Ambrose Ambles

 Twelve Caesars..

Book Two..."The Raconteur."

Part fourth..

We have traded a dreamtime that promised no more than a frugal if colourful existence for a civilisation that promises us no more than a frugal if “colourful” existence…In the horse-racing game of betting, that is nothing better than a low-priced “odds-on” to win….but it will take an expensive gamble to profit from those odds.

As a person who deplores medical intervention at the worst of times, I have to wonder what we have gained with all this “civilising”…certainly no improvement on those seven deadly sins..perhaps a bit on convenience and technology, but nothing on happiness levels and contentment..let alone on wealth and well-being…a longer life perhaps..if you can dodge the traffic as you cross the road to do that bit of shopping.

The Tank Sisters were a couple of voluminous and weighty ladies (not related in any family sense) that hung around the front bar of the Seacliff Hotel..why, was anyone’s guess..as there was little prospect of linking up with any respectable males in that establishment..at least not this side of sobriety..which, of course led to this little tale.

Overheard conversations of lurid desires between the two ladies had been reported at different times, but the reproduction of those intimate details is best left to more scurrilous publications.. sufficient to relate that the general complaint between them was that if they didn’t get some sexual satisfaction soon (they didn’t say it QUITE like that!) , “It would heal up”…whatever the “It” was.

There were rumours that Little Johnny, the SP. (starting price) bookie was running a tote on which of the ladies would anally absorb a bar-stool first…such was the broad beam of their backsides!

My old mate , Mark..you have heard me mention him in that story of ; “To the Lighthouse”..well, Mark had a Saturday morning routine he would rarely swerve from, and that involved getting to the front-bar of the Seacliff Hotel just at opening time, claiming his favourite spot at the bar with an uninterrupted view of the television set to watch the days footy, open his copy of the Saturday paper at the horse racing page and settle in to a good days exercise.

This one morning, rather than being the first to the bar, he had to share his place with Tim the plumber….who, Mark noticed was sitting sombre mood, slouched, arms crossed on the bar encompassing a pint of beer…further, Tim appeared to be in some kind of trance, staring at the rising bubbles in the amber fluid.

“G’day Tim..” Mark greeted “How’s it going?”

“Huruumph!..fuckin’ shithouse!” Tim growled out the corner of his mouth.

“Why..what’s the matter?” Mark inquired as he snapped open his paper.

“Well, I got pissed last night, didn’t I ?” Tim took a long draught of the’hair of the dog’.

“So..” Mark shrugged “You get pissed every Friday night”.

“Yeah, well..” and here, Tim tossed and fiddled with the coins on the bar-mat…he finally confessed ; “..I..I woke up this morning , at about one o’clock , on the beach , with one of the Tank Sisters hanging off my dick !”

Mark lowered the paper down , turned his head slowly toward Tim, wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the seriousness of the situation.

“JeEEzus, mate!…wadidyado ?…”

At this moment of reflection, Tim gave one of those involuntary spasm jerks of the arm..making his beer spill a tad.

“ Fuck it!..waddya think I did ?! ” he angrily spat..

Now, neither Mark , nor anyone else of that front-bar clientele has ever inquired to Tim for the answer to that question….nobody wanted to know…

Steve was a local for many years down at “The Cliff”..he circulated on the periphery of the more sordid goings on between us hard-core boozers...nefarious substances was more his genre of tripping out, his delicate physique not given to drunken fights or falling flat on one’s face at any given time late in the night..Gambling also did not attract him…but he did have ambitions for the higher realms of Krishnatic enlightenment..and he tried to role-play the part.

He was a study in tragedy…because of what he had become from what he once was. In the early days, you’d see Steve sitting in a tatty, stuffed lounge chair in one of the many dives and squats he frequented down “The Bay” (Glenelg) , his acoustic guitar cradled in his lap, a wide smile on his fragile delicate featured face, and he would be engaged in an enthusiastic esoteric analysis of the meaning of life with any young lass nearby…these young women were usually itinerants passing through the squat and were themselves in search of that elusive “me”…most of them were in reality middle-class hippies escaping from stultifying pre-war generation parents who wanted to see them betrothed and off their hands and into a “good marriage” w/kids before they were 25 yrs old…So they were out for a bit of adventure armed with bright eyes, an experimental nature and a regular supply of the pill.

Steve was keen to assist in all facets of their education.

And so he cultivated this air of the “wandering minstrel  I ” with a repertoire of light, airy conversation, a mix of rote-learned poetry, a permanent smile and keenly agreeable nodding head with a rising crest of wavy hair brushed so it resembled the southerly break of surf at Boomer Beach…and a regular supply of nefarious substances he was willing to share to these “soul mates”.

Steve always had that guitar handy and now and then he would pluck…not a complete tune…but bits and pieces of chords…he’d place that rolly-ciggy in between his lips, squint his eye from the trickle of smoke and concentrate on striking up a bar or two from a known song..but that’s all he’d do…a bit of a recognisable chord or a bar or two…and then he’d interrupt his “playing” to extract the cigarette and place one palm over the strings and extrapolate on the musicology of the unplayed piece.

He really was impressive in his knowledge of the deeper meanings of those songs.

He drove from squat to pub to dive to party in an old Austin A40 convertible..and it suited him..the paint was faded, the bumptuous shape contrasted against his willowy youthful form, and the fact that it was a convertible meant that he could place that guitar in a conveniently visible place in the back seat…just in case it was needed.

This lifestyle continued for some years, right up until the mid-seventies, when both grotty squats and free-wheeling hippy girls started to be hard to come by, and Steve now a tad older and showing his age, never being the most employable type of person, was reduced to couch surfing on friends benevolence and trying to chat up the girls who frequented the bars in the Seacliff Hotel..His fortune in both categories was soon exhausted and he started to take more drugs and in consequence look more seedy.

His once-brushed wavy hair grew more lank and he substituted brush for Welsh-combing..His once boyish laughter now became more a hardened shrill and that wide smile a cruel grimace..the end game was approaching.

One of the last times I ever saw him, was at the front bar of the Seacliff Hotel..he’d been living in a distant suburb so had not frequented this side of town for a while..Now here he was sitting on a bar-stool in that girly cross-legged manner he always had, the rolly in hand and the other arm pressing down on a slim leather satchel on the bar top…I said my greetings and passed the usual idle chatter with him, but the leather folder drew my attention..

“What’s in the satchel…sheet music?” I pointed.

“This..” he said in a secretive whisper “Is my evidence”. He smiled his “new smile”.

“For what?” I persisted.

“For a claim I intend to bring against my ex-landlord..” and he gently tapped the folder “It’s all recorded in here..every leaking tap or faulty door lock..I’ve got them all listed down…oh yes..he won’t get me that easy…”

And he proceeded to relate to me the ongoing conflict he had with his last landlord and why he was thrown out of the old shack he was renting…It was a sad tale of the obvious..and Steve ticked off on his grubby hand, every perceived insult, every incriminating action, every bit of “evidence” that he was sure would secure him a hefty compensated win in any court of law..of which it was only a matter of time before he would “consult his lawyer” and . . .

Steve had almost lost his mind…and that guitar he would always have by his side was nowhere to be seen…I remarked upon this anomaly later to Mark..

“Nah…he pawned it to buy some “gear”…”

“That’s bad luck, he must miss the playing.” I whimsically observed.

“What playing?…” Mark snorted “ He was lucky he could put those chords together that he did!..I was there when he first bought it from the pawn shop..he never could play a full song, it was just an image he projected for the girls..”

I nodded a disappointed face and went back to my beer..it’s never good to see anyone fall from grace..

And there was that androgynous person called by the bar clientele ; “Toothless”. She was what we called a “Floater”…one who floated in on the tide like a lone thong washed up on the shore and stayed for a length of time..Many of these wanderers came with a ready-made character study and very quickly established themselves within the working core of our little group..

Toothless wasn’t really toothless…it’s just that she had a plate that filled the gap of three missing front teeth, that she would click and clack and sometimes push out with her tongue …an unfortunate habit that gained her the nickname of “Toothless”.

She was ahead of her time for those days, as she didn’t carry a purse with her and kept her money in a wallet like a bloke..she had a comb that she would now and then pass through her page-boy hair cut and replace to a back pocket of her jeans. But she did seek out the company of males, which would contradict any presumption of ; “batting for the other team”. But hey!..who cares..

But she was a hell of a drinker!…Christ!…could she knock ‘em back…and she wasn’t above shouting her round. I sometimes wonder if she was a kind of “neuter” in the sexual stakes…a sort of “neither here nor there” kind of person..you do get them..I remember one such young chap in my experience..he never dated, and would spend more time admiring his own looks in a mirror or passing glass window then even consider anyone else.

Bruce got on quite pally with her and he even scored a date to meet at her flat for a few drinks.

“I’ve got a half dozen long-necks , a flask of Bundy, and a packet of weed!” He announced gleefully…”If that doesn’t soften her up, nothing will”…he informed us frankly.

Actually, such a volume of narcotics was a big investment for Bruce, seeing that he was on unemployment benefits at that time, so it must have eaten somewhat into his savings.

“Wish me luck!” he winked to us as he headed out the front bar doors.

You can consult the archives of the “Seacliff Hotel  Sports and Social Club” for a report on that night’s events…the short of it being that Toothless drank, smoked and kicked Bruce under the table!…She not only polished off all his booze etc. , but then pulled out a supply of her own and proceeded to tuck into that! Bruce confessed that he gave it best when she played that unbeatable hand. ..and it took him a week to recover both his sobriety and manly pride from such a beating!

Toothless hung about for a while until she tired of the wimpy  blokes there and moved on to greener pastures…She was last heard of ripping through the male egos of the northern beach hotels…; The Henley, The Pier and Larges Bay….and good luck to her I say!

I have “history” with that other establishment; The Esplanade Hotel…lesser so than my old “alma puttana” ; The Seacliff Hotel…it was There that I forged an alliance (however accidental) with Beelzebub!….ahh!..the “demon drink” did for all us youth in THAT den of iniquity!

But beside that, the three hotels that formed a triangle in the suburbs there near the sea nick-named ; “The Pollywaffle Triangle” as a foil to “The Iron Triangle” of Spencer Gulf ; The Esplanade, The Brighton and The Seacliff, had thriving membership to their respective “Sports and Social Clubs”….mind you, speaking for the members of the Seacliff Club (of which I was not a member ref ; Groucho Marx and ‘clubs HE would not join!)..but I was quite familiar with those said members, while I would not for a moment doubt their capacity to “socialise” with hard liquor, their capacity for sport of any kind was limited to “elbow bending” and channel surfing with the remote….and I am reminded of a Nelson Algren story (“The Captain is a card”) where the Captain of police asks a suspect why he was running a house of ill repute:

“It wasn’t a brothel, it was a sports and social club” the reprobate defended…
“So who were the scantily dressed women?” the capt’ asks…
” They were the social part” the man replies…
“Oh that’s good” the Capt’ says ” For a moment I thought you were going to tell me they were lady wrestlers!”

But besides that, the three hotels thought it good fellowship to join in a joint-hosting program where they would take turns, once a month, to host the other’s social club for dining at their premises. This went on for a while till a small mishap involving Errol “the drunk” and member of the Seacliff club. I heard it from Mark, a fellow imbiber at that hallowed trough….

“So how come the event was cancelled ?” I asked.
“It wasn’t cancelled, it’s just the Seacliff has been banned for the near future from participating.”
“Why…what’s the dirt?”
“Errol!”…..Mark’s eyes lowered and his top lip curled.

Errol was one of those homosexuals of the seventies who seemed to slip under the “Aussie Poofter Radar”…; acceptable because they were amusing even though high camp!…as a matter of fact, I remember the owner of the pub in those days, a retired footballer (of course!) addressing the crowded front bar thus..;

“Listen youse blokes…I don’t want anybody picking on Errol or Stevie (Errol’s occasional partner)….They’re good blokes…not like you an’ me ..p’rhaps…but they’re alright…..ALRIGHT!?”

Truth be known, Errol and Stevie drank enough between them to lift the pub’s profit margin above “respectable” on a good night!…..Errol was in his mid-fifties w / comb-over and was a quite disreputable person regardless of ANY sexual proclivities!

I recall a moment when I was next to them along the bar and I distinctly heard Erroll addressing a petulant, Stevie :

”Jeesus..Stevie, you’re really up-tight tonight…you should try farting..it’ll loosen you up a little”.

I took the accompanying moment of silence to slip away from that location at the bar.

Anyway..this night it was the turn of the Brighton Hotel to be “Mine Host”….Errol had been tossing a few down at “the cliff” before he went to the dinner….At The Brighton, in the dining room, quite full of family diners, it being Fri’ night, Errol took a shine to the bay-marie bowl full of big, fat prawns….he gourged himself…GOURGED himself!…and drank another couple of pints…then he decided he’d go for seconds..(you just know where this is heading, don’t you?)….eyewitness accounts state that Errol unsteadily approached the bay-marie side-table…a miniature, mock wagonette in the “Oklahoma Musical” style, replete with the “fringe on top”… plate out-stretched..he stood in front of the prawn container momentarily…he swayed a tad, his eyes widened somewhat and he then delivered what has been described as a “Guinness Book of Records” quality “technicolour yawn”….all over the prawns, all over the chopped carrots and the three-bean mix and the sweet corn (off the cob)….finishing in a dead faint flop onto the lot, then sliding, slipping, unconscious to the ceramic floor dragging the entire bay-marie potpourri and waggonette down with him…one witness remarked that his inert body slipped over the tiles like a dead fish would on an oil based tray.

Of course, such action did not go un-noticed and the consequences were felt right up to the highest echelon of The Seacliff Hotel Sports and Social Club management….ie ; Col Penny and Joe Phistus!

The “night to remember” has gone down in the annals of Seacliff front-bar mythology…along with other memorable moments…of which, if you like, more later!

Getting on to “Sos” though.. He was in a different category due to his “condition”.

You had to feel for Sos…He was one of those people raised in an institution from a very young age…”Minda Home”…that’s what it was called once, but the name was changed to “Minda Incorporated”…there was a personal slur in this state by using that original name…ie; to call someone a ”minda” was to imply that they were simple-minded…Minda Home being an institution for the disabled.

The first time I “met” Sos, was when he was coming out of the double doors at the front-bar of the Seacliff Hotel one night…I was crossing the esplanade with a couple of friends, headed to the pub for a beer or two. Sos had just pushed the door open rather roughly…he was a bloody big bloke, so he filled the entire door-space up..and his shadow stretched in a jagged elongation out onto the expanse of Wheatland Street. He suddenly turned and yelled back into the bar..; “ I can dream!…” he stabbed his finger into that space and repeated..: “I can dream!”….he let the door slam shut and turned down the verandah when he spotted us and he repeated the fact that he yelled into the bar..; “I can dream”…though this time not as forcefully…he then took a push-bike from where it leant against the wall and awkwardly mounting it, pushed off clumsily onto The Esplanade heading toward Brighton jetty….we could hear him repeat the “I can dream” mantra a couple more times as he rode away.

I remember I said the obvious to Mark (I think it was him) .;”I wonder what that was about?”…”Dunno” he shrugged “ But I’d hate to know of Sos’s dreams…be a pretty wild trip more likely.”..It turned out Sos was standing near some group of blokes and one had told another in the course of the conversation that ; “ You’re dreemin’ mate..you’re dreemin’ !”….but that was Sos…he could get the wrong end of the stick anytime…it was his mental health…you had to feel for him…but he never got into any trouble that I can remember, though he could have a “dark scowl” look after a few too many.

But boy!..could he eat!..talk about a trencherman!..I remember once seeing him sitting at the front bar, drinking pints of Coopers Ale…now, I’m talking about that old Coopers Ale…back in the days when it was real ale…with twigs and sediment in it , as they would say…but cloudy…then the cook brought out this huge roast-platter…you know those big oval platters they’d serve up the Christmas turkey on…one of those big platters with three complete “T-bone” steak meals on it, replete w/ roast pratties, carrots, onions and sweet-potatoes….the salad was in a side dish, it wouldn’t fit on the main plate….and about half a loaf of bread to mop up the gravy!….AND all the while he was eating, he was tossing back those pints of Coopers Ale….THEN!..after he had finished that platter, he got stuck into his own packed lunch he had there with him!….Mark once told me that Sos had challenged him to an eating contest…Mark declined the offer.

There was a reckless side to Sos…Once, when I came down the road that led from Minda Home, toward Brighton Road (Brighton Road is a main road carrying most of the traffic from the southern sea-side suburbs), a very busy road. I was on my motor-bike and had stopped at the intersection waiting for a break in the traffic…when suddenly, this “maniac” on a push-bike swept right past me straight out into Brighton Road…his bike bell tinkling like Christmas chimes and he laughing his head off….cars were going every which way!….braking and sliding all over the place….Sos (yes..it was he)…just roared with laughter and crossed lanes and peddled away like mad!….bloody crazy!

Oh yeah…that push-bike he rode off on that night I first saw him?…..it wasn’t his, he stole it as it was just there…the owner..a bit of a misery-guts who had won some money in a minor prize in the lottery came wandering wide-eyed into the bar later that same night calling out in surprise..: “ Me bike…me bike!..someone’s stole me bike!…” of course, no-one ever told him it was Sos……it looked like a heap of shit anyway!

The last time I saw Sos was about fifteen years ago, in Goodwood…he was still riding a pushbike..I called out to him, but he was heading in a different direction to me and he didn’t hear….gosh!..He was old then..I suppose he’d be “gone” by now

“Nan” had that androgenous look about her…never one to take up with any local fellah or seen to bring a man into the establishment upon her arm..though she did mix and drink with her favoured collection of men every Friday night, eagerly partaking in the raffles of chooks and meat trays on those nights...their section of the front bar would resemble a spread of a supper table with bowls of chips, snacks scattered among their boisterous conversation.

Getting on to that “Last Supper” thingo…you notice (as have many others) one of the “Apostles” looks remarkably like a woman…well, that’s because she is!…It’s no secret that whenever a group of “alpha-males” gather, there is always one token female allowed into the group. She is there as the “straight- man” for their confabulations (yes..I looked THAT up…)….for their double-entendres, when they say a sexist or vulgar comment and it’s …”present company excepted…” or…”If,’n you’ll pardon my language”….or ” in the company of a lady…” It’s the only way the Alpha M. can have “uncommitted sexual contact” and still be plug-ugly!

I remember in the coterie of the “Seacliff Hotel Sports and Social Club…inc.” there was one….they called her “Nan”….which is telling…although she was younger than most of them.

The “Seacliff Hotel Sports and Social Club!” used to have a fri’ night happy hour fund-raiser w/ meat-tray and chook raffles, called ; “The Clang-Bang” (don’t ask!!)…and the coterie would congregate at one corner of the front bar and make whoopie…Nan, (who was a hairdresser by trade) would be in the middle sitting high on a bar-stool (the “Wheatland St. Madonna”? ) sipping her Bacardi’s and…she sported an enormous (of the day) blonde Farrah-Fawcett bouffant…so you couldn’t miss her there every Friday night….

All this went well, until one fateful day, being kept back in the salon tending to a rather demanding ‘blue-rinser’ she was late getting to the clang-bang raffle draw for the chook….her regular number came up, and by the rules stated..; “no claim, no game”..although there was a degree of hiatus sympaticus for the person involved as she quite often professed her desire for “something fowl” ( bring on the guffaws!)…but all debate was silenced by one half-shiggered Jim Tuffin when he took a moment of pause in the conversation to call out slurrily..:

“Ahh, f#ck her!…if she’s not here, it’s her hard luck”…and of course, he was just voicing the feelings of the majority..so away with all sentiment and a re-draw!

Nan, did not take this news well when she arrived all flushed from the hurry and keen as mustard for the night….

“Well f#ck you too” was her parting words and she decamped to the Brighton Hotel, never to darken the doors of the Seacliff again….She was soon replaced by another blonde…they called her “Norah?..Dorah?…” anyway after that blonde woman in the TV. series of the times..: “Prisoner”.. She ended up marrying a Flats Bookie who ran the SP. (Starting Price) bookie, one ; Little Johnny in the front bar..I remember because the no-nonsense wedding reception was held there in the front bar and a Jeroboam bottle of champers was passed around for the patrons to have a swig in congratulations for the happy couple..It was a good night..

But who were the heroes in this little passage of time?...What merit was gained from the learned wisdom of hard experience?..How many of us actually collect, collate and sift through the adventures of our youth and discern what is reckless abandon of hedonistic desires and what is a lesson on life?...There was one of our little group who managed to do just these things and come out the other end of chaos and wasted work-ethic with a full quiver of arrows and a contented look on his dial…in my book; a true working-class “warrior”.

Let me present to you an image of an aged man, rather heavy-set, sitting deep in a relaxed posture in a large, plump, rounded sofa purchased “unused” from an eBay seller five years ago that was gifted to this same man sitting in it from his children on Father’s day. The sofa is large and the man is content. You can see he is content by the fact that he is looking plump and relaxed with a remote control for the CD player in one hand and a stubbie of “West End Draught” beer in the other….there is a smile on his lips not dissimilar to that which plays on the lips of the “Mona Lisa” painting currently held in The Louvre in Paris.

Mark Price is a contented man.

Wisdom, according to the ages is a thing learned not with education, but rather accrued through pragmatic experience. That experience can be one personally lived..the most instructive method..or one witnessed with the actions or situations enacted upon others. Mark was a witness and experiencer of both methods of instruction from a young age.

Mark Price was a learned man.

But Mark Price held no trade, no profession, no specialised employable skilled base or self-employment record at all. In this world of “market-based” consumerist demand, Mark Price was never “in demand”. Oh, yes..he worked..at menial labouring tasks, applied when requested or required to put shoulder to the wheel for family sustenance and need..but never was he recruited for any specialised skill or trade application. And that was precisely the way he wanted it, having learned by witness at a young age just what a consumerist society really wanted from those most willing to give their precious time of life to the wheels of industry..the consumerist society did not want your intelligence, your applied skills, your hunger for promotion or “recognition”, it wanted your blood!..pure and simple, along with the many disposable items consumed by society, the “market society” wanted to consume YOU…for body and soul has a value to be bought and sold.

Mark Price had learned this from a young age. In high school, he would see his teachers drive in everyday with their aged cars..step out in their workaday clothes..the same ones for quite a few days..holding that same brown-leather satchel…lock the car and if chance placed them near a favourite colleague, they would flirt whilst on their usual way to the staff-room. They did not see Mark, but he saw them..he did not make a habit of deliberately watching the teachers or anyone else for that matter, they were just acting out their everyday roles and Mark saw them..and in seeing them and other people and family acting out their everyday roles, he began to recognise a pattern of social behaviour.. a pattern of conversation..and a pattern, eventually, of a predicted ending.

Wisdom is a learned thing..and through his growing years, Mark was being pragmatically educated by the practicalities of his impoverished upbringing. Mark was learning.

He learned the meaning of “losing with grace” from his friend at school when the friend was chastised by the station master of Brighton railway station when the friend, who was captain of the school baseball team tried to re-position some of the hopelessly inept players in the team to different positions so as to improve their chances of winning at least one game…”You are the captain, NOT the coach..and I will decide who plays where!”…his friend was scolded. “But we can’t win a game” the friend complained “It is not all about winning”, the station master lectured, “it is also about losing with grace…one must learn that when one loses, one should show dignity.” The collector of the Sunday Catholic mass plate collections informed Mark’s friend.

Mark saw examples of “dignity in losing” amongst his family and friends as he grew.

He saw the working men down at the Seacliff Hotel drink themselves drunk on a Friday night to alleviate the pain of strained muscles and arthritic joints..he saw them make fools of themselves whilst in this drunken state..trying with their limited vocabulary to explain what was missing in their lives…when what was missing all the while was that love of self that had been beaten out of them with labouring or war so many years before..He saw the dignity in losing on the bruised face of Ruth Holmstrom around the corner of his street, after being beaten once again by her drunken husband while herself also drunk. He saw the dignity in losing in the lonely eyes of Jack Mitchell who lived out his loneliness with his old spinster sisters, the three of them sharing the same family home they all grew up together in…He saw Jack slowly drink himself to tears down at the Seacliff Hotel, always dressed in a salesmen’s suit, polished shoes and tie..the last vestige of his respectability..oh yes, Mark learned from witnessing others the dignity in losing. He saw a friend’s father drunk on the train coming home after the day’s work at the building site, drop his ticket and the smirking porter give the workman surreptitiously, a nudge with his knee as he struggled in his drunken state to bend down to pick the ticket up, sending the old bricklayer sprawling onto the floor of the carriage in front of so many laughing passengers…

Mark Price saw the lifetime of honest work be debased in the dignity of losing.

Mark Price was learning that there was something remiss with the promise told him so many years before by his school teacher that hard work and an honest forbearance was what “got a man through life with success and happiness”….Mark was learning that there was a war going on between those who HAD and those who NEEDED…it was very difficult to get what was needed from the hands of those who had. There was a lie being told that was never being voiced..a lie that was being heard but never audible, printed but never read..there were those who would be warriors and those who would remain slaves.

Mark Price saw what slavery looked like..and he didn’t like the look of it.

Mark had by now reached an age where he developed a philosophy to guide his steps through this battlefield of demands upon his time and his own needs to survive without falling into slavery..His learned experiences and the witness of others attempts at suburban security has shown him that there being so many variables that await to ambush the best laid plans of mice and men that it was almost impossible for someone like himself, with absolutely no assets available and no working skills to sell to gain material possessions without resorting to thievery or skulduggery, but seeing those who had tried and failed through no real fault of their own taught him that in most cases of making a decision one way or another, the best thing one could do was to do nothing and await fate to direct his hand. This was the most wise and fortunate philosophy someone of his position in an uncaring society could attain. In a world where “doing something” was wasted value, Mark Price succeeded most well at doing as little as possible.. so that having time to see opportunities arise while others were too busy “achieving”, he was able to place himself in the right place at the right time. Some would call it luck, but Mark knew that it was a strategy that allowed him to move about freely to pick up many rewards that a lack of time and availability denied to so many of his friends. Mark built a network of job-sources with foremen and hiring staff of different industries so that he could always find casual employment in a menial job with local councils or a building project..he never took a job that demanded higher responsibility..Mark had no interest in contributing to the good or welfare of a society that respected only profit and materialism..he only had interest in maintaining his and his own family’s needs, for the rest, they could go to hell!

Mark learned the price and value of many things..He knew what was most valuable to himself..; Time…”You can always make money but you cannot remake time.” He would say.

Fortune smiled upon Mark in the companionship of marriage. It favoured him that his future wife knew of his behaviours before she even started going out with him. Mandy frequented the Seacliff Hotel regularly and was able to notice Mark’s more exuberant behaviour..she didn’t mind his behaviour and she accepted his invitation to accompany him. Mark was wary of marriage..he had witnessed close friends, tradesmen in the building industry marry and build the family home…several family homes in fact, for disgruntled women…unhappy wives who resented even the name “wife”, who resented the idea of being a companion to a male..who resented having to defer to the husband to make, repair and structure a home for their benefit. A society that profited from the separation of the sexes MORE than the unity of the sexes would promote dissention between men and women, even in the case where both parties were of the same working class, the same level of struggle, the same struggle to improve their and their children’s lives…anger, dissent, distrust…these were the tools of divide and rule in the world of middle-class profiteering..TWO adults needing double the housing, furniture, whitegoods and cars made for a more profitable bottom-line…divide and rule it will be, even if both parents be impoverished and the children denied…A happy wife is a happy life was the theory that guided many men…now it made many men despair of ever attaining such.

Mark had no intention to build many houses..he only wanted one home and fortune had placed Mandy inside his realm of satisfaction..they both were content with what they had.

And what they had improved as the years went by and children graced their table. Five healthy children grew by Mark’s table and garden shed, Five healthy children grew and did in turn find partners of their own and produced grandchildren that grew by Mark’s table and garden shed..Now, secure with an aged pension, Mark could look back on a life well managed, on fortune envious of nothing and no-one, for here with the evidence of so many arrows in his quiver, could the suburban warrior arm himself against a future that would be denied some of the more industrious, worked to the bone for little gain save the bitter gall of seeing their hard-earned possessions snatched away from them when old and care-worn..to be left to rot in the ironically named “aged care” facility…to be forgotten by those children that a quarrelling world of men versus women made resentful of the feeling of being abandoned when the administration of divorce forced them to take sides. No, this was not the fate of Mark and Mandy, laugh if you will of their seemingly comical circumstance that a more “sophisticated” person might spurn, but here they were and deny them you cannot, surrounded at every celebratory event by generations of caring children and grandchildren, Mark would revel in idle appreciation of fuss and touch of his tribe. The noise of laughter and delight a song of assurance for the continuing health of the family.

Mark realised the blessings of good fortune and he worshipped at fortune’s altar with suitable penance.. for deep in his soul and spirit, he was sincerely grateful…Mark had the Pagan’s respect for chance.

It was Christmas day, the entire family with grandchildren..all ten grandchildren..were in the house making merry and preparing the Christmas dinner. Mark had one grandchild on his left knee as he sat deep in the club lounge chair given to him on Father’s Day by his children five years before. He sat in a contented state with a stubbie of beer in one hand and the remote for the CD player in the other..under his instructions, his grandchild that sat on his left knee had just inserted a CD of Mark’s choosing into the player and awaited Mark to select the track and press the play-button…which with great satisfaction he now did and turning up the sound so the music bellowed out over the cacophony of Christmas noise, Mark smiled his “Mona Lisa” smile and wallowed in the pure saturation of Jimi Hendrix’s “All along the Watchtower”…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY

Wisdom is a thing learned not with education, but rather accrued through pragmatic experience. That experience can be one personally lived..the most instructive method..or one witnessed with the actions or situations enacted upon others. Mark was a witness and experiencer of both methods of instruction from a young age. Mark Price was now a wise man.

 

The Warrior feasted on his victorious bounty.