YES, I know you’ve done this loads of times, but I am an English and it is unthinkable.
“You’ve got to get a song in your head – it helps,” says the bush pirate as we get out of the car. “Ready?”
In the sea we’re surrounded by swarms of tiny brill, which I’m not told about till later, and we often can’t see the waves coming till they bowl us over. Double the excitement.
Sea mist or something.
The fact that Philip Larkin looks like Eric Morecambe is a bonus in my book.
BACK in the olden days, everyone could recite poetry after the dessert course, but now it’s a lost art.
A quick poll of Facebook associates reveals one person can recite Wilf Owen’s ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ while the rest are caught embarrassingly short at soirees that call for poetic expression.
Personally, I know half a ‘Jabberwocky’ and that’s about it.
I like poems written in layman’s language with a grudging sentimental humour, like those of Philip Larkin and self-proclaimed hack John Betjeman; no metaphysical meanderings or frothy layers of meaning here.
I won’t lie, though – I’ve only heard of Betjeman because he wrote a slightly self-righteous ode to my hometown, which is the one I’m going to memorise, while Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ (“They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to but they do…”) people don’t so much recite as hold up as evidence.
Doesn’t matter. It’s made me go out and read more by them.
Oh no. Pixie Geldof has a Larkin tattoo.
Betjeman’s ‘Slough’ (pronounced “ow!”) was written back in 1937, when I would have thought the town was comparatively lovely. Having said I like layman’s language, I’m particularly fond of the Biblical-style line “Swarm over, Death!”. NB: Funnily enough, bombs did fall on Slough a couple of years later, during World War II. Not enough, though.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.
It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
Keeper? You know it now, but you can still test me – I did learn it.
THERE are no dirty pictures of me in existence to the best of my knowledge, unless you count that arty shoot when I was 18.
I decide to end all that today and send someone a mid-morning, up-skirt shot, sort of like a nice break for elevenses.
Unfortunately, the picture won’t send at first, so I go outside and press send about 18 times. Eventually I get the response “ha ha”, which isn’t the reaction I had envisaged at all. Perhaps the text never arrived and he’s chortling at something I said earlier.
After that, though, I’m worried that my undies have failed to cut the mustard, which is hardly fair, as if I’d known I was going to do this I would have put on some lowest common denominator ones and Bob’s your uncle.
Rattled, I decide to email the shot to ‘Rate My Pantys’ (sic) to settle this once and for all. There are lots of ‘Rate My’ sites on the internet: rate my implants / vomit / life / ex-girlfriend / ink / wedgie / pecs / parking / kitten / wee / moustache / doodle… Oh, you name it.
My finger is poised when I’m afraid I start to have doubts. I dunno. I can’t help wondering if all the pics on ‘Rate My Pantys’ are sent by real women with a burning need to know if they’re on the right track, or if it’s just a butt portal for preteens. I rate my undies sacred. Abort mission.
Keeper? I’m not convinced this experiment is bettering my personal development.
SEEING as I’m about to get my licence, I need to learn the etiquette of country roads. According to the bush pirate, there are three forms of steering wheel wave that are loaded with meaning.
1. G’day. Slight raise of two fingers. Done with right hand, as left hand is changing gears.
2. G’day! Lifting of hand, two fingers together. Usually with left hand, as right hand is holding the wheel.
3. G’DAY! Hand raised towards other driver, all fingers splayed as if trying to make self as large as possible.
NB: These are understood in Victoria and Tasmania; let me know if there are regional variants.
Keeper? Yes. Will practise down the shops till I get my wheels.
Nacho.
NACHO was dirty. I soaped him up.
Keeper? Yes. Seemed to like it, the weirdo.
Class.
TODAY I went around Emmo’s to work on getting my ute roadworthy – the handsome beast’s been parked in his drive since the previous owner wheezed it around. It’s the first time I’ve ever worked on a vehicle – hell, I only put petrol in one for the first time six months ago.
The ‘To Replace’ list ends up being quite large, which is what you get if you consult a whizbang mechanic I suppose. I’m sure we can narrow it down to one or two items.
TO REPLACE
Mirrors
Door trim clips
Driver’s window regulator
Door hinges
Driver’s door cup
Fuck, let’s just replace the whole door
Glove box liner (really?) and lid latch receiver
Festoon bulb
Cigarette lighter
Ashtray
Bench seat cover
Mud flaps x 2
Tyres x 2 (tread is “in line with the tread wear indicator”)
Driver’s side quarter window moulding
Tonneau hooks
Shock absorbers x 4
Left quarter front side mould under fuel filter
Snib button LHS
Inhibitor switch
Foam mattress
Left hand bench seat side something or other
Water squirter motor
Air filter
Radiator cap
So you see, a lot of these are aesthetic issues which we might just brush under the carpet. Which no doubt needs replacing too. All we get to do today is swap the indicator and reverse lights around – some genius stuck the wrong bulbs in the wrong holes – and bicker about whether the cabin looks “gay” or not. I’ve high hopes we’ll get the old girl roadworthy next time though – and I’ve put the nitrous oxide manual at the top of the stack on Emmo’s bookshelf for inspiration.
Keeper? I’d better get at least 10 years out of her after all this.
I unscrewed all sorts of things in here, Emmo had a sigh, and I screwed them back in again. Bonza!
Fore!
ALL the clocks have stopped in the clubhouse. The fabrics are chaotically patterned and sun-faded, the air is pleasingly musty. The alumni plaques date back to 1926. We pull up chairs to the trestle table and Walter runs through the lengthy niceties (and double-crossings) of croquet. “Croaky,” he calls it.
Waiting in here with the sun spotlighting the dust through the curtains reminds me of going to visit Nana and Granddad one Sunday a month; of sitting in their ticking front room, mechanically eating stale cheese and onion crisps and drinking flat lemonade, getting slowly gassed by the faulty four-bar fire. Eventually we’d become docile, the allure of the outside world carbon monoxided out of us.
But I digress. Rules, regulations and safety-checks administered, Bec, Anna and I are allowed out onto the lawn. We’re playing golf croquet, as opposed to association croquet. It’s the equivalent of playing snap in comparison to bridge. There’s no one on our green, but next door the bowls club is a-bustle with pensioners in soft shoes.
“Bowls is… elementary,” huffs Walter when I ask if the games are similar. “They don’t use mallets.”
Our mission today is to form two teams of two and smack our ball through six hoops. As with pool and bowls, you can also use your ball to catapult someone else’s out of the way, or block their shot. Walter teaches us to ‘stalk’ the ball – walking bandy-legged up to it with a surprisingly heavy mallet dangling down, and then sending it on its way.
My favourite part is the clack of mallet on ball. As far as satisfying sounds go, it’s up there with snap-lid phones, cowbells, the thump of a package through the letterbox, the whisper of the lid of a virgin vodka bottle being ripped from its moorings, heavy curtains being drawn back with a cord, the wet hiss of cold soda in a glass, pool balls dropping, matches shaken in their box, a needle dropping onto vinyl, being called for dinner, and the opening chord of ‘Here Comes Your Man’… yep, I think that’s everything.
Keeper? We’ll come back for a few games before it becomes too nippy. If it’s good enough for Harpo Marx and Bogart…
AS a wet-behind-the-ears motorist, I’m not overly keen on driving in the country, what with everyone else expertly hugging curves at gravel-spitting speeds, turning possums into roadkill, tickling sheer drops with one wheel and blowing the hats off posts – all with a dog balancing on the back.
On country roads I find I’m always wrestling Old Dog’s ute, which seems to want to drift sideways when I want to stay straight. It zigs left when other utes approach, then zags right as the hedgerows loom alarmingly. I’m not a mechanic, but he might want to get it looked at.
So off-road’s the ticket. I take us down a few tree-lined ravines to a rattling Billy Childish soundtrack. When we get down to the beach, Old Dog observes that there are other four-wheel drives around that could pull us out if we get stuck, and I chuckle to myself, knowing him to be hamming it up for my benefit. Bravo!
A tree-lined ravine.
Heading down to the surf, I skirt the waves, spraying Old Dog’s ute with refreshing salt water, and then back on to softer sand, where we grind to a halt and stall. My first bogging – ripper. I’m not quite adept enough a driver yet to unbog us, so Old Dog takes over.
How to unbog a ute:
1. Drop the clutch to almost stall the engine.
2. Try and get some traction by rocking the ute between first and reverse.
3. Curse.
4. Bounce in low gear by tapping the accelerator.
4. As soon as the wheels get some grip, fishtail your way out of the rut.
And we’re free!
Minutes later, though, we discover that the modest stream we’d crossed earlier has become a river, into which the sea is gushing resolutely. I assume we’ll just set up camp on the beach for the night and that this adventure has been ‘allowed’ for my benefit… but one look at Old Dog’s furrowed brow reminds me what happens to beaches when the tide comes in.
He goes off a-wading into the river, stamping down to see where the bed is most sturdy. It’s balls-deep, for want of a more technical term, but having selected the most likely crossing point, he jumps back in and hoons us across, with Bucket the dog hanging grimly on to the back.
Balls-deep, as it were.
Triumph. Wahoo! Etc.
Keeper? Once my ute’s roadworthy I’ll load it up with peanuts, a sleeping bag, matches and water-wings… because if I get bogged alone, today’s A-Team moment is unlikely to happen.
Bucket.
This isn’t me, but the level of finesse is there.
THE pheromones of fear are permeating my lycra. I’ve almost conquered my vertigo with this trapeze course, but the idea of pulling a new move gets everyone here a bit pungent.
A ‘numpty’ is a somersault dismount. I know. We’re attached to ropes so we can’t catapult off very far (I’ve already checked the instructor-bicep-width to flying-numpty ratio), but even so, I’ve never been fond of rotating in mid-air.
As I hang onto the bar atop the platform and lean into the abyss (plenty of practice at that), the instructor rattles off a string of unfathomable instructions from below. I give him a blank look and jump off. What the hell, eh?
At the moment I reach the ‘dead point’, he yells at me to tuck up my knees and let go of the bar. I really need to practise saying things like “damn” and “blast”, because I let out a loud profanity as I land on my feet. Which is great, but I didn’t somersault first because I let go of the bar too late.
“Why is it called a ‘numpty’?” Angie calls down to the instructor as I climb up the ladder again.
“Because any numpty can do it,” comes the reply.
This time when I reach the dead point, I let go on time. The instructor yanks on the ropes and I somersault with legs akimbo, letting loose a shrill “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” (hereby known as a JFC so as not to offend). I land spreadeagled on my back on the crash pad.
“Did I let go?” I ask the upside down instructor, in a moment of quaint confusion. Apparently so.
Keeper: Yeah. This will look really good if I can keep my legs together and maintain a stoic silence.
NO offence, right, but I’m more charged in my own company. When I’m around people I feel like my brain is idling in neutral and I can’t get it to engage. People drain my battery. They may not mean to, but they do.
In my teens I’d experiment with how long I could go without talking, and now I keep things ‘economical’. Needless to say, then, I’m rubbish at telling yarns. My mind goes a-meandering, distracted by my ever-present desire to physically wander off. An anecdote is likely to peter out at first corner like a faulty motor, belching smoke and a final “um”. Oh to be effortlessly erudite and witty like Lucille Ball, or Ronnie Corbett, or Kochie… or anyone, really.
While some people are born raconteurs, others – I’m sure – work at it. Like a muscle, verbosity needs to be developed or you’ll get anecdotal sand kicked in your face.
With this in mind, I hit up notorious stand-up comedian, media rabble-rouser and enfant terrible Catherine Deveny for her tips on how to deliver.
Catherine says:
1. Give someone one word to remind you of your point before you start.
2. The more you lose confidence, the louder your voice should get and the larger your hand gestures should get.
3. When in doubt apply the words ‘moving forward’ liberally.
4. Type the story out and listen to it on a speech-to-text device. You can buy one on iPhone called Speak It. Best way to commit to memory is listen or read aloud while moving. Gets into your muscle memory.
5. If you break your yarn down to five bits you can attach those bits to your fingers. Write the word, then just the first letter on your finger and eventually you will just remember: Goldilocks, bears’ house, porridge, chair, bed.
Dammit, I should have asked Catherine to help me with my expansive hand gestures while I was at it.
Thanks, Dev. I’m going to try all the above when it comes to remembering classic anecdotes that ought to make me sound legendarily but currently make me sound really vague. For more everyday, unexpected stuff, like being asked a joke or what bands I’m currently digging (what? Beyond 1996?) I will learn the answers by heart, or at the very least stick them in my iPhone Notes application.
Keeper: Ask to hear my one about the old lady at the ATM.
PS – Catherine’s one-woman show, ‘God Is Bullshit’, is back for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Go along and shake her hand – you might rub the cues off her fingers.
Australia 2012. It's okay, we're friends.
Hey man, now you're really living 
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