Real Tart

So, on Thursday, Five’s second baby tooth started wobbling and thanks to a big box of popcorn at the cinema (Hotel for Dogs was showing, if you must know) it came half out. The shock of it not just popping out like the last one made him howl and cry worse than any of the dogs on the movie. Indeed, for a while I’m sure other patrons thought it was the movie dogs making all the noise.
Upshot of all of this was that he wouldn’t eat anything and wouldn’t drink anything either. By Sunday he’d not eaten or drunk anything and he was dehydrating, especially considering the 42C heat we’ve been having, and by Sunday evening was becoming delirious and throwing up, which was a worry.
I eventually made the decision to call the doctor who said go to the hospital right now.
You know, sometimes in life you just have an experience you’ll never forget. I’ll paraphrase this one because if I write about it all we’ll be here for, well, about three days.

6.45pm: Arrive at hospital, carrying Five who is muttering like an old man. Take him down to the GP, growls the witch on reception. For a moment I think I must have entered a time warp and been transported to Auschwitz.
7.30pm: Meet GP who has just arrived from Iran, speaks no English and has worried, harried look as if secret police are still after him. Why have they sent you here, he asks before sending us back to Emergency.
7.32pm: Witch says, you will still be in the same place in the queue. By my reckoning that means we should be seeing a doctor about now. Of course, it’s a lie.
8.15pm: Five throws up every 15 minutes.
8.30pm: Three entertains the growing crowd of sick people with various songs he has heard on the radio. Grimacing I make a note to myself not to let him hear lyrics again like, my father loves a vamp, he looks just like a tramp and he’ll fuck you senseless all night, yeah, yeah, yeah, he will, or something like that.
9.30pm: Where are we in the queue, I ask the witch. You’re next, she lies.
10.30: Witch invites us into inner sanctum and looks at Five and says, so what appears to be the problem. I tell her. She says, let’s give him an ice lolly. I roll my eyes. Five likes idea of ice lolly. Throws it up after 15 minutes. Wait outside, she says, you’ll be next.
11.30pm: I want a bottle of water, whines Three every two seconds. We don’t have change, I say, every three seconds.
11.32pm: Bloke with his aged father who looks like he might already have passed away hands me three dollars for the drinks machine. Some people are very good indeed.
12 midnight: Bloke comes in with head wound, bleeding profusely, but still clutching beer bottle. His t-shirt says, Love Sucks, True Loves Swallows.
12.20am: Three says, daddy, what does that man’s t-shirt say. I laugh. Love Sucks stares at me. I stop laughing and give him a London look. I can tell he realises it will go like this: What are you looking at? I have no idea, I would say. His beer is almost empty.
1.15am: Everyone before us has been seen. Goodbye, says witch as she takes her corpulent lying self home where I suspect she will never feel guilty about taking the public’s money for nothing.
1.30am. More drunks arrive sporting various head wounds. I hear one was the result of a baseball bat, another fell off a wall, one more outran the police before being hit by a car, and another seems uninjured but is full of injury stories, as in, I lost my two front teeth here, my arm got broken there. I’m thinking, and when did your brain drop out.
2.15am: We get to see a doctor. He says, get him to drink some water. Three lies down on the bed and sleeps. He’ll recover, says the doctor, tussling his hair. That’s not the ill one, I say.
2.30am: I’ll be back in a minute, says the lying doctor.
2.45: Five says, I feel a lot better now. Can we go home?
3.00am: I pick both the sleeping kids up. Love Sucks is asleep, his beer bottle spilling dregs on the seat beside him.
3.01am: Three-dollar bloke says, good luck, mate. His soon to be deceased father waves his walking stick and smiles his goodbye and I think, that’s where the good manners come from. If God existed he'd bless you.
3.02am: The doors whup open.
It’s cool outside. It's silent. The sky is full of stars. 

Yesterday we went to Sydney's Powerhouse Museum. Now that we’ve moved it’s a 12 hour journey, well it feels like that with two squabbling kids on board the Bentley.

They have this Star Wars exhibition on titled Where Science Meets Imagination but I think it should really be called Where Branding Meets Kids And Parents Get Fleeced.
Honestly, it’s supposed to be a museum but alongside all the Star Wars ‘exhibitions’ they’ve got so many things on sale – Lego, light sabres from every province in China, alarm clocks which beam the time on your kids wall and which, by my Rolex at least, will last about 49 minutes before fizzing and zizzing and never lighting anything up again, character costumes that don’t make you look like Anakin Skywalker and even huge cardboard cut-outs of your favourite characters which look great until you realise even a Hummer can’t accommodate their size so you’ll have to double fold Count Dooko to get him on board, and he’ll never be the same again.

So after doing all that we go to the Members’ Lounge which is this haven of tranquillity where you get free drinks and biscuits and the morning paper and you can sit in the sun streaming through the glass roof and almost imagine for a moment or two that your life is still your own. So, we're sitting there having lunch. Five finishes his sandwich (made by my fair hands with a concoction of Hawkesbury River prawns, mayo – the proper stuff, madam, not Kraft – dill and mint) and then helps himself to a pile of biscuits on the next table, which belong to some woman who's with her kids, takes a big bite and his tooth comes out.

It is quiet in there. Well not when Five loses a tooth...
Three said, "Five, what is that face for?"

Anyhow, after a little bit of bleeding and loads of "daddy I am so sad my tooth will not be in my mouth anymore", he was fine. By the time we got in the lift to go he was wondering whether the tooth fairy would bring him chocolate or money, "but I hope she does not bring me a toothbrush and toothpaste because that really would not be a good idea, you know...".
That evening as he slept like only a Five year old can do, all spread-eagled and clutching his bear with the fan whirring overhead, it’s cool breeze kissing his hair, I took his baby tooth from under his pillow and replaced it with a shiny gold dollar.
In the morning he came down all sleepy-eyed, clutching the gleaming dollar and said, “Dad, look, the tooth fairy gave me a dollar.” He looked at it and then looked at me. “Dad, is that all I get?”

Yesterday I went with the nippers to the nearest big town and at 11.30am the temperature was 43C, can you imagine. It was hard even to walk from the car to the shops but we had to go because we were on the hunt for Chocko Monkey.

Actually there is no such thing. I think its real name is Yogo, or something like that but the kids have always called it Chocko Monkey because some tubs used to have a picture of a monkey on it, for some obscure reason. It’s a yogurt-type thing made with chocolate. I don’t let them have it very often because the makers squeeze the contents of an entire sugar cane field into every tub, but now and again it’s okay, especially considering they probably burn it off quicker than a bushfire.
Speaking of which, the one near us has eventually been put out. Apparently it was started by someone torching an abandoned car, you know, as you do.
Last night the firies, as they are called here, had to take their trucks and stuff to another fire down in the valley which destroyed some houses and cars as it swept towards a village. Seems like that’s under control too now but it took 250 firefighters and two aircraft dumping water to stop it.
We had some rain last night and today the temp is unlikely to go above 27, which is good. I woke up this morning at 5am shivering, can you believe.
Anyway, back to the Chocko Monkey. We went into the supermarket, the kids chanting, Chocko Monkey, Chocko Monkey, but they’d had a power cut sometime before and had emptied the cooler shelves. When we got there they were just starting to restock the shelves.
“Where’s the Chocko Monkey?” asked Five.
This old woman with those watery eyes looked at him and said, “What’s that luv?”
“Chocko Monkey,” said Three. “We want Chocko Monkey.”
“Oh yes,” said the woman, who stood up and shouted down the row of shelf packers, “Where’s the Chocko Monkey?”
They all looked at her, apart from one especially vacant bulbous one who was grunting and hitching her trousers like she was wrestling with herself.
“We don’t sell monkeys,” whinnied one acned youth. They all looked at him. His spots glowed.
“I said,” shouted the woman, “where are the Chocko Monkeys?”
A big smiling fat bloke, you know, the sort who thinks there’s a career here in this place, or maybe in this department (Head of Shelf Stocking and Replenishment - Spreads, maybe) came up all sprightly.
“Maeve, we’re clean out of Rocko Chunkeys at the moment but I’ll put a requistion 842 in now,” and he winked at her, “in triplicate, Maeve, and we should have them in sometime next week.”
“Thanks for that,” I said.
“Dad,” said Five, “I’ve changed my mind. Can we have Rocko Chunkeys instead?”

Yesterday the mercury hit 40C here and during the night it never dropped below 24. At 7am it was 28 and we're tipped to have a 42C temp today, so you know, it's hot. Last night the mountain ridge which joins the one we live on caught fire and they've been using helicopters all night to water bomb it, so not much sleep for us. The air is thick with smoke and ash is falling like snow.

I was thinking of taking the nippers to the open air baths today but though it sounds silly, it's just going to be too hot to be out and about. I think we'll go to the bank instead because they have very efficient air conditioning which I have of course partly paid for so I might as well get my money's worth. Oh yes, I have a couple of cheques to put in too.

Talking of money, next week Three begins pre-school for two days a week and the week after that Five starts big school, which he's looking forward to, so that will give me a bit of time to start getting some more work in. During December I had nothing and January will be the same as everyone takes their summer holidays. I need some paying work pretty quick so we can afford the water to put the fires out. Meanwhile I'm halfway through a second draft of a thriller called Mr Wolf. I was going to stop writing fiction as I can't get anywhere with it but I like doing it and some of my friends like my stories so I'll do it for them - fuck the publishers.

Right then, let's get moving.

I had a friend who used to work for one of those book clubs.
While they were preparing one of their regular brochures she noticed they'd spelt an author's name wrong. She pointed it out but they decided to go with it anyway, wrong as it was, because the girl in charge said, "look he's not that well known." And neither will he be if you don't spell his name correctly, said my friend to herself as she feverishly looked for another job where they could spell professionalism.

I remembered this today because I was just scanning The Independent on-line. I used to work for them back when they started and they always had one golden rule - get your facts right. That's always a useful rule for a newspaper but I guess it must have changed since I left Blighty. I was just reading the story now about Tony Blair, who I understand used to be the much-loved PM of your fine country, and they mentioned that he was awarded a medal by George Bush for services to smiling, or something like that. Here's the link http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-spoils-of-war-parting-gift-for-bushs-brother-in-arms-1334239.html

Anyhow, as you'll see, it also mentions the previous PM of our sun-kissed continent who also received a hug from George. The Indy referred to him as Michael Howard. I don't know him (well actually I do - he used to be a Thatcher Minister, didn't he...).

We used to have a PM for the last 12 years who was called John Howard by his parents, and somehow the name stuck .
But I'm not worried - after all, we're an awful long way away and not really well known.

I’ll give you a bit of a guided tour of our new environs, as I know some of you like the idea of Australia and all it has to offer, and who can blame you as you sit shivering in a northern winter.

Yesterday it was 37C here which is a bit too hot for anyone’s liking. Apparently it’s a fact that the human brain stops functioning properly over 36C, so that explains plenty then.

We went to one of the parks near here yesterday (there are about eight parks within a five minute drive, can you believe) and Five spent five minutes gambolling around before complaining, “Dad, it’s too hot, let’s go home”. I met a woman with her two kids who were also complaining about the heat. Really it is oppressive; the air hums and vibrates, nothing moves, red dust sits heavy on the wilting leaves, insects whine like banshees, your car ticks.

Where we live there’s one road in and one road out, which puts some people off. I mean if you have a bushfire you have to hope someone can put it out quick-smart, otherwise you’ll be getting more heat than you bargained for.

That all said, we live on a mountain so there’s almost always a breeze up here. You can see Sydney off about 60km on the plain below, sitting under a brown haze of smog. Sometimes I sit on the front verandah early morning and as the sun comes up and turns the yellow leaves gold I imagine the people sitting in traffic jams in their cars and I think, right I’ll have another cup of tea.

Anyhow, today is set to be another scorcher. Three has been a bit sick the last two days so we’ll probably stay in today and play soldiers with Five’s castle.

Yesterday when I was in the doctor’s Three ran into the waiting room singing some song he’d heard at the top of his voice which goes, “they call me Jane, they call me Stacey. That’s not my name”. The other day I was planting the Christmas tree (don’t worry it isn’t a plastic one) and I heard him singing in the house at full pelt, “I kiss the girls, yes I kiss the girls.”

...blogging, that is. Every time I make a decision to finish it all, scrap my blog, tear up the pages (virtually, of course...) and do something decent, noteworthy, hell, even something good for humanity, I find I’m tapping my fingers on the desk. It starts off as a tap here and a tap there but pretty soon my fingers are searching out the keyboard and going at it like Mozart, well without the final symphony, obviously.

Anyway, I promise not to promise to drop off again. It is all too stressful making these life-changing decisions.

Talking of stress and decisions...for about 13 years now my doctor (well, every time I see him he ask me to take my clothes off so he surely must be a man of the bedside manner) has been telling me he wanted to get me on blood pressure pills. Clearly he has shares in Pfizer and must be really unhappy that so far I’d fended him off. I calculate his lost additional earnings at somewhere approaching $2million, plus several lost opportunities to go on free medical company trips to places like the Seychelles and the flesh pots of Amsterdam.

In reality my blood pressure has not been sky high. One week Doctor Mengele had me wearing one of those blood pressure monitors. It has a pump which inflates a bag plastered to your arm, invisible under your shirt. I tell you, thanks to the regular hiss of this thing, and the rapidly expanding bulge it suddenly made in my shirt, in meetings girls avoided me and even Gav in accounts who was well known for his prediliction for all things inflatable shuffled his feet and looked nervous.

But really, sometimes it was up, sometimes it was down. And the blood pressure too.

Since we’ve moved to the country I’ve got really unfit though. Because the kids are up from dawn to dusk I’m too knackered to walk anywhere other than to the sofa and usually I’d clutch a bottle of Coopers Pale Ale to help me unwind (er, actually I’d do more than that – I’d drink the beer inside too...). My weight is up and my sense of humour has been down lower than the Nasdaq.

So, the point of this ramble is that new home, new doctor. This one is a woman and clearly a relative of Luciano Pavarotti. Frankly what business she has telling anyone they are unfit is beyond me, but I have to say I do much prefer undressing for her.

She’s put me on these blood pressure pills – one miniscule one a day – which has given me the blood pressure of a 15 year old. Thing is, I also had a battery of blood tests, the idea being that you have high blood pressure and things like your kidneys don’t like it and explode, or something.
When they order these blood tests they like to go for the whole banquet. They took 14 litres which is an amount more that I can drink, well in an hour anyway.

So, the news is, I have a liver and kidneys which, were there such an event, could be entered in the Olympics. Rather than floundering and spluttering, apparently they are firing on all cylinders and doing a fine job. They are the V8 Supercar of internal organs.

All the other stuff is good too. Apparently my penis is still there (and I’m told it still works too), I have only a bag and a half of sugar in my blood at any one time and my iron and folate levels are spot on.

Trouble is, of course there is always some bad news when you go to the doctor’s and in my case it is that my cholesterol is at 8.0. Jesus!, this is higher than that girl’s hemline in the local fruit market, and believe you me that is very high indeed. When she gave me the info the doctor reached slowly for the phone, but then stopped. I think she realised even an ambulance couldn’t get there in time.

Personally I feel super, or at least I did until I read the list of things you can’t drink or eat when your cholesterol is that high. I mean really I should just give up eating and certainly chop in those shares I have in Coopers Brewery and instead spend the money on a half-decent coffin.

Seriously though, the time has come. I have to get fit again, stop the drinking, put the biscuits away, no more peanuts, drop the slabs of cheese, let more pigs roam free rather than eating them, and definitely, most definitely pump up the tires on my bike.

Yes, I will try it.
I think by Friday I’ll be fine.

Yeah, yeah, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, once I've finished with the analyst (I'm helping him move his couch next door).