Apologies for the lengthy period between posting, reader. Life's been crazy, still; as Poison sang in Nothing But A Good Time: 'It's the same old same old...'. What's on my mind is that I have to undertake practicum in the next study period. The university through which I'm studying has a policy that prevents me doing this at a school where I have a relative working or attending. I understand this. So, I am unable to do my prac at the school up the hill because my son is in Year 12 there. This gives me a problem: I am not spoiled for choice in this district, and whilst there are nearby towns with high schools, the cost of fuel has gone up to the stratosphere.
The main writing I have been doing of late is a speech for a luncheon in a few weeks. I had started a post a few weeks ago that was directed to Scott Morrison attempting to weld and nearly blinding his stupid self by lifting the mask. Remember that? This is why the constant closing and selling-off of TAFE campuses is such a stupid idea; we need qualified people on worksites, not some publicity-seeking bag of desperation who is like an arrogant Frank Spencer in that he totally fucks up everything he touches, smirking whilst he does so.
However, I was elated the other day to type up this little piece for my monthly writers' group meeting. The theme we set was 'beanbag', and I'm going to copy and paste here for your amusement. And yes, 'Beanbag' is based on a real person I knew in the dreaded and loathsome Eighties.
"Greg wove his way through the
milling and assembling assortment of legal types. They wore their colours like
a biker’s club: blue suits or barrister’s robes or shoulder-padded-suits teamed
with white high heels. He caught whiffs of various scents: Poison, Brut 33, the
cloying assault of frothy hair mousse; the latter being rubbed and scrunched
into the fringes of the female law students and paralegals. He checked out
several of the them as he passed; there was a new one he hadn’t seen before
talking to his mate Dave. He might go over and wangle an introduction, after
which he would issue an invitation to Dave for lunch, with a courteous ‘You,
too, of course’ extension to the young woman. No doubt the young woman would
accept, only too pleased to be included and no doubt aware of the tacit
agreement that would see her offering the occasional ‘absolutely’, and ‘oh,
really?’, and ‘mmm-hmmmm’ to the conversation he and Dave would steer as they
talked about what case was coming up in the all-important Worker’s Compensation
Commission. It was tactical that the woman feel she was included, but Greg
didn’t see the point to it; did the women really understand the niceties of
this legislation?
If someone told Greg he was
manifesting the attitudes of his fifty-year-old insurance underwriter father,
instead of a twenty-two-year-old final year law student, he would have been
surprised. Weren’t his attitudes just a reflection of the way things were? He
saw it all the time at the Young Lawyers for the Liberal Party meetings, where
every month the mostly male members would swill chardonnay and beer as they
discussed the party’s next parliamentary moves. Greg inwardly smiled as he
remembered the last meeting whereat the chardonnay and beer had flowed with
torrential freedom, and he had not only snapped a few bra straps, but had actually
managed to undo a bra strap as he felt for and fiddled with the hook-and-eyes, hidden
beneath a shoulder padded jacket with a nipped-in waist. The bra’s owner had scowled and looked
uncomfortable, but Greg didn’t understand this. It was just a joke and meant
she was accepted. Or as accepted as she was going to be because it was weird
now the women were joining in. Never mind; the shitty moll was probably on the
rag, anyway.
Soon it wouldn’t be chardonnay
and beer, and lunch at the WCC’s cafeteria. Once he had graduated and was
accepted with an associateship into a top corporate firm, it would be Grange
and lunch at that new trendy Japanese place where the chef threw bits of food
to the diners. Oh, and some top-notch cocaine with the other associates in the
men’s washroom after the attendant was bribed to leave for a few minutes.
He joined Dave and eyed the
woman, wondering would he even remember her name after they were introduced. She
would remember his: Greg. Everyone knew Greg, the upcoming soon-to-be lawyer.
What Greg was oblivious to was
that with his amorphous physique, honed by beers and meat pies in the WCC
cafeteria, his not-quite-bespoke suit with the sagging around the crotch, and
his overall flabby softness: he was known throughout the young female members
of the legal coterie as ‘Beanbag’.:
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