New Year's Day - A Very Short Story

New Year’s day came around, and of course there was only one way to see the new year in. Various members of the crew gathered in the dark on the beach. When I got there at 4.30 The Shredder, Deluded Devotee Of The Useless Shortboard, was already there, thoughtfully studying the ocean in front of us. Within seconds we were joined by The Snake Catcher, Scourge Of All Illicit And Un-Authorised Wave-Snatching,  Snaking And Dropping In. In the darkness we congregated, congratulated and contemplated the movement of the water in front of us, and democratically agreed that we couldn’t see the square root of fuck-all. So I myself, The Baboon, Expert Of The Arse Pointing Uselessly Skywards On The Surfboard, climbed the steps up to the look-out that sits on top of a rock at the water‘s edge. I faced into the wind blowing from the north, not usually a good sign for surf conditions here on our beach, and I stuck my bagpipes under my arm. Blew a goodly amount of air into them, punched them gently but persuasively in the guts to make them behave, let rip on the world. The plaintive skirl of the pipes drifted into the air, facing and mingling with the wind blowing over the sea, and I played the traditional air of the new year, Auld Lang Syne, into the face of the Brand New World, made new all over again. Below on the beach my mates stuck their fingers in their ears and shuddered in terror. Encouraged by this I followed up with a tune about the beauty of the earth, wich very appropriately and fittingly I could see nothing of in the dark, before offering a happy bouncy sea-shanty, derived from the pleasures of the daily experiences of the sailors of the olden days of the tall ships, such as scurvy, slave-running and syphilis. After half an hour of that I deemed it enough of a dedication to the new year, exchanged my pipes for my board and wetsuit, and headed into the water, joined by more members of the crew. I waded into the water with Full On, Queen Of Ripping Waves To Pieces And Wearing A Bikini In The Middle Of Winter Time. Hot on our heels were Mr Kamikaze, Champion Of Shooting Suicidally Close Past Rocks, and Rastaman Vibration, who had recently exchanged a sixteen year growth of dreadlocks for a number one all around. He has confided in us that he now weighs ten kilos less. The nefarious north wind, dreaded flattener of surf and destroyer of waves, bent in acquiescence and deference to the sacrificial offering of brain-melting bagpipe music that had been made to him, and decided to relent and back off for a bit, just while we were there. So it became almost wind still, the waves cleaned up and smoothened out, and we got great rides with some excellent drops. My favourite wave was one where I landed a perfect steep drop into a decent-sized hole, that grew into a clean wall of head-high to just overhead. More of the crew came out to join in the celebration. There were The Racer, riding his fire-engine red board like a telemark skier form the 1930s, The Pyjama Banana, Catwalk Model Of Eye-Watering And Migraine-Inducing Floral Shorts, The Phantom Menace, Silent But Deadly At Paddling To The Inside And Snatching Waves From Everyone Else, and Kneel O’Kneel, King Of The Kneeboard. We ripped it up in great style until, inevitably, it was time to wake up the north wind again. So I laid aside my board, picked up the pipes again, climbed back up the steps and devoted one last set of tunes to the Big Sky Country. On cue, the wind returned and blew all the holiday makers to the shithouse. And so we left, to Take A Cup Of Kindness Yet, For The Sake Of Auld Lang Syne.   * THE END *.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crossbone Bay

Long centuries ago, when no one knew where Australia was except the people who lived in it, hapless European would-be colonising world powers would stumble across it by accident. Tall ships would get blown off course, of course, mostly Portuguese and Dutch trading ships trying to find Indonesia and their arses in the bath tub, and they’d end up here.    The big winds would blow them hell west and crooked, till they landed on the coast, if they were lucky, or on rocks and reefs offshore if they weren’t. Those who managed to land in one piece took one look around, found nothing but sand, rocks and flies up their nose, pushed their boats back into the water as fast as they could, if they didn’t have holes in them, and bailed out again while they were still able to. No gold, no spices, nothing here worth killing and enslaving anyone over. Those who didn’t manage to land in one piece lived to bitterly regret it, but usually not for very long. They left a long trail of abandoned c...
Read more

The Shirt

   Bernie was an arsehole.    He was a bully. He was built like a brick shithouse, tall, wide, massive, with bright red hair, fairy skin full of freckles with a predilection to skin cancer, and no neck. In his younger days he had played rugby, and had enjoyed smashing people down, grinding them into the ground and just generically hurting them.    A serious knee injury put an end to his playing days. He'd learned the trade of diesel mechanic, and after a punch-up on a Saturday night at his local that left a bloke in a coma with brain damage, he'd pulled the pin on living in town, or at least anywhere within reach of coppers, and he'd gone bush. He'd poked around for a while here, there and everywhere, plying his trade. The one thing there is always a need for out the back of woop-woop is a diesel mechanic. People didn't ask too many questions, or even none at all, as long as he could get the engines going and fix the gear boxes on the fourwheel drives, ...
Read more

The Mask

  ‘Can you please take your mask off?’      I’m sitting leisurely stretched out on a bench in the afternoon sunshine when this voice comes drifting down from above me. I’m in town getting new tyres for my car, and have got time to waste, so I’m enjoying some rare downtime. Having wandered in and out of a few shops, without stealing hardly very much at all, I’m wearing the regulation Covid-mask required now for entering premises. In spite of the big signs on all the doors and shopfront windows, politely requesting all customers to be considerate, do the right thing and cover their faces, when lining up in the post office, of all places, I hadn’t failed to notice that at least one in every four or five people were not wearing a mask. Judging from the way they were greeted casually by their first names by the staff behind the counter, they appeared to be locals.      Beware the local yokel, because they will always be above the law. Tadati...
Read more

Deja Vu

Sometimes history can repeat itself, in a bizarre case of convergent evolution. On Friday night my partner Kiana had something to celebrate, so we went and had a few quiet drinks. A few quiet ones led to a few more that were far from quiet, and the next day I paddled out with a vicious hangover. No surprise there.    As it so happened the cyclone swell had come in, finally, and the entire beach was wrapped in walls of water standing up to double-overhead high. A powerful sweep was running north to south, and huge amounts of sand had been skulldragged away into The Big Void, never to be seen again. Everywhere the earth was showing its bare bones poking up from underneath the left-over sand: rocks, ridges, ledges, stones, pebbles, shale everywhere where once the golden sand invited people to lay down and chill out.    I paddled out into the surf and got smashed comprehensively around the brains. Mountains of water stood up in front of me and crashed down on my head...
Read more

Remote Solitary

Crowded waves and competition for rides are the bane of the existence of anyone within cooee of a passably decent ride. Drop-ins, snakes and shitfights in the water are par for the course, or so it seems.    It certainly is that way in our home town of Eagle Bay. Proud possessor of an enviable first class longboard break, we habitually get flooded under a never-ending stream of holiday makers from the big city, all out to make the most of their few precious weeks under the sun, and determined, come rain, shine, hell or high water, to score some of these fabulous waves. As a result hostile altercations in the surf abound, and our erstwhile peaceful, quiet and low-profile town is now more commonly referred to as Ego Bay.    With one thing and another things came to a head, and I had decided to take a sabbatical. Time out from the neverending screaming arguments and occasional punch-ons. An interesting job opportunity came up, and so I took it.    I foun...
Read more

Day Of The Kooks

Every kook has its day. Or so they say. The word, and concept, of “kook”, a beginner or inept surfer, is something that is unique to the occupation of surfing. It is derived from the word “kukae”, which, in the Hawaiian language, means “shit”. It is one of a handful words originating from Polynesian languages that have made their way into common usage in the English language. Others are kava, booze made from the roots of a plant, popular and widespread in remote areas of the Northern Territory, and taboo, stuff you’re not allowed to do or talk about, like marrying your cousin, unless of course you’re a member of a European royal family, where incest is the preferred way of having sex and where inbreeding,   mental retardedness and having two heads are considered valuable and worthwhile contributions to humanity’s gene pool. Ubiquitous around the world now, tattoo is the world Polynesians used to describe the designs they had etched under their skins with ink, a practice that h...
Read more

First Day Of Winter

I got out of the car and froze to death instantaneously. My bare feet landed on the cold hard concrete, which immediately sucked all life blood and warmth out of me and straight into the stony uncaring world. To add insult to injury, a gale was blowing so hard the casuarina trees were laying over near-horizontally. Even though it was pitch-black dark, I could tell from the white caps on the water, the sea horses of the mythology of old, that the surf was going to be shithouse, blown hell west and crooked into nothing resembling any surfable shape. I shivered violently. The Chief arrived and bounced out of his van, dressed in a woollen beany pulled over a thermal hat, an overcoat, an under coat, a middle coat, three jumpers, his mum’s woolly vest, long shorts (a contradiction in terms, much like, e.g., military intelligence or political integrity), and, the prize piece of his collection, double-grade Explorer socks in his sandals. Dressed to impress, for sure. Dressed to s...
Read more

Blind

For the past seven days I have not been able to see. Something got stuck in my left eye, some sort of dirt-piece, a bit of dust, or a grain of sand, or a smidgin of stray mitochondrial DNA, or, quite likely, a snippet of random toenail. Either way, the upshot of it was that by nighttime seven days ago my eye was bloodhot, swollen, almost squashed shut, and pissing forth liberally with fluid, presumably tear-water. I couldn’t open the eye, looking at any light source bigger than a lit match was excruciating and impossible, and I was in agony. It was like someone stabbing needles in it. So the day after it happened I spent the whole day inside the house, sitting in the dark,   wearing sunnies on my face and a towel over my head to block out the light. I pulled any and all blinds I could find, squeezed my eyes shut and whiled away seven hours straight playing music with my eyes closed. I played the bagpipes, the whistle, the banjo, the mandolin and the guitar, comprehensively pi...
Read more

The Medewi Four-by-Two

Medewi, west Bali. Far from the insane crowds of Kuta and Uluwatu. The village of Medewi is all of 450 m across, as the crow flies, between two coastal rivers, dividing it from the village before and the village after.    The vibe is low-key. Off the congested road that connects Denpasar and east Bali to the west and, eventually, the ferry across to Java, there is just one little narrow street that slopes down to the beach. Along that, two board-hire places, a surf school, and a cafe, ominously called “The Bombora Cafe”. No prizes for guessing where the mob that set it up came from. “Bombora” is an Australian Aboriginal word that refers to a partially submerged rocky reef in the surf, not far from shore. Usually affectionately known as “the bombie”, they are found in their dozens between Eden in the south and Fingal Head in the north of NSW. It’s a home away from home, straightaway.    The beach is a shelf of dark grey-blackish sand that slopes down steeply to a ...
Read more

A Man Is Not A Camel

  I finished preparing my pack and looked it over. It didn’t appear too bulky. Travelling light, it’s the only way to go, as the old song said, a long time ago. It’s certainly the way I like travelling best. I picked up my water bottle, hefted it in my hand, then put it aside till later: fixing it onto my pack now would make the pack too big and unwieldy, and, especially, too conspicuous. The Number One Rule of Being A Bum is Do Not Attract Attention. So I put it aside till later.    I looked up to the dunes, stretching out black and mysterious in front of me. The track I was going to go down snaked out into the bushes and disappeared beneath the shadows of the overhanging trees.    From behind me came the distant sounds of glasses clinking, voices, laughter, and, especially, music. Live music. Someone singing to the accompaniment of a guitar. Intriguing and attractive. So, on the spur of the moment, I delayed my bush-plans for a bit and wandered off in the ...
Read more