Diary of a Mrs Dad 10: Don’t Fence Me In
Breadwinner: You guys are so cute… and so annoying.
Dude: So are you, but without the cute.
The front fence of an Australian home is literally the line drawn in the sand that says, ‘This is mine. Don’t come in here unless you’re invited or I’ll sic the dogs on you – or take a shot at you, if this was a farm and I owned a gun.’ We had had a traditional picket fence, with the curly work at the top peaking as a teardrop (although you couldn’t classify orange as a traditional colour), but it had seen better times. The years had caught up with it and some of the pickets had come loose, so the bored and the disenfranchised took out their frustrations with life on the wobbly vertical planks. Slowly, the pickets started disappearing and the front fence started looking like a grinning Chad Morgan after a barroom brawl.
Missing pickets are apparently also an invitation to spray paint the survivors. I didn’t mind that someone felt the need to autograph the front fence in silver, because I believe that tagging is a result of the Australian Idol generation needing to practise their signatures before fame, or an irate home owner, hits them. (My favourite bit of graffiti at the moment is someone having spray painted ‘Help stop graffiti’ on a brick wall.) The big problem is that missing pickets and graffiti upset the Breadwinner’s sense of world order in her constant battle with the forces of chaos (me), so it was time for a new front fence.
Don’t go jumping to any conclusions that I was suddenly out the front with a band saw and a tool belt, although the tool belt often goes around the tool. I only barely qualify for half of the word ‘Handyman’, so we did the Aussie thing and ‘got a bloke in’. The fence builder came to us through a friend’s recommendation and, indeed, he claimed he didn’t have to advertise, as all of his work came from recommendations. I’m wary of those skilled in the dark arts of manual labour, as they rule our society, much like Robert De Niro as the air-conditioner serviceman in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. (Namedropping opportunity: I actually got to meet Terry Gilliam when he was out here for the launch of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and wanted to be introduced to some comedians. However, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that none of us got a word in as Stubbsy was there.) The fence man built a fine ranch-style fence, as ordered by the Breadwinner, at just below waist height, and complete with groovy horizontal slats, and a smooth and easy action gate.
Dude: The ‘F’ word rhymes with ‘Duck’.
Later that night, the kids were in bed and the parents just sitting down to the night’s brief adult entertainment of a drama and a comedy, when Dudina shuffled, half-asleep, into the lounge room.
‘I think someone’s on the front veranda,’ came the sleepy tones of our daughter.
The Breadwinner and I exchanged a brief ‘Oh no’ look and dashed out the front. Recent rain and a faulty tarpaulin had meant the bikes were stored on the front veranda and, sure enough, when we emerged, I spied my bike on the footpath with the lock still around its wheel. Our shoulders slumped in the realisation there had been another theft. The Dude’s scooter had been stolen and a beaten-up bike left in its place by, what we assumed was, a junkie on the run who swapped his means of transport halfway through his getaway; the bike was useless, so we had to buy another one. Unfortunately, the Dude was again the victim, as his bike was the only one not locked, so the thief had fled on it into the suburbs. I looked back at the veranda and noticed that the new fence gave a very clear view of everything on it.
I thought the culprit mightn’t have got too far, and was opening the door of the car to embark on a search when I spied three youths of about fifteen years of age near the local train station. They had a bike with them.
‘Is that the Dude’s bike with those kids?’ I asked transport expert the Breadwinner.
‘Yes,’ came the Breadwinner’s gritted-teeth reply.
Just then, our neighbour, an electrician and former cop, emerged from his house.
‘Some kids have stolen one of our bikes…’ was all our former cop needed to hear before he jumped into his giant Land Rover and sped off Homicide style, the wheels spinning on the asphalt. I began to walk as casually as I could towards the oblivious criminal youths, imagining that I would stroll up next to them, transform before their very eyes into an irate and aggrieved bike owner, and pounce, giving them the scare of their lives. As the scenario played out in my head, the Breadwinner dashed past me in a flurry of limbs and indignation. Then she seemed to get in touch with her inner Tassie bogan:
‘Drop our fuckin’ bike, you cunts!’ she bellowed, loud enough to wake the suburb.
The heads of the lads, clad in hoodies and hip American street gear, all turned at once and then, amazingly, they dropped their fastest means of transport, the bike, and sped off across the railway and into the night. I gathered the bike, the Breadwinner gathered herself and, luckily for the youths, the ex-cop never gathered them.
As for the new fence, aesthetically I would give it a rating of eight out of ten, but a two for practicality.
Dude: I was trying to be good, but my brain wouldn’t let me.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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