work in progress excerpt (2)

I like my footy and go to a few games, but I am no fanatic and I had to do some research before I interviewed the retiring journeyman – check your notes girl - Justin Proverse. Did I hate him? Had he been one of those dirty players I yelled at during a game? I tend to blurt things out!

Yes, I am ‘outspoken’. I have ‘no filter’. Well, I have a little bit of a filter when I first meet people I have to interview, my friends love that being a journo means I have to shut up and listen to other people, they think that’s a karmic zinger. But it’s fair to say I am blunt.

I think it’s all relative – other people are just a bit more quiet than me … But I digress.

He was no big star, but he had been around for a long time and in Melbourne any sort of AFL player offers a hook for a lot of readers, even for a special in the employment section on coping with career change. I was mildly curious how big a doofus he would be … Yes, your honour, I wasn’t expecting a Rhodes Scholar with an interest in Japanese tea ceremonies and 19th century social theory. But I am not a cynical snob, I swear! I was hoping Justin Proverse would be an exception, decent and fun and smart and willing to open up a portal to a universe of sweet human being sportsmen. You never know what a person is going to give you, that’s the beauty of reporting, so I prepared to meet him full of kindness and bliss, pretending I had just been given a Cupcakes R Us free voucher, my tinsel eyelashes fluttering and butterflies in my bonnet top.