Politics. The particular small-town, small-mind politics that is a characteristic of Brisbane. Oh, I know that there’s going to be small-town, small-mind politics wherever I go, but it’s the politics of Brisbane that I’m well and truly over.
I don’t know what it is about this town. It may be the oft-referred to swift transition from large country town to branch-office city that happened from about 1980 onward. It may be the one-degree of separation that is Brisbane.
That certainly doesn’t help matters. Everyone knows everyone, or is related to them, or dated them, or hated them. Half the re-enactors are goths and half the goths are into steampunk and the morris dancers know all the folkies who play at the re-enactors handfastings. So all the politics are personal, not about abstracted issues. A discussion between two aged protagonists is always a rehash of some decades old slight, and battle lines are drawn up between tribes of newcomers who know only the folklore, and not the reasons why so-and-so will not talk to such-and-such now.
So no. I won’t miss the endless, mindless, reflexive squabbles and cat calling, and the tribal slogans and toy drum tin drum banging over campaigns to conquer mole hills.
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