Robert and Shara; Part one

As I said I met Shara at a party at Jackie Chris's, better known to Wayne than I who knew him only by sight. Oddly I met him again at Bunnings a year or so ago when he recognised me. Bunnings is certainly the new village well. Only last week I met Gabriel Carven, mother of Claudia and once co-proprietor of Arthurs night club on Victoria street Kings Cross . A couple of minutes later I encountered Dick Waite another old time friend of ours and was able to put them together. Moments after my best mate Walter appeared and when I pointed out the opportunity he declined. I agreed that some accidental reunions are better avoided unless you have some official capacity like shop attendant. Back to the meeting at Jackie Chris's, in the bathroom as I recall, where we spent the whole party as I recall, most likely to the distress of other guests but we were falling and didn't notice. I took her home on the Honda she asked me in and seduced me with entreaties to massage ever more remarkable parts of the body in which to expect aches. I woke the next morning on her lounge floor where we had spent the night in this flat she shared on the corner of Oxford and Queen behind a delicatessen with a practising witch called Margaret Almichi. Inauspicious many would say but we sort of lasted thirteen years which was better than any other relationship I've managed.

She soon moved to my place where she demanded window covering and spoilt my dawn waking but I was consoled. Not much later we were offered an opportunity by Bob Milligan to take his place in what was to become Edge City which he was finding too much responsibility. Now we moved her belongings including a fridge from her old flat leaving no hiding place for the thousands of cockroaches encouraged by the proximity of the delicatessen. I swear that as we moved the fridge the cockroaches so reluctant to lose their old home caused it to float across the floor and eventually without hiding places they were impossible not to tread on as they scampered in panic.

Edge City on Edgecliff road opposite Wellington street was the best place I ever lived and could in fact have been the best place in the world to live in those days. Probably once a grand house, by our time it had been converted into seven or eight flats which with sublets accommodated a diverse group of alternatives. Top floor accommodated artist Andy Nott who was to become lifelong friend and Some early women's libber whose name escapes me. My floor was occupied by Shara and I in a flat most recently abandoned by Kerry White a screen printer and left it to Bob who left it to us. Next door was Harley Gale who I had met in 1960 in Surfers Paradise and who would go on to be my oldest friend in another story. On the other side was Wally or Wallace Randolph, or simply Randolph depending when you met him. He was Wally when I met him and the day before I met him I saw him on Television trying to explain his art that I could see when I stood on my back porch (yes I had a back porch) and look through his window. Mike Brown a very talented, now deseased Melbourne artist lived in Wally's kitchen and Jenny Coopes who was to become a Wakley awarded cartoonist lived with others down the hall. Downstairs lived the yet to become filmmaker James Riketson and Kim Hilder, artist, sculptor and spawn of Grandfather famous watercolourist JJ Hilder and father sculptor Bim.

Here I fancy Shara and I presided in a manner that as I stretch my imagination for an adjective I can do no better than minor royally. It's not comfortable to say this but under the auspices of Shara my already tentatively established penchant for dandyism only flourished. Spending our first hours in a bathroom should have sounded alarms but of course I was not listening. Shara never left home without having spent at least two hours in the bathroom pampering and preparing. No one but me ever saw Shara bereft of makeup and in those days hair pieces.

Ours was a delightfully placed flat with windows along the eastern wall of the generous living room looking out over the garden. No ordinary garden this. From well before ours and the surrounding buildings were built there was a plan for an Eastern Rail link to Bondi which nowadays has become a reality at least as far as Bondi Junction. On this plan a train emerged from a tunnel in the backyard of the 'Hair house' (I'll explain later) on our northern boundary, paused at a station to serve Woollahra and Double Bay smack bang in our back yard and disappeared underground once more in our south eastern neighbours back yard. It's not for nothing that ours was called Edgecliff Road.

Now this steep wonderland that I call our backyard, combined with adjacent wilderness was big enough for a small farm and as it had always been designated as railway had never been built on with anything more substantial than tennis courts one built into the hillside and cantilevered into space. These had long since passed their use by date and whilst the upright props of their wire fencing still stood the wire itself had long since succumbed to the weight of Ivy and Morning Glory and now hung like upside down arches fit for the fairy life herein. The other dominant feature of this 'garden' were seven giant Morton Bay Figs whose shady branches hung to the ground ensuring that nothing much grew here other than the afore mentioned creepers.

Along a steep path from house to this wilderness Mike Brown had painted small stones with bright almost aboriginal patterns to delight or at least calm the fairies who others had often sighted and some claimed to have photographed. If fairies were to be found anywhere it would be here. I often looked out at dawn before bed to find photographers with their models sneaking around.

I should make clear that during this Edge City faze I worked as a Taxi Driver, if I worked at all, doing night shift which began at three PM and usually went till dawn. When not working our late night drug habits and Shara's insistence on keeping the east facing bedroom window double blanketed saw us rarely up before midday. Marihuana and occasional Acid were the drugs of choice though red wine, oh yes Sothern Comfort, and under the auspices of Randolph, Mandrax were making inroads. Revolution was chanted to the accompaniment of Exiles on Main Street late in to the night but we were never up early enough to foment any. Moratoriums were attended, at one of which I recall Randolph and I having a hoot, under the influence of his Mandrax probably, trying to persuade shop girls to leave work and march or at the very least give away the stock of their capitalist pig bosses.

Another saw Shara and I along with thousands of others arrested in the reign of Bob Askin, then Premier of NSW who saw the police force as his own private gang. "Run over the bastards" he told the limo driver when protesters looked like upsetting the party he had planned for Lyndon Baines Johnston. We were found guilty of disrupting his continence or something and given fines we never paid. Years later when American authorities were checking our um, files, Shara was found to have committed this heinous crime but my sheet was clean. No computers then let alone iris recognition.

There are many fine recollections of life in this house where owing to the age and disposition of the tenants parties started like spot fires and often needed to be doused. I recall Harleys Hi-Fi a formidable piece of furniture that would baulk modern roadies being lugged upstairs and dropped down without missing a beat. I recall spaghetti like power cords trailing from double adaptor to double adaptor forever increasing the load at its prime source. I recall Kym along with Jack Myer and others performing as 'The Slime Men' for hours below my window despite their knowing only two chords. Of course it was the sixties and I was there so there is a great deal I do not remember.

A similarly grand house, our northern neighbour never broken into flats was 'the Hair House'. Here the cast of that seminal musical lived a 'Hair' like existence perpetuating their stage roles. Marcia Hines and the Male imported black lead Jimmy I believe (later to fall to his death of a mountain in New Zealand) were the lord and lady here but our kingdoms didn't mix much.

I paid $25 a week rent on this kingdom and eventually fell so far behind that the agents sent bully boys who removed my front door. Very effective really and you should remember it in case you ever have trouble with your tenants. This failure to pay rent wasn't primarily driven by lack of funds, no there was a philosophy underpinning this action best explained in a blog I here re-present.
Edge City earned its name from this type of petty urban guerrilla action. My flat cost $25:00 a week, unimaginable now. Still it seemed to great a price to pay to greedy capitalist pigs. The gas company was our first target. When we failed to pay their bill they cut us off by placing a tin cap in the line into the meter to stop supply. Gimmy strength we simply removed the cap and re connected. Next they removed the section of supply pipe so we replaced it with hose. Now they came and dug up the street, removed a section of pipe and re filled the hole. We dug it back out but assessed that it would be too arduous to fit a bodgy connection and that we could survive electrically without the threat of explosions in the neighbourhood. We weren’t mad.
Electricity individually metered was the next target. When mine was disconnected owing to failure to pay bills I came up with an ingenious idea. Taking an extension lead and replacing the female socket with another male, I plugged an end into one of my dead power points, threw the cable out my window into Harleys and plugged the other end into one of his live ones. Viola! All my power points now were powered as long as Harley kept me switched on and he never failed me. Of course this extra load placed a strain on the fuses which we found we could fortify with ever increasing diameters of wire right up to the classic nails. When the day arrived, as it had too, when Harley’s power too was disconnected, your favourite innovator said "no worries" and proceeded with another cable downstairs to James Ricketson’s place (he always paid his bills) and finding him out I didn’t even have to ask permission to plug into his supply. Now years before the internal stair between mine and James floors had been removed necessitating a walk the long way around the building to reach James’s pad directly under mine. By the time I made it back, maybe a minute or more, everywhere I looked around my flat the large skirting boards carrying the power lines were smoking. Well I’m no fool, I recognized a dangerous situation and made haste back to James’s pad where at great personal risk I reefed the hot, sticky, melting cable from its socket. Yes in hindsight it sounds a little senseless to me too but adolescent brains do not fully format till early twenties and back at the intersection of the sixties and seventies it took longer still especially if they had already been damaged by drugs.

Shara and I were moving on anyway through the then largely forgotten or ignored institution of marriage to a more stable future. Inspired it seems by that old adage "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" I wore a black suit borrowed from a musician friend and my old, once white Swedish clogs sans socks to the endless amusement of guests behind during the kneeling portion of these proceedings. Shara wore a fitted synthetic crepe mushroom (at the blue end of red in the spectrum) dress bought for the ocasion from 'Cue' thus covering all these requirements. John did the honours at St Canises in Elisabeth Bay and we along with all guests, mine and Shara's immediate available families, and Shara's friends; astrologer Margaret Park and bridesmaid Pam Luxford celebrated at the then Australia Hotel in Clarence Street, with a wedding banquet of pork chops. As if all of this weren't strange enough our wedding coincided with the departure of the Pope from our town and a reception (whatever) at the same hostelry in a large room with gallery to which we had access. Here assembled were the largest group of cocktail swilling cassocked and biretta or zucchetto wearing cardinals, bishops and monsignors in scarlet, violet, and crimson velvet, trimmed with ermine, this side of a Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Not even my hand painted and sequined tie found under a bed somewhere or Sharas three tier hair pieces bound with a lime band could compete with this.

Married life commenced in Harris St. Paddington, effectively a dead end at the steps leading to the lower level across from the Lord Dudley. Here we rented from an Italianate bloke who much later would turn up on TV as a cooking or astrology show host, an attached room separated from wilderness that was Paddington's long abandoned tip by a roofed and fenced outdoor "entertaining" area. I built a loft bed to create more floor space and here Shara's cat deposited her new born litter for us to care for, abandoning them for a life on the streets from which she never returned. Here also my mum and dad sprung a disastrous, unannounced 11.00 AM Sunday visit to find Shara I and a litter of kittens in the loft comfortably sleeping. Not what they expected of newly married life I'm certain and they were careful thereafter to host all family get togethers announced and at their place.

We were soon on the road to our next flat in a block of four on William Street Double Bay. Another exceptional spot with the best part of a paddock around it. Down a leafy drive with houses on each side our north facing flats appeared along the back fence with a row of garages to the right. the small paddock in front of these garages returning across the front of the flats was surrounded by mature trees, mostly Camphor laurel. One of these grew so close to our front balcony that we could pick leaves and crush them to smell the sharp camphor scent. From the twin balcony of the adjacent flat we were greeted on our first day here by a bright blonde English girl named Val who waved a baby at us and said "this is Daniel'

Val and her Irish red haired husband Paddy (of course) along with Daniel were to become firm friends who in those 'heady' days would become our first new 'straight' friends. Now this will take some explaining and I'm not sure I'm up to it but here goes. In those days we who participated in the drug culture based around Marijuana, including Hash and Acid, and lurching into speed, mescaline, smack or whatever came around in this increasingly criminal industry were 'Heads' who like our derivative Beatnik generation were 'hip' and 'cool'. Those not of this culture had somehow evolved from the Beatnik's 'square' into 'straight'. Why they were always described in geometric terms you shall have to decide for yourself but it might help to know that geometrically we were bent.

Of course Shara and I had straight friends and family but not new ones. Val and Paddy were significant in that our friendship pointed to the possibility of life beyond one of potentially suffocating dead bent heads. I remember once when Paddy was with us when we were stopped by plain clothes police in Jersey road Woollahra. They searched the car of these obvious hippies and their hitch hiker. I'm not sure if they asked permission and I did not then know that without such they needed a warrant. It amused me to ask what they might want and if I could help as I knew what it was and that they would not find it. Paddy of course was terrified and protested that he was Patrick of Patrick's Restaurant nearby, a fact that neither I nor the police ever substantiated. I tried to console him as I was entertained by one cop who snapped and thrust dried Lantana from the boot quite violently into his nose. I was equally entertained when they were done with us and attempted to explain their overzealous inspection as being on behalf of a call they had gotten about barefoot blokes who had offended the law in the vicinity. I didn't bother to ask how they had noticed we were barefoot before pulling us up. Always happy to see the local constabulary doing their job

Out the back door and through a conveniently missing panel of back fence, mutually beneficial to the flats behind us on Cross Street, as easy access to the harbour beach on the other side of our William Street, were the Double bay Shops still then the most exclusive in Sydney. Along with this back door and a virtually unused front door with internal stairs this flat featured a large living room, bedroom and bath with adequate kitchen and afore mentioned private balcony. All this space under high ceilings ignited a creative period of life for me where studded leather work and Geta Clog design and manufacture flourished and eventually the Snibbo was born.

The Studded leather (belts bags and general adornments) was a natural progression from beads and baubles including a cloche cap and breast plates of aluminium disk off cuts from my old workplace at AWA, threaded together late at night and under the influence, for sale at Paddy's Friday markets. I recall after one night carving butterflies from cardboard on an acid trip finding my hand in pain that did not subside for months. Soon most of the studded leather was cleaned out by Frank Elgart a swish patron who became a regular Friday evening visitor.

The Geta Clogs were inspired by a developing fashionista interest in things Japanese and the seemingly insatiable lust of females for something new, different and high on their feet. Embarrassingly primitive now and eventually even then these brightly coloured things had a brief and spectacular fame way beyond my potential for control. This fame was chiefly created by Gerry Cashell an associate of Shara's who owned the boutique called UFO in an arcade off King Street where Shara was a shop girl. With my limited production techniques I could barely keep up with Gerry's demand. Then when her friend who was the editor of the then new pop girl magazine Dolly needed something bright and new to plump up her mag and gave Geta the front page and four page centrefold as well, the walls of the old brick laundry at William street threatened to collapse under the strain I put them to as part of my gluing press. A month later I received a letter from the Dai Nippon Trading Company inquiring as to the scale of my market and wondering where there might be a place for them. Not long after the shoe fad girls were distracted by Mr. Christian's or Andrew Hertzfeld's much more experienced and possibly safer (if that ever mattered in female shoe fashions) offerings.

Snibbos had yet to be invented but here is their story. Ken Beatty an Architecture drop out I had met had found what would become his life time obsession in the plastic inflatable structures company he called Plosions. He had found a backer and was making furniture when I met him. Mostly dough nut shaped seats and assorted pool type beds and furniture. He rented an eight sided glass pagoda like shop in Double Bay where I became the shopkeeper. Around this same time his brother Grahame who worked with Ken when not driving taxis, began turning off cuts into tubes and immersing parts of them in hot water during inflation to create effects that looked like snakes bulging and bent with swallowed prey. A short leap from these 1.2M off cuts he discovered the 0.6M ideal length tube that when heat treated at the ends to reinforce the welds, one to a greater extent than the other for aesthetic effect, created a short baseball bat like harmless club that produced a wonderfully sharp sound effect when struck.

Now here was a product I could identify with and it, like I, needed identity. Cooped in this glass birdcage without privacy and most times; customers I sometimes 'let off steam' by thrashing the glass walls with this inoffensive weapon and thus gradually becoming aware of its qualities and marketability. Soon we rented a stall at the then Friday Paddy's Market where I would spruik, demonstrate and sell these items for a dollar each.

When Ken's patron ,Terry Clune, abandoned Plosions for some other worthy project, perhaps The Yellow House Ken found Terry Bourke who guilt ridden by a fortune made in real estate backed him in a project to market pool domes that turned your outdoor into a virtually indoor pool. These did not run out the door but once more in possession of many meters of off cut Snibbos were produced for Friday markets. I should explain now that the trade name Snibbo, was not our invention but was borrowed from Spike Milligan; the comedian and author of the Goon Shows, who invented it as the universal product name be it laundry detergent or laxative. I hope he saw it as laudatory and not theft.

Snibbos would be influential in my life for a number of years now and for this reason I should explain more about their nature and effect on me. Physically they were similar to the inflatable plastic tubes one often now sees people clapping with at outdoor sports events. The major differences between these and Snibbos is that the Snibbo was made from thicker plastic and was heat treated for structural and aesthetic effect. It was also sold machine inflated to a much greater degree than could be achieved by breath as the modern sport clapper is. It came then in both an American and Australian flag design or barbers pole and polka dot for non nationalists. These were Kens designs, and he, the designer with the machine of manufacture, along with his brother who had developed the product were equal partners with I who had developed the application and market for it.

This worked well while we operated at Paddys Market and all received varying wages under the auspices of a patron who of course had no knowledge of nor earned anything from snibbo. I was always the driving force though and for me it meant more in respect of my weekly earnings in relation to work output and it helped me save for the coming overseas travels. When I and Shara set out on these travels, Snibbo sales ceased but I took half a dozen samples with me.

Six or more months later I reached Hong Kong and with the Yellow Pages in one hand and a Snibbo sample in the other I began to bus and taxi around the island looking for manufacturers. On my third or fourth call I lucked into a production company wherein the chairman entertained me with a Coke in his display room while one of his lackeys took my sample and reappeared some twenty minutes later with a dozen or so freshly made samples. I pored over these and pointed out flaws I would like corrected and ten minutes later was presented with a sample as good as I could produce in Sydney. It's worth noting here that we had sought manufacturers in Australia and Dri-Glo, the only company with the machinery of manufacture took six months to come up with a quote in the vicinity of 50 cents per Item. Now the president of the Sun Tai Shan Plastic Manufacturing and Trading Company took a calculator from his pocket and in less than a minute with a cross check on the abacus presented me with the price of 9.7 cents Australian per item landed in Australia all freight and duty paid, minimum order 10,000 items. $1,000 for $10,000 worth of product seemed like the right price to me and I was soon on the phone waking my partners from their Australian slumber.

Now I've gotten way ahead of myself so I must leave the Snibbo story here and return to it later. I know I had the green 55 Chev when I lived here so I suspect it was during this phase that we went to Gympie. Sort of a holiday but also to check out the proposal put to us by a builder lady friend of Val's who was building a motel at Rainbow Beach. The Chev was the best car I ever owned and solid as a rock but unfortunately owing to my bad habit of overloading the roof racks with form ply stolen from the Eastern Suburbs Rail construction site in Wooloomooloo, it had fractured gutters and during heavy bouts of rain it would become moist inside. Gympie turned out to be very wet that season and as we were using the car for accommodation as well as transport we began to mould. A friend of the builder loaned us his big old army tent with a mattress up on pallets out of the damp and we were very grateful. I remember the magical rainbow sand and driving the builders old Land Rover miles up the beach till we were forced to reverse half a mile to turn around. In those days it was common to find the hulks of cars in the surf where they were caught by the incoming tide. Eventually the relentless rain turned us back to Sydney and away from what might have proved a change of career.

On our return we took a side trip from Murwillumbah to Nimbin along ancestral song lines. For the sake of putting my foot on Nimbin's abandoned earth I went to the pub to relieve myself and was surprised to find within, two others with hair as long as mine in discussion about access roads with a local. I imagined they were planning a dope plantation which I had always imagined could provide rebirth to this area with its dying dairy industry. It was not until months later that I heard of the Aquarius Festival. I continued on past Coffee Camp famous to me for its school which had floated past my home in the big flood depositing school desks, cans of ruined film and even a piano about our farm. Down West Nimbin Road which in spite of my song line had turned into Boyle Road, apparently needing this lyric change to fit better with my ancestry. On to the old homestead which I admired from the road, but stopped at Dickies to explore the creek paddock where I remembered 'poisonous' mushrooms from my youth that looked very like Gold Tops which since then I had learnt to love so much.

Curious cows appraised these colourful strangers in that nonchalant manner that only true cud chewers can assume, as we collected a still damp pillow case full of Goldies and continued on. I pointed out to Shara the interrogation chamber dip and various McNamara spreads as we crested the now much smaller McNamara Hill. I may have rambled on about the time Leo and I discovered that if we aimed our horses directly at a log at full gallop they naturally jumped them just as in the movies. I probably reminisced about the church and altar boy duties, the adjacent bridge and spitting competitions but Shara was not much into country boy things and probably wasn't listening and it didn't matter for a joint we'd had was kicking the mushies along and the car felt soft and clingy on the rubber band road.

On through Lismore and out to Byron where on a crest where you first witness this magnificent coastline we parked and relaxed on the most comfortable rock throne that could I once more find it I would patent and put into manufacture. From here we returned to Surfers where we stayed the night at Pam's mothers boyfriends place. You remember Pam from her brides maid duties at our wedding. A tragic, beautiful, 150K (at her prime) prostitute. Born and raised in Pots Point her taxi driving father kissed her goodbye one still sub teen morning and set out for his shift but decided instead to gas himself in the cab. She married a brute who died soon after in a motor accident whilst at work. Workers compensation and life insurance policy should have made her rich but she allowed unscrupulous lawyers to take all bar a couple of grand. (Libran always ready to admit the other side's argument) Had a child, Mischelle who died within days of birth but was so determined that she was born again on the same day a year later.

Next day we three set out late once the ladies had finished their beauty regimes and chose the New England Highway via Casino from Tenterfield. Sustained by Mushrooms the wheat fields swaying in the warm night breeze reflected the full moon and imitated oceans. Somewhere up on the tableland the old valve radio in the Chev picked up the best blues music programme ever and we cruised as if blessed till we lost top gear. No not that imbecilic Pommie franchised rev head programme rather the highest of the Chev's then manual three speed gear box. Not too tragic considering our top of the mountain position from where I could let the car glide dangerously in neutral. As landfall levelled though, after Lithgow, I found I could for a time hold it in top gear by leaning on the column shift but soon this too failed and along with it second gear. On the outskirts of Newcastle at dawn it took us till early afternoon to arrive back exhausted in first gear to Double Bay.

Along with my creative commercial pursuits and the odd taxi shift I had begun my building career with a small add in the Wentworth Courier suggesting my handyman abilities. This small investment turned out to be quiet lucrative as I taught myself to reglaze windows, replace sash cords, hang doors and fit locks at the clients expense. I accidently discovered sales ploys like adding ten percent to some quotes that could then be magnanimously removed as a discount. I learnt this when quoting a window reglazing for a nice Jewish lady, let's call her Mrs. Symonds, of double Bay who wanted to haggle. I reflected that here I was with nothing else to do that morning than this ladies' job and that if I earned ten percent less at least I earned something. She was delighted to have a young, educated, English speaking handyman who also understood her cultural need to successfully haggle. Never a week went by from then on that I did not do a job for her or one of her hundreds of relatives or friends who would always alert me to the deal on introducing themselves as friend/cousin/neighbour of Mrs. Symonds.

I know I'm not alone when I say that just like the frog in the slowly warming saucepan I did not notice that the second half of the sixties and the first half of the seventies were the easiest of times when we were having a ball. Some of my friends were launching themselves into house buying and without exception I think all lost them in some mid to late seventies credit squeeze. Credit had been so loose that they would borrow and buy a dump, commence renovations; pull up a floor or rip off a wall, refinance and buy another. When the squeeze came it all fell down but at least they'd had a heady experience. I didn't consider this option as I had plans to somehow live overseas. Even as I set out on this project dumb luck was beside me. At someone's urging I changed all my money into US dollar travellers cheques before leaving. Eight weeks into travels we met an Australian couple in Singapore and had a night out with them. Next morning we woke to the news that Australia had floated the dollar and their travel money in Aussie dollars lost at least a quarter of its value whilst ours remained the same.

We kept on bumping into this interesting couple in Bangkok and again in Vientiane. She was an attractive Aussie blond and he was a tall fire red head with aspirations in writing or journalism. He met up with some Yank with similar aspirations in Laos and the two of them set out on a voyage of discovery down the Mekong and never came back. It was extremely dangerous to travel overland in Laos in those days of the Vietnam war and everyone knew they were pushing fate. We met the girl again in Bangkok where she was trying to interest the Australians in a search party. The Yanks were interested in their man but the Aussies adopted their default position which "Nino Culotta", from "There a Weird Mob" knew so well as 'yeron yerone mate'. Years later I saw the story in the Women's Weekly where the blond was still trying to garnish interest. More years later I read that the intrepid Yanks had found their mans remains, but no sign of the Aussie.

In the last exciting year or so before departure, in May 1973 I think, for our big adventure we had to accelerate our earnings far enough beyond outgoings to accumulate a nest egg. Saving might have worked if I had ever understood how to do it. I chose dope dealing, or rather it chose me. My friend Katie introduced me to George who rode his 750cc Kawasaki from the central coast at my whim it seemed with a garbage bag half full of grass occy strapped to the pillion seat. Whatever its cost it could be tripled at least by breaking to so called ounce bags and reselling to anxious customers who always multiplied and called or popped in any time of day or night. Now this type of retail is best left to convenience stores like that run by Apu in The Simpsons who have endless tolerance for the foibles of freaks who have no recollection of conventional civilian behaviour. This short stint turned me off retail for life and it is only now at Bunnings that I with far greater maturity and under duress have become capable of a return.

Yes I became a nasty drug peddler and was destined to be a smuggler if such value judgments are worthwhile. I should like to ask those "Australians" who still think that death by hanging or the firing squad is not good enough for these low life (Alan Jones) what they hold back for corrupt politicians, lawyers, bankers, estate agents, developers and their pornographic paedophile kin dealing sanctimoniously in other folks money. Dealers and Smugglers don't hide behind social institutions, they just try to hide.

By this time we were living in Fletcher Street Woollahra above Cooper park in an old weather board house with Lucy our whippet and Penumbra the small black cat she loved. Lucy had a sweet tooth and would steal chocolates if they weren't hung from the ceiling or otherwise made inaccessible. She was the most intelligent and craftiest dog I've ever known. You had to count the chocs as she left no sign of her theft and would even re close the box before retreating to a safe place to unwrap and delight in her morsel with the delicacy of a well bred lady from Jane Austen. Butter too pleased her palate but would not have melted in her mouth, a saying my mum was wont to spruik.

She accompanied me wherever I went happily curling up in the car which she understood was where I would always return. She came to the most outrageous parties, greeting her many friends socially before finding a comfortable hide where she would not be trod on. Settling seemingly to sleep but always with an eye cracked or ear cocked to any sign that I and Shara might be moving on. She and Penumbra would Tear up and down the seagrass matting in the open plan living room in a game of chasings that always ended with Penumbra's delicate head completely inside Lucy's mouth purring like a diesel tractor. When we went overseas we left Lucy with Mike, a Yank who had her brother, and she taught him, the brother every trick she had learned with butter and sweets till eventually bored with only dog company she left and was never seen by us again. One time as Mike was leaving he realised that he had left his wallet and rolled back down the steep street only to catch Lucy atop the six foot side paling gate whereupon seeing him she gracefully pirouetted and jumped back inside.

I'm sorry to bang on but she was the closest to a child that Shara and I ever shared. Shara had been so frightened of dogs that around them she behaved like a cat with her hackles up. Lucy was her cure. When she went on heat we were careful to keep her inside and she wanted nothing to do with dogs anyway at least until when visiting Katie, across the street from Randolph whose black mongrel Ben she had a soft spot for appeared. Someone left the door open for just a moment and that was all it took. So she had a litter of delicate looking 'labrokelpiepts' all of whom were readily adopted by friends to find their own lives some as far away as Kuranda.

Shara had always had cats, Puboly and Boobly when I met her. Puboly was a spaded boy and a very stoned cat who would follow a joint around the room. Once I saw him so stoned he stretched and rolled in the sun on his window sill perch and fell two stories into the back yard. More than once I saw him with unlit cigarettes in his mouth, just as if he was smoking. Puboly had wandered away by the time we were at Edge City and Boobly was the fussy queen when Penumbra came and waged a night long battle to be admitted. Half Boobly's size she won and became the favourite.

Now reading the last few paragraphs I can see that it's time to publish and post least I send you all away to 'The Christian Science Monitor' or 'The Watchtower' which are surely racier than recollections of Robert and Shara's child substitute pets. Good Night