Doing things alone can be intimidating.

Raising children solo might be tricky and by the way that bloody red hen was banging on about it, growing grain to make bread is pretty tough too, but nothing is so daunting as the prospect of going to the cinema alone.

For some reason, going to the movies has always been a social activity – because eating buttery cholesterol puffs while staring at a screen and not talking to the other person sounds like a pretty good way to get to know each other if you ask me. Movie theatres have always been pretty intimidating for me, which probably has a lot to do with the type of people who would hang out there in my golden adolescence. The cinema doors were also the main drop-off point for the shopping centre, so you had to face the dirty skegs every time you went “down town”. 13-year-old Dannielle would be just trying to get down to Supré for another raa raa skirt and these drongos would be sitting around with nothing better to do with their lives than stare you down. Turning up alone usually meant they would yell things at you. So the prospect of going to such an establishment alone has always been met with a certain level apprehension.

But on Sunday, I set myself a challenge. I dared myself to go to a movie alone. I’m not usually one for space movies that don’t have Bruce Willis in a starring role, but there was quite a bit of hype going on around one particular film, and even though I had no friends I could physically discus said film with, I do enjoy knowing that people are talking about on The Google. So I made the decision to get myself to a movie theatre and watch it. I never saw myself as the type to be so desperate to see a Matthew McConaughey movie that I would go it alone, but apparently that’s the reality I’m living in.

It’s a pretty big step in my life, so I wanted to document my experience. As always, I was slightly unorganised, and didn’t have time/couldn’t be arsed to log my thoughts before taking off, or to devise a clever way of recording my experiences. And because I was in a public place in which people are usually in groups, I decided to text myself. I’ve compiled those texts here.

There were certain times when I couldn’t actually text myself mostly because these movie people apparently frown on having bright lights while a motion feature is played. So I’ve also compiled the texts I would have sent myself.

My adventure begins when I step through the cinema doors, unflanked by the social weapons of plebs that make me look popular.

3.49pm buys ticket. Points out cashier’s Hunger games pin saying, “do you all have to wear that?” with a monotone delivery. Comes across much ruder than anticipated.

2.50pm the seat selection game begins. Scans theatre for less crowed rows of seats, taking care not to meet the gaze of friended-up movie-goers. Opts for the back row, reasoning that the back seat of a bus was the row for the cool kids and a theatre should be no different. Apparently no one in this town is cool, because the entire row is empty. Picks seat in the dead centre.

The actual (but somewhat doctored for reasons of literary consistency and humour) texts are as follows:

2.59pm opens pump bottle with mouth. Miraculously managed to spill water down tight cardigan sleeve and has to spit out the plastic cover on the sly. I’m undercover here, and I don’t want to attract attention.

3.01pm another lone ranger sits three seats away from me. The back seat is not longer the place for cool kids. Remembers that the back seat was filed with whackjobs in my high school years, such as the guy who would carry two pocket knives to cut holes into the seat where he would shove his Ritalin instead of taking it as prescribed.

3.02pm feels uncomfortable for texting while the obligatory “shut your phone off you bastard” ad plays. Hopes no one cottons on to the fact that I am actually texting myself.

3.06pm remembers the prunes consumed less than two hours ago.

This is the points when the lights darken and the movie begins.

Had I have been able to send texts to myself from my brain without going through the menial tasks of using my fingers and some form of technology, the rest of the afternoon would have unfolded like this:

3.40pm hears people chomping on popcorn, justifies that snacking is appropriate. Pulls one of the four stashed carrots from my handbag and attempts to take the stealthiest bite known to man, in an attempt to make it sound like I was also eating butter-covered slaty puffs.

3.41pm Bite sounds normal, subsequent chewing does not. Instantly recalls that time I was busted sneaking a carrot through security at the airport (I had a pair so scissors in my bag, so I had to go to the back of the line and remove it. When I went thought again, the cranky redhead said “I thought I told you to take all your lotion [my word, not his] out of your bag!” I then try to explain that I don’t have a plastic bag of lotion, while he says “hang on, is that a carrot in there?!” sparking a uproar of laughter amongst every airport staff in earshot, so loud my feeble attempts to defend myself with a “you know it’s a notorious snack” is barely audible.)

3.42pm swallows under-chewed raw vegetable so as not to disturb the other guests.

4.23pm gets a serious fright when something bangs (spoiler alert!) suddenly becomes aware of how alone I am as I try to compose myself.

5.49pm movie finishes, is glad that no one is around because said feature film packed too much into the last 20 minutes with cylindrical living pods completely unexplained, making any utterances in regards to the film quite silly sounding. Looks at coupled people below in attempt to gauge their response.

5.50pm Becomes aware of bros re-entering giggling consciousness, gets up to leave before said evolved males turn their laughter towards the sole sister a few seats away from them.

5.51pm avoids peeing in the cinema toilets to sot avoid the gaze of fellow female movie goers, who may have assumed I was merely putting on a brave face after being stood up rather than being an independent grown-up consumer of pop culture.

6pm nearly wets self fumbling with keys to get inside secure dwelling.

6.01pm realises that solo expedition resulted in neither being pointed at nor being asked when romantic partner was supposed to arrive nor having kids throw rocks. Deems expedition a success.

I’m not an expert on viewing motion pictures in a public place without a friendship group, but from my experience, it’s not too bad. Sure, it can be a little daunting and you may get a feel looks of pity because you didn’t bring someone with you, but then it’s the same story at family gatherings. I guess it kind of feels like when your butt’s a little sweaty and that dampness makes you second-guess whether or not the lining of your uterus has soaked through several layers of clothing – you think the stain of solitude is immediately identified by everyone within earshot, and everyone is whispering about why someone what deign to step foot outside in such a state. But in reality, it’s all in your head and everyone is too busy looking at their phones.

Fitting in is hard, particularly in a leotard.

The other day I went to a body step class. As one who usually restricts her athletic activity to the solitary anonymity of the treadmill line, participating in classes has been cause of apprehension in the past. But the body pump class (named that way because Les is really aiming for water cooler innuendo when you explain to your colleagues why your arse is so sore – I actually said I was “sore but satisfied” the other day) hadn’t ended in tragedy, so I thought branching out to something different would be a good idea – that and my headphones were shot and I couldn’t see myself lasting a significant period jogging to the Pitbull party tracks gym radios seem to blast at full volume.

I jumped on my step with high hopes and attempted to walk like the perky lady on the raise platform in front of me. Easier said than done. As the instructor added combos and step changes willy nilly (probably not willy nilly, but to me, that little shuffle came out of nowhere and had no business being in an exercise routine.) I thought that surely everyone else would be making the same faces as me. But, apparently I was alone in a room full of women.

I looked around and noticed it. They were subtle when roaming the wilderness alone, but when they were herded together in a grapevinning pack it became clear what I had stepped into.

The excellent posture was more than stern parenting. The flex-sneakers that meant you could point your toes and not slip across the floor was no coincidence. Neither was the way they could figure out how to get all the hair off their faces and still look feminine. They wore their work out gear with personality – they weren’t wearing the faded sports bra they’ve been rocking since high school, with three dollar five pack socks. They didn’t just throw any junk on to sweat in public. These girls had a workout wardrobe, with coordinating colours instead of multiple shades of “this will keep my boobs from looking like a pair of condoms half-filled with water” and “this will keep my stomach from looking like a lave lamp on the treadmill”. They had workoutfits, because they liked to look good while working out. Because that’s what dancers do. And I was in a room filled with dancers or ex-dancers.

Suddenly, I felt like the shorter, but probably just as heavy six-year-old dancer who had followed her sister to jazz-ballet classes. I couldn’t master the box-step or the grape vine and my shimmy was shithouse. And as one of the two chubbier girls who pranced about in what was essentially underwear, I felt a little out of place (particularly because the other girl could actually dance). I stuck out like the fat bulging out of my armpit over the slightly-too-tight leopard. Technically I am also an ex-dancer, but the extent of my prancing career was hardly glittering. My first year culminated in me skipping around in a circle then sitting down on-stage while wearing a red hessian sack. The second year saw me wear a black swimsuit and a straw tail while skipping around in a circle (again) and progress to turning my head in the same direction as a young Jonathon Taylor Thomas told me to. Now, most of my dancing incorporates heavy thrusting, squat-walks completed with a dash of some kind of fit. We were not of the same flock.

And it showed. While they leapt around their mini stages like fluoro-clad gazelles, I was more akin to the hippo floundering in in the mud. To make matters worse, I was wearing my black National tee shirt.

While my dress was now appropriate for my body type, I was that bulbous second armpit again. I have never had the urge to step ball change in my life, but suddenly I felt completely worthless because I couldn’t dance to the Rogue Traders’ Voodoo Child.

I usually try to wrap these little rants up with some kind of takeaway message as an end that justifies my meaningless existence, but I’ve reached my word limit and can’t seem to come to any profound conclusion. But I can leave you with this: if you’re trying to convince yourself that you weren’t that bad leaving a gym class don’t look the instructor in the eye, because that well-meaning “it gets easier!” remark can’t be pushed aside as easily as the undie-bit of your leotard when you need to pee.

There are certain types of lonely.

There’s the kind of lonely that a man who calls himself Akon forced a chipmunk to sing about and the kind of lonely that a marionette bearing a not-so coincidental resemblance to a certain former North Korean leader belted out in a miniature fortress. I fall into the middle-ground category, taking in aspects of both. Lonely because I don’t have my gurl (and by “gurl”, I mean “friends, acquaintances or even the last resort family members you talk to when there is literally no one else around”, and I also mean for you to say “girl” with a bit of urban sass) by my side (and by “by my side”, I mean “within a radius that would be reasonable for me to drive to”), and also lonely because there’s nobody I can relate to – e.i. no one to dress up as the golden snitch with. So my category can be best described as the “thinking that I may continue going to remedial massage sessions because it will help my neck pain, but mostly because the full hour of human contact should quench my thirst enough to prevent me to getting weird in normal interactions” kind.

Last Friday I had the realisation that it had been five weeks since I had had a hug. I’ve read that this kind of isolation is not healthy. A magazine told me that as we become more occupational health and safety obsessed and more likely to communicate via electronic means rather than in face-to-face fashion (social media is the devil), the human race is missing out on skin-on-skin contact, and like all modern developments (computers, televisions, even those fangdangle chairs everyone seems to have these days), it’s making us fat and depressed. And I don’t mean skin-on-skin in a dirty way (I immediately imagined an extreme close up of two hairless cats rubbing up against each other, with the pale pink, wrinkled, and oily-but-still-flaky skin of one cat slowly dragging along the skin of the other’s). Just things like patting someone on the arm or even as minor as brushing up against someone on your way past. I’m stretching my memory a bit here, but this longing for touch – be it erotic, platonic or accidental – leaves a gaping hole in our hearts which become filled with food and sad R&B songs played on a loop. So as much as we may think we thrive as queens of our own little frozen kingdoms of isolation, our pesky human needs get in the way of our broad-range people hating, meaning at some point we either have to give in to tenderness or pay someone to tie us up in leather and whip us.

However, I have neither the financial resources to pay for a dominatrix experience, nor the friend-ial recourses to. As such, I have a fear that I may, either consciously or subconsciously, take the human contact by force. Just as convicts may have stolen a loaf of bread to feed their starving families, I may resort to “running into” people to feed my starving touch-receptors. I’ve already stooped to the embarrassing low of spending my weekends hovering around department stores so the staff are forced to address me, so I think it’s fair to say the threat is imminent. It might start with an innocent graze as I breeze past someone, but it may escalate to tucking of a tag back in someone’s shirt on the street, and result in a bout of “surprise trust exercises” where I stand on high surfaces and chuckle gleefully as strangers scramble to catch me.

Worse still, I may resort to asking to spot bros at the gym. I mean, I was watching Dating Naked the other night and actually thought that sharing a quad bike with a sweaty chest-haired awkward man wouldn’t be the worse thing you cold do on reality television, so who knows how much this impact my perceptions of normal behaviour. As such, I have made a mental note to book that follow up remedial massage… and to look into how pricey one of those hairless cats would be.

There is a significant disconnect between my written voice and my actual voice.

This may be due to the fact that I work in the world of print media, where everything is proofed, edited and subject to scrupulation of my incredibly literate peers. So I feel somewhat safe in what I’m putting out into the world. I suppose you could say this has bred a bout of literary laziness. Importantly, the biggest influence on the intellectual clout of my communication is the length of time I have between when the thought is formed in my brain, and when it is communicated – either verbally or in writing. It takes time to properly phrase a thought in a way that gets your message across while adhering to the grammatical and social rules of the English language. I’m used to generally having quite a bit of time between thinking a thought and having someone read it.

I fear this has made me lazy, and has significantly detracted from my of the cuff ability. Just like trying to burp the alphabet after a decade of abstaining from the party trick may result in a pile of vomit, I fear that sitting on the communicative bench for so long will result in an inability to speak in a manner that conveys the notion of my being a human who was raised by other humans, not dogs (although those Darling children were effectively brought up by a Saint Bernard and they were pretty damn articulate).

Behind the filter of backspacing, thesaurus functions and the stern reprimand of the green squiggly line indicating I did grammar bad, there is the frightening reality of verbal incompetence (in my mind, I said “incontinence”, but because I have the luxury of time, I was able to correct the error equating my speaking ability to a constant accidental stream of piss – which, perhaps might be a more apt description).

I’m fine when leisurely pecking at the keyboard, however off the cuff is a complete disaster. When you suffer from the two extremes of thoughtful utterances – e.i. not thinking at all (which once led me to say “an elephant never forgets” when an extremely overweight teacher alluded to the fact that she would remember the actions of me and my friends as she was rousing on us) and over-thinking it so much you are paralysed by indecision – you’re going to have a bad time. I’ll either speak without thinking and end up using the term “yowse” (not actually a word and a bastardisation of the English tongue), or be nailing it halfway though my sentence until my mind is like “yeah, you’re killing this” with the internal fistpumping promptly re-railing my train of thought, causing me to screw up. Or, on the flipside, I won’t say anything because I’ve thought too long about what I’m going to say that my opportunity to speak passed three minutes ago. I also forget words, as having Google on hand to tell me the word for something you dig food with means you don’t really have to try too hard.

My brain was flabby, but I thought this may have had something to do with the fact that I haven’t spoken to people very much in the past month. Having moved some four hours away from friends, my only interactions outside of work were with the slow roundabout users – and even then, these conversations were only one-way.

So when my parents came to visit, I was thrilled to be able to once again engage in conversational pleasantries, testing myself to see how long it would take for me to sound like an idiot. After a few hours of catching up, we went to a pub for dinner. Being a legitimate grown-up big girl, I went to the bar to order a round of drinks, ordering a “Sex with Nate” upon the bartender’s suggestion.

When I went back to order food, the bar tender asked if I was enjoying the suggestively-named beverage. “I’m really enjoying it – it’s tingling on my lips and I can feel it deep inside of me,” I responded. Laughter ensued and my innards were celebrating, scratching another dash into my brain wall under the heading “conversational wins” – which, compared to the column beside it, was quite scant. But, true to form, my conversational high was followed by a plummet of grand proportions. I forgot the word for “mushroom”.

Daylight Savings is absolute hogwash.

This is not just another notch on the belt of “things that New South Wales does stupidly”, this is a pair of braces that have gone up so many notches that the wearer has a camel toe and a bleeding perineum.

It all started a few weeks ago – two, if my memory serves correctly, but because of the way this ridiculous concept has altered my cranial activity and concept of time, who knows! I was laying in bed on a Sunday, having just been awoken by the mysteriously sophisticated and unbelievably reliable timing of my body clock. I had a quick squiz at the time and was perplexed. “What the 6am?” I wondered to myself (well probably not word-for-word, because your thoughts are rarely formed in words, with sentences and correct syntax – they’re more conceptual and responsive. For example: *hears conversation about wedding rings* – brain replays that scene on The Simpsons when Bart and Lisa blow into their special red and white swirly whistle rings. *giggles to self* followed by a struggle to briefly summarise the scene and provide a verbal link as to why you thought of that… this may be a conversation for another time.) You see, I’ve been rising at around 7am, so for my body to automatically wake me up an hour earlier made very little sense. This made me think that perhaps I had been woken up by my bod to attend to other businesses than purely just being awake. Did I need to go to the bathroom? Had I forgotten someone’s birthday? Was there a ghost trying to entre my brain through my ear passage?

After a few minutes, I drifted back to sleep. I carried about my day as per usual. I went to the gym. I watched TV. I tried to shut out the sound of a baby magpie struggling for life in front of its clearly unimpressed parents. But something felt off. Then, when it was 6.30pm and the sun was still hanging about, it hit me. And it hit me hard.

Now, I’m nearly at the point of my word limit where I would start wrapping things up (or at least getting to the point), but I am far too enraged to be adhering to self-imposed limitations. I have things to say, dammit!

Daylight Savings is a foolish idea that makes very little sense. I hear people harping on about the extra hour of sunlight in the evenings, but people fail to mention that hour was robbed from the morning.

Now I don’t know about you, but one of the best things about the weather being warmer is that it becomes incredibly easy to get out of bed. And considering I had just moved to one of the chilliest places in the country, I was counting on the fact that heat would speed up my morning routine. But along comes Daylight Savings who effectively turns on the figurative atmospheric air conditioner and draws the shades so getting out of bed is akin to having your cervix scraped for medical reasons – you know you should do it, but it is wildly unpleasant so you end up putting it off.

Another thing that stinks about it is that you are ultimately living a meaningless lie for months at a time. One of the things I have always enjoyed about Summer, besides that pants become optional almost everywhere, is that you can be sitting around enjoying quality company and not-so-quality beverages and marvel that the sun is still glowing at 7pm. You can’t do that with Daylight Savings, because someone pushed the clock forward to make this happen. It’s like cheating on a test or creating fake profiles to comment nice things on your Insty selfies – you get the results you were after, but they have less substance than an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (which, while I’m on a rant, why the shit is this show still on the air? Channel 11 should be Simpsons re-runs and nothing else). New South Wales is living a hollow, delusional existence.

But perhaps the worst thing about Daylight Savings is the changes in television scheduling. On the other side of the border, it had always been a nuisance – your zinger tweets would never feature on Q&A and you had to exercise constant vigilance if you wanted to confirm to Karl and Lisa that you do, indeed, wake up with Today. But last night, it was more than an irritating inconvenience – it was heartbreaking. Facebook and Snapchat were abuzz about Dumb and Dumber being aired on GO (apparently all my friends were staying in on a Saturday night, which does make me feel a little better about my lack of weekend plans), with the movie at the part when the pair is in Aspen, towards the pointy end of the film. I had been lying in bed when this was going on, so I leaded out of the covers to watch the dying minutes of the cinematic poetry of this pairing. But, alas, it had already wrapped up thanks to Daylight Savings. Instead, I was met with Yesman.

Expecting Dumb and Dumber and being faced with Yesman is like when I practically forced that work experience kid to watch Billy Madison only for him to report back that he liked I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry better – you have to summon all your power of restraint to not physically lash out and then implode into a ball of lost faith in humanity.

Sure, write this off as a trivial disgruntlement. Tell me that time is a mere illusion invented by the human mind. And that a second is just a word used so we can communicate a shared understanding of the concept of our elapsing existence and that I shouldn’t get so worked up about it. But years of sci-fi cartoons have taught us that tinkering with the fabric of time is dangerous and downright foolish, so with these New South Wales cowboys thinking they can play around with something as unifying as the way human measure their existence willy nilly, I am extremely unsettled.

Sometimes I worry that my subconscious makes me do ridiculous things just so I can get a good column out of it.

After just three days living in a new, much chillier, part of Australia, I had a classic clueless blow-in mishap. I acted on advice to park in the underground parking area of a well known store pedalling various goods at rock bottom prices (for the sake of disguising it, let’s just call it schmay-schamrt – at the moment this establishment is selling novelty cat socks for a dollar fifty so it’s in your best interests to work it out!), which unbeknownst to me, locks up of an evening. Not just some shaky security guard who is counting down the days to his retirement draping a chain across the exit, but sturdy rolladoors, bolted window caging and sternly-worded signage aimed at deterring robbers and unsavoury folk. There was no sneaking in there.

So when I returned to my sweet ride, I was fairly unhappy.

Luckily, I was out having a dirty pub feed with my new colleagues and one kind soul offered to pick me up for work the next day once we realised my automobile had been inCARcerated (Yes, I DO I feel like Jesus after that ripper play on words).

The next day I was picked up as promised, however there was already a passenger in the front seat. As I buckled up, names were exchanged. But you generally follow up an exchange of names with more words unless you’re wearing a Bogart-style fedora and trying to establish that this will be a tense relationship.

I found out that it is slightly awkward trying to talk to someone when an ergonomically-correct configuration of foam and steel is creating a physical barrier between you and the subject of your attempt at conversation. The seat creates a barrier more difficult to overcome than a simple cradle of upright comfort and safety; it creates a conversational barrier. In the world of communication research, we would call this noise (I think, but just go with it – I mean there wasn’t much actual content we had to memorise in COMU, but the communication models made up about 70% of that. And COMU and/or JOUR students didn’t go to uni because they could learn facts, but because they could pull things out of their arse and manage to pass these nuggets of confusion off as knowledge). “Noise” is what prevents the message from being interpreted by the receiver as the sender intended (yeah, that truly complex notion took me four years to learn. No wonder my tertiary institution has effectively labelled my degree as worthless by proposing to discontinue it). Noise can be literal noise – such as the sound of a foghorn or an irate crowd bellowing abuse at a 16-year-old referee – or it can be the distracting fact that the sender spat while speaking, that the receiver has “hey there, blimpy boy” stuck in his head, or the sender’s thick bogan accent. Essentially, noise can be almost anything in this context.

In the context of my car meeting, the car seat was a noise so loud it was deafening. When I first meet someone, I like to establish the fact that I am equal to a male, so I do what the menfolk do: extend my open hand for a firm and brief, but meaningful handshake. Unfortunately when you attempt to pull off a manoeuvre like this in the close confines of an automobile, it can be quite tricky. The verbal greeting was followed up by an uncomfortable few seconds of trying to meet each other’s hands and failing – kind of like when you’re walking in the path of another person, and you both try to dodge each other by going the same way and then there’s that awkward dance-laugh you both do before scurrying away to deny to yourself what just happened. Except I didn’t scurry off to bury my shame in my internal quicksand of repressed memories – not yet anyway.

I decided that, given the handshake was out of the question, I would pat the man on the head. Now, clearly my subconscious was looking for another Dannielle-humiliates-herself-again story because I deemed it appropriate to PAT A COMPLETE STRANGER ON THE HEAD. The worst part is that I didn’t even debate whether this type of contact would be well received, or even make any sense. I instinctively reached over the head rest to fondle this poor guy’s skull cap. It was like my brain had thought about this situation in advance and prepared a Plan B option to revert to in the case of a disallowed handshake, and it was very, very drunk at the time.

The move was met with silence as we drove onwards. I sat there completely nonchalant about the whole exchange, thinking that I’d just nailed another encounter with a human. I was almost proud of myself. It wasn’t until about two minutes later that I realised what a huge mistake I had made. I am glad the head-petted stranger was riding shotgun, because the expression my face upon this realisation would have been quite confronting had it been visible to the other occupants of the vehicle.

I got out of the car in a daze, stunned by what had just transpired. I like to think that normally, I wouldn’t find replicating the way you interact with a dog as a suitable means of establishing warm feelings between myself and a stranger. So surely something in my brain was fishing for column fodder. No one can be that bad at people, can they?

I’m having unnatural feelings towards a piece of plastic.

Yesterday I went to change my licence from Queensland to New South Wales. It sounds like a mildly irritating visit to the Department of Transport, but really it’s like denouncing your religion in order to join a cult. This simple administrative task is the equivalent to shaving my head, burning my clothes and pulling on hessian underwear.

I didn’t think that moving states would be such a punch in the guts. On my first visit, I remember thinking that if there was some kind of impending natural disaster in which all humanity was doomed, I would hope into my noble Camry and speed towards the boarder. I wouldn’t be having pre-marital intercourse on the roof of a school building or eating seven different types of pie while setting off fireworks, I would be encased in a slightly dented metallic blue capsule all by myself, but I would be happy, because I would be in my home state. Like a seagull flying out to the ocean, I would go out to that sunny wilderness to die.

I know I’m generally quite a morbid person (I get a real kick out of checking the funeral notices – and that’s not just because I once saw an actual Theresa Green AND a Frank Grimes, although it helps), but this is pretty extreme. It might have something to do with the licence plates. As much as I hate the bogan-esque “8 in a Row” slogan plates, they sure are comforting. “The Sunshine State” reminds me that paradise is home, and “The Smart State” makes me glow with misplaced pride of my supposed intellect. More importantly, they just make aesthetic sense. Maroon or green text with a white background complements any vehicle. But the bright yellow plate with black text instantly turns a sweet ride into a crapwagon. If adorned by such grotesque physical notifications of registration, my beloved Nancy (who also goes by “The Chariot” and “that big family car parked askew AND 20 metres away from the kerb”) would go from a fine automobile to straight-up seedy. While I was driving, I ended up behind a fellow Queensland plate and happily fluctuated from 100 to 85 kilometres an hour just to feel like I was back home again. I’d only been in the state for an hour.

After being in this patch of land longer than a mere 60 minutes, more things have rubbed me the wrong way. For one, the newsreaders are different. The slick guy on the 7.30 Report is now a woman – and while I’m all for sisters doing it for themselves (both the movement and the hit track), I grew accustomed to the fellow’s sweeping side part. The Nine Network is now called NBN, which feels like a copyright violation. Channel 10 put Mike effing Munro behind a news desk for the sake of these people. Those twinkling eyes belong on a set with a grossly over-sized book, not delivering glum bulletins about robberies. The lottery signage is also very disappointing. Two colours in the place of an actual rainbow is severely underwhelming. And the police officers don’t seem like they’d be as friendly. They don’t seem like the type of guys who would make inappropriate jokes while you’re trying to blow into the breath tester or give you a ride home from the local show in the back of the patrol vehicle because you’re too drunk and cold to walk. I have yet to actually have a conversation with a police officer (touch wood), but that’s not the point. This place is unpleasantly foreign. Sure, the supermarkets here may have bottle shops attached to them, but that kind of thrilling convenience just doesn’t make up for familiarity.

So when I was sitting in line at the Department of Something To Do With Roads Communicated In A More Annoying Way, I was quite unimpressed – and not just by the guy behind the counter who was wearing P.E teacher sunglasses on his head at 4 in the afternoon (he’d obviously been wearing them all day, despite the fact that he doesn’t need to be shielded from the sun at his 9-5 desk job). At the time, I was pretty crank that I had to walk to the bank, notify them of my change of address and get them to print out a statement with said address to present to the licence bestowing lady, and was even more grumpy when I was told that information from Queensland was needed before my licence could be granted.

But in hindsight, I am glad that I have one last weekend with that yellow plastic rectangle affirming my affiliation with a superior patch of land. It’s going to be an emotional 48 hours.

Smells are very important.

You can’t pick up a Cosmopolitan magazine these days without it having some reference to pheromones playing some role in the attraction process (you also can’t pick one up without wondering who comes up with ‘those positions’, and how they keep a straight face in the editorial meetings). And fair enough. Smell attracts you to food, it can improve the reading experience (I have often wondered if I would be as big of Harry Potter fan as I am now if those books didn’t smell so fantastic) and it warns you if something is burning. The smells of people are even more important (but perhaps a tiny bit less than the burning one – knowing if someone has had a shower in the past two days is less valuable information than knowing the building you’re in is on fire and you should act accordingly).

I’m not talking perfumes though; I’m talking that person’s natural smell. Chances are their family smells the same way. Your family has a smell too, you know. You’re just so used to it that you can’t smell it. But if you come home after a week of camp or something, stick your head in your cupboards and you’ll get a whiff of it. My best friend’s smell is one that I know very well, and don’t find offensive (although, I can also tell her farts apart from others, which I DO find offensive.) Then there are other people’s smells that I just can’t stand, and I find that this same sentiment applies to the person exuding that particular odour.

So I am very concerned about the stench of my new flat. It’s not great. It smells like a really big, really hairy man rubbed damp puppies on his armpits after at least 40 minutes of intense exercise, and then proceeded to rub those armpits on the carpet. But this smell is EVERYWHERE, so maybe he had some kind of elaborate, but highly unorthodox themed party – because it would take a lot of commitment to cover the carpet of an entire flat with your personal musk with just two armpits at your disposal. I’ll admit it; I admire this person’s dedication. But perhaps if this mystery stinker applied the same dedication to showering, I wouldn’t be spending half my pay check on scented candles and Glen 20, and he would make some better friends (friends don’t let friends stink up their carpets).

I’m extremely concerned that this smell will leach into my clothes, my bedding and, eventually, my pores. What if this becomes MY smell?! When I first inspected this place I was told the carpets would be professionally cleaned, and so assumed this unpleasant fragrance would be eradicated, but now after one week, 85 per cent of a can of Glen 20 and countless vanilla tea light candles, I’m worried the smell isn’t a carpet issue – it’s a curse. A poltergeist of poor potpourri calls for drastic action. I’ve got to get serious and call in the big guns. Looks like I’m going to have to buy a vacuum cleaner way sooner than I had originally anticipated.

In my line of work, I often feel like Harriet the Spy.

 (for those of you who don’t remember Nickelodeon’s epic first motion feature and Michelle Trachtenberg’s glorious introduction to fame)While I don’t have a Nanny following my around and I’m not a fan of tomato and mayo sangas, I do have an admiration for Rosie O’Donnell and I do creep around taking notes about and pictures of individuals going about their daily business.

The difference is that Harriet’s spying is pretty exciting, and from the vague misty corners of my mind, eventually produce meaningful results. The results of Dannielle the Spy are far less exciting and produce zero moral lessons. One of the many reasons why my life isn’t a movie and Harriet’s was. My spying is much more mundane, and instead of being risky but worth it, mine are just awkward.

While Harriet’s activities are probably against the law and definitely against moral codes, she gets away with it because she’s a cute little child. My “spying” either happens in public spaces or at functions/presentations/meetings/any form of gathering, which makes it neither illegal nor unethical, if I’m caught out my fate is worse than a minor stalking conviction: it is the awkward conversation – where you have to repeat the name of the paper you’re from thrice (which is followed by a geographical description and a weak joke about some town landmark or slogan) and explain that you’re not getting the person’s name or any intimate personal details, all while trying to be quiet enough not to interrupt preceding’s but doing so anyway.

You see, Harriet’s spying was kept at a safe distance to prevent her from being caught, thus revealing her spy status and all her bitchy secrets (SPOILER: that happens. I can’t remember how, but it’s pretty heartbreaking – I can remember feeling some sort of pain on her behalf. I also feel fictional movie characters’ embarrassment – which makes a lot of movies hard to watch. I’m a very empathetic person, as it turns out). My “spying” is kept at a safe distance to prevent me from being caught in conversation.

I prefer to get an action shot, get the general vibe of what’s going done and vamoose.

Today’s action shot was a man digging a hole, and another man looking at said hole. Unfortunately, this digging and hole-watching was going on behind not one, but two construction barrier fences, a strategically placed wheelie bin and an entire playground fortress. While I could have stood on the path as opposed to skulking behind the insufficient cover that was this bitter-sweet play equipment, I didn’t for fear of conversation. This is partly because the men, being in the middle of work for a council project, would have told me they couldn’t be in a picture. And there’s nothing more awkward than someone saying you can’t get a picture. My counter strategy is a mixture of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission”, which of course results in creepy skulking.

There’s a specific art to this manoeuvre, one that is refined over time. Rule Number One: don’t make eye contact. If you acklowedge that you are person and they are a person by looking at them, your cover is blown. Rule Number Two: you don’t really have a “cover” per se; if you try not to look like a journo, you generally look like a creepy douchebag taking pictures for personal use, and that doesn’t warrant a friendly response. Carry around a notepad even if you’re not taking notes. It establishes your character and therefore you purpose of photographing. Rule Number Three: even though you don’t technically have a “cover”, don’t blow your cover. How? By following Rule Number Four: move like the wind, strike like a snake. Non-terrible-vaguely-poetic-Chinese-warrior-instruction-immitation translation: Don’t dick around. Get in there, get it done and get out. The second you slow down or stray from your task is the second someone tries to talk to you. Just take a photo and go.

It feels like you’re doing something illegal or unethical, because you’re rushed and jittery and even a little dizzy sometimes. You feel kind of dangerous, unstable even. You begin to question the moral fibre of your being. This has nothing to do with skulk-related adrenaline, and, of course, everything to do with the fact that these “missions” always occur right before lunchtime.