Enough Already

It had been a while since Teddy died or to be fair was put down at the local vets on compassionate grounds for reasons that were never quite clear.

And the pall that had lain over the Ministry of No Fun had begun to lift.

At first the Minister had found the consoling calls and unexpected drop ins a little trying.She had never been one to hide her displeasure and she certainly was not going to start now.

As her friends cowed and stayed away the Minister found she could retreat into the Ministry of No Fun to go about the task of truly grieving to ponder the big questions ,to recalibrate her affairs and out of tragedy once again perhaps a new course of action would emerge.

Her chirpy cheerful little friend E Rowley would say “Every day is a new beginning” among other positive affirmations with which she attempted to buoy up her daily existence against its inevitable disappointments.

How irritating! what a loser!

She should try living on the land for a bit ,that would wipe that insane grin off her face.

Now the Minister was less inclined to admonish her hound in absentia should she be woken in the night by a dog barking in the street momentarily thinking to herself how could Teddy have escaped his nighttime enclosure. “Naughty dog…naughty”but the reality of her dogs deceased state was slowly dawning.

She had thought at one point of replacing Teddy but nah..

she had thought better of it.

Her sister Mona with whom she keeps in regular contact felt that what the Minister needed was a new “squeeze”.

The Minister was not so sure.Mona was known to pull blokes straight out of the pub for sex and a possible relationship .Needless to say her success in securing a long term prospect by this means was not great.

The Ministers own record had been marred by disappointment too and betrayal.

That last bastard A Green had been snatched from under her nose by a member of her own coterie of women friends sometimes referred to as the brains trust.

The new liaison had formed months after they had broken up and while she was still sorting through the rubble of the affair, retrieving those personal effects that hadn’t been discarded yet out of spite.

Little did she know that while she consulted the brains trust about what it all meant and what good if anything could be salvaged from the wreck a member of her own inner sanctum was plotting against her.

The swiftness of the appropriation had put her in mind of a vulture swooping on a poor guileless lamb temporarily stunned by grief.

She vowed then to keep her friends close and her enemies closer and to keep a sharper eye out for treachery.

Bastardry and treachery were proving to be the bane of her life ,any girls life ,were you to ask the Ministers opinion.

Within weeks the lucky couple had moved in together and not long after they moved to Sydney to start a new life.

It all seemed a bit rushed ,odd to her ,not how things should be done when she considered how she could hardly get him to agree to a picnic on the beach or even a trip to the South Melbourne market on a Saturday morning.Everything about him seemed to be fraught with organisational difficulty ,strangely .

hmmm …..a lot like Teddy on his more recalcitrant days.

And she had not forgotten her first heartbreak ….that stockbroker bloke who left her in the lurch with a glory box full of treasures and a hand bag of broken girlish dreams.

But her sister was right about one thing: she definitely needed to get out more.

Word had had gotten back from Scone that a good friend of the family ,a scion of another farming family in the area had died. Hatchings and dispatchings are what country life is all about;an opportunity for tea and scones ,gossip and news and the transacting of business after the usual formalities .

It was an easy proposition to accept with nothing to lose and as it happens by sheer serendipitous good luck her social calendar was free.

It was about time the gods started to smile on her even if it was with a cynical and fatalistic grin.

The moment she arrived at the church she noticed him.

Tall and stocky he stood out with that slightly debonair look of a coastal city dweller among the ma and pa types who looked like they had just come off the paddock and could return any minute possibly lived there with their hands in the dirt.

Afterwards at the Country Women’s Association hall she found the local denizens with their yairs and nahs and awkward silences a bit too much like hard work.She threaded her way towards Jim .He was relieved as she was to discover that they had so much in common ,private school education mutual friends and the same likes and dislikes that it was uncanny.

Before long as the sun dipped on the horizon the Minister felt she had found her new “squeeze” or at least was giving him a try out.

She hoped he wasn’t one of those bludging drifters floating from one free lunch to the next collecting women’s hearts like trophies with baggage enough to sink a ship and bullshit enough to refloat it :exes ,kids, alimony assets relocated to the Cayman Islands if they had any ( not bloody likely)and divorce proceedings in a state of perpetual adjournment.

What she needed was a man with a plan reliable resourceful hard working who could be persuaded to apply himself to the common goal which was among other things to make her feel special.

No players thank you or needy types.

She needed to be more discerning about how she deployed her resources.

And of course she would need to discuss all of this with her sister and the brains trust if that bunch of perimenopausal desperados really ever could be trusted.

She must not forget to keep her man at a safe distance .

Poor Bif (that’s what his mates called him, a reference to his liking for pub brawls in his younger days)it was hard to qualify his experience.He turned out to be a doer not a talker which suited the Minister.She had her coterie to deal with that side of things.

From him she just needed brawn willing and capable of accepting direction.

Before long the newly fledged couple had packed up Bif,s ute, shut up his flat in Sydney and headed to Melbourne.

On the way down they planned their future.

At one point the Minister even started to play with the possibility of love but recognised she was getting ahead of herself.

Jim sensed what she was thinking and thought it best to avoid the topic should it ever come up.Still her heart was aflutter and she wanted to blurt it out.She couldn’t wait to get back to the Ministry of No Fun and parade her new beau .

“Look what the cat dragged in “she’d say “not bad eh for an old duck .What do you say ladies ?”rubbing it in their faces.

It took 16 hours to get back in the Toyota hilux with the air conditioning on the blink but by the time they sailed down the Hume and cut across the city for Port Melbourne the plan had been hatched.

She would give up her freelance radio job at the ABC to accept an offer to work in the Town planning department of the local council where she would be dealing with by-law infringements ,parking, noise, overhanging foliage that sort of thing.

But Bif needed to earn his keep too.

She knew lots of people downsizers who could benefit from a big cleanup of the garage and the backyard prior to sale .And her sister Mona had just completed a Burnley horticultural course and was available for a some landscaping .Removals ,deliveries big and small was another idea.That Jack bloke that E Rowling had hooked up with for instance he was selling the family home in Kew.

She’ d put the word out straight away.

But before they left the Minister took Bif or Jim for one last nostalgic look over the family property that she and her sisters had grown up on Bimbi 10 thousand acres of prime sheep country.

She pointed out to Bif the signs of aboriginal habitation remembering in her youth that blackfellas used to come to the farm house.

They had thought nothing of grabbing a sheep and throwing it on the camp fire .

Little did they know that at the same time the white fella was taking their land from under them and would invent the doctrine of terra nullius to justify it .

The ministers political leaning was essentially labour leftie the dope smoking tree hugging union sympathising type.

She supported Mabo and indigenous land rights.

But the ambit of her social conscience did not include Bimbi which they had recently sold to a stockbroker in Sydney who happened to be a relative a cousin twice removed .It felt good to be keeping the property in the family. No doubt the aboriginal family might have expressed similar sentiments if history had given them the opportunity.

The proceeds allowed her to purchase a small fibro beach shack in Rosebud and to put a bit away for her future financial security.

Jim listened ,apart from being good with his hands he was a good listener.

If any inconsistency ,any hint of hypocrisy occurred to him he did not let on.

Things went swimmingly well for a while, while everything was new.

But after 18 months Jim had had enough of being told what to do, lead by the nose, fed ,cajoled ,chided and rewarded in various ways. The gloss had started to wear off.

He had started to feel some sympathy for Teddy the Ministers deceased dog.

Being the silent type and too well bred to contemplate the act of defecation that had been often provoked in the Teddy the dog , he mouthing it under his breath to himself instead,just upped and left.

At first the Minister thought he had got drunk and stayed over at a mates place or worse picked up some floosy at a bar like Lina,s wine bar which she had introduced him to as it happens.

But when he hadn’t returned after a few days she began to worry that he had met with an accident, had had a piano fall on him ,a car crash ,a heart attack or maybe had been murdered up some dark alley.

But her desperate enquiries supported none of these possibilities.

He had disappeared into thin air.

That’ s when she realised she’d been dumped unceremoniously.

Men are such bastards .

What was she to tell the brains trust?

Her sister in whom she had confided the truth had her own theory.She helped break the news gently by degrees that he had to attend to a sick relative ,that his footballer son was having some problems in Sydney ,that they were both having a break from the relationship and finally it became clear to all without having to be told and without daring to ask that….. he’d gone…. the bastard… the gutless bastard .The c … word that she had banned in her company that was anathema to any feminist worth her salt immediately came to mind . Did she utter it ?Probably not .She felt gutted.

Ding ding!

It’s the Ministers friend E Rowling at the front door with her dog in tow and a grin on her face as big as the entrance to Luna Park.

“Hi Sal ,just thought you might like to come for walkies with me and Minnie “,she says hunching her shoulders and pursing her lips and arching her eyebrows in an anticipatory sort of way,ready for either disappointment or chastisement which is the sort of instinctive wariness the Minister seemed to evoke in all her friends and acquaintances.

“Oh ok… hang on I’ll just get my drizabone. It looks like it might rain”.

When the Minister senses rain she is usually right .

E Rowling makes a mental note not to stray too far from shelter.

“So Sal how’s it going?

What’s the plan?”

“I’m thinking of doing standup “she announces.

E Rowling is momentarily taken aback by not realizing what the Minister has just said .As she struggles with this conundrum her face contorts into a grimace then as the real meaning dawns on her a more sustained look of surprise before resuming its customary disposition ….grinning expectantly.

“Oh that would be great Sal”placing emphasis on the great but feeling she might have overplayed her enthusiasm, “I heard on Radio National there is an open mic at a comedy place in North Melbourne on Friday nights.

You should go along”.

The Minister looks askance at her friend because she doesn’t like accepting advice in case she might look like she is not across her subject .E Rowling on the other hand believes in serendipity and the idea that some things are’meant to be ’,another of her pathetic positive affirmations. She consults her horoscope on a daily basis and is encouraged by the prospect of eternal hopefulness it preaches.

It seems to escape the Minister that she doesn’t have a funny bone in her body.

E Rowling knows it and even Minnie the dog has a look of incredulity without knowing why.

Animals can be very intuitive like that.

“I’ll get the crew together ,we,ll all come along to support you “says E Rowling reassuringly but really she is just being quick to seize on any excuse for a social outing to escape the confines of her house living and working from home as she does. At that first Friday night gig in front of her support group the brains trust and fifty odd boisterous drunks she died as they say in the comedy game.

But the Minister for No Fun is nothing if not determined.

She went back time and again to face the humiliation and the flagellation of that unruly mob.

In the end she did find a thread of self deprecating humour in some anecdotes taken from her own life, like the time she woke up in the night to find a snake in her swag. It didn’t move and nor did she ,not until she realised it was dead, put there by one of those young buck shearers as a joke.She reckons she sweated two kilos that night and has never had a period since.

The Minister still sleeps fitfully.

Teddy,s ghost still roams the perimeter perhaps waiting for the chance to avenge his premature death.

Occasionally she still wakes with an eerie feeling of mischief afoot in the night which might be true or not.

She still works for the council and god help any ratepayer who infringes any part of the amenity of her municipality especially that in close proximity to the Ministry of No Fun .

The Minister has resigned herself to city life and its complexities.

Today is a warm spring day with a clear blue sky and a gentle breeze ,the kind of day that promises much but delivers little other than itself.

The Minister mounts her three wheeler and goes on a tour down Central ave towards Bay st past E Rowling’s place in case she is home which she appears not to be (no surprise there ),on to Bridgeport st past Lina,s wine bar where she thinks for a fleeting moment that that bastard P Chase is sitting at the bar but it’s closed ,down Kerford Rd to Beaconsfield parade and back again .

She pulls up outside the Greeks barber shop next to Jim’s hamburgers.

In the beauty parlour on the other side she sees a gay man having his hair cut and the grey edges dyed black by a young hairdresser.

In the barbers shop she orders a very practical short back and sides with a ducktail at the nape of the neck .

By the time she gets back to the Ministry the three wheeler once so practical now seems childishly incongruous to her new purpose.

What she needs is a power symbol a statement that she is not to be messed with ….a motor bike that’s more like it something with a bit of grunt.

A Harley is her first thought with full leathers and a defiant message embossed on the back like “Screw helmets “ or “screw you “

But she finally settles for a red Vespa she finds in the Trading post and a puffer jacket.

In a flash of inspiration she decides to become a marriage celebrant catering to our lgbtqi community.

After the gay marriage referendum recently passed into legislation to great acclaim it seems an obvious move .

There’s a clothes swap at E Rowlings place next Wednesday. I,ll get Mona to bring along some of her lipstick lesbian friends.

It should be a hoot.

And there’s the Mardi Gras to plan for in Sydney.

Back at the Ministry of No Fun the Minister gathers a few comestibles on the kitchen table and brews a cup of tea.

She sits and sighs and surveys her life inside and out.Its not all bad she thinks …..

hmmm…I wonder what became of that Jack bloke who walked out on E Rowling .

There always seemed to be bastardry afoot when he was around.

Must drop over and see how she’s getting on and check up on that Greek mob she has heard are supplying the Bridgeport st Deli with moussaka made in their garage just opposite E Rowley’s place .

She can see another municipal infringement or two on the way if she can persuade E Rowling to lodge an anonymous complaint.

Oh well it seems the Ministers work is never done and yes E Rowling is not at home or not answering the door.

It’s hard for her to decide which is the more annoying.

A mobile call goes through to message bank unanswered. The delicious smell of moussaka wafts from an adjoining property.

Ah the Greeks … got em redhanded !

And just as the Minister is peering through the cracks in the garage door and trying to squeeze an incriminating snapshot into the tiny aperture of her mobile phone E Rowling suddenly appears around the corner with Minnie her dog.

“Sal !“

she half shrieks accusingly “for gods sake… “she has sized up the situation only too well.

The Minister to her credit does not protest but just looks sheepishly at her friend.

For once someone else has the upper hand. E Rowling savours the moment perhaps longer than it requires then relenting because she has a kind heart unlocks her gate and gestures for the Minister to go in.

“Heard anything of that Jack bloke ,have you Liz? “,she asks accepting a glass of wine from her friend.

‘Heard anything from Jim ?“,E Rowling replies dodging the original if awkward subject altogether .She rather likes the feeling of having the Minister on the run eating a bit of humble pie for once.

“Another wine Sal ? “E Rowling goes into the kitchen and returns with two small fish bowls for glasses filled to the brim.

“Things could be a lot worse Sal “,E Rowling proffers another of her life affirming remarks ostensibly to lift her friends spirits as they raise their glasses but actually she’s feeling quite pleased with herself ,divorced yet happily ensconced in a small but comfortable townhouse in the gentrified part of Sth Melbourne.

But the Minister just grunts and frowns.She appears lost in thought about all the things that are wrong and need to be put right .She is after all the Minister for No Fun and for the moment she feels she might be losing the battle.

“How’s Minnie going ? “,she asks

“Oh great Sal “,E Rowling replies earnestly ever positive .

The Minister casts a practiced eye over Teddy,s sister and scornfully declares “She looks a bit overweight to me “.

“Could loose a few pounds I s’pose ,couldn’t we all eh Sal ?”E Rowling tries unsuccessfully to lighten up the situation.

The phone rings it’s a long distance business call which E Rowling is obliged to take and she is absent for a while .

When she returns scurrying down the stairs apologetically “oh sorry Sal …ah….. “the Minister is gone.

Apparently not the wine nor the warm ambience of the fire have persuaded her to stay .There’s a note scribbled on the table

Dinner

At the George come around if you want

See ya.

Its a gay bar and bistro favoured by lesbians in St Kilda.

E Rowling considers the proposition .She knows that the Minister is just being considerate and inclusive but she also knows that in that company she would be a mere accessory a handbag at most.

Yes! making a clenched fist in the air and pulling it down abruptly she signals triumph over something that has been bothering her for a while.

The Minister for No Fun is moving on she decides, venturing into new and stranger territory .Maybe it is time to give her a rest.

As a friend she can be quite draining.