In the Night Garden

Simon watched Mum drive away. She reached the gate and disappeared left. Behind him Dad and the man, David, the man’s name was David, shouted in unison with the crowd on TV.

He was stuck in this room. For the moment he was hidden by the couch and erased by the football. To get to his bedroom he would have to pass in front of the TV, possibly blocking the game at a crucial moment, which meant getting in trouble. If he waited till quarter time his Dad and the man David would be bored. He would have to talk to them or get them a beer or sit with them or do something else he didn’t want to do.

Poking his head around the end of the couch, Simon watched the football. Often, when a player caught the ball, no, marked the ball, near the posts they would take a long time to psych themselves up before they tried to kick a goal. He waited quietly, a secret third spectator, while Dad and the man David shouted things like ‘ball’ and ‘kick it.’ When a player finally marked the ball near the goal, Simon waited - sometimes they marked too close to the goal and just kicked it straight away. The player bent to pull his socks up and Simon ran from the room. Halfway up the hall he heard shouting behind him. “Goal!”

He played in his room; then outside with the dog until it began to rain. Dinner was crumbed fish fillets and oven fries.

“What did you do today, Simon?” asked David.

“Nothing.”

Simon could see David watch him as they ate. He was bigger than Dad, nearly fat, but he had big shoulders too so he didn’t look fat. He had grey hair in a crew cut and a t-shirt with an ugly collar. Simon noticed he put tomato sauce on his fish, which was yucky.

“Hey Simon, guess what? David’s a policeman,” said Dad. Simon looked up in alarm.

“Don’t worry mate,” said David, laughing, “I’m not going to arrest you.”

Little bits of chewed up fish and chips sprayed out of David’s mouth when he laughed. Simon knew about policemen. Last month he and Gavin were playing in the hedge when Gavin spotted a For Sale sign on Mrs Fisher’s fence. The sign was tied on with black baling twine. They had found some sharp rocks and tried and cut through the twine. Simon realised he’d have more success if he separated the thin strings that made up the twine and attacked them one by one. Gavin was still sawing energetically when Simon made it all the way through his.

Suddenly there was a step behind them on the gravel and a hand on both their shoulders. The policeman, Bob Wilson, had snuck up and caught them. Simon was terrified but Bob Wilson had only delivered a very solemn speech about why cutting down the For Sale sign on Mrs Fisher’s fence was wrong – this seemed mainly to be because she was very old. Being caught by the policeman had been scary, but not for long. Two weeks later they found the roller door on the canteen at the oval had been left unlocked, so they snuck in and took as many cans of Fanta as they could carry.

After dinner Simon was allowed to watch TV for an hour; then it was time to go to bed.

“Goodnight mate,” said David. Simon worried he would have to give David a hug but it seemed it was ok not to.

He wasn’t tired and he wanted to find out what happened in the book he was reading, so once Dad kissed him goodnight he got out of bed and crouched in the slice of light that fell in through the open door. He was too big to have a night-light, but his parents left the light on in the hallway until they went to bed. It was cold and uncomfortable on the floor in his pyjamas. Even worse, across the width of the hall was the spare room. Once, reading like this, the door swung back to reveal a dead blackness and the smell of mothballs. He had run to his bed and hid under the covers with his feet pulled to his chest, convinced something living in that black space would devour him at any moment. Tonight though, after a few checks to see the door had not moved, he soon became involved in the story. Besides, the man David was staying in the spare room tonight. Whatever lived in there would not come out.

Simon woke up because he was cold and he needed to go to the toilet. He was sprawled on the carpet, his book an uncomfortable pillow. The door to the spare room was ajar, but that’s how it had been before. He got up and glided quickly down the hall to the toilet. The blue TV-light still flickered in the living room. He stopped when he reached the toilet door because the light was on inside. Was there someone in there? Did David know that when you finished you turned the light off? He reached uncertainly for the knob just as the door opened and David stepped out. Simon jumped and David brushed past him.

“All yours, mate.”

Simon stepped quickly inside, turned and locked the door. The knob moved as David tried it from the outside. The room was bright and smelled bad. David had not flushed and his pee was a dark yellow puddle in the bowl. Simon stood on the cold linoleum and held his breath. The doorknob turned back and forth once more and then David moved off down the hall. Simon flushed and stood for a long time before he could pee. Eventually he finished, unlocked the door and scurried back to his room, not flushing and not stopping to wash his hands.

When Simon woke up again everything was black and there was a horrible noise outside his window. The noise mewled and screeched and hissed, cycling up and down. His tongue felt like a dry stone in his mouth. He could not move. What could it be? His only guess was a demon that must surely be about to burst through the window and kill him. The noise went on and on. Surely Dad would come. If only he could cry out, but no part of his body would obey him.

After what seemed like hours the noise was still there, caterwauling up and down in the darkness. Simon decided whatever was making it did not know he was there and so would not kill and eat him straight away. He also knew there were no stories where the little boy stayed in bed and the noise went away. If he was to be part of a story he must get up and look. With more courage than he had ever summoned before he closed his half open mouth and forced himself to breath through his nose. Breathing right gave him the courage to get out of bed and, as quietly as he could, he crept across the room to the window. Awake, and staring into the darkness for so long, he could see enough to know when he reached the curtains. All the time the noise was still there, spitting and moaning like nothing he had ever heard before.

With infinite caution he parted the curtains and looked out into the garden. The moon was full and in the dead white light he could see two creatures crouched before the rose bushes. The one on the left, which he could see better, looked like someone had scribbled with a thick black pen until they had a scribble that was a little like a person and a little like a dog, cut it out and dressed it in a small set of clothes. The colours were hard to make out in the moonlight, but it looked like it wore a green pair of pants and a red jacket, a battered leather hat and carried a stick. The other creature was harder to see because it had its back to him, but it looked as if it were made from a lot of dead animals all joined together. Simon could see a raggy bit of mouse and what looked like a swatch of magpie forming its back. It had no clothes but was holding a long bone, nearly as tall as itself, by one end. Both creatures were no more than a foot tall and seemed to be having an argument – this was the sound that had woken him.

Simon watched the creatures for as long as he dared. The scribbly one was making the moaning and mewling noises, while the one patched together from dead things was making the hissing and screeching sounds. Although it all sounded terribly violent neither creature moved very much. They reminded Simon of two old men, querulously arguing with one another over a fence, one sometimes banging his stick on the ground, the other shaking its bone for emphasis.

It was cold next to the window in his pyjamas and when he could stand it no longer Simon wriggled a little to keep his feet warm. It made the smallest of noises but suddenly both creatures were silent and looking straight at him. The scribbly one vanished immediately, but the one patched from dead things turned and moved towards him. Simon tried to run back to bed but he couldn’t move at all. The creature came quickly to the window, dragging the long bone behind it. It moved strangely, as if it were an animation drawn in the corner of a book, slow then fast, jerking. When it was close Simon saw that its eyes were just holes with tiny teeth somehow suspended in them like blind pupils. It reached out with an arm that he saw was really the grubby leg of a dead lamb and tapped on the window. It had no mouth at all but it asked him a question in a voice that was wretched and dank.

“Who?”

The next morning Simon woke up feeling good. Then he remembered the creatures in the night and began to feel uneasy. The light under his curtains meant it was sunny outside, and there was a lot of birdsong. This didn’t fit with the strange creatures and the horrible question the patchwork one had asked him. Had that been a dream? The memory felt cold and hard, not like a dream at all, but it was so removed from the sun under the curtains and the birds outside that it didn’t feel like a normal memory either.

No one else was up so he watched cartoons until Dad came in.

“How did you sleep, chief?”

“OK.”

“Did you hear those cats? Bloody things.”

“I thought it was a monster.”

“Argh, I’m sorry Simon, I should have got up and checked you were ok. Did they scare you?”

“It wasn’t too bad.”

“Good boy.”

Dad let him have cornflakes with lots of cream and sugar as a treat. As he was rinsing his bowl gravel crunched in the driveway and Mum’s car pulled up outside the kitchen window. She waved to him and Simon waved back.

“Good morning boys,” she said, coming into the kitchen.

Simon ran and hugged her while Dad asked her about her night. Auntie Jo had been having something called a ‘hen’s night.’

“Were there lots of hens, Mummy?”

She laughed. “Yes darling, it was a veritable chicken farm.”

Simon didn’t know why this was funny or what ‘veritable’ meant, but Mum and Dad were happy and laughing, so he laughed too.

Dad told Mum about the cats. “Did you hear them, Simon?” she asked.

“I thought it was a monster.”

“Uh-oh,” she said playfully. “Alright now though? You know it was just naughty cats?”

He nodded and went to the fridge for some juice. Maybe it had been cats.

“David still in bed?” she asked Dad.

“Yeah, lazy city-slicker.”

But an hour later David was still in bed, even though Mum had started banging around in the bedroom looking for some shoes.

“Go and see if he wants any breakfast.”

A few minutes later he heard quick footsteps in the house and his parents whispering urgently to each other. He got up and went to the kitchen to see what was happening.

“We should still call the ambulance,” said Dad in a voice that Simon hadn’t heard him use before.

“Just call emergency,” said Mum. She was crying and when she saw him standing in the kitchen door she ran over and hugged him. He was scared.

“Oh darling,” she said. “It looks like Uncle David went to sleep last night and he’s not going to wake up.”

Simon wanted to ask if that was because David was very tired, but he knew the truth. “He’s dead.”

“Yes, honey.” Mum started crying again. “We think he had a heart attack during the night.” 

How to write a campfire scene | how not to write a campfire scene.

Sodom and Gomorrah

On Thursday afternoon, by an incredible coincidence, I finished two very long books that I have been reading for a very long time. They are Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (or ‘In Search of Lost Time’) and Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. Proust’s is considered one of the greatest works of modern literature; Jordan’s a great work of fantasy. In nearly every respect they are the total opposite of one another. In one respect though, they are the same – length.

Oh, and they both have the word ‘time’ in their titles.

I started reading The Wheel of Time (or WoT as its hoards of devotees call it) when it came out in 1990, twenty-three fucking years ago. Robert Jordan actually died in 2007 and they had to get another guy to finish it, which he did in January this year. It ran to 14 volumes and a touch over 4 million words. In contrast, In Search of Lost Time clocks up only 1.2 million (War and Peace, for comparison, totals 587,000) across a mere seven volumes. Strangely, I read the first volume, Swann’s Way at university, counted myself lucky that was all I had to persevere through, had it itch at me for a while, then started the whole thing again in around 2008.

So, were they any good? They were, but they’re so different I can make no real comparison between them. ‘Exile on Main Street’ compared with Beethoven’s Ninth? ‘Terminator’ compared to Kieslowski’s ‘Blue?’ Jordan himself was an Episcopalian nuclear engineer who served two tours of Vietnam as a helicopter gunner (aside: Michael Herr to a door gunner in Dispatches: “How do you kill women and children?” Answer: “Just don’t lead ‘em so much”). Proust was an asthmatic social climber who spent the last three years of his life confined to his cork-lined bedroom.

The Wheel of Time was epic fantasy of a sort I don’t really read any more – I barely read fantasy at all these days. It was done very well with a big cast of nicely drawn characters, an interesting world, neat descriptions of sword fighting, a novel conception of magic and a satisfying resolution. There was a certain amount of disconnect as the years between each book meant that I started each one with the plot for the previous volume as a dim memory. I do remember that some of the latter ones penned by Jordan, say volumes 8-10, were pretty dull, and having a new author brought in after Jordan died (possibly from RSI after all that typing?) was a definite breath of fresh air to get the whole thing moving and finished.

In Search of Lost Time was vast and infrequently rewarding. It forced me to read slowly and carefully due to its dense, multiply compounded sentences, sometimes running to more than a page. It drew me in with accessible portraits of, and ruminations on, obsessive love, then pushed me away with the tedious minutiae at play between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie at the world’s longest and most boring dinner party. It left me with an impression of Proust as an expert on memory (and what a fantastic thing on which to be an expert), modestly possessing a huge vocabulary, preoccupied with class and with homosexuality (or ‘inversion’ as he calls it), a pettily jealous mummy’s boy, a tender child filled with love for his grandmother, and someone deeply affected by flowers, particularly hawthorn blossom.

So, let me cheerfully roll out the usual clichés regarding high and low culture. The Wheel of Time was a plot-driven, fun read populated by shallow characters and showing a shallow conception of the world. In Search of Lost Time was disdainful of plot; a difficult book populated by multifaceted characters and displaying an almost painful engagement with existence. I mentioned before that besides being long they also have the word ‘time’ in their titles. A good summation then is the thesis put forward by each about the nature of time:

The Wheel of Time: ages come and pass, history occurs in cycles.

In Search of Lost Time: people change so radically from day to day and throughout their lives that there is no consistent ‘person’ left by the passage of time and the process of forgetting. This is only counteracted occasionally when some chance moment throws us back to the memory of an earlier time in our lives – this gives birth to a new being who briefly exists outside time who can look at the past and the present simultaneously from an atemporal perspective.  

Autoamalgam

Every time I see cars stop and start at traffic lights, or I'm driving
and find myself constantly pulled up by red lights, I have a recurring
vision.
I imagine all the cars of the world (nearly three-quarters of a billion
of them at last count) melded together into one enormous block of metal
and plastic, miles high. Imagine this huge cube of metal, surely rising
into the clouds, visible on the horizon. You get closer and closer,
speeding along the massive strip of bitumen that leads towards it. In
its shadow the air is colder. You have to crane your neck to see the
top. Giant wheels, hundreds of metres high carry it along - their scale
daunting, but at least comprehensible in comparison to the monolith
groaning along above you. Deep inside is an enormous engine, each pulse
of its hidden pistons consuming Olympic swimming pools of petrol, a vast
exhaust belching smoke and haze from the rear.
So when I pull up at the lights, or I'm walking and see a line of cars
pull up next to me, I imagine this stupefying behemoth of metal in my
imagination stopping, starting, stopping, starting all day long. I
imagine all our ingenuity and resources pouring into this ridiculous
monster, the enormous amounts of energy needed to overcome its inertia,
get it moving, accelerate it for the length of a football field... and
then slow it down and stop it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Fluorescent Girl Dream

I usually walk. Today I had driven; parked in a steep, grassy vacant block that I knew from my walk.
Afterwards, making my way to where I had parked, one of my students, Quoc, ran up to me and asked if he could get a lift. He had run hard to catch me, and when I asked him where he was going I saw a look of alarm cross his face between the ragged breaths he was taking.
“You usually go through town don’t you, sir?”
“Always.”
“Well, into town then. Just drop me somewhere convenient.”
I told him that was fine and we picked our way down the slippery hillside to where I had parked. Nearing the car I saw him glance back up the hill; once again a look of alarm crossed his face. Following his gaze I saw a teenager with a bright purple bob coming towards us quite quickly.
“We should get in the car, sir.”
Something in his tone made me do as he said, almost thoughtlessly. As soon as I let him in he locked his door and, finding the car had no central locking, nearly shouted at me, “Lock your door!”
As I pushed the lock down I saw a flash of bright purple in the side mirror and suddenly the teenager had her faced pressed against my driver’s window. She was pale and quite pretty, but in an abstract way, like a china plate can be pretty. Her eyes were completely abnormal, flat and dull, and her head moved back and forth as if she were a snake about to strike. She tried to open the door, found it locked, and tried again, yanking the handle back and forth with such force that the car rocked.
I knew I had to drive. To start the car, put it in gear, and get away from this strange, fluorescent haired girl-thing as soon as possible, but then she put her face to the glass and said a nonsense word. It was cold but the word made no mist on the glass.
“Shibbeth.”
With the word, I knew that I had to unlock the door and let her into the car. I reached for the lock but Quoc grabbed my hands and held them firmly in his own. Outside the car I saw that Quoc’s brothers and, even more bizarrely, his father, were arranged on his side of my car – outside, but seemingly unafraid of the girl-thing. His brother Truoc, fat and almost painfully shy, was licking the bonnet.
“Say ‘Bethish,’ sir. Say it quickly.”

CUT TO:
A kitchen. Quoc’s brothers and his father are at the table sitting on mismatched chairs. On the table are two houseplants. The one on the left is brown and withered, the water it is sitting in is black like oil. The brothers and the father are staring intently at the plants. Truoc is licking half an onion.

CUT TO:
“Say it, sir. Say it. Bethish. Say it. Bethish.”
It seems unimportant, not nearly as important as opening the car door, but to please him I say the word. He was always a good student.
“Bethish.”

CUT TO:
The black water that one of the house plants is sitting suddenly turns clear. Immediately the plant begins to look healthier, green flushing its leaves.

WAKE.

Scritch

So I was sitting in Cinema Nova watching Let The Right One In when I hear this noise that's obviously not in the soundtrack, a sort of scritching noise. Carryl and I were the only people in the cinema, so I said, "sounds like something's got into the walls, I'll just go check." She's like, "Fine, whatever..." so I get up and prise some grating off the wall where it sounds like the scritching noise is coming from.
I couldn't see anything because it was so dark, but it looked like there was some light around a bend in ducting, so I managed to crawl inside and shimmy along inside this metal pipe. The whole time this scritching sound's getting louder and louder.
Anyway, eventually the ducting I was crawling through started sloping down, till I was nearly sliding along. This goes on for probably 500 metres, till I'm thinking I can't possibly be still in the Nova, and then suddenly I pop out into this plush, velvet box, quite small, with a little TV and a fridge and stuff, and there's this little animal, like from a Dr. Seuss book, all stripy and cute, sitting there watching 'Deal or No Deal' and going 'Scritch, scritch, scritch' to itself.
As soon as I popped in it freaked out and started scritching much more loudly. I tried to calm it down but it just got more and more agitated. Eventually I tried making some scritching noises myself, a calming sort of scritch if you know what I mean, and that worked wonders. We sat there for probably 20 minutes having this conversation in Scritchish. I didn't know what the hell I was saying, just going 'scritch scritch' pretty much randomly, but this little beast lapped it up - laughing, interjecting, at one point he even got me a beer from the little fridge - this stuff called 'Scritch' in a can about as big as a glue-stick. Tasted horrible.
So eventually I got bored. I thought of grabbing him and taking him back for medical science and probable money and fame, but he'd given me the beer and everything, so in the end I just turned around, gave him a little wave, said 'scritch' a few times and climbed back up through the ducting and out into the cinema. Very odd.

Killer Monkeys

I've been thinking about monkey experiments. What would happen if you gave a .38 to a troupe of macaques?

"As Lionel had expected they were all, especially the young males, intensely curious about the new object in their enclosure. The male they had named Bobby was the one who eventually managed to pull the trigger, blowing a hole in a log and scattering screaming monkeys in every direction. After that the gun lay on the ground and was given a very wide berth by the whole troupe. Eventually though Bobby began playing with it again, at first gingerly, but after some weeks with increasing confidence, until eventually he grasped the fact that if he pulled the trigger then there was a loud, frightening noise, and a piece of the enclosure would explode. Lionel had doubts that Bobby would ever make the conceptual leap that would allow him to aim the weapon, but he was proved wrong one morning when Bobby, trying to mate with one of the females was chased off by Matumbo, the alpha male, and then scratched and bitten when Matumbo chased him into a corner from which Bobby could not escape. Lionel watched, fascinated, as Bobby scampered across the enclosure, picked up the weapon and sat, turning it in in his nimble, leathery hands. Bobby sat for a full minute, rocking, turning the gun, then moved across towards Matumbo, dragging the heavy weapon through the wet grass. Matumbo, seeing his approach, began to go into classic aggressive dominance poses, puffing his chest and baring his teeth.
Bobby lifted the gun, aimed and shot him in the head, then dropped the weapon and ran.
After this horrifying incident the whole troupe ostracised Bobby, who became withdrawn, and refused to eat. Then, 4 days later, one of the immature juveniles picked up the gun, which had lay in the long grass since Matumbo's death, and began playing with it. Curious, he twisted it in all directions while his mother screamed a warning from behind him. Lionel decided the experiment was over when the juvenile sniffed the handle, looked carefully down the barrel and pulled the trigger."

Bugsy's Fantasy

Yeah! I didn't write anything on my blog for all of 2008! That's a pretty good effort.

Anyway, here's a thing I thought of on the tram. I suppose really it's my fantasy, but it felt like my friend Bugsy's fantasy as I was having it (plus I'm married, so am not allowed to have fantasies). It's possibly rude to claim I'm privy to Bugsy's fantasies, then to publish them to my blog without even changing his name, but hey, if I'm forced to experience his thoughts then I should get some sort of compensation. Plus he doesn't have a computer and so is unlikely to see this.

*****

“Will you play me something off your iPod?”

Bugsy looked away from the people dealing with the rain beyond the window to find a girl suddenly sitting opposite him.

“Will you?” she repeated with a slight challenge in her tone. Or uncertainty? It occurred to him that she may not have realised he had heard her question.

“Yeah.”

He fished the headphones from under his hood and extricated the cord from where it made a cold line next to his chest. Obeying some impulse he could not find a basis to he reached forward and put the white buds into her ears. She dropped her eyes as he touched her, her ears quite cool, pale, with wisps of hair slightly obscuring them, and with a few drops of rain from outside nestled on the lobe of one.

“What is it?”

She was very cute, he decided. Small, elfin face with her hair cut fairly close, framing it. A grey, shapeless dress. Black tights and white shoes. Those ones that looked like shoes that a ballerina would wear. Mary Janes? She looked French.

“Home By Saturday, by a guy called Hayden,” he said.

“Oh good,” she said, though he didn’t know if that meant she knew it.

He found the song while she fidgeted and smiled at him, then pressed play. Watching her listen to the song he remembered it and tried to watch where she was up to. The strongly melodic opening guitar line, then Hayden’s voice coming in and following the melody, his tone resigned and aching. He hoped she liked it.  

The Front

In 1914 a mysterious group tracing its origins back to the Ancient East managed to create a creature, or perhaps summon a daemon, which they named The Front. At first it was a mewling, vicious, bloody thing, constantly hungry. Realising that The Front required sustenance the group engaged their sister organisation, the Black Hand, to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a task accomplished 2 months later by a young novice, Gavrilo Princip.
As planned the assassination sparked the First World War, allowing The Front to feed and grow on the lives sacrificed in its name as the war escalated throughout the European theatre.
At its most powerful The Front could be heard many miles away as a constant thunder. Closer, it was deafening.
It could churn and throw earth around at will, uproot trees, and turn vast tract of land into a stinking, sucking mud. It employed rats, typhus and cholera as its agents, and strung barbed wire across its shoulders in celebration. It killed with any metal that it touched, or sometimes with burning gas. Its chief weapon was sheer terror, with which it could paralyze.
The Front was most powerful when stationary, or moving slowly. When forced to move quickly, although fluid, it lost many of its powers.
Although, once summoned, The Front could never be totally destroyed, it has never been as powerful as those first four years of its infancy, a period that ended when Private George Lawrence Price was shot through the heart at two minutes to eleven on Armistice Day, 1918.

What Women Want 2: Insanity

Walking to the supermarket this afternoon I had a not entirely unusual or infrequent (though let us say uncommon) thought as I passed a woman getting into her car. 'I could crack her head against the door of the car no problem at all,' I mused as I walked by.
Luckily I didn't do this (the thin line separating the criminally insane from the normal, law-abiding citizen), but I thought, people must have random impulses like that all the time. Perhaps.
Anyway, I wondered what would happen to Mel Gibson in the film What Women Want were he to encounter a woman at the moment such a casually amoral thought flitted through her mind? (If you haven't watched this cinematic gem, Mel gains the ability to hear women's thought, and hilarity ensues.) Would he perhaps tackle her to the ground, believing he was about to be attacked, only to end up on assault charges, unable to explain the thoughts he could hear, and hence his reason for pre-emptively attacking her?
In a similar vein, everyone in the movie has thoughts of a quite linear, scripted nature, rather than the usual half formed sentences, ideas, feelings and pictures that really constitute our thoughts. What would Mel be like if he were privy to these? Quite rapidly insane perhaps? It would have been interesting also in the movie were he to meet a schizophrenic woman, or perhaps an Einstein-like woman, who thought largely in symbols.
Time for a sequel perhaps.

Cressy

This was originally called Euthanasia, but I'm feeling mellower right now, so it's just Cressy. Cressy is a very small town in Northern Tasmania where I grew up. It's the sort of place people think their kids should grow up in, and in fact it was lovely. Lots of BMXs, forts in hedges, that sort of shit. A town with a top shop, a middle shop and a bottom shop (though these days the top shop has closed).

What parents who imagine their children growing up in these places don't take into account though is what happens when forts in hedges start to lose their appeal. For my friends what happened was a shoot out with police for one guy (maybe just a bigger, better fort in a hedge), and Friday night fights with rolls of 20c pieces in his fists for another. Though don't misunderstand me, most of them have gone on to become perfectly average blokes.

Anyway. In Grade 6 I left Cressy District High School and started school in Launceston, a place with about 40,000 more people than Cressy, and so lost touch with a lot of my old friends.

So, the following is somewhere between reportage and caricature. Certainly it's a conversation I had to listen to ad infinitum as I was growing up, circling endlessly around the dinner table, or over tea and scones while I kicked at the table legs and twisted on my chair. Enjoy

Cressy

“What’s the name of that tea-room, Bev? That one your Sandra took us to?”
“Which one?”
“You know. The one just before you get to the Liffey turn-off.”
“Near the pine forest there?”
“The pine forest near the weigh-bridge? Or the one farther along, on the right?”
“The one old Royce Pritchard’s dad used to own. What was his name now? Used to know him like the back of me hand!”
“You don’t mean old Tom Pritchard?”
“No, no, no! That was his brother. He lived out the back of Breadalbane there.”
“I thought they logged that forest.”
“Him and me used to pick blackberries down by the Mill Dam.”
“I know the one you mean! The one that runs up the hill there – Squizzy Pritchard’s.”
“Squizzy Pritchard! That’s it! God, how could I forget Squizzy Pritchard? How long’s he been dead now?”
“Must be five or ten years now. Buried him up the ‘yard at Carrick.”
“Did they now? Did they now?”
“You remember that time at the Carrick Show, Bev? That time we tried to sneak in down by the river and you got your slip stuck in all that gorse and I said I’d have to leave you there, and you started hollering!”
“I remember! And you run and got Nora from the bakehouse, and the both of you got me out of there. Hardly a mark on me slip, neither!”
“Whatever happened to Nora? I ain’t seen her for a power o’years.”
“Didn’t she marry that bloke from up Bracknell way? The one who used to run that pub in Town?”
“O’Connor’s?”
“No, that was old Jim Smith’s.”
“You don’t mean the Federal?”
“No, not him either.”
“I don’t know then. Where was it exactly?”
“Just up behind the old hospital.”
“That was O’Connor’s.”
“O’Connor’s was up there by the park next to the Methodist church.”
“So it was. You’re not talking about the Centennial?”
“That’s the place. Trevor Richardson used to run it and he married Nora. She was Nora Musselwhite and then she was Nora Richardson. They had two daughters, Sarah and Katie, and Sarah’s a doctor in Sydney. I don’t know what Katie’s doing.”
“She had a son by that Brett Easthouse fella. Brian or Barry or someone.”
“Barry, it was Barry.”
“Barry, that’s him. Turned out alright. Him and his wife run that little place your Sandra took us to last Easter. Oh, what’s the name of that now?”
“The Easthouse Country Tea-Room!”
“That’s the one. We should go there again.”
“Lovely scones.”
“They were, weren’t they?”

Bad Route

This is a piece I wrote around a piece of artwork that appears in The Royal Tenenbaums, a fantastic movie, and indeed a fantastic picture.

Rachel had been scared every time she saw the riders for as long as she could remember.
She knew when they were there, racing around and around, by the screaming, nauseating whine of their engines.
The riders only came out in summer, when the grass was brown. The tracks they made would fill and overflow with the paddock’s brown dust. They rode, framed by the far away pine trees, tired and fragrant in the heat. Only in summer: only at dusk.
Sometimes Rachel would need to drive into town and, even before she stepped out onto the porch, there would come the distant buzz of engines, like wasps at the bottom of the garden.
It was bad when that happened - as if they were waiting for her.
It was bad today.

Rachel steps out quickly, letting the screen door wheeze and bang behind her. It is hot on the verandah, hot and claustrophobic. She comes down the steps and into the dry dust of the yard. Out in the air the heat lifts a little. The day is cooling as dusk comes on.
The noise of their engines is a swarm in the air. Muted, then higher and louder, bouncing off the house and reverberating around the yard. She fumbles for her keys and decides simply to wait until tomorrow, but if she misses the post, her letters won’t make it. She decides to wait until tomorrow anyway, but is inside the car and backing out of the driveway before she can really think, the steering wheel burning into her hands.
There is a little crest between her driveway and the road, and she dives the car over it too fast. The car stalls, and in the sudden silence she hears the engines again, around and around. Angrily, she turns the car over, shoves it into gear and accelerates towards town.
She cannot hear the riders now, not over the car’s engine, but she turns on the radio anyway. There is something country playing: always something country out here in the dry, brown dust and the dry, brown heat.
As she tops the rise she looks to her right, knowing she should not, but powerless to stop herself, and there they are.
There are five riders. Five young men, she always thinks, even though one has thick, black hair on his chest. Three of them ride undersized motorbikes, the other two ride four-wheelers. They are all dressed in blue jeans. None wear shirts. They are all tanned brown like the dust.
All the riders wear masks as they ride around and around. African masks almost - that shape anyway. Three have blue faces, grotesque and leering, two with black hair, and one with a shock of white. The other two masks are even more tribal. Their pointed oval shapes are filled with strange, bold, geometric designs.
Rachel is breathing in short, ragged gasps. Her hands are tight on the wheel and she is doing better than double the speed limit.
And, like they always do, the riders stop their endless race, around and around. They pull up in formation along the fence-line, as if to salute her as she passes. She races by, throwing a great cloud of dust behind her, small stones battering the underside of the car, and all the riders raise their arms, slowly, as if mocking her and her fright. They raise their arms like little children trying to look scary, as if they are saying ‘Boo,’ but Rachel knows they are silent.
The sudden blast of a horn jolts her clear. She looks up to see Hamish Chalmers in his old, red, International truck. Looks up to see she is about to kill herself against that solid iron 1950s grill.
She yanks at the wheel, miraculously dodges the truck, but the car flips with the hard turn and goes rolling along the road, kicking brown dust and dried-off grass up in a fan behind it. Rachel is thrown around inside, her head starring the windscreen, then the side window, and then suddenly she is out, clear, in the hot, dry air.
Didn’t I have my seat belt on? Is her only thought as she tumbles into the hard ground.

The shocking pain in her head pries Rachel awake. She goes to sit up but she can’t. She goes to take a deep breath and there is more pain. How can there be more pain?
She looks up into the worn out sky and sees they are all there, looking down. They still have their masks on, and their eyes gaze at her impassively. The one with the blue face and the white hair prods her with the toe of his sneaker. She screams.
The one with the thatch of black chest hair licks his lips, around and around.
That’s not right, she thinks, how could the mouth move like that?
And then they all smile, and she sees there are no masks here at all.

John Howard, Semi-Conscious

This is a short story I wrote a few years ago for The Age Short Story Competition. It got an honourable mention, which pleased me greatly.

John Howard, Semi-Conscious

If I met John Howard I’d ask him if he remembers when he was in China in 1988 and my mother called out to him “Hello John Howard! My name’s Helen Howard from Tasmania.”
If I met John Howard we could go for an icecream if it was warm. I wonder what flavour he likes? Mango, pineapple, lemon sorbet, old English toffee, hokey-pokey? I think he’d have a plain cone, not a waffle one.
If I met John Howard the stars would hold their breath.
If I met John Howard I’d ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing.
If I met John Howard I’d take him home and play him ‘Some Girls are Bigger than Others’ by the Smiths. See if he likes my toy monkey that screams when you smack it on the floor.
If I met John Howard I’d grab his arse. He’d try and kiss me - see if he can slip the tongue in.
If I met John Howard, and it was a Saturday, we could do the quiz in the weekend magazine. He’d go well on the sport, politics and maybe the history questions, but I’d win.
If I met John Howard I’d rob him with a knife.
If I met John Howard I’d steal his glasses.
If I met John Howard you’d hear about it.
If I met John Howard I’d get his autograph, then type:
“Please afford the bearer any assistance he requires. He acts with my authority and blessing. The Right Honourable John Howard, Prime Minister.”
above his signature. If I did it on really nice paper, maybe vellum, and put some sort of facsimile of the coat of arms underneath I could probably get away with all sorts of shit.
If I met John Howard our relationship would be at the crossroads.
If I met John Howard science would take great leaps forward.
If I met John Howard there’d be a sale in every shop in town.
If I met John Howard I’d get him hammered on cheap vodka and, when he passed out, tattoo “Viva la Revalución” on his forehead.
If I met John Howard I’d show him my photos from Cuba. He can never go there if he wants to stay friends with George, unless he were to travel in secret, and so he’d probably be quite interested. We could look at pictures of all the crumbling buildings on Industria and at the May Day festivities. I could show him the various places me and my girlfriend stayed, tell him about the rickety stairs, the dodgy showers, the amazing fan in our room in Trinidad that had a ‘wind’ button, and about the games of dominoes we played on the balcony in Viñales.
We could pore over the old cars, the people walking along the Malecón, the restored buildings in Havana Vieja, and at the hilarious diorama of Che and Cienfuegos emerging from the faux jungle in the Museo de la Revalución. Maybe he’d be so inspired he could actually pay a visit to Fidel - imagine, he could become as respected as Jimmy Carter.
If I met John Howard we could have a number one single. With a bullet.
If I met John Howard we’d be the talk of the town.
If I met John Howard I’d ask a passing tourist to take a photo.
If I met John Howard I’d break his nose.
If I met John Howard I’d tell him about the day last week, walking to work, when I saw this particular bum that I often see around the City asleep against a sunny wall. He looked peaceful, but also pitiful, huddled against the wall as he was. I had a desire to stop and talk to him, to give him money, to fuck off work for the morning and take him back to my place for a shower and breakfast. Instead I just kept walking.
That same day, on my way home, I saw a kid asking people for money as he walked down the street. I spotted him a fair way off, as you learn to do, and made to avoid him, but he got me anyway. I did my usual “Sorry man” and he said “fuck” - pretty frustrated. The exchange struck me as routine, rehearsed, pre-ordered, almost inevitable.
Yesterday some guy approached me and I automatically descended into the fend-off-the-junkie routine, before I even registered that he was only asking for directions. A bad habit to get into, I thought.
I wonder what John would say about all that. I don't suppose he has to develop any ‘fend-off-the-junkie’ routines, living and working in Canberra as he does, but I imagine he has a similar hardening of the moral sensibilities. Then again, maybe I’m wrong about him and he would have helped all of those people without a second thought - he does profess to a sort of middle-class Christianity, whatever that is.
If I met John Howard I’d ask him if he ever goes down on Janette.
If I met John Howard I’d ask him if he plays an instrument, and what his favourite books and movies are.
If I met John Howard I’d force him into a sort of Dice Man style drug roulette: 1, 2, 3 and 4 being LSD (because that’s what he needs), 5 marijuana and 6 heroin.
If I met John Howard I’d tell him his fly was undone.
If I met John Howard I’d have a mental breakdown as I shook his hand.
If I met John Howard I’d run screaming.
If I met John Howard I’d cook him dinner - something traditional with a twist, maybe roast pork with pears and caramelised fennel. Homemade icecream for dessert - saffron or ouzo.
If I met John Howard I’d show him this piece, and when he got to the one about robbing him with a knife he’d become offended and flustered.
He’d say something like “I don’t think that’s very mature young man.”
I’d say “Fuck that John,” then I’d kick his legs out from under him, boot him around the body for a few minutes till he started to really lose it, till he began a sort of panicky, desperate pleading. Once his pleading became formless, incoherent, I’d jump on his chest and smash his head against the pavement till he was unconscious. After that I’d saw at his neck with a table knife, douse him in petrol, and set the bigoted, petty minded, unapologetic, fascist, unAustralian little shit on fire. Hopefully he’d wake up and scream as he burnt.
If I met John Howard I’d keep it to myself and only reveal it on my death-bed.
If I met John Howard I’d never wash again.
If I met John Howard I’d shake his hand and remind him that he’s a hell of a lot better than Ruddock.
If I met John Howard I’d ask him if he ever considered calling either, or even better, both, of his sons Howard, instead of Tim or Richard. I’ve always thought Howard Howard a very pleasing mix of the dignified and the odd. Also slightly reminiscent of the protagonist in Nabokov’s Lolita.
If I met John Howard I’d abduct him and try and explain a few home truths to him:
- Colonial Australia tried to commit genocide against the Aborigines. This is in the same league as the Nazis versus the Jews and the Turks versus the Kurds. It is very bad. The government, as the elected representatives of the people of Australia, need to make a complete apology on our behalf. Now.
- Australian foreign policy should not automatically coincide with America’s. American foreign policy is notoriously bad. Their leader is a fool.
- The two most important things a government can do for its people is provide for their health and their education. Address this. Invest the three-hundred million dollars a year that our six billion dollar surplus provides into these two fields.
If I met John Howard I’d get off my high horse and run after him, yapping like a dog, till he had me arrested.
If I met John Howard I’d buy the t-shirt.
If I met John Howard we’d form the greatest double act the world has ever seen. We’d make a beautiful couple.
If I met John Howard I’d furiously ignore him.
If I met John Howard we’d cross the road together, huddled against the cold. We’d pass an orthodox church, rain speckling our glasses, talk in low tones about the elm tree that has fallen in the wind. He would exclaim gently at a dead bird on the wet footpath. We would continue up the street together, the lights of the houses beginning to come on.