The Crew

The same thing happens nigh on every day. I get on the bus and sit with my book and the bus then winds its way along, slowly filling to the point where people start begrudgingly taking the aisle seats and sitting beside the person in the window seat. 

I glance up and see three or four seats left including the one beside me. I glance up again a few stops later and see every seat on the bus taken except the one beside me, there are people standing, there are people muttering, and an empty seat beside me. 

Sooner or later one lone traveller will shuffle and “excuse me” their way up and take the seat beside me and I find myself wondering what exactly it is that keeps these people at bay? I have my shirt and tie on, my hair neatly gelled , my Kindle doesn’t reveal that I am reading anything disturbing, I even have a nice lemony Armani scent, so why does no one want to sit by me?

I have come to the conclusion that, despite what my daughter tells me, I am simply not cool. I drag down the bus vibe of undercut hair, too tight trousers and iPhones. I sour their Vitamin and Nutrient Water with my grey-flecked beard and crows feet. 

This baffled me as I was cool once, I was on the edge, I was at the height of a movement before it was even a movement.

I was in a Breakdance Crew.

(Wavy lines and a tumbling sensation, oh yeah, we are going down the flash back tunnel again).

Break dance was phenomenon in the early 1980’s and during the school holidays of '82 I had visions of myself with mismatched fluoro socks, stubble on my face and the attitude in my eye of Turbo and O-Zone. 

I devoted very small amounts of time to trying to body pop, focussing on certain show stopping moves. In my 8 year old mind I was approaching event horizon of being able to break dance by simply thinking about break dancing now and then.

One of my neighbours, Karl, was a confirmed break-dancer. He had a shark tooth ear ring, muscle t shirt and a small cassette player with 3 break-dance tunes recorded five or six times. He had moves and skills and as such a “crew” naturally formed around him, especially also as he was ten and we were eight.

Being in his crew meant we followed him wherever he went and heckled anyone foolish enough to start a “beef” with him. We were fiercely territorial so the crew from the neighbouring street were our sworn enemies.

Karl would show his moves in the playing field and the crew from the next street would appear on the (ungraffiti’d) walls were they sat cat calling. As was our job we heckled back, declaring their dancer rubbish and we traded insults long enough that they demanded a “burn out.” This was a mythical concept; two dancers facing off until one broke from the inability to complete a special move. To loose a burn out could lead to tears, limbs could break from over extension and hospitalisation could very well follow. So saying, none of us had been to one though Karl had recounted a victory he had had in a burn out in a neighbouring and rougher town as the sun glinted on his sharks tooth ear ring.

Given the escalating drama of the moment nothing could happen there and then, Karl could not immediately break into a carefully choreographed routine. A time and place had to be determined. It couldn’t be in the park; parents may see and interrupt the precision dancing with shouts of dinner time. It had to be somewhere we weren’t supposed to be, and it had to be in the evening. We opted for the car park in the market square of town because it had a dumpster and that gave it an urban vibe and we chose 6pm because the street lights would be on. 

It was on, word went out about the burn out, people would come and witness this and I would be ring-side as part of Karl’s Crew.

We rushed back to Karl’s place to help him work out what to wear and spent the afternoon listening to the same tunes while Karl got dressed (tennis headband, ear ring, white trainers, baggy trousers and t shirt) and his mum bought us Lemon cordial and ginger biscuits.

We managed to convince our parents to let us out after dinner on the strict understanding we would be home for 7pm. With stomach battle ready and filled with fish fingers or frozen beef burgers we regrouped and ducked and dodged our way to town. Karl planted his cassette player down and we scowled and sneered. In my memory of this I am chewing on a matchstick though I doubt that was genuinely the case.

Karl broke into an epileptic warm up of half moves that suggested the raw talent he was just barely holding back and we all felt the electricity of the impending burn out. There was danger and music in the air, and our parents would never understand the necessity of this moment, the vital territorial tribal ritual that was about to be performed to Chaka Khan and the Rock Steady Crew. Adults just wouldn’t or couldn’t understand…and evidently neither did the other crew as they never turned up.

By 6.20pm we knew they weren’t coming. Karl was still windmilling his arms and checking his ear ring but by 6.30pm the manager of the chemist came out and told us to move on in and in a precursor to the Criminal Justice Act he told us we should turn that music off.

Not down, off.

We took the long way home, strutted through the neighbouring street looking for trouble, armed with imagined flick knives and broken bottles. No trouble came, though one of us did step in dog mess.

Back at our street with 20 minutes before curfew Karl pressed play on his cassette deck and Chaka Khan started singing at a sensibly low volume. He did a few moves and then spent a while psyching himself up to do a swan dive and lead into a caterpillar.

Having spent a good 12 minutes that summer practising I had a belief that I could do each move. Karl completed the swan dive caterpillar combo while the other kids twitched and jerked. 

Figuring this was my moment I launched into a graceful swan dive and encountered the terrible moment where ambition collides with inability. My arms buckled and my face planted firmly on the concrete and my legs went over my head as I crumpled.

I stood and wiped a small trickle of blood from my cheek as sniggers started but Karl silenced them with one clenched 10 year old fist.

“Least he tried” he said and as my heart swelled as he added an uncertain “Yo!”

One by one they launched into swan dives and crumpled until ten minutes later they were all wincing and rubbing sore points on their faces. Karl executed one more perfect dive and the front doors started opening on our street as our parents called us home.

I ran indoors and my mum asked how I had scratched my face, had I been fighting? 

“Nah Mum, dancing” I said, leaving my street persona at the door as I raced upstairs for a Sunday night Matey Bubble Bath.

Under my beard a small scar from my dance days likely remains.

And in my heart still burns the unchecked heat of the burn out.

If no one sits next to me on my next commute I am going to stand and scream out “Hey, you, the bus commute crew, show me what you do make a break make a move” and then I’ll caterpillar my way up the aisle and do the robot all the way to work.

‘Cause I could you know.

Cool is in my blood. 

Yo

How I Died

How did I die?

2011

Bear - Dad

Me - Yes mate?

Bear - If I am ever a lifeguard, and you aren't already dead, I’ll try and pull you out of the water.

*

My daughter predicts my death several times a week. She comes to our room at 1am and either taps me on the head until I wake up or opens my eyelids with her fingers and stares at me.

A small child standing by your bed in the midnight hours is always terrifying and most nights I wake with a jolt and see the dark shadow of my daughter standing breathing beside me.

What is it?

I had a nightmare.

Just try and go back to sleep darlin’

No Dad, I dreamt you died.

She then makes upset noises and I reassure her I am alive. I pull her into bed for a hug, she curls in and falls straight back to sleep.

Then without fail she kicks me in the groin.

In the morning I ask –

So how did I die last night darlin’?

She grins from the breakfast table and gives me my latest death. The list is now lengthy

• You were eaten by a crocodile
• You were shot by a gun
• You were stabbed in the face
• You were hit by a car / bus / horse
• You were eaten by an angry shark
• You were sick
• You were on the toilet
• You ate too much beans.
• You were hit by a dog
• You were old
• You just didn’t get up any more
• A snake killed you
• You exploded
• You caught fire and then exploded
• Dad, you just died, don’t you know? I am watching Tinkerbell.

With each scenario she mentions I make a mental note to be cautious just in case she is a five-year-old soothsayer. Should we go to the Reptile Park I keep a close watch on the crocodile enclosure in case it should break and the overly large child killing crocodile come rampaging towards me while my daughter giggles. I watch the ocean for sharks like Chief Brody and stay firmly on the sand while she throws sand bombs at me. I am careful crossing the road, I try not to catch fire or explode, I stay well away from snakes and exercise caution when on the toilet. Should I see a dog that looks likely to hit me I give it a wide berth. As for being shot, well there is only so much I can do to avoid that other than stay away from Nakatomi Plaza.

My sons’ death fixation does not relate to me dying, but is specifically related to the undead. He begs for details on zombies. Can zombies survive fire? Can zombies eat dogs? Do zombies ever catch the bus? Would a zombie swim or walk under water? Can Batman beat a zombie? I answer each question as best I can, prefacing it with “well, zombies don’t exist….but” and then launching into a lengthy scenario about Batman and a zombie having a tussle in Gotham City. The last zombie question I had from him was “Dad, can a zombie eat itself, what would happen when it swallowed the last bite?” I am still working on this one.

I took the kids to the local cemetery when Bear was 3 and Toes around the one-year mark. Bear had been asking to go for ages, pointing to it and telling me he wanted to see where the dead lived. We were short of anything to do that day I hiked them up the hill, Bear on my shoulders and Toes in the pram. It was a blistering Australian day and by the time we reached the gates I was dripping sweat and breathless. Bear ran gleefully towards the graves, Toes bumbled along.

Bear stopped suddenly and turned to me.

Dad?

Yes mate?

Where are the dead people?

Underground, they are buried.

He frowned.

Dad?

Yes mate?

Can we go and get a shovel?

On that same trip he asked me

Dad, why do people die?

I took a deep breath and gave it my best shot.

People get old. Once they have done everything, eaten every meal, had every beer, seen every movie and read every book they die. They fall asleep and don't wake up.

Like Da?

Yes mate, like Da.

Da was my wife’s grandfather; he died when Bear was two.

Da was old.

Yes mate, he was very old. But he was in hospital where they care for people, he was comfortable and you gave him a kiss goodbye.

Da died. He’s dead like fish.

Fish was Bears very originally named pet fish. The fish died, most likely of over feeding. He has a new fish now, when he first got it he wanted to call it Fishy. It’s a fighting fish so the name was toughened up to Demon-Fish.

Yes mate, Da is dead like Fish.

Bear gave the beach a distant look, like Heathcliffe on the moors. He seemed to weigh up mans mortality, to consider the brief shining life we lead before we wink out and leave only love and memories.

He turned back at me.

Can I have an ice cream?

*

Toes has seen her pet mouse die, she’s fascinated by deceased pigeons on the side or the road and she giggled when she saw a fish chopped into pieces by a fisherman and thrown back into the water, mouth gasping on its severed head. .

She tells me there is a ghost of an old lady in her room who hates her. This gives me chills. Sometimes she points to the corner of the room and assures me someone is standing there.

I tucked her in the other night, sung her a lullaby, kissed her and asked her to try not to dream my death tonight.

Ok Dad, I’ll just dream you get hurt.

I know I am reaping what I have sewn, having raised two happy little goth kids and I love my demon kids. So saying, it would be nice to live through the night for a change.

*

1997

An ex girlfriend, before she was an ex, asked me– If you died, would you mind if I dated your housemate?

The Dry Hump Instructor

David and I became friends through geography. The move to Upper School was daunting and on the last day of our Middle School David stopped me in the corridor and said we should walk together on the first day. He asked if I would knock for him,  I said I would, and that was the last we saw of each other all summer until the new term. I knocked, his mum answered, and we were almost late due to David fumbling with his tie, worrying at his shoelaces, and stuffing marmalade toast in his mouth.

We walked to school and back every day and by daily exposure we fell into being friends of a sort. On the walks to school we would talk about his favourite things – guns, grenades, and Rambo, or my favourite things, Stephen King novels, Stephen King movies, and Rambo.

One Friday night, half way into term, David’s parents were going out and they suggested David rent a few movies and have me over for frozen pizza. He rented Fletch and Better of Dead, we watched the latter movie (and I immediately developed a hope to one day have a French girl kiss me and compliment me on my Language Lessons – it never happened but damn I still think she's lovely).

Before we put Fletch on talk shifted to a school disco that was coming soon. I’m gonna dance with Jodi – David was confident with girls. I’d seen that at middle school, he’d follow them around the dance floor relentlessly until they let him dance beside them. As soon as a slow song came on he’d launch like a hormonal St Bernard, mouth wide and tongue flailing. There’d be confusion, saliva and sometimes a slap. Inevitably he’d walk away puffed up and on a countdown to referring to the girl as a slag but assuring anyone who was listening that he’d tongued her.

Who you going to dance with?

Girls were still an alien and hostile species to me, Stephen King was safer. I knew they were there, I knew they could be spoken to and potentially convinced to remove their tops, but at the time I had a misguided certainty that Chinese food was involved and any conversation with a girl would lead to the purchase of fried rice and sweet and sour pork. I had no money so could not afford Chinese food. David was deeper in the hormone swamp and wasn’t shy of pocket money. He was hairier, he was sweatier, and he was fixated.

Uhm, no one. There’s no one I want to dance with.

Have you ever danced with a girl? David was grinning. I admitted that I had not.

It’s easy. He leapt from his chair and ran to the kitchen, coming back with a mop with a long red handle and a white head. He turned the mop upside down and held it in front of him.

You just go up to the girl and say – Hey. He stared at the mop, smiled his Kiefer Sutherland smile, and said – Hey Jodi, d’you wanna dance? The Jodi-mop apparently wanted to dance. Soon he was circling with the mop and I was laughing. He guided me on small talk whilst humming Take my Breath Away.

Your hair looks nice – he said, flicking his fingers through the mop head before turning to me – Say something nice to them, girls love their hair.

You smell nice – he said, sniffing the mop. Girls love it if you tell them they smell nice, even though they all smell of Avon soap. I had no idea what Avon soap smelt like but made a mental note to find out. He carried on circling with the mop, guiding it around the lounge, eyes fixed firmly on it.

Ask them about school stuff, but nothing too much. Tell them that homework sucks and French is pointless, except kissing.

He cackled at his own joke and I flashed on the girl from Better Off Dead and her Language Lessons again.

You only have about 3 minutes so don’t talk much. You need to be kissing them by the last minute of the song.

He started bobbing his head back and forth, making lip-smacking sounds. His hips swayed and he seemed to peck at the mop head.

Then he said - D’you want to lick peanut butter off of my dick?

I was laughing so hard that it almost passed me by. There was a legend in school about a girl the year above us. She’d been at home with her boyfriend and had gone to get drinks from the kitchen. She’d come back into the room and he’d been nude with peanut butter spread on himself. The legend went no further than this but David was obsessed with it. Any time he saw the girl he would shout as PEANUT BUTTER as loud he could before running, red faced, in the opposite direction. The girl looked baffled each time, and I slowly realised that the legend wasn’t actually a legend but was a creation of David’s imagination.

He was still dancing with the mop but his disco chat was becoming darker. You like peanut butter don’t you? You want peanut butter? The mop didn’t respond that I could hear. How many times have you had peanut butter? The mop continued being a mop, unaware of David multiple meanings for peanut butter. It was swaying from side to side as David manoeuvred it. I was still laughing, but slightly less comfortably. David seemed to have forgotten I was there.

You and me – and peanut butter. He pulled the mop closer. Yeah. He was whispering now as he pulled the mop closer and wrapped one leg around it. And – and – you and me and –

He pushed the mop against the back of the sofa and kicked the bottom towards him. He pressed himself to it and began to grind. I sat, uncertain what the best thing to do was, as David bore down on his mothers kitchen mop and kept calling it Jodi. The air was thick with the smell of detergent and David’s sweat. He buried his face in the strands. His ears were scarlet, his body wrapped tightly around the handle. There was a practiced intent in his movements; seemingly this was not the first time he and Jodi had danced.

With a sudden shout of Bitch he stopped moving.

I slipped out of the room and ducked into the kitchen. I ran the cold tap and filled a glass with water, not wanting it but wanting to appear busy. I heard him walk out of the lounge room and into the downstairs toilet. I went back to the lounge and saw the mop, laying discarded on the floor now. I heard the toilet flush and David run upstairs. He came down a few minutes later in different trousers.

Before he came in the lounge I heard him in the kitchen, raiding the cupboard. He appeared with cigarettes and held it out to me. I declined and he lit one himself, sinking into the armchair and hitting play on the remote to start Fletch. He said nothing for the first half of the movie and I just about managed to forget about the sexually abused mop, which still lay on the floor behind me.

The following week, walking to school, David told me that he’d pulled 4 legs from a spider and put it in his underpants at the weekend. He told me he’d stolen his neighbour Sally’s bra and asked me if I wanted to come and see it, I pictured it limp on the floor, as abused as his mothers mop.

Then he became fixated on the fact that farmers had sex with their sheep and started telling me where he knew there were sheep and a few goats. He had a plan he said, he’d made a list of what they would need. I knew somewhere on the list would be peanut butter.

The last day I walked in with him I knocked on his door and his mother answered as ever. She smiled at me and invited me in. She told me David would be down in a moment and went back to the kitchen where she was mopping the floor. She swished the mop from side to side, dunking it in the bucket and back to the floor again. I watched the mop move across the kitchen and heard Take My Breath Away in the back of my mind. I started wondering, could you, should you, with a mop? Would it, could it, be good?

David hammered down the stairs and as we left I said I think we should stop walking in together. He asked why and I made something up about homework and wanting to get into school earlier. Truth was I knew if I kept hanging around with him I’d be stuffing amputated spiders down my pants and mounting my mothers vacuum cleaner within the month.

He shrugged and said So what and for the rest of the walk we didn’t say a word and I tried not to think about his mop.

Paying for it in the mail room

When I was 11 Roland gave me one pound. Unlike mine, Roland’s school shoes were shiny and were replaced during the school term. His school bag was leather, his uniform pressed and his packed lunch was not made from Sandwich Spread. He had a fist full of coins and dished them out to five of us in the playground.

I had 20 pence a day to buy a bag of sugar – Rainbow Dust (brightly coloured sherbet) or Pineapple Chunks (bright yellow cubes of fruit flavoured sweets) - from the newsagents. There was a tuck shop where Currency = Cool, since I had no money I wasn’t cool. On this day I strode into the tuck shop and handed over cash as though I did it all the time. I bought Orange Fanta and a bag of crisps and still had change. I giggled a bit.

That day I rocked the free world - until my form teacher saw me.

Where’d you get that?

Tuck shop

Where’d you get the money for that?

My poverty was known from the fact that this teacher had given me football boots and a rugby top from lost property. Given I have an inability to lie I said that Roland had given me a pound.

Why’d he do that?

I had no idea. Roland had given me the coin out of the blue. The teacher did not view this as positive an occurrence as I did.

The following morning Roland and I were called in. He asked Roland where he had gotten the money and Roland confessed to stealing it from his dad’s wallet and started to cry. He asked why he had given the money out and Roland had shrugged and cried some more. He asked me if I was bullying Roland and I looked at my spaghetti arms and I said no. He asked if Roland was buying my friendship and I said no (I had gone from bully to prostitute in 2 questions). He asked Roland to name the others he had given money to and he sobbed and named names. A few minutes later 4 others stood with us, staring at Sobbing Roland and SuperGrass Me. The teacher said we had to pay Roland back and they shelled over a pound each from their pockets. I said I would have to pay over 5 days and the teacher frowned. He itemised my Orange Fanta and Cheesy Quavers and said - You’ll pay for it.

Not being able to pay immediately made me the most guilty of “The Playground 5.” I had needed that Fanta too much!

Two years later Manesh bounded over to me during break. He gave me an iced finger bun. He had a Tupperware container full of them. I quite liked Manesh, we weren’t close but we sat next to each other in Maths and occasionally swapped jokes about the English, Irish and Scots. I took the bun, I ate the bun, I enjoyed the bun and just as I was finishing it a teacher pulled me aside.

Where’d you get the bun?

Round a mouthful of bun I said Manesh had given it to me.

Why’d he do that?

I said I didn’t know. I was confident there was no way they could make me repay a bun.

Are you bullying Manesh?

Again I looked at my spaghetti arms.

No.

Are you friends with Manesh?

I said sort of, we did Maths together and before I could tell the teacher about the racially profiled but funny English, Irish & Scots jokes he asked -

Are you not friends with him because he’s black?

I didn’t know how to answer. Manesh was darker skinned but I had never placed any importance on this. When Roland had given me the pound there had been no mention of skin colour.

I said no - I wasn’t not friends with Manesh because he was not white. The teacher frowned and told me racism was a terrible thing. I should think long and hard about racism, if I was being racist he assured me You’ll pay for it.  

I became wary of people giving me things. A redheaded girl wanted to dance with me at a school disco. A huge African kid offered to hit someone who’d said I had Hitler hair. I turned them both down. I was burned, I was bitter, I was driving in the rain staring fixedly at the white lines ahead, I was a man on the edge, fearful of generosity - and then I was no longer in school.

I was working my first job. One of my co workers was a flamboyant male. He wore bright shirts and sang a lot. He was pretty funny and one morning he gave me a chocolate biscuit. We sorted the post and talked about movies, music and alcohol. The manageress wandered in and saw me chomping chocolate digestive. She sent Stuart to the 4^th floor to collect something and once he’d gone the she turned to me.

You and Stuart getting on ok?

I nodded.

You know you need to be careful yes?

I frowned. Careful about what?

Stuart’s a Poof. Be careful about being too friendly with him. You don’t want to end up in an awkward situation. If you’re not careful (she nodded at the melting biscuit in my hand) – let’s just say you may have to pay for his friendship.

I still had spaghetti arms and was rocking a long pony tail. Being friendly with girls had never led to unexpected payments. I was unsure how having a laugh with “Gay” Stuart meant I may end up Paying in the Mail Room.

A friend’s father had been livid when a British Olympic swimmer came out as gay. The friend related his fathers concerns as What if the swimmer visited our school promoting sports and health and then tried to touch us in the changing room? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think Gay worked that way. I didn’t think Gay Stuart was hopping around the office touching every male who ate a chocolate biscuit with him.

Stuart came back and the manageress left, winking at me as though we had entered into a quiet agreement. Stuart asked what that was all about and, unable to lie, I said – You’re gay and I have to be careful about awkward situations or I may end up paying.

Stuart laughed and assured me that my pony tail and spaghetti arms were pretty ruinous. No one liked my pony tail. Then he told me the manageress was shagging the Managing Director and it became apparent that everyone I worked with was shagging someone else in the office bar me.

*

The use of race or sexual preference when denouncing people seems so ridiculous and unnecessary. I can offend folk at 50 yards without resorting to such epithets.

We once saw two men arguing in Waitrose in the UK years back. They were fighting about who had been first in the queue and their argument escalated. were almost coming to blows when one of them bellowed “you nigger bastard” and the whole shop held its breath. The lady who lives above us, arguing with her neighbour about nothing bigger than a washing line, shouted “Oh you black bitch.” These phrases seem to still come spilling out but hopefully for no longer than another decade or so as the bigots die out one by angry one. I'm sure by the time my kids are 18 such racial vitriol will have abated and we can go about disliking each other for other things.

The same with gay marriage, which seemingly every rational person in the world is for. By the time the kids are 18 it has to have been resolved. Now though, despite being legal, it is still bringing protest that seems to come from the most atavistic of thoughts  - “They already have civil ceremonies, why do they need more?” -  which I guess shows that it’s comforting to say we’re all equal as long as some of us are a little more equal than others.

In epilogue –

Roland is still rich and now married with 2.4 kids and a tractor (according to my briefly accepting a Friend Request on Facebook; I un-friended him before he could start sending tainted money).

Manesh I lost all contact with, but I am guessing he is still darker skinned then me.

Stuart, his ambition was to go on Stars in Their Eyes and win by singing a Morrissey song. I have no idea if he ever managed it but in general I don’t like people who go on television shows and I can’t stand Morrisey.

Me, I’m older than Bill Hicks was when he died. I still love his idea of a People Who Hate People Party and if I didn’t dislike people so much I’d try and start one.

Cut the nut

My wife is descended from The First Fleet - her ancestors were amongst the first convicts from the England sent to Australia. They arrived in Australia, served their time, fell in love and went about making babies. Being a First Fleeter grants you kudos over here so one day my kids will have to dress as starving convicts and sing Advance Australia Fair just as my wife did. The interesting part of her heritage is that one of her ancestors was arrested and deported for the crime of breaking and entering at the residence of [a man with the same name as me]. He stole a toolkit.

My first Christmas in Australia my mother in law gave me a toolkit. It’s full of screwdrivers, spanners, sticky things and scrapping things. I heft it down from the top of the cupboard about once a week to unscrew the battery compartments of kids’ toys or to look for the pen knife so I can use the scissors to cut my toe nails. Invariably when I put my hand in the toolkit I cut myself on some random sharp thing. Then I forget to put it away and Toes empties it and runs off with screws I don’t want or items I didn’t know I owned.

When I was 19 I got my first car. I could hardly afford to fill it up and new tyres were an impossible expense but owning it was wonderful, I could go places, I could drive into the distance playing music and gaze moodily toward the horizon in my leather jacket (from the front seat of a white mini that I bought from a middle aged lady who used it for shopping). Just after I bought it a friend and I attached a car stereo to it using duct tape, nails, string and glue. It fell off one week later whilst playing Nirvana and landed on my foot and I nearly crashed into a wall.

The only tool in the car was a jack for changing the tyres and a tyre iron. I thought I should learn how to use the jack so I practiced. I gave myself a blister and several cuts on the finger working out which was the jack was meant to go and how the handle attached but eventually I raised the car and feeling proud and prepared I lowered the car and put the jack back in the boot. As I did so, unknown to me, I knocked the cover of the car battery aside.

I drove around that afternoon feeling quite car-capable to the point that I conjured images of myself driving international rallies in my mini and winning at impossible odds whilst also defeating terrorists and saving women’s volleyball teams from distress. As I turned into my home street I could hear a bubbling sound that wasn’t related to volleyball. As I parked and the noise grew louder and I opened the boot and saw the metal handle of my jack stuck fast to the positive terminal of my battery. The other end of the handle was against my petrol tank and the side of the tank was glowing red. The bubbling sound was the petrol in the tank boiling. My battery was mostly melted. I stood wondering how long petrol can boil for before it explodes. The red glow faded and thick smoke wafted around me from the battery. As an adult I understand that my petrol tank would have been full of extremely combustible vapour but as a teenager I simply said Meep and ran away.

Shortly afterwards I needed to change a spark plug. I had a socket set that my dad had bought me and it was shiny and silver and manly. New spark plugs lay before me, and old ones in the car. The new ones would rocket charge my car. I attached the socket set, wiped oil on myself for the rugged look, wished I had a matchstick in my mouth and a southern American accent, and turned the spark plug….the wrong way. It sheared off and I had to get my dad to fix it.

I get blisters using screwdrivers. Building Ikea furniture hurts my hands. My hands are soft from a life time of keyboards and remote controls. When we bring Ikea items home Bear asks me how long it will be before I start shouting.

New Years Eve we needed a new toilet seat. For months the old one had been falling off and I’d been reattaching it. Given we were having visitors round it seemed wise to provide them somewhere to sit. We bought the seat and I had 3 hours before they arrived. The seat promised it was easily installed and I believed it.

The old seat sat askew and I hunkered down to start undoing the plastic nuts on the back of the seat. The bolt was rusted, undoubtedly due to my sons’ creative aim in the bathroom. I used pliers and a spanner and managed, over half an hour, to turn the nut roughly 6 times. The length of the screw thread was a ridiculous 2 inches. I tried the other nut and found it similarly rusted and unwilling to turn. Each time I put the pliers down they vanished and I’d spend 5 minutes looking for them only to then loose the spanner.

I had 2 hours and fifteen minutes before my guests would arrive and immediately need to defecate. I looked in my toolkit and decided it would spray the bolts with WD40 if for no other reason than it smelt nice. First spray I had the tin round the wrong way and sprayed myself in the face. The nuts still would not turn. By now I was topless and perspiring heavily so I put on gardening gloves to help me with my grip. Bright green ones with yellow flowery patterns.

I managed to turn the nut once more and then slipped and bent the bolt. At this point I contemplated asking our neighbour of our visitors could use their toilet.

Toes came in and informed me she needed the toilet. I returned to find she hadn’t bothered flushing. I got back to work and managed two more turns on one nut and then my son needed the toilet. He flushed but left a fog in the bathroom that was thick and frightening yet made me oddly proud.

I realised, in a moment of genius, that the nuts were plastic and so maybe I could melt them. I hunched around the toilet I started burning one whilst making Beavis & Butthead giggling sounds. The nut glowed green and dripped plastic and I started tearing up from the fumes. It burnt, but seemed to only shrink and tighten. I had made things worse rather than better but using fire made me feel pleased so I did it again. And again until the lighter was out of gas and I was slightly high on fumes. The nuts were now balls of black kryptonite melted to the bolt.

Thus far, aside from fire, I had used pliers, a spanner, I’d tried to chisel them off with a hammer and flat head screw driver, I’d shouted at them, and I’d used a small craft knife to try whittle through them and cut my thumb twice. I had an hour before my visitors were due and could sense their bowels expanding. I knew they would arrive experiencing gastric distress and immediately need to sit. They’d discover a bathroom full of tools and toxic smoke and me finger painting with my own blood. I was spending a disturbing amount of time considering their bowels.

I had not tried secateurs yet so I grabbed them and tried to cut the nut. Parts started breaking away from the left side bolt and I hacked and snipped and it shattered. I slid the bolt free and whooped with delight and did a little dance that I call the Lava Lamp.

The right hand nut was harder to reach. I snipped and small pieces fell away. I clipped but could not get purchase to cut the nut. I held the bolt in my hand and wondered if I could break it. How far would I be able to bend it before the porcelain seat shattered? I bent the nut a little and relied on 2 years of my sons creatively aimed wee having weakened the bolt. I bent it a little more, then a little more. I bent it back again and it immediately snapped in my hand. 2 hours and 15 minutes of pain, toxic fumes and emotional toolkit distress and the bolt snapped in under a minute.

I attached the new seat and washed for a long time. Both kids ran in and shouted that the new seat was Cool and I did my lava dance again. I wanted my wife to come, view the seat and smile. I was topless, sweaty, dancing with green gardening gloves covered in WD40, sweat, grime, and what seemed to be engine oil. I apologised to my wife for the time it had taken to do the toilet seat. She patted me and said It’s ok, after all you did manage to change the seat in the end. I took the comment as praise.

The toolkit is back on top of the cupboard now. I am hoping an English person breaks in a steals it and gets deported to Skegness.

Anal Fish – Cautionary Camping Tales

Camping is unnatural. It’s a fraught state of affairs. It’s blighted and unnatural.

Here’s why - and every word is true.

1998 – Cromer (a bitterly cold pointless part of the UK)

There’s a man my age who most likely wakes up at night wondering if a nude photo of him is about to surface on the internet. 18 years ago he was in the shower the same campsite as me and by dint of the fact that he had the same trainers as me he ended up with a camera jammed under the stall door by 3 of my friends and a photo being taken from the floor up.

My friends then ran off cackling thinking they had just snapped a shot of me nude and proceeded to bump into me moments later by our tent. They did a double take and as they turned they saw a white faced guy dash from the stalls, dripping wet, head whipping every which way. He fled back to his tent and the next morning he was gone.

That night one of my friends ate a tea bag. The reason? He was 20 and someone had said “I dare you to.” During the night he threw it up in the middle of the tent.

1999 - Bournemouth (a bitterly cold pointless part of the UK)

There is a bag of white pills buried in a field. 

The pills found their way into my pocket while we were at a nightclub on way too much Red Bull and Vodka. We were on a Stag / Bucks weekend for two grooms and we were 21 and ridiculous. We danced topless until bouncers told us to put our shirts back on. We were all freshly tattooed, pierced and long haired. Damn but we were.......twats.

At some point during the evening I felt someone bump into me, then saw two bouncers chasing a chap with lank sweaty hair. Being drunk I thought nothing more of it and later we staggered back to our tents ready to pass out, safe in the knowledge that being 21 hangovers were cured by a cup of tea.

In the morning I woke up to find pills scattered all around the tent. I looked down and saw them spilling out of my back pocket. Each had a little bird logo in the middle. Loaded with red bull paranoia I gathered them together and ran out of my tent, convinced the polite English version of the DEA was about to appear.

I scraped a hole in the ground with bare fingers and buried the pills in their air tight bag and went and sat in my car, ready to tear out of the campsite at the sign of the first flashing blue light.

And the aftermath of the stag / bucks weekend? 

Of the 13 of us who went 3 returned home having made the leap from heterosexual to homosexual.

2003 - Nymboida River in NSW (a sun blasted alien landscape)

A little jut of land, trees, cask wine and no kids yet.

The first day there and I was shown a shovel for when I needed the toilet. Flies droned, the sun beat down, and my sister in laws dog snuffled around at everything. I delayed the moment where I would need the shovel for as long as I could until finally I marched off up the hill to find a secluded spot. Every secluded spot was draped in cobwebs or sparkling with potential snake scales.

Flies clustered on my face and t shirt, nudging at my lips for whatever moisture they could find. Finally deciding that one blighted dead spot of earth was as good as the next I dug a shallow hole and positioned myself uncomfortably.

Immediately the flies became Catholic Priests and started touching me inappropriately. The feeling of flies on your back side when you are trying to move a motion in bowel court is not one anyone should know.

Resolving to be done as swiftly as possible I sweated, focussed and wiped. I wondered if I could constipate myself through will alone for the next 5 days.

Finally I went to stand and being unused to this crouched fly blown posture I misjudged my balance – and fell backwards into my own pit toilet.

2004 - Barrington Tops NSW (a leafy place, almost seemed nice until…)

A lovely day reading. My wife lay on my blanket all day on the ground; I lay uncomfortably but tried to relax. My father in law lay unaware of rocks and stones and ants merrily reading and sipping wine.

Come tea time we needed a fire and my father in law went crashing into the bus singing to himself, snatching wood from everywhere and returning with a pile of the size of a shed. He called my wife over – Can you check my beard? I think there is a spider in it.

I went into the bush myself, hoping to find at least one piece of wood. I picked up a branch or two. A third one. I shook a spider off of a fourth one and then gave the branch back to the spider so as not to offend it. It watched me as I walked away and I watched it, so did not see the hole in the ground. I stumbled into it, seeing white paper and flies. I realised very quickly after stumbling that I had fallen into a previous campers pit toilet. So not content with falling into a pit toilet once, I had now done of for a second time but this time the shit was not my own.

Later we retired to bed. My wife gave me my blanket and she shrugged into her sleeping bag and commented – We’ll have to get you a sleeping bag one of these days – and promptly passed out. Drunk I passed out as well, and woke up shortly after shaking violently. I was freezing cold and incoherent. I sat up and pulled my knees to me, blowing my breath under the blanket to try and raise the temperature. My wife snored as I drew near death and I loathed her sleeping bag. I reached for the car keys, thinking that maybe it would be warmer in the car. I staggered out and went to the car, as I opened the door my wedding ring fell from my finger; I was so damn cold I was physically shrinking. I could feel my nipples starting to snap off. My teeth were shaking loose. I was an assortment of parts with the hinges breaking.

I sat in the car for ten minutes and started seeing wisps’ of light and hearing fairies giggling and grinding teeth at me. I went to my wife and woke her, stammering about dying and freezing and other such melodrama. She fetched her father - and indignity followed with him. He turned the car engine on, ran the heater and started packing me in his clothing. He put his shirts on my legs; he packed his trousers around my chest and then pulled two pairs of his boxers over my head. The shivering stopped as I warmed up, he clicked the engine off and I fell asleep, wrapped in everything my father in law owned and still wearing his boxer shorts on my head like a hat.

If anyone else has woken in the morning with their father in laws undies pulled down over their head and face please let me know so we can drink together.

2008 – Hell, NSW (Hell, hell, hell, hell)

We arrived at a place that I commented looked like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Sun blasted earth, desiccated trees, dry river bed and mad horses foaming and a feeling of abandonment, as though reason left a long time ago and left only despair.

We pulled up to a shack and climbed from the car, we had kids now and my son barrelled from the vehicle as I picked up my daughter. My father in law shouted cooee and the ranger came into sight. He had severe facial scaring and the Texas Chainsaw world lurched back at me.

My father in law commented that we’d like a spot by the water and before he could finish the faceless man snapped – I know what you want and you can’t have it. You camp near the river and those kids’ll die. I’ve seen it happen. They’ll die. You camp over there away from the water. If you don’t – there’ll be death.

He turned away and we camped where he had pointed. All night he played episodes of The Bill loudly from his shack of death, adding an additional scurrility to the scene as London Police sirens wailed and taunted me with urban murderous comfort.

Searching for firewood my then 3 year old son marched happily and assisted in dragging back tree trunks crawling with creatures the like of which Jules Verne could not have conceived. I carried small twigs and was complemented for finding kindling.

After that I largely withdrew from camping. My wife took the kids and I stayed home and wrote a book which was about living at a blighted sun scorched place previously owned by a man with no face and destroying it, burning it from the face of the planet. I charred away my horror and finished the book feeling purified.

The book almost got published, 5^th out of 362 entries. The publishers told me though that they found the premise and the place slightly unbelievable. I tucked the manuscript away and hoped camping had been contained within it never to be seen again.

2011 – The Road, Victoria

It hadn’t.

My wife inflicted a road trip on me Christmas last year and we ended up at Wilsons Promontory. The part about our car dying on the 23^rd December and the Ute I was forced to drive and such like I’ll leave out. Wilsons is stunning but I still managed to fall into a wombat hole in the pitch darkness. I was alone in the dark stuck in a hole hoping that the wombat wasn’t in it. I’d dropped the car keys as I fell, and my wallet, and had to find them by touch alone.

2012 – Scrap of dirt, NSW

I went camping a few months back without the wife. She was studying and there was a family meet up on a splint of land off a distant road by a river. I drove, got lost and finally found them and pitched the tent and lost all my tent pegs. Turns our they were under the tent I had just pitched but I wouldn’t know that until I took the tent down.  

The kids immediately settled in to camp life, stripping and splashing in the river. I saw the shovel and knew this would be a weekend of not only digging holes for me to use but also digging them for the kids and crouching as they went so they didn’t fall over.

Toes found it hilarious going to Daddy Toilet.

2012 – Bents Basin NSW

Last weekend I went camping again, sans wife. This time it was with work mates. Leaving, I apologised to the kids in advance.

Bear – We know Dad, you’ll get lost and shout.

Me – I will mate.

I did. But I found the site and being there first I picked a spot under a tree and in 42 degree heat I put up the tents on my own while the kids heckled me for swimming time. Both tents up – they weren’t beautiful but they were up – I took the kids to the lake. They both jumped in, I waded in, and the heat of the day leeched away and I sank down quite content. We splashed around for an hour before heading back and finding my colleagues setting up.

I lit a fire and I had the strange moment of experiencing someone less adept at camping than me and having to tell them how to put up a tent. Shortly afterwards  there was a cry of Yaahhhh ahhhhh oyyy shit as they saw the kind of spider I have become inured to.

I felt quite capable. I fed the kids, I had 2 tents standing, I had a beer and all was well.

The following day Bear burst into my tent at 5am with Angry Birds chortling on the iPad. I groaned but endured and was soon happily killing pigs with my Luke Skywalker Bird – the middle of no where with an iPad is easier.

The others woke up and one of my friends gave me bacon and a fried egg cooked in fried bread (considering I can barely cook beans when camping I found this remarkable) and I sipped tea and felt the day begin to sting heat wise.

We went to the lake and the kids threw themselves in and stayed there. I sat on the shore chatting and again thought maybe this isn’t so bad. We ate lunch, we smiled, we dwelt in a nice picturesque F Scott Fitzgerald like bubble of ‘just before’ – just before things went wrong.

Australia exists to bite you. Everything has teeth, I pointed out an ant to my less camping experienced then me friend and he shouted Wow oh bugger what the hell is that? The ant was about a centre metre long and had lengthy yellow teeth at the head end. If you listened closely you could hear its footsteps. Kookaburras sat in the trees with their meat shredding beaks. Spiders hung in the bushes with their teeth dripping.

All of it seemed less threatening to me though as for once there was someone there who was more intimidated than me. I even suggested we do a weekend camp at the place with no face so I could enjoy seeing someone more disturbed than I had been.

Post lunch we went back to the lake. The kids swam, I loosely watched my two from behind a book, and we chatted amiably about nothing much. In the water before us was something called a Bullrout fish. We didn’t know this, we didn’t know it had venomous spines on its back and its anus. What kind of creature needs anal spines?

My friend, who’d fed me bacon so who I liked even more than before, stepped into the water and the anus of the fish stabbed her.

A Bullrout sting – and she had three though we did not know what had stung her at that time – is spectacularly painful, with the patient being badly distressed, restless and often tearful. The pain worsened moment by moment and her distress grew. She said afterwards There was a point where I knew I was absolutely not OK and at that point I had to just give up and hope other people could take care of me. I hoped I could just pass out.

Her kids were frightened and asking if her foot would be amputated. The ambulance took an age to make its way to us. The rangers knew of nothing in the waters that could sting. The ambulance had no idea what it could be and the uncertainty added to the fear given a large percentage of Australia can kill you if you are within 1 metre of it.

Her foot was packed in ice and pressure bandaged and we waited for the ambulance. A local kiosk offered us free ice creams as by now we were dripping in sweat. My camping inexperienced friend ran repeated distances to hook up with the rangers and ambulance while his wife and I managed the six kids. Once the ambulance arrived they were as worried about him as they were about my fish footed friend. When it left all our mobile phones died due to low batteries and we had no way of getting updates on her condition. After 5 hours of being away and us trying to calm the kids and feed them she returned – with pain killers I can drink on.  

So we drank.

The next morning I started packing while the kids still slept. Bear got up around 6am and I stripped his tent down. Toes slept on despite me removing the top sheet of her tent. She looked very cute with her bare bum sticking out, but I’m a dad therefore I am obliged to find those moments adorable.

I made sounds about packing up being in relation to a birthday party Bear had to get to but in reality I was fleeing. I wanted home; I wanted an indoor toilet and refrigerator. I wanted a shop round the corner that sold Vanilla Coke. We made our goodbyes and piled into the car.

Bear - Dad, how long until you are lost?

Me – I’m hoping not to get lost

Five minutes later

Bear – Dad?

Me – Yes mate?

Bear – You’re lost.

Me – I am mate.

Bear – You need the M5 Dad, to Sydney. Remember

Me – I do mate, I just don’t know which direction Sydney is in.

Bear – Dad, Mum doesn’t get lost, and she is good at parking the car.

Me – I know that Bear.

Toes – Yeah Dad, Mum is a better driver than you.

Me – Thank you darling.

Toes – And she has boobies too.

Both kids cackled about my wife’s boobies and I drove in circles for ages until finally I saw a sign for Sydney and floored it. Once I was pointed in the right direction I was home to the boobies within half an hour.

Home.

I love home