A One act, One set play.

Characters..: Bea (Beatrice)..Woman in mid-fifties, busy, efficient..she has a pencil behind her ear..she uses it now and then to write on a sheath of paper.

Scene : A meeting room, Bea stands facing the audience half-seated on a table, she has a stapled sheath of papers in her hands, there is a large table with half a dozen similar stapled sheaths of paper set at regular spaces around the table as if in expectation of more people to come to the room. Bea reads from the sheath of papers, then looks up to face the audience..

Bea : “ If you could imagine us all walking side by side toward a sunset, with our lives trailing away behind; a shadow drawn in perspective from the point of our birth. We are all facing the front so none of us really knows the substance of our neighbor’s ‘shadow’, and we can only make calculated guesses from facial expressions and mumbled half truths…Carl Jung…hrumph!…well, I reckon  that about covers it…

It seems to be always some physical event that motivates us humans to “get up and do something constructive”(Bea makes inverted commas with her fingers), sadly such events have a propensity to the catastrophic, like a sharp jab in the collective ribs of  humanity, otherwise we’d probably just lie prostrate in the dirt like a contented sow with half a dozen piglets suckling on its teats! So it was not long after her husband left her that Maggie joined our “puppet group” at the school. She said she joined to ; “Break that cycle of thought that possesses and locks one into a cycle of hate – contrition.” She had read that in a therapy pamphlet, and, I expect, nodding in agreement, decided to join the puppet group. Maggie is a rather plump, lumpy sort of woman..with a broad, round face…”like the map of Ireland” as they used to say…

I suppose by now I better introduce myself…Hello..I’m Bea…short for Beatrice..my mother was a fan of “Peter the Rabbit”…so that’s where I got my name from…parents have a lot to answer for…at least I can be thankful it was not Flopsy or Mopsy!…but for the love of God, please do not call me Trixie!…Having got the formalities over, I can also inform you that I am secretary, editor, script writer and producer for the “Goldwing Puppet Theatre”…there’s half a dozen of us actually plus many hangers-on…and this room is our planning room..or should I say plotting room, for the job of putting on a play that both appeals to and satisfies the school parents and friends association has to be plotted and schemed to the most minute detail..

We also meet once a week at Mary’s house; our group of parents from the school. We meet at eleven o’clock every Thursday morning to encourage and assist each other with our dolls. We make soft-bodied hand-puppets for the little plays we perform for the younger children every month or so and at festivals through the year. When she joined, Maggie did not know how to make a puppet in a pink fit! but, with the sympathetic encouragement from the other mothers (mostly sympathetic to her marital situation, that is), she soon got the hang of it, and by and by the materials became “mere putty” in her hands. In fact, it wasn’t long before she was producing puppets with such beautiful and tender features that one of the women: Pamela, was moved to say that “It’s a gift….pure and simple…a gift.’” and Maggie blushed  and said “Oh surely not,” and went on to explain that she had always been good at crafts; “From me mother…I ‘spect.”

Of course, Pamela went on about it.. “Oh no,” said Pamela, shocked, “It’s a gift…a real gift’” and Maggie blushed again and said “Oh well…”

The first play that we put on for the year was “Hansel and Gretel”…. Maggie was given the job of making Hansel. The finished product was so good, so fine, that the other women gazed upon him open mouthed. He had a soul almost, behind those eyes, and what eyes! “as crisp as a Summer dawn, the left hand of God,” and his costume and the cut of the cloth made his shape, his proportions seem so unnatural, uncanny, so that next to him poor Gretel looked like a cheap “tart”….so much so that Maggie was asked, nay: ‘implored’ to take Gretel home and to “fix her up,” and gosh! did Gretel ever look so beautiful, so innocent? that together; Hansel and Gretel as puppets matched the immortality , almost, of the classical tale.

Well..after that performance, Maggie was given the job of making the star puppets. And didn’t she fulfill that task admirably.“It’s a gift…a real gift,” Pam would repeat in her parroting voice.

“I’d say it was a release from the stress,” Mary would comment with a nod of the head then pinch her lips together.

Mary is our resident expert on stress…. “Yes….you’re stressed,” was her usual prognosis whenever someone expressed a weariness. Yet another time-server : Jocelyn, who holds a degree in humanities and had studied a year in psychology, pronounced in dry, measured tones (not for psychologists the heady passions of mankind!) that the beauty of the dolls is ;

(Bea mimics the woman’s voice)“…quite naturally an acceptance…a bringing to the front, the beauty of self…the awakening..so to speak..of respect for self and realization of self after the defeat…so to speak…of the broken relationship…you understand?” (Bea makes a wry, sarcastic face to the audience). Of course others added their opinions to the pot also, but all were equal in their admiration of the puppets. And Maggie basked in their praise, though her big, round  face would colour in a blush, she would smile and finger the dolls tenderly and say:

“Well, yes, it does bring me out of myself…helps me to distance myself from me troubles.” And she’d bend to her work, her clumsy-looking fingers deftly sewing a smock or line stitching a vest for the prince.

(All through this explanatory dialogue, Bea would move around the table, placing water glasses or pencils etc…sometimes she would stop to directly talk to the audience, other times she would talk over her shoulder…mimicking a vice or using body language movements..)

So it went on, story after story: Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, all perfect joys and didn’t the children Ahh! and the parent’s Ohh! and the applause after each show witnessed their appreciation, and Maggie’s puppets were eagerly touched and stroked by the children as if they were exotic talismans.

“It’s a gift,” Pamela could be too often heard at one side telling a parent, “It’s a real gift.”

But..you know..I started to notice a certain similarity about the puppets, an air of something familiar about them, but, not having them all side by side (“….like a police line-up,”), could not be certain of my memory. But I had a feeling that behind those fabric faces, those carefully stitched costumes, deeper than the wool fibre stuffing in those familiar shaped heads, was the “raison d’etre”..the reason for their very being!

For experience has taught me…the hard way.. having once cast off all the shrouds of resistance, each of us enters the creative obligations of the psyche, whether we succeed or fail in these pursuits of desire depends on the depths of the individual’s well springs of courage, of the risk of surrendering to the will of the muse.

I became a tad leery of Maggie’s seeming fatalistic acceptance of the breakdown of her relationship, and though I had never met Maggie’s husband, like any group of a collective of school parents, still felt on “common ground” with the family. But now the family was broken, and I worried less the disappointment was too much for someone as exacting as Maggie to bear, so I “studied” Maggie, looking for cracks in the facade much as we all “study” people under trauma with that guilty morbidity of wondering if and when they will “crack”! Pondering on this, I decided to pay Margie a home visit.

As I knocked on the front door, I heard a raised voice emanating from within the house. It was the middle of the day, so the children were at school and although the voice was muffled, it nonetheless was quite tense. I knocked louder and the voice stopped, there was a hiatus and then the door was gingerly opened….Maggie’s face appeared, flushed and wary in the opening.

“Bea?” she said surprised and she raised an eyebrow.

“Just popped ‘round to say hello. I said”

“Well..(she hesitated in her reply)..come in then.” Maggie eased the door open, I hesitated with one hand raised in gesticulation:

“But do you have visitors….I thought I heard….?” I politely said.. Maggie glanced furtively to one side.

“Oh….no…no, it was just the cat….” She sheepishly replied and she stood clumsily to one side so I could enter. A pot of tea was suggested and I accepted so Maggie adjourned to the kitchen while I sat on the edge of the lounge sofa and let my eyes wander around the trimmings of the room. A photograph setting on a side table caught my eye….something familiar?….the slope of the eyebrows?…the cheeks? or maybe the soft contour of the face?…

“Your….your husband?” I enquired. Maggie popped her head through the door.

“Oh…yes…ex-husband’” and she came into the room and took up the framed photograph listlessly. Richard….”the rat”….sometimes I call him “Dick,” short for….well, you know what” She dusted the glass with her T-shirt and replaced it on the table.

And there, I realized, was the similarity between the male puppets….Richard Meagher with one “sleepy eye” and the brows sloping away “just so”, and those boyish cheeks that Maggie has captured somehow in an abstract way in all the male puppets….”It’s a gift…a real gift.” Pam’s voice resonated annoyingly in my mind…curious, the flow of mood from mind to hand in a clever person, again, that artistic interpretation of psyche. I confess to gazing hypnotically at the photograph and then wondered about the other woman, but discretion forbade mention of so delicate and wounding a subject. Having solved one of my curiosities, I was satisfied I would soon find the other elsewhere so I settled down for small-talk and tea.

“Who did Maggie’s husband clear off with?” I asked Mary one day, thinking that if anyone knew, she would…but I was mistaken..

“No-one I know, but I’ll tell you who does.”

So with a little discreet enquiry and conversation I was able to see a photograph (thank heaven for that invention that fixes time and place to deed!) of the woman in that duet of complicity. I came away from that visit with the second mystery solved: that of the similarity between the female puppets. And …also the knowledge that Maggie’s husband had left with Maggie’s own sister! a double blow! betrayal and treachery! Oh woe is the bearer of a broken heart, but even more vexed is the spirit betrayed….especially by one’s own kin.

I confess to going quiet on the subject after finding out the background of Maggie’s domestic life, sometimes enough is enough when it comes to insights into others dramas, after all…one’s own life has to be journeyed, eh?

Then the time came for a production of that immortal theme of love and betrayal – “Rapunzel.” Once again our little group fell to making miniature props and scenarios and puppets for this, the end of year show and it was to be a real bang-up affair. Maggie seemed to put all her efforts into the two main puppets. Rapunzel was beautiful, her eyes glowed with an innocence enchanting and childlike, her body lithe and well proportioned as one could imagine in such a waif with yet maidenly allure! like the eyes of a portrait that seem to follow you around the room, so in reverse were one’s eyes attracted to that doll….and then the hair…such golden bounty was unnatural, uncanny, it flowed (can that be the word?), flowed….like some mythical fall of golden fibres…so long…so silky…not a hand could resist trailing it through the fingers…ah!… And the prince, too, such were Maggie’s skills now, that he complemented Rapunzel  impeccably, equally without over-shadowing each other, like a joined pair of flamenco dancers, each a part of the other. You can imagine the Ohhs! and the Ahhs! of complimenting Maggie received for these puppets, even myself, wary of over-reaction now I knew the hurt behind these marionettes, could not but help admire sighingly the mystical aura of that duet of complicity.

“It’s a gift…a real gift,” Pamela sighed and they all laughed at the familiar compliment.

It was around the middle of rehearsals for this play, when, on returning home from the city one evening I remembered a bolt of cloth I had to pick up from Maggie, and as it was not too late, decided to turn down the street to Maggie’s house on my way home. It was late spring I recall and the wind rippled freshly through the new-leafed trees, almost like the tittering giggles of youngsters at play, such is Spring when the waking of nature seems to bring a friskiness even to the breezes! And the flowers…like the halting twirls of a carnival calliope their petals would duck and sway while overhead a mellow darkness swept upward through the trees into the night….if you’ll forgive me slipping into the poetic. . .

But an old place, was Maggie’s, with a laced wire gate sprung on squeaky hinges. The path led straight off the street to a flight of three steps to a verandah. I knocked gently on the front door, being aware as I did so not to knock too loudly as to wake the children. On receiving no acknowledgement from this gentle knocking, I gazed around perplexed as to my next move. I noticed a glow of light brushing silver over the flickering leaves of a rain-washed tree, a light from down the side of the house. I stepped off the verandah and made my way quietly down the side-path, the light from a nearby window was enough to show the precise, ordered garden beds between the fence and the path and like the front yard, they reflected the meticulous discipline of Maggie’s personality.

When I came abreast of the lighted window, through a small gap in the damask curtains I could see a figure bent over a table. It was Maggie, her large body adorned in those heavy woven cloths that she used to make her dresses, her hair pulled back in a wispy roll on the back of her head. A soft, hanging overhead lamp threw its light onto the work bench. Maggie’s face was intent on the two puppets she was arranging on front of her on the table…her lips moved in a tight then relaxing pout as she sat the two dolls facing her, a slight musical hum in three notes of a descending order issued from her lips at small intervals of a few second each. She sat back, crossed her arms and stared at the two puppets, they were “Rapunzel” and the “Prince.” I have to confess that my curiosity got the better of me and I was held captive by this..another..strange sort of scripted theatre right in front of my eyes.

“Well now, there yer be,” Maggie sat back and she put her hands on her knees. “And now, my dear Shelia, what would you be havin’ to say for yourself?” This wasn’t Maggie’s usual voice..She spoke a curious softened Irish brogue in a different pitch than her usual voice.

“Will ye not answer your own mother?” Maggie’s voice became more tense “just to be a sittin’ there dumb as pots!”

“I told her, Shelia,” this now was the old Maggie voice, “I told mother what you did.”

 I felt very uncomfortable, for indeed this was something new to me, this behaviour, for with just a slight change of inflection in her voice, Maggie had conjured up an entirely new personality; her apparent mother, a person long deceased..a sudden split in personality, then just as swiftly a return to herself, like an actor playing two roles at the same time on the one stage!…but I couldn’t turn away..I was transfixed by this melodrama being played out on the other side of the glass.

“Hush now, Maggs!” the ‘mother’ interrupted, “Hush, I say!..You’ll not be interrupting me.” The Rapunzel puppet fell to one side and Margie leant to gently prop it up again, her tongue pinched between her lips in concentration. She sat back again.

“So you’ll cower in silence before me, daughter….Not answer to my accusation….you would be stealin’ your own kin’s spouse while all the time shelterin’ under her roof…. while eatin’ at the same table…exchangin’ glances of wicked delight all the while I’ll surmise, and there, in golden innocence your own sister ignorant of the treachery you and your lover conspire,” Her voice rose in intensity as she went  on.

Then, suddenly, Maggie jumped up excited:

“They did, they did, Mother… Oh, the sin of it, all the while I worked, all the while I looked after the house they were scheming and smilin’ and I was the fool…the silly, silly fool for all their wicked coupling….and under my very nose….” She then shook her fist at the puppet’s face.

“Well, I’ve got the thing to pay you for your treachery, my sweet,” and Maggie swiftly took up a large darning needle and raked it again and again across “Rapunzel’s” face so the cloth fretted and shredded in its wake, little tufts of thread and stuffing floated in the air about the lamp.

I had to put my hand to my mouth to stifle a cry, but still I watched. “What sort of madness was this?” I was thinking. Maggie paused, put her needle down and astutely took up another with red thread in it and without a word set to swiftly and deftly line stitch red marks across the puppet’s face so it looked as if it had been raked by a claw! She completed this morbid make-up with little dots of red ink to simulate blood. All this was done so swiftly that I still had my hand to my mouth.

Maggie then turned her narrowed eyes upon the “Prince.”

“And you, Richard,” (the mother’ again), “could you be so vulgar so underhand to your own wife?”

Maggie stood and turned side on to talk out of the corner of her mouth.

“Yes…why Richard….why would you betray me so….was it for a bit of skirt?…an easy ‘conquest’?” Maggie sneered the last sentence, “or would you just be a sheddin’ and avoidin’ your responsibilities….hmm?….”

“Richard!!” the ‘mother’ yelled. (and I tell you, I nearly jumped out of my skin!) “Answer your wife! a coward’s life for a coward’s courage….and the devil take your soul,” she hissed while Maggie turned slowly and leant to pick up a ‘Stanley’ knife lying on the bench, slowly she moved her left arm and grasped the puppet and raised him toward her, then with an angry gesture swiftly lifted her arm with the knife …

“This for your betrayal’” she shrieked hoarsely and swung her arm wildly to slash the puppet’s face from forehead to cheek so the tight-packed wool stuffing burst proud from the cut, and there, in jangling craziness of the light awry which she knocked in her violence, I could see, each in its own pigeon-hole shelved on the wall, leered and stared the other puppets made by Maggie during the year. But! There were twins of each puppet! Twins of Cinderella, Prince Charming, Hansel and also Gretel and the rest, identically clothed and painted, doppelgangers in shape and face… except weirdly, while one would be whole and untouched, its twin was gashed, torn or mutilated this way or that… Hansel’s eye torn from a gaping socket and left hanging down by a thread, Prince Charming’s face too was slashed, Cinderella’s hair was almost ‘scalped’ from her head and so on, all of them sitting squat in their respective pigeon-holes and appearing to gaze interestedly down on this grotesque theatre of tortured souls. I looked back to Maggie and saw that she was intently touching the lips of the slashed face with red dye on her fingertip so they bloodied with the ink, all the while humming that same three descending notes of sound in short intervals.

I could feel my eyes open wide and a silent scream choked in my throat as there, in the flickering light, rack upon rack, stood the only witness to Maggie’s despair, all those compliments she received must have driven her grief ever deeper into her soul, every “It’s a gift,” a nail into her heart so this charnel house of thread and cloth and dye grew out of the tempest of her hatred, this was the theatre of shadows that lurked behind her fatalistic psyche! And yes, there too in the recesses of that table, beyond the mutilated bodies of “Rapunzel” and the “Prince” stood their twins, gazing on in mute innocence with Maggie busy putting the finishing touches to her macabre cosmetics while soft tears edged down her rouged cheeks and she repeating over and over with childlike hurt:

“You broke my heart, you broke my heart!”

I had to turn away shamefaced from the window, my curiosity cruelly satiated, my emotions wretched, for here in the silence of another’s despair I had gazed into the forbidden abyss and in doing so was I not edged just that little bit closer to those doubts of my own?

“Poor Cocky”.

A one act, one set play.

Characters.:

George : Aged, local Cocky (farmer).

Gary (Gazza)..Also aged, Another local farmer.

Jamie (Jim)…Youth, around fifteen years old.

Scene..: Inside a shearing shed, empty except for Gary and Jamie positioned at a wool-skirting table…there is the usual paraphernalia of a shearing shed scattered around..the scene is dark and gloomy, save for small shafts of sunlight spotted through nail-holes etc in the roof. Gary has a rifle in parts on a canvas sheet on the table..Jamie sits on the table watching Gary clean and reassemble the rifle.

The door of the shearing shed clatters and grates open..A short, stocky farmer stands framed in the doorway..Gary and Jamie turn to stare at the man in the doorway…

George : “Gazza!”

Gary : “ Ah..it’s you George..come in come in..”

George steps into the shed, nailholes of sunlight glitter the raised dust particles and bead the rough wooden floor..Gary is wiping the rifle down with a soft cloth, Jamie sits, legs dangling on the skirting table…Tufts of belly-wool lay scattered on the floor and woolbags are hanging from a nail in a post in the wall..Blackened stencils with the farm name are hooked on another nail in the wall..

Geo : “What’s the score, Gazz?”

Gary : “This is my grandson…..Jamie..” (You can see Gary has trouble saying the boy’s name).

Geo : “Jay – mee..” (George emphasises the ending deliberately).

Gary : “Yeah righto…” (Gary’s tone is meant to silence any further comment on the boy’s name..but the lad surprises them both by standing from the skirting table and offering his hand to George..)

Jamie : “Call me Jim..” (George makes a pout with his lips and nods his head in respect..Gary smiles gently at this small gesture..”

Gary : “We’re going to get a lesson in gun-handling, so I thought it best to start off with the basic requirements of the skills.”

(Gary speaks as he concentrates first with a toothbrush and cleaning fluid, then with the soft cloth as he cleans and works the trigger mechanism of the rifle. The small metallic clicking sounds seems to drift smoke-like up to the rafters to mix with the lingering, tremulous feelings of the cacophony of shearing machinery and men over the past few weeks…)

Geo : “You gonna teach him to shoot?”

Gary : “Mmm…this arvo.”

Goe : “Where?”

Gary : “Oh…dunno…I thought down on the flats, near Dempsey’s Landing.”

Geo : “Coupla’bunnies?”

(Gary is reassembling the rifle as he speaks and now it is complete, he pushes in the bolt and works it a couple of times with a click! clack!)

Gary : “That..or maybe a couple of those bloody thieving galahs.”

(George shifts his stance perceptibly, he himself does not shoot at all now, although it was once said that he was the best shot in the district).

Gary : “Gonna come along?” (Gary asked, though he knows George would refuse).

Geo : “Nah…nah…give it a miss, Gary.”

(Gary carefully placed the rifle on a cloth on the skirting table and folding his arms whilst leaning against the table, looks George squarely in the eye and says;).

Gary : “George…you used to be the best shot in the district when we were young, but now you don’t even pick up a gun…it’s a puzzle, George, a real puzzle…so c’mon, out with it, what’s the story of all this pacifism, eh?”

(George takes his hands off the table and plunges them into his pockets, they are rough hands, coarse hands with solid callouses and chipped nails, they are hands that have shaped the framework of the family farm, he himself is a nuggety man, old now but still solid with yet firm muscles from an age of hard labour on the farm, from a generation who structured their lives around the necessities rather than the leisure’s, his face wears evidence of struggle against nature…nature was winning!…His shoulders set).

Geo : “Aww…you wouldn’t want to know Gary…Why…you’d just laugh,” (he grimaces a sort of smile).

Gary : “Oh give it a rest George…how long have I known you…?”

Geo : “Yeah…well…but some things that happen to a man might be terribly upsetting to him but still seem funny to others…like, like slipping on a banana skin, or walking into a street sign while looking the other way, for instance.”

Jim and Gary : “Ha, ha.” (Jim and Gary laugh together).

Gary : “No, George, you’re not going to get out of it that easy… Now, if I’m going to teach young… ( he pauses) young Jim…here the correct use of firearms, he’d do well to hear why another man who used to drop a rabbit at a hundred yards running…suddenly gives the game away…you owe it to the young lad’s education, so c’mon,” (he makes little flicking “c’mon” gestures with his fingers and hand) …out with it…” ( he crosses his arms again..They both looked at George impatiently).

Geo : “Well, (George decides) alright, I’ll tell you, but it mightn’t mean much to you and I feel a bit of a fool for the telling of it, so I’ll trust you not to spread it far and wide.”

Gary : “Of course…of course.” (George takes his hands out of his pockets and leans at arms length against the skirting table and gazes at the floor).

Goe : “You know, it’s strange, the things that change a man’s life…and it’s almost always little things that do it too, not the big but the little. (He takes a deep breath, purses his lips and begins)…You remember that Sulphur Crested cocky we had for a pet years ago?”

Gary : “No..no, can’t recollect it …but everyone had a pet magpie or cocky ’round here at some time.” (Gary scratches his head as he answers).

Geo : “Well, we did and you know we got him from old Tedmonson out there on the ‘Bulldog Run.’ He was a cranky old bastard, that Tedmonson, he used to treat that cocky cruel, was there myself one day and the old man swearing and hammering away at a plough-arm, trying to straighten it and that cocky up and mimics him. “‘Bloody bastard of a thing,’ says Tedmonson. “‘Bloody thing! Bloody thing!’ cackled cocky. -“‘Shuddup stupid!’ yells Tedmonson. “‘Stupid bastard, stupid bastard!’ mimics the bird, and old man Tedmonson up and chucks a hammer at the cage, swearing and cursing, picks up a length of water pipe and smacks the side of the cage with it something shocking, so the bird in there has its crest shooting up and is flapping its wings and screeching something awful! “‘Steady on Sandy,” I said to Tedmonson. “‘Bloody bird…I’d wring its neck if I could get close to it.” “‘Wring your neck! Wring you neck!’ cocky mimicked again, so the old man picks up the water hose and sprays the parrot while all the time laughing sort of cruel like ’till I calmed  him down.
Then one day they’re moving interstate and I happened to be over there looking at a generator I was thinking to buy and I asked him what he was going to do with the cocky.

“‘Wait till the wife’s gone and then shoot the bloody thing…then I’ll tell her it got away.’

He grinned menacingly at the parrot who just raised its crest and ducked its head away sideways, always keeping its beady eye on the old man though.

“‘I’ll take him”, I offered. “Be a shame to kill it, I don’t mind birds and the kids’ll be thrilled!’

Tedmonson looked disappointed, but I pressed him on the subject and said I’d ask his wife that night, so he shrugged and said: “Oh well…so be it, but it’ll cost you a dozen bottles of beer.”’ and that’s how we came by the cocky…and we called it “Wudgie” or “Wudge” because when I first brought him home, Louise, who was just three years old then, looked at it and asked: “‘Is that a wudgie?” meaning budgie of course and we all laughed, so we called it “Wudge”…and the kids taught that bird to say all sorts of things and some words it picked up on it’s own, like those birds do.”

“We had that parrot for around eight or so years, ’til one day it escaped, an’ it tells you how clever those birds are : every day we came to feed it, it’d climb up the wire, beak over claw to hold by the door lock with its head cocked and one eye watching us lift that catch. We had one of those gate catches that click up themselves as you shut the gate, and that bird spent eight years every day watching us lift that catch ’til one day I come out to feed it and he was gone and a twig was left pushed through the wire where he’d flicked that latch..

Gary : “Oh bullshit!” (groans Gary, turning away).

Goe : “No…no…listen, “Bandy” Phillips had a cocky that used to undo the valve-caps on his bike with its beak and press the tiny tip in there to let the tires down…and Harry Hocking…”

Gary : “Alright, alright… I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but go on with your story.”

Goe : “They’re clever birds, those sulphur-crested cockys,”

Gary : “Yeah? (Gary brakes in sarcastically) then maybe they oughta’  put ’em through university and make politicians out of them …or perhaps they already have” (he raises his eyebrows and an indicative finger as he nods his head sagely).

Geo : “Anyway, (George continues with a sigh) it was gone… but I thought I might see it again if’n it came back or someone caught it, and I’d recognise it by the one missing claw on its left foot where, presumably, Tedmanson had hit it with something one day. By and by over the next few years I forgot all about the bloody thing…presumed it was dead…Then one morning the missus says that Uncle Charlie is coming up with his family for the weekend and would I go shoot a couple of wild ducks down by the river so as to have a nice roast come Sunday. They always said that: “George, go shoot a couple of ducks…George, go shoot some bunnies for Christmas… …’cause I was a good shot, you see.”

Gary : “I’ll say, (Gary interupts, then turning to his grandson says eagerly) I seen George here trim the corners off a playing card at twenty-five yards with his .22, then plug the centre with his .410 shotgun.” (Gary finishes off with his arms gesturing).

Jim : “Wow,” (the boy remarks, suitable impressed).

Geo : “Well, I was a reasonable shot then, (George humbly admits)..Any-road, (he continues) I’m down near ‘Westies Billabong’ there at seven in the morning and my breath’s steaming.. I’d spotted a couple of ducks by the reeds there so I got into a crouch… (and here George goes into a pantomime of his actions)…and was working my way bent-backed ’round the billabong real quiet when suddenly all hell breaks loose… (he throws up his arms in a gesture of surprise)…and these two cockies come twisting and screeching in the air above me…must’ve had their nest in a hole in a tree there and saw me as a threat.. Any-road, they were making a hell of a racket so it scared the ducks who flew off , and I was that angry with those bloody birds that when one came swooping and diving then twisted side-on to me… (George uses his hand flat to show the action)…just above, I quickly just swung the shotgun in its’ general direction and let fly…boom! ”

(George stops talking and stares to the air above).

“Well, I hit it and it fell like a folded object to ground over near a red gum and it lay twisting on the grass so I started walking casually over to it all the while pushing another cartridge into the breech of the shotgun. (He goes through the action of loading the gun)…”But as I came nearer, suddenly! (he pauses)… I hear a voice…call out ;

“Poor cocky”

“What’s that!”  I called…again I hear it…

“Poor cocky”.

“Who’s there!” I called…turning 360 degrees to see who it was…I thought someone was having me on.. but there was no-one, nothing but the screeching of that cocky’s mate weaving and diving madly in the air above, around the branches of the gums…Then again, that same voice calling weakly and I turned to the direction of the sound (George turns staring to the empty sheep pens) and there it was, on the ground in front of me, the cocky  I had shot, calling weakly….’poor cocky’ it was saying, ‘poor cocky, poor cocky’ over and over till it’s voice faded, I looked down at the bird..and suddenly I saw that missing claw..Nah! I thought..it couldn’t be.. Wudge…Wudgie? I said unbelievingly as I stood over it, but sure enough, there was the crook foot with the one claw missing…sure, it could have been another pet bird that had escaped and gone back to the wild..after all ,it had been years since I last saw it… I bent down and lay the gun on the grass, then raised the body of the bird close to look at its’ eyes to see if there was still some life left in it..but it was dead, and I just stared and stared, but all I could see in that dark pool of it’s eye was the reflections of passing clouds overhead…and there was something about that…that killing of the bird, it threw me…maybe something to do with it gaining it’s freedom and losing it perhaps, and I couldn’t even let a poor bloody cocky have a bit of life but I go and kill it! So really, in the end I was no better than old man Tedmonson, perhaps worse..’cause even he didn’t kill the bird…(George stares into the empty shed as he speaks)..Killing, killing… George kill this, George kill that and I was so sick of it, sick of  the killing… (he lets his arms fall to his sides wearily)…I dunno…just…sick of the killing…so I went home, threw the gun in a locker in the corner of the shed and I haven’t shot it since…

“It was the killing, I think…I just got sick of the killing….”

End of Play..

It’s true,

And it’s real,

It’s tragic,

And it’s a very sad ideal. . .

That you have destroyed our fantasies,

Betrayed our sweet, imagined, seraphic vulgarities,

And replaced them all with your own confected, so-called reality…

That offers us nothing but desecrated, emotional negativity.

It’s true,

And it’s real,

What you offer for what you steal,

Is of lower value than beggar’s gruel,

What measure of a celestial king’s ransom,

Could replace dreams we create for our heart’s enhancement?

We rue,

And we construe,

Life’s reality which is so raw it hurts to embrace,

And of those experiences so cruel we daydream to replace,

With a more pleasant fantasy, a more delightful entrance,

Of course we know it is but a reverie, a lover’s fanse.

So..

Let it be true,

Let it be real,

Better than your filth,

Better than your misconstrues,

 Those lies you peddle to replace our dreams,

Trash that you manufacture as avatar schemes,

Then try to flog to us as the future ideal,

A nightmare of false, banal life we can neither touch nor feel. . .

It’s now true,

And it’s now real,

It’s also tragic,

And it’s a very, very bad deal!

An Indigenous woomera.

A one act, one set play.

Characters :

Antonio..Male, around sixty five years old.

Bob..A Catholic priest.

Francesco..Older brother of Antino.

Scene : A camp site in the outback. There is a silhouette outline of a four wheel drive car…a camp fire and the trappings of an overnight stay…The two men are to one side of the stage looking at an object that Antonio is showing to Bob.

Antonio : “Come on over here, Bob..I want you to see something against that tree.”

(Antonio steps away to the far left of the stage, he stands with his hands in his pockets but with thumbs outside..Bob moves over to join him and they both stand gazing at a twisted, dead tree.)

Bob : “ So what am I looking for?”

Antonio : “See there?”

Bob : “What?”

Antonio : “There at the base in that small cleft.”

(At first Bob doesn’t see anything unusual, but then a soft focused spotlight illuminates the spot and an object takes shape, a man crafted object of symmetrical design. He moves a few steps closer so he is only a couple of metres from it, in the dusk he makes out clearly the shape.)

Bob : “Why … it’s a woomera..an … an Aboriginal woomera … but it’s old … so old”.

( He speaks in awe, and indeed it was old.)

Antonio : “ We thought at least a hundred years old because of the wearing of the elements on it, it has been sun- baked and sand blasted, the resin and fibres holding the spur onto the body have deteriorated and the patterns cut into the body of the woomera are now obscure.”

( Bob leans forward as if to touch it but Tony grips his wrist fiercely.)

Tony : “No, Bob … don’t touch it, let it lay there. I haven’t touched it ever in all the years I’ve known it’s here, you’re the first person I’ve ever shown it to … it must remain as it is till time takes it back to the earth … as it will take us all … as it will take Francesco.”

(Antonio releases Bob’s arm and straightens up still gazing at the woomera.)

T : “Come, we will camp for the night it will soon be dark.”

(Both men turn and walk back to the camp. A soft fire glows in the centre of a ring of stones, but its light is too frail to penetrate deep into the darkness, unable to wash into the deeper crevasses of their eye sockets and the hollows of their cheeks, so the men’s faces quiver into grotesque shadowy masks.)

Bob : “Who’s Francesco?”

(Antonio squats, one arm on his knee with the other hand prodding a stick into the coals.)

T : “Pass me that piece of branch, Bob..ta…Francesco was my older brother … he died a long time ago … twenty years now … or rather tomorrow.”

( Bob stretches one leg out in the cool sand and makes himself more comfortable.)

Bob : “You never told me you had a brother” ( Bob remarks quietly, in a tone that suggests he is a little bit piqued that this close friend would keep such a secret from him. Antonio doesn’t look away from the flames.)

T : “It’s why I asked you along on this trip actually,” (Tony solemnly speaks.)

B : “Oh?”

T : “You’re a priest, I want you to help me bury him again..”

B : “Who?”

T : “Francesco … my brother!” “…

B : “…You alright Tony? .. I mean; where’s the body?”

(Antonio leans back and feels inside his clothes bag and swings back with a small wooden urn.)

T : “Here …” He said quietly “His ashes!”

( Bob squints at his friend with one eye closed.)

B : “In there?”

T : “In here”.

( There is a pause in the conversation as the fire crackles and hisses, the silence of the desert night crowds in all around them, as if listening.)

B : “So what did they bury all those years ago?”

T : “Ashes … plain wood ashes!” (Antonio smiles and leans back to place the urn into his duffle bag. Bob lets out a slow, low whistle.)

B : “You better enlighten me Tony.”

T : “I’ll get the billy boiled first.”

( Antonio drops a palmful of tea into the boiling water. He slowly stirs the contents with a piece of stick.)

T : “I’ll tell you Bob, not as a confession, but still…maybe for Francesco’s soul!”

B : “How did he die?”

T : “He shot himself.”

B : “Suicide?” (Bob raises his eyebrows Antonio leaps up angrily…)

T : “No! … No … No, a thousand times no …” (he strides two steps away then turns and comes back, the ball of his cupped left hand slapping onto his right fist, he shakes his head empathically as he speaks.) “Not suicide, … no! his was a sacrifice … yes, a sacrifice to the filthy God security!” ( Antonio stops suddenly, hands frozen apart, his heavy breathing noticeable in the still desert night.)

T : “Security,” ( he whispers. His shoulders slumped and he sits back down by the fire, reaches over, takes the billy and fills two mugs with the brew.)

T : “Sugar, Bob?” ( his voice is still tense.)

B : “Please … and milk”.

T : “I take mine black.” (Antonio leans back on his duffle bag and stretches one leg out comfortably, his boot pushes up a little mound of the red sand..)

T : “Dammit Bob, it still upsets me after all these years.” (he guffaws) “Suicide!” (he guffawed again. He takes a sip of his tea and a breathes a deep breath.)

T : “Francesco … was ten years older than me and we were partners in a building company before the recession. We started out as brickies you see, then it just grew from there “Collossus Constructions” we called ourselves and it did get colossal! Ended up flat out just organising the other trades. We did a lot of estate housing projects in those days for those big real-estate companies. We were in it up to our necks when the recession hit and it all went bust! Oh God did it go bust! Overnight, two of our biggest contracts went into receivership and left us holding the bag. Subcontractors to be paid, contracts to finish etcetera, etcetera and it cleaned us out … or nearly …”

B : “Didn’t you see any signs of the impending collapse?”

T : “Nah! they were still signing contracts up till the day before … so someone was pulling a shonky!”

B : “It’s always the way” Bob chipped in.

T : “Anyway we were running around like scalded cats all week, cajoling this one, pacifying the other, putting someone else off till finally on the Friday night Francesco comes ’round in his ute and says to throw in a sleeping bag and the billy and let’s go bush for the weekend. I couldn’t have agreed more. Hey, isn’t it good out here in the desert?..clean, peaceful. It was at this very spot that we camped … right here, the same place I come to every year since then … but this will be my last … this will be my last.”

B : “You look good for a few years yet Tony.”

T : “But I feel tired Bob, so bloody tired.”

B : “You been carrying some of the weight?”

T : “In a way … it could’ve been me … it could have been me that died.” (Antonio sighs)  “He found that woomera, not me, he wandered over there to go to the toilet, after a while he called out to me: ‘Tony … come here, have a look at this!’  No thanks! I called in disgust I got one of my own.. ‘ Nah … not that … it’s interesting.’ He had found something..When I got there he was squatted in front of the woomera staring at it.Hey! I said, that’d look great above my mantelpiece and I reached out for it but he rapped my knuckles with a piece of branch…

F : “Don’t touch!” he barked. “Have respect for the dead.”

“What dead? It’s only a woomera.” I said.

F : “Oh he’s dead alright, after all those years, and it’s still his..it was probably left here by mistake.”

“Finders keepers…” I began, but Francesco wasn’t listening to anything I said, he just stared at that thing.”

F : “He was a hunter … and he rested here … for a camp maybe … maybe he speared a ‘roo, he leant his woomera against the tree … it would have been a sapling then surely …” and Francesco went on in this quiet monotone, building up a picture of this lone Aboriginal hunter and the desert and the need for food that sent him on long journeys …I just stood there listening to him talk and it was enthralling in it’s depth of feeling. I’d never known Frank to think of these things before.” Antonio stopped and stared into the fire, it’s flickering glow so enticingly rich and comforting under the stars. When he finished, Francesco stood up, turned to me and said: “We’re still all hunters, you know,” then turned and walked back to the camp.”

B : “It seemed to have touched a spot in him”.

T : “I’ll say, he went back to look at that woomera again and again over the weekend. But he said no more about it. Then on the Sunday afternoon as we were packing up he said to me:

F : “‘Tony … we’re done for, you know that don’t you?”

“How do you mean … financially? I replied”

F “Yes financially stuffed..but I’ve thought out a way to beat the bastards!”

T : “Like how? I asked.”

F : “You remember those insurance policies we took out on each other two years ago?”

“Yeah, in case one of us kicked off, but they’re not worth a quid yet … unless one of us dies … say! you’re not thinking of faking a death, then disappearing or something?”

F : “Not faking … but a death, yes.”

“What are you talking about, – you lost your marbles or something … what are you talking about …” I was shocked I can tell you. Francesco got angry.”

F : “Grow up Tony” He yelled “Grow up, we’re finished. In less than a month they’ll have our business, our houses, our cars, … our balls … everything .”

“But Frank. . .”

F : “Don’t Frank me … you know what it’s like to live in poverty? Do you? and your wife and your kids … what’re you gonna tell them … “sorry kids, sorry honey but we gotta go live in a shack and eat porridge and potatoes!” hey? you tell them that … listen, you’re too young to remember back home, but I can tell you; I remember and I don’t intend to have my family go through those times,” and he slammed his hand against the side of the ute.

“What … what do you intend to do? I asked.”

F : “Better you don’t know.” But I knew.

“Frank … no … be reasonable … Stefania … the kids …”

F : “It’s them I’m thinking of “ he said softly, then; “Listen Tony, I’m sixty three, been working in building since I was a kid in shorts..what’ve I got; ten, fifteen years left, I’m already bent and aching from the hard yakka..and what of those years? Fifteen years of nothing for me and my family, or else … I’ll never have more than I got now, never, I’ve reached my peak and I don’t want to go down into the depths, it’d kill me anyway.”

“We argued back and forth and I followed him around the ute talking to his back, but he was stubborn.

F : “Listen,’ he said “You wanna go live in a ditch you go live in a ditch. What do you think the old people suffered in their lives for..and how long did they live?…the old man died at sixty eight, mum at around the same age..Why.. So you could have it easy and to hell with your kids? Every comfort has its price, Antonio, what do you want your kids to be? tramps? bums? No, … I don’t want my kids to battle out of a poverty trap like the old people had to. If there’s a price in it I’m prepared to pay, everyone pays sometime … it seems my time is now.”

“But me, Frank, what would you have me do, sit by and see you knock yourself off and then reap the reward .. what sort of man do you consider me?! No, we’re both of us in this together, I won’t let you take it on your own …”

F : “It’s the only way Tony, you’re ten years younger, your family’s younger.”

“Give me a risk on it … toss a coin Frank, you always like to toss a coin for a decision, toss a coin now and we’ll take equal risk!” …

F : “Alright” He relented. “We’ll toss … and the winner loses!” He grimaced at his own joke.

“He pulled a few coins from his pocket and picked out a twenty cent piece.

F : “I’ll call, since it was my idea” he said and he flipped the coin.“Heads!” he cried.

“ Bob..Bob, have you ever been so scared that your stomach was just one big knot wrenching your innards together so they just ached? Well, that’s how mine were. Don’t ask me why I agreed to that madness but I knew the loser wouldn’t back out. The more I think of it, the more I refute it, but strangely, strangely the quick fix of the idea attracted me then and I loved my family enough to kill anyone that would hurt them, so why not kill myself to save them from hurt?! … all those kind of thoughts went through my mind in the split seconds of that toss as that coin flickered in the light. Of course it came down heads and Frank bent down and picked up the coin. He slapped his hand on my shoulder and said.

F : “Now, it’s decided. let’s not talk about it on the way home. Who knows, maybe I won’t have to go through with it after all,” and we packed up and left.

“On the Monday afternoon I was in the office when I got a call from the insurance agent.”

“Mr Gustoni?’ the agent asked.

“Yes” I replied, thinking it was me he was after.

Agent : “Yes..I was right, I inquired into the policy agreement and yes, your accident indemnity does cover accidental death outside the working site and hours.”

“I went weak at the knees … and almost speechless. I could just mutter into the receiver  Oh..right..thanks..thanks and I hung up and raced out of the office and drove to Frank’s place. “Oh mother of God! mother of God!” I prayed as I drove through that endless traffic. I didn’t think it would be now not straight away! Give it a bit more time please! Please!

Stefania, his wife, was there.

Stefania : “He’s gone out Tony he said to give you this contract to look at …’”she handed me a fat manilla envelope, then I knew it was too late. “Is there anything wrong?” women they’re so sharp.

“No more than usual,” I remarked and quickly left in case I betrayed my feelings.

“He didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye, Bob, not a chance, not a chance. “Why?” I asked myself…He made it look like an accident..like the gun went off as he was climbing through the fence…”

“In the envelope there was a goodbye note and a few items he wanted buried with him and – also this …!” ( Tony tosses a coin to Bob’s feet. Bob picks it up examines it and turns it over.)

B : “Why … it’s a double headed twenty cent piece, it’s been cut and another face glued on to make one coin! …”

T : “The cunning bastard … I always wondered how he won all those coin throws, and you see that nick on the edge, that’s how he picked it out amongst others with his fingers.” ( Bob snorts and tosses it back) .

T “Well he did go through with it and in the note he asked that I somehow get his ashes and bury them with the few other personal items next to that woomera up here.”

B : “And did you tell Stefania of it all?”

T “What do you tell the women? : Frank knocked himself off so we can pay our bills? What did that hunter tell his people if he came home without any tucker ‘I lost my woomera’? ..’left it somewhere’ ? No Bob, Frank was right, we’re all hunters and each must guard his secrets. No, I didn’t tell them, but she’d guess, women have their damned intuition.”

B : “Why didn’t you bury him, then?”

T : “I couldn’t bring myself to put an end to it all, I didn’t understand the connection between that hunter’s primitive woomera and our own highly complicated lives, that is till now. Now I know what Frank realised that weekend twenty years ago. That woomera over there is a totem of men’s responsibilities, the women bear the children, the men provide, that is the base line of our cultural life. Some women die in chldbirth some men die in the seeking of provisions. I’ve been on building sites myself where workmen have been either killed or badly injured. They’re taken away and another fills his place. No-one can shirk his responsibilities, we all take our risks. So the hunter’s woomera left here by accident must have wrought danger to that whole family’s existence so was that recession the calamity that befell our family’s existence … The insurance policy was just another means to provide … at a price, everything changes, but nothing is changed. The immortality of all things mortal … ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He lost his fear of death. ( Antonio sighs)..and I believe that when a person no longer fears death, along comes The Master to collect his debt”. And this is where you come in, Bob … would you mind … a simple ceremony …?”

The two men stand before the tree that holds the woomera in its cleft. Tony gives the wooden urn to Bob who lays it in a shallow hole near the woomera. Then he gives Bob a flick-knife with a carved ivory handle.

T : “He bought that in Italy years before, and you see that carving … here, give it to me for a sec … this carving of a woman, he’d sometimes take the knife out amongst a group of us men and he’d rub the ball of his thumb over the tiny breast there and he’d sigh and say, ‘Ah, my Stefania, she once had breasts like this,’ and then he’d press this button here, like so: “

(Swish! the silvered blade of the flick-knife shoots out of the handle so it makes Bob jump.)

T : “And Francesco would sigh sadly again and nodding his head say: ‘And me, my cock once sprung up like that!’..he’d always get a laugh.” ( Tony smiles and folds the blade away and gives the knife to Bob.)

T : “And last of all this” (Antonio flings the double headed coin into the hole. Bob pushes the sand over the urn and knife and coin. He stands up and speaks in a clear concise voice:

B : “Let this site remain sacred to the memory of Francesco Gustoni …”

T : “Could you say the prayer in Latin Bob, he preferred Latin.”

( Bob nods and begins):

B : “In nome il Padre e Filio e Spirito Santo …”

Many of you who have followed this blog and read my stories will see that I have converted some short stories into these, what I call : “One act, one set reading plays”…I have gone back over those older and less read stories to give them this treatment so as to – perhaps…hopefully..-let any small preparatory theatre group use them to allow their actors to develope character experience and interpretation with a presentation of several plays on the one evening…

I did this not just because they made it easier to post a new piece on the blog, but because the conversion to named characters actually “speaking their roles” allows those “personages” to develope their own “personal voice” when and if an actor applies their own personality to the character…perhaps, in some instances actually bring the person to life under the actor’s guidance…

Anyway..I do hope you enjoy the experience and continue to read the blog…thanking you…Joe Carli..

A one act, one set play

Characters:

Narrator.

A Mother..she has no name like all the characters in this play, they are and remain anonymous.

A young son..the mother is trying to get him to go to sleep.

A grown but still young man refugee.

Two security men in uniform.

Scene..(opening) stage is in very low light…a spotlight falls upon the narrator who tells the theme of the story. Then when the narrator finishes talking, one half of the stage lights up to see the mother and child in a bedroom scene in a small room.

(second) on another part of the same stage later, we see the security men sitting at a table interviewing the young male refugee..

Narrator : “What can it be that “anchors” a refugee to their personal situation and can give them the strength to persevere but a cultural / familial reflection back to happier times in their own country with their own family. As to how far back that memory must go would surely have to depend on what their age was when they first had to flee their homeland. I would imagine that those closely-held “pictures and words”, perhaps treasured from way back in childhood, seen and spoken when among the ones that they trusted and loved in a time of greater innocence and now held most dearly to the heart would be the single most precious tools of sanity and survival when things went bad while seeking refuge abroad..and the threat of losing or tainting those treasured memories to either callous abuse or fatalistic hopelessness could, I imagine, be worse than death itself…(The Sheryl Crow version of the song is there at the end for when you finish.)”

Boy : “I flew my kite today!..did you see me mamma?”

Mother : “Yes..I saw you!…I saw you on the paddock with Tessy and the others..”

B : “Yes..it flew good..but then the wind died and it fell down…”

M : “Never mind, there’s always tomorrow…Now it’s time for this little kite-flyer to go bye-byes..”

B : “No..tomorrow I am going to help Daddy and Uncle Donny fix the truck…they said I could help..”

M : “And then so you shall..but tonight you must sleep..now lay back and I’ll sing you a song..”

B : “Can you sing “Beautiful Dreamer” to me mummy? ”

M : “Of course I can..for my little chappy.”

“…Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,

    Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;”

B : “Will Daddy and Uncle Donny fix the truck , mum?”

M : “They better…or they won’t be able to take Mr. Elses load of produce to the city Friday”.

B : “It’s an old truck mummy..Why did they buy an old truck?”

M : “It’s all we could afford, darling..Yes..it’s old..but it’s a good truck.”

B : “Yes mummy..it IS a good truck…a good red truck!”

M : “…Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,

      Lull’d by the moonlight have all passed away!

     Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,

     List while I woo thee with soft melody;”

B : “Mummy..”

M : “haaaaa…yes dear?”

B : “I rode Sammy’s bike today”

M : “I know , dear..I saw you..”

B : “I rode it to the store and back…”

M : “I hope you didn’t go past the store..”

B : “no, mummy..I know not to go past the store….Mummy?”

M : “Yesss dear?”

B : “Do you see everything I do?”

M : “More than you know..now you close those wide awake eyes and go off to dreamland. or I won’t sing you any more songs..patient’s  reward!..if you keep interrupting me…Now where was I..?”

    “Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng,

     Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

     Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!”

B : “Mummy?”

M : “For heaven’s sake..what!?”

B : “Uncle Donny said it was the fuel pump broken in the truck….what’s a fuel pump?”

M : “…a fuel pump..is..a pump!…a..pump that pumps fuel…like a heart”

B : ” A heart, mummy?…”

M : “…yess..I suppose it’s exactly like a heart…but a heart doesn’t pump fuel, it pumps love…now go to sleep you cheeky little want-to-know-it-all..”

B : “O..O..don’t tickle, mummy!…don’t tickle !”

M : “Then go to sleep..go to sleep..! Here..here’s “teki bear” to cuddle…here..I’ll get your pillow straight again..my , you do fiddle and fuss..”

B : “Donny’s not my real uncle is he, mumma?”

M : “Not yet, dear..but we hope he soon will be..when he marries your sister.”

B : “Why does he want to marry Sissy?”

M : “Because he loves her …and she loves him..and so..they will want to get married…have some kiddies of their own…Now..where was I?..”

“…Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea,

     Mermaids are chanting the wild lorelei;

     Over the streamlet vapors are borne,

     Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.”

B : “Will Sissy and Uncle Donny live with us when they get married?”

M : “I don’t think they will have a choice, dear”

B : “Hmm..that’s good..I like Uncle Donny…hmm”

M : “…Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,”

B : “But what about “Trunk” and his cart…will he still stay with us?”

M : “Well…”Trunk” is a donkey, and I don’t know if there is room for a donkey AND a truck in our little yard..”

B : “But “Trunk” has been with us for years and years..”

M : “Yes, well….we’ll see..I’ll speak to Mr, Tully next door..he has a little yard there..we’ll see..now seriously…mummy’s getting a bit tired herself and angry..here..a kiss……for a tired little chap and it’s REALLY time now we went to sleep..”

…Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,

    Even as the morn on the streamlet and sea;

   Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,

   Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

   Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!”

(Stage fades into darkness but we hear a young man scream in despair..)

” Aiya!….Aiya!!…He’s set himself on fire!..he’s set himself on fire!..”

“Don’t just stand there get a hose…get a bucket or something…get the guards…Get security!”………………

(Stage relights to the other half of the stage showing two security guards and a young man sitting across from each other at a bare table..The young man is being interviewed by the security men.)

Security man #1 : ” You shared his room son..you must know something about why he did this.”

Young man : “He did it because you were going to send him back to where he came from.”

Security man #2 :“Firstly..don’t give us lip…Second..It’s not up to us where the department sends anyone..and Third..answer the question as we want you to..we’re trying to get to the bottom of his death.”

YM : “I can’t tell you much at all about him..I was only sharing with him for a couple of weeks.”

S #1 : “Well..you must have talked..at night..unless you got up to “other things”…just kidding, just kidding!….so c’mon..what got him so upset..surely you want to know as well..after all, you were there when he struck the match.”

YM : “Yes..I was there..but only just there..I just came around the corner and ..whoosh!..god..it was horrible..”

S #2 : ” From where you come from, you must have seen worse.”

YM : “Yes..well..not really..this was suddenly there..in my face”.

S #2 : “So right..c’mon..tell us what you know of him”.

YM : “He was depressed that the department was going to send him “back home”..He said he had no home anymore..or family.”

S #2 : “No family?..no-one at all back in his village?”

YM : “He said there was no village anymore..the whole village was burnt to the ground..His mother, father sisters and all the people there were slaughtered..”

S #1 : “Didn’t he come with any relatives?”

YM : “No..oh..hang on…he did say they started out together..he and an Uncle..?”

S #1 : “There!..he does have a relative then”

YM : “No..He said they started out together..but the Uncle..Don, Donny.. I think he called him, drowned with many others  before they were rescued from the sea.”

S #2 : “So..No..Uncle..”

YM : “No…nobody..just some leftover dreams from a long time ago, I’d say.”

S #1 : “How do you know that?”

YM : “How?..He was just like the rest of us..though he did say something different to me last night…He asked me if I ever flew a kite when I was a boy. ”

S #1 : “Every kid flies a kite sometime when they’re young…Did you fly a kite?”

YM : “Of course I flew a kite..everyone flies a kite.”

S #1 : “Some people said he was singing a song before he lit the match..a song he was heard singing at other times..”

YM : “I…I don’t remember..I…don’t want to…….”

S #2 : “You were heard to yell out…”Stop singing, stop singing!”…even after he fell over….”

YM : “yes..well…It’s a song he sang quietly to himself every night before he went to sleep..almost in a whisper…but I could still hear it..every night..every night.”

S #2 : “What was it…the song?”

YM : “I don’t know the name…How would I?”

S #1 : “Well…me and my mate here like to be entertained..how about you sing a couple of bars?”

YM : “uhh..alright..I’ll try…….

     Beautiful dreamer… wake unto me,

     Starlight and dewdrops….are waiting for thee;

     Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,

    Lull’d by the moonlight have all passed away!

….Beautiful Dreamer…awake…unto….me.”

End of play.

(Sheryl Crow..”Beautiful Dreamer”.

https://youtu.be/f_aB1NOqC3Y?list=RDf_aB1NOqC3Y  )

A play of one act, one set.

A Melbourne story.

Characters..:

Peter Haffney..; mid fifties, portly build, congenial nature.

Stephanie..; Peter’s wife…sardonic in an amusing way..more observant than participant.

Scene..Kitchen of a working-class suburban house..minimal decorations..more efficient than cluttered with ornaments.The dialogue in this play is of the main character (Peter) talking calmly and confidingly in a one-on-one relaxed manner to the audience as if they were a trusted friend in the room with him.

(Peter Haffney takes his latch-key from the deadlock and closes the front door behind him. He pauses inside the entrance as one is want to do when first coming home and looks about.  reassuring himself that everything was as when he left it that morning. An air of suburban mustiness pervades the house and the dreary silence echos the polished rustle of his suit. He then proceeds to the kitchen pantry and easing his portly bulk between the ironing board and bench top he places a plastic shopping bag with several regular sized cans of food on the bench nearest the pantry. Taking one of the cans from the bag, he raises it to eye level and reads the label ( using his index finger as guide on the label so the audience can see what he is doing). On satisfactory completion of this task, he shakes his head slowly and sighs. Taking a similar sized can from the pantry, he places it next to the other on the kitchen bench and compares…).

Peter : ( looks at the cans as he speaks) “The brand’s the same, the content’s the same, even the advertising slogan is the same, but they’ve changed the layout of the label! Gone is the old familiar label that has for more years than I can remember, been the hallmark of the company’s product. That label, it could be said, is of greater recognizable value than the product contained within the can! ….that old familiar label must have been the same since before I was born! But now that’s all gone and, heaven forbid, perhaps too they have changed the mix of ingredients in the product…”(he sighs…then turns to confide to the audience..not directly, but rather as if talking to a confident in a relaxed, over-the-shoulder casual way).

 “ And sure..I’m worried, because for many years, because for a goodly part my life, I have suffered from what is called a “obsessive-compulsive disorder”. My peculiar obsession is concerned with the cooking and eating of food..(he throws his arms up) I confess..I confess..I will never eat any food that I have not myself prepared, with the exception of fish and chips…I like fish and chips.. And though this condition may seem humorous to other people, it can single out the victim..ME!..for mischievous mockery. I have been many a time made the butt of poor-taste humour. For instance, although I will never eat any food my wife would prepare, I do bend this rule for a roast dinner..my mother always had the Sunday roast…but I have to guard my portion at the table against mischief…such as : If anyone was to touch my food, never mind with a finger!..heaven forbid that! but with just a clean knife or fork, I can’t help but sweep the corrupted article off my plate with a flick of the fork…so on a really bad day, bits of roast would be hitting the walls or television or whatever till I give a cry of exasperation and the protagonists buckle over in convulsions of laughter! Such is the life of us that suffer this malady. Because of this complaint, my mainstay of nutrition from Mondays to Fridays is canned spaghetti on toast! Saturdays are fish and chip days….Sundays are..well if my wife is cooking one ; roast day otherwise…you guessed it ; canned spaghetti on toast!

But now, all this is thrown into disarray with the discovery that “the company” has changed the label and perhaps, the ingredients! Fortunately (he opens the door to the pantry, displaying a supply of the canned products) I have kept up a supply of cans to allow a week’s ration of meals…in case a family member takes a liking to spaghetti on toast . So all is not lost, I still have a week to sort this nagging doubt out….I shall write to the company seeking reassurance.”

(A gentle beam of afternoon light shines through the lounge window , Peter folds back the top sheet of writing paper and places the pad squarely in front of himself. He then sits and thinks..while he is thinking, he carefully sharpens and examines the point of his pencil..he turns to the audience and explains)..

P  : “You see, I always write with a sharp-tipped, “Staedtler” “Bl” pencil, preferring it to a ball-point as it is not likely to clumsily “slip over” the paper and make for illegible writing.”

(The house, except for himself, is empty. It exudes that unexciting silence that is common to outer suburban houses…nothing extraordinary would ever happen there and was tinged with the stale mustiness of yesterday’s air-freshener. Peter touched the tip of the pencil to the tip of his tongue and begins..speaking the words as he writes)

P : “Dear Sir/ Madam.

I am writing to you to make a small….perhaps a trivial…enquiry. For many years, I have held your product above others on the market as being greatly superior in quality and flavour .Indeed, I have travelled great distances to full-fill my obligation to purchase your product when the local supermarket was not able to supply your particular brand! However, recently, when purchasing my usual supply from the supermarket, I was astonished to be informed that you had changed the layout of the label! Upon inquiry if there had been some sort of mistake, I was reassured by the proprietor that this was indeed so! Though he hastened to add that the ingredients were the same, I was far from reassured! So I am writing to you seeking that reassurance and I don’t think I can exaggerate the importance of this reassurance required to myself!

I , fortunately, have a number of cans of your product (see the accompanying label) to see me through another week. So I would appreciate a swift response to this letter (may I suggest return post?) to reassure me of your continued high standard of ingredients.

I await, in anticipation, for your reply…may it be favorable…

Yours truly… Peter Haffney. “

(Peter gazes at the finished letter with a sense of satisfaction.)

P : “There..it says no more nor no less than I wish to say, written in clear, concise script taught to me by my primary teacher : Mrs Herreen, who enforced a high standard from her star pupil (flutters his eyebrows in a humerous manner) with the aid of a flat, slim,wooden foot-rule that would cut over my knuckles when a grammatical deviation was observed by the attentive Mrs Herreen gazing sternly over my shoulder! Even the underlining of words were encouraged by that same teacher, with the logic that : (he mimics a stern but shrill female teacher’s voice)“It does no harm to the correspondence, Peter, if you draw the reader’s a-ttention to a par-tic-ular point you wish to em-phasise by the use of underlining speh-cific words or phrases in nee-ed of their a-ttention!” and she would invariably finish her homily with a steely gaze over her glasses down the pointed rule.”

( Peter pauses to gaze into the empty lounge area…he cogitates out loud..)

P : “But when you think on it, there’s a mathematical precision in the action of writing, isn’t there? Perhaps this obsessive affliction itself is a result of conflict of reason versus reality…Perhaps the fact that the uncertainties of life do not adhere to my own personal desired situation, has resulted in the withdrawal of my eating habits to a more precise routine…a routine that I have complete control over. ( Peter pauses, sits back in the chair and croses his lower legs in contemplation) A cabinet maker I know is the same type. His obsession is with jokes and satirical humour, he simply cannot stop telling them..heaven knows where he gets them all from…customers, he says.. His over-exuberant laughter rings through the rafters on all occasions and he is known by his laugh, his nickname being ; “The HO! HO! man”…but that does not really disguise his mathematical brilliance…and it becomes most visible in his skills with the chessboard, even at state level competition. That and his swift response to subtle mockery. He too, controls his lifestyle through his obsessions, and with these obsessions, I believe we distract and distance ourselves from too close a familiarity with the unruly chaos of life.”

(Stage darkens to relight with Peter and his wife standing at the kitchen bench..she looks at him with a concerned expression and speaks..)

Stephanie : “You’re not giving up smoking and your football team’s on a winning streak You’re breaking even at cards, though you lost a little at the dogs the other night so I’m buggered if I know what’s eating you….but you’re out of sorts this last couple of days.”

P : “It’s nothing, nothing….I…I’m on a bit of a diet.”

(His wife lets out an explosive guffaw..)

S : “That’ll be the day! ” (she narrows her eyes cunningly) “You haven’t been tucking into your spaghetti on toast the last couple of days..I’ve noticed that….what’s the prob’, love.. can’t find the can opener?…got worms?..”

P : “Look , piss off love!..it’s nothing..leave me be, I’ve just been making a little inquiry…that’s all.”

S : “But you’ve got some cans…”(she moves to the pantry and takes out a can..)”Why, look!” They’ve changed the label…. crikey, after all these years… ” (she gazed pensively at the can. Peter comes and takes it gently from her hand and places it with the others on the shelf.)

P : “So they’ve changed the label?…so what?…it’s their label they can do what they want with their label ”

(His wife watches him closely while he mumbles this little discourse. She suddenly let her jaw drop a little as it all dawned on her..)

S : “Oh, I see…the label!…The label has changed….ok! ok!…but what of the ingredients?….That’s why you’ve not been hoeing into it this week! and I thought you were coming down with something…ha! ha!…you poor bastard!…ha! ha!”

P : “Don’t let it worry you, love..don’t let it worry you….I’ve made inquiries and I expect an answer any day now!”

(But his wife doesn’t look as if she is worried at all… as a matter of fact she has to ease herself into a chair so as not to crumple up with laughter…Peter reflects, wincing at the humiliation he would suffer when this new one got around.)

S : “Oh! you poor suffering dear..” (his wife speaks between gulps of breath, then the look of comical angst on his face set her off onto another round of laughter.)

( Stage darkens to relight on the same domestic scene. Peter walks in through the doorway from work with a bundle of letters in his hand. He is thoughtfully sorting through the mail when his wife asks)

S : “Anything there for me, love? (then in an aside to the audience..) I already know the contents of the mailbox…I had looked before and I saw the brand-name letter amongst the others and I decided to leave them in the box for Peter to find.”.(she winks to the audience).

P : “Yes…yes a couple the usual bills”…(here his eyes widen in anticipation.)

(His wife watches from a sly vantage point in the lounge as he slit the envelope with his pocket-knife. Peter is a study in silence as he reads the letter…then, slowly, his eyes closed with delight and an ecstatic smile spread over his lips.)

S : “Anything else?”.

P : “Oh….yes, one for me.”

S : “Important?”

P : “Well..sort of…just a reply to a trivial inquiry”.

(upon completion of the read, Peter methodically tears the letter into very small pieces and places them into the waste-bin. Next, whistling a little self satisfied tune to himself he goes to the pantry and takes out a now familiar can. His wife spies this little pantomime from her vantage point in the lounge and shakes her head smiling to herself.)

S : “The poor dear” she says to herself.

End of play.

Margaret Fulton’s Cookbook.

A Play..

Characters: Jonty, aged woman (real name; Jeannie) no-nonsense person..grandmother of Cassie.

Cassie: 13 yr. old Grandaughter in Jonty’s care for the duration of the school holidays.

Scene: Jonty’s kitchen table..Jonty sits alone reading from a letter.

Jonty : “ Thanks ever so much for looking after Cassie this coming week, mum…I don’t know what I would do these holidays without you…I hope she is no bother to you and perhaps you will find her good company..(if you can lever that wretched mobile phone from her hands!)..She will drop around Friday after school..Also, I have arranged with the super-nice people at “Foodfast” to deliver a cooler-box of food products to your door this week to save you having to buy in extra for Cassie…there will be products in the styrene box they deliver that we regularly eat here, so Cass’ will feel right at home!…

Again…thanks so much Mum..both Michael and myself are so busy this week at work seminars and conferences, we just would not have the time to spend with Cassie that she needs..

Love you…Emily. “

(Jeannie places the letter with envelope to one side of the table, stands and goes to a kitchen dresser on the side of the room..she takes from one of the shelves a large book and brings it to the table…She plonks it down heavily on the table, opens it and reads..)

J..: “The Complete Margaret Fulton Cookbook….A Styrene box of food, INDEED!…We’ll see about that…won’t we, my dear Cassie?”

(The doorbell rings, Jonty goes to one side of the stage and returns carrying a white styrene box labelled “Foodfast”, which she places upon the table. She begins to remove items from the box, naming them as she does so…)

J..: “What’s all this pre-packaged rubbish?…Boxed pies, boxed beef casserole, boxed pizza..two of!…boxed curry!…(she pulls out a wrapped candy bar) A Mars Bar!!..goodness me..bananas, avocado, and a smattering of other various canned products…well…we know where this lot will go!”…(she places the box behind a door nearby and returns to the table, where she opens the cookbook.) ..Now…let’s plan a real menu of real food!”

(Jeanne..goes to a drawer and brings pencil and paper to the table..she begins to write upon it, speaking the written words as she does so)

J..: “Weekly menu..;

Friday..: Mains..: Moussaka..With Broccoli and Carrots…Dessert ; Lemon delicious pudding.

Saturday..: ( she pauses to consider)…Let’s go easy on the poor girl to start..(she crosses out a word) ..no blood sausage, beetroot and fried egg…lets give her a treat…Calamari!”…(Lights fade to dark…)

(Stage lights up to show Jeannie entering from the left accompanied by a young schoolgirl in uniform)…

Cassie..: “ Thanks for having me over, Gran…it’s good of you to put me up for the week.”

Jonty..: “ You’re always welcome, dear..I’ve got the spare room all made up ready for you..You can put your things in there…( Cass turns to go, but is held by Jonty)..”Oh..is that your new school blazer?…it’s very smart, if a little tight..”

C..: “ Oh please don’t say anything about my weight, Nan…it’s so embarrassing..”

J..: “ Not I, Cass, dear..(turns aside to mumble)  with that processed food they eat, it’s no wonder.. ( turns back and declares out loud)…I think it is a good sign for a youngster to carry a bit of “condition”…none of that yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look around here!…but is that the school motto there under the badge? ( she reads) ‘Factum Sit Verbum Tumm’..? “

C..: “ It means ; ‘ Make your word your action’..”

J..: “ How very noble..”

C..: “ Some of the older girls have made a joke of it..’Fart when y’sit but turn y’bum’..”

J..: “ Not quite..so noble.. but there..you go.. make yourself at home while I get ready for dinner.” (Lights darken for several minutes while kitchen table is set with food for the dinner..Jonty opens the Margaret Fulton cookbook and reads) “ Ah, yes…here we are..Moussaka…that’s tonight’s meal..”

(The table is set for dinner, Jonty places the dish of Moussaka on the table as Cassie enters from the right, casually dressed, holding her phone)

J..: “ Just in time, Cass…sit yourself down and let’s have dinner.”

C..: “ Smells wonderful…is this from the box mum ordered?”

J..: “ Hardly…that hasn’t arrived yet…perhaps they had a busy day and will deliver it tomorrow…Here..this is my cooking ..from a recipe in The Margaret Fulton Cookbook..”

C : “Is that an old fashion cookbook, Gran?”

J : “The cookbook may be called ‘old fashioned’, Cass…but the recipes are still quite relevant.”

C : “ But it takes so much time to prepare food from a cookbook.”

J : “ And so it should, Cass..whether food be slow and long to prepare or not, good food…very good food is eternal!”

C.. : “ Mum has a cookbook she uses for the microwave.”

J.. : “ Is that so?..well, I shouldn’t wonder on the meals she must prepare.”

C.. : “ OH, no, Gran…the meals come already prepared, she has to heat them up according to instructions.”

J .. : “Fancy!…modern times…so convienent.”

C..: “ Oh..what is it?” (Cassie smells the moussaka).

J.. : “ Moussaka, my dear..”

C.. : “ Where is that from?..it doesn’t look like the meals mum gets from Foodfast.”

J..: “ Many places, I believe..it is thought to be of Greek origin, but in the cookbook, she says it is from Rumania…tell you what…why don’t you look it up in that phone of yours?”

(Cassie brightens up keen to use it to impress Gran)..

C..: “ Oh…It says on AI that it is from Baghdad..! (she reads) : “Although moussaka is famous as a Greek national dish, it was not invented in that country. A mediaeval book titled ‘A Baghdad Cookery book’ suggests that moussaka originated in the Levant. It contains a musakhkhan recipe similar to that of moussaka. The cookbook was published around the 13th century..”

J..: “ Well…I suppose Ms Fulton’s source must stand corrected…after all, what can one say against AI..? “

(Cassie picks up knife and fork and gazes over dinner setting, replete with water jug, glasses and side plates etc..) This is nice Gran’…I usually eat my dinner in front of the tele’while watching Netflix..”

J.. : “ Be a bit sloppy, I would think…doesn’t the sauce drip off the plate?”

C..: “ Oh no, the food comes in separate serves in its own plastic container.”

J..: “ Oh…like dog food?” (Jonty gazes wide eyed in naïve amazement at Cassie).

C..: “ Oh Gran…not at all..it’s just normal these days..”

J..: “ I think I will stick to the old fashioned way..just like when your mother was young like yourself, Cassie.” (She smiles kindly to Cassie).

(stage darkens to re-light to show Jonty and Cassie sitting in lounge chairs in the next room…Cassie is nibbling some sort of crackers from a snack-pack while she watches the tele…we can’t see what’s on the television, but it is loud, aggressive with flashing lights…Jonty sits side on to the tele, not watching, knitting with needles…)

J : “What’s that you’re watching, Cass?”

C : “Oh..it’s a thriller, Gran..it’s on to the end of episode six!”

J : “Sounds rather exciting..what’s it called?”

C : “…’Rescue from Russia’…lots of action..”

J : “Perhaps I should watch?”

C : “Oh..I don’t think you’d like it Gran…it’s a bit rough..”

(Jeannie stops knitting and looks to Cassie with her eyebrows raised in sardonic surprise)

J : “Oh..You think I have lived such a sheltered, life, Cass?”

C : “Oh, no, Gran…but..but I don’t think it could be as rough as it is nowadays…what with all these wars, terrorists and things..”

J : “There were a couple of wars around back in my days, Cassie…and even around this house here there were moments of touch and go…even back when your mother was a teenager..like yourself…well..perhaps a bit older than yourself..”

C : “Here!?…like we see on tv?”

J : “Certainly…well, it didn’t boil over into actual gunshots, but it came close..back when your grandfather was alive.”

(The television show ends..Cassie turns off the television and moves to sit on a pouffe near her gran..)

C : “ What are you knitting, Gran?”

J : “ Oh..it’s just a tea cosy..it is going to be a koala bear..when I put some stuffing in the head.”

C : “ It looks cute…but who do you knit them for?..I’ve never seen one at my place”.

J : “ It’s for the Auxillary stall…we have one for display and sales down the local shopping mall once every three months.”

C : “ Do people still actually use them, Gran..and why do you do it?”

J : “Oh..I doubt if people do use them for what they are made for, Cass…but people do say they remind them of older times and they buy them for their cuteness or just for show..(Jonty smooths out the knitting and gazes at it in silence)..and there are those who admire the intricate stitching in them..something not practiced much anymore in these faster times.. I make them, Cassie, because in the repetitive stitching and the slow evolving of the finished product, my mind must hold to a strict discipline of keeping and paying attention to the required pattern..it doesn’t do to drop a stitch..a system I suppose I grew with and held as need to stay the distance as I lived throughout my life..and now, at the end, I do it because it is a simple, solid-comfort to myself.”

C : “Anyway..So tell me, Gran..what did happen around here..it sounds exciting!..what was the most thrilling event back in Mum’s teen years?”

(Jonty stops knitting and places the work in her lap and stares at the ceiling thinking..)

J : “Let’s see…Well, there was one rather frightening night that got your grandfather all in a lather because Emily (Cassie’s mother) came home very late and on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle..your grandfather…Ralph was livid!”

C : “Mum had a biker for a boyfriend?…like..wow!…I didn’t know she had it in her..”

J : “Yes..well..that was Ralph’s worry…and he was part of a group of bikers in those days.”

C : “What..a big fat biker on a Harley Davidson motorcycle?”

J : “Oh no…they weren’t like that in those days..they were quite stylishly dressed as was the fashion of bikers in those days..lots of sharp leather jackets with chrome chains and things..and they rode British motorcycles..like Triumph and BSA..or a Norton if they were intellectual..”

C : “How do you know the motorcycle names, Gran..?”

J : “Well, that’s how many of us youngsters used to get around in those days…motorcycles were the main means of cheaper transport for working people…even Ralph courted me on a Triumph Tiger”…(Jonty smiles condescendingly to Cassie)

C : “So what happened after mum gets home late?”

J : “ Ralph..as I said was livid..(Jonty fusses with her knitting while she regales the tale to Cassie)..He worried about several things, the dangers of riding around with a gang, whether this gang got up to trouble with the law and if his daughter was being promiscuious with her boyfriend..”

C : “Mum!…promiscuious!?…(she snorts) hardly..she evens asks me if her bra-strap is too visible under her gown when she goes out with dad..”

J : “It was the times, Cass…a leftover from older days, older mores..Anyway , when they do finally arrive home, Ralph goes outside to confront the boyfriend and wales into him about disrespecting himself, Ralph as the father..and the lad casually takes off his leather jacket and throws it over the rear-view mirror of the motorcycle..I remember it had an image of a cartoon character of the times painted on the back..and I think he was nicknamed after it..what was it now..Oh yes..”Zeke wolf”..and he was called ‘Zeke’..anyway, he casually says she’s (your Mum) old enough to make her own decisions…and Ralph then makes a decision for himself and clouts the boyfriend about the ear’ole!…well one thing led to another and I had to intervene to separate them rolling about on the front lawn before they did each other some real damage..”

C : “Wow!…what did you do?”

J : “I threatened them with the straw-broom, calmed them down and said to at least go into the house and talk it out, but not make a spectacle on the front lawn…Which we all did..and in the end after much to and fro-ing of blame and excuses and reasons, they shook hands and apologised for the misunderstanding…”

C : “And was anyone hurt?”

J : “ Just their pride…and your Mum’s boyfriend got his shirt near torn off his back..so Ralph had to lend him one his so the lad could at least ride home without catching a chill..”

C : “Oh well..I suppose that was the last mum saw of THAT boyfriend..”

J : “No…not really..he hung around for quite a while after that incident..as a matter of fact, he and Ralph shared an interest in motorcycles right up until Ralph’s death back so many years ago..before you were born.”

C : “Oh…gramps and dad would’ve got along as dad likes old motorbikes..he has one in the garage that he’s restoring..I think that’s called a “Triumph”..”

J : “The boyfriend was a quite handsome chap..and he and Ralph also had an interest in tattoos they talked about…Ralph had a couple he got in the navy when he was in the war..and the boyfriend had one of a cobra snake on his chest,, I saw it that night he had his shirt torn off..”

C : “ Hah!…that’s funny..say..dad has a snake tattoo on his chest too!”

J : “Well, as I say,,the boyfriend hung around for quite a while until Ralph wanted to know what was his intention regarding Emily..And he said his intention..using his own words..;’Was to make an honest woman of her’..Ralph’s temper immediately flared up and then they both laughed at the mischievous slighting and they shook hands…and your mother and the lad eventually got married.”

C : “Oh!…Oh!..so the biker lad.. HE was dad?…Oh..how wonderful…I can’t wait to tease mum!..and dad:…”Zeke”..oh..oh..just imagine what I can do with that!”

J : “But first you are here for the week and please, for Gran’s sake put that phone away and please, hold your tongue until you get back home…for patience really is a virtue..and there’s plenty of time to think about those times and I’ve still got a few more tales I can tell you, but please…use restraint and be civil.. I don’t want any angry blow-back from your parents..AND, I’ve got a whole week’s menu already worked out for us to have a really nice time spent cooking them together…all chosen with love from my “Margaret Fulton Cookbook”.”

(Stage darkens…end of play)

So Smells Defeat.

I confess…I..of the steely disposition have been traumatised..my once confident self image of “Mr Fixit” has been in one fell moment swept into the dustbin of “the delusion of a job-well-done”…no longer can I wave the stem-glass of Chablis with over-exaggerated pinky-finger stretched air of manly conquest as I regale friends (and the Ladies) with my latest mechanical prowess over the machinations of that cursed machine..The Motorcar.

I am defeated!

It all started so innocently as I parked the motor in the parking lot and in stepping out, noticed a slight stream of liquid trailed from behind the parked car…”Was that of my car?” I pondered “or from the last person used the bay?”…a quick inspection under the car (as any right-minded male would do) revealed no sign of a dripping leak, so I passed it off as an outrider of no consequence…you see, I am now going back over what led to the disaster as we drove home in quiet confidence of a shopping venture well completed, with no other worry ahead but to cut and serve the ham and prosciutto (with Greek salad) fresh bought from the market for a light dinner…

Then, out of the blue it happened!

In the middle of heavy traffic, the temperature gauge started to raise…I gave it a pout and a line of wrinkled brow and dismissed it as being a consequence of the slow moving heavy traffic that would, once speeded up cool the radiator and thence the motor. Then once out on the highway, it didn’t go back down (the temperature gauge!) but continued to creep up until a little light came on with a sharp “bing!” and a sign on the dashboard instruments said something like “down powering”…which sounds like the sort of thing a “newspeak” politician would say when kicked out of the front bench…but no, the car sort of played up…but I thought we could nurse it home and tomorrow I’ll fix it.

And it decided to stop completely.

And it wouldn’t start again…stopped out in the countryside miles from nowhere, which in itself is also miles from anywhere..”Oh, it’s overheated…I’ll let it cool a tad, top up the water and we’ll be on our way” I thought..But it was not to be.. The computer in the car said : “NO!”…and that’s it, isn’t it…there’s no room any more for a twist of wire and a snitch with the pliers and back on the road again…never again..and that’s when my manly Mr Fixit crashed…there was absolutely NOTHING I could do..kaput!

This is the thing that hurts most..: I’m a sixties / seventies youth, we had motorbikes, rough cars, many of both that we’d keep on the road with electrical tape and bent wire…because the machines of those times were more “organic”…you rode or drove them in a manner that you were “connected” to the rumbling, vibrating mechanics like our forebears were with their horses and carts…we were an essential part of the mechanics of transport..we lived, talked, slept and ate valves and gaskets and grease and oil…the spark plug was as well known to us as a microbe in a Petrie dish is to a bacteriologist!

But no more..gone..

And I feel responsible for the fact that I didn’t or couldn’t read or even believe the signs of the motor overheating like I used to in the old days when a stream of steam would curl from the bonnet of the car…and I have to admit being lured into a false sense of security with these ultra modern motors, where one is contained in a cocoon completely detached in reality from the vulgar mechanics of the automobile..You can’t hear the motor running, there is a smooth ride that ameliorates any roughness of suspension or ride..there is only filtered air fed into the cabin via airconditioned comfort..and when the small notice comes  when you first turn on the ignition key to say ; “System Check…OK”…you trust it implicitly…why would a machine lie to you?..THIS, is the age of Supra Technology!..it knows best..and when the car did break down and I again turned the key in the ignition, what did that little sign say?…yes..too right ; “System Check…OK”..

BASTARDS!

Also, when you pop the bonnet to check the motor, you are greeted with a ribbed alloy shroud that completely covers the motor making it invisible to the eye, looking for all the world like that “face-hugger” beast from “Alien”, that shrieks ; “Don’t you dare touch…there’s nothing for you here!”…and you know…now, I believe it.

So I called the Roadside service man and this thin sub-continent lad stepped out of his van and straight away said; “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I think I can do”…and the honest man turned out to be as good as his word..and I ask you..what has happened to that legion of mobile roadside RACV etc men who rode around the countryside on motorbike and sidecar as in the promo doccos of that age, looking very ‘Chappy” and only too willing in snow, rain or sleet, to assist? I think, like my own manly confidence, they have gone the way of all the rest of a practical, competently trained and organised society…

“Resistance is futile”…

I give up…I surrender..

Most of the division in the Western Sphere of governance is driven by a perception of entitlement manufactured within and driven on by an exaggerated sense of outraged bourgeois entitlement, an entitlement of material, philosophical and class privilege…and I repeat..: The only contemporary political leader (so far) who dealt successfully with these sanctimonious “entitled” bourgeoisie was Chairman Mao..and look where China is today..The West needs desperately a cultural revolution of its own to cleanse our societies and economies of the upper middle-class gormless bastards!