MELLIPOP GETS OUTED AS A BOGAN BY A SCOTSMAN IN A BELGIAN PUB

Ok, so what exactly is it about me that screams “bogan” (or “westie” for our brethren in the Eastern states)?

So it’s Friday afternoon and I’m in some wanky overpriced faux-European pub in Perth with a few workmates. Think $6 for a stubbie of Cascade Light beer and unpronouceable ales from the Eastern Bloc served in fucking wine glasses for $10 a pop. And before the geo-political lectures commence, let me first say that I do realise that Belgium is not and never was a Communist state, but by that same token must also confess that I don’t really know or care where the fuck it is. Their beer is shit and expensive. Enough said.

So I’m serving tenure at the bar, waiting to invest the meagre remainder of the “Sydney Fund” with my otherwise-occupied ale-slinging bartender Murray, and am restless and distracted enough to start up a conversation with the gentleman standing beside me.

Turns out to be a bloody Scotsman, of course. Like all people in Perth – or to be precise, those who weren’t born or raised here - he didn’t seem to know exactly why the hell he was here, but was certain enough to state for the record that out of all the places he had been in Australia, it had to rank as the most soulless and boring of the lot. A statement which would otherwise have seen him lynched on the spot by a posse of Perth locals hepped up on Euro-trash beer and small-town parochial fervour, had he not been speaking to a similarly lost and bored expat from Sydney, who shared his feelings of bewilderment and exile.

So we chat as we both continue our lengthy wait for Murray – gunning hard for the title of “World’s Least Dynamic Bartender” – to attend to our orders before heading back to our respective beer drinking buddies.

Turns out that my Scottish companion had been living in Coogee back in Sydney, and asked me where I was from. So I told him that I had been living in and around the Inner West for the last few years – Newtown, Leichhardt, Camperdown – and he nodded his appreciation for the region.

So I’m choking back the tears as I’m reminiscing about Toa - my erstwhile bartender from the Annandale Hotel - pulling me a fast and cheap VB from the tap, when completely out of the blue, my Scottish friend asked me if I was from Blacktown.

What the fuck!?!

I’m still fucking speechless, even now. I got fucking outed within the space of three minutes. The guy was spot on, yes, but where does a Scotsman get off spotting my bogan roots from over 4000kms away? It led me to start thinking, what exactly is it about me that screams “bogan”? I’m smart, I’m, literate, I’m articulate – and I wasn’t even wearing my Meatloaf t-shirt!

Sure, so I say the word “fuck” more often than may otherwise be deemed necessary, I’m a smidgin rough around the edges and I tend to speak loudly and without refinement, but I have a job, a future and a full set of teeth.

I still don’t get it.

Though I have to say in all honesty, that I’m secretly proud of my working class roots. It gives me a fabulous arsenal of ammunition to fuck with the heads of pretentious twats from private-school leafy-suburb backgrounds. Me with my parent’s pristine collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and $90 a year public education. And a university degree paid for with riches accumulated slinging sausages in a butcher shop (managed by my Dad) for five years. The very same fertile environment which gave birth to my love of VB. Fuck the smart bombs. I’m a smart bogan.

Say it loud, I’m a Westie and I’m proud.

Now bring me a beer so easy to pronounce it’s fucking abbreviated!


Man that post sucked. Too much cheap wine and too many hyphens.