Real Tart

God, it’s hot. At 6am this morning it was 24C and today the fire service has issued their Catastrophic – or Code Red, as they’re calling it – warning for this area, with the temp here expected to peak at 42C. The advice in the paper and on TV is to leave our home this morning and go somewhere else. They’re suggesting a shopping centre, or a friend’s house – presumably somewhere in Europe.
Anyway, as I’m English I’ll simply carry on as usual and not panic and try to keep cool.
Four told me what to do in the event of an emergency, him and his pres-school friends having had a visit from the firemen and women from the local station (most of whom have kids at pre-school – Four told me, “Chantail’s mummy drove the fire truck.” or Fruck, as he calls it).
He got down on the floor with his hand over his mouth and crawled along like a soldier creeping towards enemy positions.
“You keep down,” he said, “then the smoke is on top of you.”
I said, what happens if the whole street is on fire, and he said, “Daaaad, you just keep crawling until you get far, far away.”
We’ll see.
In fact, Four’s pre-school is closing end of this year, which is a right pain because he loves going there and also it’s only a 10 minute drive away. They’re closing because the Federal government is insisting each centre has at least one university trained person and more ‘teachers’ per head of child then before. You can see the good intentions behind this but as there is no free pre-school here it means those centres that stay open will charge more (currently it’s around $57 a day which in pound terms is about four pence, errm, I think that’s right, the dollar acting like Popeye while the quid is more like Olive Oil, or whatever the skinny one’s name was.), and others will close down completely, so costing us all more and more to get our kids in a centre that is not nearby.
So, from January I have to move him about 30 minutes away which is going to really bugger up my mornings. Of course, I could take him out altogether but he has only another year and then he’ll be at Six’s school, and most of the other pre-school children will go there too, so it will be good for him.
Okay, I’m just going to hose myself down.
With water, madam.

Everywhere outside the cities in Australia there are bushfire roadside warning signs, usually with a pointer on them that tells you on any particular day the warning level - low, medium or high.
Now they’ve changed that, after those 150 or so people lost their lives in one weekend last year in the fires in Victoria. The top level is now tagged Catastrophic.
Today is over 40C here and we’re on the big C, and it’s not even summer yet. All this week it’s been in the high 30s. Even at night it’s barely dropping below 25.
I went with Four to swimming lesson this morning and the outdoor pool looked like it was sizzling. We were in the indoor pool so it wasn’t so bad, what with the air conditioning and all that.
Yesterday I was waiting for Six to come out of class. You go and sit on benches outside the class rooms, under a large canopy, and have a gossip with the mothers. As we were sitting there a Lace Monitor came strolling by. These things are about three feet long and look like dragons. I’d only seen one before and I tell you, first time it scares just about everything out of you. In fact they’re not that dangerous unless you corner them. Some of the little kids started baiting it and eventually one of the mothers, a large farmer’s wife with strong arms, picked it up by the tail and led it thrashing its head, trying to get her hand, and heaved it onto the garden where it scurried off with a rustle and crash through the undergrowth. Some of the women didn’t even stop the gossiping.
One thing I’ve discovered since I’ve been here is that Six doesn’t get invited for play at many people’s houses. One of the women told me it’s because the women’s husbands would mind. That’s the thing out here, they are very conservative, actually I’d call it stupid, but there you go. I feel sorry for Six because most of his friends get to play with their mates after school. But there’s not much I can do about it, other than suggest we meet at the park where they can all see what I’m doing with my hands, but even that is hard because, to be honest, it’s too bloody hot to be out and nobody ever goes to the park – they prefer to shut themselves in air conditioned cocoons.
It worries me because I don’t want the boys to miss out on the early friendship bonding sessions, but it’s hard to work out what to do.
That aside, I’ve been doing well with Mr Wolf this week. I also decided to start selling all the vintage watches I’d accrued via Ebay. I eventually worked out that I wanted to concetrate on watches made in England which somewhat limits the choice, so that’s no bad thing. Someone at school told me the problem with selling anything through Ebay is that you spend most of your life at the Post Office sending off boxes, which is true.
Still, I’ve sold most of them for more than I bought them for, so that’s good. With some of the proceeds I bought a Smiths W10 which is a black dialled watch issued to the UK armed forces back between the 1940s and 1970s (when Smiths went bust because Margaret Thatcher thought it best to supply John De Lorean with money for cocaine, er sorry, money to build sportscars in Northern Ireland). Anyway, it is a really fine watch, in this case made in 1968, and if you know anything about English watch making you’ll know the Swiss learnt most of their skills from the English – no, it’s true. The W10 is very similar in movement design to Swiss Jaeger LeCoultre watches, which start today at 10,000 pounds. I’ve got a Jaeger I bought back 10 years ago and I have to say I prefer the Smiths. Here's a link which shows you what it looks like: http://www.mwrforum.net/forums/showthread.php?t=28875
Right then, I’m off to take a cold shower.

I’m chuntering on with Mr Wolf. I have to get it finished, that’s completely finished, by December 18 because the nippers break up from school then for their summer holidays and really I’ll get no work done for two months. So the clock is ticking, which funnily enough is the way I like it.
I would have had it finished by now except for the end of term holiday a few weeks ago, and generally Six and Four are much more time-consuming. Of course, they know everything by now so endless hours are spent in arguments about how many trees there are in the whole wide world and if God can’t be bothered to show himself should we really be spending so much time talking about him. Sometimes I have no answers – or at least not good ones – for their questions. Now I understand why when faced with questions like, why did they build the Great Wall of China, some parents stumble about and then say, to keep the rabbits out.
Anyway, at school there are some right bitches. Most of the mothers are fine but there are a couple who seem to think they are descended from Royalty. They have those lemon-sucking faces and walk around in a haughty manner, though it doesn’t quite work in the Australian National Costume of thongs (flip-flops to you and me), sawed off shorts with floppy arses, tops which were once tent material, and hair-dos which haven’t been near a hairdresser – at least not one who can still see – for, oh I don’t know, maybe 16 years.
There’s a stick-insect blonde one who doesn’t talk to anyone unless they are what she considers true-blue Aussie. This counts me out, clearly, as I have no criminal record.
She’ll walk past me without so much as a nod. With great fanfare she went off to Perth with her husband and kids thanks to hubby's new job. He works in tarmacaddam, apparently, and is an expert in laying reverse cambers on the approach to roundabouts.
But soon she returned, minus the husband. I imagine he couldn’t put up with her either. Anyway, she’s got herself a little fluffy dog, presumably in place of the husband, and parades around with it like Marie-Antoinette.
Jerome’s wife, who speaks like Penelope Cruz, with twice the fire, sat down next to me the other day while we were waiting for the kids to come out of school and moved her shoulders about and said, “oh, you see, the fancy woman has got herself a fancy dog.”
“Oh yes,” I said, “and another thing-“
“No, no! Let me finish, for I have more to say.” She narrowed her eyes at me and whispered, “they are two bitches together.”
I had to laugh.

Every morning the silence is disturbed by the roar of jet engines as what the locals call ‘the post run’ comes over the mountain and heads for the RAAF base in the valley. From our house you can look down on the plane and its giant bat-like shape as its afterburners flare orange in the blue pre-dawn.
The plane is massive, a four-engined Lockheed of some sort in matt green. If you drive down to the base and stop around the perimeter fence (this is Australia, madam,) you can see it, heat still shimmering above its jets. On the rear fin it says, US Marine Corps. No one knows, or no-one will tell you, where it comes from every morning, and why.
As it happens, Jerome, ex-US Special Forces, was sent away for two weeks back to the Land of the Free by the company he now works for to be taught about new mass spectrometers.
These things can be explained to you eighteen times and you will still never understand what they are for or what they do.
Anyhow, Jerome was back this weekend and his daughter – who is in Six’s class – just had her birthday, so they held a party at the local leisure centre pool where I take the nippers for swimming lessons.
It was a good afternoon. Jerome, me, and the father who owns the 10 acre spread, got in the water and performed around 85 rescues of small children falling, giggling and screaming off the massive floating castle that stretched the whole length of the pool. A good time was had by all.
I noticed many of the mothers staring at my near naked body. I really must lose a few kilos, er, I mean, many kilos.
In the changing rooms afterwards I was chatting to Jerome and said, “you must be quite a good swimmer.”
“Oh yeah,” he drawled. “You know, they taught me to swim with my arms and legs tied.”
“Useful,” I muttered politely, wondering what could be the use of that.
When he came with the family to Australia, Jerome wanted to bring his gun collection – he was handed his first gun when he was three years old. Seriously, if I’d given Six a gun at three you wouldn’t be reading this now.
Apparently Jerome has 62 weapons, including his personal sniper rifle and another gun that can also launch a grenade from its snout. It seems when he left the Special Forces he just had to sign for them. And they wonder why America’s in trouble.
Before he stepped onto our sun-drenched shores he called the Aussie Customs people and explained the situation and the Customs bloke said, “Okay, tell me what you’d like to bring in.”
“I got as far as number five,” Jerome told me, “and then he said, whoa there fella.”
Three weeks ago I passed Jerome driving the other way. I turned around and followed him. I know, but sometimes I just do things like that. It’s exciting.
I followed him down to the town and out onto the road to Sydney. Just outside the town he turned left.
The Lockheed’s engines were roaring on the tarmac.

In Australia there are only three driving speeds – Go, Stop, and On Your Roof.
Honestly, more people get injured in car accidents per capita here than anywhere else in the world, well except for Afghanistan, but that’s mostly down to roadside bombs, and blokes blowing themselves and their Toyota up in crowded markets on their way to see 40 virgins (the after-life is probably the only place these days you’d find 40 virgins...).
We had a bit of rain last week and there were three big car accidents in two days between our house and the end of the road. Admiteddly it’s a winding road and it’s all downhill but it’s in good nick and wide.
The first day it was a mother from school who'd spun off the road in her Toyota Landcruiser and knocked over one gigantic wooden power pole. "I didn't want to put the brakes on," she told me the following day, "in case the car tipped over...". The cops were there and I had to stop to let the ambulance get out of the verge. An old cop who looked like Clint Eastwood ambled over to explain what was happening and said, "Makes you wonder how they do it, sometimes."
Crasher has got a new vehicle already, the Toyota being a write-off, what with its engine being in the back seat. The new car – which may mean little to you European folks – is a bright red Holden Clubsport R8. It looks like a fighter plane, has a 6.8-litre V8 engine and will reach a power pole in about four seconds. Good choice, madam.
The following day someone had come down the hill and on a wide sweeping bend had spun their car, hit the bank, gone through an electrified fence (bet that gave them a shock) and tipped the vehicle on its roof in the middle of the field. The same copper was there. I had to stop to let the fire engine reverse out of the field. The copper nodded to me and came and leaned in the window and said drily, "Hello again. Now, today we have a very impressive one indeed. Notice the upside down position."
"Yes, I see what you mean. But what happened to the goats?"
"My colleagues are trying to round them up.” He looked off in the distance to the smoky hills and said quietly. “Some have made it to town." He looked at me and smiled bleakly, “It seems one of them has run out in front of a bus, which hit a car.”

Just a quick one before I take Six to school.
They reckon it’s going to hit 40C today so it’s going to be a hot one.
The Melbourne Cup is on this afternoon. Melbournites have a day’s holiday so the women can dress up in silly hats and stumble around in tart-trotter shoes and watch some horses run around a track while sipping Chardonnay – that’s the women drinking, not the horses, you understand.
We went to the local park for the Teddy Bears’ Picnic on Saturday, which was a nice day out sitting on picnic rugs and eating party food. The park is on top of the mountain so there’s almost always a breeze, and there’s a 360 degree view over the lowlands. You can see Sydney’s towers 60km away poking out of the haze and on a day like today you’ll look and be glad you’re not there. The park’s about four acres of grassland and stretches of trees, including some massive English oaks which were planted when the original English settlers struggled up here, so they are massive and you can sit under them and try and keep cool. Funny to think those acorns came up the mountain in someone’s pocket, all the way from Chorlton-Cum-Hardly, or somewhere similar.
The park was where the residents of this small enclave gathered every morning during the last Emergency, as they call the bushfires, about eight years ago, to hear from the fire people shouting above the clatter of the water bombing helicopters that kept dumping thousands of tons of water on people’s houses. One woman told me she went out one morning and suddenly got swept half way up the street in a rush of water. This Sunday the Rural Fire Brigade held Fire Wise which is a gathering of residents who sit in white chairs under the oaks and listen quietly to experts tell us what to do in the event of another Emergency this year.
The chief fire officer reckoned he was a bit of a joker, only there was tension in the air and no-one laughed at his silly jokes as he told us that detection of sudden bushfires is better than it's ever been, they get there quicker ("but if you hear the sirens, then it's already too late for you to get out") and they have more equipment than ever before. The kickers is, conditions have never been this worrying before so we had better get ready. It didn’t help that on a giant screen they had a dramatic music-backed film loop of last year’s Victorian fires and the people panicking as the inferno raged and roared across valleys in seconds and engulfed houses as if they’d been doused in petrol.
The fire officer said, “if you think it’s safe to just leave and go to the next village, well, think again. You will die there too.” Nice.

Back a few years ago Don and I got together and came up with a book idea called Wish You Were Beer.
The concept was we’d travel around the world reporting on the world’s foaming ales. This lavishly produced tome would contain startling facts and figures, stuff you never knew about the amber nectar (I know, I’m going to run out of beer phrases pretty soon...), health facts about beer, the history of the brews, the beer drinking donkey of Tijuna – you know, a homage to the hops. At the bottom of each page there would be a timeline running the length of the book - Cleopatra bathes in pale ale, 44BC - Adolf Hitler can't get a decent wheat beer, decides to invade Poland, 1938 - yes, of course it was meant to be fun too!
For the presentation to publishers we decided against anything electronic as most of them still appeared to use quill pens and delivered rejection notes with all the speed of a tortoise with a zimmer frame.
So, Don designed the look and feel of the book – our theory being that this would save the publisher four and tuppence, which in publisher land is thought to still be the price of a quail and pigeon pie down at the Horse and Bridle. I penned the words and between us we finished up with a very nice presentation pack.
To be frank, as I’d had dealings with publishers before, I expected to see Jesus Christ walking towards me on the High Street saying, Hello, could you spare a moment to talk about the Lord, before we got anywhere with it. Don, on the other hand, was busy cruising Double Bay, where all the millionaires live, looking at houses. One day when we got together to plan our campaign he said, “You know, I’d like to donate some of my earnings from the book to setting up a charitable philanthropic organisation to help those who are blind help to see again.” Yes, I thought, I too would love it if a publisher could spot a good thing when they see it, but really.
We sent the pack off and heard...well nothing, for a very long time. In fact, if I’d had children back then I could have watched them grow up, go to school, borrow my car and crash it several times, and even be dating, before a reply came back.
But one day, a message made of the finest parchment was delivered. The man they sent – bedecked in a red and white ermine fringed costume and wearing a tricolour hat with gold braid unrolled it and read aloud – as his horse snuffled behind him, pawing the ground impatiently – and said, “Don’t you mean, Wish You Were Here?”
He handed me the message, and sped off on his steed. I placed it in the FW file, not having the energy to write Fuckwits out fully.
But the day did come when a publisher from one of the big companies invited us to come in and discuss it. Well, even I was beginning to think there could be a drink or two in this.
When we arrived we were ushered into the board room and left there to ponder the stacks of presumably unsold books against one wall. Eventually the publisher – a flinty eyed woman with grey hair and the haughty demeanour of Margaret Thatcher came in with a girl whose job appeared to be to pass the biscuits around.
Now, the funny thing was, Margaret would not look at me at all. She would only look at Don. It was utterly bizarre. Soon, Don was casting sideways glances at me – I was glad someone was – because even when I answered one or other of her questions, she would look at Don. I have never experienced anything like it. I mean she was too old for me to have shagged in a previous life, or even her daughter for that matter.
The thing was, she said she really liked the idea, but followed that up with, “And how would you propose to fund this book?”
Don looked at me and I looked at him. We sort of thought the idea was they would give us some money and we’d write the book. I mean, we didn't expect them to fund a lavish drinking trip round the world - though clearly that would have been nice - but we did expect enough to buy a pack or two of salted peanuts. But no, we had to deliver the book and then if they liked it they might give us a sovereign – each, mind you! – and then they might publish it, but only if Saturn was rising against Jupiter on the seventh equinox in the east - and then they would lavish the usual publisher sums on worldwide advertising (er, a poster on the back of a dirty bus on the Sydney to Canberra run, once a month).
We had to laugh.
On the way out, the publisher shook Don’s hand. Then she shook mine, but looked at Don.
Outside Don said, “What was all that business of never looking at you?”
“I have no idea. It was most bizarre.”
“Maybe she fancied you.”
“Oh yeah, but if you fancied someone wouldn’t you want to look at them?”
“Oh yeah, you’re right.”
We never have figured it out and sometimes we still have a laugh about it.
A few years later I had an idea for another book (yes, I am an idiot, but a hopeful one, mind you!) so I sent it off to the-publisher-who-wouldn’t-look-me-in-the-eye and she sent a lovely long letter back (they were upmarket, they used a racing pigeon), saying it was a good idea and if the non-fiction publisher saw eye-to-eye with her on it it was a goer.
I laughed to myself and went to look for the FW file.

This weekend just outside a town called Bathurst about three hours drive north west of Sydney they are holding the annual Bathurst 1000, a 1000-kilometre (620 miles) touring car race held annually at Mount Panorama Circuit and featuring the biggest, most fuel-greedy V8 engined cars the planet has ever seen growl around a track.
It’s a venue for rev-heads from all over who spend the weekend extolling the virtues of Fords, Holdens, and beer.
This year the organisers put out a press release (which contained not a hint of humour) which said that this time around the visitors would be, and I quote, “strictly rationed” when it came to how much alcohol they could take to the meet.
Everyone is limited to 24 bottles of beer or two bottles of wine.
That’s person, per day.
I imagine the punters must be grumbling louder than the V8s.

Five miles, down the mountainside in the fetid sink of a trapped valley where it gets hot as sin and no breeze stirs, there is a town.
If you were to travel through a time warp, perhaps be sucked through a blackhole, you’d believe you’d arrived in 1964.
Shops lean one on the another, heat sizzles on the wide, uneven pavements. In the oval a wooden stadium casts a shadow over two black cannons from the Great War. The whack of leather on willow echoes under a sky where blue never ends.
A 24-hour McDonalds oversees it all. It arrived in 1998, in a truck, and was assembled inside 36 hours. Apparently that’s a record.
It doesn’t matter what time you drive by, it’s packed with corpulent SUVs, sound systems doof-doofing, waiting in line in the Drive-Through lane, V8s throbbing like a heart.
Any early morning you drive from our house, down the mountain, the fresh cool breeze sifting through your open window, enlivening you with scent of jasmin, eucalyptus, fangipania, you’ll see McDonald wrappers strewn about; boxes, empty drinks cartons rolling from the verge, sometimes the wind sending them skittering like silly animals, under your tyres where they pop.
The other day, I saw a field of cows the colour of butter scotch, standing knee deep in a field of the greenest grass.
One of them had its nose in a MacDonalds box.
He chewed.
The silk breeze made the grass flow like the sea.

Monday: AFL training for Six. Sit on benches in the late afternoon sun with the mothers as children run around screaming for an hour. Mothers talk amongst themselves, asking why they are all so fat when all they do is eat normally, well sometimes there is a snack involved and one woman said, “we only have Maccas two or three times a week, KFC on Fridays and Sunday.” I watch the sun go down behind the baobab trees, their elephant trunks casting a shadow across the playing fields almost as wide as Mrs Maccas.

Tuesday: Football (soccer, as it was known) in-door five a side for Six. He’d never played football before, unless you count kicking me in the testicles every now and again. Gets on court and scores a goal within two minutes. Father of Six’s team-mate who looks like a biker and has more tatoos than a painted lady shouts across the court, “Yer a fuckin’ demon.”

Wednesday: Day at home for me – both nippers in school and pre-school. Have been asked to write journalism course for a college. Also, back on marking papers. I’ve had 90 this week...

Thursday: Four (yes, birthday last week, read on...) goes to swimming lessons. I tell woman behind the counter I’ll go for a swim too. She looks at me as if I’m mad. Leisure centre is packed with mums – sitting at the café. Australia’s best pies, says the sign. I look in vain for Mrs Maccas then realise she is probably still climbing the steps outside.

Friday: Go and help at school, which consists of helping Six’s classmates with their reading. All the girls can read, all the boys play. One of the teachers is going steady with herself. She is blonde (this week...) and wears figure hugging one-piece outfits that squeal when she walks. She is rumoured to be a top tango dancer in her spare time, offering lessons to anyone who's willing to get close to her. I imagine the queue is longer than the one at KFC.

Saturday: Six goes for swimming lessons. I say I’ll go for a swim. The woman at the desk looks at me, wondering why I don’t like pies.

Sunday: Four’s birthday. People have realised I don’t do 2-4pm at a play centre, so big crowd gathers. I cook jaloff rice, chick pea salad, potato salad, bbq lamb chops, sausages, t-bone steak, fish marinara. I do jelly shots with vodka (purple for the adults, blue for the kids, or is it the other way around...I forget). Kids organise their own games. The girls organise the boys, sending them off to go play hide and seek. I hear two Four year old girls discussing the game plan. One says to the other, “The thing is, you just can’t trust them.”