Real Tart

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.