Welcome to Wallyworld

I need a man to love(My Life as a Frog)

by LODA BULLDUST

About the Author

Loda Bulldust is a Paris-based writer. In another life she was an Australian poker-machine addict and pisshead. She hasn’t done much with her life at all. She didn’t finish primary school nor high school but is proud of the fact that she once attended Gamblers Anonymous for almost four weeks straight and has a Diploma (Correspondence) in Primal Screaming. She found herself in France five years ago after smoking too many bongs in an Amsterdam squat and getting on the wrong train. Loda has never studied French but she knows what “voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir” means and can tell you to “nick off” in the colloquial.

For Mum and Dad

(Whoever you were)

Et vous, connard (you know who you are)

Prologue

I left Australia after a big win on the pokies. I was playing a One Cent “Queen of the Nile” machine at the Italian Club when I got heaps of free spins and took out eight hundred bucks. I should have gone home and paid the rent and bought some food but I was feeling right naughty so I stopped off at the R.S.L. Club and the rest, as they say, is history. I got dead lucky on the “Lucky Diamonds” machine and walked with three and a half thousand bucks. I bought a ticket to Europe the next day.

It was while I was knockin’ around Slovakia that I met John-Pierre, sorry, Jean-Pierre. We were both on the same pub crawl and I fell for his accent - he sounded like Maurice Chevalier on speed or something and later on at the backpackers it was so funny when I told him I “had the shits” and he thought I said “had the sheets” and wanted to sleep with him. Well, I did, but that’s another story. Anyway when I ended up in gay Paree I needed a place to crash and J.P. had given me his address and Voila! as they say in France. I was in like Fly
click on me babynn.

I didn’t know much about France then. Oh sure, I knew they had the Eiffel Tower and the Moaning Lisa – everyone knows that. And I knew they ate snails and horse-meat and other disgusting stuff. And I knew the blokes were all big shaggers and kissed you on the hand and everything. And I knew they threw in the towel early in the piece with Hitler and collaborated and that. But you know there’s a lot more to France than just the Awful Tower, berets and baguettes. Things that you only realise after living there awhile. You can’t hope to know a place after just a few days I suppose. Although I went to Tasmania once and I reckon I could find my way around Hobart again real easy. You know...if you start at that pub near the docks.

Now remembering how dumb I was about France and the French – how naïve, I gotta smile. All those things I thought France was turned out to be wrong. Well not completely wrong. They ARE rude bastards in Paris and men and woman DO use the same loo. And what about those awful smelly Turkish-style squat toilets they have! And I’m still not sure what to do with a bidet apart from washing ones feet in it.

For a long time I couldn’t figure the French out. Why do they ignore you when you go into a shop? Why don’t they have any prices on things? Why don’t they smile? Why are they so rude to you? Why don’t they respect a queue? Why are there so many strikes?

But then there was a lot of things about me that the French couldn’t figure either. You don’t wear your trackie pants to the shops for instance. And you don’t smile at the shopkeeper – he’ll think you an idiot. You don’t get pissed in the bar and chunder in the dunny. Well pretty much hurling anywhere is off-limits. And that goes double for women. And you don’t see women getting pissed. Not like we get pissed in Australia, anyway. You can get a bit tiddly but not full-on, swinging off the chandeliers, rip-roaring drunk like we’re used to. In Paris it’s not a good look. Oh yeah…………and another one – you’re not supposed to use someone’s lavatory when out visiting. You’re supposed to go before you go, if you know what I mean. And the biggest faux-pas of them all is to drop a big smelly grogan into someone’s loo or heaven forbid technicolour yawn into their bidet. Especially if you have been eating julienned carrots.

Anyway………living with J.P. has been cool. For a Frog he’s pretty funny. And he’s now starting to talk like an Aussie. Except he doesn’t know how to use the swear words properly. And he still thinks I want to go to bed when I say I’ve “got the sheets” with something. And no matter how many times I tell him that “CUNT” is the rudest word in the English language and you have to know how to use it properly he’ll still address a stranger in a bar with “Hello you silly Cunt” and wonder why the guy wants to deck him.

If I had to pick one word to sum up my life in France it’d have to be “MERDE” which means “shit” in French (pronounced “MAIRD”). That’s because I live in Paris and you can’t go anywhere without stepping in barkers-eggs –“crottes de chiens” en Francais. It’s a real problem. At first I could never understand why Parisiens wanted you to take off your shoes at the front door of their apartments. But now I understand. The bloody stuff is everywhere. Officially it is illegal to let your mutt defecate on the footpath, street or park. You are supposed to “ramasser” – to pick it up but nobody ever does. There is a fine of Fifty Euros for disobeying but noone’s ever heard of it being enforced.

But when I say “Merde”, living in Paris doesn’t always give me the “sheets”. There are times when I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I love the way the French respect artists – any artist – whether it be painter, singer, dancer, sculptor, striptease artiste, pavement-artist, bullshit-artist. They love their artists. So when I’m asked, as I often am, “what do you do?”, I have no hesitation in replying “I’m a performance artist”. And instead of getting “So you’re on the Dole” as I would in Australia, I get “How interesting! Tell me all about it”.

It seems like just yesterday that I arrived in Paris – well woke up with a rude shock would be closer to the truth. I looked out the train window at a sign that said “Gare du Nord” and thought I was in Sweden or Norway – somewhere with big, blond blokes that liked drinking beer. Instead I had to settle for smallish, dark blokes with Inspector Clouseau accents and aperitif tastes. I was dressed in my standard summer gear – cargo-shorts and T-shirt, my hair was all over the place like a mad-woman’s breakfast and whilst not exactly woofy, I wasn’t wearing any perfume or make-up and looked like I’d been sleeping in my clothes after being on the piss all night – which was more or less what I had been doing.

I hope you get to finish this book. Well more correctly I hope I get to finish this book. I’ve never finished anything in my life. I’m a great one for starting things and never finishing them. A psychiatrist once told me it was a sure indicator of bipolar disorder (manic depression). Could be. But then some of the world’s greatest artists have been or are bi-polar. Like…..Um…..well…….(quickly goes online to consult the Web) Ernest Hemingway, Van Gogh, Winston Churchill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Tennessee Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, Sting, Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Milligan, Axyl Rose, Robin Williams, Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Daly, Mickey Mouse and Napoleon. Well alright, I made up Mickey Mouse and John Daly is a big-hitting golfer but the rest of the list is Kosher. Check it out. So if this yarn suddenly peters out you’ll know I’ve lost the thread. Or maybe I’ve gone off to write a book on Bipolar Disorder (“You Too Can Be Bi-Polar!” or “Mmmm..Make Mine Manic!”, “The Downside to the Upside” – Travels in Bipolarland”).

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again…………

CHAPTER ONE

This isn’t like me

I tumble out of the train at Gare du Nord not really knowing where I am. Paris? France? Can’t be. Everyone else seems to be half-stoned and/or hungover as well. I see French Customs up ahead and hope someone hasn’t slipped a joint into my pocket. Welcome to Paris – click click as they handcuff me and haul me off to the Bastille. What do I know about Paris? Let me see. There’s a hunchback living in Notre Dame. They do the Can-Can at Montmartre. They chopped the last King’s head off with a guillotine. Napoleon said “not tonight Josephine”. The Impressionists were impressed by the light. The Louvre has the Mona Lisa; they make great films like “Is Paris Burning”, “Diva”, “Moulin Rouge”. See, I know quite a lot already. Uh Oh. They speak French. Bonjour. Grazie. Oo air ler leaning Tower ? How hard can it be?

I’m not the sort of Sheila that shacks up with anybody

It takes forever to get through Customs. The gendarmes are giving the hippie couple in front of me a hard time and making them empty their pockets. I feel like saying “Well of course she smells of pot – she’s just come from Amsterdam, dickhead, and it is legal there you know”. Geeze. But when it comes my turn all they say when they see my Australian passport is “You like Rugby?” And I say “I prefer the League” and they wave me through with “Bonne journée, Mademoiselle…….bienvenue à Paris” which I now know means “Have a good day, Miss……Welcome to Paris”. Geeze…..Gay Paree….who would have thought?

Paris? What the fuck am I doing here?

The railway station is a mix of Art Nouveau and state-of-the-art with the old segwaying into the new. I’ve been dying to use that word ever since I heard it on the Breakfast Show on Today F.M. Kind of suits this place, don’t you think? Could be a movie title – “Segue at Gare du Nord”. Yeah that’s what this is. I’m starring in my own movie. Or maybe it’s a dream within a dream. I dunno. Seems I’ve come a long way since cracking the feature on ”Queen of the Nile” at the Italian Club. 60 free games. Who do you know that’s ever got 60 free games? So this is meant to be. God’s plan. My destiny.

Now to find J.P. Gee, I hope he doesn’t think I’m easy just because I need somewhere to stay. Maybe I won’t sleep with him again. Not straight away anyway. Make him suffer a bit

I go looking for a telephone then realise I don’t have J.P.’s phone number. Just an address – Rue de Vouille in the 14th Arrondisement. He’s written in brackets “Roo de Vooyay”. O.K. how am I gonna get there? Cab? Nah. Too expensive probably. Bus? Nah. I hate buses. Unless they’re double-decker like they have in London. I know. The Metro. The Paris Underground. I’ve seen it in the movies. Can’t be that hard to figure out.

About an hour later I’m outside J.P.’s apartment building. The trip should have taken twenty minutes but the Metro was a lot more complicated than I thought. “Follow the signs” they told me at the ticket office. Yeah right. What signs? And they’re all in French. So after taking the wrong line to begin with and then going in the wrong direction I finally got it together and managed to get myself from Gare du Nord on the Right Bank in the North of Paris to Metro station Plaisance, Line 13 Direction Chatillon Montrouge in the 14^th Arrondisement or district in the Left Bank almost due South of the Gare du Nord. I’m not too sure about this “Line 13” business though. Maybe I’m making a big mistake. I hardly know this guy. What if he’s a cereal killer or something? Chops me into little pieces and puts me into his muesli. Now that I think about it he did say he was from Belgium. Or somewhere up the North of France near the Belgium border. Somewhere blokes kidnap little girls and keep them in cellars.

And I don’t know if that whole Midnight Cowboy thing is a good look. Kind of like Elvis Presley meets the Sundance Kid. But already I’ve seen a few other French guys who dress the same. Maybe those fringed suede jackets, winkle-picker boots and Navajo silver belts are back in now? This is, after all, the fashion capital of the world. And you gotta admit that skin-tight Levis leave nothing to a girl’s imagination. At least he has a job. Well he told me he had a job – paediatrician – one of those guys that scrapes the corns off your feet. Yeah I know...a childrens doctor. He’s probably an accountant or a loss adjuster if the truth be told.

Geeze, I don’t know about this arrondisement though. There’s a lot of black people around. Not that there’s anything wrong with black people. It’s just...well where I come from the blacks are all down by the river drinking all day. And if you go near them they’ll ask you for money or a cigarette. Talking of cigarettes, everyone seems to smoke here ‘cause the gutters are full of butts. Butts and dogshit. But they’re working on the doggie-doo problem I see. They have these guys on motorbikes with a vacuum cleaner on the back. No kidding, they just suck it up. Imagine doing that for a living? Whadya tell people when they ask? I’m a dog-shit sucker. Fair Dinkum.

I’m standing outside J.P.’s apartment and I’m thinking “maybe this is not such a good idea”. I look like something the cat dragged in. So I decide to find a café or a Maccas where I can tidy up a bit. Get the bong smoke out of my hair, as it were.

Ever tried ordering in a French café in English? You’d think it would be easy right? “Coffee, please garcon”. That’s not hard is it? Blank stare. O.K. “Cappucino” ? Nothing. “Flat White”? Irritated sigh. “Irish Coffee”? Outright hostility now. “Anything with caffeine in it?” Finally after going through a whole deaf and dumb sign language routine and two verses of Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose”, which brings a smile to his dial, garçon deigns to bring me something. It’s drinkable but he hits me up 6 Euro – about 10 Dollars Australian. I find out later that if I’d stood at the bar with a short black – Coffee that is, not an African, it would have been less than half that. Welcome to Paris, France. “Tourists R Us” – 70 million visitors a year at last count

The lift to J.P.’s apartment looks like it was the hot item at the 1888 World’s Fair. A three-man steel cage affair. La cage aux folles as it were.

You know the taxis here will only take three passengers max. In the back. You can’t sit in the front seat next to the driver. That’s for his lunch. Or his dog. Or whatever he bloody-well wants it to be. If you wave a sizable tip under his nose you may get another person in the front. But usually it’s one cab for three people. So if you’re a party of four, it’s two cabs. You work it out.

The lift rises slowly. Reminds me of that scene with the old guy in the Stairmaster in “Arthur” or was it “Arthur II”. You know, when Dudley Moore and Lisa Minelli are checking out an apartment to rent?

After three hours it gets to the thirteenth floor. There’s that number again. If he opens the door wearing a T-Shirt with “13” printed on it I’m outta here. I stop outside J.P.’s apartment and put my ear to the door - as you do when you’re not sure what you’re getting into. I can hear drumming. Some sort of tribal drumming. African? Jamaican? Haitian voodoo?

To be continued

Larry, Curly and Mo in FijiIt started with an ad. I saw in “The Sydney Morning Herald” Classifieds one weekend.

“Travel Writers Wanted for New Pacific Rim Magazine. Opportunity for immediate all-expenses paid assignment” .

I didn’t know what a “Pacific Rim” was. Thought maybe it was something to do with gay travel. But the “all-expenses paid” part rang my bells. It sounded too good to be true.

I dialled the phone number and had a long conversation with a basketweaver in Balmain. Called himself Mike Aussie. This has to be a joke I thought. ”Mike Aussie - My Cossie”. But no, this bloke said it was no joke. He really was Mike Aussie. I found out later that he had in fact changed his name by Deed Poll.

Anyway, I was intrigued, so after work one day I went out to this geezer’s gaff. He lived in a strange-looking pad by the harbour. He called it a “sustainable tourism lodge”. I’d call it a backpackers. Several nubile young women in sarongs were making cups of tea and toast in the communal kitchen. Mike Aussie seemed to be the Head Honcho or the Big Kahuna or something by the way they were flirting with him. I got the impression there was some sort of swingers club going down. But whatever rings your bells.

We went into his “office” (a spare bedroom) and he ear-bashed me for an hour or so about his project. Most of what he said was gobbledegook but the keywords were “Press Card”, “All-Expenses Paid”, “Free”, “ Trip”, “Fiji”. I’ll believe it when I see it, I thought.

Some weeks went by and I’d all but forgotten this bloke. Then he rings. Wants me to come over and help him stuff envelopes. Rambles on about “Fiji looking good...Need to get these magazines off to the international members of the Worldwide World of Wallys...Waiting on accreditation...Zambia also a possibility...Kenneth Kauanda’s a good mate...Feasted on chicken-claws and goats balls with him...Drank his toast with vampire blood...Everything is really good...Great things are happening”...Yada yada yada .......

Seems Mike Aussie had attended some dodgey Tourism conference in the Subcontinent and had managed to get on the piss with a bunch of Third World representatives all riding the gravy-train. Now I don’t know how he managed this. He didn’t seem to have any credentials aside from a loud mouth, a big set of cojones and a bad Seventies haircut. Perhaps that’s all you need. But his fellow seminarians seemed to think he was some kind of “Tourism King” and they were falling all over themselves with offers. So the Aussie came home from Deepest Darkest Africa with a swag of open-ended invitations to go to various two-bob countries and advise them on “Eco-Tourism Opportunities”. The first cab off the rank was poor bloody Fiji – pre Coup days.

We were a mixed bag of nuts that assembled at the Air-Pacific Check-In the morning of departure but only two of us had any real credentials – my Art Director and I. The rest of them were ring-ins and chancers - wannabe travel writers along for the free ride.

There were two women - a hairy under-armed Canadian backpacker who was writing “What I Did On My Holidays” and a middle-aged Aussie sheila - a tired old leftie tart that was still burning the bra and keeping the dream alive. I think she’d written an unpublished vegetarian cookbook and a tract on the healing power of crystals or some shite like that.

The other men were an alcoholic short-story writer and a short-arsed Froggie guy with an Inspector Clouseau accent who was “World President” of a nebulous travel-writing group supposedly affiliated with UNESCO that no-one had ever heard of and the head perpetrator himself, Mike Aussie in all his Hawaiian-shirt-wearing glory.

This had to be the junket of all junkets. A Ten Day Cook’s Tour of Fiji all-expenses paid – airfare, accommodation, meals – all the Fiji Bitter you could drink. And pass the Kava brother.

First stop was the Five Star Regent Hotel in Lautoka where we were given luxurious double rooms all to ourselves and our double chins. Complete with complimentary tropical fruit basket, complimentary chocolate on the pillow and complimentary turned-down sheets at night. No complimentary hula girl but maybe I had the wrong island.

We feasted that night on suckling pig, barbequed chicken, sweet potato, jackfruit, Captain Cook’s Penis and Golden Circle pineapple rings while a fierce-looking bunch of out-of-work cannibals cavorted in grass-skirts in front of us. The smoke from the oil-burning barbeque flares stung my eyes and the drums were rattling my crowns but apart from that it was alright as far as your native dancing goes. But I was a bit disappointed that the pole-dancing part of the show wasn’t topless. And what do they wear under the grass-skirts anyway?

Before setting off for The Friendly Isles we’d all been made card-carrying members of something called (and I kid you not) F.I.J.E.T. – “Federation Internationale Journalistes Ecrivains and That” or whatever it was in French. This was the group that the Froggie Guy was representing. The “World President”. I think they must have been big fans of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and frigged around for days trying to work the initials “J.E.T.” into their travel-writers group acronym.

Froggie had done some deal with Mike Aussie. Maybe he said “I’ll give you seven F.I.J.E.T. Presscards for ten days in Fiji”. Who knows? But we were each issued a snappy-looking Press Card in a plastic wallet with our photo in it and a blurb explaining what-the-fuck FIJET was and would the reader please render all assistance, be kind to us and let us in free to Museums, Art Galleries and other cultural exhibitions.

Also on the card was “name of affliated organisation”. And Mike Aussie had written in black pen “F.A.S.T.W.O.R.D.S. Australia”. This was the acronym he’d come up with for his travel scam. Wait for it – “Foreign AssociationS (of) Travel Writers Organising Regional Distribution (of) Stories” . And what did this magnificent title mean? Bugger-all from what I could work out. Aussie had the delusion that he was going to co-ordinate all these travel-writers into some kind of press group like a Reuters-on-Wheels or something. And somewhere along the line do a bit of freelance eco-tourism consulting on the side. In other words he was looking for places he could whack up native-style backpackers hostels. At next-to-no-cost. This from a guy who could barely write or express himself, who’d never worked in Publishing or Journalism and as far as I could tell from all the beers I had to buy him, didn’t have two clams to rub together. In fact I didn’t know what his background was. He was very cagey about it. Maybe he’d written the Travel Section of a prison newspaper? With articles like “See the Sunny Outside”...”Where to Go When You Get Out”.....”On the Run in the South Pacific” Who knows?

The Fiji Tourist Board minder had breakfast with us the next morning - “Hard-boiled Missionary Head and fingers of toast”. No I’m kidding. There was no toast. After a few starter bowls of Kava and a Fiji Bitter chaser it was into the minibus and off to the Fiji Cultural Centre. No not the Golf Club. That came later. We transferred to dug-out canoes and were paddled upstream past thatched-roofed pavilions with happy smiling native girls weaving tapa cloth and making obscene gestures with their fingers when the official guide wasn’t looking. It was very funny. They’re nice people the Fijians - when they’re not dashing your brains out with a war-club, that is. Or barbecuing the Indian shopkeepers.

It’s all a bit of a blur now because it was awhile ago. But from what I remember we stayed in four different accommodations – from the Five Star Regent to other more downmarket joints. We had a cruise around the islands and stopped at two of them – Treasure Island and Castaway Island - both pretty tacky destinations and great favourites of the package tour set. They weren’t much more than a bunch of thatched-roofed huts arranged around a pool, restaurant and bar full of holidaying New Zealanders. Now stuck on a deserted island with a bunch of half-pissed Kiwi nurses on heat is not my idea of fun. Maybe it’s yours.

When we got to Suva, Aussie organised some publicity. He shanghaied the Frog and I into an interview with him and a staffer from the Fiji Times and we had a photo and story in the paper the next day. It showed me looking at Aussie with utter disbelief. I couldn’t believe the crap coming out of his mouth. In fact they should have drawn a cartoon bubble from my lips with “bullshit” in it. Aussie talked a complete load of bollocks to the reporter who didn’t understand any of it so consequently the story they ran was utter rubbish. Three paragraphs appeared under the photo of Larry, Curly and Mo about how the representatives of a new travel-writers group were looking for local stooges to join them. There would be a “symposium at the Suva Travelodge the next day where all writers were welcome”. The last bit being something that Aussie had thought of on the spot.

The next day two jobbing journos from the paper turned up at the so-called Symposium hoping for free grog. They sat there and were bored silly for an hour while my Art Director showed a few slides of his travel photography and talked about how to put a magazine together (“well you’ve got a page see........”). Aussie got up and waffled on about God-knows-what and then called for a few words from me. I was just getting into the part where I didn’t know what the organisation was or where it thought it was going when Aussie cut me off and we retired for drinks.

It was around about this time that the leftie tart got down and dirty with one of the locals. She disappeared for a couple of nights and we found out later she’d gone native with a Fijian Army Colonel. I reckon she must have gone back to his village and got on the Kava and beat the drums big-time. And then they played “I’m the missionary and you’re the cannibal”. Or maybe it was “Me headhunter – you planter’s daughter”. But whatever it was that happened she was wigged-out when she got back to base. She told the pisshead short-story writer later that it was the “best sex she’d ever had”. Thing is, the Fijian had this cracker of a moustache – she brought him into the hotel to show him off – which you couldn’t forget or mistake and I swear it was the very same fella that staged the later coup – Colonel Rum something.....Colonel Rumballs......Rumjungle.......no....Colonel Rambuka that was it.

The highlight of the tour was the Cocktail Party at the Governor Generals mansion on the last day of our stay. I don’t know why they had it at the end. Sort of good riddance to bad rubbish I guess...rather than a “Welcome to Fiji”. Or maybe the G.G. had been booked solid the previous ten days. Or perhaps it’s the Fijian way – to throw a party when your guests are leaving. Dunno.

The wing-ding was organised by the Fiji Tourist Board and they announced us one by one over the microphone to polite clapping. When it came to me they described me as the “Editorial Director of a large number of International Magazines” Not quite true. It wasn’t a large number of magazines at all. Try seven. But a loud “OOOOOahhhhh” came from the Fijians present. You’d think they’d been introduced to Prince Charles or something. Or maybe it was just the Kava refluxing on them. I was embarrassed but quite touched that they should be impressed by this pretty ordinary hack from Sydney. Then we hooked into the tropical punch and the cocktails and the Fijian-style finger-food “as the sun sank slowly into a scarlet sea”. And I went back to the Travelodge and threw up.

Footnote: I ran into Mike Aussie five years after this trip. Or rather I saw him first and managed to avoid him. He was delivering mineral water to the offices where I worked and was decked out in a canary-yellow uniform with a snappy white peaked-cap and was wheeling a trolley. In homage I spent the rest of the afternoon making up acronyms to suit his latest gig.

F.A.S.T.W.O.R.D.S.(Foreign Association of Travel Writers Organising Regional Distribution of Stories) was the original.

F uck A ussie! S o T his’s W hat O rganising R egional D istribution mean S

Second Prize went to:

F iji A nd S ociety islands - T o W elcome t O R eality D umb S hit

The Consolation Prize:

F air dinkum Aussie Sinks T o W heeler O f ae R ated DrinkS

And The People’s Choice:

F ly-by-nighters A nd S cammers T ravelling W orldwide

O n R ather D odgy credentialS

DISCLAIMER: All the characters in this story are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental( my arse!).

House in ProvenceLet’s make one thing clear from the off. I’m a fifth generation fair-dinkum Aussie and proud of it. My Great, Great, Grandfather was a free-settler. A Pioneer. He came out from England in 1836 and is buried in Australia’s oldest cemetery, St John’s Parramatta. Along with Samuel Marsden, assorted First Fleeters, bushrangers and convicts. My old man (who died last year) was a survivor of the Sandakan P.O.W. camp. I’m proud to be Australian. But I married a frog and I live in Paris now. This is where I washed up.

I like it here. It’s “sympathique”. But I spend most of my time in the apartment (“playing with my wing-wang” the rottweiler...I mean “the wife” says). I don’t get out much. Yeah, sad, I know. This is partly because my French is crap and I don’t have any French mates. In fact I’m pretty much “Johnny-No-Mates”. Stuff happens.

I get out a bit. I take junior with me to do the shopping at the supermarché or the boulangerie. At the supermarket I don’t have to talk much. Just “bonjour” and “au revoir” to the checkout girl. Or “bonjour, une baguette s’il vous plaît” at the bakery.

I can ride the Metro and the bus all day around this great Metropolis without having to speak a word to anyone if I don’t want to. Although lately I seem to be saying “pardon” or “je suis désolé” (“I’m sorry”) an awful lot - the young bloke has learned how to blow raspberries at little old ladies we pass in the street.

Last Saturday night I was bored or lonely. Maybe both. Her indoors was away. I’d been working on the computer all day and there was nothing decent on the television – a choice between a programme on the Cannes Film Festival on 1, something called “Fort Boyard” on 2 featuring topless dancers from the Crazy Horse Saloon and a resident dwarf playing some sort of ‘Gladiators’-type game. Channel 3 had a telefilm called “Docteur Sylvestre”, which from what I could make out was a medico going to nick and discovering his stir-crazy cell-mate was really a woman (giving a whole new meaning to the expression “doing bird”).

Channel 4 or ‘Canal Plus’ is a pay-to-view and I’m too tight to buy it. Channel 5, the Channel 2 of France, had a doco to do with the curse of the Incas gold - a right little gripper that had me on the nod in five minutes flat. That left Channel 6, kind of like the local Channel 10, which had “La Trilogie du Samedi Charmed” – some hocus-pocus with that stupid tart Shannon Doherty.

A lot of French television is dubbed from the original English or German. So listening to Sean Connery as James Bond, for instance, speaking French “Je m’appelle Bond...James Bond” is a bit weird. And when an evil Nazi Gestapo torturer says “We have ways and means of making you talk” somehow it doesn’t sound quite as menacing in a Parisian accent as the original Kraut.

And of course they never get the lip-sync right so every one of these dubbed movies ends up being like “Mr Ed – the Talking Horse”.

Last night I tried watching a Charles Bronson movie but his voice sounded more like something out of the Marais - the gay district here. I’ve had a few good laughs but it’s wearing thin. I long for the sound of English being spoke proper like. When Channel Five puts on an English-language movie I pounce on it no matter whether I’ve seen it before or not. The odd Aussie film pops up too. “Muriel’s Wedding” for instance.

That’s why I’ve been hanging out at the backpackers –“The Three Ducks” just off Rue des Entrepreneurs in the 15^th Arrondisement. I need to talk my own language. I’ve become a bit of an “habitué”. Just about everyone speaks English and they have a bar. A pint off-the-tap of crap, flat Kronenbourg in a dirty glass costs €3.30 which is pretty good for Paris. You can pay €20 for a beer in a club here.

The other day in The Ducks I was talking to this young guy from Melbourne who’d been working in a London pub. After awhile the conversation went off the boil. We were down to “where are you from?” and “how long have you been here? Then a Yank joined us. He was from Alaska so we rubbed noses. No...I’m kidding. He was born and bred in Minnesota and had moved igloos north to Alaska. He was doing a PHD at a Irish university, to be sure, to be sure. Something to do with sports injuries. Well so he said. Whatever. I’m a rocket scientist myself. Anyway...it was hot and the beers were flowing and we bonded, as you do. Next thing I know I’ve invited him to dinner the next night – the Sunday of the Tour de France finish in Champs Elysées.

So getting to the point...I tell the French sheila (the one I married, remember?) when she gets home Sunday morning we have a dinner guest that evening. She goes off the Richter! Full dummie spit. Who have you invited to dinner?! How do you know him?! How dare you invite him into our home! Where did you meet him?! What do you know about him?! Then she chucks the Mother-of-all-Tantrums and announces she’s going to stay in the bedroom all night. She doesn’t want to meet him.

You see, French people don’t invite strangers home. Home is the castle – the chateau. You invite people you don’t know very well to join you at a restaurant. Never at your home.

So suddenly remembering this, I suggest we take him out for a meal. “That means we have to pay for him” she says. I say “Well let’s go to the Lebo’s around the corner”. She says “Weel eet be o-pen?”

It’s as plain as fingers nose she doesn’t want anything to do with this guy. So I say “Fine..I’ll go out with him..over to Pigalle..we’ll find a girlie bar..have some fun..remember fun?”.

“Maybe I’ll ring Smithee and Mountjoy...see if they want to tag along. Live a little. After that we might push the Deux Chevaux over to E’s place...take her some Absinthe...interrupt her knitting...beat up her bikie-type boyfriend...throw up on her shrubbery.”

In the end the Seppo came to dinner. Right on time with a present for the raspberry-blower and a very nice bottle of Chateau Rothschild Bordeaux ’99 or some such.(I’m no wine buff so don’t even try picking me up on it.)

His manners were impeccable, his socks didn’t smell and he’d ironed his cargo pants. I made a chicken caesar salad. We drank cold beers and rosé. Had a few laughs. He showed us photos of his time in gaol. No...I made that part up.

We finished the evening with a cigar on the balcony. I was reminded of a quote from Marx. No not that Marx. Groucho Marx:-

“A man’s only as old as the woman he feels”...ah hang on...bit confused...went off the medication...”A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke”.

Written & directed by lambe, paris.

A few years ago I had a gig as a copywriter in a provincial city F.M. radio station. It was in brand-new studios at the top of a high-rise glass office building overlooking a stretch of mangroves and tidal-flats “somewhere in Queensland”. It was a pretty good set-up. They had two on-air studios, a news-room, production facilities with 24-track mixing boards and various other executive offices and a Board Room. It was State-of-the-Art, which is more than could be said for the staff.

The F.M. license had cost the owners, a consortium of local businessmen, a motza. So savings had to be made in other areas. Mainly wages. Most of the jocks were straight out of radio school and the all-important sales team were a mish-mash of failed real-estaters and used car salesmen. They’d had a crash course in radio terms and fancy marketing concepts like “cumes” and “demographics” but mostly they didn’t have a clue how to go about selling radio space. Part of my job as “Creative Director” was to wise them up “el pronto” so we could start bringing in revenue.

One of our early clients was a local pub, “The Do Drop Inn”, that was, for good or for bad, next door to the catholic church. It was an ordinary suburban pub with a theme restaurant attached. The initial advertising brief was on my desk after I got back from a $10 “surf & turf” lunch one day into my fourth month.

“Client wants something creative” the dumb-fuck salesman had written.

Yeah? Like what? How about “Jesus gets pissed in our bar then eats our shit food. So should you”.

I was sick of it. I’d spent the last few months training the sales staff on “how to take a proper brief”. We’d had weekly sessions on it. And still they were giving me briefs like that.

“Put in as much detail as you can” I’d said to them. “You know the product, but I don’t. I’m stuck in this fishbowl trying to write and produce fuck-knows-how-many spots a day”.

One day, for instance, I made twenty-two radio commercials from go-to-whoa and didn’t leave work until ten that night. Then I backed up the next day with another fifteen. That’s a shit-load of work for any guy. And of course every bastard wanted their ad to be “creative”. They wanted funny voices, they wanted jingles, they wanted Sound Effects, they wanted 64-Flavours of Ice-Cream To Go and they wanted something “different”. They wanted Big-City production at Mickey Mouse prices.

As I kept telling the sales team, whatever happened to pushing product? You think putting John Cleese’s voice in an ad automatically sells truckloads of cheese or some shit? It doesn’t. For one thing, some people hate John Cleese, hate the whole Basil Fawlty thing. Not me. I love it. But a so-called “creative” ad just for the sake of winning the client over and writing the airtime can blow up in your face if it doesn’t work. And it didn’t help when all I got was a brief saying “client wants something creative”.

So after reading the “Do Drop Inn” brief I got Mandy, the Sales Rep. responsible for it, in to my office. Behind her back everyone called her “Randy Mandy”. She thought she was God’s gift to mankind. She’d be right in your face so you’d get a lungful of her perfume and an eyeful of her pushed-up tits. She’d flutter her eyelids with what she thought was a dead-sexy “I’m all yours” look. If you were a bloke who hadn’t had sex for a few years or weren’t too fussy it worked. She’d been a model in the Seventies but had been around the track a few times since. The undercarriage was sagging and the Duco was touched-up in places, if you get my drift. I couldn’t stand her. Not many of the staff could. She’d managed to alienate just about every woman in the place after only two weeks. The men, for the most part, thought her a joke. But the General Manager, for some reason, thought the sun shone out of her freckle. Maybe there was a bit of extra-curricular going on. Who knows? So for his sake I had to tolerate her. But luckily I had a few things on her. Things she was rather the world didn’t know about. For one, I knew Johnny Shanks had given her a knee-trembler up against his Holden the night of the ratings party. Apparently she never got over it as she put her car into the river on the way home. Things didn’t go too swimmingly with her hubbie either. She told him a cat ran out on the road in front of her. I guess he knew it had something to do with a pussy.

The ratings party was a hoot. We were all pissed on the free booze by eight. I even missed the staff photo as I was too busy gargling a charcoal-filtered Millers at the bar. It was a good survey. We were the number one station in the region and had only been on air three months. Management had booked a fancy restaurant and all booze was on them until nine o’clock. Things went progressively downhill after that. The Production Manager, a nasty little control-freak that no-one liked but put up with because he was good at his job, had a hooter full of toot and broke a mirror in the Gents. One of the “Call Girls” – the chicks who rang people to see what music they liked, did the “Dance of the Seven Veils” on a table-top, fell off and fractured her arm. Two of the “Traffic Tarts” went skinny-dipping under the pier and everyone had a decko at them through the see-through glass dance floor. And the Jock who did Midnight-to-Dawn and was hoping to be upgraded to Drive went the grope on the Company Secretary who complained to the Chairman who made sure he was stuck on the graveyard shift for another year.

Randy Mandy couldn’t come up with a decent brief to save her life so I went around to meet the client – the Publican of “The Do Drop Inn”.

It was a typical nondescript suburban Queensland pub with a huge neon XXXX sign on the roof and a couple of bars full of sweaty workers in blue singlets and thongs. Very blokey. About the only thing it had going for it was a large faux-adobe Spanish el-rancho hacienda steakhouse sort of affair attached to the beer-garden.

“Jesus!” I thought, “how the fuck am I going to position this dump?”

I shook hands with Smitty the publican. Or rather, he crushed my mit in his, the way those cane-toads do and we looked each other up and down. I knew what he was thinking. “Another smartarse from “Down South”. Me...I’m thinking “this guy’s huge!” He had to be every bit of eighteen stone. And no spring chicken. Maybe the sunny side of fifty. Probably played Rugby League for Queensland in his youth. With a nickname like “Terminator” or “Tanker” or some bloody thing. Eating a dozen cold pies for breakfast like Artie Beetson used to do. But now he had the big beer-gut, the balding boofhead sun-spotted face and the Errol Flynn moustache – a typical middle-aged cane-toad.

We sat in the restaurant and drank Fourex while kicking a few ideas around. Smitty thought he might like to feature the restaurant in the ads. He went through the menu describing each dish. “T-Bone, chips & salad”, “Rump Steak, chips & salad”, “Lasagne, chips & salad”, “Sea Perch, chips & salad”. Like that. Then we had a decko at the bars (the “Sportsmans Bar” and the “Pelican Lounge”) and finished up with a tour of the Drive-In Bottlo and the cellars.

“Whadyareckon?” he says.

What did I reckon? Tell you the truth I didn’t know what to think. It was a pub. A common or garden variety suburban Queensland pub. It wasn’t even on the water. It had nothing going for it. No “U.S.P.” as advertising types used to say. No “Unique Selling Proposition” as far as I could see. But I had to do something with it.

“What’s unique here Smitty? What do you do better than any other pub here?”

The big fella thought for a minute.

“Well……our bottle-shop beer’s bloody cold – coldest beer around I’d reckon”.

“And that’s important is it?”

“It is if you’re a Queensland beer drinker.”

Fair enough. It gave me something to work with.

The first ad went to air three days later. Like this:

“Smitty O’Brien’s a cold bastard. Why is he a cold bastard? Because he sells the coldest beer in captivity. The beer you buy at The Do Drop Inn Drive-In Bottlo King Street, Fairhaven is kept at a constantly-monitored temperature just over freezing point. So by the time you get it home it’s perfect to drink.

Do Drop Inn Beer – probably the Coldest Beer in Queensland. Brought to you by that cold bastard – Smitty O’Brien.

The Do Drop Inn. King Street, Fairhaven. Pick up a pack today.”

A series of 30-second spots followed. All built around the theme of Smitty O’Brien being a cold bastard. The joke being that he was very much the opposite. He was well-known in the community for his generosity and charity. Far from being “cold” he was a warm affable, outgoing kind of bloke with many friends. He was also a bit of a piss-pot which can’t be bad for a publican.

The ads went to air R.O.S. – Run of Station. Which meant we pestered the fuck out of you all day. There would be several in the prime Breakfast slot, a couple in Morning, several more in Drive and one or two dropped on air during Night or Graveyard. The first week established the “Cold” hook and then we had some fun with it using the same gravel-voiced announcer each time. The only problem was we had to drop the word “bastard” and substitute “man” as several wowsers rang to complain. No matter. It still worked like a bewdy.

“Oh no!!What’s the Cold Man up to now? This won’t do Smitty. You’ve lost the plot son!

Free Beer! Yes you heard right - Free Beer!

This afternoon between 4 and 6 they’re giving away Free Fourex at The Do Drop Inn, King Street, Fairhaven.

Buy one Fourex – get one Free!

This’ll never work Smitty. No-one will fall for this. Who’s ever heard of free beer?

This arvo at The Do Drop Inn, King Street, Fairhaven. Free Beer!

Brought to you by that Champion of the Underdog, Master of the Free World – Smitty O’Brien.”

Well...what can I say? It was a free-for-all, an ugly scene. The freeloaders came arunning from miles around – they ran through the bushes and they ran through the brambles, they ran through the places where the rabbits couldn’t go. You’d think they’d never heard of free beer. Well...they hadn’t. They were three or four deep at the bar, getting ‘em in. Then sinking them like there was no tomorrow. Not just the blokes either. The “ladies” were there in force at well. The foam was flying. Talk about ”responsible service of alcohol”. Now days you couldn’t do it. The law won’t allow “encouraging excessive consumption of alcohol by two-for-one offers, dollar-drinks and other special offers and enticements”. But in those days in Queensland, it was anything goes.

Six barmaids couldn’t take the pace and the cellar ran dry shortly after seven o’clock – an hour after the supposed cut-off for the freebies. There might have been a riot had extra kegs not been borrowed from a neighbouring pub to enable the session to go until “stumps”.

A couple of weeks later we ran another beer promotion disguised as the announcement of a betting shop opening. Like this:

“Good news punters! You can now get TAB at the Do Drop Inn. Yes T.A.B. – the Tote, has come to the D.D.I. King Street, Fairhaven, Q.L.D.

So now you can have a pot and a punt at the same time. And this afternoon between 1 and 4, Smitty “fair dinkum battlers mate” O’Brien is laying on Fourex for 95 cents. How good’s that?

Best P.O.Q. down to the T.A.B at the D.D.I., King Street, Fairhaven.

Good on you Smitty Poohs………..love the shirt!”

The last bit was a reference to a lurid Hawaiian shirt Smitty had been wearing the night before when Security found him passed out in one of the Gents at the Bowlo and suggested he might like to sleep elsewhere (But I admit I nicked the idea from “Hey, Hey It’s Saturday).

After this we had to tone the ads down a bit. They worked like a beauty but we were beginning to cop some flak. Several do-gooders and Christian fundamentalist bible-bashers wrote to the papers and rang the radio station to complain. But from my point of view and Smitty’s, it had been a rip-roaring success. Bar sales went through the roof and we attracted a whole new sub-class of low-down, bludging, freeloaders hoping for another promotion like it. But all we gave ‘em was “Fourex Beer Off the Wood” – which is big in Bananaland. The beer came from wooden kegs instead of stainless steel. The punters will tell you it tastes much better. But I dunno – cat piss is cat piss in my book.

During this time Randy Mandy pestered the fuck out of Smitty. She had him in her sights and finally nailed him after a session at the Bowling Club. Apparently they “did it” on the terrace with people in the bar on the other side of the tinted glass. Rumour has it she either sat on him or they were standing up against the glass. The latter probably. After all she already had a bit of “previous” in that department. But either way I gave them ten points for artistic interpretation. And Smitty got her “out of his system” as he put it to me later.

Smitty changed pubs not long after that but his reputation followed. He still got mail addressed to “The Cold Man” and the boys in the bar slapped him on the back and called him “Champion of the Underdog”, “Love your Shirt” and invariably the chant went up “Free Beer...free beer...free beer!”.

Disclaimer: All characters in this bullshit story are just that – bullshit. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. But if you feel you have a strong case for defamation, go right ahead. But I should warn you, the queue forms to the right.

lambe, paris.

I gotta tell you, I’m a bit worried. My aunt, who’s ninety something not out, is in a nursing home. She has been for awhile. Used to have her own little self-contained flat there but was moved into care after she nearly burnt the whole place down. She was drying her nylon nickers in front of the electric heater and forgot about them. The fire brigade had to be called to put out the resultant fire. All the other oldies were evacuated so Auntie was not exactly “Geriatric-of-the-Month” after that. Although some of them thought it was quite exciting I believe.

The nursing home is called “North Haven” but mail often turns up addressed “North Heaven”. It’s run by the church and is quite good as nursing homes go. But unfortunately it’s on a noisy major highway as it used to be a motel. I suppose if you were a retired Christian truck-driver you’d feel right at home. And if you’d had enough of the place and wanted to do a runner, you could just stand out the front with your thumb out. (“Where you off to love?”...”The Gold Coast thanks driver”.)

Reception is a kind of portico affair lit up like an R.S.L. Club or a Five Star Hotel. There’s a jolly woman behind the front desk ready to greet you (“Welcome to the rest of your life. No-one gets out of here alive...should you require complimentary oxygen in your room, please don’t hesitate to ask”) Ah...it’s not funny is it.

There’s a restaurant off to one side and a lounge full of sick-looking potted plants on the other. Background Musak is usually playing some selection from Ferrante & Teicher while the guests sit around shooting-the-shit and placing bets on who’s going to pop it next. Well, I wouldn’t call them “guests” – more like wall-to-wall vegies. You know they’re alive because their eyes follow you across the room. No, I’m being cruel. Can’t be much fun for them. But whatdya do? It’s not like Asia where the elderly are revered. Or at least looked after by their rellos at home. Here we just park ‘em and forget ‘em. That’s what worries me.

I don’t want to end up in one of these places. Having some Nurse Ratchett put a bib on me and wheel me from Bingo to “meat & three veg” for dinner. Just let me die. Or better still we’ll go down the casino and I’ll put my last pension check on the blackjack table. Maybe I’ll scull a schooner or two if I can still bend the elbow. Or let me choke on the Kettle Chips. Just keep me away from a Nursing Home. I don’t wanna be nursed. I’m not into Bingo. I’m over jelly & custard. I hate plastic undersheets. And no bastard’s gonna lift me into the bath and run a flannel round my freckle I’m telling you that much.

Auntie says the food is “muck” but we take no notice of her because for years that’s all she’s been used to. She was the “World’s Worst Cook” and when you went to see her she’d serve up leftovers that’d been in the fridge for God-knows-how-long. Her idea of a slap-up dinner was an over-cooked leg of lamb with bullety potatoes, over-boiled vegetables and lumpy gravy. Through experience we learnt to say “uh no thanks Auntie...we’ve just eaten”. Had to be cruel to be kind to yourself. It was either that or stick two fingers down your throat.

At the nursing home, Auntie complained that she was still a bit “peckish” of a night. So after they’d done the medication rounds they’d bring her up a glass of milk, some crackers and a little packet of cheese like you might get on an aeroplane. Or a nursing home. She’d sink the milk, scoff the bickies and stash the cheese in her little bar-fridge “for later”. But somehow “later” never came. My father went to put something in the fridge for her recently and here were all these tiny packets of “Coon” cheese. Hundreds of the bastards. Some of them dated three or four years ago. She had cheese for Africa! When he asked her about it she got a bit stroppy. Said she paid extra for this little nighttime snack so she could do what she bloody-well liked with the cheese. But he could take some home if he liked. She’s very good like that.

When we were kids she never forgot a Birthday or Christmas. We always got a card with a ten-shilling note and “love from Auntie and Grandma & Grandpa”. The Christmas presents became more bizarre the older she got. She tended to shop in bulk so everyone in the family got the same things. Couple of years ago it was a packet of “Sensodyne” toothpaste, a face washer and a bar of cheap soap. Never mind. The thought was there. Something to do with “look after your face and teeth”.

Auntie still talks of leaving “North Heaven” and getting a house. Or starting an olive farm. Or buying a Rolls Royce and learning to drive. She’s got a few quid in the bank from the sale of her flat. It’s in some under-performing term account that pays next-to-zip interest. The bank’s always trying to get her to move her money to a higher-interest account but Aunt’s convinced she’ll have to pay more tax. And she likes to stay liquid just in case an opportunity comes up. Like an olive farm or a Rolls Royce.

My mother looks after Auntie’s “business empire”. She sees this money sitting in the account doing nothing while Auntie slopes around in some ratty gown she bought Circa 1972. And dries herself with patched towels and sleeps on patched sheets. Or she did right up until the nursing home. Patched towels . Who do you know that patches their towels ? And the patched sheets had patches over patches . I ask you...is this a definition of poverty-thinking? Or is it just that she hasn’t got over the Great Depression?

Mum takes her out now and again and tries to buy her clothes. But when the old girl is told the price she jacks up. So she still gets around in these gravy-stained numbers that would do a bag-lady proud. And the money sits in the bank account earning 2% per annum or something. We’re convinced that when she pops it that dosh will go to The North Shore Womens Knitting Group or the Association for Underprivileged African Heads of State or some bloody thing. Fair call. It’s her money.

Auntie goes on about “Divine Retribution”. This theory holds that because our family were once wealthy English sugar-planters and slave-owners in the West Indies, God, in his wisdom, has seen fit to punish subsequent generations for the sins against the slaves 200 years ago. She might have something there. I’ve been struggling for years. Can’t take a bloody trick. And it’s all because of those rum-soaked planters and what they did to their slaves. Bastards!

I think I’ll pop up and see my Aunt now. I fancy a bit of “Coon” and a cup of tea. Maybe I’ll take her some olives and the road test for the new Roller.

Are you stuck in a job you detest but can’t leave because you have the mortgage to pay plus the car payments, the gym fees, the dentist bills, the daycare centre, the vet’s bill, the overdraft, the marriage counselling... yada yada yada? Not all of us are caught in this rat-trap.

I’ve got this old mate who went feral in his early twenties. I’ll call him “Gumbie” to protect his privacy. He comes from a leftie, hippieish kind of family so it wasn’t such a radical move sideways. But still. He pissed off out of Sydney before getting sucked into the bullshit like the rest of us and bought a share in a 250 acre “alternative” community out the back of Nimbin – the so-called rainbow region. I think it cost him a grand back then to be a fully paid-up member of a co-operative. It gave him the right to build a dwelling and to use the rest of the land-in-common.

In the very beginning he did it tough. He didn’t have much money. He lived the simple life in an old corrugated-iron chook shed with an earthen floor, a cold-water tap and a hole-in-the-ground outside for a dunny. He couldn’t even afford toilet-paper - well not without giving up the beer and ciggies. But a bloke’s gotta have some vices and ya gotta get your priorities right, right? So he just used the leaves off the nearest wild tobacco plant to wipe his date. Works for me. But not a good look when you invite a sheila home for the night, eh?

Over time he built himself a one-roomed shack, with the luxury of a hot-water system running off a wood-fired fuelstove. The shower was on the exposed timber landing outside but it worked. Well, most of the time anyway - when he wasn’t too out-of-it to remember to chop the wood to feed the furnace.

The shack had no electricity and fuck-all furniture and the dunny was still a hole in the ground outside, albeit with a bamboo screen around it. And toilet-paper was still a luxury although he progressed to using cut-up pages of the “Nimbin News” rather than tobacco-plant leaves. He went up-market - all nouveau riche, you might say. Maybe he was looking to attract a better class of girlfriend.

In the early days he drew the Dole but being a self-confessed Anarchist he hated having anything to do with “the bloody government” and just threw the benefit cheques in a drawer out of contempt for the system. Never did cash them. These days he spurns all forms of assistance – government or otherwise – and struggles to make a living with a small herd of dairy cows, a bit of firewood-collecting and various entrepreneurial ventures like drying fruit and paralysis-tick-collecting.

Seven years ago Gumbie got a $20,000 cheque from his old man before he died. Probably the most amount of money he’d ever seen in his life. He put it in the bank and some time after he got a “please explain” letter from the Tax Department. It must have looked a bit “sus” this relatively large amount of money going into a long-dormant bank account in a notorious marihuana-growing town.

His sister got twenty grand also. She cashed her cheque and took a holiday to Bali. But before leaving she gave Gumbie a $5000 wad of notes for him to safekeep for her just in case she went tropical and spent the lot. He stashed it behind the wall-panelling in the kitchen of his shack. When the sister returned from Bali asking for it some months later they found the rats had been at it and they had to take the remains to the bank to sort out what they had. (“This goes with this...and that’s a corner of that”...)

Gumbie just ignored the letter from the Tax Department and hoped they’d drop off. He’d never put in a real return in his life. Years ago, when working as a brickie’s labourer, he’d filed a return under a bodgie name to avoid tax. A rebate cheque came back written out to the fictional “Larry Pot” - being the name given to the water bucket that brickies use. “Fuck tax” is part of his manifesto.

Gumbie has always been a somewhat “original thinker”. When we were both in our late teens he told me that he was going to have all his teeth pulled out. That way he wouldn’t have to pay the “fucking dentist” any more. It took him another twenty years but sure enough, he had every tooth in his head, or what was left of them, pulled out and eventually got a set of dentures. But he can’t be bothered wearing them and they don’t fit so well anymore. So mostly they just lay amongst the rubbish on the floor of his old handpainted Holden. He only puts them in for special occasions – like when he has to go to the bank or get the $2 counter lunch from the pub in town. He picks them up off the dirty old car-floor, gives them a wipe on his work-shirt and whacks them in his mouth. “No worries!” But mostly he gets around without any teeth and it puts a good twenty years on him. And it’s sometimes hard to understand what he’s saying. It’s not until he takes his shirt off and you see his lean hard frame that you realise he’s a relatively young man still.

He took up surfing again a few years ago and when he’s got the petrol money he’ll chuck his old single-finner in the back of the wagon and make the hour’s drive to the beach. He looks like the “Wild Man of Borneo” or something as he’s nearly two metres tall with long hair down to his waist, hard-muscled and toothless. The grommets don’t know what to make of him when he drops in on their waves. They prone out quick smart, I can tell you. (“Jesus! What the fuck was that!”)

For awhile now Gumbie has been dossing in another of the shacks on the co-operative or “M.O.” (“multiple occupancy”) as these arrangements are more commonly called now. It’s a bigger place than his at the top of the hill they call “Heaven”. Some bikies had been squatting there so Gumbie took it on himself to act as unofficial caretaker. It’s in a worse state than his own shack. But not by much. There are carpet snakes in the ceiling and rodents in the cupboards. The floor is strewn with empty beercans and the fireplace is full of long-cold ashes from the furniture the bikies burnt to keep warm. Gumbie is crashing on a rotten old slab of foam and the bed-sheets are literally black and scattered with snake-shit. Five–Star it’s not. It’s more “Ratz” than “Ritz”.

Most nights you’ll find Gumbie sitting at the kitchen table next to the fuel-stove in the Community House. He’ll be smoking laced “Log Cabin” rollie tobacco and drinking “Chateau Cardboard” out of a screwtop peanut-butter jar, ear-bashing whoever’s silly enough to hang around and loving it.

In the Spring months he spreads an old blanket over the table at night and empties his tick-jar over it to count the days pickings. The Paralysis Ticks (Ioxodes Holocyclus) are bought by the local Vet. They’re put on laboratory dogs that have built up immunity to the poison and after a few days blood is extracted to make anti-venine. The Vet pays an average of a dollar a tick over the season and on a good day Gumbie can collect several hundred by dragging a blanket through the lantana thickets and camphor laurel stands. It’s hot, nasty, unhealthy work that attracts mostly junkies, gamblers and other desperates who need daily cash injections. But this money keeps him going for a few months of frugal living.

The Community House is furnished with everyone’s cast-offs. There’s a couple of ratty sofas, some mouldy rugs and an old television in the corner with an all-green picture that keeps rolling and rolling. Gumbie doesn’t mind.

“At least the fuckin’ junkies won’t steal it” he says.

In another room there’s a thirty year old refrigerator humming away and stuggling to keep a few bottles of Gumbie’s cows milk cold. Some of the milk has gone off but Gumbie says there’s nothing wrong with it and still drinks it – mould and all.

“It’s unpasteurised and unhomogenised so it’s just curds and whey – like yoghurt”.

When the fridge is too full Gumbie puts his milk bottles in the creek that flows past the house.

If the Co-operative ever gets into eco-tourism I can see the brochure copy:

“Get hand-pressed pure unadulterated organic Milk fresh from contented cows and cooled by a mountain stream high in the Nimbin Ranges”

Second thoughts...maybe its too long. How about just:

“High in the Nimbin Ranges”

Sometimes Gumbie will have some extra dough and he’ll splash out on a leg of lamb and maybe some pumpkin and spuds that he’ll bake in the ancient fuelstove. Afterwards he’ll have “pot and pot” for dessert - a pot of tea and a pure-bud joint. Then an old slack-stringed acoustic guitar will come out and he’ll play some Leadbelly and sing to himself.

“Oh the rockiron line is a mighty good line...oh the rockiron line is the road to ride...oh the rockiron line is a mighty good line...walkin’ and a’talkin’ down the rockiron line”.

Last time I saw him, my old mate, I believe most of the $20,000 was still sitting in the bank. While Gumbie often has days when he can’t afford to eat. But one thing’s for sure – he aint going back to the city and the Government can whistle Dixie for a tax return. 

The Big News in Paris this week is that the Frogs have gone ape-shit over Aussie-style pokies. C’est vrai! It started as a joke in an Australian bar in the Latin Quarter (called, I kid you not, “The Dingo Ate My Baby”). Seems the manager imported a couple of machines to add a bit of authentic Down-Under flavour to go with the schooners of Fosters and the didgeridoo ambient music. He didn’t expect the French to get the joke. But they’ve taken to them like ducks to water. And now he’s making more dosh from ‘les pokies’ than bar sales. Fair dinkum! He’s leased the shop next door to his bar, knocked a bloody-great hole through the wall and turned it into a ‘Gaming Room’ - complete with Change Machines, ATM, complimentary coffee and ‘Iced Vo-Vo’ biscuits gratis for the punters.

First it was the foreign students and tourists queuing up to get on a machine and then the Parisian night crowd got hip to the action and the place has gone ballistic. They bang on the doors at ten in the morning and have to be forcibly ejected by a Samoan bouncer at three the next morning when the machines are serviced.

The rest of Paris has seen what’s happening and pokies are popping up everywhere. They’ll even be in the Louvre soon. Yes le Louvre, that bastion of high culture on the banks of the Seine. If you go, look for the signs “machine à sous” (“slot machines”) on the Second Floor. It’s a Triple Bill – you can see where they filmed “The Da Vinci Code”, check out Moaning Lisa and have a flutter on the bandits at the same time. A bloke will be able to say to his Missus ‘I’ll be a bit late home tonight Darl’ – there’s a new exhibition at the Louvre I’ve just gotta see’…………and bang – there goes the housekeeping.

Even the smallest of bars, and believe me some aren’t much bigger than a suburban Australian lounge room, are going for it. Out goes those clickety-clack football machines you see all over Europe and the sixties-style pinballs and in comes ‘Queen of the Nile’, the ‘Penguin’ and ‘Chicken Run’.

I tell ya, we’re “flavour of the month” here. Sales of Fosters, VB and Winnie Blues are going gangbusters. ‘Bonjour’ is fast being replaced by ‘G’day’, ‘No Worries’ and ‘She’ll be right, mate’. No bullshit, they love us!

The “Dingo Ate My Baby” bar has special promotions where you can win Bondi Beach towels, tubes of ‘Pink Zinc’, six-packs of stubbies and rubber thongs. The sheila behind the bar reckons fights break out all the time over the free beer-nuts and Smiths Chips. She can’t keep up with the demand – soon as she fills the bowls the players are into it. They tried Jatz Crackers and cubes of Coon for awhile but the punters used them as missiles and the cleaner went on strike.

The Bandits have only just started to infiltrate the suburbs. But the shit’s hit the fan. They reckon school truancy is at an all-time high and job absenteeism is rife too. Marriages are breaking down – hubby’s hitting the slots straight after work and coming home skint and stinking of VB and Bundy. Pensioners are withdrawing their life-savings and putting them through the machines hoping to win the big one. Even the buses and trains are affected. The Metro was stalled this week for lack of drivers – they were all down the pub trying to get the three pyramids for 20 Free Games. Or the Penguin and money token. Or the three chickens to cross the road to the safety of the ‘Topless Chick’ bar without getting run over by a Mack truck. It’s madness mate!

So this week enough was enough. The Mayor of Gay Paree (who is, as it happens, gay) convened a National Debate on the scourge of Les Pokies Australien. The finest minds of the land sat down in the splendour of Hotel de Ville and pondered the existential question of electronic gaming and its affect on the national psyche. A dozen machines were installed so the delegates could experience firsthand the phenomenon happening out there in the city and ‘burbs. But proceedings had to be abandoned when the learned Professeurs and intelligentsia started brawling over whose turn it was to play.

Anyway….. I’d love to tell you more but I’ve been playing this machine over the road and I reckon it’s about ready to spew the big payout. I nearly got it last week but the third chicken got creamed by a Semi. C’est la vie.

Disclaimer : There are no poker machines in Parisian bars – Australian or otherwise. This has been a lame attempt at humour by the writer. However there are Australian poker machines at Enghien-les-Bains casino in a Northern suburb. You can play all reels/full weight for Ten Euros a pop – about A$16. And if you give me some playing money I’ll gladly escort you there.

The Customer is (not)Always Right

It seems like here in France they’ve never heard that old adage ‘The Customer is Always Right’. Service here is a joke. You pretty much work that out from the moment you step off the plane. After clearing the cattle call that’s immigration and customs go to the Information Desk and ask them something and you’ll see what I mean. What with one thing and another you’d think they’d be keen to be at least civil so we’d spend a few more shekels and come again. But no. More often that not you get the famous Gallic distain. But I suppose with 80 million visitors a year they can afford to be a bit blasé. Hell, with those kind of numbers they could safely insult a million visitors and it probably wouldn’t matter.

Here it seems that “customer” is a dirty word. You know, like that sign says - “This would be a great little business if it weren’t for the bloody customers”.

Go into almost any retailer here, big or small, you’re as likely as not to be ignored by the sales staff unless you’re prepared for some serious brown-nosing. Suddenly you’re The Invisible Man. All they see is an ‘etranger’ as it’s known here. This is an old French word which I think means “One who is far from home with no mates and deserves to be severely humiliated”.

God help you if you don’t know the password – ‘Excusez-moi de vous deranger, monsieur(madame)’ – ‘Excuse me for disturbing you, Sir(madam)’ (I know it’s an inconvenience but could you possibly get off your derriére and sell me that overpriced wing-wang you have in the display there?)

I’ve been in Paris five years now and I’m still amazed at their attitude. For instance, this morning I fancied breakfast at a well-known fast-food chain that will remain anonymous because they might sue my arse. Oh O.K. it was McDonalds. Yeah I know, I don’t know what came over me. You’d think this would be easy, right? I mea