Category Archives: Sandshoe

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 2

25 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

,

The Inner Cyberia Pleece Force in the car park after one to many Trotters

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 2

by Sandshoe (Honshades)

We need to know a lot to build a house that is a home.

We moved to New Zealand in 1983 with 5 children as the family was grown as planned. My husband had completed a Ph. D.. He accepted a position of employment in Auckland.

We had one month accommodation provided us.

Our housing was a motel next street in from a suburban beach the motelier told us was the best beach in New Zealand, only a step from the heart of our beautiful city. Our first view of it fixed on the largest and dirtiest rat I have seen ever scuttle out of

An Auckland rat…

a storm water drainage pipe onto a foreshore. The tide was in as well lapping at a narrow strip of sandy beach so that naive and homesick, we were well confused this was the best beach in New Zealand.

I did not want to immediately buy at the end of one month. I wanted to rent. I foresaw we needed a period to orient ourselves. Forewarned is forearmed. My husband considered we could not afford a rental to house our family of seven. We did not discuss options. I accepted we could not afford to rent.

Mind, we faced a raft of other underlying reasons why to proceed was looking no go at all. At one later stage we discussed suggestion my husband raised that to stay was looking financially impossible. Neither had we anticipated that raising a loan on the down payment

Tits sell

secured from the sale of the house in Australia was not a walk in the park in the NZ office of the major bank we had the previous mortgage with in Australia. First benchmark learned about borrowing money no matter how confident and successful a home buyer has been, no matter how many previous mortgages, how major the bank, no matter how upwardly mobile. You think you are home and hosed or housed. Check what is going on in any other country you migrate to and never suppose reliable employment and sound credit rating means an iota in translation.

Your bank in Australia is nothing to do with us and the decisions we make.

Get your hand off my clit and hand over the money

We were able to raise the mortgage from another bank, fortunate.

I basked later in praise newly-met friends and colleagues lavished on us. They would never have been courageous enough to buy where we did. Previous to our example they imagined, implied foolishly, they would never have considered it.

Who knows if we said it was the only property we could afford to move out of the motel on desperately straitened means.

My husband and I were as individuals and a couple entirely burdened with stress. To arrive in New Zealand as a family of seven on the day before Christmas Eve, 1983, we thought we knew what we were talking about when my husband and I discussed the move. We knew squat. We were as naive as the other. We subsequently found ourselves without income because my husband’s pay was not immediately accessible. The accounts office was closed for the summer holiday period. We had to cash in a lone investment remaining in Australia that was our one source of small means to survive, potentially no home other than the motel, potentially no transport having not anticipated Customs demands we pay a substantial amount of money to secure our

Law abiding officers

vehicle out of the depot where it sat in storage for weeks after it was unloaded at the wharf. Our transport was a rough hire van which was supplied for the first month. The first of two vans was so rough it remains a mystery to me how an employer could establish a least justification to supply it under the terms of a contract of employment. We saw danger everywhere. New Zealand had no safety belt laws. We watched out of the windows of our van in horror a cavalcade of unsecured passengers and unrestrained animals in passing vehicles. Least of our immediate worries that we did not know much that was practical about a culture and a national economy in transition we needed to come to terms with and understand, neither could have imagined.

I, my turn for a shock and on my own, attended to open a bank account at a branch of the Bank of New Zealand I chose local to the house we bought. I offered my passport as an item of identity with requisite proof of the new address. I had never had a passport before. It was a source of original joy unconfined, shiny in a protective plastic cover and one stamp only that was entry into New Zealand. The teller

She was a teller…

emerged from taking it to be reviewed by a manager in a back office. He tossed it by way of a spin onto the counter. The passport slid towards me. I was gripped by a sense of saturated disbelief watching the passport come to rest. I believe all colour drained out of my face. The teller’s had transformed to a rampant bully’s. His lip curled.

“Come back when you’ve got something decent to show for yourself,” he agressed and turned his back on me to underline contempt.

I stepped back to make a space in the middle of a crowd of customers where I demonstrated with a raised voice and vehement passion. A better recourse than turning on my heel and walking out after would have been to stay and even get perhaps arrested. I had a family to return home to. Staff at the National Bank of New Zealand I walked to across the mall regrouped, found a chair and brought a cup of tea to soothe me when I started to tell a duty officer at a customer service desk I

Did you say wank or bank…

wanted to open a bank account, but suffered a flood of tortured tears. The bank account was duly opened without question. Later I could not recall if the passport was taken out of its cover and opened. I knew neither staff or the manager who was called read letters of identity I offered. What they thought they knew of neighbourhood was perhaps torn into the tiniest pieces as mine was.

An incident at a stop at road works on a blazing hot day went to the heart of all frustrations. A road worker ambled across the road in front of our van as we slowed to crawl past a site of a road repair. He picked up a witch’s hat from the lane where it was as we approached and set it down before us in the lane we had changed into. No road repair was in process. There was no other traffic in any direction. The action appeared to be unwarranted mischief. I put my head out of the passenger window and called it we wanted to be allowed to pass. The worker slowly ambled towards the van with an expression of insolence. He leaned forward and leered in the window.

A cartoon sketched exclusively out of her own imagination by one of my two older daughters shows the mum and dad kangaroo seated in the driver and front passenger seats respectively. Clustered behind them is an assortment of joeys, one of which is a girl … as the youngest baby in nappies was … defined by femme bows tied around

Sargent Sulfate here, my friends call me Copper

her ears. Out of the mouth of the mum kangaroo in the front passenger seat is the speech bubble ‘Let us through’ and out of the beak of a shaggy hulk of a kiwi visible through the front passenger window flows the classic denunciation as it happened ‘Why don’t you go home where you came from’.

to be continued…

Christina Binning Wilson

I fucking hate cats

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 1

19 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

, ,

Hi honey, I’m home…

 

 

The Sociology of A Place To Call Home Part 1

by Sandshoe (Honshades)

I began writing this essay considering the issues raised by Tent City in Martin Place in Sydney.

I noted on the Mayor of Sydney’s website there are 60,000 on the public housing waiting list in NSW. That is around three times the number in SA reflecting a larger population pretty well.

There are 105, 200 plus people homeless in Australia. 24,000 are said to be homeless in Melbourne alone. Homeless sleeping rough in inner city Adelaide is up 44 percent from last year. 20,000 plus is well more than that now surely as a figure for Queensland (2014 latest) and similarly 10,000 in West Australia. The categories by age are frightening, the old, the young, the disabled, mentally ill and just plain broke. They need services, meals, supplies of blankets, nothing more urgent than a roof overhead that offers a sense of home.

There are the boarders, rooming house lodgers, people sleeping motels, on living room

So park the car

couches. There is the population that has no choice as well but to rent, but wants security of tenure hoped for by home ownership and regard themselves as homeless. About 30% of housing in Australia is rental property. The Australian rental market is not the greatest. Renting imposes short term housing solutions on many who yearn to buy their own home. A common experience is of a battle ground.

One of the outcomes of having to move house repeatedly is stigma that is a close associate of prejudice and its poster child, discrimination. It evidences in ways beyond imagining. My experience as a renter who has lived in maybe a hundred different rental properties and housing includes a medical professional, a young doctor, at a surgery immediately above my then new workplace … local to my new rental address … tell me to stop doctor shopping.

Well and good if nothing ever happened again as bizarre as this was relative to my conservative history of medical presentation. Renters I know from years of experience walk a rocky road accessing housing and related services that have to be re-established each time they move houses, districts and, sometimes, towns and countries.

A segment of the population does not want to own a home because they cannot forsee meeting rates and maintenace costs, cannot perform essential maintenance themselves or do not want to be tied to a location view employment prospects, access visiting rights with children and so on. Rental is my mindset. My thinking about renting as a choice different from intention to own a home has progressively led me to consider the difficulties of the rental market as incitement to protest and revolution.

Wouldn’t it be nice

In whatever frame and howsoever revolution is visualised, middle- and low- income earners and those on less than the average wage logically cannot do anything else but oppose the levers driving land prices and home ownership costs upward to dangerous and dizzy height. Little people by which I mean compromised by unbridled capitalism are the bodies left behind in a debris of failed housing projects, compromised tradespersons, investment strategies gone maliciously wrong, of course mum and dad investors and so on, among them renters.

So many grubs with grubbers and so little time for everyday people who will not live fantastically long and healthy lives as a direct result of their straitened existences.

Housing policy that fails to spell out people need a roof overhead sounds paradoxical, but I believe we find that is so evaluating our everyday experiences, our friends’, families’, our struggles to keep a roof overhead as well as pay utilities, feed and clothe ourselves, access education and training, organise and attend social get togethers, go on holiday, keep our kids in the manner we would prefer them to some small degree or larger be accustomed, not to forget so many of us never see our kids of whatever age as we go round on the hurdy gurdy. Everyday people live a much-of-a-muchness hand-to-mouth existence that varies only by a few degrees house to house, suburb to suburb, town to town.

Neighbour to the next neighbouring house and further, if we are ourselves not poor by official definition or measured by relativity in a culture of haves and have-nots, we are in some way poor as a result of our personal circumstances, how many people we

Home is where the heart is

provide for, charities we feel an obligation to support, sports and service clubs we give to and on it goes, hobbies, obsessions, conditioning and addictions included as we are only human that we seek the readies to pay for our Achilles heels too.

No question we are vulnerable. Unsure if there are more recent figures but I make it the Australian median weekly income is $662.00. Median rent is $335.00. To spell it out median rent is looking towards 50% of median income. Median household mortgage repayments (monthly) are $1,755 and not to neglect figuring in rates, rubbish, roof repairs and there is everything else.

20% of the population has an income less than $650. To spell it out median rent is more than 50% of median income.

Look at Newstart Allowance that I call the dole (unemployment) in disguise. Consider the ramifications for housing that 75% or so of recipients are single.

The base rate is $535.60 that increases to $579.30 for 60 year olds and over. Median rent is way over income and if the recipient owns their home they receive no assistance to maintain it. If the recipient is a renter they receive a payment of $132.20 maximum in rent assistance per fortnight. Consider median rent is $335.00 a week so a renter paying it has to find $538.00 a fortnight.

Do not go past go. On paper leastwise a Newstart Allowance recipient who is not a home owner is not housed. This is not a housing policy. All the rhetoric in the world and documents that detail allotments of health and transport services to suburban and regional and rural populations cannot change the undeniable.

If a single recipient of a Newstart Allowance owns a well furnished mortgage free brand new home with solar panels on their new roof overhead and new water tanks in

Sister Yvonne comes home

their back yard holding sufficient rainwater to see them through a year, they can breathe relatively easy they only have to secure everything else they need to eat and sleep well out of a payment of $267.50 a week. Best they own a brand new car that is under guarantee so they can shop around for food bargains and bulk buy ‘cupboard’ milk to pay for car registration, licence renewal, ambulance cover, houshold insurance, the rates and phone, internet and for clothing.

‘Of all households’, 36% of homeowners have a mortgage. Only 31% do not.

30% rent. Give or take a few percent here and there and there. The Great Australian Dream in its parallel universe for all that it is everyday unattainable in its form of ownership of a house that is a home with a yard, outlook and a barbecue with at least a blow-up paddle pool stored in the garage for the kids pulses yet like a power house … incredibly… even children witnessed by me first when I met High School sweethearts some years ago now who had a savings account for when they married and purchased a house, actualised The Dream.

What if this driver I visualise as so powerful, The Great Australian Dream for one when its actualisation is impossible needs a shake up to let some of our national psyche down off a hook it’s dangles from, helpless, frustrated, non-reactive, complacent even when a dream regardless it will not materialise engenders hope.

I was a home owner when I heard a University lecturer expound the premise in 1980 that rental housing is a potential choice not a default position and home ownership not all its cracked up to be. Until then I had never thought about rental from the viewpoint of choice.

How did I? To illustrate a thought process I need to provide a backdrop of personal experience.

Two years earlier I had moved with three young children from Queensland to live in Adelaide in South Australia with a partner. I was awarded a generous allotment of University of Adelaide subjects as representative of subjects I had completed at the

Queenslanders

University of Queensland in Brisbane stretched over the years 1968, 1969 and 1974. By 1980 I was 30 with three young children and a classic sandstone home in a state of disrepair, a relationship to match.

I undertook to graduate to establish employment and sufficient income asap to relieve my husband-to-be and step-father to the three children of the load he was carrying as primary provider. I wanted to graduate certainly before my ageing parents did not see it through to know I had, but as well to help provide shelter, food, clothing etc for a projected larger family of children in the future.

Having completed two full time subjects in History at the U of A, I had achieved equivalence of one Major (three years study in the one discipline). To graduate now I had sufficient Minor subjects. I needed one other Major in a different discipline, I needed to choose one only further full-time subject from either the Politics Department or English Department given the U of A had awarded me equvalence of two years full-time study in each.

Politics seemed to offer a wider field of opportunity and the subject ‘Sociology of Power’ lept off the Handbook page.

I wanted to define myself as having power and understanding power. An interest in a career in Local Government rekindled especially grown originally out of ‘dropping-out’ from the Queensland Department of Education into the social tumult of the counter-culture in the 1960s. Skirmishes with local coucils and local Progress Committees was par for the course for alternates building home made houses.

I was surprised the class ‘Sociology of Power’ attracted only a handful of students. I had thought it so interesting a concept I presupposed a lecture theatre or auditorium. Classes were delivered in the intimacy of staff offices. Especially my outlook was introspective. I did not worry at any topic and draw attention. My no-frills kick-off position undertaking to pass the one subject was to graduate. I was compromised by fatigue and the demands of a domestic household.

Professor now, Jim Kemeny, grabbed my attention however when he presented the consideration that rental housing is a potential choice. He outlined what I heard as an

Fuck off Hung TISM

idealistic in part and ideological alternative dream of a rental housing sector of tenants and landlords bound by law and common respect for the other’s purpose and relationship to housing.

We each become sophisticated in our lives in one detail or other, usually in the most unexpected ways whereas my experience had been naive in this respect, dependant and certainly powerless in regard to bigger decisions of quality of lifestyle and domestic arrangement. That the Great Australian Dream had holes in it and neither did I dream it, but complied with it escaping persecution of one variety or another, had never crossed my mind. The presentation was a housing policy set in an understanding of diverse housing needs and expectations. This was a discussion about housing policy that dealt with considerations of financing, relativity and a practical analysis of what a Dream means, who its players are and their stakes, tenancy law, contemporary shortfalls in the law, a projected future in which tenants had maximum opportunity to participate in housing policy with non-intrusive real estate agents, that they would hold rights that are the proper rights of tenants investing in being housed in a maintained home, not begrudging paying rent, enjoying diminshed friction that was otherwise rife between landlords and agents and tenants. More Australians would settle in rental if the relationships between landlords and their agents and tenants were well legislated to establish equity and pride in tenancy, that the relationships were valued. If the Great Australian Dream was not the dominant driver of the housing market, born out of a cult of individualism and desire for a higher and higher standard of living, for freedom from tenant-landlord relationships, instead more people would opt to rent but be happy, to achieve the goals of their day-to day pursuits without housing stress.

to be continued…

Christina Binning Wilson

This is my home

Gordon and the Bish take leave – the holiday ends yet begins – Part 3

13 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Gordon and the Bish get back to work

Gordon and The Bish Go On Holiday: Part Three

by Shoe

Continued…

“Seems an important scientific fact, Bish. The longer a toad like Toad settles in one district, the less likely are its chances in its lifetime of pulling in big crowds, I reckon. See, toads travel and further and faster than a toad’s predecessors.”

“Gord, Toad was doomed on his own whatever way I look at it!”

Look there’s one

“Bish, Toad likely had a bad back too. Toad was in no shape to be on racing. Toads get spinal arthritis. Because they walk further faster. Not a word of not trew truth.”

Gordon and the Bish are both sobered.

“A population dwindles and individuals like Toad head out in a random pattern called toad dispersal. They mate with other dispersing toads. They breed more offspring than their predecessors and even faster toads that can travel even further again.”

‘Awesome,” the Bish says. “How do you know all that, Gord?”

“Shoe told me, Bish. She read it on Ogle.”

Shoe, in a former role

“Shoe’s awesome. Gord, we’re going in the wrong direction. I’m staying at Sandy’s. Remember? He’s in the manse across from the car park? Behind the Pig’s Arms?”

“Bit of a walk. What were we thinking. I had better go back with you to the good Father O’Ways, Bish. We can have a night cap. Better not tell him in the confessional. About Space World. The toad never happened either.”

The Bish muses as he and Gordon struggle to keep the pavement steady to turn around.

“Int’resting though, Gord. I like a toad story with an int’resting ending. Shoe is so awesome. Shoe wrote the frog joke, eh.”

“Yes, she did.” Gord lets out a tiny sigh. “You know when she says she did to people who like it and on tell it, she would like to make new friends or she wouldn’t say. You know it’s been in other people’s books and voted best joke

I thought you said a dog joke!

and on television and someone clever made a funny film about how much they don’t want to hear it again. The people don’t talk to her when she tells them. Shoe’s lonely.”

“Shoe? Lonely? IS she?”

“Of course she is. People running in the opposite direction.”

“We’re friends. We’re all friends. Shoe’s a friend. Wonder if she’ll write another frog joke.”

“Nah. Unlikely, Bish. She misses the frog too much. Ought to ask her if she’ll write a toad joke and cheer us up.”

“Great idea, Gord. How about we ask her will she make it a good long story with some joking around in it about a toad. The frog joke isn’t really a read, is it.”

“Here we are at the manse already, Bish.”

The home of Father O’Way

Gordon and the Bish walk in the dark with care past the mail box swinging on its hinges from the old gate post. They can just make out the familiar brass lettering of the name ‘FATHER O’WAY’ and the front path littered with debris. The garden is a mess.

When his mates clatter and clang the brass knocker on his front door to get him up off the sofa where he sits in the late evenings reading Pigs Arms porkies and laughing, Sandy O’Way is slow to stir. He gets up on thinking on it. He remembers the Bish is in town.

It’ll be a night.

The End

I’m sure there was a door here this morning

Written by Christina Binning Wilson 2017

Gordon and the Bish take leave – in much frothinesses – Part 2

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

 

Yes, I know, ee eagle Emm sea dared. Bloody dentures…

Gordon and The Bish Go On Holiday: Part Two

by Shoe

Continued…

“Zarks and Constantine,” the Bish says. “It’s Algernon.”

“More than that. It’s Emm and Big M and Mark. It’s… Shoe and Viv and Yvonne and Helvi. Nev and Manne, Merv. I can see Gregor, Ricardo, Gez, Rosemary… Our mates. On an excursion. Didn’t ask us.”

Photo of the crew arriving at Space World. From Back L to R: 1,2,3,4,5
Front row:6,7,8

Gordon O’Donnell feels indignity as rough as a pineapple. The tequila is fuel to a fire lit by a surround of carousing patrons du porc. “How did you get here,” Gordon demands to know.

“I came straight off the Flyer,” says Algernon as cheerful as a bird singing in a tree top.

“I caught the bus home. The Zephyr’s in for mechanicin’.”. It’s Foodge.

He’s fucked Merv, Trotters all round fanks

Others’ voices add ‘walked’, caught the bus’, ‘the other half dropped me off’, ‘me too’ and such like.

“Granny’s latest batch of Trotters,” whispers the Bish to Gordon. Words are a hurdle. “Don’t say anything about Space World, Gordy.”

“No fear,” Gordon whispers back. He is in the same quadrant on their dial. “Don’t mention the toad, Bish, I think.”

“What if he wakes up?” the Bish whispers, nervous, glances at the Pig’s Arms Sports Bar pedal bin.

Warning: Some viewers may be offended as the following contains laptopothansia

“Goose!” Gordon answers in a snapped whisper at the Bish, “He won’t wake up. He can’t. He’s not real. Deny we know him anyway. We’ve done it once. We can do it again.”

“Why?” the Bish whispers back.

“Frogs are popular. Toads bring … opprobrium. They’re … a menace. We’ll get the blame. Anyway, if the toad is in the bin he’ll expire in Trotters’ slops.”

“Leave sleeping toads lie,” the Bish whispers as a cant.

“Good scheme. Say he’s a liar if he wakes up, escapes and says anything,” Gordon commands.

“Don’t mention the toad in the room,” the Bish cants.

“Someone’s got to get you blokes tucked up in your cots,” Merv announces. He slides a tray of freshly washed and polished new knives and forks the length of the new stainless steel serving bench and walks to its other end.

Merv and Foodge stare each other down

“Foodge?” He beckons. “Can you walk these blokes home?”

“Uncle Merv,” says Foodge, “Don’t want to. They should … should be made to pay their slate getting the way they are.”

“We spent all the coin we too… ” Gordon applies a hurtful kick to the Bish’s dangling shins. “Nexsht week, we promise,” the pair says half in unison as they slide unsteadily onto their feet off the new bar stools covered in shining new clear plastic.

“See, Uncle Merv. They’re all good for that.” Foodge is his ever trusting sheltered self and he relents. “We’re scootin’. Gettin’ on the frog and toad now.” Foodge nudges Gordon whose face has gone from pale to deathly white. “Come on, Gordon O’Donnell. Fresh air do you some good” he says, playful. “Come on, Bish. Uncle Merv, I’ll empty the pedal bin on our way out.”

Unashamedly yours

“Good work. Place smells like a dead toad,” Big M gives a thumbs up. Merv feels a glow of Uncle pride to see Foodge recognised for domestic initiative after all these years.

The patrons du porc cheer.

“Be careful with that pedal bin,” Viv warns as Foodge grasps it, nonchalant, naïve of the skill it takes to empty a pedal bin holus bolus without liquid content dribbling at best off the rim of the bucket and around the lid hinge down his arm.

Gordon and the Bish stagger back and veer towards the door in a half run between them as Foodge throws the bin onto one shoulder. The patrons du porc gasp. The weight of the sliding bucket jams the lid of the pedal bin open. Rotting Trotters’ slops propel an arc in the air of liquid silage dotted with discernible strands of coleslaw and mayo.

Nev gets the message

“Surreal,” Nev says. Nev writes restaurant reviews and scores the pub with a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the best.

“I think that’s him,” whines the Bish to Gordon and points to a crumpled black mass of oozing slime on the plastic cover of a table near the door.

“Don’t point!” orders Gordon from somewhere on high, “It’s Schticky Date Pudding.”

The Bish doubles over puking a splendid Inner Cyberian chunder on a new hessian and rag coiled rug at the door. “Lesh get out of here.”

“Where’zh our luggage, Gord,” the Bish asks as they step into night. The air is freezing. They walk along the pavement arm-in-arm to steady themselves

Look, a suppository

and for warmth. They have on Hawaiian shirts that smell bad and knee length shorts with plastic sandals.

“Dunno, I dunno,” says Gordon in reflection apparently on their luggage. His pondering might be on cold.

“Gord, I’m f’r shewer not shewer how much of our shtory’s true this time.” Gordon can see by a glimmer of a lone roadside lamp the Bish looks deep in thought.

“Bish, the toad’s closhest to trew truth.”

“That no-hoper, Gord. Couldn’t walk a straight line if he tried.”

I’m shitting bricks and farting pebbles waiting for the next exciting episode, brought to you by Red Donkey.

To be continued…

Written by Christina Binning Wilson 2017

Gordon and the Bish take leave – of their senses – Part 1

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, ,

Gordon and the Bish in holiday mode

 

Gordon and The Bish Go On Holiday: Part One

by Shoe

Never has the Inner Cyberian World Viewpoint looked more beautiful. Everything is coming up roses in public park gardens and out of the way places rose gardens take form. Rose bushes in planter boxes the full length of city streets droop roses in full bloom. In suburban Inner Cyberians’ front, side and back yard gardens roses bloom widdershins.

Gordon O’Donnell and the Bish are getting away from it all for a few days. They are going to Space World in the Outer Cyberian galaxy. They have a Cyberian Ogle Map.

“Should be a blast” the Bish says. The Bish is talking a holiday.

“Who’s got the tickets,” Gordon huffs and puffs. The Bish has a way of getting Gordon to carry the luggage and yes, yes, yes Gordon has talked the Bish into an old fashioned trip in a rocket space ship. Checkpoint Charlina pats them down.

Charlina is such a nice bird

Each is wearing underpants three pair deep on the outside of their shared economy travel rocket space ship suit.

“Going for just a few days then?” Checkpoint Charlina asks and chortles “No room for anything more in your travel cases. All the Hawaiian shirts.” She consults a check list. “Gordon O’Donnell. Institute of Pigs Arms Higher Thought. Physicist? The Bish? You sure?”

Gordon and the Bish vigorously bob the head of their rocket space ship suit.

“Get out of here,”

“One thing, Gordy,” the Bish remarks “is perhaps a few too many Trotters’ Ales before we left.” They are waddling across the rocket space ship station tarmac towards the base of a vertical ladder up the side of a rocket space ship.

Advertisement: Go to the Moon With A Mate. Save Space.

Try our new improved space rocket

The lurid plastic clown floating above the ticket gate behind them beckons on one hand, ‘Come this way’ elongated plastic arms flailing and ‘See you’ on the other.

Gordon and the Bish remember and turn and wave. Having worked up enough volition to walk forwards instead of both toppling backwards, negotiating between themselves a complete turn and a half reverse spin to wave seems an irrational response to a plastic promotion floatie.

They reposition themselves (it’s a struggle) and climb the ladder.

“Are we there yet,” the Bish asks as they tumble into the rocket space ship. They find the modular cot allocated to them.

“Yes,” says Gordon, “We’ve arrived. Like the brochure says. In one piece.”

The face of the Bish is a picture. Gordon takes a close up.

They scrabble out of their modular cot and waddle backwards to exit. They are a tight fit stepping out through the door onto the top rung of the descent ladder.

Business class first

Below them at the base of the ladder Business Class is emptying of Business Class travellers. Once, after a perilous climb down I must say, they are on the tarmac of the Space World Rocket Space Ship Station they follow a squiggly black felt pen outlined arrow trail.

A stowaway toad in racing colours sprints past them with a scrap of muddy stretch knit cotton tee held high as a freedom flag.

“Takes no time.” The Bish is all admiration.

“Fast toad,” Gordon comments.

“No. Us, Gord. We’ve only been gone a minute.”

“The travel advisor said it would only take a minute, Bish.”

“Thought she meant the paper work. The paper work took such a long time.”

Gordon says with a smile, “We have been uploaded, Bish, at the rate of 1,000 cyberbits per second.”

No time for the Bish to raise improbability as a subject with an atomic scientist who is not yet connected to the NBN. Gordon raises the importance to them both he has urgent need of a rest room.

They do find a rest room and change into cazh. They use the conveniences and discard their rocket space ship suit. Gordon smoothes his Hawaiian shirt front. He

Gordy and the Bish suit up

scrutinises the Bish. “How do I look?”he asks. “You’ll pass,” the Bish assures Gordon.

The main lane gambling saloons and alleyways of Space World entice with flashing neon moons.

GUARANTEED TO WIN!

So Gordon and the Bish being strapped for cash throw cyber coin at machines throwing cyber coin into space on a screen on the machine. They ride the Big Zipper up and down and up and down. The Bish barfs. Gordon wears some of the Bish’s barf. They buy Spinning Space Sugar on sticks and lick and pick off with their fingers dollops of Spin and eat Space Dogs on sticks. Gordon barfs. They find the Science Academy by following the crowds and see the new movie Climate Science Denial And The Great Big Federal Government Loud Gas Bag Who Is. They have a cup of Space World covfefe after the movie and find a rest room.

WIN WIN!

Then it happens. They see a pub. No word of a lie Gordon and the Bish decide to seek the solace of a pub.

The already boozed toad is calling loudly for immunity at the bar. He sings,

Humans are redicilious

although badly: ‘O, my old man’s a dustman, I knowww becos he wears a dustman’s hat.’

“Not a toad!” exclaims the Bish.

“You don’t recognise him? It’s the toad, Bish. Might not be any others in Outer Cyberia. Let’s be optimistic. Where will we sit?”

As luck would have it, two empty bar stools alongside the only toad leastwise on a bar stool they have ever seen is their option or stand. The place is packed.

“Never shaw my old man again after that,” the toad says, doleful. He rolls his eyes, “He disappeared. Everyone’s ignoring me.”

“No more for you.” The bar tender rolls her eyes. She turns to the newcomers and asks the embarrassing question, ‘You blokes know this toad? Sez he knows you’.

“No.” Gordon and the Bish order a bottle of House tequila the same as at home by any name with salt and lemon. They start knocking shots back straight.

“Youse never bought me a drink,” the toad slurs and his eyes roll. He sings in his fashion, ‘I know a dark secluded place’. He crumples headfirst onto the bar and falls asleep. The bar tender has had her eye on him. She briskly strides from the other end of the bar and picks the toad up. The toad is unperturbed. He snores loudly. The bar tender steps on the pedal of a stainless steel pedal dustbin she has handy and drops the toad in. She releases the pedal and the dustbin lid clangs shut.

“Done and dusted,” a group of patrons chorus.

Over on ABC News 24, Brian Toldme explains the Universe in 60 seconds.

To be continued…

Written by Christina Binning Wilson 2017

Nurse Barbara for President

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Nurse Barbara…One small step for Piglets, one giant [static……] for the Pigs Arms

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

Starring Big M as Joyce*, book now

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

I love research

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

Threesa Throuseroff

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…do you want fires with that punk?

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

 

Buy one, get one free, Mono-pedals only, must purchase pair, free shoe at $89.99, monochromes more than welcome(while stocks last)

A Reveal.

18 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

, , ,

An old snap: ‘My altered ego Shoe c 1960.

 

A Reveal

By Hon Shades

Yep, G’day eh I’m Hon Shades. I was Sandshoe. Dinkum.

Awesome enough.

I saw Merv by the way pushing a brand spanking new lawnmower in through the front door of the pub. Make of that what you will and he’s now got his name up in big lettering on the facade of the Pig’s Arms Two-Up School out back.

Merv readies the bar for business

“Two. Two naming rights,” Merv over a drinkie winkie retorted to a journalist from the Pigs Herald daily [advertisement. Pigs-Fly-Buys. Claim Them Now. Only 4 Million left.*] “not one you know and two in the hand. Just from wheelin’ and dealin’.”

Merv looked as if he’d come into a bit of money.

M E R V

About who I am in my no-names on buildings insignificance eh, what happened when I commented at the pub as Sandshoe was the pub bounce let me in no worries. No gravatar ever popped up but. No mug shot’s a concerning thing when you’re seeking fame.

WordPress wouldn’t have a bar of me lol.

True. I couldn’t crack into my WordPress account to get my old gravatar up. No amount of money.

Least work begging scenario, I needed to open a new account. I had to have a new name.

Good fortune. Mark a.k.a Hung One On nick-named me Hon Shades.

Hung and family

Great name.

I’ve taken the name I hope graciously and these words from the bish. The bish himself over a drinkie winkie or two tells Gordon he did, even the greatest physicist in Cyberia, the fame is only a name. It’s not everywhere either fame, Gord. Be glad of a great name.

Youse know the pub’s a blog right eh. The pub’s an imaginative construct assembled by a crowd of people over a number of years. It’s not real even if it does seem real to the gifted.

The Management Team from the PA”S from left Emmjay, Hung, Gez.

Episode 87: In the Manner of An Instauration

14 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Foodge Private Dick, Sandshoe

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

 by Sandshoe

Honest to Gordon, I would have said to Gordon, Gordon let the bish go.

Foodge

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

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.”

EEvonnn winked and grinned. EEvonnn had laid a couple of bets with the bish earlier on her way to work. Eevonnn winner and grinner. She does not know yet the canvas tote bag is missing.

Nurse Barbara clickety-click-clicked into the foyer of the pleece station looking elegantly turned out and wearing very high and very nice white high heel shoes. She had changed for work. An early. Nurse Barbara announced she was lost.

A new lot of people was shepharded into the foyer by more pleece behind them.

“Bish,” Nurse Barbara smiled brightly, jostling with the crowd, “You can help me and I thought you were dead. I’m lost. What’s wrong with him? Does he need something?”

Nurse Barbara motioned one elegant hand at Gordon slumped on the counter top now and asleep, snoring with gusto. She turned to see EEvonnn standing behind the counter.

“Nurse Eevonnn! You’re on the wrong side of the counter. Aren’t you?”

“Barb, I’m a temp. I’m only acting. I’m a desk clerk. What’s wrong.”

“I’m lost.”

“I thought myself the bish was dead. That’s how much I know,” smiled EEvonnn.

Nurse Barbara looked at EEvonnn askance. “I’m lost.” She waved her hand, this time describing ‘don’t know where I am’, palm upturned, an ancient Egyptian-style raised elbow and forearm supporting a raised wrist gesture, a ‘Where am I?’ or can be used for ‘What’s wrong with everybody? Why is food being carried in? The Pharoah was dead last I looked?’

“The NavSAT woman directed me here,” Nurse Barbara explained. “I should not ever listen to her.  I’ve never been to this Pleece Station before. Thank our lucky stars. It’s Foodge.”

Never was everybody crowding into the foyer with pleece persons ever so happy to see Foodge. A cry of exultant would-be ciminals if it was not for Foodge went up in one voice.

“FOODGE!”

Foodge had changed out of his party clothes into a grey-silk work suit and a soft-white silk shirt. He was wearing his college tie. He was carrying in one hand a recently purchsed new fedora. He was carrying a briefcase in his other hand. If a court was convened Foodge was ready for anything. He was worried.

Young Bish

When the bush was young and wore real underpants

Foodge stopped and paled even more than he is pale as it is.  The bish partly wrapped in one of Janet’s curtains she sewed for Merv for the bar had managed to get his feet free when he squirmed out from under the weight of Gordon on his shoulders. Foodge saw the bish shuffling and Gordon loudly snoring on the counter. The bish however stooped. He was about to bestow on Nurse Barbara an adoration for being medical. He attributed Nurse Barbara’s arrival at the pleece station as responsible for his restoration. He kissed her feet. Not a lot of room for even a drunken sailor. Never mind. Enough people huddled together out of alarm at the sight of the bish, the bish was able to lay himself prone on the floor between their feet.

Nurse Barbara makes a statuesque statue, just no sparrows and in a nurse’s uniform and high heels.

Back against the counter face next to Gordon Foodge slid down into the crowd. He hunkered.

“Uncle Merv thinks you’re dead and he killed you,” Foodge said succinctly in the ear of the prone bish, “Bish, I’m mad. You runnin’ that illegal book.”

The bish didn’t move. He was thinking. He remembered the canvas tote bag.

Foodge sighed and lent his head back against the counter top behind him. He was worried for Uncle Merv waiting in hiding, not knowing the bish was alive, Foodge thought he was alive anyway. Hard to tell through the curtain,the bish lying doggo.

Bish 2

… the bish

“Get up, bish. Here you are. Put on your pants. Crouch down. Put these on. Rosie gave these to me to … give to you.” Foodge hesitated. He could not bring himself to say what they were intended for for all he was mad at the bish. Foodge is soft hearted.

Foodge pulled a neatly ironed and folded pair of smart black dress slacks and a plain white poplin shirt out of his briefcase. “They’re not my best, Foodge,” grimaced the bish.

Thongs

things out of a charity box …

The bish was unsteady on his feet pulling on his pants.

Foodge remembered. “OK. So they’re a bit ordinary. What’d you expect. I’ve brought you some thongs too. Couldn’t find your dress shoes. We did our best on short notice. Sorry. Here.”

Nurse Barbara said quietly, “I’m lost.” She left to find her way to work with the NavSAT turned off.

Black Canary

Acknowledgment – A Black Canary Cartoon

 TO BE CONTINUED

 My sincere apologies to all the nurses and those who aren’t and now are if anybody is offended by these representations of ourselves if not ourselves.

Acknowledgement: That’s Clint Eastwood modelling underpants.

Episode 86 and a tad: Parallel Bars

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Foodge Private Dick, Sandshoe

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

,

Gordons Cat

Illustration 1 Gordon’s Cat

Story by Sandshoe

Schmoley the room lit up like a Roman Candle going off. Looked like Gordon set up one of the best exits for the bish. Totally.

Gordon spiralled through the door of the bar out of a parallel universe. He swooned like an accordion collapsing onto the bar stool next to where the bish was flopped with his limp head lolling in the space under the bar. See previous episode eh to understand what is going down here.

Gordon was oblivious to everything in the room aside the bish. He was tapping his foot way wrong.

Gordon always tapped out I Did It the Wrong Way which was a song he wrote when he was a post man and the more seriously (totally) wrong the timing (yeah, I know but his theory, not mine) he thought he could raise the dead. No, you’re right nobody else has mentioned this not even in passing. The bish might have but who knew so much going on.

Talk about silly this lot. Universities, eh. Like Schrodinger’s moggie. Not that Gordon had run into Schrodinger on the circuit even when their cats’ lives over lapped, but there are some dead and undead theories going on in Gordon’s head about the bish in that moment would have made any phsyicist proud, more so if they had been on the turps themselves up the way a bit. Polite way of saying Gord was feet up and the rest of him on Rosie on Rosie’s sofa having his own down time.

There’s a euphemism. When the lights went out instead of on at Rosie’s, Gordon (nothing surer, our Gordy) jumped to his feet as well as he could manage with his inebriation and flailing tumescence and looked out the louvres that looked out over the left hand and the right hand stair case. You know the sort. Inexplicable design to accommodate an onslaught of who knows how many tramping feet and they reach a landing that is a square hardly looks big enough for the anticipated siphoning of these many arrivals up the remaining single staircase. Without the neon light flashing in his eyes as it did in usual syncopated beat-style FLASH FLASH no worries a light or two fallen out over the years, he made out the shape of a contingent of pleece personnel at the door of the Sports Bar. If not pleece, it was an army battalion.

PLEECE! PLEECE!

That’s what he heard.

Nobody could hear Gordon tapping his foot anyway so what hope would the dead have. The pleece bursting through the front doors off the street unexpectedly caused a sort of Pandemonium.

I’ve got the timing right, you don’t have to worry about that. Gord was upstairs looking out and downstairs looking at the bish’s head lolling in the space under the bar at the same time. He arrived before he was missed upstairs. Rosie did not know he had left. She did work out he wasn’t all there. She asked him to please not to forget to put his pants on being like he was well affected by Rosie’s liquor. He replied he had and Rosie said to him even though he was downstairs wrestling the body of the bish back up into an upright position from prone no he hadn’t.

Gord was there when he wasn’t to explain what happened without to-do. He was both present and absent in both places at the same time. He put pants on and he hadn’t. He met himself coming.

PLEECE! PLEECE!

“Likely story.”

That was what the Superintendent at the Pleece Station said when Gordon was brought in by half the army battallion-like pleece personnel contingent struggling and clutching the bish upright who it appeared in the light of an emergency generator was a stiff already dressed in a floor length ceremonial death caftan and Gordon wouldn’t or couldn’t let go. He couldn’t. He went back a long way with the bish. It was time to take their relationship to the next level. Keep him close. Bring the bish back from the dead.

“Name!”

He tried. He couldn’t say it. It was too long. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Alright then, sir! Initials if it’s too hard! Give us a … ”

“G.” Gordon managed a G. Tap. Tap.

“It’s a start! Got to start somewhere.”

Gordon noded his head and shook it. Confused the desk clerk. EEvonnn. Hard to confuse Eevonnn. Tap. Tap. Tap. He kept tapping his feet.

“Next!”

“O a postrophy D. For O’Donnell. G is for Gordon. Ehxcuzhe me. I urgently need to phone my cat.”

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Shoe

The Author – fact checking

TO BE CONTINUED:

Episode 86: Everybody Loves A Night On The Turps

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Foodge Private Dick, Sandshoe

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

 

0D9FD12C00000578-3020383-image-a-2_1427836845930-1

by Sandshoe

Every one was in and the bar was jumping.

Frank

A young Frank Sinatra was finding his way to the  microphone. He crooned into it. O-o-o-yes. He stopped. Every one was looking. He was talking to a young woman in a pink check gingham shirt and blue jeans. The young woman leaned in towards the microphone. She was wearing a pretty pair of white sandals she lifted one by one – and langurous – behind her. She was laughing. Her mouth opened in the shape of a pretty bow. Her heart stretched and purred on her sleeve. Young Frank was flirting. O-o-o-yes.

Granny screeched: TIME

Granny screeched. That was normal.

WHAT FOR?

Young Frank had the floor. The microphone volume was tuned and his voice amplified was sexy, sweet in a lower register. The young woman was now reaching forward to touch a button of his shirt with one long pretty-in-hot-pink finger nail and another on the next and next marching glossy nails up his shirt front to his chin where she rested one. She titillated the skin under his bottom lip with the other. O-o-o-yes.

Granny screeched. Nobody understood her. She nodded her head in agreeable assent with herself. Circles of gypsy gold glissandoed and shimmered suspended from her ear lobes. She abruptly pushed herself with her forearms raised like a bucket of a front end loader back through the jostling crowd gathered at the bar and disappeared. Granny swathed across one shoulder to thigh high in a faux striped animal skin tunic. Granny in petite fur boots gone in the melee. Granny who waved an arm of metal bracelets in the air like a submarine periscope when she wanted to be found.

The juke box and the acoustics of the room bent the sound of a newly spinning disk. Impossible to tell who it was until Acacia shouted loud enough followed by Fern, “LADY GAGA LADY GAGA”. Every one started shouting, “LADY GAGA LADY GAGA”. The door of the Nathan Rees Memorial Ballroom  across from the head of the stairs to the second level opened and shut and the distorted sound of the juke box mingled with the B52s rocking the ballroom. SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT.

Dancing-clip-art

Everybody was going for it !

The nurses all thought it was the best night they’d at least had in a while. They were all shouting. As loud as they wanted at a table at the eastern end of the bar.

“That bloke with the dildo stuck…”

“Shhh, DON’T repeat that here. Somebody might hear. Every one will guess who it was.”

“We want to book the ballroom. We  got a Double Sister Comedy Act called M ‘n’ M ‘n Emm,” Big M and Mark shouted. To no-one. Just shouting. “We’ll, us, we’ll be singing and Emmjay can play the ukelele keep us in choon.”

Foodge had joined them. They had someone to tell.

“We want to book the ballroon, We got a Double Sister Comedy Act called M ‘n’ M ‘n’ Emm,” they shouted at Foodge.”Want to get M ‘n’ M ‘n’ Emm down on the books and Emmjay c…”

“Heard the rest,:” Foodge shouted, “He can plague the ukulele to keep the bus running. Is that a thing, it’s called a euphemism? I’ve not heard it before.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right,” the new act of M ‘n’ M ‘n’ Emm agreed excitedly, way people do when they have not fully understood what someone says or is talking about in a crowded bar where the build up of noise is a cacophony no different from a flock of fighting and scrapping galahs and magpies going home overhead together to roost at the end of a hot day.

Foodge sucked on a straw he took out of a shirt pocket. He inserted it into the lid of a take-away container and sucked again. He drew in a mouthful of liquid.”

“Milo,” Foodge shouted at the new Double Sister Comedy Act of M’ n’ M ‘n Emm. Emm had just put his head in from somewhere. Foodge supposed a quiet spot ‘plagueing the ukelele and keeping the bus running’.

‘Milo’ was a word they had all mastered lip reading.

“Yes, lovely dog.” M ‘n’ M ‘n’ Emm shouted back in unison.

They were staying in character. Big M and Mark hoped Emmjay had his ukelele with him. Emmjay did not know yet of the turn of history’s freewheeling wheel. Better tell him, the M ‘n’n M part of their Double comedy act looked at each other. No need for words. Their first gig was later in the evening in the ballroom when the 52s fnished. At that moment as if to remind them the door opened and closed on the ballroom. It was frenetic. SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT.

Foodge yelled at Emmjay, “Have you been doing what you can do … you know … to keep the bus running?”

I need to finish the story.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Emmjay nodded his head vigorously and smiling broadly at his collection of trusted and loved friends and Foodge, his charge, shouting and yelling with them at the table in the corner. He repeated, nodding his head, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Hadn’t a clue.

The juke box stopped. The hubub briefly died. Foodge was shouting.

“I’m getting married. You know, Uncle Merv…”

Merv was sitting behind the bar in the Sports Bar, the next room, in his rocking chair, his knees crook and keeping an eye on The Bish. The Bish was running a book stuffing notes in bundles into a canvas bag under the counter fast as he could go. Punters were handing notes to the Bish in wads secured with rubber bands.

“… that television program, Married at First. Uncle Merv!”

Young Frank Sinatra who had sung a bracket and vacated the stage area that had been temporarily made for him by pushing some tables aside ran out of the crowd at the bar. His hand held the hand of the woman he loved following behind him half-running and her smiling bow of a mouth was freshly painted with a hint of Delicious Red lined with Strawberry lipstick. Her white sandals picked up a shifting spackle of lights on a string, a bunch of flickering Valentine Day heart ‘candles’ arranged in a love heart over the microphone. O-o-o-yes. Foodge choked up with tears of sentiment in his eyes when Young Frank Sinatra, his voice like honeydew and melons, took advantage of the hush. Young Frank had leaned into the microphone. He purred, “I love my Dearie.”

Turned out later, properly introduced Young Frank said Deirdre. Foodge’s eyes spilled over at Dearie, nevertheless. A few eyes were wet with sentiment. Merv was rocking himself, furiously, trying to stand up out of his rocker by propelling himself up and out of its confine. He slammed into the Bish. When his feet found the floor he had tottered forward on the impulse of a moment and helpless it looked motivation. He grasped onto the Bish’s collar Merv could only see in the illumination of a tiny flicker of light nobody could say later where from.

The bar had plunged into darkness.The only sound in the quiet was the momentary gurgle of air as the Bish succumbed to the throttle-like twist Merv’s grip on the Bish’s clerical collar effected.

The patrons and staff, the workers, pensioners, real and make believe nurses, the writers, poets, painters and decorators, public service officers and counter clerks, IT engineers, architects, lawyers, the unemployed and the Hells Angles looking in through the door onto the car park, the ecclesticals, the ecumenicals, everybody, the thickest of bricks and the brightest knew power cut.

The Ballroom had fallen victim of the power cut as well. The entrance door into it at the head of the stairs had opened because a voice could be heard advising patrons to file out and in an orderly manner descend the stairs. TURN ON YOUR MOBILE PHONES.

A stream of moving light illuminated the profiles of patrons walking out of the Nathan Rees Memorial Ballroom door and down the stair case pooled in mobile phone light. The tinkle of messages being received and of the different soundscapes being activated was profound. The procession was in sharp contrast to the cathedral of dark places around it and pierced shadows overhead. The ballroom was at capacity. The floor below at the bottom of the stairs was an ocean of mobile phones like fireflies as its inhabitants searched around themselves to find handbags of friends they minded and their own and manbags as well as denim and safari jackets. Each other was impossible in the glare of 500 skittish phones.

Granny screeched, EVERY ONE IN THE FRONT BAR AND SPORTS BAR. STAND STILL. QUIET.

PLEECE! PLEECE!

And we’ll leave them to make what they may of their timing, and the main participants, their rakings and their takings, humanity, gullibility until we meet again. We’ll find out who flogged the canvas tote bag out of the grip of the long fingers of the Bish as he choked on Merv’s stranglehold or not long after. Eh.

Some of the life story of Foodge.

https://pigsarms.com.au/2011/04/21/foodge-23-acacias-plan-foments/

Something important is laid down about the Continuity Department

https://pigsarms.com.au/2012/03/22/foodge-33-the-interview/

CLOSING TIME by Leonard Cohen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-0lV5qs1Qw