DAY 186: Doing the hokey croaky

5 Mar

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…

DAY 185: My first bogging

4 Mar

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.

DAY 184: Pulling off a numpty

3 Mar

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.

DAY 183: Telling a good yarn

2 Mar

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.

DAY 182: Getting a good snig

1 Mar

I saved this witchetty grub's life, so it owed me a photo.

YOU know, if I wasn’t being constantly supervised by burly experts I’d be going about many of my ventures in a very half-arsed manner – like for 10 minutes, tops. So it’s great that I have these hard taskmasters standing over me. I s’pose.

Today I’m going with the bush pirate to see a man about a dog chop some firewood. There’s a bit of a country-style barter system going on here. He’s had his ute fixed for free, so in return we’re visiting a coop to load up his friend with a stash for the winter. Tasmanians are very proud of their woodpiles, showing them off at the front of their houses. Shops, pubs and petrol stations have framed pictures of local loggers and heavy machinery lining the walls.

Or you could play golf.

After I take a few half-hearted swipes that come bouncing straight off again, the bush pirate demonstrates how to chop properly.

1)   Mark the spot on your stump with your axe. Make sure you’re going with the grain and avoid knots.

2)   Hold the handle with your hands about a foot apart and pull the axe back over your head.

3)   Slide your furthest hand back to join the other at the end of the handle, rock back and sling forwards.

3b)  Make sure you use your stomach muscles on that rock back, so that the weight of the axe doesn’t pull you backwards and send you staggering over stumps like a twat.

4)   Bend your knees as you bring the axe down. Make sure the blade hits the stump squarely, so that the wood splits like poetry.

5)   Keep going till you have a ‘good snig’ in your ute.

A good snig.

Keeper? I like chopping wood.

DAY 181: Bidding at a country auction

28 Feb

I BAG my party a sack of root vegetables and a ‘taste of Europe’ beer set from this Lilydale auction held to raise funds for the local footy club. Pretty much the whole town has shown up and everyone’s sportingly bidding for bits of scrap metal, broken prams, rusting tractors and such – most of which will probably end up at the next auction. There’s much hilarity as the auctioneer and his crew hold up each and every ‘treasure’ and give it the patter.

Keeper? Yes.

This dude looks exactly like that one off Wolf Creek.

Eep!

DAY 180: Making an outdoor cinema on top of a mountain

27 Feb

Yon mountain mist.

A WOMBAT waddles ahead of the ute on our way up Mount Barrow in north-east Tassie. It’s past midnight and we’ve been mostly dodging pademelons – pronounced ‘paddy melons’ – for the past hour. Pademelons are small round wombats, and they’re so prolific around here that they’ve shat all over every inch of Old Dog’s property.

(Country folk come up with curious names for each other like ‘Old Dog’; names with backstories that are as ancient as the hills.)

This is a pademelon.

Mount Barrow is 1413m high and awash with rockfalls that cascade down it like rivers. Right at the top there’s a weather station that looks like an evil lair. Where we park, there’s an abandoned stone cabin that some jokers have built Blair Witch-style stone sculptures around, and as the mists rolls in it’s proper spooky.

The evil lair.

It’s my birthday. Old Dog sets up a laptop on the ute tray, throws down a doona, sticks in Wild at Heart and opens some Doritos. Voila – mountaintop cinema. I fall asleep three minutes in.

Moon, venus, sun.

Next morning the clouds have settled beneath us, so we’re piping hot and afforded the sort of sunrise you usually only see from an aeroplane – unbroken stripes of colour. There must be a lack of oxygen, because when Old Dog suggests I climb up to the peak (unaccompanied), I agree automatically and set off in my party hat. The hat’s still up there, if you ever happen to be passing by.

I'm that speck at the top.

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 179: Dancing under the stars

26 Feb


I HAVE to be asked twice to dance to ‘Crimson & Clover’ in the middle of the night, in the middle of a country road.

On night one I plead fatigue. On night two, I mentally run through excuses ranging from hysteria to a twisted ankle, then agree. We jump up onto the hood of the ute and dance in the moonlight – snickering possums and grumbling ute bonnets be blowed.

Keeper: Yes.

DAY 178: Illustrating a children’s book

25 Feb

AS many of you will know, I’m already a published author (oof!), but now I am also an illustrator. I coloured in this flag for Matt Zurbo’s next children’s book. Let me know what sort of cut you think I am due and I will put it quietly to his agent.

Another of Zurbo’s suggested missions: become a bit-part character in a comic.

Keeper? Soon to be immortalised forever!

DAY 177: Jaywalkers ruin my life

24 Feb

AFTER 35 years of being a pedestrian myself, I now want to mow each one of them down like rabbits and mount their heads on my lounge-room wall, the hateful bastards.

Quick poll: Who knew you had to give way to jaywalkers when the jaywalkers haven’t even started crossing yet, but are having a good long dither about it on the median strip?

I shit you not. According to my VicRoads tester – let’s call her Vicky – that’s the law, and so I am failed for the third time. And this after my instructor has loudly told me outside her office that she is a soft touch who has a crush on him.

My instructor also warned me beforehand not to point out my prowess with four-wheel drives and V8-style donuts, so I sit sniffling stoically in the passenger seat while he argues the toss with Vicky. The more he roundly patronises her in disbelief, the more she resolutely scribbles damning stuff like “failed to give way to pedestrians” on a form.

Can you believe it, though? I can’t. Quad bike disasters aside, I’m not a bad driver, and that test was smooth as butter. My last instructor kept valiums in his pocket for occasions like this (and for the tests themselves, actually) but there is no such comfort forthcoming today, so I just have to pacify myself with the fact that tests are a lot harder these days. If you could similarly bear that in mind, that would be great.

Keeper? I’m keeping VicRoads in Tim Tams and tea bags, yes.

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