$6 steak and chips at the Ballina RSL

Steak and chips
Six dollar steak and chips
With lots of salt and gravy
Tomato sauce and gravy

Friday night at the Ballina RSL
I looked into your eyes, you looked into mine
We were about to play the 50c poker machines
When I saw a fly buzzing at the corner of your mouth...

- Floyd Vincent and the Childbrides, 1997

Triple Z FM (‘The Heat’, 100.9FM), the Northern Rivers’ local commercial FM station, had a problem. Their problem was spelt J-J-J. Since Triple J had started transmission in the area in 1995, Triple Z’s share of the listening market had been eaten away swiftly, along with their image and their credibility. Triple Z’s cause most certainly wasn’t helped by the J’s launching their ‘Unearthed’ regional talent-spotting competition in the Northern Rivers, with the result that the mighty ragged behemoth known as Grinspoon was monstered onto an unsuspecting world. To this day it’d be difficult to argue any Unearthed band had been as big as the Spoon - yes, Killing Heidi were big for an album or so, but the lads have had a good dozen years to date and show little sign of dropping off the twig success-wise. It’s worth noting that a lot of local folks were very proud of the Spoon, and likewise, were grateful to the J’s for giving them national exposure - and repayed them by keeping their radio dials locked on 96.1 Megahertz, rather than 100.9.

This caused Triple Z FM another problem, colloquially described as Going Fucking Broke. Bleeding audience and credibility, their advertising revenues were also falling - at least they weren’t being poached by the competition, who were only interested in advertising J-labelled merchandise and promos for Roy and HG - and their parent company were agitating for a shake-up. So the station’s managing director did what most in his position would do. He blamed his underlings, specifically the station’s music director, and fired his arse. The latter’s case wasn’t helped by the regularity which aforesaid music director, who also happened to be the station’s regular six-til-midnight DJ, got off-chops while on-air and said Rather Inappropriate Things, like encouraging kiddies who phoned in to smoke illicit substances, and asking underage girls what they were wearing at the time. His replacement had pretty much the same attitude to illicit substances et al but was much more amenable to full-scale theft of Triple J’s playlist. Amongst the Britney and Shania, there had suddenly emerged much more 'Bait and 'Gurge. And, interestingly, more local stuff. Grinspoon, obviously, led the line, but they also found space on the playlist for eclectic local artistes like Floyd Vincent and the Childbrides, and had kicked off a local talent-spotting segment which in concept was not a million miles from the Unearthed competition - except there were no prizes and basically all they did was play one of your songs on the radio. Still, better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. Which was actually second prize, if I remember correctly.

I was driving back from dropping Jessica at work next evening, and I swear I was only channel surfing at the time, honest. The J’s were playing some annoying dance rubbish so I flicked the radio preset in the postie van to 100.9 and was presented with the arse end of an Offspring song - can’t remember which one, the arse ends of Offspring songs tend to be pretty much of a muchness. Next thing I know, I’m hearing Old Man Sam jack-rabbitting through an arpeggio-laden Chuck-Berry-meets-Dick-Dale riff, I’m chiming in on someone else’s Strato-cast-off, and warbling sunnily about being a surfer dude who’s got the skills, or some such rubbish. For Christmas, to replace the dodgy old standard-issue Nissan tape deck, I’d scored a decent aftermarket CD player which had a digital radio tuner; not believing my ears, I had to glance down and check, almost chucking the thing off the road on the tricky turn off Ballina Road into Mountain View Drive. Sho’ nuff, 100.9 FM. We were getting played on commercial radio. Not SCU student radio. Commercial radio.

And I realised something else. It was a fucking good song, too.

Hugely immodest of me to say so, I realise, and a little odd as well given that by that stage I’d played it and heard it back dozens of times. But in the confines of the postie van, with the new Pioneer CD player driving through those still-decent stock speakers, Learn To Swim sounded fuckin’ tops. In one of the most bizarre moments of automotive karaoke I’d been part of to date, I found myself roaring along in tune with myself, singing lustily about Harold Holt getting sand crabs in his pubic hair, and giggling profusely as I threw the Skyline through the downhill left-hander at prodigious speed, balancing the roll-oversteer with a big grin on my face. Juvenile, I know. But FUN.

Before I knew it the bum-of-bag (literal translation of cul-de-sac) at the end of Mountain View Drive loomed large. I screeched to a halt, barrelled out of the postie van and practically vaulted up the stairs and through the front door.

Inside was a typical scene: McCarthy and the Duffer slouched on the couch, beers in hand, while Marty tended to his laundry in the kitchen. I think I’ve mentioned Marty was a little on the anal retentive side; safe to say his attention to detail (to put it mildly) most certainly extended to his laundry habits. He separated whites from colours. OK, so that’s not uncommon, though I’ve never bothered (until I started sharing my living space with Bethany) and I’ve never had any issues with colours leaching into whites or anything. A lot of people, though, do separate whites from colours, and are not necessarily mentalists. Marty, though, went further, subclassifying his whites and colours into individual material types - cottons with cottons, poly-cottons with poly-cottons, wools with wools, and so on - for fear each would somehow contaminate the other. This was evidently the result of deep-seated childhood trauma; apparently, according to his sister Gina (who’d told her mate Jessica, who’d told me) his mother had once inadvertently placed a brand new fluffy white towel in the wash along with his best dark-brown shirt and trousers for church. As a result, come Sunday mass, he looked like a lamington. Most humiliating before the eyes of the Lord.

Marty’s carefully considered laundry protocols extended beyond the stage of preparing one’s washing for interaction with the ten-year-old Simpson (aka Bart) in the laundry. When hanging his washing out, he had to use the same type of peg to hang out each item. To hang out a shirt, say, he couldn’t use a wooden springy-type peg on one corner and one of those three-prong plastic jobbies on the other corner - it had to be the same both sides, as he wanted to make sure that both corners were capable of sustaining the same level of wind-generated shear forces. Not even McCarthy’s engineering mates from UNSW were that exacting in their attention to detail (probably why that bridge fell down that time, eg Dogga?). This explanation didn’t, however, explain why both pegs needed to be the same colour as well. That pointed toward good old fashioned obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Finally, in the bemusing OCD extravaganza that was Marty’s weekly washing wonderland, there was ironing. Because I am male AND a bogan, I iron as little as I can get away with, and given that my wardrobe in those days was almost entirely T-shirts, boardshorts and jeans, I hadn’t busted out the iron all year. McCarthy was normally of a similar mindset, though reluctantly ironed his shirts and pants for work. Phil, because he was raised properly by nice Christian folk, at least ironed his T-shirts and jeans. But Marty ironed everything. Shirts, trousers, jeans, shorts, socks, jocks, even his hankies. He was midway through pressing a crease into his favourite argyle hankie with surgical precision, when I galloped in the door like my arse was on fire, and dived headlong at the communal stereo, wrenching the tuner dial from Triple J over to the competition. Last chorus. Just in time.

“Oy!” whinged McCarthy.

I turned to him and flicked a thumb in the direction of the stereo. “Ring any bells?” I grinned.

“Yeah,” said Phil after a brief pause, “but we always get played on 2NCR.”

McCarthy nodded his assent.

“Well aren’t we blasé, you big fuck-off rock stars you,” I chided him. “Trouble is, boys, it’s actually Triple Z…”

“No way,” said McCarthy. Almost if on cue, our efforts were back-announced, confirming that Flange Gasket were tonight’s featured act on their Local Heroes segment, or words to that effect. As I’m always cool under pressure and never get over-excited over things like this, of course I remember the exact words; I just don’t think it’s relevant to recite them at this time.

“Jeez,” said the Duffer. “I’d heard Triple Z were supposed to be going more alternative, but I thought that just meant they were playing Celine Dion three times a day instead of six.”

McCarthy got up from the couch to toss his empty in the recycling box, and decide whether another was warranted. “Next thing you know,” quipped our resident cynic, “fucking Chris Kurtin will probably try to take credit for this. You watch.”

“Hey,” I recalled, “how did your meeting with the boss go, after all that? Cleared out your office yet?”

“Don’t joke, mate. I was shitting myself.” McCarthy shook his head wryly. “Of course, it had nothing to do whatsoever with Chris Kretin or any other shit I’ve done. It was just a standard catch-up meeting with the boss to discuss about how my first few months here has gone, how I’m settling in, how I’d like my role to develop...”

“You serious?” That didn’t sound like the fearsome Mac McCormack I’d heard about.

“Yeah. Apparently Mac’s trying to become more hands-on and touchy-feely in his staff management style… presumably he’s in trouble for making half his staff poo their pants with his trademark tirades of thunderous invective, or something. Buggered if I know.”

“So basically Kretin’s full of shit then.”

“This is a surprise to you?” remarked the Duffer.

McCarthy’s initial reaction next morning wasn’t, in fact, how full of shit Chris Kurtin was. Rather, it was this: I was right. Followed by: How the fuck did he get my work email?
(In hindsight, sam.mccarthy@apn.com.au wouldn’t have been that hard to figure out given that every other email address at the Star went by the same format.)

Mr McCarthy,
I trust you were listening to the radio last evening.
I’m sure the question has crossed your mind.
How? Why? Who?
The answer is the same in each case.
Seek.
Or you may as well stay hidden.
I await your response to my proposal of Sunday.
Inform your men.
Yours, CK.

Shaking his head, McCarthy forwarded Kretin’s missive to the SCU email addresses of Phil, Marty and myself, with the tag line ‘Told ya. Can you believe this shit?’. Given that McCarthy’s emails were usually longer and more verbose than an exchange of dialogue from Dawson’s Creek, this was cursory in the extreme.

Andrea repeated her greeting, and added sweetly, “A ‘good morning’ would be polite, Sam.”

McCarthy’s furrowed brow lifted from his screen and belatedly realised Andrea’s presence. At around five foot ten, her presence could be imposing when she chose it to be, such as when playing goal attack for the staff side in the local mixed netball comp. She was standing in front of his desk, leaning across with her arms propping her up. Andrea wasn’t big on the concept of personal space. Which helped when playing mixed netball, particularly against the neolithic thugs of Lismore Base Hospital. Those nurses liked the hip-and-shoulder and weren’t averse to a good old fashioned shirtfront. McCarthy himself had lasted half a game of the social season opener at wing defence against the hospital side, and ended up faking a recurrence of an old football injury just so he could get home in one piece in time for beer o’clock.

“Morning, Andrea,” McCarthy finally said. Andrea looked very cheerful today. No doubt, she was about to ask how his anterior cruciate ligament was holding up. She rarely passed up an opportunity to inquire about his ‘injury’, as Andrea was a shit-stirrer of the highest order. Cute as she was, McCarthy wasn’t sure if he could deal with her sunny disposition at this bleary hour of the morning. OK, so it was ten a.m., but Uncle Sam wasn’t really a ‘morning’ person, in the same way that the Unabomber wasn’t really a ‘people’ person.

“Hey,” she ventured, kicking him gently under the table to get his attention, “guess what I heard on Triple Z this morning.”

McCarthy thought he could guess. Instead he replied, “What the hell were you doing listening to Triple Z this morning?”

Hands on hips. “Triple J’s not the be-all and end-all, you know. Some of us actually want to know what is going on in the local area, and what the weather might be like.”

“I find the local newspaper is rather good for that,” McCarthy replied. “What’s it called again? The Daily Examiner?” He grinned broadly at her frown, signalling she’d taken the bait. The rivalry between the Northern Star and its Grafton-based APN stablemate, the Examiner, was always hotly-contested, and Andrea was one who contested the rivalry as hotly as anyone at the Star. Lord alone knew what would happen if the two papers’ social netball sides ever squared off against each other, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

“Are you going to shut up and let me tell my story?”

“I’m all ears, Andie,” he smiled sweetly, knowing full well she hated being called that. “What did you hear on Triple Z this morning?”

“You,” she replied boldly. And should that have needed further clarification, she added, “Flange Gasket.”

“Really?” Though he’d guessed as much, it was a bit of a surprise to hear it confirmed. Breakfast shift, huh. Jesus. Moving up in the world, apparently…

“Absolutely,” she said, leaning forward almost consipiratorially. McCarthy steeled himself against glancing down at her cleavage. As per the standard-issue Star journo outfit, she wore a fitted white cotton blouse which emphasised her narrow waist (particularly given her height), while the rest was emphasised courtesy her Wonderbra. Wunderbar, thought Uncle Sam.

“That’s amazing,” he grinned. “What song?”

“That one about learning to swim with Harold Holt,” Andrea said. “I actually heard some of the lyrics properly this time, too. You guys are actually pretty bloody funny.”

“Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?”

“Don’t ask me to specify,” she replied, “it’s never flattering for the male ego.”

“So you hadn’t heard that since the gig? Don’t tell me we failed to swing you one of our several hundred spare copies of the recording…”

“Oh, you gave me a copy,” she replied with an ego-deflating smile, “I’ve just not gotten around to listening to it yet.”

“Thanks for the support,” he muttered.

“Oh come on, Sam, I have to listen to heaps of stuff for work as it is… Christ, who has to review every music CD that comes into this place? I’ve got a stack of unplayed CDs up to my armpits.”

“Seems an odd place to store them,” he quipped. “Should give it a listen, though, you’ll probably be able to hear yourself squealing and giggling.”

She reddened. “You can’t… surely you can’t hear me over the rest of everyone?”

“Listen out,” he suggested. “That’s a very characteristic squeal you have, Andrea. Glad I don’t live nearby your place, particularly when Tim’s home.”

Andrea reddened further. “Tim and I actually broke up last week,” she offered.

“Again?” queried McCarthy.

She made her sour-lemon face. “For real this time,” she pouted. “It’s over.”

“Serious?” Now McCarthy was the one sinking into a pit of his own embarrassment. “I’m, um, sorry to hear that, Andrea. I hadn’t realised.”

She said that was OK. McCarthy was pretty sure it wasn’t, so he changed the topic.

“Have to say,” he considered, “that I’m a bit surprised they’re playing the likes of us…”

The Star’s entertainment reporter nodded sagely, delighted to (a) allow the topic to be changed and (b) let Uncle Sam in on her area of expertise. “Well, Duncan, their new music director - as you’ll probably remember, I interviewed him for last week’s feature, but he said some other off-record stuff which didn’t go into the piece... Basically he said they’re going for the youth market full-scale, aiming more for the students as that’s the demographic where the advertisers want to target their investments - the 18-to-25s, who seem to be mostly listening to Triple J and 2NCR at present. Listening to Triple Z over the past few days it seems it’s probably about fifty to sixty percent ‘old’ Triple Z, like the commercial pop stuff, say thirty percent Triple J playlist, and maybe ten percent 2NCR.”

“Fantastic,” said McCarthy, “I’ve always wanted to be one of those ten percenters that I’ve heard so much about in the music industry.”

“God, you’re a cynic,” Andrea retorted. “Can’t you just take a compliment?”

“Where was the compliment in any of the above?”

Andrea looked him in the eye with a consipiratorial smile, and perhaps even a promising sparkle in her caramel-brown eyes.

“The part where I said, ‘Congratulations, Sam, I heard your band has been played on commercial radio, let’s go out together to Caddies for a coffee’.”

“I must have missed that part,” he admitted with a grin.

Caddies was a bit of a walk from the Star offices, but did easily the best coffee in town. In terms of positive results, a coffee at Caddies was the third best of the morning, he thought to himself as they wandered across town. The second best result was confirming that Learn to Swim was getting commercial airplay - he wasn’t sure why this was happening, and he didn’t know what would come of it, but he generally felt it was a good thing, although he didn’t know why he felt that either. And the best result, despite what he was telling me, or what he’d even told himself up to now, was that Andrea had finally split with her dull-as-Don-Burke accountant boyfriend Tim, and had asked him to go out to Caddies with her. Not to go over to Caddies, but to go out. And that, to McCarthy, was key. Spur-of-the-moment semantics like these, duly over-interpreted of course, were usually the sorts of things which he would traditionally obsess over, analyse the significance of, make plans, change plans, deliberate, agonise and finally talk himself out of doing anything in response to. Then again, he was hardly about to change the habits of a lifetime.

He did, though, mention his interest in her straight away. Not to her, of course - that's crazy talk - but at least to himself and then to your correspondent. Usually, if Sam was interested in a girl, he went out of his way to conceal the fact, and generally kept it undercover for a while. In the case of Lena, it was around four years. You’d think he’d have learned, but as Andrew Symonds would have said when running between wickets, nah mate NAAAAHHHH.

That evening we were playing pool on the table in the garage downstairs - that is to say the table was playing us at pool, and beating us handily - when he brought up the topic of Andrea, as obliquely as you can imagine.

“Andrea mentioned she heard Harry Holt Does The Bolt on Triple Z this morning,” he began.

“Yeah,” I pointed out, “that’s why I barrelled in through the door last night in such a fuckin’ hurry…”

“This morning, Angus. Clean your ears out mate. Wanking makes you blind, not deaf.”

“They played Learn to Swim again? Christ, they must be keen,” I figured. “Mind you, it is a pretty shit-hot bit of work, even if Kretin does say so himself.”

“It’s probably more to do with the fact that it’s the only song on the CD which doesn’t contain the words fuck, shit, cunt, or Chris Kurtin.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “all are grounds for an offensive language warning. There is a ‘bugger’ in there, though.”

“I didn’t know Harold Holt was that way inclined?”

I grinned. “Anyway, I didn’t think it was really breakfast radio material, with the pubic hair references and everything.”

“Don’t know about that, Angus. They’re taking their lead from the J’s, as ever. Paul and Mikey played that 'Gurge song World of Sleaze the other day, as I recall. No language warning or anything, seven-thirty in the morning.” He threw up his hands in mock moral indignation. “What is the world coming to, I ask you.”

I knew the song he was talking about. Like I Sucked A Lot Of Cock To Get Where I Am, one of their earlier efforts, it was one of Quan Yeomans’ beautifully-crafted pop songs that he had quite the talent for turning out (and then besmirch with lyrics which would make a sailor phone the ABC Backchat program to complain.) World of Sleaze had this wonderfully melodic, Sgt Pepper-style chorus that went:

Well there’s dicks and cunts and sluts and butts, oh
Pimps and ho's yeah plenty of those
There’s no end to the things you can win
And I’ll be your friend if you’ll just spread your legs.

Rather hard not to sing along with, to be fair. “Yeah, nothing like a bit of butt-slut action first thing in the morning. So,” I continued, preparing my usual winding-up procedure, “did the lovely Andrea have anything else to say?”

“As it happens, she did,” he responded with what could be interpreted as smugness. “She asked me out for coffee this morning. We’ll probably go for lunch on Friday as well...”

“Did she just,” I replied. “Old man Sam… good work son. She’s finally being won over by your charm and animal magnetism. Have you told her how badly you want to pound her yet?”

“You’re such the charmer,” he winced.

“You are keen on her, though, aren’t you.”

He shrugged. “Yeah,” he finally admitted. Cue ever-so-smug grin from this little black duck. Before I could say anything, though, McCarthy dived in to defend himself. “But don’t go on with that ‘I told you so’ bullshit because I only really decided I was interested in her when she asked me out, straight after mentioning she’d dumped her boring-arse boyfriend.”

However, I completely missed the second half of that sentence, being more interested in taking the piss out of the concept of all of a sudden ‘deciding’ he was interested in someone. “Oh I just woke up one morning and decided this tall gorgeous brunette chick with the spectacular rack was attractive, and I might choose to want to sleep with her…”

There’s a thought, I thought.

“There’s a thought,” I said. “Tall brunette, spectacular rack…”

“I was wondering when you’d mention that.”

“What’s the story, you starting a collection or something?”

“Look, you can’t say she’s anything like Lena. She’s slim and athletic. She’s very… casual.” Loud, brash and overly familiar I would have said, but that was probably because I was still sure she thought I was a tool. “She’s definitely a country town girl, whereas Lena was definitely a product of a metropolitan upbringing.”

‘Was’. And ‘a product’. Interesting semantics there, too. McCarthy seemed to be talking about her like she was (a) dead and/or (b) an inanimate object of commercial interest. At least he was moving on with the ‘grieving’ process, such as it was, for his relationship with Lena, such as it was.

“So what’s next for you and Andrea?”

“Who knows,” Sam sighed. “I’m not too worried. I won’t be losing sleep one way or the other.”

My arse you won’t, I thought. He had all that obsessing, analysing, planning, deliberating, agonising and finally talk-himself-out-of-ing (?) in front of him, when would he possibly have time to sleep?

“And what’s next for Flange Gasket?” I further pondered. “Got that email from Chris Kurtin you forwarded - what’s all that about?” Which, for those playing ‘Pick the Nineties Pop Culture References’ at home, was a song from a sketch on The Late Show - it was on one of the Best Bits of The Late Show videos which were on regular rotation through the communal VCR at Chateau Dodgy, particularly on hangover-recovery mornings (i.e. most of them).

“Don’t know,” said McCarthy. “Don’t know why he’s picked me out as the leader of the group, either. He seems to think I’m in charge, or something.” I could tell he was trying to pretend he wasn’t enjoying this misconception.

“He thinks you’re the singer?”

“Doubt it. He can’t be stupid enough to think there’s only one vocalist. It’s pretty obvious there’s two voices on the album,” he pointed out, “and if anything, the songs which are getting picked up on the radio are the ones you’ve done lead vocals on.”

“You’re the only one with a responsible job?”

“Yeah, that’s got to be it,” he nodded.

Actually, I’d tossed it out there as a throwaway line, but there was a little logic in it, now that I thought about it. “Well,” I reasoned, “the rest of us being students, we’re on Austudy or Dadstudy or Wankstudy or whatever meagre subsistence allowance we can scrape together, so if Kretin turns up and says hey, I wanna make a bunch of money out of you hapless idiots, and just maybe, if you lick my balls, you can have a bit too, we might be more likely to say yes than if we had real jobs and relatively secure income, so it’s you he’s gotta convince. Or so I reckon it would seem to him. I’m just trying to figure out how he’s thinking, basically.”

“Yeah, but in real terms, I’m on fuck-all as well, so it’s not as though I’d pass up the offer to become a big fuck-off rock star and rake in buckets of coin, as if that were ever a fucking possibility regardless of what bullshit he cranks out. I mean, you’re on OK money. Sure, you have to fuck off back to the farm every holidays and work your fucking arse off, but your old man seems to sort you for enough cash-in-hand to put away across the year so that it makes Austudy into survivable subsistence living. Of course, if those arseholes at Cunterlink find out what your arrangements are, you’re fucked, but bollocks to them.”

For those of a delicate disposition - other than asking what the fuck you're still doing here - I should point out that McCarthy’s language tended to deteriorate in proportion to his lack of success in sinking cue balls. As we spoke, I was on the black and he’d only potted two ‘bigs’ in the current game. Enough at least to prevent him having to circumnavigate the table with his strides down, as tradition dictated. He’d been circling the table, in increasing frustration, trying to decide on a shot - with that many balls still in play, you would think it’d be easy enough to find something ‘on’, but nothing leapt out at either of us. Finally he aimed fairly arbitrarily at a couple of ‘bigs’ and let rip with a thunderous drive. Balls cannoned everywhere. To McCarthy’s buoyant delight, one of his plopped into one of the middle pockets.

“Six pocket theory,” he declared, “never fails…”

At which point the 15 cannoned into the 8, punting the black directly and inexorably into a corner pocket.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he moaned, and tossed the cue stick to the floor in a defiant fit of pique. The cue had endured worse treatment before, and would endure worse treatment again. As the loser, it was McCarthy’s duty to get the beers. “Fuck that, fuck this table, fuck Cunterlink, and fuck Chris Kretin.”

“And fuck Andrea?”

“I’ll get to that in the fullness of time, and the less said about those plans the better,” McCarthy quipped. “As for Kretin,” he continued, handing me a coldie, “I’m certain he’s got two fifths of fuck all to do with this shit, even if he claims he has. Andrea’s talked with the new music director at the Zeds, they’ve been planning to go more alternative and play more local bands for a while, it’s got fuck-all to do with Kretin.”

“And we both know we don’t have any ‘better material’. There’s Marty’s stuff, but that’s…”

“…Marty’s stuff,” he finished. “Not ours. Bloody love it if he had the balls to get it out there and find an audience for it, but he’s not got the confidence in the material or in himself, as we know.”

“At some stage soon,” I advised, “we are going to have to sit down as a group and work out what we’re doing. Do we take Kretin seriously? And if so, do we want to take this seriously? Have a go at writing some decent stuff?”

Uncle Sam shook his head. “I don’t believe for one fucking second that he’s serious. I’m absolutely convinced he’s trying to set us up to make arses of ourselves. It’s straight-out revenge for us hanging shit on him in that song - and since it was me who sung about him, it makes sense for him to target me. He’ll suck us in, promise us a bunch of improbable shit, and then just fuck us over with a broom handle.”

“Sounds… invasive.”

“Probably because it is. Anyway,” he added with a grin, “I have an idea. Should shake things up a bit, Kretin included.”

Hmmm. How was that a good thing?

He must have read my expression. “Actually it was mostly Andrea’s idea,” he deflected. “But I’m sure to get the blame in any case.” And then proceeded to tell me about the little plan they’d hatched over coffee at Caddies.

“You sure that’s wise?”

McCarthy kicked back into the dishevelled brown couch, and swigged his beer.

“Come on, Angus - what could possibly go wrong?”