A Dingo's got my Barbie!!!

Effective cause

The seat covers were the instrument for meeting the future Mrs Willowtree, but none of that would have been possible were it not for a seemingly insignificant event that happened when I was around ten years old. Like most early childhood memories, this one is crystal clear for the thirty or so seconds surrounding it, but blurry on much of the periphery. For instance I don't remember the lady's name, nor do I remember how often I walked to the bus stop with her, though I don't think it was very many times.

What we were talking about is a mystery, why we were talking about it, ditto. But one sentence, more of a phrase than a sentence really, shone like a beacon then as it does now. For some reason this middle aged woman remarked "I've been around the world" to a ten year old boy, and it had a profound effect on my life.

Prior to this I had no interest in Geography, as a matter of fact, my interested the subject remained exactly the same after she uttered those momentous words. When it came time to choose my elective subjects, I chose French and Art and therefore didn't study Geography at all. Somehow there was a disconnect between what she said and the fact that it had to do with countries. Nevertheless, at ten years old, I decided that one day, I too would go around the world.

All of which, I guess, means that Molly wins a prize, and a good thing too if you ask me; as far as I'm concerned you just can't own too many Aussie flags!

Here's the strange part, this was entirely unplanned. I hadn't made an appearance in words for a while, and frankly didn't have the motivation, so I wrote a paragraph hoping no-one would notice what a slacker I've been. But just like in the story, small events can have significant outcomes, and I've decided to write about my first trip around the world (yes, I ended up doing it more than once).

So stay tuned for Willows Big Circumcision, I think that should be Circumnavigation.

PS. I'm not sure how many parts there will be (as you know I don't outline, I just write), so if you can't be bothered waiting and reading and waiting, just checkout Molly's comment in the previous post for the Cliff Notes.

Of Cakes and Bloggers

Why is there a cake tin on my computer desk?

That's an interesting question, and for an answer we need to go back a couple of days to when I received an email from a fellow blogger who, along with another blogger, was making his way back to Gympie after a holiday in Sydney. He knew that I have policy of not ever wanting to meet fellow bloggers in person, but he had also read my post where I actually met one and wasn't too scarred by the experience, so he asked if I would be up for a brief get together.

My initial reaction was "Fuck! How did he get my email address?" followed by "If I just ignore the whole thing he'll assume I didn't get the email".  After thinking it over, and deciding that as he was older than me, if things went bad I could probably take him, I replied "Sure why not, but don't expect me to talk to you."

And so it was that Peter and Wazza showed up at my refuge for cats, dogs and people that hate everything...

Wazza (on the right) isn't really as angry as he looks in the photo, yet strangely enough, Peter (on the left) who is smiling, was one cranky son of a bitch! Just kidding, they were both good blokes and we had a lot of laughs in the short period they were able to spend here.

So what's all this got to do with cakes and dogs having severe pain inflicted upon them. Well let me splain. I'm a big fan of the CWA and what they stand for, so knowing that two itinerant bloggers were heading my way I made this cake...

Yumm, looks good eh? It was a Tea Cake, and we each had a small slice. Now this is where the story takes a turn for the worse. Seeing as these two bloggers were on the road and hadn't had regular internet access for a while, I offered the use of my connection to check their mail, which Peter accepted, but Wazza being only semi-literate declined, as it normally takes him several hours to read a couple of emails and they didn't have the time.

And so it was that while we were all in the computer room, Belle came trotting down the hallway carrying the cake tin in a scene reminiscent of Oliver Twist asking Mr Bumble for more. Having lived with Belle for the past three plus months, the warning bells started ringing immediately, so excusing myself I raced back down the hall only to find the cake that was sitting on the table awaiting our return had disappeared without a trace.

I'd love to show you photos of what happened next, I had my hands full doing in impersonation of Homer choking Bart! However, Peter took a picture of it so if he sends it to me I'll post it.

As a postscript, Belle was funny to watch for the rest of the night. She was obviously feeling the effects of her over indulgence (it was a pretty big cake, full of sugar, flour and three eggs) that had only had three small slices taken out of it. She was slow in her movements and couldn't stay awake, but neither could she seem to get comfortable. Serves her right!

Willow's Big Adventure, the death scene

Well here it is, the long awaited conclusion to Willow's Big Adventure (except this obviously isn't the conclusion as I'm still alive and life is still an adventure), so buckle up we're a bumpy ride (who said that?)

Unfortunately we can't escape a bit of house keeping and some boring background explanations. First the housekeeping: these are the links to the previous parts of the story Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 (I was tempted to really lay on the linky love and point to Stephanie's post and let you find them from there ha! talk about linkage lunacy, actually I ended up using her post to get the links anyway, as it was quicker than searching for them myself - thanks Steph).

Secondly the background, unfortunately we can't avoid a bit of technical crap so that you get a better picture of what happened...

The image on the left is a schematic of a headframe, the image on the right is a photo of real one very similar to the one we're talking about, in fact this mine is close to where the story is set. If you're interested the photo is from Kalgoorlie and the story is set in Agnew (Leinster if you google). In the schematic you'll notice two things, the big chimney which is part of the motor used to power the winder, and a rope that goes from the winder to the top of the headframe. 

In our story there is no fossil fuel motor but instead a 3,000 volt electric motor about this size. The building that houses the motor, the winder (the drum that holds the rope) and the winder operator is called the winder house (go figure), and because everything is so much bigger than in the schematic it's further away from the frame, that's why you can't the winder house in the photo. Still with me? Good. The company I worked for had installed the motor, but as yet it hadn't been commissioned (gone through rigorous safety testing). This is important.

Now, on the end of the wire rope is a fifty ton bucket that is lowered down a vertical shaft to collect the diggings from the decline shaft (this is where reading the previous posts would be helpful). Obviously in order to take the weight of the bucket when full, the rope needs to be fairly robust. To try and give you an idea, just imagine a normal rope about a half inch in diameter...it's made up of a whole bunch of strands that are wound into bigger strands which are then wound together to form a rope, there are thousands of strands making up the rope. Now imagine a rope who's smallest strand is solid steel about a 1/4" thick with about a thousand of these wound into a rope about ten inches in diameter and very strong.

So now to the point( finally). The construction of the shafts went 24hrs a day with three 8 hour shifts. Each shift had a crew of 5 miners working the face, and a heap more driving dump trucks and doing other mine type things. At the end of the shift, the crew working the face would get into the bucket and they would be brought to the surface. As I said before the winder motor and associated controls had not been commissioned which meant that the bucket was not certified to carry people. There should have been overspeed and underspeed cutouts as well as sensors on the rope to alert the winder driver to it being either tight or slack.

One morning just as were arriving at the winder house to work on the installation, there was a really bad noise, actually there were a lot of really bad noises. So now all you guys that have been patiently waiting for the gore, here it is. What happened was the electric brakes failed and the winder driver was unable to stop the motor, so when the bucket reached the surface instead of stopping to let the miners out, it just continued to the top of the headframe (about 160ft). When it got there, the motor just kept pulling on the rope until finally it snapped (you don't argue with 3Kv motors).

In the space of about 20 seconds the following happened: the bucket fell to the ground bouncing of the metal frame like a pinball and depositing body parts wherever it hit, leaving arms, legs, heads and bodies strewn over a 100ft radius. At the same time, the wire rope snaked back like a huge rubber band and left an 18" wide gash in the roof of the winder house, it also amputated the winder driver's arm at the shoulder. All up it was pretty gory.

But to make matters worse (for me), you might recall that I injured my leg on that site, and while I didn't miss any work, I did have to go to see the nurse every day to have my bandages changed to prevent infection (you might also recall that the burn was so deep it severed my calf muscle). Later that day when I went to the infirmary to get my leg seen to, I discovered where they were keeping all the body parts.

There, now wasn't that better than a goofy old contest? Thank you Robin, Karmyn and Stephanie for keeping at me to finish this. Mind you the adventure didn't end here, I left the mine and flew to Bali, and then spent the next six months traveling through Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand using only local transport (buses, trains and ferries). But you don't want to hear about that.

I'm an avid recycler.

I am a passionate recycler, in fact this is where I was yesterday (it's only a short drive from my place).

Here's a closer look, the facility (I love calling it that, it's really just a tin wall with holes, in front of a bunch of 50 gallon drums) is run by the local Aboriginal community.

So why am I posting pictures and writing about a recycling 'facility'?  Well, I'll tell ya. Today's story first appeared in OUAB in July, but since Julie, and possibly Robin are the only ones that may have read it, it's worth another run. I feel like a TV network in the non-ratings season. It may be a bit crappy, after all I hadn't found my style yet (man if I knew then that all I needed was to be insulting, I never would have gone to the trouble of writing this).

Anyway I hope you enjoy "May Ahms Cart"....

When I lived in England I worked for a department store called Marks & Spencer. Not all dressed up nice and selling quality merchandise, but in a small warehouse loading trucks. Not loading quality merchandise but rather, shop fixture and fittings, toilet rolls and paper goods, stationary and anything else to do with the operation of the stores.

This was unskilled labour, and everyone except me was Irish. One day I was working with Paddy and Paddy (that wasn’t their real names but to Aussies all Irish are Paddy and all Scots are Jock, interestingly the Scots call everyone Jimmie). Old Paddy had lived in England for a long time and spoke quite clearly. Young Paddy was another matter; he had only been there for a couple of weeks and was near impossible to understand.

We had to load one of those (heavy) refrigerated deli display units onto a truck. This was one big mutha and it would be a tight squeeze getting it onto the loading dock. I was at the back pushing and young Paddy was at the front pulling and guiding it through the door. “Weet! Mairnscart!” he called called out to me.  Not being fluent in Gaelic, and seeing no sign of a Wheatman’s cart, I took this to be Irish for “Push harder!”. This was not the time to discuss the Irish language, so I just pushed harder. “Asset weet! May Airn Scart!” he repeated (this time a bit louder) and once again I complied. It was then that Old Paddy, who had been alerted by young Paddy’s increasing volume, came rushing over and shouted at me “He said wait! His hand's caught!”. Which, I now saw, it was.

In fact all I could see was four fingers sticking out between the fridge and the door frame. Unfortunately we were laughing so much it took us another couple of minutes before we could free his hand. (It didn’t help that while we were pulling our guts out trying to get the unit off his fingers, I yelled “Pull man! Pull like you’re pulling an Arab off your sister!”). Until then I had never  seen an old man's knees buckle and collapse in hysterics on to the ground. That’s one thing about the Irish, they not only tell a good joke; they appreciate one too. Oh yeah, no broken fingers, just bruising and swelling.

Hmmm, it's a lot shorter than I thought it was.

We can't all be geniuses

Now it's my turn to steal an idea from Ree. She did a post today about some of her experiences with special people, and I got to thinking "hey I've got some too". Plus it gives me a chance to prolong the suspense of the 'great mining disaster', don't worry folks it's coming. But in the meantime here's a story concerning some very nice people.

My friend Claude, who owned the Australian Restaurant in San Jose, was a cranky old prick but he had a heart of gold. One of the ways he demonstrated this was by holding monthly picnics for the staff of a  sheltered workshop in SJ. Another was to only employed retarded kitchen hands and busboys. But that's a story for another day, this story is about the picnics.

I used to work at his restaurant too, but I did it it out of friendship - not for pay. Although I did always eat there for nothing.

This is the outside of the restaurant, from now on I'll just call it Claude's. He had it for many years and it was on W.Lincoln Ave.

This is the interior, neither of these pictures have anything to do with the story, but there's nowhere else for them to be, so here they are.

This is Claude loading my truck with food for the picnic (actually it was ET's truck, but at this particular time I was driving it). This wasn't one of our usual picnics, I can't exactly remember what it was for, but it was bigger than normal.

The guy in the purple shirt was the manager of the workshop, he was a really good guy. Oh, an interesting story, he once shot and killed an intruder in his house. He had friends on the Police force who told him that if you ever have an intruder and you shoot at him, shoot to kill, otherwise they will sue you for everything you have. So he did.

And this is what it was all about. A day out and some food that they don't usually get to eat.

A funny thing that I learned early in the piece, its easy to relate to those with Downs syndrome or some other physical indicators, as they are generally very friendly, but those who look just like anyone you would meet in the street can sometimes be a bit harder to get to know because their problems can manifest in so many different ways and can be psychological rather than genetic.

Here's a good example, you wouldn't know anything was amiss (ok, the outfit kinda gives him away, but put him in a good suit and he'd give Omar Sharif a run for his money), but he was mad as a March Hare. But he was a lot of fun too.

Time for a Serial

I was trying to think of what to write, but drew a blank (I was going to draw a bullet but I didn't have enough powder). As you know I don't like longs post, I'm not religious, I don't have kids, I'm not all that philosophical and I keep my episodes of depression to myself.

So that doesn't really leave that much to write about except self inflicted pain (which I have a few stories about) or pets (which I've flogged a bit lately), then it hit me...why not tell an adventure story? So that's what I'm going to do, problem is, I think it will take about four, possibly five posts to tell. However it may be worth it if you want a glimpse into the life of exploration mining.

Seeing as this might be a biggie, there needs to be some organising of thoughts etc., so it will start tomorrow.

Play Ball

ET and I used to play in a beer league softball team in SJ. This was the first time I had ever played the game and getting used to playing and catching with a glove on my non-dominant hand took some getting used to. But the main problem was that I had no idea how to play the game, that has since changed and in fact I'm a qualified baseball coach.

To give you an example of what it's like to grow up in a country that plays cricket not baseball, I didn't realise for instance that in the case of a run down, as an infielder you can't grab the runner(who knew?). I also had trouble with depth perception (still do) which made me pretty much useless in the outfield too. So as with baseball, which I played for 10 years on my return to Oz, I ended up pitching.

Another thing that always eluded me was the slide. While I've taught (by explanation not example) many a young player how to successfully execute a hook slide, I never really got the hang of it, but that's much later. This story is about softball.

At the time we were in the beer league, Pete Rose was still playing (this was before they crucified him), and if you know him you'll know he was one of the best exponents of the head-first slide, I've seen him do it at first which is just plain dumb. On this particular occasion, ET was telling me all about the head-first slide and how effective it is. This was sage advice, problem is, ET was a footballer not a baseballer.

So now we've got a runner on 3rd (ET) and one out when there was a dink hit to right field. ET took off for Home and if you didn't know it was him you could have swore he was a professional ball player. As he approached the plate he heard the coach yell "Slide", I'm not really sure why, because the ball was still in right field, having been dropped several times by the right fielder.

I could see the cogs ticking in ET's head "This is my big chance to show that Aussie what a great ball player I am with a Pete Rose special" and with that he dove for  the plate. But there was a conflict between his ego and his commonsense, because no sooner had he dived when he tried to pull out of it. The result was an image that even now,  if it enters my consciousness (unbidden or otherwise) I'll burst into laughter, regardless of where I am.

Have you ever seen Peppy La Peu? You know the skunk that is always chasing the cat with the paint stripe. You know the way he kinda bounces along after the cat? Well that's what ET looked like in amongst the great cloud of dust he created. Here's ET bouncing into home plate on all fours in a cloud of dust. But wait (as they say in the knife advertisements), there's more. Because his idea was to slide head first into home, he timed his slide different to where he would have started if he had decided to bounce in, consequently his slide finished about 18 inches short of the plate.

So here's ET frozen about a foot and a half short of home plate, stunned and doing his best dog impersonation, and thereby giving the ball all the time it needed to get to the catcher for the tag.

Now you see 'em now you don't. Part 2

This one is so obvious it's hardly worthwhile telling it but the timing was pretty amazing, so here goes...

I used to play competition golf (not that I was good or anything, it's just better to play with blokes who know what they're doing, plus you can win prizes). So, one day I'm playing in the Friday comp and my group was the last group in the competition to tee off, after we teed off they let the social players onto the course.

This was unfortunate because as I said, I like competition golf because you don't have to deal with social players who often know neither the rules nor the etiquette of golf. Worse still, they don't care.

At the risk of boring you, some of golf etiquette is about ensuring concentration and some is about safety. One of the important ones about safety is when you can have your shot. On par 3 holes you can't tee off until the group in front has left the green, on par 4 and 5 holes you can't tee off until the group in front have had their second shot and have all moved off, you can't have your approach shot until the group in from has left the green. Still with me?

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Our group was on the fourth green and while we were waiting for the last bloke to put his clubs at the back of the green (again, etiquette) I was standing next to an old bloke (I mean old). He looked back down the fairway towards the social players and said "I hope these pricks......."

You guessed it, all of a sudden - no old guy. I looked down to see him sprawled out on the grass. It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to complete his sentence for him, what he was about to say was "I hope these pricks know what they're doing" (they didn't). But halfway through saying it he was struck on the shoulder by a ball that one of the idiots behind us had hit. And worse still, they were too fucking stupid to even yell 'fore'.

He didn't die or anything, but he carried on like a baby for the rest of the round. Oh,and  we went back an explained to the dickheads behind us what can happen if you don't follow etiquette, which includes having your clubs shoved up your arse.

*Updated: When Robin isn't criticising my drawing, she makes a good point. Photos are always nice so I just took these pics of my clubs. And yes I have won prizes.

Now you see 'em, now you don't

There are two times when the person I was talking to just disappeared. I was going to write them both in this post, but I'm running short on material so I'll do the other one tomorrow.

The first time was when I was working on the construction of a power station in the Hunter Valley, one of Australia's formeost wine producing regions. It was just after lunch and three of us were walking back to the site from the lunch shed. We were having one of those three way conversations.

Walking three abreast, suddenly the bloke in the middle just seemed to disappear. One minute I was looking at him, the next I was looking at the guy who was on the other side of him. The other guy and I just seemed to stare at each other dumbfounded for a second and then looked down at the ground. That's when we saw the the bloke in the middle.

Remember Curly from the Three Stooges, and how he used to lie on his side and go around in circles? That's what this bloke looked like. He flopped around a bit, got back up, dusted himself off and fell into step as if nothing happened as we all continued on our walk back to the site. After a couple of minutes he said, "It's OK, don't worry about it, it happens all the time. I'm an epileptic" and that was all that was said on the matter.

I have to say though I was a bit shaken (more surprised I guess), and so was the bloke on the other side of him. I'd hate to think what would the results would be if he was on a ladder when it happened.

Labels: what the?

Budget Baywatch

Warning !!!! This is a long post so if you have to go to work, read it later.

Remember a while ago when I showed pictures of Phuket and told everyone to remember a particular picture? Hands up all those who committed it to memory. Never mind, here it is to remind you (sorry to those who memorised it, you didn’t have to after all).

So now that we’re all caught up, let me explain. The body of water going off into the distance is a tidal lagoon. For anyone who is thinking “Huh?” that means it fills and empties out with the tides. It was a lot of fun riding the flow out for an hour or so  each day after the outgoing tide started to ebb. The rest of the time it was either a lake or a raging current that dumped you way out in the ocean.

This is between tides when it's calm, that's me at the back.

This is when it empties out, that's me again.

One of the main reasons I love Phuket is that there are no Thai girls there, well of course there are Thais who are girls, but ‘Thai girl’ has a specific meaning. They are a cross between a hooker and a girlfriend, closer to a girlfriend but less expensive. Something that I’ve always found amazing in South East Asia is that despite the fact that millions of people live on islands surrounded by ocean, no-one knows how to swim.

These are the actual girls in the story

One afternoon while we were just lounging in the shade with a whiskey in one hand and a joint in the other, I heard some excited male voices. Heading down towards the beach I saw two Italians, who had brought the girls in the photo from Bangkok, running around like chooks with their heads cut off yelling “The girls! The girls! They no can swim!”  Out in the water were the two girls thrashing about, apparently they saw us having fun in the water and decided to have a go themselves. They should have paid closer attention to us, because we were all waiting for the current to slow down a bit.

Being a person of stunning mental acumen and blessed with lightning quick reflexes, I immediately appraised the situation, “Hmm, they probably shouldn’t be out there if they can’t swim”, this brilliance was followed by and even more astute observation, “Perhaps the Italians who brung them should go and get them”. I would have imparted this pearl of wisdom to the Italians, but just as I got close enough to tell them, they both ran off waving their arms above their heads in a manner reminiscent of the great Italian war heroes.

This is Sven (or something).

Luckily the Swedish guy in the photo was there at the time too (he’s name was probably Sven), so we just looked at each other and somehow wordlessly decided it was up to us. Having grown up in Oz I have lifesaving qualifications, I didn’t know if he did too,  but he was calm which is the main thing. The most important thing you learn when you do lifesaving training is that you need to keep drowning peopl out of reach until you are ready to grab them, and when you do grab them make sure its from behind. Many a person has been drowned when the person in trouble panics and grabs hold of the rescuer and tries to climb out of the water (I’m not kidding, it really happens).

Anyway we managed to get them back in without too much trouble, although the undertow was pretty fierce. It is said that rescuers feel empathy for the people they rescue, I just felt angry that these stupid bitches were fucking around in the ocean when they didn’t even know how to swim. And it turned out that having disdain for them was the right emotion because neither they nor their fucking lowlife Italian johns offered even a word of thanks. Either at the time or over then next three days they were there. Not that we did it for any reason other than to save their lives, but at least saying thanks would have been the polite thing to do.

Labels: adventures

Don't you wish you could tell them to get stuffed?

Have you ever been watching the news on TV when some feisty powerful person is being grilled by a Senate committee or some such body? Don't you just love it when they bite back? Well I did that one time (but not a Senate committee), trouble was I got no satisfaction out of it. Here's why.

When I worked for Sydney Water, one of the positions I held was 'Senior Analyst, Information and Communications Systems'. Part of my job was to analyse system requirements and produce various documents including business cases, system specifications, database design and implementation control plans. That, by the way, is why I've got a bit of an idea why blogger is such a bitch these days.

Anyway, on a number of occasions I had to design Scientific applications, this meant many, many, many interviews with scientists. At one of the labs, the minimum qualification was a Ph.D., and I'm telling you I've never seen such a collection of fuckwitts in my life! I remember two of these peckerheads arguing for nearly 30 minutes on whether the punctuation should have been a colon or a semi colon. These same nerds failed to notice that they had only specified half of the data that needed to be kept on each sample. We're talking major league fuckwitts here!

So after about six months of this bullshit I'd had enough, and started to cut back on my politeness (if you knew me personally you'd know there wasn't that much fat to trim at the best of times). After much effort we were approaching the final stages of System Specification, which meant, among other things, fine tuning the reports that would be produced. As this system analysed water samples from all over the Sydney catchment, there were always different people coming in from the field to be interviewed.

On this one occasion there were four people I had never met before, and as luck would have it, I was caught up in traffic getting to the meeting from head office and missed the introductions. Using a whiteboard we started to design some additional reports, now I was a bit miffed that this was being done so late in the process but bit my tongue. But it just got worse, these guys were asking for stuff that no-one had seemed to mention in all the time I had been involved.

Enough is enough I decided and losing it almost completely, gave them an unbelievably inappropriate spray. I don't remember it all but it did involve words and phrases like 'you people need to pull you heads out of your arses and face reality', and 'there is no way we are going to do this just to satisfy your whims'. There were also swear words and some aspertions cast about their parentage. They just sat there like stunned mullets and took it all.

When the meeting ended and everyone went their separate ways, the chief scientist came over to me and said "You do realise that they were from the EPA don't you?" The EPA being the body that licences Sydney Water to carry out its function. Oops.

I know I’m honest.

I’m writing this post today because I was prompted by one that Robin over at Pensieve just posted, although I have been thinking about it for about a month. More precisely, I have debating for about a month as to whether I would write it or not because it’s a little bit self congratulatory and I’m not all that comfortable with it.

I was watching a TV show a while back and they were making a big deal about “how honest are you?”. Now this was one of those checkout magazine type shows so their aim was to show how low people are. They left a wallet with fifty dollars and some ID on a bench in Sydney and filmed the people who found it (I should say discovered it, as it wasn’t lost in the first place). I don’t know what editing was performed, but most either took the money and left the wallet or just pocketed the wallet and walked furtively away. Only two of them (both women) made any attempt to find an owner, one took it to the nearest shop, the other to a police station a block away.

The host then posed the question “What would you do?”. Well you know me, I wouldn’t be writing this for fun (well I would but that's beside the point). As it happens, I know exactly what I would do. I know what I would do because not once, but twice I have found wallets. In both cases there were larges sums of money involved, and in both cases I managed to return them to the rightful owners.

The first time was before I met MDW, when I was living in a pub in Lithgow while working on a construction project. One night after I had my shower (this was in a shower block of about 10 showers) I found a wallet containing over fifteen hundred dollars. Now considering this was around 1976 and I was only 22 years old and had nothing, this was a lot of money. But I took it to the publican and he opened it and said that the guy was staying at the pub (which I had assumed) and that the would take me to him. The guy didn’t even realize he had lost it at this stage and was dumbfounded when the publican said “this fella has something for you” and I handed it to him.

The reason there was so much money in it was because that night was his last night before he went on holidays. Now there’s two things you need to know about Australia, a) we have never trusted cheques, until direct deposit came in (around 20 years ago) all wages were paid in cash, and b) we get four weeks annual leave. So this meant there was actually five weeks' pay (less taxes) in the wallet.

The second time was just after MDW and I came back to Oz. I found a wallet with eight hundred dollars in a phone booth. When I checked the address on the driver’s licence it turned out to be only about half a mile away so I just walked it down. Once again it contained the guy’s whole wages and he had four kids so he was real pleased to get it. Oh yeah, I just remembered, this was just before Christmas.

The similarities between these two occurrences don’t end with the large amounts of cash and the fact that it was payday. In fact those are the reasons why they were lost in the first place. In both cases the guys who lost them were drunk.

So, the point of all this? The point is, Robin said that the reward was in knowing that you did the right thing, and she's right, twenty years later I still get a warm glow when I think about it. Also, in both cases, the guys kept buying me drinks until I couldn’t stand up.

I won’t even tell you about all the times I’ve given back money when I’ve been given too much change (that would be just too goodie two shoes wouldn’t it?) but I have.

Of course I've had Artichoke before!

Just before I met MDW I went out with a woman who was a real piece of work. Not only was she a drunk, but she was a nasty drunk. In fact she was such a bitch that its amazing that I ever got married because at the breakdown of the relationship I made a solemn oath to myself that I would never date again. Two weeks later I met my wife but that's another story (one that's been partially told, I started this a long time ago).

Anyway, Terri (I'll use her real name because she's a bitch) came from LA too and her mother lived in Pasadena, so we drove down to visit for a few days. It only took a few minutes after meeting her mom to understand why Terri was such a bitch, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". Her mother was even more of a piece of work than she was.

After a couple of days of constant jibes like "do you have running water in Australia?", and "do you have cars or do you ride kangaroos?" I was starting to get pretty pissed off with the pair of them. Oh, the mother was a drunk too. So the day before we were to head back to SJ her mom says we should all go out for dinner. 'We' meant Terri, her mom and her brother plus the mom's boyfriend (an ex-lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers, fuck he was big!!) and the brother's girlfriend.

They decide to go to the Brown Derby, there were four in LA but only one still remains, the one on Los Feliz. We order our meals, mine came with a whole artichoke (and a bowl of mayo). Terri's mom says "have you ever had an artichoke before?" and by this time I was fed up with their crap, so I lied and retorted "what, do you think I'm a hillbilly or something?".

OK, now I'm assuming that all of you have had artichokes before, but in case you haven't let me explain one thing, you do not try to cut them open like you would a baked potato. I'm telling you, it took at least 10 minutes for everyone to stop laughing and 3 days for Terri to stop mentioning it (which was precisely how long it was before I told her it was time we went our separate ways).

Credit to whoever's photos I've borrowed for this post. None of them are mine.

Earl Schieb was here.

I've just had my weekly session with ET and warned him that the revelations would continue unchecked unless he visited my blog. He not only wouldn't commit to checking it out, he gave me even more ammunition, but as they aren't first hand accounts, I probably won't use them, but then I might.

Before we begin, I need to bring you up to speed on PO, his wife, as her behavior is germane. Not only did PO have no sense of embarrassment, even worse, she reveled in embarrassing others (particularly me). For those familiar with Ree's writing, I'm just like MM in so far as I hate having any attention focused on me in a crowd (ironic, considering I'm an accomplished public speaker).

By contrast PO loves attention and will do what ever it takes to get it. She has one of those distinctive (and extremely shrill) laughs, if her laugh was a meal it would have been served with a side order of straightjacket. It was loud, piercing and hysterical and she was not afraid to use it. She would put it to great effect in restaurants (which we went to often), and would purposely let out such a maniacal chortle that it was guaranteed to startle everyone within a ten table radius. Thereby ensuring that the entire restaurant would be staring at our table in astonishment.

So to ET's story, the morning after the party, while I was lying in bed hoping the day would just go away, I heard what seemed to be a blood curdling scream. I was shocked into wakefulness (not to mention hurt physically) by what turned out to be one of PO's hysterical outbursts. I sprang out of bed (well sort of, I got tangled in the bedding and ended up on the floor) and rushed to see what was wrong. The scene that greeted me was like something out of CSI. The bathtub looked like a body had been dismembered in it and it took a couple of seconds to realise that PO was shaking with laughter, not shock.

Seems ET thought rather than run the risk of getting the the bathroom covered in wine barf if he missed the toilet, it would be better to aim for the bath which afforded him a bigger target. Having performed the equivalent of an Earl Schieb $99 spray job, it then took him hours to get the colour out of the bath. We're talking old bath with worn porcelain, i.e. no sheen and very porous and the wine didn't give up without a fight.

So ET, you keep ignoring me and I'll keep writing.