callandoescairns

[callandoescairns]

Fear...

...and loathing.

Callan’s existential crisis had flowed and ebbed over the years. And at times it was like an old friend. Like an old friend that keeps find out where you have moved to every damn time. And there’d been some great benders along the way.

The first time he was called ‘fuckboy’ was from a depressed, curvy brunette from Mt Gambier.

Emma certainly went off at Callan that night, when Callan had declined the latent invitation to partner up with and have a family and grow old together and die together. When Callan and Emma had met she had already given notice to her Goodwood landlord that she was moving back to Mt Gambier.

Emma had an easy job as a receptionist at the City of Unley. She was sharing a flat with a friend of a friend. The rent was high for what it was. After a year of being a bon vivant in the big smoke, the pressure of the rent and bills and empty parting had worn Emma down.

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[callandoescairns]

Trust.

At 9.37am at the Smithfield shops, which was a mid-sized suburban shopping centre stuck in between the main arterial road from Cairns to the Daintree, and the towering steep mountain that marked the winding, winding gateway road to the backwater hill town Kuranda, there was a disturbance of the peace.

Nothing to unusual for regional mid-sized suburban shopping centres at 9.37am on a Saturday any-where in Australia, and definitely not unusual at all for The Smithfield Shopping Centre on a Saturday morning.

Faced with needing to interact with each other in any meaningful way for the first time since last Sunday night, after a week at work for the man and a week at work and school runs for the woman, a couple were arguing with each other in public.

This was not an argument-royale. The couple were in no danger of announcing their divorcement in announcements section of The Cairns Post.

The argument style, which consisted of a loudly spoken back and forth like exchange of some things that didn’t really matter, was ‘permissible’ to occur in pubic because over time the couple had to watch what they said in front of the kids.

As it was, the kids, a barrel-chested boy of about 8 and a little barrel of a girl, about 6, vacantly looked at the displays or toys and trinkets that were placed under the guidance of retail psychologists at the frontages of shops so as to draw children-accompanied-by-their-credit-card-packing-parents, into the shop.

Salt of the Earth people.

The man was a modern day version of the mythical 6 foot 4 snowy-blonde freckled Queensland Cane-cutter - 6 foot 1, the 3 inches in height lost due to rounded shoulders, from which were hung Christmas Ham size upper arms which both had an assortment of worn, sunburnt tattoos. Obligatory thongs contained large bear-like toenails. His tan was maintained as he couldn’t wait to take all the safety shit he was made to wear whist at work off at clock-off. Thongs and Beer’ O-clock.

The woman was wearing a cheap dress that was very conducive to the humid tropical climate in that it allowed much of her motherly body to be cooled by any cool breeze that might come along in a few months. Her tattoos were less sunburnt, but were worn. Newer additions seemed to be her children’s names. Her thongs were pink and her toenails were pink.

Certainly, the dress allowed the crisp air-conditioned shopping centre air to cool her, and it was a welcome relief from the tepid humidity of the walk from the couple’s air conditioned 4WD to the centre. But the couple had started arguing in the car. Well actually, before they set off to the shops.

The couple seemed content to halt their public arguing at a point when they had enough people looking at them. The people weren’t welcome to listen, in fact the couple were both starting to feel angry at the eavesdroppers who were now so rudely invading their privacy. The man broke his pained averting from the woman’s gaze expression and shot a wandering furrowed brow glare across the random people who were now looking away out of both a sense of ‘job done’ in regaining the collective peace - and of some primordial concern that this hulk might have some residual Berserker in him. The woman joined the man to support him in their condemnation of these eaves droppers, eyeballing one woman in particular who was slightly slower than the rest in turning her attention away from the couple.

The man, satisfied that there were no challengers to his or his family’s autonomy, grunted a signal-to-move grunt to the woman made a one-inch ‘let’s move on’ gesture with his meaty arm at his side. With this the woman and kids followed the man into the shops, united from their defence against the outside world into their private affairs. The woman a few steps along turned back to flash a look of condemnation upon the eavesdroppers

Callan thought – “What lucky bastards” as he watched the round-shouldered man and woman walk off into the shop, still with whatever it was they had flashed at each other about in the argument unresolved but with the wagons-circled against the outside world.

The entirety of the argument and the man’s furrowed brow quelling of the intrusion into the invasion of the private affairs of his family was one of those things that swells peaks and ebbs as quick as a wave. 5 seconds? 7 seconds?

With the family some steps into the shop and the spectacle over Callan was able to himself into the shops in order to make his purchases which consisted of the following items:

·         A bulk pack of generic ‘hangover easing dissolve in water’ pills. (The brand name ones had a strong brand name, but were just to unjustifiably more expensive than the generic ones.)

·         A 24 pack of a non-generic aspirin brand (the one that his mother had given to Callan at 8 when he had a severe earache). Things had changed - the aspirin was for hangover maintenance these days.

·         A new pair of no-brand name double-plugger thongs. Black, with white soles and with Chinese dragons on the straps. Authentic retro.

With this accomplished, Callan went on to the Pharmacy and had his script for generic-viagra filled.

That was Callan’s shopping expedition completed, and it was time to get back to Callan’s flat underneath the flightpath in the city. But there was always time to stop in at the Smithfield Tavern for a counter meal breakfast and a beer. After all, it was 10:30am and it was the only pub between here and the flat pretty much. Anyways, it was right next door.

The night before with divorce Danielle from Clifton Beach had been fun, but Callan knew it was time to put a bit of space between himself and Danielle, and she had raised the subject of Callan coming around for a barbeque on Sunday afternoon – and this weekend she had her kids.

At the bar as Callan was waiting for his counter meal he thought of Danielle’s hopes – that Callan would show up to the barbeque, that her kids would like Callan and visa-versa. Not much to ask in itself, but fair dinkum, being a step-dad would really cramp Callan’s style.

Yeah Nah. Callan thought of deleting Danielle’s number. The meal arrives. Greasy shit slapped together by someone who’d rather be somewhere else on a Saturday morning. Perfect.

As he washed the last of the Big Breakfast down with the tail-end of his full strength pint of beer, Callan opened up the contents section of his phone and sent out a ‘what’s up today’ text to 7 women, the last 6 texts copied and pasted from the first text.

[callandoescairns]

Callan got thru the door and was already on the vodka - Dr Max had been enthusiastic about vodka’s complete lack of carbohydrates, and had virtually PRESCRIBED a scrip of vodka for health and well-being.

Callan, Who was always enthusiastic about the booze-effect of vodka, needed no hesitation in taking up Dr Max’s advice to replace all other alcohol with vodka.

Callan could see that it would also make him drink less, cause even Callan didn’t want to get to the liver-wrecking stage of drinking a bottle of vodka every damn day.

[callandoescairns]

Good ole...

...job switching. Nothing like it to distract you from writing! I’m back here, gunna keep up the writing now. 

[callandoescairns]

Passion...

“Can’t you see? I’m trapped living in that shitty share house! A distressed Angel snapped.

Callan signed internally – aware that he was about to venture into the land of having someone lean on him emotionally for some time – and spoke a soft “Hey… I care” whilst physically nodding subtly, as per Callan’s brewery sales team training of that the demonstration of ‘body language’ in order to reinforce the verbal pitch.

Visual to back up the verbal.

With this, Angel glanced at Callan, eyes still for once, nodded the ever so slight nod back and then latched onto Callan like a drowning cat to a log and burst into a fit of heaving anxiety cleansing tears.

The premise had been well established over the preceding weeks…From her relative poverty from studying and working around study at the supermarket, the grinding stress of having to watch every cent - along with being a beautiful anonymous nobody in a city full of sweaty transients actually going somewhere - had been causing Angel to snap at times and with a volcanic vent that had, when it first occurred, gave Callan a flashback of his back in Adelaide former fiancé using a steak knife as a pointer during conversations about her wanting starting a family   - and it better be soon!‘

You’re not in Unley anymore, Callan’ Callan had reminded himself at the time of Angel’s first vent as they were out for breakfast after a night at Callan’s.

Yet another argument with one of her housemate over some as the scale of life would have it petty house matter had now brought Angel to Callan’s door.In this moment Callan duly, like the big lug Angel was expecting him to be, wrapped Angel in his arms in a re-assuring everything-is-going-to-be-alright hug complete with a slow clockwise palm rub on the small of Angel’s back in order to provide the sensorial slow pace to Angel that would eventually bring her chest heaving to a sobbing stop.

Just like how a mother soothes a distressed child.Noticing just how petite Angel was, and how thin her arms were and that Callan could feel the sharpish model shoulder blades as he held Angel with his left hand, Callan for a moment had the thought of the unwelcome chain of an emotional tie cast aside for a brief moment, and could enjoy a flash of time being a Hollywood lead actor holding the damsel in distress like a rock in her time of need.“There really wasn’t ‘much’ there with this girl, is there. Quite the waif” said a Hollywood trans-Atlantic accent, somewhere in Callan’s head.

The sensation of Angel’s tears and snot and mouth slobber emanating through Callan’s retro Hawaii shirt pin-pricked the Cary Grant thought bubble.“…How… …bout you move in here for a while, so that you can save some cash for the bond on your own flat, just like you said a week or so back” ventured Callan.

With this, Angel looked up from Callan’s chest to look at Callan with huge beautiful crying bloodshot blue eyes and tearstained high cheekbones – and the same sculpted from marble by da Vinci pert little nose and with a snotty top lip Angel kissed Callan with a peck on the lips then returned her head against her chest into Callan’s embrace.

The salt of the snotty peck immediately set Callan’s mind back to - that day - at - that beach - with - that goodness: Camille. Again lost for a moment, Callan’s mind wandered and was back there with Camille at the beachside hotel, at the moment where Camille’s eyes were so beautifully illuminated with beautiful shades of amber and green by the setting west coast sun as Camille smiled that too cute smile – the exact moment he fell in love for the first time.

Oh, he knew that now. That was one of the realisations from knowing Camille.

Snapped back to the present reality of the body memory sensations of someone who was not Camille holding him, Callan caught the apple of longing in his throat. And coughed softly. 

-

“So you are letting her move in?” Barbara venture-asked by the pool, after she had been as silent as a psychologist aside from her comforting hmmmings to let Callan know she was still listening to Callan’s though download as they both reclined on pool side couches at Barbara and Kevin’s Las Vegas modernist ranchero in the tropics.

Callan, in noticing the mojito with the now dissolved ice on the flagstone pavers by his side, sat up on the pool lounge to face Barbara – and with a gulp downed the tepid cocktail in one, bruised mint leaves and all.  “Not move-in move in – Not like that. She’s just moving in – y’know”. Pause. “She needs somewhere to stay for a while, that’s all”.

Barbara propped herself up on one elbow and lifted her sunglasses with a pale long finger eyed up Callan and thought – Well, he needs to get over Camille sometime, the poor lug.

“I like Angel. She’s sweet”, and reclined back, as she took a mental inventory of Angel’s pros and cons. “It’s about time you settled down for a while”.

“Yeah, well she just needs a place to stay for a while – that’s all” and with this Callan went and mixed a Moscow Mule at the poolside bar as he thought about how having one of his girlfriends move in would really really cramp his style.

Back pool side and back on the pool lounge, Callan cast his eye over Barbara’s long lines, the showgirl calves, firm thighs, pert ass and sculptured back as Barbara cloud-tanned her freckled milky skin perfectly nude in nature.

“Hmm… perhaps Angel moving in for a while will be good after all” said Callan to the low clouds above as he internally figured that maybe having an Angel about the house would help dampen down the burning embers of - that – new old flame from Perth. 

Fin.

[callandoescairns]

[callandoescairns]

Sad...

...happy Callan was TOO SMART to be loveburnt. Callan had been loveburnt once before, and - aside from the brief interlude on walking in paradise ~ that is actually heaven on earth, namely knowing that that other person is wakening to loving thoughts of you - the awakening each morning to the pain of missing THE LOVER in your life - is what Callan had to wake up each morning to face. Best to put it out of your mind. Callan wearily summised at 3am after exhausting his mind deliberately

[callandoescairns]

Black...

...is the ultimate. Black eclipses everything. It all started with opening of a letter addressed to him at his Mile End rental, an address Callan hadn't lived at for over ten years. When back in the West End to visit have a monthly Sunday afternoon beer at the Wheaty with Young Jock, Callan had first stopped in at his first rental to pick up the letter the young female of the couple renting the now hip workers cottage had texted Callan about. The writing on the envelope was from a female hand, that was evident from the neat looped even pen strokes. Callan thanked the tenant for the letter, and letting him know it had arrived. "I though I should tell you because who sends letters these days" volunteered the tenant Monique. "Yeah, and there I was expecting a carrier pigeon" joked Callan with a crooked smile, which eased Monique's worrying that Callan might have smelt the joint she was smoking and stubbed out in a back veranda pot plant when she heard a knock on the door at 2:00pm precisely. Of course Callan had, but C'Est la vie, with ice, not even cops bother to stop in-public joint smokers these days. Callan gave his fair tidings to Monique, walked towards his parents house and stopped exactly three letter boxes up. Puzzled. Cairns postmark across the crooked stamp. No name, no return address on the back of the yellow envelope. ''...you have a daughter ~ her name is Ember. I wasn't going to tell you about her as she is my child, but since her diagnosis she has been asking who you are. Would you like to meet her? She lives in Cairns".

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Garbage cannot

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...not comforting...

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Clayton...

...Fairfield. Clayton is the name you have when your not having a name. Fairfield is a cloaking of my real name. https://youtu.be/ylH43Tcaj60

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Jack's...

...back. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a3yvqHRA6r4#

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Nom...

...de Plume Is Clayton Fairfield

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!

the irony

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Jock...

...Junior. Callan's dad Ian Lochlan Arthur Maclean was known to all at the brewery as Jock Junior, after the first Jock, Callan's grandfather Alistair Gordon Angus Maclean. When Jock Junior started as an apprentice Mechanical fitter the day after he turned 14, Jock already worked for the brewery for 17 years, working as a process worker for 10 years, after having done his back on his delivery run in 1957. Jock Junior was a simple man. Jock Junior's ambition was to retire at 65 - after being awarded a gold wristwatch and having his name painted on the '50 Years Club' honour board after a full 51 years working at the Brewery - to fish off the Port Adelaide dock full time. Jock was nearly there too. Unfortunately for Jock Junior, the overseas corporation that bought the brewery in 2006 to expand into Australia eventually had different ideas, and Jock Junior was non-voluntarily made redundant amidst a desperate company restructure in 2015. The management did however remember his long service, Jock Junior was named as one of the 3 employees sadly made redundant before making the 50 Club in the 'Goodbye To Those Leaving Us' extended morning tea speech given to the assembled redundant, and any Team Members that weren't ABSOLUTELY required to keep the brewery ticking over, by the Change Management consultant on $250,000 a year to go into businesses and figure out where to cull staff numbers and 'provide individuals with the ability to negotiate the terms of employment directly with the employer'. Jock Junior's redundancy payout was huge, so huge that the corporate accountants in Sydney argued to have Team Member 4,873 kept on to hit retirement age, thus saving the payout. The corporate toe cutters were having none of that. Ian Maclean had been a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union for 51 years and whist had never led a strike or a stop work meeting was 'The Greybeard' of the brewery. Operation Re-Set required that the corporation had complete flexibility of team member shifts, skill sets and even location - Team Members needed to be willing to relocate across business units, interstate and even overseas. This fucking DINOSAUR had to go. After the 'Goodbye To Those Leaving Us' morning tea the lovely Change Manger lady personally escorted Jock Junior to the gate of the Brewery, charming Jock Junior with gracious accolades of his service, and in her mind keen to ensure she had Jock Junior's gate access card in her hand as she watched Jock Junior LEAVE. Just as he left, Jock Junior looked up at his dad Jocks's name on the 40 Year Club on the wall one last time, and walked the mile home to Cowra St one last time. - There was a minor outrage in the community when the word had gotten around that a contractor painter had painted over all of the Clubs, 20, 30, 40 and 50. The press release published in the Adelaide Times - written by the corporate toe cutter lady - assured that it was an accident and that the corporation valued the 122 year history of beer production at their South Australian site.

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Oh...

…Kay.

Callan’s mother Küllike Kirsipuu was not Scottish.

Anglicised to ‘Kay’ as soon as Küllike started school at Kilkenny Primary School, West Croydon.

As a 5 year old speaking good Estonian and no English, Kay soon learned to speak the English language in the West End Accent, assisted by the merciless teasing of her classmates, and her teacher who saw the children’s chant of 'White Wog, White Wog’ and other teasing of this foreigner as helpful in motivating Kay to pick up English as soon as possible.

The other children were preferred it when Kay had picked up their accent. With her blue eyes and straw blond hair Kay just wasn’t the wog their parents had warned them about.

And -

Kay was pleased to join in with the rest of the children chanting 'Wog! Wog! Wog!’ when the dark haired brown eyed girl Ludovica started at Kilkenny the following year.

Listening to Kay now, there is only the out of date West End of Adelaide accent. And there certainly were no Estonian keepsakes in Jock Junior and Kay’s Mile End Bungalow.

Kay’s parents moved to Adelaide in 1960, her father lured by his other brother Vidrik’s tales of plenty of work at the ACI Glass factory and plenty of sunshine.

The guys at Vidrik’s first Australian job, at the Melbourne docks, imaginatively christened Vidrik - Rick.

Rick was on the first of Prime Minister Caldwell’s ships of European migrants picked from the Baltic States for their blue eyes and blond hair, landing in Melbourne in 1947, moving to Adelaide in 1953 to take up a job at the new glass factory.

From the age of 14 Kay worked a variety of factory jobs across the West End area, her favourite sewing up boots.

Kay met Jock as a pretty 18 year old at a friends Underdale house-party in 1973, with Callan arriving - post marriage - a few years later. From there, Kay, in ignoring the a-washing wave of Second-Wave feminism completely, was a stay at home mum and washer of Jock’s mechanical fitter overalls and fishing clothes.

Now that Jock had been made redundant from the Brewery, she only washed the blood and guts and grease off the rod off Jock’s faded and patched fitter overalls.