As another utopian dry season twilight silences
the usual fun and frivolity of communal life in the staff crap shack, I use the
rare moments of peace to finally bring this journal up to date. I take another
long slurp of my frangelico and fresh lime velvet alcoholic love sauce, and
feel like I am being fucked by a rainbow. I reflect on the amazingly enjoyable
life I lead still encompassing all the things I want to do. A wedding portrait
finished as one of my best ever, then four other paintings in the last
fortnight. Enough money saved from working at Matso's to go to one wedding in
Port Macquarie, and on to the next wedding four days later in Ko Samui,
Thailand.
With South America now back on the agenda with
my dear friend Danielle, there is a lot to look forward to over the next 2
years. And save for! An old reflex response to thinking so far into the future
sends a brief shiver down my spine until I realise how much I want that, and
how a fun commitment could never be a scary commitment.
Even work
hasn't turned out to be the usual matriarch of all complaints as employment
there has proven to be more entertaining than soul-destroying. It certainly
hasn't been incident free, but certain experiences make for interesting story
telling if nothing else. Like the time I tried to change the mango keg with the
gas still on. Three times I got sprayed in the face with mango beer before I
remembered that changing a keg isn't the same as partying with one. Looks of
bewilderment greeted me when I returned to face the waiting clientele soaked
head to toe in beer that I was licking from my arms and feverishly sucking out
of my shirt. Regularly confusing the request for water, with a request
for porter, and then downing the resulting miss-pour, made syphoning it
out of my clothes rather unnecessary really.
Not that I
would say that alcohol is a big part of life up here, but not saying so is
tantamount to lying. That fact is not helped by working in a brewery whose oft
repeated catch-phrase is 'Brewed by alcoholics, for alcoholics!' I freely admit
to perpetuating that myth by missing the first staff meeting to pass out in a
friends front garden. After making it to the next managers meeting, the reasons
for my jovial state was not mistaken by anyone. Forcing the meeting to move to
the front courtyard so I could smoke a cigar and have waiter's constantly bring
fresh beers out to me felt justified seeing as I was brought in for the meeting
on my day off. Such behaviour is accepted as the norm in Broome though. No wonder I feel like my inner child has ADHD,
Broome is pleasure overload.
With the empty glass of frangelico no longer
able to take my tongue as close as it can come to having its own orgasm, I am
reminded that in life, change is the only constant. One of my house mates is
about to move on just as another great friendship was starting to form. Another
recent inductee into the frangelico fanciers fraternity, Sarah has to satisfy
her second year visa work requirements before sharing enough nights talking about
everything and nothing out on the derelict couches on our verandah. She is
English, so I used that to explain the whole new level of wrong I witnessed
when she put vegemite on her fish and chips! I had to invent a new scale for
wrongness based upon that one act. That was before she admitted to using it
with pasta, roast dinner and every meal you could imagine; except for toast.
Wow! The diversity of humanity heh?
The previous three months have passed by so
quickly, my new mantra is 'Time flies when you're having fun, but disappears
altogether when you are having the time of your life'. When I think of Broome,
I think of a clock with wings, flying off into a pink and orange sunset. I then
think my surrealist imagery is obviously being influenced by the Salvador Dali
like moustache I am growing for the upcoming weddings. Viva life; and cheesey
facial hair.
