by Les Shipp
ORIES
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Acknowledgements.
Many thanks to my mentor Pat Ritter for his help and encouragement in putting these stories together. I would also like to thank my friend Noela Flack for all the time she spent correcting my many mistakes and to my wife Alice who has been most patient during the hours I have spent writing.
The strange titles in some of the stories came about from the Pomona writers group where we were given a title and had to come up with a story, so come and havachat and see what we can make of these tales, some written on a fact basis but mostly fiction.
Thanks to my wife Alice Shipp for the use of her painting to copy for my book cover.
WHO WAS PAUL BURSER.
Paul Burser had worked in a government department for ten years. He had started off as an office boy when he was twenty years of age. He loved his job and put a lot of effort into becoming a top accountant. So it was a bitter disappointment to him when he was told his services were no longer required. It seemed to him that he had been coming to work and sitting at his desk forever. Now he would be finishing up at the end of the month.
How could he tell his wife Mavis when he got home? They had been going through a rough patch anyway and this was not going to be good news. He stopped off at the pub on the way home to give himself a boost for what was to come. He stayed at the pub longer than he intended and by the time he reached home he had the wobbly boot on.
Mavis had been waiting all day for him to come home so she could tell him her good news. She had been promoted at work and her new job required her to relocate to another state. She was not impressed when he staggered through the front door announcing that he would soon be unemployed and laughing hysterically about it. That was the last straw for Mavis who told him he was now on his own. She packed her bags and left to stay with her mother while she was waiting for her transfer to Melbourne.
Paul was in a right mess and didn’t know what to do next. He knew by her unreasonable attitude that she wouldn’t be coming back. He didn’t go to work the next day, instead he spent the day at the pub trying to console himself and this behaviour went on for the rest of the week. One evening as he drunkenly peered into his beer looking for an answer, an old school mate named Jake came in. Noticing what a bad way Paul was in and having been through a divorce himself, he said to Paul,” You’ve got to pull yourself together mate”. Paul wasn’t easily consoled and he felt he had worked all his life as an accountant in an office and now in his present state he was unemployable. This was true as far as Jake could see but there were other alternatives. After Jake’s divorce he had left his city job behind and had gone out west working as a fencing contractor. Since the change he had always had work and could do with an extra hand.
Paul was too far gone to care and was still in a drunken daze when Jake loaded him and his gear up into his utility and headed off into the wide open spaces. When Paul woke up the next morning, bleary eyed all he could see was open space. Never having been out of the city before it was a shock to his system. He had no other option but to stick with the help Jake had offered him.After some months he discovered he really liked working outdoors and with the heavy physical work he had changed from an anaemic looking office worker to a strapping healthy man. He liked the change in himself and decided this was going to be his life from now on.
The pair of them worked well together and always had lots of work coming their way. The next contract they had was on a property owned by an attractive young widow named Amanda. Paul liked the look of her and jumped at the chance when she told him she was having difficulties with her books. He offered to call in after work to help her sort them out. Even after the books were in good order he would he would call into the homestead for a coffee and a chat. When their contract was finished on the property, Paul was loath to move on and was over the moon when Amanda asked him if he would like to stay on and manage the property for her. When he told Jake about staying on, Jake said, “Good on you mate but what about Mavis”, Paul replied, “Mavis who”?
SUPPOSITORY OF KNOWLEDGE.
I am aware of where my suppository of knowledge didn’t come from and that was from attending school. Right from day one, aged six years when I enrolled myself in school I was told what a stupid child I was because I didn’t know what my mother’s maiden name was. To me it had always been Mum. From that day on my relationship with school and in particular the teachers never improved and although my body was forced to attend for a few years my mind never did. It was a relief for me when we moved to an extremely remote and isolated farm in the Blue Mountains and school was right off the agenda.
I always accepted the fact that I was not very bright until my early forties. I was accepted on an experimental basis, because of my extreme lack of formal education, into a graduate diploma course at Hawkesbury College. One of the requirements for entering the course was you had to have a degree. I was told when I signed up there would be very little chance of graduating and to treat it as an exercise. I had some very good friends also doing the course and with their encouragement I put my heart into it, studying and writing well into the night.
It was an external course with a fortnight residential here and there at the college and several weekends, plus attending a study group once a week in my home town. The course unlocked knowledge that I never knew I had, and I can’t tell you how proud I was as I marched up to receive my diploma. I was told my final submission was amongst the best. The college gave me a boost to my aspirations of doing a social science degree at the University of New England and recommended that I be given two units head start for my work completed at the college.
This gave me heart that perhaps I wasn’t as stupid as I always thought I was and this led me to wonder where this knowledge came from. It certainly didn’t come from the same place Abbott said Rudd kept his. Looking back over the years I realise that although my formal education was dismal, I had gained in other ways. Even as a small child I had always been curious and a prodigious reader. Reading everything that came my way. I loved to read and through the years I must have stored up a lot of knowledge I didn’t know I had. It just took the pressure of the diploma to let it all out.
I have never at any stage thought of myself as clever and never will but knowing that I am not stupid either gives me confidence to know if I set my mind to something, it might take me awhile to get there, but mostly I will succeed.
I would have read thousands of books over the years and thank them for making me think. My love of reading also helped me with my studies as it was always a pleasure to read and research the subjects. Mathematics was always my weak point and when I was faced with enquiring into social science with a make or break exam coming up I nearly freaked out as I thought it was beyond my capabilities. The Professor luckily had faith in me and pushed hard until light bulbs started to come on and I worked really hard to understand it all. I only just passed the exam but 60% of the students either failed or dropped out. Looking back I don’t know how I did it and if asked to do it now it would be a complete mystery to me.I still have a suppository of knowledge floating around in my head and surprisingly now and then it will come to the surface. The moments of being on the surface is getting less and less but never mind, it’s there and it has given me a very rich life.
THE LIGHT WAS FADING IN PARADISE.
Joe was the CEO of a large manufacturing company in London. On his way up the corporate ladder his job had taken him all around the world. He and his partner had an upmarket unit in London and these days his
job kept him full time in the city. He thought his life was good with an attractive intelligent partner, a great unit close to Central Park and the company he worked for supplied him with a luxury car.
To keep up with the pace of his position he found himself working longer and harder, with very little time left over to be with his partner or anybody else for that matter. He was so engrossed in his work he didn’t notice that his personal life was falling apart. Coming home one evening he found a note his partner had left for him. She had had enough and decided she would move on and find a better life with someone who at least knew she was there. It was over between them and Joe was devastated, he had been too busy to see this coming. Feeling shattered he needed some changes in his life so he applied for a position with his company that had an office in Sydney Australia. The company didn’t want to lose him so a month later he was off to Sydney.
When he started his new position in Sydney he thought everything would turn