Run like a gun

You've got to run just like a gun
And never stop having fun
Living like there's no way out
Come on child, let it shout
- Rocket Science, 2002

Rock music ain’t rocket science. Except when it’s Rocket Science. Who were on before us. Fucking Rocket Science, man! 2002-03 in the house. Felt right at home. It’s always a good festy afternoon when Rocket Science are playing. Particularly if Roman Tucker remembers his name and what songs he’s playing. (Banged his head falling down stairs a few years back. Forgot the entire content of the album they’d just recorded. Bit of a career dampener.) Phil decided he wanted us to play Rocket Science’s Run Like A Gun, whereupon we pointed out that (a) it might look a bit rude considering they’d just played it themselves as their set opener, rather bloody well I thought and (b) we’d have to borrow Roman’s theremin, which none of us knew how to actually play even though it just seemed to involve a lot of wobbling about and looking vaguely special needs. He was slowly coming around to the idea of us playing Beef Week Queen as ‘his’ song of choice. Mainly because we’d said “Phil, we’re playing Beef Week Queen, fuck off or we tell Maddy who’s been downloading all the porn on the laptop we nicked from the studio.” Would have liked to see the wording of that Official Warning Letter.

And then it was go time, and we were on, and fuck me – a crowd. A proper one. A D-Barrier with more people on our side than the empty side. Saints be fucking praised.

“Hello Melbourne! How the fuck are ya?”

Christ, I’ve turned into Jonny Toogood from Shihad. Ah well, run with it.

And so we did, searing into the intro for Learn To Swim With Harold Holt. My fingers felt like they were spitting high voltage. You could tell Jeff had set the guitars up because it sounded like Angus Young’s axe in AC/DC’s live movie Let Their Be Rock – like Thor ripping corrugated iron with his teeth. Just. Fucking. Enormous. Best guitar tech I ever had, that lad. If pretty much the only. We fucking tore it up, huge riffs, quick-fire banter, crowd roaring like I could barely remember: Harry Holt, Angus Young, Gaydar, Meaning of Life, Stupid People, Chick Song, Drunkees, Video Hits, Beef Week Queen...

“This is our last show ever folks – thanks Melbourne – you’re fucking tops. This is Phil, he’s our drummer. We’re about to make him the happiest man alive. We’re going to let him play the solo from Moby Dick. Phil, you’ve got four minutes.”

“Should be more than enough,” chimed a voice from the sidelines.

Of which we rudely took up at least 70 seconds playing the Actual Riff Bit at the start, but you can’t have everything. And security were actually pretty lovely about it. The Ting Tings… not so much, but they were still pissed at us for our esteemed guest Mr Super Dave accosting the chick singer on Friday with trousers akimbo, so fuck them and their 15 minutes of fame.

“Erm, how exactly do you know about Phil’s longevity there Danno?” I queried, after we’d taken our big stage bow, said our thanks and taken our leave of the stage – leaving the Duffer still belting away, tongue hanging out, centre-stage on his drum riser. (Yes he was still drumming, for the record.)

“Couldn’t possibly comment,” Danno mused.

“Ewwww, girl,” I said.

“God, not me,” she laughed. “Why else do you think Joey’s been banished from the tour? ‘Too much of a distraction’ apparently… seems ironic her boss is so down on office romances, don’t you think?”

Aha, the plot thinnens… Anyway. There was a mental picture for the ages, just not for ages below 18, or those with weak stomachs. Moving on. Quickly.

Melbourne had been good to us today. Best show I could remember in that town, any venue, any format. And that wasn’t just because I had the memory of a goldfish when it came to good shows. They missed us and liked us and were sad to see us go. And they knew Every. Fucking. Word. Made up for a lot of pretty indifferent gigs south of the Murray over the years, particularly the early ones. And if they were good to us, they absolutely swooned over Marty and his band. Particularly his set-ender Silver Lining, which had just scored top-four (i.e. fourth) in the Hottest 100. Bit of a comedown from first last year, but you can’t win them all. Unless you’re Powderfinger.

“Youse fullahs sticking around for a drink?” Ed Terry from Marty’s band was keen to catch up over a few. Tommy Wilson, less so. Something to do with the Curt Words I’d had with him re him crowning me over the Stig-hat with a bottle of suds at Marty’s shindig at the Zoo last Wednesday night. He was keeping his head down. I wish I had. Might have lessened the headache next morning. Of course, Ed and Tommy were also veterans of that first Tour de Pants, playing with Three By Three, as well as Imogen who’d been in Sagittaria, so with ACME Industries’ Drunken Duncan Duff on the premises as well as we four Gasketeers (one of whom had an old ACME part number stamped on him somewhere), it was looking like quite the reunion. Of course, some selfish prick had to bollocks it up for everyone.

“Fraid not,” I frowned. “Other plans.”

“What are they?” asked Marty.

“Airport,” I began. “Going to spend the night with my girl in an onsite van in a little caravan park on the beach south of Coffs. Then roadtrip it up the coast, taking it pretty easy. Just so we get back to Straddie by Wednesday morning.”

“Why’s that?”

“School starts,” Beth observed ironically. “The joys of having a nine-to-five job…”

“Nine-to-three,” I corrected her.

“Whatever, rock star.”

“Can’t call me that any more,” I pointed out. “I’m now a former rock star.”

“Faded rock star,” suggested Duncan. “Failed rock star?”

“Listen, chubby,” I reminded him, “who’s paying for your beers?”

“Those EDS cunts I used to work for,” he pointed out.

“Good to hear. Be a lad and stay the fuck out of the rider.”

“When’s your flight?” Jeff asked.

“Eight-ish,” I said. “Direct, for once.”

“Tidy,” he declared, “I can take you out there.” And brushed my replies ref. being able to take a cab or whatever. He was insistent. And he reckoned we needed to roll, which was probably right, so Beth and I said our farewells, more hurriedly than we thought we’d be giving them, grabbed our bags from the unlocked/unlockable boot of Justin’s Citroen DS21 (one of the bits which remained not-quite-restored as of yet – the owner/restorer and his partner hadn’t been out of the Boiler Room all day) – and followed Jeff to his rental car.

Which wasn’t.

“Dude,” I said in a heroic statement of the obvious, “this is your car.”

“Yup,” he nodded. “Actually it’s Beck’s. Chuck your shit in the boot and let’s get rolling.”

“Did you seriously drive down?” I scrambled into the front, as Beth bemusedly wedged herself between the booster seats on the Forester’s back bench and dug around for a seatbelt. I’d have offered to switch, but there was no way I’d have fitted back there.

“Nah, teleported,” he replied. “Yeah, drove down. Stayed with Beck’s folks Saturday night.”

“Must have been fun…”

“Nah we get on alright. Helped Beck’s old man put up racking in his cellar for more bottles of piss.” One way to describe Allan Townsend’s thousands-of-dollars worth of rare and vintaged reds. “You forget, he doesn’t have local labour to help him with stuff like that.” Beck’s brother, who lived down in Mosman, was a freelance food and wine writer who wrote for a couple of glossy lifestyle mags, including the Qantas inflight one. He was good at procuring the wine, not so much at the building of a wine rack. Didn’t come from IKEA with instructions and allen keys, you see. Also might have risked chipping his manicure. Hence rough farmer types actually came in handy on occasion, even if they smelt a bit funny, insisted on bringing their homebrew to try, and (ahem) had kidnapped their beloved daughter and taken her away to live on a cane farm 800km away.

Actually, that needed clarification. “Just you?”

“Yeah mate, just me.” Jeff seemed bemused by my interest. “Beck and the kids are coming down later. Flight gets in… just about when yours is about to fuck off, as it happens.”

“Cool,” I said. “Couple of days with the kids in Melbourne, that the plan?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. “Zoo, museums, Healesville, Luna Park, whatever. Then cruise back up to Sydney for a bit. Leave the kids with the grandparentals for a few days…”

I grinned. “And go have some boy-girl bonding time somewhere?”

“That’s the one.” In the late afternoon light, Jeff guided the Forester out of the VIP carpark (marginally less of a dustbowl than the non-VIP one, I imagined) and into Melbourne’s inner-western suburbia. “Houseboat on the Hawkesbury. Go remind ourselves why we started this relationship caper off in the first place.”

“Awesome.”

“I thought so. Kids are supposed to be back at school this week, but not till Thursday, and fuck it, it’s not as thought they’ll miss much, week one.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine anyone silly enough to rush back…”

“Hey,” Beth smiled, “some of us don’t get paid for standing around on stage looking pretty.”

“That’s him fucked I’d have thought,” Jeff intoned. He plugged his old iPod into the auxiliary input and set it shuffling on its way. Old Pennywise. Society, well we know there’s something wrong and we’ve known it all along. Sincerity, you may think there’s noone else till they put you on the shelf… Nice. Completely unrelated and non-contextual for what we were talking about, but nice to hear Jeff hadn’t given up entirely and just filled his iPod with Wiggles. As I said to him.

“Yeah… don’t count your chickens. There’s probably some of that on here,” he admitted. “Got to give the kids something to listen to on the long drive up the highway.”

“NOFX and Millencolin not likely to cut it with the kids?”

“Probably not with their mother.”

“I thought Beck was a cool punk rock chick, back in the day she was into that stuff…”

“Not so much,” he smirked. We both knew her taste in music had been more down the Britney/Xtina end of the spectrum back in the day. “But into punk rock guitarists… yeah, she was. And will be again too, I reckon.”

“Good stuff,” I said, and meant it.

“Yeah. By the way,” he added, “cheers. Thanks. For all this,” he said, indicating the ball of light that was the BDO compound at Flemington. “Wasn’t that gracious about it at the time, but you know why that was. Other shit needed sorting. Which you had a part in too, so I guess I’ve got to say thanks there too.”

“Aw, I dunno about that, mate…”

Jeff’s expression was suddenly a little grave, his voice a little quiet. “When she fucked off to Sydney… someone said it was with some guy. Local gossip queen spotted her at the airport with some bloke she didn’t recognise. It got all over town, I heard about it. Freaking the fuck out. When she came back and it was with you… I know I wasn’t the most fucking pleasant of cunts… sorry Beth… of blokes there for a while, but once I’d worked out you weren’t actually banging my sister but trying to stop me and her from making absolute fuckwits of ourselves…”

“You seriously thought…”

“Mate… small town, you hear stuff, and things are going bad… you think the worst, yeah? I mean, when all the evidence you have is pointing one way… no matter how dodgy the source… it takes a lot to believe shit’s not happening that way.”

“Yeah mate, I can see that.” I paused. “I’m glad you got let out of the house to come play with us, particularly when it was such a shit time for you both…”

Jeff shrugged. “Went both ways, me being away. Good and bad. We needed space, not that we’d admit it – I was copping it for being away, of course – but finally, last time, I just sat down and said this is it. We can’t do this. Let’s sort it. And she stopped jabbing pins in her voodoo doll of me long enough to listen…” He laughed. “She’s gutted she couldn’t come down for the show. Her summer holiday classes had their big gala performance last night.”

“Ah well,” I surmised, “she’ll always have Spam Filter. Who’ll be looking for a new singer the way Jen’s taking to motherhood, yeah? Might not be coming back…”

Jeff looked askance at me. “You asking for Beck or yourself?”

“Me?” I laughed. “No, why?”

“Just checking,” he said carefully, but I was surprised by his tone.

“What’s to check?” I asked. “What’s the issue? Wasn’t an issue when you wankers dragged me on stage in Byron, was it?”

“Yeah, and you hated that didn’t you. That kickstarted all of this, I’m still waiting for a thank-you card. It’s just… look. You in Spam Filter, it’s not Spam Filter, is it. It’s fuckin’ Flange Gasket Mark 2, or 3, or whatever.”

“When did I say I wanted to…”

But Jeff was still working to his script. He’d been stewing over this for some serious time, I guessed. “And you might think it’s just a shitty little covers band, and it’s below you, or whatever… but it’s our deal, yeah?”

“Fuck, man, you finished there?” I said. “When did I ever say I wanted to flounce into Spam Filter and replace Jen as lead singer?”

While thinking: Fuck. Am I that transparent?

“I mean, besides the fact I live fucking hundreds of kays away, and besides the fact YOU HAVE A SINGER ALREADY… I’m fucking retired, man. That was it. That there was my last ever fucking gig.”

Nup, still hadn’t sunk in yet. I was pretty sure once it did I’d be sulking for a week.

Jeff shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. Not angry. Not bitter. More… incredulous.

“Seriously, noone’s fucking told you have they.”

“Told me what?”

“You ever check your phone messages, or emails?”

“Erm, no. Not sure where my charger is…”

“Faaaarrrrk,” Jeff muttered. “Right, this is the story. Adelaide, Perth. There’s an open slot.” He corrected himself. “There was an open slot. There isn’t now, cos you’re in it.” He glanced across to see if I was getting any of this. “That Seppo indie band… what are they called? Critics darlings, ’80s throwbacks, can’t play for shit.”

“That narrows it down. Could be any of those kids.”

“Kids,” he nodded. “Something Kids. Chubby White Kids? Some shit like that. Anyway they’ve cracked the shits with Team BDO over what was promised for coin and playing times and whatever, and they’ve fucking bailed. That was part of the reason why our crowd was a bit up on previous – noone was actually playing the Big Top at the time.”

“Aww, don’t tell me that,” I said. “I thought Melbourne liked us.”

Jeff smirked at that. “Anyway they’ve fucked off, deals were done – supposedly that’s much of where Maddy’s been the last couple of days, in meetings – and basically, you’re it.”

“You mean we’re it,” I clarified. “Would have been nice if someone had run this past me…”

“Erm, Angus,” Beth reminded me, “they probably did.”

Ah yeah. That whole lost-my-charger thing.

“No, mate,” Jeff replied, “you’re it. Can’t join you on this one, I’m out. Like I say, I’ve got shit to sort.”

“Ah,” I noted.

Fuck.

A very strange sensation, this. A very late reprieve. I’d already buried and farewelled the whole live-playing deal, at least in terms of Gasket. Yet now I was being told no, it’s back on. Adelaide and Perth, under the Big Top. You just don’t have another guitarist. Well you might, but it’s not Jeff, and it’s not McCarthy, so it’s hardly fucking Gasket is it? Unless you play as a three piece, which we’d never done, because it’s crap. Name a three piece that have ever had live presence. Other than Led Zep. And Motorhead. And the Presidents of the United States of… yeah bad example. This was like being told you were getting a new bike for Christmas, but you’d have to build it yourself. Out of balsa. It did at least explain Marty’s somewhat cryptic plea to Jeff of “You will tell him won’t you?” when leaving. Not so much the hug he gave him (and not me) to say goodbye and thanks. I felt weirdly left out. Actually I just felt weird, watching on. Jeff and hugs didn’t look right, like Shannen Doherty’s eyes. (They’re at different heights. Check it out. Then try to look at her the same way EVER AGAIN.)

“Sorry mate,” he said. “Sorry for not saying before, figured you’d hopefully see where I was coming from.”

“Look, I understand why you’re pulling stumps mate. Shit to sort, like you say. Would do the same myself.”

There were a shitload of questions I wanted to ask him, of course. Whether there’d been talk of another guitarist, what the arrangements were, when the deal went through, whether Phil had actually given Joey one (or vice versa, depending on the relationship dynamic). But I figured that was probably all on my phone somewhere (possibly not the Phil and Joey stuff, hopefully anyway) and I should just get on and check my messages, rather than asking Jeff for second and third hand info.

“Good luck with it,” he said. “And yeah, sorry we won’t be around if you drop in on your roadtrip up the coast tomorrow.”

“What makes you think we’d want to drop in on you lot of dodgy scruff?”

“Haha. For the best home brew on the North Coast…”

“Has Allan forgiven you for inflicting that stuff on him yet?”

“We’ll see, depends whether his wine cellar collapses or not,” he said. “Praise be to Allan.”

“I see what you did there, that’s pretty good,” I said. “By the way, what the fuck is this?!”

This was the latest tune which had shuffled its way out of Jeff’s iPod. We’d been on a run which had gone AC/DC (Shoot To Thrill, live) – Silverchair (The Door) – Bad Religion (Punk Rock Song) – and now we had some annoyingly chirpy twenty-some kid singing about fucking dinosaurs. Shuffle fail.

“Ah, yeah,” Jeff laughed. “Warned you about that.”

“Is this the Wiggles or something?”

“Nuhh,” he said, like I was some sort of failed hipster-wannabe who couldn’t tell the Kooks from the Klaxons. “This is better than the Wiggles. Next big thing, do yerself a favour…”

“Oh fuck me,” I declared. “Nothing’s better than the Wiggles. Not bigger, anyway. They own the fucking universe.”

“Maybe,” Jeff pointed out, “but they’ve changed tack big time since the original yellow guy left. Dropped the ball. Jumped the shark. Trust me, I’ve noticed. They’re…”

“You’ve noticed? What are you, a fucking Wiggles fan-boi? ‘I like your old stuff better than your new stuff’?”

“Nah, serious though. They’ve dumbed down the act big time. Aimed it much more at early childhood. Clever marketing in the short term, but fucks them long term – kids grow out of it faster. Claire’s four – Wiggles are already uncool at her preschool, and as for Josh – forget about it. Six years old. Ben 10 or Lightning McQueen at his school. Even Thomas the fucking Tank Engine is last week.”

I shrugged. “This sounds pretty Wigglesish…”

“Yeah, well it’s not gonna be death metal is it. It’s a bit rockier, but it’s all major chords obviously. Must be easy as fuck to write. Have a listen.” He skipped back to the start of the track. I really wasn’t that interested, to be honest. But yeah, it started off rocky enough, if you were six or seven and had only ever heard the Wiggles or Hi-5 rather than having folks who played old Stones or Zeppelin or whatever at you. Sounded pretty plastic – most of the noises and beats sounded synthed, and the voice had been Autotuned (which I hated) – but still, passable, agreeable pop. And if they’d been singing about lurrrve or whatever rather than about Tyrannosaurus Rex – the scariest of the carnosaurs, chasing after herbivores, king of all the dinosaurs, look out he’s coming back for more! – and maybe stuck an ex-soapie starlet on the microphone end of it, there was no reason you couldn’t scare the actual pop charts with it. As I suggested to Jeff. To which he replied: “Yeah, but given the state of the music industry these days – where do you think you’re gonna make more money?”

Fair point. The Wiggles, even with their New Stuff being fanboi-inferior to their Old Stuff, had been the highest grossing musical act in Australia for years – even surpassing AC/DC. Admittedly the chances of Angus and Malcolm opening an AC/DC-themed playcentre for toddlers in the bogan-battler-belt suburbs of Sydney wasn’t great (not as great as it should have been), so there were clearly some avenues of revenue open to the skivvy merchants that weren’t available to Burwood’s Finest. But the point remained. Whatever that was. Oh yes – Australia’s greatest bands all came out of Sydney. Just like us. *cough technicality cough*

“What’s this lot called?” I was sucked into the conversation now. I knew Beth thought this was hilarious. The sort of conversation only a parent could enjoy. And since I knew she was just as happy as I to push that particular set of responsibilities as far down the track as possible…

“Superfun,” he said.

“Not the Superjesus?” I suggested. “Sarah Mac is probably short of a gig these days…”

“Nah, but they’ve got a spunky little brunette who in a certain light…”

“Ah, now I see why you’re taking an interest.”

“Got to have something for the Dads in there,” he maintained. I was hearing male and female vocals, which suggested an ensemble, which was making me think more Hi-5 than Wiggles.

“Superfun, eh,” I said. “Any good live?”

Jeff laughed. “Haven’t had the pleasure,” he reported. “Beck took the kids when they were playing Lismore Workers. Said it was a fun show. Danced and sung well, despite the Autotune. Music all out of a can, but it’s not like the kids care. Lots of props on stage. It’s aimed a bit older than the Wiggles, so songs about firetrucks and scary animals and trips to the zoo and… dinosaurs, obviously.”

Superfun’s ode to the T-Rex was winding up. Actually sounded a bit T-Rex, if not quite as crunchy in the mix. If you pulled it apart, it was basically hanging off one of the oldest riffs in rock and roll, just a one-four-five progression like a condensed 12 bar blues. Fuck, we’d used it ourselves several times. I laughed as I began to recite the lyrics that sprung to mind from some long-forgotten synapse, rolling right over the top of the dinosaur stuff:

Sandra Sultry she’s so fine
Sandra Sultry please be mine
Getting on a bit, it’s true
But Christ I would, and so would you

Sandra Sultry news at five
Ignore Tim Bailey’s moron jive
C’mon Sandy, me and you
Let me rack my auto-cue…

“What the fuck was that??” howled Jeff, as he attempted not to drive into oncoming traffic.

“Sandra Sultry,” I said, giggling. “Something McCarthy and I wrote fucking years ago. Unreleased demo. Remaining unreleased for obvious reasons.”

“Oh man, they’ve like totes ripped you off. You should sue.”

“We should, hey. Noone’s ever used that chord progression and that riff before. In the HISTORY of MUSIC.”

Jeff laughed. “You realise, you’ve utterly bollocksed that song for me now. Every time I hear the kids play it, it’s going to be… what was it? ‘Sandra Sultry, me and you… come and chalk my auto-cue’??” He dissolved into giggling.

“Actually, that’s a better lyric I reckon.”

“Do I get a writing credit?”

“On the final version, once we sue you mean? Yeah why the fuck not,” I declared. “You’ve already contributed more to actually writing the song than Mick and Keef did for Bittersweet Symphony…”

By now we were pulling into the carpark at Tullamarine. We wouldn’t be able to hang around to see Beck and the kids, we’d need to run for check-in for our flight as it was, which was a pity. Jeff was still shaking his head. “You’ve got to get me a MP3 of that Sandra Sultry song so I can play it for Beck,” he said.

“I’ll have a look when I get back,” I offered. Most of my old stuff was in boxes in the shed around the back at Point Lookout while Don Richardson continued his brave-but-futile battle to get the place sold in the teeth of a howling recessionary headwind. Couldn’t have picked a worse time to put the place on the market if I’d used a time machine. “Can’t promise I’ll find it, but fuck it, all else fails I’ll teach the boys to play it for Adelaide or Perth, play the fucker live and we’ll have someone run a tape over it for you.”

“What if you can’t remember the riff?” he asked, with a hint of sarcasm.

“I’ll just plagiarise this,” I laughed. “Tempo times one and a half, plug in Samboy’s usual Offspring-ripoff punk riffing, should be just about bang on…”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so very sorry.”

“For Sandra Sultry?” she queried.

I nodded. “Terrible, terrible things we used to do in those days…”

“Because Beef Week Queen is so much classier?”

“Touche,” I admitted. “The irony of course was that song was actually about a different newsreader who I was kind-of secretly seeing at the time... but I figured that by changing the name to another hot newsreader…”

“Aha. I see what you did there.”

“Genius huh?”

“Almost undetectable. There’s just no off position on the genius switch with you…”

I’d never been condescended to more sweetly in my life.

For about two tenths of a second I considered stopping at the internet kiosk at Tullamarine to check my emails – and finally get worded up on what the arrangements were for next week – but the feeling passed. I knew Adelaide was Friday and Perth next Sunday, maybe we’d have rehearsals somewhere on the eastern seaboard this week, maybe we wouldn’t. I wasn’t too concerned. Tonight and tomorrow was for Beth and me. Our only non-negotiable schedule marker was we had to get her and her VW to Cleveland in time for the last vehicular ferry across to Straddie on Tuesday night, given she had work on Wednesday. That was it. Anything else could wait until I was plugged into the interwebs again on Wednesday. Clearing emails, sorting scheduling, touching base with Don Richardson. Which meant, while I’d love to have been heading back to Straddie with Beth tomorrow night, since all my stuff was actually at Mad Mick’s – my ute, my laptop, my old shitty mobile (currently redirecting to the iPhone), clothes that weren’t the same three or four shirts I’d been wearing since the history of recorded time – it kinda meant I’d have to head there Tuesday night before I did anything clever on Wednesday. No matter. This didn’t seem to be the sort of clingy, compulsive, juvenile relationship where we desperately needed to be with each other 24/7/365. Make no mistake, we wanted to be with each other 24/7/365, but we didn’t need reassurance 24/7/365 that the other party hadn’t changed their minds and fucked off with someone else in the two minutes since their last text/tweet/phone message/Arsebook update. It’d suck to have to have a night apart, but then again, I was looking forward to a quiet, normal day on Wednesday, kicking back on the deck at Mick’s with a coffee and finally getting some shit sorted. Depending on flight schedules I could probably duck back over to Straddie Wednesday night, so long as I could get back to the mainland in time for my (presumed) Thursday morning flight(s) to Adelaide. It’d be sweet.

In the meantime, we had 24 hours together, alone at last. Notwithstanding a localised explosion of Emma later on Monday night, who’d picked us up from the airport and talked nineteen to the dozen the whole trip back to Urunga about what the various familials had been up to, the cyclone brewing off the Queensland coast, the latest cretinous obnoxious shite Kyle Sandilands had done/said/spewed forth – just about as much superfluous knowledge as you could fit into a 20 minute car ride. She’d missed her calling, should have been a big-city cabbie. The one piece of useful information came right at the end – one of the tyres on Beth’s car had looked flat when she’d walked past earlier. So it was – probably a slow puncture – but as far as we was concerned, that was a Tuesday Problem. Monday’s only remaining problem was trying not to keep a long-weekend holiday caravan park awake with the sounds of passionate lovemaking so fucking hot it could have melted the crappy beige vinyl off the Viscount’s kitchen settee.

The Silly began early. Beth’s early morning run went out the window in favour of a dawn swim down at back beach, which ended about the way you’d expect it to. Emma treated us to breakfast and talking, after which I set about changing the tyre on Beth’s Beetle. There was a full-sized spare, at least, rather than one of those crappy space-savers you can only use up to 80 kays. That was about the last sensible part of the equation though.

“I think we should rally-spec it,” I suggested.

By which I meant, pull the Noddy wheeltrims off it. So we did that. And, look, it’s like home DIY, once you start it’s hard to know when to stop. The fake flowers in the stupid flower holder ended up in the skip, with a triumphant smile from Beth. A roll of silver duct tape was found from the garage and before too long we had the first New Beetle with nose-to-tail go-faster stripes. I briefly considered trying to fashion a ducktail rear spoiler out of cardboard a la the old 911 RS Carreras of the ‘70s but thought that might be being a bit too stupid. Besides we’d used up all the duct tape on the go-faster stripes. However, she did catch me writing ‘RACING FOR’ above the Jesus fish on the back bumper with a thick black Sharpie.

“I suppose you think it’s funny to make fun of people’s religious beliefs, Angus,” she reproached me.

“Yeah, I do actually,” I replied.

She took the Sharpie from me with a stern look, bent down, and carefully drew a set of feet onto the Jesus fish, before writing ‘DARWIN’ across its flanks.

“There,” she said, “it’s an Evolution model.”

Oh ZING. Never knew she had that in her.

“You know there’s more species of beetles in the world than any other animal?” Random science facts courtesy that one third-year ecology and evolution subject I’d taken in undergrad about 15 years before, mainly because it was full of hot chicks. No idea whether said factoid was still valid. Your mileage may vary.

Beth nodded. “But how many of them are bright yellow with racing stripes and a Darwin fish?”

“Not many. If any.”

Pre-road-trip rally-speccing for beginners: once you’ve reached the point where you’re channelling Scribe, it’s probably time to hit the road.