Honest to Gordon, I would have said to Gordon, Gordon let the bish go.
Foodge scrubs up well
Bring in the strongman. That’s a circus expression.
“Let the bloke go,” EEvonnn asked Gordon, “will you please?”.
The bish was standing at the counter. Maybe he was wedged between Gordon and the counter. Gordon had let go and slumped forward on him. Gordon was snoring.
Nurse Eevonnn reads law
“Merv’s missing. Foodge’s Uncle. He’s suspect in your demise.” EEvonnn was not put off her job. She launched a conversation with the bish.
“Last thing I saw of Merv,” the bish answered, “was only a glimpse. He was rocking the rocker. He wouldn’t know which was up in the state he was in. Nobody can believe a word he says.”
The bish added, hastily, “I’ve no formal complaints to make, Vonnny.”
Treu bleu, the undertaker could not be sure he was dead. Not the undertaker. The stiff I meant.
What kinda story opens like that. The inquiry is the rhetorical mind. I’ve no mind for a treatise on why or how. Even who is a measure too far.
Still, it is the first Sunday of the year. Jumpin’ emus. I’ll grab my hat and head to the Bar.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023 TO THE PIGS ARMS!
It is the genuine Shoe here.
Youse’llall would guess I’ve been scraping the barrel to find an audience, diverted, following in Foodge’s footsteps. Foodge made it all the way. I might yet.
Barflies who do not know who Foodge is will have to ask around for now.
I’m still remembering that Hung One Over in his persona as Mark or Hung if he pleased and I in mine as Christina or Shoe if I pleased most solemnly vowed between us. We would conjure a summary of what has gone on here. We would write it or one of us would and the other one cheer. Good one, ay. It would be epic however small. It’d be good.
In the New Year when I’m back studying just like Foodge did to go to the Bar, I’m gunner give it a go to print out the episodes in a form I can read lying down on the job. I’ve been way out of commission for a year. I had to take a year off Law School because I sustained two spinal fractures. They knocked me right off my feet. The point is relevant that one day I woke up (literally) and wondered where the pain had gone. I do still need rest because sitting for hours on end as I recently have begun (again) is hard work regardless no pain to speak of.
Now here is a miracle. I have been in pain for years. Long before fracturing my spine and finding myself in an extraordinary pickle living because of the housing crisis in lodgings (where I couldn’t move a muscle without suffering agony). A couple of friends were able to occasionally help me.
Now, a single woman of 72 years of age at this present after nearly 12 months of the transformative experience of discovering what dinkum pain is like, I can stand in the shower with water cascading over me and wash my hair, but not focus at every second fearful of not keeping my footing.
I discovered ambition after a few days pain-free.
Not rediscovered it. Discovered it burning. In a flood of yearning to solve the many (socially problematic) issues I learned the aged suffer (learned as I suffered through being nearly entirely immobilised in digs in agony, eventually dependant on My Aged Care), one glaring thought emerged, “You’re a WASTE.”
I kick start the New Year with an Intensive course to knock off one of the remaining subjects and I’ve scheduled another nine subjects (plus another Intensive) for 2023. I did do two full-time years of the study of Law in the two preceding years prior to 2022 despite I failed two subjects. I sat them for the second time from the get-go in that time frame. Not too shabby.
I lived for two years at a University College on campus. For the previous 12 months I have missed my student class friends who are my peers especially very badly, madly, and somewhere in time and space, living alone in a parallel universe, I have re-found and re-imagined myself. I’m an improved, better version by far.
Mrs O’Way, the most beautiful girl in the universe
“I’ve had enough of this shit” roars Mrs O’Way, whose first name is Belinda by the way. Belinda is the the little sister of Glenda from Glenda’s Pain and Torture Clinic, just down the road and around the corner from the Pigs Arms. “The Fictional Characters Union has just amalgamated with the Characters Fictional Union to become the FUCU(Fictional Union of Characters United) and we’ve become the laughing stock as now everyone is referring to us as fuck you.”
“Merv, pour me a double South Sea Island Blue Label and are you fictional or real?” she demands.
“I think I’m real, no hang on a minute, that’s right I’m fictional but a union member of FUCU” replies Merv.
“So fuck you” says Mrs O’Way.
The rest is real or maybe…
“ Hello, look author here. I’m not into this swearing stuff…
2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.”
3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes… sort of:
“Got a good woman with the meanest face in town.
Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town.
Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound.”
4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch–ain’t no way out.
5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don’t travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain’t even in the running. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.
6. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.
7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Clarksdale, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don’t get rain.
8. A man with male pattern baldness ain’t the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg ’cause a alligator be chompin’ on it is.
9. You can’t have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.
10. Good places for the Blues:
a. Highway
b. Jailhouse
c. An empty bed
d. Bottom of a whiskey glass
11. Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom’s
b. Gallery openings
c. Ivy league institutions
d. Golf courses
12. No one will believe it’s the Blues if you wear a suit, ‘less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it.
13. You have the right to sing the Blues if:
a. You older than dirt
b. You blind
c. You shot a man in Memphis
d. You can’t be satisfied
14. You don’t have the right to sing the Blues if:
a. You have all your teeth
b. You were once blind but now can see
c. The man in Memphis lived
d. You have a pension fund
15. Blues is not a matter of color. It’s a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.
16. If you ask for water and your darlin’ give you gasoline, it’s the Blues.
17. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. Cheap wine
b. Whiskey or bourbon
c. Muddy water
d. Nasty black coffee
18. The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast
19. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can’t have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.
20. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling
21. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie
22. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.
23. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:
a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.)
c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)
24. I don’t care how tragic your life: if you own even one computer, you cannot sing the blues.
(Disclaimer: this series of stories is completely fictional and none of the persons, places or institutions in these stories are real, but figments of my own imagination. Any similarity to any real person, place or institution is entirely coincidental.)
St Helvi’s was the largest hospital in the South Ozzie city of Madeleine. Consequently, it was the busiest hospital in the city and this was its good fortune because large enough numbers of patients passing through the doors made it easy for the hospital administrators to convince their insurers that their medical staff were not actually incompetent and that the hospital’s fatality statistics were only marginally above the statistical norm, and, it was often argued, because it was, after all, a public hospital, St Helvi’s was obliged to take patients the private hospitals could afford to reject… such as those who looked like they had less than…
Another classic from Big M. I stuck a few names in the word scrambler and got Gib W(Big M) and Angler(Algernon) which Big M kindly replicated in this episode. Honshades(Sandshoe) was another one but she isn’t in this episode. Still bloody funny today.
Gib W was looking worried, no pensive. Well what is it? It can only be one or the other? Well he was worriedly pensive, how’s that, and who are you any way? Me, I’m you. I’m just talking to you as I felt like it and I became pensively worried, hmm.
“You look a bit pensive Gib, what’s wrong mate?” asks Angler, fresh off the Flyer and fortunately in time for dinner, oh yes the man must be a musician to have timing like that.
“No I’m worried but the author is paying me back about a comment I made about Foodge being pensive and punishment is in this episode I’m pensive.” blarts Gib worriedly.
“Oh, no worries, lets shoot him” replies Angler.
“Nah, if we shoot him he doesn’t get to finish the story and then we won’t exist till next episode and…
I am not sure where the present obsession of motions and spill originate from. I could google it but at my age I have enough on my plate.
I know that moving motions is the essence of getting on with the business of governing but how politicians can keep a straight face in Parliament while sitting on private motions is tsunami causing hilariously funny. Is that why the English speaking world has produced so many top comedians? How did the word ‘motion’ ever come to be part of parliamentary language as did ‘spills’? Another type of moving motions is the intestinal one, at times far more urgent and necessary. When you look at that coterie of politicians sitting there in rows it might help to see them in their other ‘motion moving’ role as well. It helps to give perspective.
Nothing mate. I wasn’t there, I was washing my hair…I’m bigger than big. I created the universe as my week day job. Otherwise I worked at Maccas.
Gordon and Merv Lock Horns
Story by Mark.
Concept development thanks to the Congo Crew.
Ring, ring, ring, ring, etc., etc., not to be confused with ect.
In the old days, I would let the speaking telegraph ring as long as possible, normally to piss off the caller and or to boost the word count. Today, however, I’m a mature resident of the world and will no longer stoop to those levels, well sort of.
Well, anyway, it’s before noon so it must be the Bish that is ringing me. No one in their right mind would ever ring me before four in the afternoon.
“Hello” I say in a rather perfunctory manner, “Father O’Way here, semi-retired parish priest from the Church of St. Generic Brand speaking. How may I help you? Hang on, I just need to void.”
Voiding is a natural function. Now, if you follow Gordon’s teachings, you won’t find voiding has ever been mentioned, except for behind a tree after many pints. It’s about as close as it gets.
“The FUCU(Fictional United Characters Union or the FUC You) has been on to me. Sandy, you now have to take on a foreground role down at the pub.” says the Bish, you know, Bishop Bishop.
“The FUCU?” I exaggerate with every bit of my poor capacity to exaggerate. “Sorry, but I only do background roles, you know, sitting at the bar, sipping a beer, an occasional witty interlude.” Well, isn’t it great to take a backward step from the front line.
“Well, smart arse, a patron has rung me on the speaking telegraph and said that Merv and Gordon are having a heated dispute down at the pub. You need to get down to the pub, pronto.”
Every boys dream. Imagine someone telling you that you need to get down to the pub straight away.
Not so sure if I can continue.
“Did you mean the Window Dressers Arms Pig and Whistle?” stretching the word count beyond belief.
“FFS, Sandy, the Pigs Arms, the Window fucking Dressers Arms Pig and fucking Whistle, WTF are you on about?!!
“Well, Emmjay always said a good short story is somewhere between 500 to 1500 words. So if you say, ”go down the pub” that’s four words, however if you say “go down to the Window Dressers Arms Pig and Whistle” that’s ten words. The detail is important.”
Gee, I can see that I am dazzling the Bish with these statistics.
“Yes, well sometimes I believe in the death penalty” states the Bish. “Now get down the pub, I mean the Window Dressers Arms Pig and Whistle and sort out this argument. Now!!”
Wow. Double exclamation marks means business.
You know, we have just got past the speaking telegraph call and yet there is so much more of this story to go.
So I gets to the pub, you know, the Window Dressers Arms Pig and Whistle, just to rub it in to the word count function.
“Merv, Gordon, stop. Pints all round of Granny’s Best. Now, if you have anything to say, your time starts now.” Wow, was that assertive or what.
“Now what seems to be the problem?” I ask rather innocently.
“Gordon wants to move the car park”
“Merv says no way”
“What’s wrong with the car, park?” I say emphasising the comma.
“I’m bored. The Bill repeats have finished for the last time in 50 years” says Gordon of course.
“I want cars out the back, not out the front like this fucking God freak wants” says Merv.
“I don’t believe in God, I am God” replies Gordon.
Now, there is actually more to come and it revolves around gladwrap.
In my next exciting episode I will reveal to you the issue with galdwrap and it’s tearing properties.
Look, gladwrap you say, sorry, even small things have implications. I mean a butterfly farts in Concord and so a flood in Pakistan occurs. Well, I think so…
Take it from me, don’t let a buoy go down, allegedly…
Merv was pleased to be reversing the old EH Special into the Pigs Arms garage, but was still bloody cranky with Janet. The usual story, they’d blued, she cried, called him a bastard, he told her to fuck right off, which she did with the kids. Now she’s staying out at Buttfuck West with ’Her People’. He’d done the right thing, driven up, bought real good flowers from the servo and a bottle of Porphyry Pearl from the grog shop. I won’t record the anatomical locations Janet had instructed Merv to relocate his well thought out gifts. Anyhoo, Merv was well buggered after a long drive.
“Welcome back Mr Merv, didja buy yerself a Mickey Mouse shirt when you were out West?” O’Hoo took a break from pressure cleaning the cement path.
Foodge scrubs up well 
Nurse Eevonnn reads law 
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 