

Year of the Rant

Part One: Ignition Point

Autumn, 2013.

By Lachlan Barker

Copyright 2014 by Lachlan Barker

Smashwords Edition

With thanks to all those who read this rubbish weekly.

### Contents

1 - Bad Karma

2 - Please Don't Walk on the F*#@ing Road

3 - Welcome to Al-Al land

4 - I'm Not One to Complain (much)

5 - I'm Sure I Unplugged the Oven

6 – I Am Divided Like the Clock

7 - Organic Life and More Roadway Idiots

8 - Clinton, There's a Man in a Dog Suit Behind You

9 - Since When has Being a Loud Mouth Been Genetic!?

10 - A Naturopath in the Bottlo and Hula Dancers in the Yurt

11 - How Many Men Does it Take to Find a Piece of Software?

12 - How to, and Definitely How Not to, Coach a Children's Sporting Team

13 - I Feel Like a Woman

About the Author

More Works by Lachlan Barker

Connect with Lachlan Barker

Read the first chapter of Lachlan's first fiction work – The Destruction of Lasseter's Road

### 1 - Bad Karma

Jonathon Ross the British journalist once did a show called 'Only in America', which featured some of the outlandish things that we've come to expect from the place.

One article that stuck in my mind was a bloke who had modified his car engine bay to cook his dinner as he drove home.

So before leaving work he would wrap a steak and potatoes in alfoil place it in the modified oven heated by the engine block, drive home and voila!, dinner ready as he stepped out of the car.

I mention this because this series of articles I'm doing could likewise be titled, 'Only in Byron Bay'.

The attached photo is one I took when I was in a local pharmacy.

Most businesses have a menacing sign saying something like, "It is the policy of Try-and-Save to prosecute shoplifters to the full extent of the law".

Either this particular pharmacy had tried threatening shoplifters and it didn't work, or the staff and owner were canny Bay-ites who knew that Karma is a more powerful force here in the Rainbow Region than the cops.

And while I'm on the topic of shoplifting, those who know me well will tell you that it is no point calling me at six in the evening (or morning for that matter) because I'm watching The Simpsons.

Many think The Simpsons is typical American crap, but I've learned a lot there and one of those things was where the term shoplifting came from.

Traders on the Levant sold their wares from tents in the market place and shoplifters would literally lift the corner of the tent, reach under and grab what they could before, one would think, mounting a fast camel and high-tailing it into the desert.

It was quite a good episode and it starts out with the desert folk going about their lives before Moses came down off Mt Sinai with the ten commandments.

Homer the thief is chatting with Lenny the carver of graven idols and Rohab the adulterer.

Suddenly a shout goes up, "Moses is coming, everybody get busy!"

So Homer starts nicking stuff, Lenny begins hammering furiously on his stone figurines and Rohab starts cracking onto a nearby desert maiden.

Then Moses arrives and reads out his commandments among which are of course 'thou shalt not steal', so Homer's got to get a job, 'thou shalt not worship graven idols', so Lenny's out of business and 'thou shalt not commit adultery', so the scene ends with Rohab saying "looks like the party's over".

Which loosely brings me to one night when I was in a local hostelry when a load of shouting began and a naked man was trying to get into the pub.

He was either on a trip, not uncommon up here, or a nudist, very common up here, or, now that I think about it, both.

Anyway the security staff assembled and dealt with him gently, they're used to events like this I promise you that and gently but firmly told him he couldn't come in.

After some moments he wandered off into the night and things settled down.

A bit later I asked one of the staff members why they wouldn't let him in and they said, "he wasn't wearing any shoes".

Only in Byron Bay.

### 2 - Please Don't Walk on the F*#@ing Road

I rounded the corner of Burns st earlier this week and found these two young women right in front of me, on a slick, rainy road. I had often wished for, and truly never as much as that moment, a 40mm anti-tank cannon to mount on my car so I could give those tourists who come to my home, break all the rules and trash the place something to remember me by.

The girls in this photo would have been the first to feel some of my high-velocity shells, particularly because just one hundred metres or so from where these soon-to-be-smudges-on-the-asphalt are walking is this sign.

It brings to mind a joke that always amused me.

A guy is driving down the road in his Mercedes-Benz and stops and picks up a hitchhiker.

They drive some distance and the hitchhiker asks what is that metal thing on the front of the bonnet and the driver decides to have a bit of fun with his passenger and says, "That's my sight".

"Oh", says the hitchhiker, "what do you use that for?"

"Well", says the driver if I'm driving down the road and see a cyclist I line them up in my sight and then run 'em down at full speed."

"Oh right", says the hitchhiker somewhat nervously.

They go a bit further and the hitchhiker spots a cyclist, "look", he says, "a guy on a bike. Good chance to use your sight."

The driver says "rightio" and speeds up.

He heads for the cyclist and just as he is about to hit the bike rider he shears off to miss, but just as he does he hears a 'thunk' and looks in the mirror and sees the cyclist spinning away down the side of the road.

The hitchhiker says, "Man, you better get your sight checked, if I hadn't opened my door we would have missed him."

And there neatly to a comment made when I first came to Byron Bay on holidays 20 odd years ago.

After a week I fell in love with the place, mainly I think because it was everything my home town wasn't, and so started looking into buying some property in the area.

A young estate agent called Grant Rutter showed me around and as we went we came across some tourists walking on the road like the photo above and Grant said, "I don't know what it is about Byron but people who come here suddenly think they are impervious to vehicle impact."

In the following twenty years my temper has receded to vanishing point and I am now ready to test their hypotheses.

Since, in South Australia at least, you are allowed to use your shotgun on an intruder to your home, then surely if a pedestrian is breaking the law then I should be allowed to enforce the same law using my car.

So, if you are jaywalking around the Northern Rivers pray that a maroon commodore with a 40mm cannon welded to the bonnet is not the next one to come around the corner.
3 - Welcome to Al-Al land

Do you know the full name of LA?

Well here it is: "el pueblo de nuestra señora la reina de los ángeles de porciúncula".

(In english, "town of our lady the queen of angels of the little portion river").

I once read that in the very early days of its settlement that there were more letters in the name of the town than people living there.

The Red Hot Chilli peppers song "Under the Bridge" refers to living in the city of angels, but having worked there myself while with Greenpeace, I can assure you it is anything but.

Of course the other nickname for the place is La-La land and in a typically roundabout way that brings me to my home town, Byron Bay.

The picture shows the clock tower in the main street with two faces visible.

I include it because when I first arrived in the bay, or Al-Al land as most of the drug soaked denizens of this burg would no doubt render the nickname, each face showed a different time.

I know this doesn't sound like much but it used to give me great pleasure to see tourist vehicles lurch as they passed the clock tower with those inside wondering if they were four hours early or three hours late.

I also liked it because it meant, to me at least, that you could choose whatever time you wanted for whatever activity you happened to be doing.

Thus you could say to your boss that it was 8:30 when I passed the clock tower so how can I be late for work?

Here in the bay no-one knows what day it is because hardly anyone works 9-5, the main industry in this town is hospitality and that is done on the weekend and lets us surf weekday mornings while all the tourists are sleeping off the drinks we spent all night pouring down their throats.

Anyway, I was bereft when I saw a council worker on a ladder with a spanner finally fixing the various broken clock faces and thought we were going back to ordinary time as pictured with the same time on each clock face.

But I was premature.

The man on the ladder went one better and removed all the hands and so now each clock showed no time at all, and that was a better metaphor for this town than anything!
4 - I'm Not One to Complain (much)

One of my favourite writers, Bill Bryson was starting his weekly column when his wife happened past and noted the beginnings on his screen.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch", she said.

"What was that my dewy English rose?", Bill replied.

"All you do in that column is complain", she said.

"Well", said Bill, "I'm a columnist, that's what I do."

Is that what we columnists do?

I have checked my previous three posts and it does indeed seem that all I do is complain, so I have included this picture of me checking the surf at the Pass this morn to remind myself as much as anyone that it's not all bad up here.

Now on to the complaining.

A few years back I was between dwellings and in desperation took a room in a share house here in Byron.

It wasn't the standard setup I remembered from my uni days where all those living there would get together and interview prospective housemates.

This place was a run by a manager and he would just plonk people in as he saw fit.

Thus I would come home and there would be some Bogan sitting on the couch shooting his mouth off before I'd even sat down and I realised with a sinking heart that I was sharing my living space with them for the foreseeable future.

I did my writing in a school exercise book at this time and one evening one of his friends asked me why I was always writing in this book.

"I want to be a writer", I said.

"WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER?!", he responded.

Why indeed?

I think, like Bridget Jones and almost everyone else who wished to be a writer, I was in love with the perceived lifestyle.

Writing for a couple of hours each day in a sunlit studio with terracotta pot plants on my desk, leaving each lunchtime to be feted at literary lunches whilst consuming vast quantities of red wine and delivering rapier-sharp bon mots to an audience breathlessly grateful that I allowed my countenance to shine on them from on high.

Of course the reality is somewhat at variance.

The first thing you've got to do is WRITE SOMETHING.

I once completed a manuscript, 220 odd pages, 60,000 odd words.

When finished I thought in my massive, massive ignorance that the hard part was done.

I contacted a publishing house in Sydney and they told me they only take manuscripts from literary agents, unknown authors can fuck off.

Actually they didn't say that but the message was implicit.

So I got out the Yellow Pages and found there were three literary agents in Sydney.

I rang the first and they said "we don't take manuscripts unless you've already been published."

Great.

So I gave up on the idea and have only begun to revisit it here in the new fangled age of electronic publishing.

So the question remains 'Why do I want to be a writer?', and I think the answer is that I want a forum to complain loudly and longly about the fucking wankers that tick me off on a regular basis.

First cab off the rank is a cyclist I almost ran over on Monday this week.

Those who recall a previous post of mine, "Please don't walk on the f@#*ing road", may be getting apprehensive, but I can assure you that testy though I get, deliberately running someone down is not on my agenda.

Anyway, I wasn't having a good day, I was quite depressed for no reason I could nail down.

I haven't had alcohol since New Year, I haven't had pot for nearly five years and Monday was my day off, even then my main work is as a gardener which I enjoy, so there was no logical reason to be down.

Yet I was, and I think this is probably the best sign of clinical depression.

When there is a reason, e.g. a death of someone close, a sad book or movie, trouble at work, then feeling down is logical.

This amorphous black cloud that descends has no logic to it at all.

Anyway, I went for a surf and it was as I was looking for a parking spot afterward that this eternal nob end entered my life.

I spotted a park and ducked in and as I was ferreting about getting my stuff together to go to the shops, I noticed a cyclist staring fixedly through the windshield at me.

I got my wallet, phone and shopping bags, then stepped out of the car.

"Why don't you watch where you're going?", said the cyclist, "you almost ran me over".

Now all my life I've felt I was a coward, this largely stems from the abuse I suffered at the hands of my parents, I won't go into that here, but thanks to good therapy, I am getting over it and these days I am learning to assert myself.

"Oh yeah", I replied, "well you're not wearing a helmet you fucking wanker, so don't talk to me about road rules."

He was shocked.

I feel the essence of road rage is that each person believes they are 100% right and cannot believe for a fleeting nanosecond that the other person can possibly believe, on this or any other planet, that there is the remotest possibility that THEY ARE IN THE RIGHT!

Anyway, he then began edging away from me and left.

I gathered my stuff went shopping and then home to read and relax.

My heart was racing, my hands were shaking and the adrenalin coursed through my system for some time, but I was glad I asserted myself and didn't back down mumbling and stewed on it for days.

What's more, I think he sensed I did a blog with literally tens of readers and so I would get to tell the net my side of the story and he would just go home and continue to give himself RSI of the right hand.

So I'll close by bringing the 'Only in Byron' part in.

My friend Bodhi (real name Colin) pointed out that if you see a car with a 'Peace and Love' sticker on it, steer clear of it because they will be the most aggressive driver on the road.

And likewise, nowhere in this country will you meet so many aggressive, impatient road users than here in the heart of hippy country.
5 - I'm Sure I Unplugged the Oven

Why on Earth have I got a picture of my prescription at the start of this post?

And a picture of my ovens?

If you're confused then I am sure you are not alone.

Don't worry I'll get to the explanation in my usual roundabout fashion.

I was reminded of an election held in the Northern Territory in (I think) the nineties in which the Labor party won the poll, and it was the first ever non-conservative government elected up there.

On the TV show The Panel they showed an ad done by the leader of the NT Country Party and he was standing in front of a chainlink fence declaiming to the audience.

The Panel members pointed out quite rightly that here was a man who was not really trying, with all the beauty of the NT at his disposal (Kakadu pictured below) he chose to be photographed in front of an urban wasteland bounded by a wiretrace fence.

Likewise, with all the beauty of Byron at my disposal, why the prescription?, why the ovens?

Well the answer is that I am mentally ill, no surprise there, anyone who has read any of these posts could tell you that.

What I would like to explain is that these pills, Mirtazapine, also known as Avanza, are anti-depressants specifically for people with anxiety disorder.

When I was about 40 I suddenly became overcome with all sorts of panic.

I still have no real explanation for it, it was nothing to do with turning forty, I was quite relieved to make it that far.

These days my anxiety has settled into an exhausting round of 'checking' things.

When I park the car it often takes me ten minutes to check the handbrake is on, the transmission is in park, the lights are off, my wallet, phone, keys and glasses are accounted for, either with me or clearly visible in the car.

Then I check all the windows are up, and all four doors are locked.

Having checked all this I walk away and then are beset by doubts and have to go back and do the checks all over again.

On top of all this, I am no longer able to park the car on a slope, worried that something will go wrong and the car will roll away.

I have a few times driven to my favourite surf spot, Wategos beach, which is encircled by steep hills and if the crowds are thick and the only parking spot left is sloping then I have turned around and driven away, unable to enjoy the surf, worried I may return and find the car in a ditch at the bottom of the slope.

Likewise when I leave the house in the morning I have to go through and exhaustive, and likewise exhausting, round of checks to see that everything is switched off.

Both the car and home check anxiety fundamentally has money at the bottom of it.

If the car gets damaged I don't have enough money to fix it without weeks of saving (or borrowing from my long-suffering friend Antony), and at home with the price of power, the thought of leaving the oven on all day is just too much to bear.

Thus, the picture of the ovens.

Anxiety has got so bad for me that I have to photograph the ovens with the cords visibly out of the socket before I can leave the house.

Even then I still go back a number of times to check that the cords that I checked were unplugged thirty seconds ago have not somehow magically re-inserted themselves in the socket.

If photographing these appliances seems a little over the top I can assure you that it is still better than the old days when I often got hit by a panic bomb and had to stop work, pack my mower away and drive home and check that everything was turned off.

Now I can at least get my phone out and look at the picture to reassure myself.

So if you're wondering if you are mentally ill, once again, you are not alone.

Most people check things, in my opinion if you get to checking things more than five times, then there may be an anxiety worm eating away inside you.

Clearly, the actual issue, in my case leaving the oven on, is usually a facade hiding a deeper problem.

If anxiety is starting to interfere with your life AKA, not being able to surf if I can't find a flat space to park or having to leave work to check the oven isn't on then it could be time to seek help.

I've been lucky (and tenacious), after a long search I found a competent mental health professional called Paula and she has the unenviable task of listening to me moan for an hour once a month.

All she does is listen and even I can't explain how it works, but it does.

If you think about it when was the last time someone listened to you?

I don't want to get preachy here, indeed this blog is supposed to be entertaining, but if at least you can go away thinking 'man, at least I am not as nutty as Lachlan', then that's some reassurance that has made the time you spent reading worth it.

So I'll close with this paraphrasing of a gag I heard from David Frost.

"The creed of this blog is simple, if I can bring just one little smile to one little face, then I've really screwed up somewhere".

Majestic Kakadu.
6 – I Am Divided Like the Clock

I didn't write the title of this post, if I did I could say I was a great writer.

It comes from a book by Joanne Harris, 'Five Quarters of the Orange'.

The book is about a French country woman during the Second World War who suffers from crippling migraines.

For those who have never suffered a migraine headache it is characterised at the start by a flickering of the vision, classically on one side, but not always, sometimes your whole world seems to be coming at you like a TV set with bad reception.

I first suffered when I started uni and each day about 11am my left eye vision began to shimmer and then a series of jagged black and white lines would zoom up and recede like the Northern Lights.

The picture gives some impression.

Once my vision began to flicker I would have to look at forty-five degrees past the left ear of anyone I was trying to talk to, and then I knew that the migraine was descending and the unbearable pain was to follow.

Likewise the character in Joanne's book would stare at the large Roman numeral clock on her mantle piece and realise that she could only see half the clock face and her migraine was coming.

She wrote in her journal, "I am divided like the clock".

I am no Photoshop expert, but hold a piece of white paper over half of this clock face with a shaking hand and you can get some feel for it.

And so, to this post.

I was divided about whether to put ads on my blog.

Those who know me well will tell you that I hate advertising, but when I thought about it I realised that what I really hate is intrusive advertising, and the most intrusive of all is television advertising.

Visitors to Australia, particularly from the British Isles, simply cannot believe how many ads there are on Australian TV.

To give you an example, the third Lord of the Rings movie is 201 minutes (3 ½ hours) long.

It was shown on a commercial channel here on a Sunday night and began at 8.30pm.

Talk about a marathon.

It was still running at midnight when I gave up and went to bed.

But here's the thing, the main reason I stopped watching was because after 11pm the porn ads began and to see a film all about the best and noblest of the Middle Earth fighting to defeat pure evil desecrated by ads for strip bars and phone sex lines was too appalling for words.

(and no I didn't call any of the sex lines).

In my opinion the greatest invention in the history of the human race after the remote is the mute button on the remote.

I haven't heard the sound track for an ad on TV for many years and the definition of a millisecond is the amount of time it takes me to hit the mute button as soon as an ad appears.

So I really don't like intrusive ads and I'd like to think that the three ads on this website aren't.

So divided by the decision to advertise, I gave it some thought and realised that one thing I am not divided about is being poor.

We are all divided, it's so hard to make a decision, the consequences of a bad decision lead us all to an almost permanent state of indeterminism (if that's a word) and to relieve the overarching feeling of doom this post has no doubt brought upon you here is a Dave Allen joke that sums it all up.

A man is conscious of a lifetime of bad decisions.

He had the choice of two universities, he chose the wrong one.

He had a choice of two jobs, he chose the wrong one.

He had the choice of two women, he chose the wrong one.

Comes a day he has to fly for a business meeting and the travel agent tells him there are two planes.

After much agonising he picks one and takes off, some hours later the captain comes on and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to announce a fuel emergency. We are four hours from the nearest land and it looks like the end."

The man immediately goes down on his knees and prays, "Please, please, St. Francis save me".

And a voice from the heavens intones, "St. Francis of Assisi or St. Francis Xavier?"

To end I want to make a meaningless jump to something one of my lecturers said to me back at uni in 1987.

All appearances to the contrary I do think about what I am going to write ahead of time and try to get some sort of linear structure to the post.

When I began thinking I made a seamless transition from being divided like the clock to my lecturer's comment but I can't remember how I did it now.

Anyway, I was thinking about why we (the human race) do not do more about global warming and the environment in general.

There are people like George W. Bush and an Australian shock jock called Alan Jones who try to make the populace believe that the problem doesn't exist.

However our lack of action goes deeper than that and here is what I think it is.

I was at a social function of the Zoology department and talking with my herpetology (reptiles) lecturer, Rick Shine.

He had made the point that some species of Australian snake, the King Brown and the Taipan could go extinct due to eating Cane toads.

I, unlike most, loved these animals and was distraught that they could disappear, so I said to him, "couldn't something be done to save them? Captive breeding for instance."

Little did I realise that Rick's response would return to me 25 years later and from the specific of extinction of two snake species become broadly applicable to the whole of society and explain our lack of action on environmental issues, said Rick:

"No one cares, Lachlan, no one cares."

### 7 - Organic Life and More Roadway Idiots

I had high hopes of this post being all about environmental solutions until I came around the corner in Burns st and was confronted by a classic 'Only in Byron' moment, actually two 'O-in-B' moments.

Now don't get me wrong, despite all my complaining I love this town in much the same way that New Yorkers love the Big Apple for reasons that no visitor can really understand.

And the wacky characters in Byron Bay are a big part of it.

My continuing beef is that you can be wacky and entertaining while still obeying the law.

For those in North America we drive on the left here in Australia, and as you can see in the photo this unicyclist is on the wrong side of the road while the white SUV in the distance is bearing down on him.

Also he isn't wearing a helmet, so quite frankly he deserves all he gets.

The other curiosity is the person on the far right of the picture.

What are they carrying?

I didn't really notice till I enlarged the photo on my computer, but it seems to be a wok.

A numbskull on a unicycle and a random wok carrier.

Only in Byron.

And so to other issues.

Most of my life I've worked for environmental causes of one sort or another and a common saying, no doubt familiar to many of you is 'think globally, act locally'.

I was doing some gardening at one of my client's places and there were weeds on the path.

I mused to myself, "I better spray those weeds".

I really don't like spraying, but some clients ask me to do it.

But then I thought it through a bit and said to myself, "don't be so lazy, you can do it".

So I got my weed sack and went over the path by hand and ten minutes later it was weed free.

In my little world, in my little way I had been finally able to act locally to reduce the toxic load on the planet by a vanishingly small amount.

Likewise at home.

For those who don't know I live in a tent.

I am generally very happy there, I particularly love the quiet.

Sometimes in the afternoon, when my neighbour isn't mowing his lawn down to the bare soil, it is so quiet that the only noise is when the fridge engine kicks in.

When was the last time the only noise you heard was the fridge?

I think it is partly the serene silence that leads many animals to move in with me, a koala has a favourite tree of the end of my deck, and indeed some nights the loudest noise in my world is the damn Koala grunting outside.

I normally let him have his head unless The Simpsons is on, in which case I have to shine the torch on him to get him to shut up.

So this morning when I stepped into the bathroom and discovered a lizard in the shower, it was no real surprise.

This lizard and I have been cohabiting for a long time and he has regularly made me jump by running between my legs to cross the floor.

However I am glad he is there as he eats any cockroaches that try to move in.

Well, I don't have any cockroaches and I'm pretty sure it is due to the lizard's diligent pursuit.

The lizard couldn't escape due to the steeply sloping porcelain sides of my shower recess, but I was determined to get he or she back on cockroach patrol, so after five minutes of rodeo-like, slippery-sliding pursuit I finally got it onto my dustpan and back into a favourite spot behind my bathroom door.

Which leads me to another story of life in the undergrowth.

One night I was abed when I was awoken by the sound of footsteps in my little workshop area next to the bathroom.

I lay in bed thinking it over.

"Why is there someone walking around in my tent?", I mused.

I didn't think it was a burglar, who would want to rob me?

I then ran a brief mental checklist of friends who had mentioned they may come and visit, but no one was due at this time.

So what was going on?

Then the intruder turned on my electric jug and it began boiling.

So at that point I said "that's it. I don't mind you walking around but making a cup of tea before robbing the joint was taking things a little too far".

So I got out of bed, put on my boots and went to check things out.

It was a possum.

She likewise is a semi-regular tenant and in her wanderings had put her foot on the top of the jug and set it off.

I only wished I'd been present to see her jump as the lumpen foothold she had chosen suddenly glowed orange and began vibrating.

Anyway that was the only time I ever laid hands on her, as I scooped her up and returned the beast to her sleeping spot on the roof.

I might add, Possums have a human like ability to stare and she gave me a filthy look and hissed at me in a fashion that made me feel somehow guilty.

To which I responded to her, 'well don't make such a damn racket at three a.m and I won't have to relocate you in such a rough-handed manner".

So we both retired to our respective beds not on speaking or, in her case, hissing terms.
8 - Clinton, There's a Man in a Dog Suit Behind You

I had a whole post neatly laid out in my mind when Byron Bay provided its usual interruption to my plans. I meet with Clinton every Thursday for coffee at his local coffee house and we discuss whatever is going on in our lives.

We were involved in an erudite discussion about the history and development of the English language when my eye was caught by this arresting tableau coming up the footpath.

Since I've started this blog, and even before when I would tell some of the stories of my town, occasionally people would say "are you making this up Lachlan?"

The picture shows I'm not, I don't have to.

I'm reminded for instance of when I returned to Byron after a short, horrendously mistaken attempt to live on the gold Coast.

The GC is only an hour's drive away, but a world away in culture.

Eventually I realised my mistake and headed back to this crazy town which is the only place I had ever felt at home.

Upon my arrival I called my Aunt Jen as promised to say I had arrived safely and as I was talking to her from the public phones in Jonson St, around lunchtime, a girl walked past me in full Jane-Austen-esque ball gown, but no shoes.

I knew I was home.

I did stop and speak with this dog-suited fellow and he gave me permission to use this pic on my blog.

The most Byron thing about it was that Clinton didn't bat an eyelid.

He, like me, habituated to this place, obviously thought it the most normal thing in the world for a man in a dog suit to first walk past, and then stop for a conversation.

I might add, just writing the above kind of crystallised in my mind one of the things I like about Byron Bay, viz; for the first time in my life I am not the looniest person around.

So if Byron can stop providing further must-snap photo ops I will finally get around to this week's theme: pressure.

It all started I guess at coffee with my other group of friends.

I was exercised about some issue and began speaking loudly and one of those present ask me to speak more quietly as she felt she was being 'battered' by my discourse.

Being an eternal digresser, bear with me here while I set things up.

Recently I wrote about having anxiety and many of you sent me supporting messages along the theme of 'it's good to speak about it'.

Thank you again.

I replied to some of you on Facebook saying "Thanks for your support as all I can remember from my childhood onwards is adults telling me to shut up".

Thus, my friend saying 'speak quieter' was my most ancient nightmare revisited.

I am going to speak with her and try to find a way forward, but it seems a bit of an impasse.

I am not prepared to go around constantly monitoring my decibels and she, to be fair, has sensitive ears.

If anyone has any thoughts on how to solve this I am happy to hear about it, but please note ear plugs for her and me sitting on the other side of the room have already been suggested.

Then Monday came around and I started the car and had no power.

My transmission had been a little iffy and this day it packed up completely.

I called the NRMA and when the helpful local mechanic arrived (we are on first name terms now and he doesn't have to ask directions to my tent) he first lifted my spirits by saying the car was just low on transmission fluid.

He then went on to send said spirits plummeting to the cellar by pointing out that when the fluid is this low there is a leak in my system.

Now a bit of urban philosophy I've developed in my time is this: "There are three things you never want to hear; 'you better come and see me', from your doctor. 'Audit' from your accountant and 'head gasket' from your mechanic."

For those of you not overly mechanical a head gasket is a seal in the engine, the actual gasket costs about $60, but so deeply buried within the engine is it that it takes six to ten hours labour to replace it.

My problem wasn't the head gasket, but I wasn't sure if the leak in the transmission was going to be a similar deal where it needed ten hours labour to pull the trans out, fix the leak and then put it all back together.

So the NRMA man filled the beast with fluid and I drove off to my mechanic who booked it in for Friday, also to get a pink slip as rego is due and I was already wondering how to pay for that.

So with this burgeoning mechanic bill looming above me like an Andean Condor cruising with ever greater menace over my financial carcass, I went on with the week.

Gary, my mechanic, said I could use the car but to keep an eye on the transmission fluid.

But I then decided not to do any long distance driving, so had to text through to all my clients of the week in Ballina, Wollongbar and Possum Creek to say I couldn't be there.

Which of course meant no money which I was going to sorely, sorely need.

Then a text from my friend Sandy about other matters in which she mentioned that she was working for most of the week with her partner, Pete, painting his Byron property in advance of new tenants.

I owe Pete a lot of money and he has been great in not having my legs broken in lieu of the cash, but what he did say was I could do some work for him to pay it off.

Thus helping with the paint job was a good opportunity, so I hied me around to his house and began work.

It's good to be finally chipping away at the debt, but if you are working for no pay at the end of the week it is harder to motivate yourself.

Things weren't helped by my first morning on the job when I broke the grinding wheel on one of Pete's tools.

He didn't get upset but I have mentally added it to my debt, the way this is going I will still be working for him when we are both residents of Feros Village, the old folk's home up here.

So then Wednesday night came around and I am normally at soccer training, which is a piss off because all my favourite shows are clustered on six channels across four hours this night.

But as I couldn't drive to Alstonville (40k) due to car, I settled down to enjoy this and try to forget about money for a while when my set top box crapped out.

So loud and long did my swearing go on that the same possum from last week's column woke up and asked me to shut up.

However in adversity comes good.

I texted my friends Clinton, Ivan, Scott and the same Sandy as above, and to my delight both Scott and Clinton were able to provide me with replacements.

Additionally Clinton, Sandy and Scott were able to provide a greatly appreciated listening ear while I coped with all of this and thankfully, it was therapy week, so Paula had to endure a greater degree of intense moaning on my part than usual (and that's saying something).

Friday tomorrow, up at five to get the car to Gary by 8, then cleaning the balcony for Eric at Clunes followed by more cleaning for Pete in Byron all the while waiting for the call from Gary telling me how much it's all gonna cost.

I'll close by saying that pressure makes things harder, therefore by the time this is over I'll be made of Titanium.

### 9 - Since When has Being a Loud Mouth Been Genetic!?

For those of you who have been watching this space my car repairs came out at a decidedly reasonable $600.

All this to service the car, fix the transmission leak and do the annual pink slip for rego.

So relieved.

The other issue I raised was me talking to loud, I still haven't resolved this with my sensitive-eared friend, but have contacted her and am planning to meet with her and see if there is a way out of this.

I just had a mental picture of the cone of silence from Get Smart, but if the two of us got into one of these it would of course be a foretaste of hell for her, with my voice booming around inside those acoustic walls like a sports car's exhaust inside a tunnel.

I guess what we would need to do is I get inside the cone of silence and she sits outside it.

Which leads me to a curious coincidence.

English surnames that end in 'er' generally come from a job.

Thus, Hunter, Shooter, Fisher, Farmer and Thatcher for example.

For those of gen 'wifi' who may be reading this, a long time ago people did live in houses with a thatched roof, usually reeds tied tightly into bundles and woven, or 'thatched', together.

Less well known are Cooper and Fletcher, a maker of barrels and arrows respectively.

Also curious is Webb and Webster, which started life as 'wevva' slid over to 'webbe' and is derived from 'wefan' to weave.

Of course the commonest name of all, Smith, comes from blacksmithing, but there are also Tin, Silver and Goldsmiths scattered about.

Likewise (I just looked it up, I do research things) there are 100 people with the surname of 'Miner' in the Australian phone book

My surname is Barker and that is a job as well.

A barker was the guy who stood outside the circus and said "roll up, roll up, see the bearded lady" and such like.

Now in the days before electronic amplification, the main qualifications for this job were a big, loud voice and verbal diarrhoea.

Two qualifications that those who know me well will tell you I have in spades.

Additionally, my father was a lecturer at Charles Sturt Uni, Mitchell College as was, and he taught before lapel mikes were the norm and was famous for his carrying voice.

So could it be that the reason I am so loud and (big word alert) loquacious is that we Barkers have been barkers since antiquity and it's in my genes to never shut up?

I'll tell my coffee friend this and see if it ameliorates her attitude toward me.

So having taken you through a history lesson of sorts I'll go onto a story that usually amuses.

When I was living on the Gold Coast I was 'nearly homeless'.

The quote marks are there because I wasn't sleeping in bus shelters and shop doorways, but I was the next step back from there.

I lived in backpacker's hostels and campgrounds, No Fixed Abode is probably more accurate.

Eventually I began to get some work as a gardener and was laying turf in a new housing estate at Ormeau.

It was a tough gig, if I had sat down with a pencil and paper and tried to work out the worst conditions possible for turf and man, that summer would have been it.

It was very hot, mid-30s plus every day and often 30 degrees by 7am.

Bush fires were burning in both western NSW and western QLD and the winds were blowing across the estate as from the very furnaces of hell.

Small bits of ash would fall on me as I worked and the turf roll would often dry out to a burlap sack texture by the time I carried it from the pallet to its place on the lawn.

I had to run the sprinklers constantly on the pallet and the laid turf and the amount of water wasted to provide a lawn was doing my head in.

One morning I drove from my backpackers in Surfers Paradise and when I got there I went to roll a cigarette while I contemplated the day.

But could I find my Champion Ruby? No.

I tore that car apart, but could not locate it.

Eventually I realised I must have dropped it in the car park at the backpackers and drove up to the shop and bought a new pack.

I went on with my hot work for a few weeks and eventually one Sunday I said, "I have got to clean this car out".

Leaving anything around the backpackers during the day was an invitation to steal, so everything I owned was in that car, tools, clothes, the lot.

The mess indescribable, but I'll have a go.

Take away coffee cups jostled for position with burger wrappers, the ash tray was piled so high that it was becoming difficult to see through the windscreen and there were parts of the carpet that had already evolved into new life forms.

So, time to clean.

I borrowed a vac from the backpackers and got some garbage bags and went down and began to unload my life piecemeal from the car in the underground car park.

My recollection is that I filled 1 and a ½ garbage bags with rubbish, which is pretty filthy for an ordinary mid-sized sedan.

Eventually I got everything out and was using a dustpan brush to clean between the driver's seat and the console when I came across my missing tobacco pouch.

It had slipped out of my pocket in transit and wedged itself in the gap in perfect position to be out of sight.

"You beauty!", I exclaimed.

There was $20 odd worth of baccy in the pouch and, at that time in my life, was ~5% of my weekly income, so a great find.

I had a pouch on the go, so I tipped my current pouch into the found pouch and went on with my life.

Over the next fortnight though I began to notice a change in my behaviour.

I'll bring in a quote from a great writer, Doug Adams, to set this up.

"Ford then behaving oddly, or, as Arthur thought to himself, he began behaving in a way differently odd to the odd ways he more customarily behaved."

I was finding it difficult to stick to any task and my consumption of muffins, candy bars and take away coffee began to accelerate from one each morning and afternoon to driving up to the shop every hour, and still eating a full lunch.

In this period I also had a somewhat scary experience where I was driving home from Ormeau one afternoon and couldn't remember where I was living.

I had to pull over and really think hard to come up with the answer.

"Aren't I staying at Miami Beach campground?", I said to myself. "No, didn't I check out of there on Monday?" "No, I think I'm at Broadbeach Backpackers, didn't I check in there on Tuesday?"

"Maybe, but what day is it today, it's Thursday isn't it?", and so it went for some minutes till I eventually came up with the answer (my tent wasn't in the car, so that helped me remember I was back at another campground just up the coast).

Anyway, you all may have guessed where this is going and soon after I got the answer myself.

As I came to the end of my recently found tobacco pouch, I was scrabbling in the bottom for the dregs when my fingers roughed across a small twig.

I pulled it out and suddenly it all fell into place.

The night before I lost my baccy pouch some Israeli backpackers had come and asked me to help them navigate away from the Gold Coast to their next stop at Noosa Heads.

I drew a pencil marking on their map, up the Pacific Hwy, turn to the Gateway Motorway and onward to the Sunshine Coast.

Happy with my help they gave me a large marijuana bud which I stashed at the bottom of my tobacco pouch in case the coppers pulled me over.

Then, as the pouch slipped down next to the seat, the heat from the console dried the bud to dust and the jiggling of the car in motion then vibrated the dope dust evenly throughout the tobacco.

I smoked 30-40 rollies a day in that period and was thus stoned from morning through to bed time.

No wonder the turf was iffy and when I told the people at the Ormeau coffee shop that I had finished my turf laying and wouldn't be buying coffee, candy bars and muffins there anymore, they had to close down.

A cast iron example for legalising marijuana, I know the shops that sell food would go for it.

Sweet Mary Jane: The cause of my erratic behaviour that summer, actually every Summer till 2007, when I gave it up.

### 10 - A Naturopath in the Bottlo and Hula Dancers in the Yurt

When my client Joanne asked me to be at her place by ten a.m. As she was going to Hula in the yurt, I was again reminded why I love this town.

Nothing as mundane as "I'm going to the shops" or "I'm going away for the weekend", no, in Byron shire it's "I'm going down to the yurt to hula".

Hula dancing is great meditative exercise (apparently, I've not donned the grass skirt yet), somewhat like doing Tai-Chi to music.

Joanne lives at Possum Creek (and isn't that the quintessential Australian place name?) Which is referred by most as the 'roof of Byron'.

As you can see in the picture, there are not many better 'offices' than this.

The other part of the title, the naturopath, refers to my friend Mick.

He runs the main bottle shop in town and is a very handy guy.

We have worked on a deck project at his place together and when I want any advice about glue, screws, paint or hammer he is one I turn to.

I naturally met him in my drinking days and when we could get a shaved second edgewise into our conflicting busy schedules; we would have a lunch together.

We were in a local having a counter lunch when Mick floored me by saying he had studied naturopathy for two years.

For mind the image of a bottle shop worker is a beer-gutted, red-faced tippler, but Mick, and indeed most of his staff, are among the healthiest people in town.

Gabby who works there is a surfer, Keith is in his sixties and he regularly rides his bike up to Bangalow. The critical part of the ride is a one-in-ten climb that would make Tour de France riders think twice, but Keith manages it, if not effortlessly, at least smoothly. (or so he tells me)

I haven't been in my local since New Year but even then the health paradox that is Byron goes on.

One of the bar staff, Carrie, was studying nutrition and she gave me lots of good diet advice when I realised I needed to lose weight.

Travis, another bar worker, is so fit that the Hotelier Association regularly tests him for performance enhancing drugs. When not behind the bar he does the Tough Mudder three or four times a year.

The Tough Mudder is a gruelling 20k slog through trenches, up ropes, over walls and down men's trouser legs.

It is based on military training and even completing it is worthy of great accolade, doing the sorts of times Travis does means fast-tracked recruitment to the SAS.

Once I'd bought my drink from Carrie, Trav would stop by my table and give me exercise advice.

All greatly received and helped me drop for 101 to 87kg. (30 pounds in the old money).

Actually, when I see the promos for that weight loss show on commercial TV, the title of which accurately describes anyone who watches it, I want to contact the show and say "all your contestants would be better off heading down to my local in Byron Bay; you'll get better advice there".

Mind you, I don't think that excuse would float with your boss, "sorry I'm late, but I was down the pub getting fitness advice for the last three hours".

Pharmacist Fleur: One of the few legal drug sellers in town.

Just down the plaza from the bottlo is our local pharmacy.

I get my anti-depressants there and also good advice on my various soccer, work and surf injuries.

Following the theme of this post our local pharmacist Fleur surprised me by revealing she has an honours degree in Visual Art, I texted her back like the smartarse I am to ask "is there any non-visual art?"

Apparently there is, her text reply reads as follows, "Certainly some that have no visual interaction".

Eh?

Do you go into a dark room and wander about with your arms out till you find some art?

Scott, who manages the accommodation centre where I write this each week is near finished a degree in Enviro Science.

Even I fit the dual-life category, most people that see me hanging on the end of a whipper-snipper or lapping the back yard with the mower are generally surprised to find that I have a science degree and work one day a week at Australian Seabird Rescue as a marine biologist.

Also, for the record, I am trying to put less photos of me on this blog. The problem I am having is that most of those mentioned in this post didn't want to be photographed.

Mick the naturopath-bottlo manager for a start.

I only got that fuzzy Fleur pic by creeping up behind her and clicking my phone camera before she had time to say 'no'.

I know the photo you all want is Joanne's Hula class weaving their way across the floor of the yurt, but I didn't even ask for that one.

Mind you I will check if they have a class publicity shot of some kind and get that to you next week.

Time to go, I've got to get round the gym and get some advice on heavy drinking.
11 - How Many Men Does it Take to Find a Piece of Software?

Answer: No one knows 'cos they never look.

I would just like to say that I am not setting out, like Ben Elton, to show that all men are sexist except me, I used to be very misogynist, but I'd like to think that I have improved.

What happened was this.

The woman in the photo is our super-manager at Seabird Rescue, Kath.

Recently she left us to take a job with wildlife in Western Australia.

She was away for about a year working all hours and dealing with problems that made Fawlty Towers look like a functional establishment, eventually she pulled up stumps and returned to us, which many heartfelt sighs of relief, mainly from Rochelle, our general manager, who was able to hand over 90 odd hours of weekly work.

Coinciding with her return was my work computer began to crap out.

The possums that ran round the wheel to provide power were getting elderly and it was taking half an hour to load a single application.

So I whinged to Rochelle until I wore her down and she bought me a new 'puter.

I was so happy, now I could listen to my favourite songs on the tube-of-you and look at porn sites in real time.

But with every computer upgrade there are issues and the wireless antenna from my old box wouldn't work with the new.

I needed the install discs for the antenna but instead of LOOKING for them, I whinged to Kath.

"You haven't seen any discs with Belkin written on them, have you?", I said as she whirred past completing her daily round of tasks.

She cocked her head and replied non-commit ally but docketed it away in her capacious memory cache.

I went back to trying ineffectual things to get an internet connection and was vaguely aware of Kath rooting about in the background.

She then said, "Did you say Belkin?", I replied, "Yes", and she then floored me by saying "here are the discs".

She'd found them.

So there you have it, Kath was away for a year and had found the discs within three days of returning to the building.

I have to break from writing here and make a work call, now where's my phone?

Kath!!

Elsewhere, I sorted it out with my coffee friend and we came to a compromise.

I would stop talking like I was trying to reach Mars without the use of a radio and she would wear the earmuffs I use for whipper-snipping.

Joke of course, however I will say that resolving this issue was quite a step for my own emotional development.

For reasons stated many times already I had a quite stunted development and grew to man's estate as stable as a yacht with no keel, as functional as a shovel with no handle and, to borrow from Blackadder, as cynical as a man who has just been appointed Professor of Cynicism at Oxford.

My usual pattern when confronted by a casual remark that had hurt me was to disappear, cease contact with the person who had hurt me and never speak to them again.

An overreaction?

Just a little.

However Becky had helped me greatly in the past and slowly I realised that I had to resolve this.

So heart racing and bowels dissolving I took a phone call from her and we sorted it out.

Good for me and a great credit to Paula and the long list of mental health care professionals that have had to endure me moaning over the years to effect some change in my underweight pygmy of an emotional intelligence.

But returning from the realms of my internal and seemingly eternal dark side of the mind.

As I was writing about Becky and my volume control I was accosted by a new sound growing outside the office.

Slowly the noise grew and conversations fell silent as it approached.

It eventually resolved itself into that most Byron of street theatre, the Hari-Krisnas.

However it seems that the Haris have a most un-Amish view of modern technology and have moved on from munching lentils while beating hand bongos and have embraced the field of mobile amplification.

As can be seen in the picture the two leaders were miked up to lead the chant and the group carried enough hardware to sound Phil Collins at Knebworth.

So I'll close with this story from my teenage years, which some of you from Kelso High will probably resonate with.

When I was 13 or 14 I had quite a full schedule, school all day, then sport all afternoon till dark.

After school on Winter Thursdays at this time I would race down to Dag City (The Police Boys club) to play basketball, then on the soccer training at George Park till dusk.

Now one of the requirements of playing in the basketball comp was that each team had to provide two refs for the game afterward.

I had ignored this in my selfishness because of soccer training, my logic was impeccable, I have something I want to do so other people can do the less than fun task of reffing.

After one game however, the organiser of the comp, a teacher at South Bathurst Public called Ray, came over and took our team to task.

He said, "Hang on you guys, this fellow here (he was pointing to Graeme Hollis) has refereed every time I looked. It's about time someone else took a turn".

Graeme was a quietly spoken, popular boy who had moved quietly in the background and done the whole teams duties for some weeks without complaint.

The rest of us looked around uneasily, wondering if anyone would volunteer.

No one did.

I can't recall the sequence of events, but I ended up reffing the next game, more or less because I didn't move quick enough.

How I railed and fumed, "how could I have to do this?!, I have soccer training, what I want to do is clearly more important than anybody else's desires".

Of course it never occurred to me that Graeme, for instance, might have DESIRES OF HIS OWN!

Anyway, it was the first time I learned about selfishness, particularly, how selfish I was.

I'd like to say I changed my behaviour there and then, but teenage boys don't work like that.

However, the fact that I am recording this story here some 35 years later shows something and I'd like to think that slow as a glacier I have finally learned not to be so selfish.

Of course, what everybody really wants to hear is that I've learned to shut up, but that looks like being another three decades at best.

### 12 - How to, and Definitely How Not to, Coach a Children's Sporting Team

Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws: When you look closely you can see the madness burning off the screen.

As I write this I should point out I haven't been very happy recently.

I don't want this blog to be self-indulgent, but then I don't want Tony Abbott to be the prime minister, and as the Stones famously sang, "You can't always get what you want".

However I'll ask you to bear with me as I take my usual five hours and multiple discursions to get to the point.

I was quite surprised when I did a post in March in which I explained about my anxiety disorder, I honestly thought people would read this blog to be entertained with humourous anecdotes, but discovered that more people read that post than any other, I guess many of you who read it had/have trouble with anxiety yourselves.

Anyway, a few years ago Stephen Fry did a very good documentary about bipolar disorder.

It began with Stephen describing how he tried to kill himself after a stage show he put on in the west end of London bombed big time.

Thankfully he was unsuccessful and he is with us today, but the major benefit for him was finally being diagnosed.

Just for the record, bipolar disorder is what used to be called manic depression; Spike Milligan is one of the better known sufferers of this mental malady.

In Stephen's doco he visited with some famous sufferers of bipolar, the most stark example was Richard Dreyfuss, and if you look again at him performing in Jaws, you see his feverish, manic intensity burning from the screen.

Carrie Fisher was another Stephen described, when he interviewed her at home she couldn't sit still.

Then the doco went on to visit with other, non-celebrity sufferers and here the stories took on a more harrowing hue.

Mainly because as non-celebrities, the families and partners of these sufferers had little or no money to get the help they needed.

Then Stephen went on to say that in the end the only way these sufferers could be helped was to completely remove stress from their lives.

And here is the point I have been building up to, the moment he said that, I was riveted to the screen hoping he would explain how!

Sadly, only those with decent support can have a few weeks, or preferably months, of stress free existence.

And to close this textual loop the reason I have been unhappy is mainly because I have been working too hard.

When I came out of rehab (booze mainly, but pot was part of it), I realised that I had to set up a sustainable schedule otherwise I would collapse like a dead star.

So I set out to work four hours a day maximum, see my health professional Paula and not smoke pot.

I have generally been successful, but recently I've been working off a debt to my friend Pete and because the renovations on his place have been approaching a crescendo and I found myself round there for full days.

However, I got there, with indeed a little help from my friends and now am able to go back to my preferred four hours a day.

The other area of dissatisfaction I have been having is with my soccer team and so I want to record here how (in my opinion) to coach a sporting team, either adult or children.

And before I set sail on this tale of the seventies, I'll digress to say this.

As a boy I loved sport and in country Australia at the time this meant football, either rugby league or Aussie rules, depending on state.

My mother wouldn't let me play either of these codes and therefore condemned me to an adolescence branded a poof.

She said that these codes were too rough for her delicate boy, but now I realise that there were more devious motives afoot.

My parents thought that being middle class, whatever that means, was important. Those of you reading this who suffered through Bathurst in the seventies with me will no that no-one, I mean NO-ONE gave a flying fucking rat's arse whether you were middle, upper or any class.

You see, only lower class, yob types played rugby league and my mother couldn't have that as it would not fit her image as a refined person and mother of aesthetes.

I think what she really wanted was for me to go to the opera and then come home and spend my time practising the violin before graduating semma cum laude in Physics from Cambridge and walking around saying 'ectually'.

Anyway, enough of her.

Grudgingly I was allowed to play soccer and began my competitive soccer aged five for Bathurst City Redtops under eights.

The guy who coached the team who I won't name for legal reasons was really bad.

I don't know why he did it, as he hated kids, or maybe he just hated me, he was certainly one of the first adults I can remember telling me, at the top of his voice mind you, to "BE QUIET".

After some years I made the move to Bathurst Pandas and met someone who really knew how to coach.

His name was Alec Lamberton and he was a Scotsman with, dare I say typically, three teeth missing from the front left side of his mouth.

He can't have inspired confidence in any parent who saw him and realised he was in loco parentis of their children for two hours a week, but he turned out to be the saviour of my young life.

With my parents smashing up, in turn, each other, the house and me, Alec was the first adult who treated me with respect. Often he would give me a lift home from training and would discuss tactics for the team with me as an equal.

Additionally, I believe now, he could tell when life at home was particularly bad for me because of how upset I would get in the game if I made a mistake.

He spent more time telling me "it's OK, calm down, just control the ball and it will be all right".

In retrospect he was my first mental health counsellor, and grateful I was, I can tell you.

Alec had very few rules for the soccer team, but they were simple and staggeringly effective.

First: "NO CRITICISM".

I am still surprised, nay staggered, by adult men on sporting teams who yell at someone on their own team if they made a mistake.

Do you know of anyone who goes to play sport, or work, saying to themselves, "Today I am going to make as many mistakes as possible and deliberately stuff as many things up as I can?"

No, I don't either.

But Alec's simple rule, once he got us trained to do it, turned Pandas into a really good boys' soccer team.

If someone did make a mistake, the whole team would get behind that player and say things like, "head up", "let's go again", "it's Ok" and such like.

Additionally, for the technical, the way to tell a good sporting team, certainly one with good team morale, is if they can come back from behind to win.

This was demonstrated to me most forcibly in a semi-final that involved (from Kelso High) Adam Yates and myself for Pandas, against Churches Eagles, with Russell Meadley, Wayne Beatty and famous golfer, Peter O'Malley for them.

Late in the second half, Eagles scored and went to a 2-1 lead.

Disaster!

But when I talked with Russell and Wayne on Monday at school they said that all the goal did was make us, Pandas, come back harder.

We went on to win 3-2 and would not have done that without Alec's simple rule of support for other players.

There was no question of yelling at our goalkeeper or dropping our head's, just "time to go hard".

Another rule of Alec's that I wish, also, that modern players of any code would take more notice of was this. If you score a goal, don't run around pulling your shirt over your head and screaming how great you are, but instead find the player who passed you the ball for the goal and shake their hand.

Simple, but another cornerstone of playing as a team, not for yourself.

So enough, if you coach a team and you can install these two simple rules, you will have a winning team on your hands.

My next task is to see if I can get anyone on my team to take any notice.

### 13 - I Feel Like a Woman

The title of this post comes from the Shania Twain song, and great it is too.

However whenever I heard the hook line, I always answered mentally, "I feel like one too, in fact I'd like one right now."

Then again, I was once interviewed by ABC radio on the mid-north coast as a failed stand-up comedian and I told a listening audience of some thousands that whenever I see the sign on the door that says 'push', I think they want me to sell drugs and when the sign says 'pull', I think about masturbating, which shows you what a petty, small-boy mind I have had most of my life.

I might add, when I told people I was going to try stand up comedy they all laughed, a great pity I didn't appreciate it at the time as it was the only laugh I ever got.

All of this smutty chat is a curious lead in to this post which is about, I believe, my development away from being a sexist pig.

And said development had its most recent reveal to me, of all places, with my soccer team.

If that surprises you, it does me an' all, but then you can learn things in the oddest places and there are really two types of learning, 'how to do it' and 'how not to do it'.

I can write about my soccer team because I am confident none of them read this blog. (Actually I'm pretty certain some of them can't read period.)

This was probably best put on the Simpsons when Homer and Bart are running scams to get enough money to fix the car which was damaged when a fish, a sturgeon it was, fell from the Russian space station, Mir, onto Homer's car as he was driving home.

(Man, I would have loved to have been at the script editor meeting when they pitched that plot.)

Anyway, for various plot related reasons Homer father joins the scam team and says he has the best scam of all and "this was in The Sting II, so no-one has seen it".

Likewise, I can write what I like about soccer with impunity as none of them will ever read it.

So.

I wrote last week about my great soccer coach, Alec, that I had as a boy and the way he eradicated criticism from the team and created a hard-running, high-morale unit.

My current team had a big problem with this, one player in particular.

So a couple of weeks ago, Steely (the coach/manager/captain) and I had a word with him before the game.

He responded well and he, and the team, played well and 'won' 3-3.

Then the next game he was back at his worst, sticking it to me at half-time.

He said that thing that never fails to AGG the living Christ out of me, "I don't want you to take this as criticism, but...", and then went on to criticise me roundly for the next three minutes.

We were down one nil at half time in that game, but I collapsed under the weight of this criticism.

I was playing a position called sweeper, the main organiser of the defence, and so down was I that we conceded four goals in the second half and lost a resounding 5-0.

Then the last game we played, he went back to being good.

And here's the point that has been gestating for the past paragraphs.

I thought the problems with our team were all due to the negative talk, but with that removed I saw clearly that the real problem is that we are just bloody hopeless.

Laugh over?

More accurately, it is not that we are hopeless, but disorganised and worst of all, some players won't defend.

Back to Alec for a moment, apart from working hard on the psychological health of the team, he didn't do a lot of tactical work, because it wasn't really required, but one thing he was very hot on was everybody, from striker to goalkeeper helping with the defending.

For the unfamiliar, soccer and Aussie rules are very similar sports in their way.

The guys in the middle of the team, the midfielders, have to run the most, they have to push forward to supply the ball to the goal scorers, and, in my and certainly Alec's opinion, they have to run back hard when the attack is over and help with the defending.

And this is our big problem, certain players will not do this, they like attacking (who doesn't?), but when it's time for the hard work, they go on the missing list.

I tried on the night of the game, when I realised how disorganised we were, to call players back into position, but once I'd said it five times or so I intuited that I was going to be ignored all night and so shut up. (We lost 4-2 by the way)

And here is the part where I finally gained some understanding of what women have been putting up with since time began.

I have to get the point about defending across to these players without it coming across as criticism.

I have to tiptoe around their fragile egos, just like women have been doing eternally.

So all the women throughout the world that have ever had anything to do with me, in a relationship or otherwise, "I'M SORRY".

I finally have a glimmering of what you've had to put up with.

### About the Author

Lachlan Barker is an author who lives in Byron Bay, Australia.  
When not complaining to the internet through his blog at cyclonecharlie88.blogspot.com.au, he surfs or works as a gardener.  
He entered rehab for booze and pot in 2008 and hasn't looked back since.  
He has been on every continent except South America and Antarctica, and they're next.

More Works by Lachlan Barker

Long Way Round to Rehab

Year of the Rant. Part Two: The Winter of Our Discontent, Winter, 2013.

The Destruction of Lasseter's Road (first chapter preview)

### Connect with Lachlan Barker

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lock.barker

Blog: http://cyclonecharlie88.blogspot.com.au/

### The Destruction of Lasseter's Road

[Available at Smashwords October 2014]

It all started when Kellner at number 312 decided to blow up the stump that was blocking his driveway.

Kellner hated that stump.

It didn't stop him accessing his house, but merely from parking next to the verandah of his house, which was a problem as he repeatedly had to bring in his shopping in the pissing rain.

He could have had it removed when the tree guys were there, but Kellner was a cheapskate.

He didn't think he was, he thought he was merely prudent, but anyone else when asked would make comments like "he knows the value of a dollar", and "he would make $20 worth of effort to get back $10 owed."

When the tree guys charged him the exorbitant fee of $350 to cut down the tree, he asked aggrievedly "do you use gold chainsaws?!"

Then they'd had the outrageous audacity to quote him $2,000 to remove the stump.

Over his dead body.

So the tree company had cut down the tree, mulched the logs and left with the stump in place.

It was a big tree, and therefore now, a big stump.

It sat in the exact middle of the cul-de-sac end of his gravel driveway and was exactly in position to annoy him every time he came home.

He had tried his own hamfisted efforts with his rusty, never starting, always breaking down and always blunt chainsaw to remove bits of it from time to time, but he had never changed the bulk of the thing, and now he'd had enough.

Kellner couldn't have exactly told you why now was the time to do something about it, but it was almost certainly to do with his neighbour, Wills.

Kellner hated Wills, but then really, Kellner hated everybody.

Disliking the bulk of the human race seems to go hand-in-hand with being a cheapskate, why? Who knows, but Kellner certainly fitted the mold, maybe it was because it was only other humans who constantly cheated him out of money that was certainly his by right.

His work paid him less than he deserved.

The supermarket charged him more than the products were worth.

The government took more than their fair share in tax.

But Wills his neighbour didn't have any monetary interaction with Kellner at all.

No, Kellner hated Wills simply because of the noise.

Lasseter's road was a meandering suburban entity that wound away from the town and got quieter with every passing bend till you arrived at Kellner's driveway, the last dwelling, in the full blown countryside.

Thus Wills' constant habit of partying every weekend with backpacker chicks he met in town annoyed Kellner to the point of making his doctor think he was eating raw salt, nothing else could explain medically Kellner's blood pressure.

To be fair to Wills, he constantly invited Kellner to his parties, but Kellner never went, suspecting (quite rightly), that Wills only invited him to reduce the number of neighbours at home in bed, who would then complain about the noise.

And this decision to remove the stump, by fair means or foul, had been taken by Kellner in the week after a particularly noisy party.

Even then, Kellner probably could have handled the noise, but the accompanying annoyances were beyond the pale.

For instance: even if Wills had not invited him over, Kellner knew there was a party on because of the number of drunk and stoned backpackers who would get lost and turn up in Kellner's driveway and ask if "he knew where Wills lived?"

Whereupon Kellner would tell them "no", and they not understanding or simply full of drunken bonhomie would then say, "but you must know him, he's a great guy and there's a party on tonight, it must be around here somewhere?"

Kellner would then relent and whilst grinding his teeth give them approximate directions and let them get on with it.

He had for a while deliberately given them the wrong directions, but that had just led to innumerable camper vans driving up and down Lasseter's Road all night seeking the party as mariners had once sought the Flying Dutchmen.

So he suffered on the whole in ground tooth silence.

He had tried wearing his chainsaw earmuffs to bed, but this had had the counteracting effect of not hearing cars pulling up onto his forecourt and coming out on the morning to find he had been parked in by these party goers who had thought his parked car was a sign that this was party parking, they had then parked their van and wandered off through the trees to Wills house to party all night.

So all in all Kellner was not a happy, or even fully sane man when he began the process of obtaining explosives to remove the stump.

A saner person would have noticed for instance that the very house he wished to park closer to, was ipso facto, close enough to sustain damage.

But the stump by now had become the repository of all Kellner's frustrations.

Somehow it embodied everything that was wrong with the world, or at least the part thereof that Kellner inhabited.

And so he sat down at his computer to find out how to turn that small volume of hated wood into a large amount of smithereens in the shortest period of time.

Milliseconds ideally.

Wills was drunk.

Even he knew he shouldn't be drunk at two in the afternoon, but if he knew it internally, there was no way he would admit it publicly.

He had a job, sort of.

The sign on the side of his car said "builder", but he wasn't really, or perhaps more accurately, he was a builder who hardly worked anymore.

What he did do, when he could pull himself together to do anything, was supervise people who really knew what they were doing.

Even then the word supervise was a hopeless over-estimate of Wills' skills.

If he got a job for a new client, it was usually because an old client from the time when he did swing a hammer had passed his name on.

Then Wills would swing into action and beg other tradesmen in town to do the job.

Wills hated and loved those phone calls.

In the short period after the phone had been replaced in the cradle he would be filled with a joyous euphoria, he had work, he could afford more alcohol.

This feeling of well-being would last until the first problem arose in the build.

Then he would cross the divide into hating this job, the client, the tradesmen he had dragged on site, the building supply house, the labourers who worked for him, the architect, the council for placing countless footling regulations in the way of doing things and all because they kept him away from the bourbon bottle and the company of 18 year old backpacker chicks (his word) which he preyed upon.

He went to the fridge and poured himself another drink.

He was "not at work" this day, meaning he was supposed to be supervising the laying of a concrete slab at a build outside town, but had twisted the arm of the concretor to do it all without him and was now sitting on his deck getting a full alcohol glow on before the weekend's partying started six hours or so hence.

He had as usual invited his neighbours for the night's party, but as usual those miserable, police-calling gits would not attend.

He didn't really want them there anyway, but even Wills knew that he had to try to maintain some sort of political détente.

He wasn't sure if anyone could have him kicked out, or indeed if even the coppers could do anything when they showed up once a weekend to tell him to keep the noise down, but keeping some sort of peace seemed to a good idea.

Of course once 8pm rolled around Wills would be in the midst of bourbon-induced revelry and didn't care if the US Navy started shelling the place in a vain attempt to keep the noise down, he was drunk and was allowed to have a little fun wasn't he?

But then neither Wills nor Kellner could have foreseen that a single tree stump would not only see the end of Wills partying but the end of life as the residents of Lasseter's road knew it period.

O'Driscoll knew he had been doing this job too long.

He often tried to remember back to a time when he was a young policeman and to discern if his attitude to the job had been different.

He knew the job wasn't different, the things he'd hated then, he still hated now, but back then he seemed to have more patience.

O'Driscoll felt that this was ironic, and certainly paradoxical, in that young men were supposed to have less patience, but he felt that back then he had more time to take over things.

Why then was his fuse shortening on a daily, if not an hourly basis?

Like the slowly dispersing cracks in a concrete dam wall, he could feel a parallel corruption of his restraint.

The scenario he feared was if just one more drunk started arguing with him, then abusing him, in the course of his work, he would go off like the fourth of July.

Just one more drunk, just one more loud mouthed, habeas corpus quoting drunk could see him turn from a regular joe into something so incandescant, so full of nitric rage that not even a straight jacket could contain him.

Probably the thing that most enraged him these days was the "Why don't you go and arrest some axe-murderer?" line that he got from every single fucking drunk.

The drunks seemed to think that what they were doing, pissing on a shop front, fighting in the street, vandalising parked cars, then pissing on said car, jumping on bikes left chained to parking meters, and/or spitting on him, were somehow perfectly reasonable ways to behave.

His old cop buddies from the academy who worked in different locales would say make similar complaints, but then they would admit that at least in their towns the drunken crescendo occurred only Friday and Saturday nights.

O'Driscoll's town was a coastal resort with nearly two million visitors a year and the partying was 24-7, and thus there was no let up for O'Driscoll and his colleagues.

Even then, the tourists were in general the best behaved of the people he dealt with.

Handsome Aryan men from Germany, passionate French girls, Danish travellers.

There only offences were driving vehicles that were as roadworthy as a rowing boat.

When they partied at their accommodation they would shut it all down meticulously at 11pm and go quietly to bed.

No, the real troublemakers and regular abusers of O'Driscoll, were the locals and their sense of entitlement to do whatever they damn well liked and if someone complained that was too bad because they were locals.

With a sigh O'Driscoll realised it was time to go out on duty.

He got his car keys and drove out of the station.

It was Saturday at 6pm, he just prayed that tonight wouldn't be the night he cracked.

"Coastal Demolition, Brad speaking."

"Yes, I wonder if you can help me, I want to remove a stump from my driveway, can you guys help me with that?" Said Kellner.

"Possible, how big is it?" returned Brad.

"Well it's about, 1 metre across, maybe a metre and a half."

"OK, um, normally you'd get an excavator to do that, have you tried any of the tree companies?"

Kellner ground his teeth.

"Yes, I have, but the guys who cut it down wanted to charge me the earth to do it. Also, I don't think you could get a big enough machine down my driveway to dig it out. That's why I'm calling you guys, as far as I can see, the only way to get it out is to blow it up."

Brad, the voice on the end of the phone sighed internally.

He wished they'd never advertised they did explosive demolitions.

From the day his company had, they had been fielding a semi-regular series of calls from weirdoes who just wanted to blow something up.

He began the weeding out process, "Well ok, I'm happy to come and have a look, but the minimum price for any explosive related demolition is $5,000. Are you prepared for that?"

Kellner nearly dropped the phone, he cleaned out his phone ear with his little finger, "did you say $5,000?!" he responded.

Brad sighed internally once more, "Yes. Any demolition using explosives requires local council permit approval, insurance, the explosives and staff to execute. Plus nearby buildings, roads, pipes and trees have to be checked and shielded. Do you still want me to come out and check it out?"

"NO" yelled Kellner into the phone and slammed it down.

He paced about his kitchen fuming to himself.

He had a mental picture of a couple of hundred.

In his mind's eye he saw a demolition guy come out, place a stick or two of dynamite under the stump, open a beer, press the plunger and the job would be done.

Once again he had not counted on the local council placing a thicket of regulations around him doing what he wanted on his own property.

He wandered out to the front verandah and stared at the stump.

As he did he noticed that his "always on its last legs" car, was leaking again.

He went over and knelt under the front fender.

This time it was the radiator, a very small pool of green fluid was dripping on the ground.

The leak wasn't enough to worry him, his car had achieved an almost zen-like state of continuing to run despite the eternal lack of care he bestowed on it, he would just have to remember to fill it before he left.

He stood up, he went automatically to dust the gravel off his knees, and as he did so noticed that there were dark stains upon his skin.

Probably oil or diesel from leaks from other parts of his engine.

Then something clicked in his mind.

Diesel.

Where had he read something about that?

Something to do with diesel exploding, something to do with home made bombs.

"Home made" was an expression Kellner loved, it implied less money spent.

He went back inside and turned his computer on.

The party was in full swing and Wills was, as always, drunk.

Like the Inuit of Northern Canada who had twenty-two words for snow, correspondingly Wills had a range of words to describe his drunken feeling.

A mild glow described how he felt when drinking alone on his stoep at two in the afternoon.

Mildly jouyous described the period around five to six pm when he was "allowed" to drink, and the pace of his bourbon consumption would quicken.

"Pretty Happy" was when he began to forget what had happened.

And the ultimate was "totally fucking legless", which was literal, and described his immoderate progress around the party, groping women, saying things like "Do ya' drop 'em?" (Meaning the accosted female's underpants), and was a period of the night when his legs no longer functioned as decent ambulatory devices and so legless was accurate.

He also has the expressions "Shit faced", "Slaughtered", "hammered" to allow composite adjectives.

"Pretty happy, verging on shit-faced", for instance, allowed him finer gradations to his descriptions of the revelry.

Now it was ten pm and Wills was completely happy.

His younger workers who did the procuring for him had done a good job and his house and lawn was covered with 18 year old women.

The music blared, the lights resounded and his mood soared.

Clouds of marijuana smoke drifted on the breeze.

"What", thought Wills, "could be a finer lifestyle than this?"

A song he thought he recognised came on and he yelled, "TURN IT UP! I love this song."

The music soared forth and he realised it wasn't the song he thought it was.

No matter.

He moved onto the dance floor and sort of tried dancing with a couple of attractive young women.

In his drunken state he didn't notice them edging away.

They knew him too well.

It would have surprised Wills to learn that almost everyone at his house that night hate his guts.

The others at the party, all younger than Wills, only attended because he provided vast tubs of free alcohol.

He thought they attended because he was a great guy who despite the ongoing years still knew how to party.

Oh the self-deception of the middle aged.

He shimmied across to the ice tub and got himself another can of bourbon mixed with coke.

Kellner ground his teeth.

Another Saturday, another party at Wills's place.

He had already told two van loads of revellers that the party was next door and "couldn't they bloody hear it?"

They had responded as usual with the "can we park here?" question, as if everyone on Lasseter's road would be falling over themselves to provide convenience for those attending.

He told them to go back to the road and park at Wills, and they had backed lurchingly down his drive in the dark.

He knew he was in for another night of little sleep and ongoing, increasing frustration and hatred of his neighbour.

Among the real crosses for Kellner to bear was the issue of timing.

His job was with a road crew for the roads authority and was up at 5am each week day to join the crew.

And like all those with a regular early start he found it impossible these days to sleep in on the weekend.

He had tried, saying to himself, "c'mon it's the weekend, have a relax."

But he had always just ended up lying in bed with his eyes closed, until eventually, with a sigh he would roll over and start his day.

And of course this had become vastly worse with the advent of Wills next door.

Now it was Saturday night again and he faced his usual courses of action.

Like most, Kellner found his heart racing as he faced the confrontation of asking Wills to keep the noise down.

It was a paradoxical endeavour.

If he went over early-ish, say 9pm, Wills, full of bourbon-fuelled bonhomie would wrap his arm around Kellner's shoulder and ask if he wanted a drink.

Kellner would say 'no' and then ask him to turn the music down.

Wills would say 'yes', and drop the volume.

Kellner would go home and then wait out the next step.

Which was, an hour after Kellner had gone home, sometimes a minute, Wills would have completely forgotten the conversation and when next a song he liked came on would once again yell 'TURN IT UP', and so it would go for another Saturday night.

If he waited till midnight when the local council noise covenant came into force, Wills wouldn't even remember the conversation.

Then Kellner would ring the coppers and complain about the noise.

The police were very good and would do their best, but in this partying town, particularly in the summer, they had so many calls for noise abatement that they sometimes didn't get to Lasseter's road till three in the morning, by which time Kellner was a red-eyed wreck, dozing fitfully in his chair in the living room, knowing the futility of entering his bed, since the moment he did he would have to be up to tell someone to get out of his driveway, or know that simply the volume of the music would rattle his walls and make his bed dance in time.

So he continued his research into home made bombs on the internet, and with each passing second an unconscious desire to make Wills sorry burgeoned within him.

"You there Barry?", crackled the radio in O'Driscoll's car.

"Yes, June", he replied.

The dispatcher this evening was Constable June Holcroft, O'Driscoll got on well with her and they had a loose and definitely unspoken agreement that she wouldn't bother him if she could at all avoid it.

"It's that time, I'm afraid," said Holcroft.

O'Driscoll's heart sank.

Like most in this coastal party town he knew the time to the minute without looking at his watch.

When the pubs shut, when the nightclubs shut, when the bakery opened, when the first coffee shop opened, all provided him with time markers that helped him through his shift.

However, again like everyone else, he had trouble keeping track of the days.

"That time", from June meant that it was Saturday midnight and now the noise complaints would start coming in.

"It's not is it?", said O'Driscoll in a hopelessly optimistic attempt to change the time and day of the week.

"Sorry Barry, but it is. And first up is your favourite address."

"What again? Jesus does that guy ever stop."

"Well not this weekend, you on your way?"

"Sure June. I'll go now."

'Your favourite address meant Wills place on Lasseter's road.

O'Driscoll couldn't count the times he'd been there, but each visit was a carbon copy.

He cursed under his breath and started driving.

Kellner had decided not to go over and put his heart through the racing stress of trying to get Wills to turn his music down this night.

He wasn't sure himself why it stressed him so, but it was most likely to do with the fact that it never did any bloody good.

Some Saturdays Wills would turn down the music, but as ever Kellner wasn't able to relax, sitting in his living room waiting to hear if a song Wills liked came on and the music got sent up to heaven again, whilst Kellner gritted his teeth in his private hell.

Also, even when Wills did turn it down, usually only after the police came, the roar of the drunken conversation would easily fill the sound vacuum and once again Kellner would have to wait till the last reveller had gone to sleep, before he too could find some rest.

So this Saturday he had gone for the easier option of calling in his complaint to the police as soon as the noise covenant came in at midnight.

The police were very good about it, in that they now knew why Wills' neighbours called in at 12:01am, and responded as rapidly as the events in town would allow.

Thus it was Kellner's call, routed through Holcroft on the switch, that had set O'Driscoll on his way.

O'Driscoll parked his police car at the end of a long line of cars parked haphazardly on both edges of the road, indeed the gap in the middle was barely adequate for a single car to pass.

He locked the vehicle and began walking.

If he hadn't been here every Saturday for the larger part of his working life, he would have known where to go by the noise.

It was scandalous, he had no difficulty understanding the neighbours complaints.

He turned into the driveway and approached the house.

As ever possibly a hundred, maybe more people were thronging the joint.

He entered the exo-rings of partiers and began to shoulder his way through to the heart of the action.

If the noise was scandalous, so was the condition of Wills, O"Driscoll knew him well by now and was able to pick him out where he stood leering down the tops of two young women.

With a long practised skill he manoeuvred his way to the music centre and turned it off.

The onrushing silence, well comparative silence of only the voices echoing around the place continued.

Wills, vaguely sensing something was wrong, well different, to what had been happening previously, turned and saw the upright blue figure of O'Driscoll staring balefully at him.

"All right Tony, it's midnight and you know you've got to turn down the music", said O'Driscoll.

He then waited for the next part of the routine.

Wills walked, well lurched in an upright sort of stagger, over to speak with the sergeant.

He threw his arm around O'Driscoll's shoulder and said, "Aw, yeah, officer, real sorry about that, do you want a drink?"

O'Driscoll looked down at Wills' hand dangling below his shoulder.

"Take your hand off me", he said, in as calm a tone as he could muster.

Thoughts shambled around in the subterranean caverns of Wills mind.

He faced this regularly.

He had to impress the young women at the party with his mature(?) and strong dealing with the policeman.

He faced a difficult decision.

He wanted to get through the conversation without looking like he was backing down.

But also, he didn't want to antagonise O'Driscoll who had the power to write him a noise citation, and, he vaguely thought, the power to confiscate his music centre.

"Take your hand off me, " repeated O'Driscoll with about the same level of menace as a leopard stalking a gazelle.

Wills equivocated.

"Would you like a drink officer?", he said, allowing him to take his arm off the policeman's shoulder and rummaging in the ice tub and coming up with a beer.

"No", said O'Driscoll, "what I want is to not be called back here tonight because of noise, or any other complaints, do I make myself clear?"

Wills struggled to come up with an answer that gave him some face saving wriggle room.

"Oh, sure, there's no problem with that, you sure though you don't want to take a beer along with you when you go?", he said.

O'Driscoll, fed to the back teeth with dealing with this guy, just shook his head and turned and left.

He made his way through the now (slightly) subdued crowd and began the walk back to his car.

Wills turned back to the young women he had been 'talking' with to discover they had taken the opportunity to flee his advances and made for a part of the party that Wills wasn't.

Wills, waited till he heard a car start on the road and drive away, prayed that it was O'Driscoll's car and then yelled, "OK, PARTY ON!" and turned the music up to about half it's previous volume.

'That should impress everyone', he thought and began patrolling for more female company.

Kellner groaned.

He was able to follow the events of O'Driscoll's arrival at the party as if he had been listening in on a phone extension.

Some nights Wills had co-operated, this was one night when he didn't.

Even at half volume he would have described the music as blaring, throw in the conversation and it was as if O'Driscoll had not been there at all.

He had a vaguely defined feeling that it was somehow bad form to call the cops twice in one evening, his only hope now was that one or more of the other neighbours would complain.

He went into his bedroom and lay down and wondered what his quota of sleep would be this night.

As he lay there he heard a snippet of a Wills sentence, ".... Yair, I wasn't having that, I even offered him a beer, and he ....."

'Some day', thought Kellner to himself, 'Some day'.

The noise continued and Kellner began his Saturday nightly activity of staring at the ceiling and waiting for exhaustion to overwhelm the sounds from Wills house.

The stump was no longer recognisable as such.

An ice sculpture now stood in Kellner's driveway, or perhaps a highly localised snowstorm had fluttered down in the night and formed itself into peaks and scallops on the woody surface.

It certainly looked quite beautiful to Kellner as he stood and admired his handiwork in the dawn light.

Like all cheapskates Kellner had kept everything he had ever owned in his life in a ramshackle shed made of stringybark logs, rusty gal and fencing wire.

He had once bought a cow which he was planning to milk, but quickly learned the lesson that so many diary producers have, that having even one cow gave one a morning and night chore that couldn't be ignored and tied you to the house, making holidays out of the question.

He likewise has had a brief enthusiasm for gardening and had layed out a garden in which he would grow veges, and save himself the exorbitant costs associated with purshace at the supermarket.

But likewise, he had found the work hard and by the time he brought in soil and fenced it off, the veges from the garden had actually cost more than those bought in town.

Thus his shed was full of the remnants of past ideas.

One such remnant was bags of fertiliser, and it was this product that now covered the top of the stump and trickled down around the sides onto the driveway.

Kellner had finally shuffled into a restless sleep around three am, but his body clock had snapped his eyes open with a click that almost audible at 5am.

A lifetime of rising for work at this hour had once again denied him a desperately needed sleep in.

He had tried.

He rolled and lay with his eyes shut, but after a mere ten minutes of this he had swung his legs out of bed and lumbered groggily to the kitchen to make coffee.

Once he had imbibed some mouthfuls he had decided that since he was up he may as well get on with the stump removal.

He wouldn't have really thought he was out for revenge, but he had to work Monday and this was the day he had set aside for the stump to go.

He finished his coffee and went out to the shed.

He shifted things around till he had located the fertiliser and began dragging the bags out to the stump, one by one he emptied their contents out until he was he had emtied all the bags.

His internet researches had not been clear about what volume of fertiliser was needed to create what sized explosion, but like the chinese inventors of gunpowder centuries before he decided to start big, as it was a big stump.

He had brought home a jerry can of diesel during the week, and now he emptied this onto the fertiliser and it, in more liquid form, splashed and trickled down and through the fertiliser, pooling around the seam of stump and gravel.

He once more stood back and admired his work.

Looked good, but would it work?

Soon find out.

The last piece of the apparatus was an electrical circuit to create ignition.

The diagrams he had looked at had all favoured a car battery with wires leading to the charge, but Kellner's only vcar battery was in his car, and he had carefully backed it up the driveway away from the ignition zone.

SO how could he set this off?

He went back inside for a coffee refill and thought about it.

He jiggled the cord to his electric jug to boil some water for a second round of coffee.

As you expect, his cord looked like Isaac Newton had used it for early physics experiments and it had to be jiggled into place create a circuit.

An idea formed in Kellner's mind.

He had had a problem with rats.

His television wouldn't turn on one night and he eventually discovered that starving rats had chewed through the power cord to the back of the TV.

As one would expect, he had taken the chewed cord and thrown it in the shed, he couldn't have imagined what it could ever be used for, but now his frugality would pay off.

He went out to the shed and ferreted about.

Under a rusted out ride on mower, but dangling over some besser blocks was the cord.

He wrestled it loose of it's impediments and took it back to the house.

He got some pliers out of his work room and then examined the cord.

He found the parts chewed by the rats and cut the cord off neatly there.

Then with some scissors he separated the two wires back about twenty centimetres from the cut, then stripping the plastic from the copper core.

Beautiful.

He plugged the cord in and flicked the switch.

Holding one wire with the rubber handled pliers he brought in closer to the other.

A spark crossed the circuit and every light in his house went out.

He had shorted the circuit.

He went around to the fusebox to flicked the fuses back on.

The hum of the fridge and light in the kitchen came on again.

Kellner was satisfied, he had the power.

He plugged the cord into a powerpoint in the front hall and carried it out to the stump.

He placed the two wire ends into the diesel-fertiliser mix and went back inside.

He bent down to the powerpoint, installed at ankle level in the hall, and flicked the switch.

Nothing happened.

In the part of his mind where no one else can go, in the inner mental sanctum where he could be honest with himself, he knew this would happen.

The reason, generally, that home made things are cheaper is because they don't work.

Or, they work once and then fall apart.

Or, they work, haphazardly, sometimes effectively, most often not.

Kellner sighed.

He walked down the hall and stood on his front porch looking at the mound of chemicals piled on and around his stump.

As he stood there in the quiet of the Sunday morning his befuddled mind slowly grappled with a seed of mystery deep inside.

True the explosion hadn't worked, but...

He turned and looked back down the hall toward his kitchen.

The light was on.

That was different, last time he'd tripped the fuses.

He turned back to the pile.

As he did so, he noticed that the morning wasn't as quiet as he'd previously thought.

Down at the very lowest level of his hearing a sound was seeping in.

Where had he heard that before?

At breakfast.

The faint noise was a snap, crackle, pop, as of a famous breakfast cereal when the milk is added.

He went out to the pile and looked at the point where the cord entered the mix.

The sound was clearer now, and there was a sizzling component.

Then Kellner noticed that at the epicentre of the noise, bubbles were emerging.

With an appalled fascination he watched as a bubble grew and popped, and was then replaced by another slightly larger one.

With a rush a terrifying realisation hit him.

Against all the odds, he had succeeded.

His home made reactor pile was approaching ignition point.

It was the last coherent thought he had, his endocrine system took over.

He turned and fled.

Through the house, out the back door and into his ramshackle shed.

He dove through the air and landed behind some straw bales bought to mulch his garden beds and crouched down and held his hands over his ears.

Less than a second later the air was rent by an almighty ka-whuffing sound, felt as much as heard, and the whole thing went up.

Kellner had hit the jackpot of home demolition.

Inside his shed he watched with a preternatural fear as the rusty gal walls at the back of the shed bulged outward and then sprang back with a clank that rivalled the sound of the explosion.

From the house he heard the tinkling of broken glass as every window on the front of the house disintegrated in a welter of shards.

The stump itself, lifted and tilted as if by a giant hand, then resettled down the driveway from the newly formed crater showing its previous lodgement.

The natural eucalypt oil in the wood, combined with the spark and latterly encrusted diesel caught and red flame began to lick around the stump as it settled, mud encrusted roots exposed, on the gravel.

Kellner was a not a religious man but prayed for the first time since childhood that he would come through this alive.

The percussive effects began to recede, replaced by the sounds of falling debris.

First the heavier chunks of wood, glass and gravel settled over the environs of his house, clunking,, clanking and thunking over gal roof and timber decking.

Then the lighter material began to fall and Kellner could hear the pitter-patter of a gentle eucalypt rain on the roof of his shed.

Eventually even this died out, and the quiet of Sunday morning returned to Lasseter's Road and the only sound Kellner could hear was a persistent ringing in his ears.

However, unbeknownst to Kellner, the effects of his explosion were really only just starting.

His attempts over the years to reduce the size of the stump with axe and chainsaw had made a series of cracks and fissures in the body of the stump.

Sometimes he cut down, sometimes he held the chainsaw parallel to the ground and thus a series of geometric shapes had been visible in the stump.

One of these, about the size of an adult human leg, had been separated from the stump and launched into the high atmosphere like an organic rocket.

Coated with diesel and dusted with fertiliser this chunk of timber sailed aloft trailing smoke and glowing red.

At the zenith of it parabola the chunk turned lazily, gravity took over and it began its descent.

As it speed increased the flames died down, but driven by the increasing rush of highly oxygenated air over its surface anew and demonic cherry red incandescence burgeoned.

Wills' septic tank was not in great condition.

Installed by the previous owner some twenty years ago, it had now succumbed to the heating and cooling cycles of the seasons and was cracked on all surfaces.

Wills had inspected it from time to time and often thought he should do something about sealing the cracks.

If the wind was strong in any direction it wasn't a great worry, but if the wind was light and drifting toward the house, then Wills's place was enveloped in a fairly foetid odour.

But then like most builder's jobs, paid or otherwise, Wills found it far easier to just say, "she'll be right" and go back to sit on his deck and drink bourbon.

And so when this most aerial piece of Kellner's stump arrived at terminal velocity from on high, the cover of the septic offered little or no resistance.

With a crack, then a groan, a section of the cover gave way and the still flaming chunk of wood entered and became as one with 25 years of well matured sewerage.

And there for a few seconds matters rested and the peace of this Lasseter's Rd dawn returned.

Wills, passed out drunk on the outdoor couch on his deck had started visibly from the first explosion at Kellner's place, but then unable to see the cause of the noise returned to his drunken sleep.

Which was a shame in its way as he would have been the first human to see a septic tank exploding.

At first the timber merged with the contents of the tank and a chemical battle ensued, with the moisture within at first threatening to douse the rocket red surface of the timber.

But the thing about septic tanks is that they gas off.

The smell that Wills had noticed over his tenancy was indeed a highly valuable commercial product, natural gas.

A bubble of this ignited, spread its exothermic message to other bubbles in the tank and the peace of Sunday was once again split by an almighty explosion.

The roof of the tank lifted with a lurch and the contents erupted skywards carrying, then splitting the roof of the tank into smaller pieces of concrete.

The cracks in the side of the tank gave forth geysers of raw sewage and the side walls likewise came down and the contents at the base of the tank decamped sideways in all directions.

The percussive wave of force travelled up the pipes connecting his tank with the house and all three of his toilets, two upstairs, one down, became a revolting mirror image of their function, spewing raw sewage out instead of in.

The toilets began to run and cascades of the muck formed rivulets, then creeks and finally small streams of sewage, flowing along the halls and down the stairs.

At the base of the stairs the various courses merged and an ankle deep pool of waste began to cover the living room carpet before flowing over the step, onto the deck and down the garden.

The flying sewage then began to retrace the path of the burning timber progenitor of this cataclysm and returned to Earth, covering the roof of Wills' house, the driveway, the garden and Wills himself.

Wills, insensible from twelve hours of bourbon drinking slept on.

Some time hence he would wake and know truly what hell was.

"Barry", crackled Holcroft's voice over the radio.

O'Driscoll stared at the thing in disbelief.

It was 7am Sunday morning, an hour after he should have clocked off.

There was no way, just no way, that Holcroft was thinking of sending him on a call.

Following the first call to Wills' place he had then dealt with the usual round of Saturday night calls to holiday makers and told them, one after the other, at one house after another, to turn the music down.

He had argued with drunks till his already threadbare tolerance had approached a point similar to the pile of explosive in Kellner's driveway.

With gritted teeth he tapped the 'respond' key on his car's mobile.

"June", said O'Driscoll, in ominously low tones, "I know, I just know you are not calling me to go on another call."

"I'm really sorry Barry", said Holcroft without preamble, "I really am, but you're the only mobile unit left and this is a recall."

O'Driscoll rolled his eyes.

A recall would indeed tie Holcroft's hands.

In an attempt to "simplify' dealing with late night complaints, the supervising officer had decreed that if at all possible, the same officer would return to a previously complained about address, as they already knew the situation, and it was thought this would aid in sorting things out.

As if, O'Driscoll had thought to himself many times, ANY administrative tweak would make dealing with irascible drunks any easier.

"All right", said O'Driscoll, "what is it."

"OK", said Holcroft, "I'll read you the exact words of the call that came in four minutes ago."

Holcroft cleared her throat, "There was a big party last night that went on till after 4am, then this morning there were two explosions at the party, now there is a really bad smell and I have had to close all my windows. Can you get someone to have a look up there."

June continued, "the call came from a Mrs Trail who lives at 264 Lasseter's road."

"Goddammit", said O'Driscoll. "OK, June, I'll go and see."

O'Driscoll pulled over, made a u-turn and headed out of town.

Driving the vehicle was less a policeman than a blue-clad incendiary device getting ready to detonate.

O'Driscoll noticed the smell some kilometres from Wills's place.

On this summer morning he had the windows down in an attempt to stay awake and in a far less successful attempt to provide some serenity to his fusing mind with a gentle rush of morning breeze.

With the first waft, he rolled up the window and found that the toxic odour was unstoppable.

He drove on attempting not to breathe.

He pulled up much closer to Wills's house than last night, the young things at the party, as always seemingly able to operate without sleep, had decamped for an early surf of just not to be there when the clean up started, and so the line of cars along the road was much reduced.

He pulled a t-shirt out of the boot of his car and with this providing minimal at best odour reduction, walked down Wills's driveway.

Within a few steps of doing this he stopped and stared.

A perfect circle of..., well, now that he attempted to form a sentence, he wasn't sure what the substance was, but continuing inside his head, he saw a perfect brown circle covering the lawn, driveway, deck and roof of Wills's house.

O'Driscoll had been on the force twenty years and like all beat coppers had a plenty of stories, some tear-squirtingly funny, others that still rankled.

He had seen fires, vomit covered driveway, blood strewn bar rooms, fights, accidents and wild parties, but even he had never seen anything like this.

Whatever THIS was.

O'Driscoll continued to stare and as he did a movement caught his eye.

On the couch, on the deck, a figure was struggling to stand.

The encrusted figure slowly, shakingly gained his feet and like O'Driscoll stared down the lawn.

O'Driscoll, still uncertain, knew one thing with clarity.

He wanted to be a long way from this odour as rapidly as possible.

"HEY!", he yelled.

The figure on the deck started visibly, then turned and saw O'Driscoll in the driveway.

He began a shaky ascent and as he slipped and slid his way till he stood before the sergeant.

O'Driscoll saw now that it was Wills, and realised from the flecks of toilet paper stuck to his surface among the brown goo what the substance coating every surface was.

O'Driscoll then said a line that would go down in the annals of police folk lore.

"So Mr Wills, how'd this happen?"

Wills stared.

He stared the stare of a man who had woken up with a chronic hangover covered in sewage.

He began to speak, but then realised he had nothing to say.

He didn't know how this had happened.

O'Driscoll waited a few moments and then continued, "Well, however it happened you better start cleaning it up."

This broke the walls of the little restraint Wills had.

"Clean it up! What are you fucking talking about, I didn't do this, I'm not cleaning it up."

"Oh, so you do know who did this?", O'Driscoll took out his notebook, "would you like to file a complaint against the perpetrators?"

Wills stared wildly around him.

He hadn't done this, couldn't this dumbass copper see that?

But then large chunks of the night before were lost to his memory.

Whatever had happened, and whoever had done it, Wills didn't know.

O'Driscoll waited once more.

"So Mr Wills, can I have a name please?"  
Wills shook his head.

O'Driscoll waited again then put his notebook away.

"OK, then I'll leave you to clean this up. Be aware that following the neighbours complaints you can be cited under the environmental health act if you do not abate the smell and leaking sewage. The maximum fine can be as high as $20,000 per breach, do you understand?"

Wills stared dumbly with bulging eyes at the policeman.

Sometimes there are no words, or more accurately, no language had developed adequate words to describe his immediate situation.

O'Driscoll gave it a few more beats to see if Wills would respond, and then turned on his heel and walked away.

He drove back to the station turned in his car, reported briefly that the explosions on Lasster's road were fireworks and it was simply a big clean up job up there.

Then drove home and went to bed.

Wills finally regained his deck, found the phone and began calling anyone whose number he had in his phone that had been at the party.

But those he could reach didn't answer the phone and when he went to leave a message he realised that asking anyone to come and help clean was unlikely to respond to a message saying "there's shit all over place, can you come and help clean it?"

So he then searched his house for some cleaning materials.

He began at the top of the house and began frantically trying to remove the sewage from his carpet.

Within thirty minutes he had cleared a space a metre square.

He estimated he had a week of cleaning to go.

And so Sunday continued on Lasseter's Road.

Kellner sat contentedly on his porch and watch the stump burn away, soon it would be small enough to hack up and remove completely from his driveway.

He would wheel barrow in some soil and stones from the boundary of his property and fill the crater.

Then he would be able to pull up to his house, then turn full circle and leave his driveway front on and not face the anxious reversing that had been his such a big part of his driving life before.

He had swept up the broken glass and would replace that as the weeks went by, costly it had to be said, but in general the overarching glow of having removed the stump, quietened his mind.

Additionally, having noticed the smell he had snuck through the trees and watched, hidden from view, O'Driscoll's interview with Wills.

His hearing was till imperfect, and he hadn't been able to audit their conversation, but the body language told him all he needed to know.

What's more the near square acre of faeces spread across Wills residence had provided him with a satisfaction he had never known before.

All Kellner's frustrations over all those times Wills had refused to turn the music down over all those Saturday nights was now gone, washed away on a tide of sewage.

He hadn't consciously set out to get revenge, but he had succeeded, all unlooked for, beyond his wildest dreams.

O'Driscoll slept well during a Sunday for the first time in as long as he could remember.

Most Sundays he struggled, with his mind continually churning over the arguments he had had with raving drunks through Saturday night.

But this day he drifted off to sleep with the image of Wills, covered in shit, facing multi-thousand dollar fines and having to clean the lot up on his own, with a raging hangover to boot.

Like Kellner, O'Driscoll had not set out to revenge himself on Wills, but he had been granted a privilege denied so many law enforcers, of seeing one of their tormentors completely reduced to mental and physical rubble.

None of the three men would have said they believed in karma before, but certainly Kellner and O'Driscoll did now.

