Do you prefer footbrawl or thugby?

My flatmate is a repository for all kinds of AFL knowledge. I was quizzing him about it the other night - there wasn't a breaking development in the game that he wasn't aware of. "Who has just been caught with drugs? Who is Essendon's new coach? What are the names of their players?" He knew it all, but how? He doesn't sit around all day watching and listening to the news. Maybe it's in something he eats?

His condition, whatever it is, is pathological. This morning the only thing he said to me was "Have a happy Grand Final Day" before bounding outside. I naturally decided to mark the event by doing what I do on every weekend, go down the street to get the papers.

The customers in the nail salon of the Coburg Mall were certainly doing good business, so evidently a lot of locals were choosing to celebrate the occasion by having their nails polished, as you do. (Maybe they were getting them polished in club colours.) Several people had club scarfs and cat hats on, and there was a brass band on the other side of the street*. And, to top things off, I had this particularly festive conversation when I bought the papers:

PAPER LADY: I hope you have a nice day today!

TIM: You too!

PAPER LADY: You too!

TIM: You too!

We could have gone on that way all day, although paradoxically, that would have made the day rather boring, not nice at all. The other customers might have got annoyed as well.

I doubt that I'll be able to rise to the depths of depravity in quite as splendiferous a fashion as I did last year, so this will have to do for now.

*Although, to be completely accurate, that brass band hangs around Coburg Mall all the time. I wish they'd go away. You there, with the computer, do you want a brass band? It doesn't matter if you don't have a mall to put them in - you can store them in the cupboard and feed them on dog biscuits.