MEATPIES, BIRDSONG AND OTHER STUFF TO MESS YOUR LIFE UP.

Unfortunately among my all too few talents I am unable to list the ability to see into the future. To illustrate this my only foray into the share market, other than Telstra of course where the Government apparently sold my publicly held shares to their city mates, was during the Gulf War when I bought into an American arms contractor just before Saddam “the coward” Hussain surrendered. Let me tell you every silver lining has a cloud. I quickly reasserted my previous pacifist and socialist credentials by renewing my membership to the union bar. This inability at second sight I have been informed is genetic on my father’s side. I have been reliably told, he died when I was still quite small, that lying on his death bed his last words were, “don’t fuzz I’ll get up in a minute.” It isn’t clear if he said this to reassure those around him or an example prophetic hindsight. Last week I almost spoke my own final words when overtaking on the Burwood Highway. “Can’t this idiot go faster,” wouldn’t make a brilliant epitaph.
My wife has invented a word: seeit, as in: “I will believe it when I seeit.” Or “I’ll seeit if it happens.” I only have to say something like, ”I’ll fix that bathroom light at the weekend,” for her to seeit.
For example the other day I was walking down the road enjoying the ten minutes that pass as twilight during this time of the year. Suddenly when I was outside the video store I saw a ghost. Not the shadow of a tree moving in a strangely unworldly way but a spectre, a shade, a spook, a real 100% Technicolor ghost. It’s not the sort of thing you expect without the aid of a major hallucinogen. Unfortunately I hadn’t taken anything so it scared me shit less. He, the ghost was a boy, or an ugly girl with a haircut like a lavatory brush, looked at me accusingly and then faded like a cheap b-movie special effect. The whole apparition lasted less than a minute but was very real and very unnerving. Above everything it gave me a feeling that something somewhere was very wrong, or something was about to happen that shouldn’t. Call it a portent perhaps. When I got home I told my wife and she said she’d seenit too.
There are those who will tell you that when a butterfly flaps it’s wings in Central Park, whoosh !, a cyclone rips Darwin to pieces. To which I reply, “never trust a bloody American.” The point is that the scientific laws of cause and effect aren’t as simple as they at first appear.
So one day I’m sitting on my veranda with my stream side fly tying kit, trying to match a little bug in a jar that I’d collected the day before, when Penni pops round to see if I want a piece of cheese cake.
“I didn’t know you baked?” I asked
“I don’t but I thought we could go to the deli, and you could buy me some.”
I’m always a bit dubious about shop bought cheesecake because my mother, who would be sainted if she wasn’t Jewish, was such an expert at it. She couldn’t cook anything else in the world that was even vaguely edible so every day we’d ask, “have you make a cheese cake mum?” Most of the time she’d say something like, ”no I’ve make lochshen pudding,” and our hearts, not to mention or stomachs, would drop.
I decided not to go to the Deli in case Ron was there. Since Gelatti had left him he had been eating there so regularly that Margaret, the owner, had stopped charging him service, and started charging him rent. There was even a rumour she was going to name a dish after him. It had got to the stage that at least once a week she took the day off and he did the cooking.
So Penni and I went to the Olde Maide Tea Room, ordered a Devonshire tea, and decided to see who could put the most whipped cream on a scone. It still seemed like a good idea when we were standing on the pavement outside having been asked to leave. We won’t be going back there again, apparently. So we bought a pie each from the post office and while they were heating up in the microwave passed the time by sticking some suggestions in the suggestions box on the counter. “Never wash colours and whites together on a warm wash,” “at the supermarket pay for each item that will be rounded down separately, not only will you save money but you’ll get a chance to really get to know the cashier.” Then pies in hand we went for a walk in the woods.
In England the birds sing, in America they warble, in China they are silent afraid that if someone sees them their feet will become a local delicacy. Australian birds squawk, and those that don’t squawk laugh. While walking with Penni I discovered a third type of Australian birds, the stuka birds. These fly past silently and dive-bomb shit on your head while their friends squawk and laugh. Penni told me that it was a sign of good luck, a logic that escaped me. She told me the luck was that she had a tissue. I bent my head forward and she wiped my scalp clean, then somehow as we were standing close we kissed. Just like that. She tasted of meat pie.
Little causes can have big effects, and you can’t always seeit coming.