Mammy Low Pt2 / the world is short.. by albi

I stepped from the plane into the cultural ant-capital. I soon discovered a cultural void edifice the size of Uluru (that’s Ayers rock to you Nazi’s), akin to the immeasurable internal all consuming void edifice of my need for alcohol. I think its funny after being an alcoholic; I still can’t spell the word without spell checking it, much like my degree in Communication Processes, which I still can’t spell either……… Not that any of that mattered in such a godforsaken country as Australia. Maybe I could bring culture to this country like an old style missionary but bringing culture instead of Catholicism. There are of course the amazing Aborigines, but they have been hunted almost to extinction. I was due to stay a year and Sydney was my first stop. My first tentative steps, nervous with hangover fear, took me out of my dorm room and put me face to face with Kuntz (real name). He was a young German fellow with a handlebar moustache and a caliber of the likes you will rarely see again. He asked if I would share a bottle of fine wine with him, (its 10.30 am) as it’s his last day in the country. Never wishing to rile our Teutonic friends, I took part; what’s the worst that could happen? After all it would take him a day or so to get to Poland and he would have sobered up by then. This drinking session lasted 6 weeks. As Kuntz left he was replaced by a series of wonderful fellows, but my money and liver were wearing thin, after a louche month spent up the east coast in Byron Bay, involving booze, dope, a tad of heroine and a 24 hour pie shop. One day I had a moment of pan au chocolate clarity; a flash of genius; I could go and stay with my Nan and alcoholic step-granddad in Perth, that way I could save money and cut down on my drinking; I really believed this. 6 months later and was booking my flight home, financially fettered and exhausted.

My time there had been eventful though. There had been a lovely 17 year old who I fucked everywhere, she was always bra-less and only ever wore a short piece of hippie curtain material wrapped round her waist and never, ever any knickers. Her sharp nipples peeping strikingly through her top and red bush gleaming at me from across the room at a party, as she sat cross-legged on the floor. There were others too and a tip off for a fixed horse race that eased the financial troubles. I had a bar job to lessen my woes too. A titty club by day and a music bar by night. I ended the trip by hitching from Perth to Darwin. I hadn’t really figured on the distance; around 5 thousand miles. At the end of the first day I was hitching back to my gran’s again, with my tail and a leaky bag from a box of wine between my legs.

That in itself, turned out to be a Taoist blessing in disguise. I was too embarrassed to go back to my gran’s in the end and headed to my uncles, where I was tipped off my elusive other uncle John who I hadn’t seen in 15 years, had a trip up to Darwin planned the following day. He had only waited 25 years to get round to it and would be going unknowingly the same day as me on the 3-day bus journey. At the first truck stop I mysteriously handed over the dollars my other uncle had given me to pass on and said enigmatically “you don’t know who I am do you?” as I recognised him, but I was very different to the 8 year old kid he had last seen 15 years before when corrupting me by taking me to the then still controversial Monty Pythons Life Of Brian and giving me me a glass of gin. Having spilt some in the sink, someone thought I had tipped it away; could my prodigious alcohol abuse be put down to still trying to prove to those long gone critics that I could REALLY DRINK? John had always been my favourite uncle and we clicked again instantly. As I hadn’t been able to track him down during my spell in Perth I had settled for hanging out with The Drunks. The Drunks, as they were half affectionately known, were Peter and Barry. Both dead now of course; Peter turned Simpsons yellow as his liver failed and Barry has long since drowned in his own sorrows. They were so much fun, those guys. Once a week they would receive their benefit checks and duly head into Freemantle town to cash them in. Money in hand, they would proceed to spent a load of it on a day time drinking session that would see them awake the next morning with no recollection of the night before. Nothing unusual there, except that the bar they frequented was next door to a pet shop and they would often be surprised to find a Parrot or some such creature greeting them in their living room upon their hazy coming to of a morning. The Awakening of The Drunks was always an interesting ritual. The first to rise would sneak a can from the box of beer and with a tea towel tightly wrapped around the top to minimise the noise, gently spring it open; this was so the other would not hear and start on the limited amount of booze too.

I finally made it to Darwin after an uncomfortable penniless time in Broom, where I had left my uncle. On the way up to Broom each stop saw the people in these roadhouses know him by a different name, I never asked the details of why, I just left it as an enigmatic little story. Life’s more fun left as a fugue of enigmas. Some people lead mysteriously interesting lives it seems, though not nearly enough of them. The flight home from Darwin to the UK was uneventful it seems, as I recollect nothing, except planning to become a teacher of English as a foreign language. I eventually became one, with plans to travel the world that year financed by it; I got a far as teaching an infamously dumb white area of my hometown. I still wonder how Kelly, the 17-year hippie kid is doing now. I wonder who is fucking her and hope that she is calm, happy and at peace in her life.