by Les Shipp
Oscar had found his heaven and Joshua had found his soul mate.
Next door to them lived an aggressive dog called Rex who would often growl at Oscar through the fence. Oscar would show distain of him with a flick of his handsome tail. Then came the day Joshua was riding his bicycle out on their driveway, really enjoying himself with Oscar keeping watch from the front porch. Without any warning Rex decided to teach that spoilt brat of a kid a lesson and attacked him, biting him savagely and pulling him off his bike.
At the first cry of distress Oscar launched himself at Rex like a furry ball of fire. His onslaught knocked Rex away from Joshua but he wasn’t done with him yet. In a fury he sent the cowardly dog racing for the cover of his own home.
Oscar was a hero and the parents looked upon him with very special love and put him in the category of a superior being and Oscar knew now he had a reason for being.
TOO MEAN TO DIE.
Joe was brought up in the school of hard knocks but through great effort and hard work he managed to acquire a vast track of grazing land in the Northern Territory by the time he was thirty years old. He named his property Hardwood Downs and he made it his life.
Hardwood Downs had a substantial homestead on it and with all the required outbuildings, so he was well set up. He was a self-sufficient man who was happy with his own company and never needed others around him. Being a practical man he came to the conclusion that life would be much easier if he had a housekeeper and the only way that would be possible would be if he found himself a wife. He didn’t think much further than she would be an asset taking care of his home base.
To make this come about he decided to go to Brisbane for a holiday and see what was on offer. Here he got lucky on a day out at the horse races where he met an attractive bubbly young girl who had a practical side to her. After weighing up the fore’s and against he decided she would fit the bill quite nicely so he set out to woo her. Betty was taken in by his good looks, and the fact that he was the owner of a very large property.
They got on so well that at the end of Joe’s four weeks holiday, he proposed to her and she said yes. As soon as they were married he didn’t want to waste any more time in Brisbane so they flew straight back to Hardwood Downs.
This was all very exciting for Betty, taking over her role as a wife of a substantial land owner and she was reasonable happy for the first few years. As the years rolled by and the arrival of three sons she could feel a discontent in Joe’s attitude towards her. He was taken up with his work and hardly paid any attention to her and she came to realise that she was indeed a housekeeper much more than a wife.
This ate into her thoughts until eventually she had had enough. While Joe was away with his cattle she packed her bags and with the three boys headed back to Brisbane. Joe was disappointed but that was life. He did the right thing by the boys and paid their expenses but not a penny more than he had to.
Over the years the boys grew up and Joe had reached old age, becoming a recluse and something of a miser. He had by now vast wealth and made it his life’s work to guard it. The boys could have done with some help from Joe but he had become too mean to even think of sharing his wealth with them.
The boys kept hoping the mean old bugger would die as he was now in his nineties, but no Joe kept on keeping on. The boys reached the conclusion that the miserable old devil was just too mean to die.
YOU SHOULD SEE THE OTHER GUY.
Not always being sensible about my well-being I decided to join the cast of the musical, The Man from La Mancher, while still recovering from my open heart surgery. I knew it was risky but I was sick of not being able to be involved in my old life. The fantasy world surrounding the script and the weird characters it had in it had me intrigued enough to give it a go.
I was very careful of my person during the weeks of rehearsals and it all went well. There was a fight scene half way through the musical that I was concerned about but there was no way around it so I decided I would proceed with caution. The fight scene involved several muleteers fighting over the honour of one of the girls who had just been raped.
The musical being pure fantasy involved three men with a long ladder being held horizontally, a man at each end and one in the middle. The one in the middle was the one who needed sorting out. The men at the each end of the ladder were trying to do the middle man harm but he being a cad amongst other things was very keen on self-preservation. The evil doer in the middle of the ladder caused it to spin with the two men on either end being spun around at high speed. I waited for the right moment to let the ladder go, but hung on for a bit too long and the centrifugal force eventually lifted me off my feet and I was spun out through the side curtains, hitting my head and knocking myself out.
With much fuss and attention I recovered in time to go out for the next scene, but I did end up with quite a bruise on my head. I was careful of that ladder from then on. I think perhaps I was relieved when the two weeks of performance was over. I made sure that any future musicals I was in didn’t have a fight scene in it or more specifically a ladder.
When I returned to work afterwards my bruise was very noticeable and caused a lot of comment of how I came to get it. I never discussed my stage activities at work so I wasn’t about to tell them what really happened or they might have reckoned I was even more stupid than they thought. Working with men who went from work to the pub and then home every day meant they wouldn’t have understood why I did what I did. It would have made no sense to them.
When their curiosity got the best of them and they asked me outright what had happened, I simply said I had got into a fight and if they thought my bruise was bad, they should see the other guy.
DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH.
Kev knew he and his party had made some big mistakes. The main one being all the back stabbing that had gone on for some time and the fact that no one liked each other very much unless it was to further their cause. The people he most cared about was his constituents that had voted for him and he wasn’t too sure about some of them at times. Loyalty wasn’t something you could rely on in his game, it only lasted as long as it suited the players on the team. He had regarded Julia as a mate, although he knew better, until she drove the knife in. All those smarmy characters surrounding him, not a true supporter in any of them when it came down to it. Well Kev had been knocked down before and survived and came back full of fight.
This time might be different as the blow he had taken might be fatal, but not in Kev’s mind for he was a born fighter. He planned to drift around in the wings out of sight until he saw a bit of back-stabbing he could do for himself. The two contenders for his position were already shaping up for a fight. Perhaps one or both would get the chop as he had done. You never knew with the party, they were more unpredictable than the voters. Perhaps he could put in a quiet word to help them on their way. No better not, better to keep his head down for the time being, never know what you might learn down here.
Just look at that Tony Priest, or is it Abbott. As smug as you like just because his party won the election. Better enjoy it Tony, I saw that little blond lady who is always at your side, sharpening knifes in her office recently. There are bound to be several others who don’t agree with your policies especially about turning the boats around. Even Mr. Bang Bang doesn’t like your idea. What will the voters think when your grand plans for a surplus goes down the drain as well as all the millions you plan to give away to all the wealthy people, who don’t need it, for having children. He should meet me down at the Polly’s bar one night and I could bring him up to scratch on what is real and what he is up against.
He thinks he is on top of everything and will have a clear run from now on. Don’t make me laugh.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
A name might not seem important to some but when you look at two men going for an important position, without seeing them would the man named Billy Jones or Reginald Farnsworth stick in your mind. It might depend on the interviewer’s name, if it was Burt Brown h
e might lean towards Billy, or if it was Bartholomew Pennyweather he might lean towards Reginald.
It doesn’t make the person but it does help to get them noticed. As a small boy I had a vivid imagination. I had in my very simple mind that I must have been stolen at birth or somehow ended up in the wrong family. Rationally I knew this was not the case as I looked just like the others, but I liked to dream of a more glamorous life, being transported around in a horse drawn carriage, and being referred to as the young master, like in the books I read. In fact my transport was a bicycle and lucky to have that.
I figured when I grew up I was surely going to be knighted and what I would do then. Sir Les didn’t sound at all right. A little more hard thinking and I came up with Sir Leslie which did have a better ring to it. A little time later I read in a magazine about a man called Sir Les Patterson. This threw me into confusion as that definitely didn’t sound right, and if he was going to be knighted with a name like that, I lost all interest in the matter.
Eventually I admitted to myself that I was just an ordinary kid, from an ordinary family with a very ordinary name, but what the heck it was easy to spell and for others to remember.
THE SOUND OF A DISTANT TRAIN.
Georgio’s