BILAMBIL CALLING : THOUGHTS FROM DAVE ' THE BLOKE' OVENDEN

IZZY…and the stroke…

Well ya see it’s like this…We’re in this band called Paspalum, an we was halfway through the mix of our Sticky Grass Pudding CD, aiming up to hit the festivals, and then, well, the big time…We had it sussed…

Now Izzy is the star, and the most important cog in this Paspoe thing, and this is as true as I’m telling it to you…

Ok…So…Izzy is the lodger at the Bloke's home on the hill, and he likes to jog along the track by the lake, when the high tide laps tight along the shoreline, and the morning sun shines bright from a clear blue sky…

I’m still stacking up the zeds as he sets off on his morning trot, stepping warily down and along the overgrown trail where the snakes and spiders lurk, gingerly avoiding the Cain toads, ticks, leeches and other creepy crawlies…

And there by the waters edge he hits the jogging track, and rhythmically, huffing and puffing starts to bound from one foot to the other, leaping through the air, without a care, in through the nose out through the mouth, stepping it out, and moving through space and time…While I’m comfortably snoozing in the cot and dreaming of many wild and way-out, far-out flipped-out, and flopped-out things…

RING RING, RING RING… Ah, whoo, ahm, that’s the telephone, so I climbs to a shaky vertical an stumbles down the hall, and picks up the receiver, then with a sway, a cough and a fart I says…Harlooww…Then this Indian sounding type, talking in real broken English, is trying to sell me some new deal for Telstra…Well as polite as I could be I told him to fuck off and leave me alone…CLUNK…

I then staggers toward the kitchen to flick the switch and jug up for a nice brewed tea bag settling cup a tea…

So while the jug is gurgling, I steps to the veranda to take a long and relieving piss…

And as I’m hosing away I happen to notice a torso spread across the track, also arms and legs laying in the shadows down there on the rain forest floor…

    Fucks me dead I thinks…That’s Izz…I hurriedly shake the drips, and down around the side path I trundles, downwards, moving along the awkward stepping track, brushing through cobwebs and low reaching palm fronds, stepping over Brown snakes and funnel web spiders  till I get to Izzy, laying arms out wide and flat out on the track, with a far away disheveled look in the one eye that was half open…

I brush some leaves away and lightly kick him in the guts, then I kneels down, and I gets close to his ear and shouts ‘IZZY YOU FUCK, IT AINT OVER YET… THERE’S MIXING TO BE DONE’…