Bogan Reporter

On Sunday I found myself, wide eyed and bewildered, on the first of what I hope will be many fine journalistic deployments for a Melbourne magazine.  It was a hoot, but prepared, I was not.

You see, I’d spent the better part of the morning loitering aimlessly around Footscray, occasionally peering listlessly into some shop or another, wondering if I should go in.  My back had been giving me such hell that I’d thrown the towel in and elected to take a valium, despite it being the middle of the day.  The directionless meandering appeared to be some sort of side effect, and so, at the moment the phone buzzed me back to consciousness, I was pressed awkwardly against a glass window separating me from a delicious looking fruit flan.

It was the magazine.  Life is cruel.

The editor needed someone urgently to cover a film fest in the city.  By the time I noticed the alert, there was precisely one hour to go till lift off.

I couldn’t think.  I tried desperately to gather a list of pros and cons for analysis, but all I could come up with was this:  Do I have time to have a shower!?  I’ve never really been honest with myself about how long I spend in the shower, so I don’t know!!  I just don’t know!!

These thoughts were not helping.  Time was running thin.  And so, lacking the mental faculties required to make an informed choice, I figured my only option was to go.  I couldn’t risk living with regrets.

I ran home.  My legs felt heavy and like they were not made for running.  Inside, I accosted Tom with my armpit. 

‘DO I SMELL?’

Tom flinched.  ‘Um, maybe a little.’ 

‘FUCK IT!  Quick!  Lay out some edgy looking clothes for me!  I’m going to cover a festival!’

Tom looked very confused but elected not to question me.  I got in the shower and tried hard to hold my face directly under the flow the entire time, in an effort to blast away the latent effects of the pill.  Once out, I asked Tom if he thought it was a good idea to rush into the city and meet my new editor for the first time unprepared and on valium.  He said yes so we jumped in the car.

At the venue, I ran into my editor.  As in, we physically collided, apologised to eachother, then in a moment of recognition/horror, realised who one-another were.  As we said hello, it suddenly occurred to me that this was a terrible idea, that my editor had obviously intended for an experienced journalist to answer the call-out, and not some doped-up-too-keen-wannabe who clearly lacked the analytical skill to have garnered that fact in the first place.

Too late.  He was lovely and gracious and explained that ‘I don’t really know anything about this thing either,’ and in we went. 

The auditorium was big and shiny and buzzing with young arty types.  I began a process of looking at something, then quickly swinging my vision around to focus on something else, in an effort to discern if the valium was still affecting me.  A girl with orange hair looked at me as if I was mad.  This caused me to realise that my repeated head swinging was probably too obvious a test.  I desisted. 

The first video was in an Eastern European language and it was at this point that it occurred to me that I had been too busy drug-testing to think about what I should be doing.  The video was passing my by!  Should I be taking notes?  I decided yes.  But on what?  The general ambiance or the content of the film?  I wanted to pose all these questions to my editor, who was sitting and laughing at the appropriate times and looking decidedly not-confused.  But I wasn’t sure if any of them were professional enough.  So I scrawled random notes and chortled as convincingly as possible at the Romanian guy.

After what felt like 5 minutes but was actually an hour, my editor explained that he had to go and he would speak to me tomorrow.  And with that, I was on my own.  Just as I was beginning to relax, someone tapped me on the shoulder. 

‘Yes?’  I said to the neatly dressed girl with a clipboard.  I half expected to be kicked out.

‘Hi.’  She sounded very astute.  ‘Katie, right?’

Eeek.  ‘Yep.’

‘I’m Sarah.  Just confirming that you’re planning to stay and cover the awards at 7?’

I had no idea what she was talking about.  ‘Of course!’  I beamed, and she seemed satisfied with this response.

And so the end came and I was turfed out, with hours to go till the fabled awards and only a notebook full of frantic scrawl for company.  I figured I had a choice.  I could begin the process of stressing needlessly over what to record/ what direction the article should take/ whether I was even good enough to write it, or I could go to the restaurant and get a little bit drunk.  I elected to do the later.

By the time I returned for the awards, I was full of merriment and anticipation and cheered along with best of them as the hosts warbled out their show tunes.  I clapped, I laughed, I note-took.  I felt very reporter-like.  During an intermission Sarah approached once more, dropped off her email and bade me farewell.  But the paranoid part of me couldn’t help but notice her reserve.  Had I done something wrong?  I racked my brains, and was just about to dismiss the thought as ridiculous when my hand happened to brush against my head wear.  My beany!  I had left my bloody Collingwood beany on!  As the gravity of my faux pas set in, I wondered if Sarah would report back to the mag.  ‘That newbie reporter you sent,’ she would say in the smuggest of smuggery, ‘wore a novelty beany to the awards show!  Hardly the sort of person you want representing your fine publication!’  And they would laugh and laugh and I would be fired and cast from the industry like the dirty bogan Collingwood supporter I truly am.                       

I took the hat off.  I had hat head.  Then the night was over.

I’m yet to find out if Sarah chose to reveal my true identity to the magazine.  I can only hope she’s not a Carlton supporter.