim with total sincerity that crunchy meat, soggy vegetables, and condiments individually packaged in plastic sachets is not merely food but cuisine. The musicians he books are the cream of the country's talent, rather than cloth-eared old men with delirium tremens who plough through heartbreakingly soulful Roy Orbison songs at breakneck speed with a gay smile and a wink at the most ambulatory woman in the room.

After dinner we sat out in the cool of the back patio (Oh, you have a "patio" now, not just a back step? "Mater, come in from the patio, I'm just about to give a recital on the graarnd piaaarno!"), and I slipped into the usual daze as Allison and her parents discussed at length the intimate details of the lives of people I've never met (and I suspect they haven't, either). I think that's where I lost track of how much I'd been drinking, and where most of the damage was done.

It's all coming back now. On Saturday we bought a mattress that cost as much as our last overseas holiday. I have no idea how that happened. We set out to buy flippers in order to go snorkelling. Much of married life is like this. It's made of latex and cunningly arranged individual springs (the mattress, not my marriage). The salesman assured us that the latex contains no chemicals. Not entirely sure how that's possible, but he was a nice young man so I wasn't going to start an argument.

We were shopping on the far side of Coffs in once of those places built for the maximum comfort and convenience of your motor vehicle. No shop in the complex can be reached from any other shop without driving. We lunched in the nearby KFC, giving us an opportunity to scrutinise at close range people who you don't often see because they aren't comfortable being anywhere more than ten feet away from their car. Large groups of young men travelling north, two to a car, shouting comradely obscenities to each other all the way. No shirt was without a corporate logo.

Branding is a marvellous thing. I was in Toormina the other day and saw a sign advertising "Chicken Shop", with an arrow. You'd never see KFC promotional material using the words "chicken shop". Nobody aspires to "chicken shop". "Chicken shop" isn't going to make you feel good about yourself. It's going to get you chicken, and what use is that to your fragile ego?

That's why "Kentucky Fried Chicken" became "KFC". Freed from the pedestrian reality of "we're a chicken shop - we sell chicken", they are able to make all sorts of grand nebulous promises about what the embrace of this now meaningless acronym will do for you. You'll be young and beautiful, lounging with your beautiful friends on the gleaming bonnet of your beautiful car, laughing uproariously at the sheer absurdity of your ludicrously rich and satisfying life. Maybe you'll even nibble on a piece of chicken before resuming shopping; who knows?

Nobody ever sold chicken by selling chicken. There's a lesson in that for all of us, and I'm fairly certain I don't like it.

Allison is now off buying a bed to fit the mattress which we've just worked out is too large for our current bed. In due course we'll conclude that this bed is too large for our bedroom, and we have no option but to move house. I think I'm feeling well enough to start drinking again.