Nurse Barbara For Social Club Pres.

By Hon Shades aka Sandshoe

“Ya plant garlic on the shortest day of the year. Ya dig it up on the longest.”

Merv was holding court to a bar of gardeners who had been bussed to the pub by the organisers of the 2017 International No Dig Gardeners Convention. They looked like a conference of hippies in an assortment of rubber boots and khakis draped over with camel hair ponchos. Some individuals appeared to have been yarn bombed.

Others carried bundles of plastic raincoats and everyone had an ID card around their neck on a lanyard as you do.

“Good on ya, Merv. That’s our friend,” a voice rang out. Merv looked over at the nurses’ table no mistaking Big M’s voice. A cheerful Big M

was standing on a chair on one leg. The next sight Merv had of him was Big M and the chair toppling sideways.

A loud caterwauling and cheering went up out of the crowd of inebriated newcomers at the bar.

No harm to Big M in the re-enactment of this classic scene of a chair falling over and a man with it who was in fact standing on one leg on the chair however previous to the moment Merv or anyone else looked in the direction.

“The chair was definitely on one leg,” Merv said when the insurance assessor from Cyberian United Assurance came knocking.

Hung One Over chimed in, “That’s crook for a chair.”

“Mr Merv and Mr HOO, I’m only here to check the detail of Mr Merv’s witness statement,” the assessor insisted. She adjusted her frilly black

bra  straps with teensy weensy naked breasts on them of every colour showing from under the low cut neckline of a classic Inner Cyberia corporate wear pinafore. The uniform for staff was made of a watermark design silk shantung in pretty chartreuse and with layers of frills in the same fabric edging the overlapping wrap-around skirt front and skirt hem.

“Big M was all over the shop. That’s all I saw,” Hon Shades said at the bar later.

“He must of near transpired from the unexpected shock. I was painting.” Foodge was ordering a drink. He was dressed in paint splattered overalls and in one hand he was swinging a 4 litre paint can. He lowered carefully down onto the towel bar runner his barrister’s wig he was carrying in his other hand.

“That’s not true truth,” he said when Sister Yvonne told him the insurance assessor marked him down as pub lawyer and a witness.

“Been painting when I’m not in court. Can’t purge myself.” Foodge was worried.

“Mate, we each said on our damages claims you’re our lawyer and you

were here,” Therese chimed in. “You’re not going to go all ipso facto and all that, are ya. Done deal almost. We’ll get a new chair out of it.”

The customers at the bar as one turned round. They looked at the sea of dangling springs that had fallen out of the upholstery of most of the chair seats and dangling strings of jute thread and decayed jute strapping. Rips gaped open in the vinyl upholstery of unoccupied chair seats and a scatter of unoccupied bar stools that displayed grey compressed padding.

The chrome surrounds of the seats of the bar stools and their legs were pocked with rust damage. The rubber tips on the legs of the bar stools had perished.

The pub fell quiet other than for the slurping noise of patrons turning their attention back to contemplation and refreshment. The chooks in the rafters set up a flustering sound of soft clucking.

Nurse Barbara was one to speak up.

“Merv,” she said, “this bar needs an entire set of new chairs and new bar stools. With the seats covered in that same clear plastic you’ve had the new carpet and the surface of the bar and the tops of the new tables covered with. If nothing else, it’s O and it’s H and it’s S, Merv.”

 

*Joyce the Musical – coming to a reputable theatre near you. Follow the story of a well hung but disconnected suburban youth growing up on the Northern beaches of Kidney(named as it stinks like piss) who at a tender age throws away his burgeoning career as a lawn star, Lidcombe Bowls Champion 1902 or thereabouts, and becomes a purse carrying nancy boy, no good poofter male nurse that has never had a hard days work in his life. Book at www.joycethemusical.con/bookings