The Pig’s Arms Welcomes Sandshoe !

A young woman on a phone is excited. She’s negative geared. She’ll lose and someone else will profit, but she’ll win in the end. I can tell. I hear from behind the screen in the next booth, “Hi. What are you doing tonight … mmm … well, I’ve got a couple of tickets … what sort of a bad time … Grandma … o … well, look don’t you drag yourself out for me … you’ve got enough in your bed without dragging yourself… ”

The fellow with the dark moustache and an urbanity that fits loveably in with an idea he is a to-be-fat grandpapa dashes incontrovertibly past between the desks like a convertible for all seasons. He’s so smooth the wine is not yet picked from the vine in its nascent form as a grape and he’s telling you it’s got great bouquet.

“Look, I’ve got to go anyway,” the voice on the other side of the screen says. “Its  been a long time and I’ve work to do … no … I know we’ve not been talking long, but in this office … yes … you know … bye … o, have you seen Claudia … the girl who …. the one at your …. no … well, it doesn’t matter now because I know you must be suffering. I’ll have to go.”

The telephone receiver clicks quietly into place. Another number is dialled.

“Jack? No? On my lunch break. Just got up the nerve to ring Pauline. What? No. No, it doesn’t go over well. I think she made up an excuse not to go out with me. She knows I am going to ask her. What do you mean? Well, I’m still not healing. It’s hard to believe though her grandmother is ill. O, you have to go. No worries at all. I’ll be doing something with Peter on Friday night.”

The receiver drops with an audible clunk onto the rest. A protracted sigh carries over into a silence that sounds like a single thought gong. I think the head of the owner of the voice is in his hands.

The brisk footsteps of the supervisor sound as if the carpet is woven from the finest sheet metal. He crinkles. His shirt crinkles. His tie crinkles. The cuffs of his trousers are caught up in a bunch on the top of his scuffed day shoes. A woman heads him off as he approaches the desk.

She engages him. She who comes past with a coffee balanced on the top of a sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper. Home-made style. Favourite. From the business directly over the other side of the brick courtyard between the Council building and the shopping centre. He nods his head after several sentences. His assurance is a reiteration. It’s all been seen before and done with mirrors breathes a young man in Aged Units. His desk is across the way. Ostensibly behind a screen. O, the stress he suffers and has since the transfer from Dogs. Why, nobody knows, only dogs became the catchcry in the suburb around him at a glimpse after he mentioned over a card game at the cricket club no provision had been made for moggies. He politely laughs to himself, scratches his crotch and adjusts the zip of sensible lounging trousers out of sight. My considered guess is his shoes have not been polished for some time. He stands up as large as life. I must polish myself up: he introduces himself. He tugs at the knot of his tie so that chest shows where the shirt gapes.

I thank him and tell him my name. He starts as if he knows it and he can’t. We agree surely not. “This position is paid for by Agricare. The only contribution the Council makes is the computer, the space and the chair. It’s a business to decide on terms of reference after the contracts thing.” He waves a hand.

He mentions by the popular name thing, the Standards Inspector. In the local clink. Nothing to do with Agricare or a social entrepreneur, he agrees. I demur in defence of clarity. All of a sudden a flurry rocks the divider on the side opposite to where the voice continues to make telephone calls. That innocent voice searches for friendship. In my booth I stand for reason. The divider appears to be falling. The agent is revealed as a buxom woman. She is a pin head with glasses above overpouring breasts. Her breasts spill in a cocktail frock. The woman cries out. The screen slides away from its base and collapses.

All I can do is ask, we are face to face, can I help.

Such presence of mind to question who an unknown person is when a divider falls. This unexpected woman with breasts asks.

“Volunteer,” I blush. “I’m allowed. Editor. Newsletter. I’ve got a pin to get in. I can’t get out for a break. I went to get out. I’m locked in. I was waiting for the supervisor.” I turn and find he’s gone. This worm has turned. It is another horrible experience of being a volunteer. Its insight is sharply keening. I am a staffer who is nobody’s responsibility. This is a form of prison.

“You’re the woman. You have a deadline. I can let you out.”

“Why can’t I get out on my own,” I ask as we walk to the door. She slides a card in the reader. I turn the handle of the door and experience the exterior like a large china bowl of freshly delivered reality. Just-how-sweet-freedom-is. I hear the word ‘Security’. It’s closed. The door.

Down the steps is a wheelbarrow. James is leaning over it. He seems to be looking for something that is lost. We greet each other when he looks up at the sound of my step. He is usually smiling and does not always say hello. He clears leaves, branches and furrows of silt and sand run-off that block drains. Through the bollards at the end of the short path to a small staff carpark is the reversed utilty someone has parked for James to ferry his wheelbarrows of detritus to fill. He takes off with the barrow in the direction. I step aside from the path. James stops. His face breaks into an intimation of a smile as I smile at him. I speak. “James, do you remember me?” He shakes his head. His curls bounce. His is the curly head of a blonde pre-schooler, his countenance is a child’s. I smile. James smiles. I walk, saying see you again. James waves.

Cowboy boots, hat, camel socks, white shirt, black felt hat with peacock blue feather and slick moleskins. Lanky, like a moving grease spot and twitching, it’s Jack Jacobs. “Hi,” he manages to say. His face opens in a smile. Where the grassed ampitheatre makes a green depression in the brick paved surround of the entrance to the shopping centre a brick wall holds a gaggle of girls who giggle. “Jack,” one calls out. A girl coyly sidles. She rocks from side to side as she draws level. Some meaning is exchanged between her and Jack. She opens her mouth and says something that is run over as surely as an accident happens. A train of supermarket trolleys comes through. “Watch out,” a lad calls who spits his saliva in the wind. His sputum dollops on brick paving. I call out angry reason. He retaliates. “You can’t expect me to collect in my lunchtime,” he swaggers. Jack is walking by now into the maw of the centre. With him the rocking girl who has a distinct gait.

I go into the shopping centre past the loungers at the door. The floor has a fresh glaze. I meet my friend, Daani, as I anticipate. She can’t speak for infectious giggles shaking her upper body. Her pearls are jiggling. Have I seen the advertisement.  I follow her to the escalators.

“Get rid of your … unkempt … Tasmanian.” She points helpless at the depicted bust of a puny white man with a giant brush of tangled hair on a more than life size illuiminated screen. He is an astonished comedian. “Get a … smooth … Brazilian. Take a photo. Have you got a camera.”

The toned figure of the chocolate hued Brazilian is in full aspect with a six-pack and a soccer ball grasped under one arm.

On the way back to work I telephone two people from Tasmania I know. They were flown from there to exile on the mainland. One can meet me immediately at the end of my release from my remnant day’s work in Council. He is obliging. He poses by the illuminated sign. Men in broad band striped t-shirts and shorts tucked in them by rolling their outsized bands swarm past to their transport to the basement. Women in tent dresses and others in giant jeans stretched over giant bottoms push laden carts of shopping. I take photographs.

A silent European man with a straggling long beard and long hair is standing near the foyer to a set of descending moving stairs as he calls them. He is positioned beside the advertisement for the Brazilian. He dandles in his hand a plastic bag – Please re use, don’t forget me – with toilet paper in it he has purchased on special on his way to this appointment. He urges a gentlewoman out of sight–in baggy jeans- to take more photographs and she asks to pose him as well beside the illuminated advertisement for the gentle toilet paper on the ascendent side of the escalator. He agrees, walks across to the screen with the toilet paper (and facial tissues – why rough it-and demonstrates a pack of the alternative brand out of the plastic bag -like wiping an arse with a quilt. A labrador pup gambols downstairs on top of snowy white toilet paper- yet another variety-that unravels fresh in luxuriant abundance on a giant picture screen. In a succeeding flick a blue cartoon bird angles with a fishing rod and cheeky smile for a frozen pack of whiting.