Parts one and two available by clicking on coloured typing stuff in this sentence
It didn't look good outside. Didn't look that good inside, either, after several drunken, sweary, sweaty and farty hours on the road by the non-driving members of the T20 roadtrip contingent; there were more dead marines lying about than a bad day in Fallujah. Outside, though, it was absolutely pissing down. Through Helensvale on the M1 the spray was a solid wall, the concrete of the road surface just another shade of grey in a world of grey, the only difference being it was shinier. I was glad big Aidan was steering the ship and not me. Largely because I was quite pissed. But the prospects of this half-arsed mission actually involving any live cricket this evening seemed more remote than the chances of finding something that wasn't U2, Counting Crows or Collective Soul on Smurf's iPhone. Still, we faced our fate stoically, with wry grins and gallows humour. The likelihood of spending the evening in a pub, I mean. The playlist prevalence of MOR Christian rock we faced with quite a lot of swearing.
Cresting the rise over the foothills of Mt Gravatt, though, there was hope. Cresting the rise at the Griffith Uni exit you get your first glimpse of the Brisbane city skyline: the finish line, the primary target, the point of the exercise. If you can see it. And we could, which meant the weather between here and the city - including the distant light-towers of the Gabba just this side of the skyscrapers - couldn't be THAT shithouse. Traditionally, this was the point of the trip from the North Coast to Brisvegas where you felt it was all done and dusted, if not bagged, boxed and buried. Unless you were Aidan, on his way up to Brisbane to get his flight to NZ for our wedding in '05, in which case it was at this point you remembered your passport was still sitting on your kitchen table, three and a half hours drive south of where you were now passing.
No such problems this time. Well, not ones we discovered at that point, anyway.
"You know the place we're staying?"
"Yeah, the Oaks Charlotte Towers," Smurf said.
"Nah, the Oaks Festival Towers," corrected Aidan.
"Nah, Kris and I booked it on Wotif, no fucken way were we gonna stay at Festy Towers, that bucket of fucking slop..."
"Ah, that'd have been useful to know before I asked the Doc whether anything had been booked yet, and he said no, and I booked Festy Towers..."
Which is how we came to have booked TWO two-bedroom, four-singles apartments in separate Oaks tower blocks about a half-decent Roy Symonds off-drive from each other. We'd learned this about a week before, and Oaks had been utter cunts about not cancelling either booking, so we were stuck with it. We checked in and checked out both joints. Because there was no fucken way he was gonna stay at Festy Towers, that bucket of fucking slop, Smurf and I took the apartment on Charlotte. The reason Festy Towers was such a bucket of fucking slop, of course, was that it'd been build on the bulldozed ashes of Festival Hall, one of Brisbane's legendary live venues of the past which, like many of Brisbane legendary live venues of the past, had been bought up, fucked flat and concreted over by developers in order to build yet more fugly fucking matchbox apartments. Smurf had taken a principled stand re not spending a night in the place so long as his arse pointed downhill; I had less of a connection to the old barn, the last show I'd seen there having been the Fat Pizza live show, so I had more of a macabre interest in the smug gentrified shininess of what had become Festy Hall's gravesite. Big Ads and Jonty didn't give a shit, so they stayed there, with the big white whale parked in the underground carpark.
Greg had been planning to stay at his place in St Lucia, where he hadn't been for a few weeks over Xmas, but there were complications. Complications related to his flatmate. Who was also his girlfriend. Or had been. Or still was. Just sit down and have a cuppa while I try and sketch this out for you on this whiteboard. They'd broken up, I think, but were still together during work hours, because they worked in the same lab and the dynamic in the lab was fucking weird enough with their socially inept boss and a highly claustrophobic social circle that they felt it was easier to pretend they hadn't actually broken up. So they were together in the lab, just flatmates back at home, 'in a relationship' on Facebook, and Christ knows what after a few drinks on a Friday night at the Red Room. Or, erm, a few drinks at the cricket. Cos she was coming with, apparently. Along with another mutual friend from the lab who liked her cricket, liked her beer, and (many assumed but Greg flatly denied) liked Greg, in a pants-off fashion.
May you live in interesting times.
So we reconvened at Gilhooleys on the corner of Albert and Charlotte, a watering hole of our long acquaintance and one of only a handful of Gaelic-themed alehouses in the Greater Brisbane area. At last count they were down to their last 176,000 I believe. Half our party started on the Coopers Pale but after a heavy afternoon on the beers that grew tiresome and they joined the rest of us on the marginally cheaper, markedly crisper Boags. It was around 4pm when the Dog joined us. The Dog (Daniel Pound to his mother) was a mate of mine from college who'd moved up to south-east Qld to a job in property finance, which he'd been doing down in Sin City. Making the most of his degree in industrial chemistry, of course. Dogga was from Wagga, which kinda fit, and used to live in old Euro soccer jerseys and footy shorts. The Dog and I both played for the college football (round-ball) team, which usually involved me warming the bench (on account of being a teensy bit shit) while everyone else watched the Dog poncing about holding up the ball in midfield doing stepovers and circus tricks while we waited for someone to lose patience and pole-axe the bastard. Occasionally it was even someone from the other team. His missus was dressing him in chinos and polo shirts these days, and he looked to be carrying a few more pounds (sorry) than his playing days, but it was still bloody good to catch up over a few. Dogga had wanted to join the pre-Xmas mission to the A-League, but I got the feeling a leave pass hadn't been successfully negotiated from the Powers that Were, so he set about making up for lost time by downing pints like they were post-match Powerades.
The girls turned up shortly after, making us marginally more popular with the mixed-couple baby boomers at the tables nearby who we'd been serenading with our particularly blokey brand of swearing and sledging. At least until the girls nicked two of their chairs. Greg's ex Daniela - a polarizing figure amongst our mates as girlfriends tended to be, but I thought she was pretty cool, and not just cos she was tall, blonde and curvy - wrapped him up in a big squeezy posy-Xmasy not-really-very-flatmatey sort of cuddle. To be fair so did her friend Kathryn - Kryten to her mates, as she had a bit of geek girl to her. Along with the usual orderly queue of geek suitors that followed her about. Greg was a recovering geek - his bookcases still creaked with sci-fi and fantasy novels, but he wasn't hammering the online gaming anywhere near as much as he had the year uni had suggested he fuck off for 12 months and think about whether astrophysics was really his deal (no, was the answer to that) - so while the force was strong with this one, it did illustrate the potential for a very interesting battle of wills should they decide Greg was worth fighting over. Which they would, of course, to the entertainment of all; it was how girls worked. (Because I know how girls work. Yeah.) In the car on the way up, having heard both were joining us for the evening, I'd suggested he should get them to arm-wrestle for it. Or wrestle in something, anyway. He gave me a look like I'd just hung a poo in his shoe. I was pretty familiar with the look in question - he was a St George fan, it was the same look he gave me at the end of each year's Charity Shield match. I knew it as the look which said 'You can shut the fuck up right now, Souths are still not making the finals you cunt.'
The final additions to our party - late, but worthy - were the man, the myth, the legend, the Munter, and his old man. I'd known Mark Munton since preschool. I'd been best man at his wedding, though I wasn't taking any responsibility for how that turned out. Munter was laconic, rough as guts, funny as fuck, and in a word, value. His old man Pete was a good bloke too. Munter had been the veteran of many a cricket mission in the past, and his arrival had been the last piece of the puzzle. Team Yobbo were complete.
And as if ordained by a higher power, or just by Munter's AWSMness, we seemed to actually have a cricket game to go to. The skies were clear. The outfield was drying. The Jesusphones were reporting game on. The tickets were selling. The buses were waiting.
Ay. There's the rub.
We had a bit of a history with buses, you see. Like the time Smurf, Munter and I were in the Sydney CBD crossing the street at the junction of Liverpool and Elizabeth, outside Museum Station. We were on our way to the Homebake festival at the Domain and may or may not have already had a morning skinful, but that didn't cancel out the fact we were crossing the road under the aegis of a Little Green Man flashing at us from the other side of Liverpool St. This didn't seem to dissuade a council bus driver from swerving into the turn, pulling up in the middle of the intersection, opening his door and proceeding to berate us for daring to cross the bit of tarmac he and his (empty) bus owned by some sort of divine right not immediately clear to any of us. There was a bit of a frank exchange of views between Smurf, who's capable of starting an argument in a vacuum, and the bus driver, while traffic began to bind up behind our new mate. After thirty seconds or so, the car horns must have finally pierced through my hangover enough for me to offer a suggestion:
"OY. YOU'VE GOT A FUCKING JOB TO DO," I said, pointing at the empty bus and the empty road in front of it, "SO GO AND FUCKING DO IT."
That seemed to settle the argument. He went off to find more passengers and we went off to find more piss.
However we managed to identify and board our bus to the Gabba without starting another diplomatic incident, so clearly we'd grown up in the years hence. Disproving that thesis completely were the occasional rounds of 'I WISH THAT ALL THE LAY-DEEHHZ' which sporadically rang through the cheap seats up the back. Old habits die hard.
As they did once we were inside. We bitched about the price of beers, the fact the bastards were charging for the egg-cartons that carried them, and the fact the fucking things were still XXXX fucking Gold, but we still invested heavily. We sat in the same general area we always sat in, the one Smurf liked to call 'Zoo Section'. He always maintained the best thing Cricket Australia and the Gabba Trust could do for crowd safety wasn't banning the Wave or throwing out pissed fuckwits acting up (of which he had personal experience, but he can tell you about that) but sealing all of Zoo Section in a see-through perspex dome so that drunken bogans like ourselves could chuck around all the beercup snakes, beach balls, inflatable dolls and opposition supporters we liked, without impinging on the safety and comfort of the players or other, duller matchgoers who'd gone there with the apparent intention of watching the game.
Like the family in front of us.
Ah well. You get that on the big jobs.
"MISCELLANEOUS!" bellowed Smurf. "YOU'RE SHIT!"
Miscellaneous
was shit. He was so shit, he didn't actually have his name on his shirt, hence Smurf's hasty reclassification. Miscellaneous, whose dodgy bearded mug was in the programme under 'Dirk Nannes', was fielding at deep fine leg, in front of us. I'd never liked him. He'd played for the Dutch in the T20 World Cup. If there's two things I can't stand, it's intolerance, and the Dutch. Actually, that's not quite true. I just didn't like Nannes. He was the first of the new breed of egregious mercenaries who'd sprung up in the T20 era, changing his team and country allegiances at the drop of a hat. This week Holland, next week the Delhi Dickheads. Smurf just hated him because he was nearby and wearing a Victorian shit, named or otherwise So Miscellaneous it was - with Smurf's characteristic mispronounced accent on the non-existent hard 'C', for greatest comic effect. YOU'RE SHIT MISCELLANEOUS. GET A NEW SHIRT.
Meanwhile, the generously endowed, stingily dressed teenage girl in front of me texted a friend with 'sitting in front of total dicks lolz'. Though she was only saying that cos she knew she was the least hottest sister, of course.
Somewhere in amongst the sledging, the swearing and the drinking, a game had been going on. Victoria had recruited well, signing Kiwi Ross Taylor and the Windies' Dwayne Bravo. Just as well as they'd been the only two bastards to get any runs in the Vics' dig. Taylor was busting out his fairly unique diagonal-bat slog-drive to good effect, though he'd not managed to land any in the vicinity of our deliberately-chosen position at deep long off (or deep fine leg when bowling from the Stanley St end.) He'd particularly taken to rusty-arsed returning hero Roy Symonds' slow-right-arm shite. Together he and Bravo smashed 94 from 54 balls, both having been given a life by the Qld captain Simpson (who he?) who'd grassed them both at slip, Taylor off his first ball.
Quoinslaaand started well in reply, despite Victoria's first bit of blatant cheatery in the first over where Hastings the Vic quick leapt from over the boundary to parry a would-be six back into the field of play. Like the Adidas Predator, and some of the girls in front of us, it was legal, but it ain't fair. Miscellaneous was bowling at the time, so we blamed him. YOU'RE SHIT MISCELLANEOUS. FILE UNDER 'REASONS TO FUCK OFF.'
Things started looking a bit grim as the innings developed. The Bulls top order started falling over midway through their dig. Roy came and went, swinging like a shithouse door in a gale, equally as rusty. The Dog became more and more punishing the more he had to drink... I'd forgotten about that, it'd been a while since I'd been out on the turps with the Dog. And the thunderclouds were rolling in again, threatening to kill the game off with Qld slipping closer and closer to falling behind the Duckworth-Lewis par score.
It was just as the numbers started to meet on their opposing trajectories that it started to rain.
Queensland needed four off the last ball of the 17th over to guarantee being ahead on D/L if the game was called. It was still playable, just about. Miscellaneous waddled in to bowl it. And pretended to slip, in a piece of acting so shit it would have even been carded for simulation in the Premier League. The umpies bought it. Called dead ball. And, as the deluge accelerated, called for the covers. As sixteen thousand Queenslanders (and we booze-ripened New South Welshmen) booed their lungs out, Miscellaneous scored a sly low-five from his captain Bear White.
"MAKES A FUCKING CHANGE FROM THE REACH AROUND HE NORMALLY GETS," bellowed a gravelly voice from deep long off. I really needed to ease off on the sledging or I'd have no voice left.
By now the deluge was torrential. There was no prospect of further play. We scrambled for the exits and the buses, where we promptly lost Munter and his old man - they were headed eastwards anyway, we were headed back into the city - and half our group ended up on a different bus, meaning we were no show of commandeering the back seats and roaring through our usual back catalogue, as traditional for this time of the evening.
We reconvened at Gilhooleys. It was shut, but it had an awning which kept the rain off. Jonty was headed to the casino; he reckoned he had to catch up with an 'old friend' there. Female. One wondered how friendly she was. Or was likely to be. It was the fact one was wondering such things aloud, and repeatedly, that was winding Jonty up. Aidan was going with; having driven us up here he was of course several beverages short of the clubhouse leaders, and was at the stage of the night where throwing cash at either the blackjack table, the roulette wheel or the top-shelf spirits at the bar sounded like a Tops Option. Besides, he said, someone had to check out whether Jonty was talking total bollocks about this chick.
But the rest of us - Team Charlotte, as distinct from Team Festy Towers - we were old men, and we were fading. We'd been on the turpentine for 12 hours and we were too old for this shit. There was no hope of finding an open bottle-o within staggering distance at this time of night on a fucking Monday. We decided to retire.
Which seemed quite the disappointment for Greg's ex. She and Kryten wanted to kick on, and did. However they wanted Greg to kick on, and he didn't. He planned to take up our offer of the couch in the apartment. As we watched the girls sauntering away, after a farewell embrace that was open to interpretation, I figured what Greg needed at this stage was to have people loudly speculating on his romantic arrangements, much as we'd done with Jonty.
"What do you reckon you've given up on there then?"
He looked sardonically at his feet.
"The chance to make shit even more confusing," he declared. "I'm fucking off to bed."
Of course, he'd been wrong. So very, very wrong. We'd all been, though. There HAD been a bottle-o nearby. In the ground floor of Festy fucking Towers, dammit. Ah well.
We'd staggered downstairs around nine and loped over to the cafe in the based of Festy Towers for breakfast, texting Aidan and Jonty upstairs to come down and join us. Aidan was en route, but reckoned he couldn't raise Jonty, his room was shut. It'd been a late one when Aidan had returned to HQ, three or four, and Jonty had still been out with his friend. Who'd seemed very friendly. And hot. Aidan did seem quite insistent on that point. He left Jonty to do what he gotta do, be what he gotta be, yeaahhhh, and joined us for breakfast, where more spurious speculation on Jonty's early-hours activities was invented and encouraged. Cos we're cunts like that.
"Miscellaneous," Smurf declared. "He's shit."
This was agreed.
"Coffee's tops," I declared.
Agreed.
"Bacon's
fucking tops," declared Greg.
Agreed. And with that, we declared the meeting closed. Aidan went back upstairs with the Tactical Response Group and a loudhailer to get Jonty out of his room ahead of our 10am checkout, while we three Charlottans grabbed another coffee - from the other cafe over the road, just for variety's sake - and headed back to our joint to check out.
By the time we reached the rancid-scented carpark underneath Festy to sling our bags in the White Whale, Jonty had surfaced. He'd looked better. He'd also had higher opinions of Aidan and the rest of us. Of course he hadn't banged her, she was a friend, he had morals, he had standards yada yada yada.
"Crashed and burned then?"
"Fuck off," he suggested. So we did.
I don't know what the stuff was called. Mad Goat or Feral Pig or something. It was a pale ale out of Matilda Bay - find it at your local Dan's - and it was tall frosty goodness on a late Tuesday morning. It also cost more than Stadium Australia but fuck that, it was tasty. We were camped in one of the pseudo-alfresco bars on Queen Street Mall, in front of Day 4 from the Melbourne Test, watching Shane Watson scoring a hundred.
Except he wasn't. He was most conspiciously
not scoring a hundred. He was on 92. He'd been on 92 for what felt like a day and a half. He'd got out in the 90s every game he'd played all fucking summer. And if he didn't either get a ton or GTFO, his bestie-4-life Punter would have to declare on him. At which point we'd have a giggle at the poncy-haired Ipswich clown, down our pints and GTFO ourselves. Facts were facts: individual milestone HAVE to take a back seat to team objectives, the Aussies needed a good dig at the Pakistani top order before lunch, change of innings would take 10 mins, so we were in agreement - Punter needed to call them in an hour before lunch. Punter HAD to call them in an hour before lunch.
...Or 40 minutes before lunch, that'd at least give Passion Pop and Cronulla Beach a good half hour to work on Butt and Farthat and co.
30 minutes before lunch?
Twenty??
C'mon, what the fuck?
Jesus Christ, he's not going to do it is he?
In the end,
neither of them did. Lunch came and we were still on those fucking uncomfortable bar stools drinking Rabid Mountain Wallaby or whatever it was. Punter hadn't declared and fucking Twatson was still on 92. We shouldn't have been surprised, or disgusted, or ashamed to be Australians, but we were. Yet another case of me-me-me twentysomething Gen Y fucktards having their cake, eating it, crying about their entitlements and demanding MOAR.
We'd seen enough, and the road was calling again. Well first the facilities at the nearby food court were calling, and the siren calls of all the passing underdressed shoppingistas of Queen Street were themselves difficult to ignore, but we were men and we had our mission, as codified by Steppenwolf.
Get your motor running. Get out on the highway. Looking for adventure. And a bottle-o.
This was where Jonty left us. He'd changed his flights back to Sin City from the north coast to Brisvegas in order to join the mission, which we appreciated. We'd offered to run him out to the airport on the way, but his flight was later in the afternoon. And his friend was going to give him a lift out there anyway.
Hmmm.
"You can't use that little lay-by near the Kingsford Smith Memorial," I told him, "it's shut for construction."
"Fuck off," he said. And did so.
We wandered back to Festy Towers where the White Whale was parked, and came across not only that bottle-o which had evaded our attention the previous night, but a particularly arresting footpath ad for a random Korean beer which seemed to have a bit of punch to it. Greg was particularly taken by the pretty Asian girl who was into the fist. I really didn't want to ask, but I blamed his ex-flatmate with the debilitating addiction to pr0n.
With that as a ringing endorsement, we bypassed Fist Lager and got some Nastro Azzurros in. Which needed replacing by Helensvale. Hey, that Scabby Grazing Quadruped had given us a thirst.
I'd called shotgun for the return mission, having been camped in the cheap seats on the way up. Which meant I was in charge of navigation and tunes. As you'd expect, my playlist got sledged as much as everyone else's, and not just because it was delivered via crappy old iPod Shuffle instead of shiny heavenly JesusPhone.
"Take note, Ads," I declared, as the opening drums of the Fratellis'
Chelsea Dagger resonated through the Falcon's speakers. "Something that was actually released this decade."
"Which sounds exactly like it was released in 1978," he pointed out.
Bastard. He had a point there. Eventually, we switched back to the cricket on ABC Radio. Whereabouts Twatson finally got his ton, somewhere near the NSW border. Cue ironic applause and helpful suggestions such as 'GET A FUCKING HAIRCUT' and 'BRING BACK MISCELLANEOUS'
Twatson had fucked our day completely. We'd planned a leisurely BBQ lunch by the pool at Smurf's on the Goldie, with a few cold Heinekens to go with, but our late departure from Brisvegas made that a write-off. Instead we made for the Bangalow pub, partly because I'd heard it did good work, partly because I'd written a scene for
In The Worst Possible Taste there and hadn't actually set foot in the fucking joint. Call it research. What we should have researched was the bistro-opening times, arriving ten minutes after the fuckers closed up. The time dilation effect of the NSW border - moving forward an hour and at least 20 years - probably also contributed. We grabbed a six of Boags from the bottle-o and continued to Lismore, hoping to dodge the traffic shitfight around Ballina courtesy holidays and bypass construction.
We refuelled in Lismore: a tankful of BP for the White Whale, and a bag of ice for the beers to hide in. And for us: the Evil Colonel.
The Evil Colonel stalks the highways at night, terrifying travellers to death, then using their giblets for making nuggets for his fried chicken franchises. You will find his hideous ghoulish apparition gawping at you in the dead of night, as your car's headlights play across the blue-and-silver reflective highlights on KFC highway billboards. It is truly a disturbing and deathly sight.
Despite this his underlings make fucking tasty bacon and cheese Zinger burgers, so we trolled through the drive-thru on Ballina Rd to pick up a carload of same plus large chips in excelsius deo. I'd missed KFC. Good KFC, I meant. Australian KFC. KFC that tasted good and didn't give you food poisoning. Whatever the fuck NZ farmers were doing with their fresh chicken, they needed to stop it, or do it more hygienically.
KFC is best after dark though, and I don't just mean the midnight witching hours when the Evil Colonel stalks the highways. It works best when you're too mentally altered to think too hard about the nutritional content, which is usually late at night, near closing. An old flatmate of Smurf's, Gabbo, had it sussed. After a heavy night on the herbal organics he and his mates would get in their shitbox and wobble over to their local KFC drivethru on the stroke of closing, and negotiate for the last of the day's trade, bartering with them Egyptian-bazaar-style.
"How much chicken you got left?
"Erm, about two buckets worth?"
"What's that worth?"
"$19.95 each."
*sounds of furtive change counting*
"Give ya twelve bucks fifty for the lot..."
Which usually worked, KFC drive-thru staff rarely wanting to leave a fellow stoner hanging When Munchies Attacked. It kinda fit. The last time Smurf and Gabbo had lived together, Red Rooster had been within walking distance.
We were on the home stretch now. The run from Lismore to the lower Clarence was practically our driveway. And yet it wasn't the end of the trip, because there wasn't one. It's been a running joke amongst the participants of the trip as the writing-up of it has proceeded: hurry up and finish the story, I want to find out how it ends. The truth is, this story doesn't actually have an ending. There was a destination - the Italian place in Yamba, for a feed with the family - but not an ending. Not really. There might be long gaps in the continuity, but the story gets taken up once or twice a year - same characters, same blarney, same beers. For this is mateship - not a cliched bucket of slop from a John Williamson song or a John Howard preamble, but the quiet knowledge that no matter what happens, next time you're in the same room as these bastards whether it's next week or in a year and a half, the same drunken rambling stories will be told, the same lies, bullshit, running gags and thousand-year-old-jokes about girls we shouldn't have shagged or dumb stuff one of us said in 1993. No matter the time gap, as Jack Newton would have said, the Tradition Continues. And none of us - not even grumpy Jonty of Newtown, butt of most of the jokes, who was messaging us on Arsebook even before we'd made it back declaring it'd been fucking great fun and we should do that shit again next year - would likely have it any other way.
See youse bastards in August. Who's up for a mission?
The Doctor is OUT.
That said, I don't have any great affinity for the Gardies. I've gone there exactly once. The other day, at the (northern) end of an impromptu pub crawl with one Ronnie Flotsam, troubadour to the pissed cunts of London, brother to the pissed cunts of this chair. (We weren't actually aware it was marked for destruction or even on the auction block when we wandered in for a couple of pints of Summit. It happened to be there and so did we.) Let's not mince words, it was and is shabby as fuck. A poo-brown brick blockhouse out of the Legoland school of architecture, with a dilapidated beer garden strewn with broken furniture, more akin to the backyard of one of the neighbouring student flats than a licenced house of ale. But, unlike the shiny, overhyped, conspicuously empty Cook a few blocks away, the kids of North D were actually happy to turn up to the Gardies and sink a few sharpies and a few pool balls on a sunny Saturday afternoon, instead of hanging out in their scabby fucking flats. And that's the thing. Uni bars aren't meant to be shiny. They're meant to be functional. Like the backyards, living rooms and garages of the student flats they stand as proxies for.
