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.