Big M awoke in a narrow little bed that seemed to be in a tiny room. There was a tremendous knocking. ‘Oh, Christ’. He thought.’ Not Foodge and Granny again?’ The knocking seemed to continue, and, this time wasn’t associated with cries of pain, or ecstasy, that seemed to emanate throughout the upstairs rooms of the pub at intervals through the night. He suddenly realised it was coming from the door. “Please come in and stop that infernal knocking.”
A very ebullient Manne bounced into the room. “Have yer worked out a plan?”
“What, to get rid of this headache?” Big M had probably imbibed a little too much IPA, and had had very little sleep.
“Well, with a head like that, why wouldn’t it ache?” Manne cheerily replied. He didn’t really know what it meant, but his father used to say it to him when he was a kid.
“What time is it?” Big M shovelled a couple of panadol into his mouth.
“Sparra’s fart”Manne grinned.
“Why so fucking early?” Big M was searching his toiletry bag for some Zantac.
“Early, no I’ve been doin’ some jobs for Mr Merv, getting’ the kitchen ready for Granny.” Manne absent mindedly picked at a dirty fingernail. “Anyhoo, I reckon we need to get some sheila, I mean, lady to impersonate a Lady in Waiting on Foodge’s phone. You know, to explain the blood test.”
“Fiendishly clever, Mr Manne, he would see straight through a letter, but a phone call would instantly appeal to his Royalist tilt. He’ll probably think he’ll be getting a knighthood!” Just then their conversation was interrupted by a tremendous knocking, each knock accompanied by cries of….you get what I mean. “Oh shit, let’s go and have some breakfast.
A couple of hours later Big M sat back in his chair, having consumed multiple cups of black coffee, a Thai omelette , wedges with sweet chilli sauce, and Atlantic salmon. “Manne, when did the menu become so, um, er, international?”
“Well, Granny needed a break, so I’ve been doin’ some of the cookin’ You know that I grew up in Thailand, and me Dad was a chef? Manne cleared the table. “Do you think you may appreciate the hair of the dog? I mean, you look a bit peaky.”
“I was about to say that I didn’t realise you had grown up, let alone in Thailand. Excellent idea, young Manne, I mean about the beer, and the cooking.” Big M had loosened off his belt a tad, but left his button done up. ‘I mean, Christ.’ He thought. ‘Yer not on the Newcastle train now!’
Manne appeared with a pint of Granny’s Best as Foodge seemed to emanate out of nowhere. “Ah, Foodge, good to see you, Old Son!” Big M enthused as he struggled to his feet to shake our Dear Boy’s hand. “How the hell are ya’?”
“Fabulous Uncle M. You look well, how is Aunty M?” Foodge sat opposite Big M and motioned Manne to pour a second canoe. “Manne, would you be kind enough to prepare a six egg white omelette on sourdough, mushrooms, tomatoes and a side of chipolatas?”
“So, the usual Mr Foodge?” Manne shuffled off to the kitchen.
“Big day today, M.” Foodge eagerly drank the first half of his pint. “Off to the cordwainer.” Foodge motioned to the shopping bag on the floor. “Might have a poke around the Queen Victoria Building while I’m there.”
“Cordwainer, what’s a bloody cordwainer?” Big M shouldn’t be surprised at Foodge’s outlandish pronouncements.
“A cordwainer is a shoe maker. These brogues aren’t going to resole themselves!” Foodge skulled the last of his pint, and was already eagerly looking around for someone to proffer another.
“Oh, so you mean a cobbler?” Big M was also looking for another pint.
“No, I mean a cordwainer. A cobbler is simply a shoe repairman.” Thankfully Manne had placed two pints of Granny’s Pale Ale in front of them. “Besides, I think my left foot may be changing shape, so may need to have my last adjusted, or even remade.”
“Last, what fucking last?” Big was lost in the discussion.
“You know, when the cordwainer makes a shoe he makes a wooden model of your foot called a last. What does your cordwainer do?” A plate of eggs and mushrooms had appeared at his elbow. “Ah, eggsellent!” Foodge never tired of this little joke.
“I don’t have a cordwainer. I can’t afford custom made shoes.” Big M was growing exasperated, but his headache had settled.
“Don’t have a cordwainer? Next you will tell me you don’t have a tailor! Although you do have that off the shelf look about you” Foodge was searching the table for some Tabasco sauce. “Ah.” It was right there with the salt and pepper. Just then Foodge’s phone rang. “Hello, yes, Foodge here. Yes. Lady in Waiting to whom? …You want to what? ….Family tree? ….What?… Present from my pals at the Pigs Arms? …You want to what? …Blood taken?” Foodge was suddenly sitting up very straight. “I could be a Minor Royal? …Yes, of course, I’ll get the blood taken…Thank you, Your Majesty. No, Oh, thank you, your Lady…I’ll get it done today..” Foodge put the iPhone away. “Big M, you’ll never guess…”
Big M already had a syringe and needle in his hand. “Which arm. Foodge?”
The Professor strode into the lecture theatre and dumped his armful of texts and papers onto the desk without ceremony. He set the lectern up with his notes and then quickly assumed a position in front of the desk, looking up at the students as they moved into the theatre, shuffling and sliding to their seats.
After waiting what seemed an appropriate length of time the Professor jumped his backside up onto the desktop, spread his arms wide and said quite loudly, “Right! Quieten down people. We’ve got a lot to get through today.”
The students took little notice. A lot of them were looking around the room for faces they recognised, taking note of the name tags each of them had pinned to themselves. This was the first time they had all been assembled in one theatre.
Now, even louder and sterner, “Quieten down…, people please, people, a little shush!”. There was no appreciable quietening and the Professor lowered and shook his head. It was always like this at the beginning of the year. He tried again.
“If you attend closely…,” he suddenly turned sharply, balled a sheet of paper and shied it at a particularly boisterous student, giving him a look of stern disapproval, before returning to his remarks with, “I can assure you that before you leave this course you may well be terminally confused, or maybe, just maybe you will have been sorely amazed, and possibly, just possibly, your existence changed forever!”
His audience, still finding their seats and getting themselves set up for the lecture, laughed at this hyperbole. Although these were all senior graduates from a diverse range of disciplines, they were freshers to this course and hadn’t had the chance to become familiar with the Professor’s sense of humour first hand.
They’d heard the legend when they’d accepted the offer of a position on this very selective course. The words used included mercurial, moody, and of course brilliant; but it was what former students and associates couldn’t put into words that made up the bulk of the Professor’s legend.
Comment on the Professor often started with, “I don’t know, but…”, usually with the head negotiating a rather complex series of turns looking like nothing so much as a physiological attempt to perform every semiotically meaningful head movement, all at the same time.
The physics wags claimed he had a certain “dark energy”, you couldn’t see it but you knew it was there none the less; but having never seen it, no-one could really say what it was that was the source of this energy. There was some agreement that just being around him had some sort of transformative affect on students. The best of them became becalmed in his presence, content to just absorb him, like a lizard in the warm light of summer sunshine; and even the least seemed to find ideas in themselves they would never have thought themselves capable of even harbouring, let alone expressing.
The Professor had come to Sydney University about five years before, having first been appointed an adjunct professor in the Philosophy department. He’d spent most of his time there conducting soirees under the Jacaranda tree in the corner of the main quad. Those students that stuck the course did well, though there was a high attrition rate and by the end of that year only four of the original twelve finished.
His method was unrelentingly Socratic and many past students claimed that they had never heard him, even once, use the declarative in reference to any aspect of the course. His stock in trade was the interrogative. “Every question leads to further questions, or it isn’t a question worth asking.” his students would claim he said, but even that might have been too declarative for the Professor.
He’d moved on from Philosophy after that academic year. His new position was notionally in the Physics department, but that too only lasted a year.
He had finally come to rest, an academic orphan, in a set of rooms in the eastern range of Edmund Blackett’s old neo-gothic quad.
Located in the basement, the only natural light had to make its way down past the cars parked outside against the building, the weeds growing against the old sandstone, and finally, through the small ground level windows perpetually dirtied with car exhaust, rain-splash and the grime that came with the University’s inner city location.
Inside, those windows were high up on the wall and each morning, once the sun had climbed just that little higher, the windows offered little to dispel the dark and there was always a pervasive sense of subterranean intensity. The small suite of rooms developed a reputation as some sort of intellectual Altamira where there was always something more going on than just the depth, the dark, the art and the artificer. It was considered a privilege to be invited for tea in the Professor’s rooms.
And, of course, there was the course; a kind of finishing off, a final cognitive and intellectual polish to the already bright academic careers of the students; always delivered here in the lecture theatre of the ivy clad Woolley Building on Science Road.
Given three choices, the professor had chosen the venue himself. He liked its brick solidity and relative lack of embellishment compared to the main quad and many other of the older buildings on campus. He’d said he wasn’t up to the Carslaw Theatres’ brutality and the General Lecture Theatre at the back of the main quad was like a subterranean sepulchre where ideas came to be interred and forgotten.
Besides, the Professor always claimed a kindred spirit with Woolley the man. John Woolley had given his professional life to raising the minds of his antipodean charges. He was both a Principal and Professor at the newly constituted University of Sydney, but he also freely gave his time to lecture to workers at The Sydney Mechanics Institute.
In 1866, at only 49, Woolley had drowned in The Bay of Biscay when the overloaded SS London foundered in heavy seas on its way back to Australia. A fine, decent man and a great loss to Australia’s nascent academia. The Ivy clad Woolley had been the home of the course for the past three years..
It wasn’t your usual course, of course. It was only for the select and selected few, and the winnowing of candidates was as thorough going as it was somewhat unusual.
Operating globally and funded by a private international philanthropic trust, monitoring of potential candidates started at age seven, Primary candidate selection made at thirteen, and Secondary at matriculation. It was generally accepted that a High Distinction average across a candidate’s undergraduate course was necessary to stay in contention, and the all important post graduate work finally determined the ultimate candidate selection.
A wide range of students from around the globe had been offered positions in the course based on that selection process and today was the first day of the new semester.
They were an mixed bunch. There were musicians, mathematicians, physicists, cosmologists, philosophers, psychiatrists and psychologists, there were biologists and neurologists, and all manner of cognitive scientists, historians, and there were artists and fine arts graduates and a contingent of Chinese calligraphers; curiously sitting with economist proponents of the Elliot Wave theory, who might have been looking forward to lucrative careers in finance before they were sidetracked to the Professor’s course. There was even a theological student whose PhD had been on the rise of the Jesuits. The theatre was filled with a naïve enthusiasm at odds with the usual seriousness of these young minds.
The auditorium was beginning to settle so the Professor began.
“You’ve all done your reading. I know this because you’re all now professional intellectuals and wouldn’t dare turn up here without having done it. So, lets get straight into it, shall we?”
The lights went down and multiple slide projectors set up at the back of the auditorium began to clatter and clack as they projected a multitude of images onto three screens suspended from a temporary truss that spanned the theatre. An audio system, unnoticed until now, began playing back a primitive drum tattoo that, having established its pattern, segued into the sound of moslem women ululating at a funeral, followed by the sound of a, crumhorn, was it? And so it went on.
The Professor raised his voice against the audio. “Up on the screens you’ll see a selection of the material we’ll be looking at for the next few weeks. This material has been included in your course folders, including all the peripheral resources and the tools you’ll need to manipulate any numerical data. Those of you without access to a computer can get help from those that do. It is of the essence of this course that you co-operate with one another.”
The three big screens were currently covered in images of great art and architectural glories; there was The Pieta and the Willendorf Venus, naïve medieval church interiors and Lichtenstein’s “Whaam”, Gobekli Tepe, and Mohenjo Daro, the Giza pyramids and Angkor Wat were included in a sequence that included the Flat Iron Building and the World Trade Centre in New York; the audio played on, now The Beatles’, “Penny Lane”.
On the other screens there were maps, graphs and tables, algorithms, word lists of cognates, there was photography of all kinds and screen captures from TV and movies including “Frankenstein” and a BBC production of “Gormenghast”; there were hundreds of them cycling through, blinking up on the screens for a few seconds before being replaced by another. Faces of the famous starting several millennia ago with the Rameses, then the Greeks including Socrates and Archimedes, and Romans, Augustus, Nero, then Cicero and Seneca, then Hadrian amongst many others; and working its way up through the centuries; eventually Freud, Jung and Adler, but also John Wayne Gacy, L.Ron Hubbard and Pope Paul VI. As the slide show continued for several minutes, all the students were glued to the screens, watching and wondering what all these things could have in common.
The professor watched the faces of the students as they watched the changing images. He could see the growing effect of the slideshow and audio. The Student’s faces, at first excited, then calmer, more deeply curious, became blank as the eyes flitted from image to image, exciting their deeper consciousness. He let the presentation run on for a few more minutes to Hindemith’s “Metamorphosis”.
In the midst of a double forte horn figure the professor killed the audio. The sudden silence was startling.
“So what are we about here? Anyone?” There seemed no rush to respond, the students were still entranced by the continually changing images. “Anyone…?”
Eventually, as the Professor scanned the faces in the theatre, a few students tentatively put their hands up. One or two of them then, uncertain, bringing them down again.
“Remember what you were told when you signed up; there are no wrong answers in this course, only more interesting questions. This course is not like your previous courses. Its more about how you think than what you think.” The Professor did one more visual turn round the theatre before uttering a quiet “Hhmmmm”.
“Come on people, this isn’t difficult. All we’re looking for is the unseen, the invisible link.” the Professor turned from the students and rounded the desk before leaning forward against the back edge, looking up at the ceiling, a little disappointed.
“Yes…,” he checked the name tag and quickly consulted the course register, a pure mathematician, “ …Dravinda.” he finally nodded to the sole remaining nearby raised hand.
“Well, all the images reflect the creative impulse and the growth of human consciousness, or more particularly its expression; and, well, that’s aberrant psychology, statistically; either negatively, as in the case of the serial killers, or positively, as with the artists and the like. All of this material is representative of the outcome of a creative intellectual leap from the known and experienced to the unknown and yet to be experienced, So that might be the collapse of the quantum wave function….,” He paused briefly, then his face lit up, “No, no, this is about implicature….., no, this is about implicate and explicate enfoldment.”
“You got that from this?” the professors eyes widened with surprise, “Well done you! OK, so what about it?
“Well, more particularly, you’re going to steer us towards quantum consciousness and the zero point field”
“Good,” the Professor managed to combine both a shake and a nod of his head, quite pleased that the student had winkled his way into the mess of the thing and been able to form a coherent intellectual position about the unseen links between the various items, “but what about it?”
“Well, from what we’ve seen up there,” Dravinda pointed at the main screen, “and the reading list, I think you intend to start on a tangent, any tangent, and then show that these items are points on that tangent and those tangents are tensors in a kind of chaos analysis?”
The professor had began to nod slowly and eventually let out a brief chuckle followed by a long wide mouthed “Aaahhhh…, so someone did have an idea. Well done Dravinda. Now, how many of you thought something similar but thought to test the wind before engaging in our little discourse?”
A few hands went up among the mathematicians and physicists, then a few more scattered about the theatre .
The Professor smiled almost parentally at his students, “Of course, of course. Being who you are, many of you would have had more than an inkling of what we are about here from the reading list.” From time to time he had to remind himself that while these were the best of the brightest, most of them had never experienced the real world, having been intellectually cosseted most of their lives, feted for their intelligence. They were for the most part still children. The professor paused briefly to look again into the faces of his students. The slide projectors clattered on.
“Well let me assure you again. There are no wrong answers here and the best way to get the most out of this time we’ll spend together is to dive right in and swim as hard as you can. If there’s one thing I know about teaching this course, and it might be the only thing I’ve ever learned about learning, it’s that you’ll learn more, the more uncomfortable you feel about what you think, the more uncertain you are about the question you want to ask. You could say we’re here to do away with certainty and the easy answer. To reach a state of terminal interrogation. This is not like your previous course work. There will be no way to determine your relative rankings at the conclusion. The “results” will be internal, cognitive, personal, and you’ll have no more to show than the simple fact that you were here and you completed this course.”
That seemed to quieten the theatre a little. These were competitive minds. The notion that they had gone through all that they had to be selected, and then there’d be nothing to show, except a certificate of attendance, left a few of them wondering whether it was all worth it.
The professor looked around the tiered seats noting the slow impact of what he had said. His face suddenly brightened.
“Anyway; all of the material you’re looking at up here” he shot a finger over his shoulder, “and a lot more, plus all the ancillary materials you’ll need are on reserve in Fisher Library and can be accessed at any time by any of you during library hours. You’ll find that these resources have been categorised to ease the sharing of information between you all and the expectation is that you will co-operate in your various researches. The professor paused to let that sink in.
“There is no expectation that fine artists will become quantum physicists, but there is an expectation that they might, where appropriate, collaborate, to reach a mutual conclusion. I not only encourage multidisciplinary work, I believe it to be essential for you all to get the most out of this course. I can already see some rather unusual teams forming up.” The professor looked up at the calligraphers and Elliot wavers. Even the professor was having trouble parsing the links that appeared to form organically in that combination. “So lets get straight into it.”
“Go to “Bohm” in your folders, open up the “quotes”.
“The one that starts, “As in our discussion of matter in general, it is now necessary to go into the question of how in consciousness the explicate order is what is manifest…” This quote, by the way is from as yet unpublished work, so we’ll be speculating on this at the same time Bohm is. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could “read” the implicate enfolded in Bohm’s consciousness?” A few students giggled at the fairytale prospect.
“But we can’t, so lets speculate on what Bohm means here. Anyone want to jump in? The waters warm, and deep.”
A young woman sitting in the second row shot her hand up and without waiting for acknowledgement dived straight into her speculations.
“If, as Bohm says, each moment is explicate but enfolds all implicate possibilities and in quantum consciousness it is the “remembering” or the bringing of the implicate up into the consciousness of memory, the explicate, if you see what I mean; then that would imply that under certain conditions it might be possible to….., um, given that the brain doesn’t consciously differentiate between remembered and perceived, you know, except when we consciously choose to differentiate…., um…, well, so we could “think” things into being…., if you see what I mean. Sort of, “think it and it will be…..,”
“…and what are the implications, if you’ll excuse me,of that enormous and somewhat alarming idea, anyone else…?” The professor liked to get things rolling and then keep them going at as quick a pace as the students could stand.
An architecture graduate, “That can’t be right; implying, as it does, that any individual consciousness could change the physical expression of the universe. How would that work?”
“The answer may only apply to an individual’s creative thinking. It may not be literally applicable to the so called “real world”. Think on this. Perhaps reality is only a projection of a consensus among consciousnesses. Sorry for the tortured word. That would preclude the explication of contradictory implicates.”
The students were warming to this. A few of them displaying the kind of excitement common at children’s parties when guessing games are played. One of the more excited students, now just shouting out, “Heisenberg and Schroedinger, but from a philosophical perspective…”
“Weren’t the mathematics philosophical enough for you?” A comedian in the group.
“The Gioconda smile.” a fine arts grad shouted.
“Heraclitean fire!” That must have been the theology student.
The an architect again, “Iktinos and Kallikrates and the design of the Parthenon with all those ever so slight bulges that none the less satisfy what the eye expects and thereby confirm a geometry that doesn’t exist but looks like it does.
“You’re right, its all geometry at some level”
One of the calligraphers had his hand up. They were an unusual group, very quiet and keeping very much to themselves, they’d had to apply for permission from Beijing to attend the course. A political cadre had come with them. He sat at the edge of their group, a look of concentration on his face as he kept an eye on his charges.
The Professor nodded a quick bow, indicating that the Chinese student had the floor.
“When we are are at our work,” his English was flawless, “we are seeking to discover, to tease out the unseen in a word or idea. We are also seeking the centre of ourselves, and to make manifest the dynamism of the act in the final work. We seek to understand the world through an understanding of our own being in the moment of creation, a reconciliation of the interior individual and the external world across a metaphysical creative bridge to bring into being something which is both of the artist and of the world, but more than both. I think the English idiom is “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” He finished and sat quietly, neither seeking nor expecting a response. There was a discernible pause.
That pause was broken by a strong voice from right up the back, “Actually, what about those silhouette perception tests?” It was a young woman. “Those black and white images that might be two black faces looking at one another across a white field, or a white vase on a black field. There is a cognitive continuum which stretches from the two faces to the vase, but somewhere along that continuum there is a single point, a place of no scale and no fixed location, that is the tiniest of interstitial spaces between the faces and the vase but at which, perceptually, there is neither faces nor vase, there’s your SchroedingerandKallikrates all bound up together.”
“And Heisenberg, don’t forget Heisenberg.” the professor added with some energy. “So its the seen and the unseen, or more particularly what happens cognitively at the point of turnover. Sounds simple doesn’t it? And it is, in the end, but we’re a long way from that end. Look, these are all good answers but you’re all still thinking like undergrads.”
“You,” the professor pointed up at the young woman in the second last row who had aired the idea about perception. He looked up her name in the course register, “Bess, is it? Yes. Bess…., You’re absolutely in the wheelhouse. Do you feel like steering our ship?”
The young woman blushed and smiled at the professor. He felt a little unbalanced by her smile.
“That’s all I’ve got at the moment, except to say that there must be something in that non-moment of no time and place. That’s what fascinates me.” She smiled again and the professor now felt a subtle “push”. There was something metaphysical in that smile.
He made a quick note on a slip of paper and pushed it into his pocket, exclaiming as he did so, “Oh, well done! And yes, so it should fascinate you, all of you, because that’s where we’re going. Into that tiniest of places between utter chaos and the strange attractions of systems and order. All the really good stuff happens there!”
(As long as you don’t mind dealing with a lot of shit)
or…….
How to be a Carer of a person with multiple problems arising from cancer treatment.
Keep calm and have patience in abundance.
Remember that a woman can do anything. Men probably can too when it comes to the crunch.
Have a strong stomach for icky stuff.
Do a lot of research.
Never accept anything without questioning it.
Remember your gut feeling is usually right.
Be tech savvy because programable nutrition pumping machines don’t come with instructions and are not logical.
Keep important phone numbers at hand at home and on your mobile phone.
Makes notes every day. You’ll be amazed at questions doctors ask because they don’t have any notes passed on to them by other doctors or nursing staff especially when you’re dealing with three different hospitals. Type notes up on your computer and run an up-to-date copy off for every major event.
Observe the patient’s reactions and changes which may be related to changes in medications or new medications.
If you’re calling the ambulance at night put all house lights on – inside and outside – because there’s no street lighting in non town/village areas (our house is 200 metres from the gravel road).
If patient has collapsed at home, keep very calm even if they look like death warmed up.
Buy twice as many PJs as you think are needed and don’t be surprised at how hard it is to buy summer ones during the summer, especially ones the right size. You can’t be choosey about the colour either.
Be lucky to have a good small ceramic mortar and pestle for turning to powder pills which have to be administered via a feeding tube. Getting them in is another thing because they don’t really dissolve and quickly like to form a sediment.
Be good at making baby food and transitioning to moist grown up food.
Have lots of rolls of paper towels and big and thick tissues.
Don’t mind doing repetitive rather boring stuff.
Get a pee bottle.
Be excellent at timetabling and shopping with very limited time.
Be good at filling in very lengthy forms.
If possible, have private top hospital health insurance. Out of pocket expenses have been inconsequential.
Be lucky at getting a park at the hospital carpark (good luck with that indeed).
Try not to forget to feed yourself and keep on enjoying a wine or two or three.
Note: this is an extremely short version of my experiences over last thirteen months. There are some details which no one really needs to know – like what really bad constipation is like when your bladder has gone to sleep after an operation (who knew that could happen and why weren’t we warned?) and why they demand half your teeth have to be pulled (well that did cost a small fortune). The good news is that the patient is close to being back to normal.
Former National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce has slammed his colleague, Andrew Broad, for not considering his personal staff for his extramarital affair.
Joyce’s outburst came after allegations were published in New Idea that Broad broke with National Party tradition and relied on a third-party dating website to find suitable partners for his affairs.
‘There’s nothing wrong with the girls we hire!’ Joyce said. ‘I’m disappointed and appalled by Andrew’s lack of judgement’.
Broad, who yesterday resigned as Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, has expressed deep regret for his actions and vowed to keep future affairs within the National Party family.
Big M had reached a heightened, or perhaps, lowered meditative state that can only be achieved by feeding garden waste through a mulcher. He hated enjoyed this simple mindless task because it suited his intellect, as well as his vast horticultural skills. A nagging thought repeatedly interrupted his meditation. It was something he had read some months back. He had paid all of the bills, emptied the recycling basket, and watered the baby lettuce. Oh, shit, what was it? Must be some fuckin’ trick question, or somethin’ Mrs M wanted. He ruminated. Something about the Pigs Arms….Ah, Mr Merv retirin’. “Oh shit.” He yelled.
“What’s wrong, Dear?” Mrs M yelled back. “Did you cut your finger off, again, or see a snake, or get the cord on your shorts caught in the mulcher, or fall off a ladder….?”
“No, it’s Merv. Get me best suit, and brogues, and that new Fedora….Oh, wait, I’m not Foodge. Can you book me a fourth class ticket on the Flyer?” Yelled M over the sound of the mulcher.
“Probably not!” Mrs M had already lost interest.
“Why?” Yelled M, as he dragged the mulcher back into the garage.
“It’s not 1937, and there is no Flyer, and you can use your Opal Card.” Mrs M knew exactly what was happening, so was already getting her handbag and car keys, knowing that the next question would be something about being driven to the train station.
Twenty minutes later Big M found himself firmly ensconced in an oxymoronically named ‘quiet car’ heading towards Sydney at speeds of up to seventy kilometres per hour. Not three hours later he found himself in the Gentlemen’s Bar at the Window Dressers’ Arms, Pig and Whistle. “Barkeep, a pint of your best.”
Merv was about to turn around and face the arrogant sod when he suddenly recognised the voice. He turned around anyway. “I’m not yer fuckin’ barkeep!” Then grinned. “Gib W, I mean Big M, I’d forgotten who was writing this episode. How the hell are you?” He crushed Big M’s soft nurse’s hand in a vice like grip. A glass canoe quickly followed.
“I’m already enjoying my retirement.” Mumbled M through a foamy, hoppy moustache. “Always thirsty work, commuting.” As he pushed the empty canoe across to Merv who picked up on the hint and proffered another foamy treat. “Anyway, I’m not here to talk about me, I’m here to discuss this rumour about YOUR retirement!”
“Ah, well, that’s difficult.” Merv looked around furtively. “It’s not me that I’m tryin’ to get retired, it’s Granny. I thought that if I sold my share of the pub she might retire.”
“Granny, why Granny? I mean, she’ll work until she drops.” Big M was already looking at the bottom of his empty glass.
“Therein lies the problem.” Merv was pretty pleased with himself for getting in one of those high faluting words, like heretofore, and such. “She’s bloody exhausted!” A third canoe was paddling across the heavily stained timber bar.
“I know the feelin’.” M was as unsteady with his words as his legs, but eagerly skulled another half pint.
“I’ll bet you don’t. It’s bloody Foodge. He’s at her all of the time. Like a boy of fifteen. Early morning, mid-morning, lunchtime, afternoon delight….that’s just a warm-up for the evening!”
“I always thought that our dear Private Dick was pretty backward in the use of the wedding flute. Especially after Granny gave him those anabolic steroids that turned out to be oestrogen.” Big M noticed that the bar had become relatively quiet and quite attentive, relatively.
Granny had appeared at he bottom of the stairs. “What mischief are you causin’?” As she pointed a bony finger at M.
“Ah, oo, um, er. No mischief. Um….this new Pale Ale is good, I mean really good….ah, great.” Big M stared into the bottom of his glass and started to tremble. He couldn’t help himself as he started to laugh uncontrollably. “Pftt…..Foodge….a demon in the sack!”
Soon everybody, including Merv was laughing.
“All right you lot…SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Granny was livid. “How dare you laugh at one of the finest Private Dicks in the country?”
The mere mention of ‘Private Dick’ fed the laughter like trying to put out a fire with petrol. Even the Bowling Ladies were tittering from the Ladies bar.
Granny turned on her heel and marched straight back up the Errol Flynn Memorial Staircase.
“Oh fuck, now we’ve done it!” Muttered Merv. Fuck, what will we do now?”
“The best thing we could do is try to work out what’s going on.” Came a quiet voice from the end of the bar. Manne had crept in with a big basket of eggs, having recently taken over the care of Granny’s chooks because she was too busy. “I mean, Foodge might have some hormonal problem.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Big M picked up on it straight away. “Yes, too much testosterone, or some other androgen. Did Foodge go to an endocrinologist after the oestrogen overdose?”
“Yeah, but he said there was nothing to be done, ‘cept for a powerful placebo.” Mumbled Merv as he wiped over the taps with a dirty rag.”
“Have you ever seen Granny wait? She’s hardly very patient” M mused over a forth pint. “Would she buy steroids?”
“Nah, not after the oestrogen business.” Merv pulled a tray of steaming glasses from the washer, setting them on the bar to cool.
“Has he been to another doctor?” Big M was scratching his head, struggling to finish the episode.
“No, he hates the doctor.” Reckons they’re charlatans, unlike the legal profession.” Merv winked.
“No one else has become horny?”
“Well I can’t speak for anyone else, but there haven’t been many opportunities.” Merv blushed.
Manne shook his head. “Not since Granny caught me with nudies on me phone.”
“We need more help. Where’s Emmjay?”
“Queensland.” Merv was placing the glasses into the bottom of the refrigerator.
“Algy?”
“Thailand.”
“Mark?”
“Summer Bay.”
“The Oosterfolk”
“Costco, no at home.”
“Viv?”
“At ‘ome with ‘er recuperatin’ ‘usband.” Merv grunted as he realised that the IPA keg was empty.
“The rest?”
“Well they’re dispersed across the country as per usual.” Merv was trying to get Manne to pick up on some non-verbal cue about the empty keg. Manne was busily trying to balance an egg on its apex.
“Fuck, we’re on our own?” M slumped over the bar.
“Couldn’t you just measure Foodge’s testicle level?” Manne had given up on his egg-balancing act.
“Of course, great idea. How would we do it? Total urinary steroids. No, too much pissing about. We probably need some blood. How would we get, say, ten mls of blood from Foodge?”
“I could punch him in the nose, then save all of the tissues.” Manne said in earnest.
“I think we need something subtle.” Big M mused. “More subtle than a punch in the nose.”
“You remember Foodge thought he was about to be knighted last Liz’s Birthdee?” Merv’s brow was crumpled in concentration.
“Yep, but what’s that got to do with the price of mullet?” Big M was getting exasperated.
“Well, we tell him that we was doin’ ‘is family tree, and the Royal Family want a blood sample because they think he is a distant member of the royal family, like Liz’s third cousin, four times removed, or summit!” Merv’s brow finally relaxed.
“Yes, yes. I’ll get some needles, syringes, blood tubes, et cetera and away we go!” Big M seemed to sober up at the thought.
Staple your entry to a $20 note – best of luck with the Spot Scott Morrison Competition (Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images borrowed with thanks)
An intimate interview with the PM – by Emmjay
Sco Go the Sharkies.
Emm: Yes, good, thank you Mr Morrison.
Sco: They were great weren’t they !
Emm: If you say so, Mr Morrison.
Sco: And I do say so, mate.
Emm: Mr Morrison, what’s your reaction to the Victorian election result ?
Sco: Call me Scomo. Go the Sharkies.
Emm: Mr Morrison, the Victorian election ?
Sco: We was robbed. Did you catch that ref ? I mean his seeing eye dog should do the one-way trip to the vet.
Emm: The Victorian election ?
Sco: Sorry, you were saying ?
Emm: Mr Morrison, I was asking you for your take home message on your reaction to the Victorian election result.
Sco: There was loose talk that we didn’t have a prayer – but I did one for them and I cried a bit.
Emm: … and ?
Sco: Well, well, nothing happened.
Emm: So, divine intervention was a fizzer ?
Sco: What church do you go to, son ?
Emm: I play third ukulele at St Generic’s Brand.
Sco: Well, son, I think it was probably your fault. Ya have to play in key and in time.
Emm: Sorry, I’ll try harder in the next election. Who’s having that again ?
Sco: Somebody told me that. No, wait… I think there’s some snags ordered for the Happy Clappers of Shark Park.
Emm: Close, Mr Morrison. It’s the NSW election in March next year.
Sco: How’s our form there ?
Emm: I believe that the verdict is still with the TV ref.
Sco: Will there be Sharkies contesting ? Go the Sharkies !
Emm: Indeed, Mr Morrison.
Sco – checking his mobile phone “It will be fought on local issues”
Emm: Like Wentworth ?
Sco: Australia’s best Prime Minister ? William Charles Wentworth. I used to call him Bill. My mate Bill.
Emm: He died even before your little dust up with NZ Tourism.
Sco: I was robbed. Those ALL Blacks have no understanding of the offside rule.
Emm: They say the Nez Wealand taxpayers was robbed.
Sco: It wasn’t my fault that “Put a shrimp in the hungi” flopped. I mean, what’s a hungi ? Some kind of pagan ritual? Of course, no God-fearing bloke is going to go there for some druid nonsense. Did I tell you that I turned back the boats ?
Emm: From New Zealand ?
Sco: From Shark Park.
Emm: No you didn’t.
Sco: Yeah, I did. Coz I’m fair dinkum.
Emm: Was Malcolm fair dinkum ?
Sco: Who did he barrack for ?
Emm: I have no idea. Does he barrack at all ?
Sco: There you have it. Not like David Steinbergstein.
Emm: The former candidate for Wentworth ?
Sco: Bill ?
Emm: No, the proposed candidate for Wentworth.
Sco: Sonja ? She was a snappy dresser.
Emm: Yes she was. Mr Morrison, what did the Coalition learn from the Victorian election ?
Sco: Did you realise you just typed “coal” ? I love coal, it’s all black and shiny like my BMW.
Emm: Well the voters of Wentworth didn’t seem too fond of your coal policy.
Sco: Ha ha you just typed coal again ! Twice.
Emm: Was the coalition’s lack of an energy policy or a climate change policy something to do with the Victorian election – I believe the Murdoch press called it a Coalition rout.
Sco: How dare you suggest that the Victorian coalition is routed ! OK, the Sharkies didn’t run, but I prayed for them and I had a little cry too. So, did my minister Pasta Farian.
Emm: Or did it have something to do with the bogus war on South Sudanese youth in Melbourne.
Sco: I have been accused of racism, you know ?
Emm: You don’t say !
Sco: Yeah, although I’m a fair dinkum bloke, I will not abide by street violence. Nobody. Not even people the colour of coal are above John Laws.
Emm: Are you saying that you ARE racist on the black gangs street violence issue ?
Sco: Those dickheads who point to the 40% decline in youth violence in Victoria in the last four years are turning a blind eye. I reckon it’s because South Sudanese youth are hard to see at night.
Emm: So, what was the cause of the Coalition rout in the Victorian election or in the seat of Wentworth – a seat it is alleged that has only ever been in Liberal hands.
Sco: It was a state issue.
Emm: Wentworth is a Federal seat.
Sco: I know that. It’s held by my mate Billy Wentworth.
Emm: Billy’s been extinct for decades and so is his love child Billy McMahon – perpetually voted as Australia’s worst Prime Minister – until he was unseated by Tony Abbott.
Sco: But the Sharkies are great ! Go Sharkies !
Emm: Have you got any tourist tips ?
Sco: Put another shrimp on the barbie !
Emm: Thanks. That’ll be a few million dollars please.
Sco: Sure. The cheque is in the mail.
Emm: Mr Morrison, thanks for your time.
Sco: No worries, anything for a fair dinkum Aussie bloke. Go the Sharkies.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 