Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell

1
Retard dad

My brother Andrew's written a song and he's putting a band together. He just calls himself ‘Andy' and musicians are queuing up to play with him. Andrew's been really angry for a long time and great things can come out of talent and pain. This song he just wrote, he says it's amazing, says he plays it every single day and even
he's
not fed up with it yet. He calls it ‘Retard Dad' and says he'll be playing it at the Glastonbury Festival next year on the newcomers' stage. Andrew's first gig at Glastonbury, I wouldn't miss it for the world. I'm so proud of him and if you knew what Andrew had been through, you'd be proud of him too.

My da was a crazy man see, and he made our lives ­miserable. He killed a puppy once when we were young—kicked it to death right there in front of us. He resented every animal that we ever brought home and we were animal daft, always bringing home cats and dogs and ducks and donkeys and anything we found in the street that looked like it might be in need of a good home and often others that weren't in need of a good home at all.

Lots of bad stuff happened in our lives, but one of the best things that ever happened was that finally, at the age of 59, after 40 years of abuse, Mum found the courage to say ‘no more'. She threw a few bits into her tartan holdall, put the dogs and the cats into the back of the car and finally she left him. And I've never been more proud.

After she was gone I thought about him and through the cracks in the doors of my mind I could see him there at home by himself, with nobody. He's wishing he'd been a better father, that he'd been there for us, that he could remember our birthdays for Chrissake. And next thing I know my eyes are welling up and a lump's appearing in my throat and I start thinking about how things could have been and what a waste of time that is.

Mum though, she's making up for wasted time. She's bought herself a wee flat and a fancy wee car, and she's started placing discreet ads in the lonely-hearts columns in the local paper. She's decorated her new pad on a jungle theme, so African masks and elephant trunks adorn the walls. Her life-size sculpture of a Zulu warrior holding a spear she carted back from the south of France wrapped in a sleeping bag, stands in the corner and doubles as a hat stand, and two bongo drums sit at each side of her king-size bed and double as bedside tables. She's finally getting to express herself and she's doing it in style in fabrics and furs, in sculptures and in masks, and she doesn't care what anybody thinks. This is freedom and Mum likes the taste.

And every so often, in her wee dark moments, she thinks about how life might have been if she hadn't met him and she'd taken that interior design course instead. And she thinks about all the years she's wasted and what she
should
have done and what she
could
have done before she met him and got saddled with three kids, four dogs, five cats and a donkey called Annie.

She's coming down from Scotland for another visit to Sydney soon. She comes down twice a year to see us and last time she brought a fifteen-foot blow-up Santa Claus you plug in and it lights up the garden.

Some people might be embarrassed by what their mums do, but me, I couldn't be prouder. She's the best thing that ever happened in my life and I wouldn't change her and her fifteen-foot blow-up Santa Claus for all the bongos in the world.

2
Arsehole on a tandem

She was wearing her Audrey Hepburn hat and gloves to match and a pair of winkle pickers that would take your eye out soon as look at you. And she'd bought herself some stockings too, with a line up the back, and she turned the head of every boy she passed in the street.

After mass that Sunday she stopped in at Angie's sweetie shop for a stick of Wrigley's to chew on the long walk home. When she came out of the shop she couldn't help but notice the strange man sitting on the tandem at the side of the road, by himself if you don't mind. She unwrapped her stick of Wrigley's pretending she didn't notice a thing and she'd no sooner set off on her long walk home when the strange man was cycling up alongside her. ‘Arsehole on a tandem,' she thought, as she tried to hide her confusion at seeing a man riding a tandem on his own. Then the man who would one day be my da jumped off his tandem and stood sweating before the woman who would one day be my mum and Mum said to him, ‘Well, it's no' often you see a man riding a tandem by himself.' And the man who would one day be my da blurted out he'd seen her standing behind him in the queue at Angie's sweetie shop and that he'd fallen in love with her right there and then—and without taking a breath he asked Mum if she would go out on a date with him the following Saturday night. Mum, well she didn't know where to look, and so she said yes but if he didn't mind, could he leave his tandem at home.

My da was the happiest man alive when he got back on his tandem and that's when he decided he was going to marry Mum and that he would ask her that Saturday night right after their date, if it was the last word he spoke.

The Saturday night came and my da was already waiting outside The Roxy when Mum arrived at six o'clock. He'd Brylcreemed his hair for her and put on some Old Spice and Mum felt sorry for him when she saw he'd cut himself shaving and left the toilet paper stuck to the wound. They hooked arms and walked up the steps to The Roxy looking just like a proper couple out on a date on a Saturday night and my da made a fuss of Mum that first night all right, buying the tickets and the choc-ices and everything. When the movie was over he wanted to escort Mum back home all safe and sound, but she wouldn't hear of it 'cause the bus that would take him all the way home was just across the road from The Roxy. So they walked together to the bus stop where she waited with him in the cold, and as they waited a thick fog descended upon them and the street lamps gave off an eerie yellow haze, much like the haze they'd seen just moments before in
Psycho
when Anthony Perkins goes up to the scary looking house to see what the hell's wrong with his mother.

Mum was beautiful in this light, as he knew she would be in every light he saw her in thereafter, and he knew he was lucky she'd agreed to go on a date with him. He also knew if he didn't ask her to marry him that night, it was only a matter of time until she discovered that he was a complete prick and dump him forever. He was dying for a fag but he'd wait until after he'd asked her to be his bride so his breath would be fresh in case she decided to kiss him passionately in the excitement of their future together. But the man who would one day be my da was scared. Scared she'd say no, that she'd laugh in his face and say something like, Me, marry you? You're fuckin' joking aren't you? Scared the number 64 bus would come when he'd only half the question out, scared he'd be ridiculed and left cycling on his tandem without a wife until the end of time.

His heart was thumping hard now and my da felt dizzy and intoxicated by the love that he felt for Mum. His excitement mounted and suddenly he was unstoppable. His desire to have her as his bride knew no bounds and in the heat of the moment, my da took Mum in his arms, lifted her off the ground and swung her lovingly around in a circle, and all the while his eyes never left hers, just like in the American movies they sometimes showed at The Roxy on a Saturday afternoon. My da turned Mum full circle and he'd no sooner placed her lovingly back onto her own two feet when something terrible happened, something he wished he could have prevented more than anything, something their children and their children's children would write about in years to come. It was at this—what should have been—most romantic of moments, that my da unfortunately farted. Not a silent unassuming kind of fart, but more a fog-horn kind of fart and, sure, it was foggy, but that one solitary, seemingly innocent fart ruined everything. He clenched his buttocks, albeit too late, but he clenched them nonetheless and he stared at her, his eyes wide in ­disbelief. And she stared back, her eyes wide in a similar kind of disbelief. And nobody said a word.

After an eternity, they heard the drone of the 64 bus as it made its way through the yellow fog. The bus stopped and its doors flew open and my da raced onto the bus, leaving Mum behind in the eerie yellow haze. He headed straight to the back of the bus, took out his packet of Woodbines and slumped down on the red vinyl seat. With his right cheek pressed against the window, he drew long and hard on his Woodbine and stared out into the fog and he wished he could have disappeared into it. And the cool windowpane did little to soothe his troubled mind.