Hey Byron Baby

Cookie has been behaving very oddly recently. More oddly than normal, that is. Which is why it was so good to have the interventions of an Animal Guardian. I spotted the sign advertising this service immediately that we arrived at the Starlight Wellness Expo here in Bangalow over Easter. And without further ado I embarked upon a long spiel to the kind-faced lady about how Cookie didn’t seem to love me anymore, she seems to prefer HGG (who she hardly even knows), is emotionally and physically distant, and spends her whole life crouched in the back corner of the corner cupboard in the corner room of our new house.

Help was at hand. The Animal Guardian said a short prayer over a bottle of liquid crystals (three drops a day in her food) and told me to have a think about my own qualities of self-righteousness and my need for self-preservation. Ever happy to address my shortcomings, I looked directly at my naval for the next few hours and subjected HGG to a rigorous analysis of these qualities in myself.

And Lo! Behold Cookie that very night coming to sit with me, lying on my head in bed, purring like a generator into my ear, meowing in my face at 3 am. Ah, sweetheart, how I have missed you. I must follow up with the Animal Guardian about you urinating on HGG’s rug though. That so not cool.

Yes, the Starlight Wellness Expo. An interesting concoction of healers and dealers. We attended a session about ‘how to find your true self’. It was dark and funny. Not because my true self is a world-class comedian, sadly. But because our host was about as enlightened as Cookie’s favourite hiding spot.

I was sitting next to him. Before too long, he looked at me, put his hand on my leg, and said “I can see you are a very deep person, yeah?” – cue slightly-too-long moment of staring into my eyes  – “that’s why I am looking at you”. Good to know. I thought you were just being creepy.

But I am weak and a hypocrite. I smiled encouragingly at him because I wanted him to think he was doing well.  I even laughed at his jokes and nodded appropriately. HGG stared at him in utter bewilderment for an hour. He ignored her completely. Her honesty clearly causing him discomfort, it was much easier to align himself with a fraud like me.

During the session, there was some scribbling of light and shade on a bit of paper, a lot of eye contact (and that funny thing people do with two fingers pointing at their own eyes and then someone else’s eyes, yeah?) some strange discussion about Indian men having feminine bodies and Ghandi beating his wife, and love. There was a lot of talk about love. Our host had a connection with the (Indian) man sitting opposite. He stared into his eyes a lot and told him that they loved each other. The older woman beside him, unfortunately, was more complex. She had blockages, which meant she was not able to fully access him, yeah? I thought she seemed quite nice and I hoped she didn’t go home and try to do anything dangerous to unblock herself.

Apparently the session can take quite a toll emotionally and so we were advised at the end of it to drink lots of water that evening and eat healthy food. He also advised HGG and me to make love. Which I took to mean I should stare into her eyes for a long time and say “yeah” a lot. I think she enjoyed that.

Ah, it is unfair of me to mock. I know that. But I can’t help it. There is humour in it, and I am irresistibly drawn to the funny things in life. But there’s quality to it that disturbed me too. There was an edge to the man that I don’t think he was adequately in control of. Call me self-righteous, but I think he is only just approaching the fork in the road to enlightenment. There was a rampaging nature to his quest to discover the true self, which I thought had the potential to harm. The stillness and tranquillity of enlightenment is over the hills and far away.

That’s the thing up here in this new home of ours. The whole region is built on a block of black onyx*, you know. Makes it deep and mystical and magical. And already I have met so many people, like Cookie’s Animal Guardian, who embody it and extend it in so many inspirational ways. And there are others who unsettle me. But, you know, it could just be me. It is easy to criticise others whilst doing nothing yourself. But, fear not, I picked up a flyer at the coffee shop this morning about a “Becoming a Psychic” – in just four hours I will have acquired the skills to begin psychic readings immediately. Watch this space. 

*I only found this out the other day and haven’t checked it out. No prizes for guessing where. So don’t quote me.

I had this crazy dream last night.

One minute I’m in bed and the next I’m standing in a big green oval in the country somewhere. In front of me is a crumpled old dude in a cowboy hat and he’s handing me a wad of perforated numbers. At his feet are four white ducks with bright orange feet, each with a different coloured necklace around it’s neck – Red, Blue, Pink and Yellow. They are standing in a small pen, which is constructed in a “mini golf”-style, with an array of slides and trapdoors and pools of water and fences, all made out of pieces of junk.

Ducks Wearing Necklaces

Wait! Now I’m standing in the small pen. I’ve been giving out perforated tickets to thongs of small children, sticky little hands reaching out towards me to grab their free ticket. It’s like the chocolate factory over here and I’m Willy Wonka. Now I’m putting my hand into a small green bucket which is taped to a white and green sun umbrella and I’m gleefully yelling out the numbers: “27!, 15!, 33!, 19! (it’s HGG – she’s got 19 – up she walks to take her big number, the little numbers get replaced with big numbers). And then I pick a final number, it’s 33! And the crumpled man reaches his hand into an esky and pulls out a black and white cuddly toy which he hands to the man clutching the big number 33.

Picking the Winning Numbers.

Weird eh? But it gets weirder. I’m calling out more numbers, just four this time and each winner gets a coloured silk handkerchief which matches the colour of the duck’s necklaces. Each then gets to barrack for their coloured duck. Then a big black dude with an afro starts ringing a bell with gusto, and the ducks bolt out of their cage and start racing round the track. They fall over each other, desperate to get through the first fence first. The blue one misses completely and runs around the fence. Silly blue duck! The other three jump up onto the milk-crate-come-see saw and they come tumbling down on top of each other. A little shake of the tail feather and they’re off again. The Pink one’s in front, but Red and Yellow are not far behind. The blue duck is wandering off in the opposite direction.

Silly Blue Duck

The red duck is walking up a ladder and – what nonsense is this – he’s sliding down the slide and landing beak-first in the pool of water at the bottom. Red can’t get up in time and Yellow makes his move.

Red Duck in Front

Red Duck Falls at the Final Hurdle

Yellow’s sneaked past! And then he’s off, waddling with ferocity to the finish. He’s there, he’s almost there. Green Moon has nothing on Yellow Duck. He waddles across the finish line, the bell tolls, the bearded hippy judge declares the winner and a small freckly boy called Angus jumps up and down with joy. He is given a great big cuddly white elephant.

And that was kind of the end of the dream. Well there was some other crazy stuff in there too… some kind of “mini trotter” harness races where all these little kids were sitting on chariots being pulled around the oval by an array of miniature ponies.

Mini Trotters

And then there was the novelty horse made out of cucumber and cabbage.

Novelty Vegetable Horse

And then I was kissing a coconut wearing lipstick.

Coconut Wearing Lipstick

And then I woke up. Thank God. HGG, already awake, says to me: “Hey, I hear the Mullumbimby Country Show is on today. Do you fancy going?”. “No thanks,” I reply. “I had this crazy dream that a yellow duck won the Mullumbimby Cup. I think I need coffee.”

My girlfriend has many talents. She’s a ‘can do’ person. I’m a ‘can’t do’ person. Or maybe I’m a ‘can’t be arsed’ person.

Anyway, HGG can do anything she sets her mind to. Except this one time she went bungy jumping and could not quite coax her feet off the platform. She eventually had to shuffle back off the platform to make way for the next impatient backpacker with a death wish. I find this story funny because I know it must’ve been a terrible mental struggle for her, having to accept that she was giving up. She’s not the giving up type.  The mind was willing but the feet were ‘fuck that shit, we’re staying here’. If it were me, I would have given up before I started, thereby avoiding said terrible mental struggle.

I very much admire HGG’s tenacity and competitiveness. I was reminded of it the other day when we were driving down the Gold Coast Highway and HGG remarked that the car was making a “funny noise”. I hadn’t even noticed. I was too busy wondering why butterflies have got the word “butter” in their name. Apparently there was a terrible clatter, which HGG diagnosed as a flat tyre. We pulled over at the Caltex and inspected said tyre. Definitely flat.

I quickly turned my thoughts away from butterflies and starting suggesting practical things like calling the RACV, asking a nearby man to help, or having a little lie down and waiting for it to fix itself. Before I had even got to the end of these options, HGG was rummaging around in the boot, brandishing spanner and jack and oily rags. I think that ‘jacks’ are very suspicious inventions. How can a little thing like that hold up a whole car. I’m muttering about this, whilst HGG is standing on top of a thing that undoes nuts.

Undoing Nuts.

That seemed to undo the nuts. Then she is inserting the jack under the car and I am advising her to “step away, get back, it might fall on your toe”, aware with every word that I sound just like my mother, to whom every little thing is a potentially life-threatening hazard. Even a butterfly. HGG ignores me and starts vigorously rotating the rotating thing on the end of the jack. The car creaks and warbles and emits a small sigh of resignation. And then it’s up, exposing it’s naked underbelly to HGG , who wraps her arms around the wheel and yanks it off with one confident tug.

She’s Got the Jack.

By now I am starting to enjoy myself. HGG picks up the other wheel with her little finger and tosses it nonchalantly in the direction of the axle. It goes straight on, and is promptly nudged into place.  I ask HGG to stop a minute in order to take a photo of me pretending to be doing something useful.

Butterflies are so pretty and cars are so boring.

HGG asks me to do something actually useful and re-attach the hubcap, while she “checks the oil and water”. I place the hubcap gingerly across the face of the wheel and squeeze down gently until it (theoretically) clips gently into place. But it’s slightly askew. So I stand up and kick the fucking thing until it falls off and lands crumpled on the floor. “I think you might have to do that, sweetheart”, I yell up into the open bonnet. HGG walks over and calmly replaces the hub cap whilst giving me a slightly bemused smile.

I contemplate how hopeless I am. And how capable HGG is. She’d never changed a tyre before, but she just got on and did it. Admittedly I’m not much help in these situations, but at least I can make her laugh. And you can’t call the RACV for that can you.