You know in Britain, if you come up with a good idea people snarl at you. They don't like it. I don't really know why, but I think it's got something to do with the “mustn't grumble” school of thought where you should always be happy with your lot. In Australia you can go up to someone and say, “look, what I'm going to do is design a rocket and then build it and then blast off next month to Jupiter because I think there's a bit of potential up there.” and the Aussie will say, “not a bad idea mate, I can see that working. Give it a go", and they genuinely believe it. There's none of this, “well, I told the chap that it was a damned fine idea, but frankly Biffo he's never going to get it off the ground. Simply didn't go to the right school, don't you know?”

Anyway, Don lives in Bondi. He lives in this house that he rents and he sub-lets rooms to other people. He has a studio on the top floor which is the third floor and he's within walking distance of the beach so though you can't see the water you can always smell the sea. He's also near Bondi golf course. The golf course is bounded on one side by the sea, so when you lose a ball that's it. I guess some of them even hit English holidaymakers who are unlucky enough to be tugged out to sea by the rip-tide. If you were one of those being swept away I imagine that really would make your day complete. There you are drowning and then a golf ball whacks you on the head. Super.

Don says to me, come and have a look out the window here, and I do and in the building next door, which is a block of smart apartments, there's this good looking girl playing a violin. She's two floors below so we're sort of looking down and across at her and we can see almost all the way into her apartment which is lit with sunlight.

"She is so good looking,” says Don quietly.
“What's with the violin,” I ask.
He looks at me, “She plays it.”
She's strumming the violin like she knows what she's doing. It doesn't even sound bad. Snatches of the music float up to us on a breeze from the sea.
"I'm going to marry that girl,” says Don and I wonder if he's been getting a bit too much of that sea air.
“What's she think about that?” I ask just as quietly, watching her, listening to the music. I think it's a bit of Beethoven.
“Well,” says Don, also watching her, “I haven't actually talked to her yet. On account of her boyfriend.”
“Oh,” I say, moving away from the window, “that's going to be a bit tricky then.”
“I don't think so,” he says, turning towards me and spreading his hands, palms up flat, “see she plays the violin and I'm - ?” He waited for me.
“Well, you're a gas fitter.”
“Mate! I am a musician! I make music! It is only a matter of time before our musical talents collide.”
“Hmm,” I said and turned to look out the window again and listened to some more music.

Two weeks later Don calls me up and says, “Come round. I want to show you something.”
I drive over there and he has the TV wired up to the video player. He shows me this film of the girl from next door who, it turns out, is called Zady. In the video she's sitting in Don's room talking to Don about music. On the tape Don has this fan gently blowing in the room because it's so warm and she's wearing this filmy dress and the fan breeze is playing with the edges of her dress. Because she doesn't know she's being filmed it's actually a whole lot more sexy than any other video I've ever seen.

“See Tone, I'm going to go out with that girl,” says Don as the tape comes to an end. “She's already interested in playing in my band.”
“On the violin?”
 “Well, I've been having a think about putting a string section in the group.”
“What about the boyfriend?”
“I don't think he'd be interested, He's an architect.”
“No, I mean what are you going to do about him? She's not going to go out with you while they're still living together.”
“Well,” he says, “I hear them arguing all the time now, so way I see it, it's only a matter of time.”

Three weeks later...Don calls me at work. It was like a scene out of Seinfeld.
‘Hey,” he said, “guess what happened?”
“Tell me,” I said as I continued to tap on the keyboard.
“That girl, Zady.”
“Yeah.”
“She ran out on the street yesterday.”
“Yeah.” I said, still typing, only half listening to him.
“And she was screaming.”
My typing slowed.
“Really screaming -”
"Yes,” I said, listening properly now, leaning back in my chair, the computer abandoned.
“The boyfriend's dead!”
“Jesus,” I said coming forward in my chair and nearly head-butting the computer screen, “How'd that happen? He was only maybe, what, 32?”
“Yeah, 32. She came home and he was lying on the sofa and he was just dead. Had a dicky heart or something.”
“God.” I paused. And then I said, “So when you going out with her?”
“Friday.”

So, Zady starts playing in Don's heavy rock band, her violin fighting with Duggs on double bass and Monster on the drums. It was an interesting sound, but the more I listened to them the more confident I was that John Bon Jovi had a future. There was something a little frightening about Zady's playing. Gone were the soft lilting chords that the sea breeze had brought up to us that day in Don's flat and in their place was a savagery that seemed to come from another place entirely. Of course it was to be expected. When you're in your mid-20s you don't expect your 32 year old boyfriend to lie down on the sofa one afternoon and die. Not when you're out. Imagine the way things had been left, the words that hadn’t been said. What a terrible business.

Anyway, Zady and Don started going out. This had to be the worst thing to do. And, no of course, I didn't tell him that. Some things you just have to find out for yourself.

Perhaps not too surprisingly the relationship didn't last and when it finished it upset Don a lot. He really thought he'd found his soulmate but when they broke up she said to him, “You know, I never fancied you.”
“What!?” said Don, “after all the things we did?”
“That,” she said, “was just sex.”

The truth was, she'd wanted a shoulder to cry on, just one, and Don’d wanted her, all of her, not just her shoulder. But it was a relationship with three people in it. And one of them was dead. How can you compete with a dead man? Well, you know, you just can't because he's already had the last word.