C.S. Boag's Blog, page 7
June 18, 2014
Bullets at the Ballet
The fourth book in The Mister Rainbow series " Bullets at the Ballet" is due out the 23rd June 2014. Start now with Rainbow Red
A trip to Paris in the company of a beautiful dame would be many men’s idea of heaven. But a flight to France with the gorgeous Helen Damnation rapidly spirals into a journey to hell. Rainbow’s daughter’s missing and he doesn’t know who’s taken her – or why. Nor does he know where she might have gone – until he enlists the help of a childhood mate – now a spy – Ace Mollema. But can he trust the spook? Or the beautiful dame, for that matter? Above all, can he save the kid? Sparks fly when the Rainbow assumes a temporary identity to get a passport – and those sparks quickly turn to fire. Can Rainbow rescue his daughter? And if he does, can he work out the significance of the Bullets at the Ballet…
A trip to Paris in the company of a beautiful dame would be many men’s idea of heaven. But a flight to France with the gorgeous Helen Damnation rapidly spirals into a journey to hell. Rainbow’s daughter’s missing and he doesn’t know who’s taken her – or why. Nor does he know where she might have gone – until he enlists the help of a childhood mate – now a spy – Ace Mollema. But can he trust the spook? Or the beautiful dame, for that matter? Above all, can he save the kid? Sparks fly when the Rainbow assumes a temporary identity to get a passport – and those sparks quickly turn to fire. Can Rainbow rescue his daughter? And if he does, can he work out the significance of the Bullets at the Ballet…
June 13, 2014
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene
This beautiful little book is a picaresque novel depicting the travels of fools and rogues all the while shimmering like a well cut diamond.
More than any other writer I know, Greene subjugates style for story, and himself to what he wants to say. Cast on a spinnet of Cervantes Don Quixote, with the Bible and various communist tracts as bedfellows, this beautiful innocent wanders Spain with his Sancho Panza, in his little car, the seat 600.
But it is not Spain that these two traverse but the whole mongrel depth and breadth of human goodness and aspiration- significantly Friendship, Belief, Religion, Doubt, Understanding, Death, Politics and Hypocrisy.
Greene does not make the fatal error of sticking to the script- instead he does what all good writers from Shakespeare and Dickens to Updike and Amis do, and remembers the reader. After all, Cervantes work's 1000 pages of small print, by my estimate half a million words, and covers battles with flocks of sheep, smashing puppets mistaken for soldiers, and getting bounced in blankets. Greene keeps his eye on the main game- doubt- and plays that game superbly. In reading this book i have much better idea of what perturbed Greene himself.
Paying tribute to the real Quixote's observation that "There are no birds this year in last year's nests". as meaning nothing , "but the beauty is enough"; rendering fiction as fact; and accepting that the real Quixote was a madman who was yet an idealist of the first water; Greene's Quixote refers to God as a "mosquito" to prayer as "wax in the eternal ear"; and doubt as being far superior to firm belief. Such beautiful lines: "Sancho, Sancho, we disagree too profoundly to dispute".
Greene is the measure by which other writers should be judged.
More than any other writer I know, Greene subjugates style for story, and himself to what he wants to say. Cast on a spinnet of Cervantes Don Quixote, with the Bible and various communist tracts as bedfellows, this beautiful innocent wanders Spain with his Sancho Panza, in his little car, the seat 600.
But it is not Spain that these two traverse but the whole mongrel depth and breadth of human goodness and aspiration- significantly Friendship, Belief, Religion, Doubt, Understanding, Death, Politics and Hypocrisy.
Greene does not make the fatal error of sticking to the script- instead he does what all good writers from Shakespeare and Dickens to Updike and Amis do, and remembers the reader. After all, Cervantes work's 1000 pages of small print, by my estimate half a million words, and covers battles with flocks of sheep, smashing puppets mistaken for soldiers, and getting bounced in blankets. Greene keeps his eye on the main game- doubt- and plays that game superbly. In reading this book i have much better idea of what perturbed Greene himself.
Paying tribute to the real Quixote's observation that "There are no birds this year in last year's nests". as meaning nothing , "but the beauty is enough"; rendering fiction as fact; and accepting that the real Quixote was a madman who was yet an idealist of the first water; Greene's Quixote refers to God as a "mosquito" to prayer as "wax in the eternal ear"; and doubt as being far superior to firm belief. Such beautiful lines: "Sancho, Sancho, we disagree too profoundly to dispute".
Greene is the measure by which other writers should be judged.
May 27, 2014
"Runaway Jury" by John Grisham
The Runaway Jury by John GrishamMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What the hell, he teaches you how to plot and keep the thing running. And his research! It's all a bit predictable in an unpredictable sort of way. But the book's easy to pick up and hard to put down. Characters are pasteboard but that's what they are supposed to be, and everyone's evil or crooked or nasty or mean which makes the reader feel better for not being as bad as them.
The cover blurb promises a murder which never eventuated but if you're ever going to serve on a jury this would be an interesting limber-up and make you laugh when you are actually on one. It's what it is and might even make you give up smoking.
View all my reviews
May 15, 2014
The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared
I must say that I thought I was in for some belly laughs. A great title and simple prose. Quirky characters. So I read with great anticipation. I am still anticipating.
What on earth was all this about? It was clearly laughs but for me the laughs were few and far between. If it was a history lesson, it was surely a warped one. And if we were meant to take from it a philosophy of life, it was disappointing.
This Voltaire, travelling thin. Remember Candide and its philosophy went like " All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds".
That motto is replaced here by something like " It is what is and what ever will be will be". I take it as a fatalistic view of life Simple Allan advises presidents and comes up trumps; he gets in sticky situations and comes up clean; even murder doesn't matter.
Apart from the centenarian, there are various crooks and characters, I had difficulty identifying with them or caring about them. The author invites us to take this as absurdism but the essence of absurdism is a sense of nihilism, thats life's like that so don't take it seriously. But the trouble is that this work is not like life at all. Instead its more like a children's book, with out any moral sense.
The only bang in it is courtesy of The Karlsson Explosive Company.
What on earth was all this about? It was clearly laughs but for me the laughs were few and far between. If it was a history lesson, it was surely a warped one. And if we were meant to take from it a philosophy of life, it was disappointing.
This Voltaire, travelling thin. Remember Candide and its philosophy went like " All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds".
That motto is replaced here by something like " It is what is and what ever will be will be". I take it as a fatalistic view of life Simple Allan advises presidents and comes up trumps; he gets in sticky situations and comes up clean; even murder doesn't matter.
Apart from the centenarian, there are various crooks and characters, I had difficulty identifying with them or caring about them. The author invites us to take this as absurdism but the essence of absurdism is a sense of nihilism, thats life's like that so don't take it seriously. But the trouble is that this work is not like life at all. Instead its more like a children's book, with out any moral sense.
The only bang in it is courtesy of The Karlsson Explosive Company.
May 8, 2014
Fahreneit 451
Or is it "Celsius 232.7 repeater" by Bray Cackleberry
The title’s a nonsense. There is no one type of paper used in books and therefore no set temperature at which it will ignite. As a title, Fahrenheit 451 is gimmicky and sloppy. The same goes for the rest of the book.
There are some great novels warning of the dangers of social control, primary among them 1984, Brave New World and Animal Farm. These three works are all carefully worked out and beautifully written. There is an air of reality about this world of the future. As a result, the warnings the books contain therefore work.
But F-111, or whatever it’s called, is quite simply idiotic. There is nothing real about it at all. The author has taken one idea and not bothered to expand it one iota. It is a solitary mono-thought. The fireman’s job is to light fires, not extinguish them. There is a light attempt to weave a love story out of that idea. It fails abjectly. The people are robots. Who’s doing what to whom? Who cares?
How can works of literature be regarded as the sole repository of thought? The mind thinks. People discuss. Why then can the mere burning of books be expected to extinguish thought? It doesn’t.
What does the discovery of books depend on? Accidental discovery or dobbers. How inefficient in what we are supposed to believe is a highly efficient world. How are they destroyed? By fire. How hit-and-miss.
And yet in this hit-and-miss, accidental, inefficient world we are to believe that no one protests, no one objects, no one thinks. There isn’t a highly visible army or police force, just firemen. And is this one city or town, or is it a country or the world? Are books other than literature involved? If so, how do they maintain their fire-engine without a maintenance manual? If not, who decides what is inflammatory material and what isn’t? There is no sign of a review-board. Again who decides what is worthy of punishment and what that punishment should be - again
Say, like Animal Farm, it is an allegory. Does it work on that level? Not for me. It is too farcical. At no time did I as reader say to myself: Hey, this could happen! The main reason? The situation is allegedly brought about by, and policed by, non-readers. But non-readers have a contempt for books that lessens their perceived danger. Censorship is good but stopping publication is better. But there is no evidence of either.
The work is slight. It could have been so much better had the writer sat down and nutted it out: its implications and how the idea could be extended. There is nothing in this book that goes anywhere within cooee of the Thought Police, the Malthusian Belt, or Big Brother, or that wonderful aphorism: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
He didn’t even bother to get his temperatures right.
The title’s a nonsense. There is no one type of paper used in books and therefore no set temperature at which it will ignite. As a title, Fahrenheit 451 is gimmicky and sloppy. The same goes for the rest of the book.
There are some great novels warning of the dangers of social control, primary among them 1984, Brave New World and Animal Farm. These three works are all carefully worked out and beautifully written. There is an air of reality about this world of the future. As a result, the warnings the books contain therefore work.
But F-111, or whatever it’s called, is quite simply idiotic. There is nothing real about it at all. The author has taken one idea and not bothered to expand it one iota. It is a solitary mono-thought. The fireman’s job is to light fires, not extinguish them. There is a light attempt to weave a love story out of that idea. It fails abjectly. The people are robots. Who’s doing what to whom? Who cares?
How can works of literature be regarded as the sole repository of thought? The mind thinks. People discuss. Why then can the mere burning of books be expected to extinguish thought? It doesn’t.
What does the discovery of books depend on? Accidental discovery or dobbers. How inefficient in what we are supposed to believe is a highly efficient world. How are they destroyed? By fire. How hit-and-miss.
And yet in this hit-and-miss, accidental, inefficient world we are to believe that no one protests, no one objects, no one thinks. There isn’t a highly visible army or police force, just firemen. And is this one city or town, or is it a country or the world? Are books other than literature involved? If so, how do they maintain their fire-engine without a maintenance manual? If not, who decides what is inflammatory material and what isn’t? There is no sign of a review-board. Again who decides what is worthy of punishment and what that punishment should be - again
Say, like Animal Farm, it is an allegory. Does it work on that level? Not for me. It is too farcical. At no time did I as reader say to myself: Hey, this could happen! The main reason? The situation is allegedly brought about by, and policed by, non-readers. But non-readers have a contempt for books that lessens their perceived danger. Censorship is good but stopping publication is better. But there is no evidence of either.
The work is slight. It could have been so much better had the writer sat down and nutted it out: its implications and how the idea could be extended. There is nothing in this book that goes anywhere within cooee of the Thought Police, the Malthusian Belt, or Big Brother, or that wonderful aphorism: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
He didn’t even bother to get his temperatures right.
April 23, 2014
Still My Favourite -Fergie
To many people, Fergie is still Lady Sarah Ferguson, ex wife of Prince Andrew, writer of children's books and generally interesting.
But to us Fergie is and forever will be our little grey 20 horse power tractor: 60 years old, battered, rusty, but still going and always handy.
We take it into the forest to collect fire wood, it ploughs our paddocks and digs our post holes, it has even pulled a tow truck out of a bog!
During the winter we place a padded horse rug with Western Saddlery along the side over the Fergie to keep it warm. It will start when it feels like it. People say Fergies tend to rear up over backwards, although ours never has.
So, yes, it's a bit cantankerous, but it's almost human and 60 years old.What else could you expect of it?
But to us Fergie is and forever will be our little grey 20 horse power tractor: 60 years old, battered, rusty, but still going and always handy.
We take it into the forest to collect fire wood, it ploughs our paddocks and digs our post holes, it has even pulled a tow truck out of a bog!
During the winter we place a padded horse rug with Western Saddlery along the side over the Fergie to keep it warm. It will start when it feels like it. People say Fergies tend to rear up over backwards, although ours never has.
So, yes, it's a bit cantankerous, but it's almost human and 60 years old.What else could you expect of it?
April 14, 2014
Mister Rainbow in Drop Dead Gorgeous
DROP DEAD GORGEOUS
The kid’s just turned eleven – or maybe it’s fifteen – and I’m taking her out to celebrate her birthday, after me and the ex had the following discussion on the subject:
Salina: ‘I’ve just found Mr Perfect on the internet and this is the only day he can take me out so you’re looking after Imogene.’
Me: ‘But I’ve got this job, Sal, I’m busy.’
Salina: ‘Then you can just get yourself unbusy.’
*
Imogene’s trotting beside me, clutching a notebook and looking like something the cat dragged in. I make with the conversation.
‘What’s with the papyrus?’
‘You’re joking, right?’
I want this to be a nice day. Call it guilt or call it wishful thinking.
‘Help me here, kid.’
So she helps me and the way she helps me is by telling me that what she’s got in her hand is her textbook.
‘I write down all the things you tell me, daddy. The cases you get and how you solve them. Your tips on what to do and what not to do and the funny way you talk. In short, how to be a private detective, because that’s what I’m going to be as soon as I’m old enough.’
Bloody hell.
‘Why don’t you become something normal, kid, like the chief executive of a finance company?’
Her answer comes back like a shot from a Browning.
‘Because of your number one rule in life, daddy. And that is that if money does anything in this world, it does bad.’
As it happens, right now I’m loaded, having just scored a motza for a job. And because I don’t like dough all that much, I want to get myself unloaded.
‘I’ll tell you what, kid – let’s make a day of it.’ I ruffle the kid’s hair – I read in this magazine once when I was waiting to get a broken leg fixed, that kids like having their hair ruffled. ‘We can start by buying you some new clobber.’
The kid hauls off from the hair-ruffling and looks harder than she ought to at my own get-up-and-go – the too-tight pink jacket I got from the Salvation Army in Matraville during an all-you-can-fit-in-one-bag-for-five-dollars sale, the oversized black daks from Vinnies, the green hat from Lifeline, and the white-sided co-respondent shoes I always wear.
‘What about you, daddy – couldn’t you get something nice, too?’
‘I don’t do nice, kid.’ She’s too far away for me to do the hair-ruffle again, so I just do the tight-in elbow-riff on the coat. ‘Like I say: money – and all the accoutrements that go with it – is for the pigeons.’
We’re in the top-end of town – where jokers are too rich to think of anything but money and par consequence shops for the poor have been hounded away – and instead find a boutique selling clothes for girls that want to be more grown-up than they ought to be and when we come out, that’s what the kid looks.
‘Where to now, kid?’
‘What about an expensive restaurant, daddy?’
‘You mean McDonald’s?’ I glance around. There are jewellery-stores, places selling men’s wear that can afford the apostrophe, and cafes with university-educated baristas in them. But fast-food franchises are thin on the ground. ‘I guess we’ll have to go to another part of town for that, Immo.’
The kid whacks me with the book. The whack’s part pretend, but also part like she means it, just like my comment about the eatery.
‘I mean a proper place, daddy.’
So we find a joint where you got to wait for the maitre d’ to find you a table, like you got too much wealth to find one for yourself, only I clap eyes on a dame to die for, and am suddenly able to select a table all by myself.
The kid hesitates.
‘Are you sure this is where you want to be, daddy?’
At the next table, where I’ll be able to reciprocate her interest without turning my head too much – golden hair tickling shoulders that the shoe-straps of her little red dress are having terrible difficulty staying attached to, a gorgeous face, and beautiful eyes – the dame’s looking my way far more often than she would if all she wanted to ask was the time.
‘Sure I’m sure.’ I change the subject before the kid puts up the sort of fight that fathers are always going to lose. ‘Now how about showing me what’s in that book of yours.’
So, after we order our food, the kid shows me what’s in the book, and what I see in the book – between glances that tell me the beautiful dame’s still checking me out – is little drawings of a figure that might be me doing something like a cross between ballet and kung-fu, interspersed with writing under headings like THE HOOD WITH NO HANDS, DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN and HORSES FOR CORPSES.
And at the end of it all, a GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED.
The dame’s shifted in her seat so that one beautiful breast is more on display than it was before, but I manage to stick with the program.
‘So what’s with this glossary?’
The kid takes a break from eating to tell me, while I hear the dulcet tones of the dame telling a wait-person to bring her a queen-serve milkshake, so that she can add to her already well-shaken curves.
‘You know the funny way you talk, daddy?’
I hoist the shoulders. My upbringing – after my mum topped herself and my dad dumped me on a maiden-aunt that was also a gumshoe – consisted just about solely of how to be a private-detective, and old black-and-white gangster movies, but that doesn’t mean –
‘It don’t seem all that funny to me, kid.’
‘See? And that’s just what I’ve written.’
I note that the kid has spotted the fact that me and the dame are exchanging more than the odd glance, so I assure her, Yeah, I see what she’s written, like I got a lot of enthusiasm for the fact, and I also try and pretend I got my mind on the job while the kid goes on explaining:
‘So I’ve put down here about dulcet tones and how you call women dames and men jokers and guns gats and equalisers and places joints. And how in your world everyone’s got moves and counter-moves and people are hoods and punters and the fuzz and palookas.
And then there’s your descriptions of women, like you’re trying to establish some sort of supremacy over them that you’ll never have in real life – expressions like knockout and zinger and shaped like a DNA molecule – I suspect that’s your update on hourglass. And if you don’t mind me saying, it all seems to – oh, I don’t know – reveal how sadly isolated you are, daddy, and sometimes I wish –’
Suddenly the kid’s got my attention. In her new clobber – demure dress and nice, heavy, roll-neck sweater – she looks so grown-up that she needs more protection than I been thinking necessary to provide her with lately – and the undivided attention that ought to go with it.
I knuckle her hand.
‘Wish what, honeybunch?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She takes her hand away and a deep breath, and it looks like she might be a lot sadder than her big bright smile is trying to make out she is. ‘All right, I’ll say it.’ She glances towards the dame. ‘That you weren’t so completely vulnerable to women.’
The world seems topsy-turvy all of a sudden. This is the sort of advice I should be giving the kid, not the other way round. I start to deny the truth of what she’s saying but it’s like a deflect-move in aikido, as though by my own unaided efforts I’ve managed to put myself flat on my back on the floor.
‘You got someone specific in mind, kid?’
The kid’s mouth sets in a grim little line until she’s able to speak again, at which time she nods in the direction of the dame.
‘Yes, that horrible woman at the next table who, ever since we sat down, has been ogling you like you’re the next course on her menu.’
Somewhere in that book of hers would be words to the effect of Lies are the beginning of the end in any familial relationship. So instead of going into denial, I shrug the trapezia and tell her:
‘So what do you want me to do about it?’
Maybe I’ve taught her more than I thought, but a mischievous look comes into eyes that appear to have grown up with the clothes.
‘When that dame makes her move – ’
I interrupt her.
‘What do you mean – makes her move?’
‘You know, comes onto you.’
Why am I surprised? This is the 21st century and the kid’s a child of the 21st century and in the 21st century, unlike the one I was brought up in, the male of the species hasn’t got it all his own way any more.
But I still got to put up a fight.
‘Come on, kid, I got about as much attraction to that dame as the underside of a turtle.’
The kid doesn’t deviate.
‘As I said, when she comes onto you, I want you to tell her as follows.’
She’s busy riffling through her book until she finds what she’s looking for and when she’s found it she swings it around to face me and points something out, just as I hear the dame at the next table get to her feet and start towards us.
I can feel the dame’s presence beside me, smell her scent, sense the absolute promise of what she’s likely to be offering me.
But at the same time the kid’s putting the squeakers on me, whose birthday it is.
I read what she’s showing me.
‘Just that?’
‘Just that.’
‘Hi, handsome.’ The dame’s so close that her portside thigh’s massaging my shoulder, and when I look up she’s got the milkshake in one hand and her calling-card in the other. ‘Here’s my number if you’re interested in getting in touch.’
I glance across at the kid. The thigh’s a 21st century thigh, the kind of thigh that comes courtesy of an expensive gymnasium and a personal trainer, and it’s attached to the kind of beauty that only pays you a visit once in a lifetime.
‘Say it, daddy!’
‘Do I got to?’
‘Yes, you got to.’
So I take a deep breath and with my eyes closed so I’m not blinded by all the beauty perched beside me, I say the words.
That’s when I open my eyes and that’s when I see what the dame looks like when she’s upset.
‘What did you say?’
I try it with my eyes open.
‘Drop dead, gorgeous.’
*
The suit I got from the outfitter’s next to the eating-house deprived me of the rest of the money I had, but the kid made me buy it, just like she –
‘You didn’t have a choice, daddy’ – she’s gripping my hand and she’s a kid again, a kid that’s just been out on a birthday-treat with her dad, a kid that had her dad all to herself for once, a happy kid – ‘With that milkshake all over you, you had to get something else to wear and that was the only shop there was.’
*
When Salina opens the door, she’s looking at the ground and she’s looking unhappy. I still put the question.
‘How did it go?’
She still doesn’t look at me.
‘The guy wasn’t the one whose picture was in Man of Your Dreams, more like his idiot cousin.’
That’s when she looks up and that’s when she sees me.
‘Jee-sus!’ she says.
I step back. In my experience, Salina hits me just after she says something like that.
‘What’s up?’
Salina takes a deep breath and although she’s taking delivery of Imogene it’s like the kid’s not even there.
‘I don’t like saying this, Rainbow, but you look drop-dead gorgeous.’
The kid’s just turned eleven – or maybe it’s fifteen – and I’m taking her out to celebrate her birthday, after me and the ex had the following discussion on the subject:
Salina: ‘I’ve just found Mr Perfect on the internet and this is the only day he can take me out so you’re looking after Imogene.’
Me: ‘But I’ve got this job, Sal, I’m busy.’
Salina: ‘Then you can just get yourself unbusy.’
*
Imogene’s trotting beside me, clutching a notebook and looking like something the cat dragged in. I make with the conversation.
‘What’s with the papyrus?’
‘You’re joking, right?’
I want this to be a nice day. Call it guilt or call it wishful thinking.
‘Help me here, kid.’
So she helps me and the way she helps me is by telling me that what she’s got in her hand is her textbook.
‘I write down all the things you tell me, daddy. The cases you get and how you solve them. Your tips on what to do and what not to do and the funny way you talk. In short, how to be a private detective, because that’s what I’m going to be as soon as I’m old enough.’
Bloody hell.
‘Why don’t you become something normal, kid, like the chief executive of a finance company?’
Her answer comes back like a shot from a Browning.
‘Because of your number one rule in life, daddy. And that is that if money does anything in this world, it does bad.’
As it happens, right now I’m loaded, having just scored a motza for a job. And because I don’t like dough all that much, I want to get myself unloaded.
‘I’ll tell you what, kid – let’s make a day of it.’ I ruffle the kid’s hair – I read in this magazine once when I was waiting to get a broken leg fixed, that kids like having their hair ruffled. ‘We can start by buying you some new clobber.’
The kid hauls off from the hair-ruffling and looks harder than she ought to at my own get-up-and-go – the too-tight pink jacket I got from the Salvation Army in Matraville during an all-you-can-fit-in-one-bag-for-five-dollars sale, the oversized black daks from Vinnies, the green hat from Lifeline, and the white-sided co-respondent shoes I always wear.
‘What about you, daddy – couldn’t you get something nice, too?’
‘I don’t do nice, kid.’ She’s too far away for me to do the hair-ruffle again, so I just do the tight-in elbow-riff on the coat. ‘Like I say: money – and all the accoutrements that go with it – is for the pigeons.’
We’re in the top-end of town – where jokers are too rich to think of anything but money and par consequence shops for the poor have been hounded away – and instead find a boutique selling clothes for girls that want to be more grown-up than they ought to be and when we come out, that’s what the kid looks.
‘Where to now, kid?’
‘What about an expensive restaurant, daddy?’
‘You mean McDonald’s?’ I glance around. There are jewellery-stores, places selling men’s wear that can afford the apostrophe, and cafes with university-educated baristas in them. But fast-food franchises are thin on the ground. ‘I guess we’ll have to go to another part of town for that, Immo.’
The kid whacks me with the book. The whack’s part pretend, but also part like she means it, just like my comment about the eatery.
‘I mean a proper place, daddy.’
So we find a joint where you got to wait for the maitre d’ to find you a table, like you got too much wealth to find one for yourself, only I clap eyes on a dame to die for, and am suddenly able to select a table all by myself.
The kid hesitates.
‘Are you sure this is where you want to be, daddy?’
At the next table, where I’ll be able to reciprocate her interest without turning my head too much – golden hair tickling shoulders that the shoe-straps of her little red dress are having terrible difficulty staying attached to, a gorgeous face, and beautiful eyes – the dame’s looking my way far more often than she would if all she wanted to ask was the time.
‘Sure I’m sure.’ I change the subject before the kid puts up the sort of fight that fathers are always going to lose. ‘Now how about showing me what’s in that book of yours.’
So, after we order our food, the kid shows me what’s in the book, and what I see in the book – between glances that tell me the beautiful dame’s still checking me out – is little drawings of a figure that might be me doing something like a cross between ballet and kung-fu, interspersed with writing under headings like THE HOOD WITH NO HANDS, DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN and HORSES FOR CORPSES.
And at the end of it all, a GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED.
The dame’s shifted in her seat so that one beautiful breast is more on display than it was before, but I manage to stick with the program.
‘So what’s with this glossary?’
The kid takes a break from eating to tell me, while I hear the dulcet tones of the dame telling a wait-person to bring her a queen-serve milkshake, so that she can add to her already well-shaken curves.
‘You know the funny way you talk, daddy?’
I hoist the shoulders. My upbringing – after my mum topped herself and my dad dumped me on a maiden-aunt that was also a gumshoe – consisted just about solely of how to be a private-detective, and old black-and-white gangster movies, but that doesn’t mean –
‘It don’t seem all that funny to me, kid.’
‘See? And that’s just what I’ve written.’
I note that the kid has spotted the fact that me and the dame are exchanging more than the odd glance, so I assure her, Yeah, I see what she’s written, like I got a lot of enthusiasm for the fact, and I also try and pretend I got my mind on the job while the kid goes on explaining:
‘So I’ve put down here about dulcet tones and how you call women dames and men jokers and guns gats and equalisers and places joints. And how in your world everyone’s got moves and counter-moves and people are hoods and punters and the fuzz and palookas.
And then there’s your descriptions of women, like you’re trying to establish some sort of supremacy over them that you’ll never have in real life – expressions like knockout and zinger and shaped like a DNA molecule – I suspect that’s your update on hourglass. And if you don’t mind me saying, it all seems to – oh, I don’t know – reveal how sadly isolated you are, daddy, and sometimes I wish –’
Suddenly the kid’s got my attention. In her new clobber – demure dress and nice, heavy, roll-neck sweater – she looks so grown-up that she needs more protection than I been thinking necessary to provide her with lately – and the undivided attention that ought to go with it.
I knuckle her hand.
‘Wish what, honeybunch?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She takes her hand away and a deep breath, and it looks like she might be a lot sadder than her big bright smile is trying to make out she is. ‘All right, I’ll say it.’ She glances towards the dame. ‘That you weren’t so completely vulnerable to women.’
The world seems topsy-turvy all of a sudden. This is the sort of advice I should be giving the kid, not the other way round. I start to deny the truth of what she’s saying but it’s like a deflect-move in aikido, as though by my own unaided efforts I’ve managed to put myself flat on my back on the floor.
‘You got someone specific in mind, kid?’
The kid’s mouth sets in a grim little line until she’s able to speak again, at which time she nods in the direction of the dame.
‘Yes, that horrible woman at the next table who, ever since we sat down, has been ogling you like you’re the next course on her menu.’
Somewhere in that book of hers would be words to the effect of Lies are the beginning of the end in any familial relationship. So instead of going into denial, I shrug the trapezia and tell her:
‘So what do you want me to do about it?’
Maybe I’ve taught her more than I thought, but a mischievous look comes into eyes that appear to have grown up with the clothes.
‘When that dame makes her move – ’
I interrupt her.
‘What do you mean – makes her move?’
‘You know, comes onto you.’
Why am I surprised? This is the 21st century and the kid’s a child of the 21st century and in the 21st century, unlike the one I was brought up in, the male of the species hasn’t got it all his own way any more.
But I still got to put up a fight.
‘Come on, kid, I got about as much attraction to that dame as the underside of a turtle.’
The kid doesn’t deviate.
‘As I said, when she comes onto you, I want you to tell her as follows.’
She’s busy riffling through her book until she finds what she’s looking for and when she’s found it she swings it around to face me and points something out, just as I hear the dame at the next table get to her feet and start towards us.
I can feel the dame’s presence beside me, smell her scent, sense the absolute promise of what she’s likely to be offering me.
But at the same time the kid’s putting the squeakers on me, whose birthday it is.
I read what she’s showing me.
‘Just that?’
‘Just that.’
‘Hi, handsome.’ The dame’s so close that her portside thigh’s massaging my shoulder, and when I look up she’s got the milkshake in one hand and her calling-card in the other. ‘Here’s my number if you’re interested in getting in touch.’
I glance across at the kid. The thigh’s a 21st century thigh, the kind of thigh that comes courtesy of an expensive gymnasium and a personal trainer, and it’s attached to the kind of beauty that only pays you a visit once in a lifetime.
‘Say it, daddy!’
‘Do I got to?’
‘Yes, you got to.’
So I take a deep breath and with my eyes closed so I’m not blinded by all the beauty perched beside me, I say the words.
That’s when I open my eyes and that’s when I see what the dame looks like when she’s upset.
‘What did you say?’
I try it with my eyes open.
‘Drop dead, gorgeous.’
*
The suit I got from the outfitter’s next to the eating-house deprived me of the rest of the money I had, but the kid made me buy it, just like she –
‘You didn’t have a choice, daddy’ – she’s gripping my hand and she’s a kid again, a kid that’s just been out on a birthday-treat with her dad, a kid that had her dad all to herself for once, a happy kid – ‘With that milkshake all over you, you had to get something else to wear and that was the only shop there was.’
*
When Salina opens the door, she’s looking at the ground and she’s looking unhappy. I still put the question.
‘How did it go?’
She still doesn’t look at me.
‘The guy wasn’t the one whose picture was in Man of Your Dreams, more like his idiot cousin.’
That’s when she looks up and that’s when she sees me.
‘Jee-sus!’ she says.
I step back. In my experience, Salina hits me just after she says something like that.
‘What’s up?’
Salina takes a deep breath and although she’s taking delivery of Imogene it’s like the kid’s not even there.
‘I don’t like saying this, Rainbow, but you look drop-dead gorgeous.’
Mister Rainbow RED "The Hood with No Hands"
Mister Rainbow in the case of "The Hood with No Hands" will be available on Amazon, Google and Apple for $4.99 from 1/5/2014 to 31/5/2014
April 13, 2014
The Ferret House
Judith installs me in the Ferret House (my writing room) every morning together with a thermos of coffee and home made bread and then she is free of me for a few hours, maybe for a good part of the day?
Various other creatures- like ants, field mice, and dogs try to invade , but it is largely mine. Phew
Various other creatures- like ants, field mice, and dogs try to invade , but it is largely mine. Phew
April 9, 2014
Our Front Door
Judith and I live in an old miner's cottage. Old miner's cottages might suit old miners, but we've had to make a few changes for it to suit us.
Like a north facing addition with double glazing to keep us warm during the cold winters, and a new front door. We love our door, Judith took a photos of a door in Paris with Cat eyes, i did a drawing from it; our wood artist friend built it from yellow box and our friend Paddy Robinson , a glass artist made the windows in it. During the day we can trace rainbows across the floor and walls and from the outside at night it looks like a cathedral. All that in Wattle Flat!
Like a north facing addition with double glazing to keep us warm during the cold winters, and a new front door. We love our door, Judith took a photos of a door in Paris with Cat eyes, i did a drawing from it; our wood artist friend built it from yellow box and our friend Paddy Robinson , a glass artist made the windows in it. During the day we can trace rainbows across the floor and walls and from the outside at night it looks like a cathedral. All that in Wattle Flat!
