Sample Dialogue 2
I’m having lunch in a railway station café, often a dangerous proposition, but in this instance, they’ve passed the Fruit Salad Test. The way I see it, if an establishment’s fruit salad is almost entirely composed of three types of melon, if you’re largely eating water compressed into red and orange, but mostly green, cubes, then the chef is not to be trusted. Who knows what corners he’ll cut with a sandwich? But here, today, the fruit salad pleasingly features more than a token ladling of fresh strawberries, and is generously smattered with wheels of pineapple and kiwifruit. There’s even a rivulet of boysenberries snaking its way down the west face. These people know what they’re doing.
But, just as I pick up my fork, the chair opposite mine scrapes back, and an elderly woman materialises at my table, wearing thick, cord-secured half-glasses. Her only consort is a packet of cigarettes. This, she carefully places on the tiny table, mere inches from my plate, and proceeds to fixate upon, as though it might, at any moment, do a runner. She doesn’t acknowledge me and makes no attempt to start a conversation.
I return to my paper, and thirty seconds later a large chicken roll is delivered to, what I now realise is, our table. Apparently, we’re having lunch together.
A further minute passes, and then two other old broads, in CWA sunfrocks, plant themselves at the table to our left. One of them, the leader, leans down and addresses my ‘date’.
‘You wanna move your chair over with us?’
Their table can barely contain the two hot lunches currently steaming atop it, so my companion shakes her head and grunts something to the effect that she’s fine where she is. The other two both stare at me, like I should maybe move to another table, but there isn’t one vacant. I hunch down and pretend to be engrossed in the news that someone called ‘Richo’ has retired.
Before commencing their lunches, the other two carefully dismantle their ‘foccacias’ and subject them to a CSI-style analysis.
‘They haven’t spared the avocado,’ sniffs one, disapprovingly.
‘Same here,’ chimes in my one. ‘It’s overdone, if you ask me.’
I look up. They’re all looking at me like the avocado thing is somehow my doing.
Eventually, they embark on their rolls, and nothing is said for five more minutes, save for the occasional qualitative assessment of the fare.
‘Not too bad. How’s yours?’
‘S’all right.’
‘They haven’t held back on the mayonnaise.’
My one contributes nothing, and returns her gaze to the packet of fags.
After a dessert course for all of us, and coffee, I fold my paper and prepare to vacate. For a few uncertain seconds, I’m uncertain as to whether I should say goodbye. In twenty minutes we’ve not exchanged a word. I figure a simple ‘Well, have a nice day’ will cover everything but, as I start to draw breath, she stops chewing and, for the first time, fixes me in the eye, and roughly shakes her head, as if to say, ‘No. Just say nothing and get out.’
Her friends, too, have stopped eating and, as I gather my things, I can’t resist saying to them, ‘Same time tomorrow, then?’
No one laughs. This is nothing new.
***
I’m at the bank, continuing to fly the flag for old-school passbook holders everywhere, when the teller, a spectacled beanstalk curling nicely into his early fifties, flashes me a look of recognition.
‘Hang on, you’re off the telly, aren’t you?’
‘Um…’
‘I’ve seen you on that show, Bike Du Jour.’
What? I’m genuinely stymied.
‘Bike Du Jour?’
‘Yeah, Bike Du Jour. On the ABC.’
‘Bike of the Day? What would that even be?’
‘I’m sure it’s you.’
‘Every day I bring out a different bike?’
For ten minutes I just sit in the car, and then, finally, I realise he means ADbc on SBS. There’s an occasional segment called ‘Plat Du Jour’. Food from history, cooked and presented to a panel of guests. But never a bicycle. Not even a picture of one, in twenty-six episodes.
***
‘Have you seen that film?’ I ask the cab driver, referring to an ad blaring from his radio.
‘What film, mate?’
‘Mao’s Last Dancer?’ I reply.
‘Mao’s Last Answer?’ he responds.
‘No, Dancer’, I say. ‘Mao’s Last Dancer.’
‘Nah, mate, they were just talking about it. Mao’s Last Answer.’
‘That’s just the way they were saying it. It’s Last Dancer. Like the book.’
‘Nah, mate. Last Answer.’
‘Hang on, what do you think it’s about?’
‘Dunno, mate. But Last Answer makes more sense than Last Dancer.’
I drop it. I don’t want footage of me in a headlock, with an enraged cab driver screaming a mispronounced film title into my bloodied ear, to end up on the internet.
But what did he think the plot was? Chairman Mao on the Beijing version of Millionaire, phoning a friend to ask, ‘Who was the maid in The Brady Bunch?’
‘Just here, thanks.’
‘Nineteen bucks, mate.’
‘There you go.’
‘It’s Last Answer.’
‘I’m telling you, it’s Dancer.’
‘See ya, mate.’
‘Bye.’
‘Answer.’
‘Dancer!’
***
It’s three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon when the phone rings. After a rushed hello, the producer of a local radio program says, ‘Dunno if you’ve heard, but Don Lane’s dead.’
I hadn’t heard. An image flashes through my head: Lane’s famous on-air stoush with James Randi. He yells, ‘You can piss off!’, before sweeping everything off the coffee table and proceeding to ‘piss off’ himself. But what I always remember is, despite seeming to have lost control, Don, ever the professional, still manages to add ‘and we’ll be back after this break, with Diana Trask!’ before storming off the set of his own show.
‘And we were wondering,’ adds the producer, ‘whether you’d like to come in and do an on-air tribute?’
‘But I never knew Don Lane,’ I protest. ‘He wasn’t on in New Zealand and by the time I moved here, his show was already off the air. Although I do remember him always missing the basketball hoop on Late Nite Oz. Oh, and You’ve Got To Be Joking, of course. I think I may have been asked to be a “Celebrity Prankster”.’
‘Didn’t you work with him on The Late Show?’
‘Very briefly. He sang the final song in the last episode.’
‘Right. Would you like to come in and talk about that?’
‘But there’s nothing, really, to say.’
As I say this, I’m recalling, and feeling sick about, a particularly cruel joke at Don’s expense that appears on the inner sleeve of one of the old D-Generation albums. And I think Tom Gleisner and I may have been responsible for a sketch about the ‘Don Lane Coffee Table Book’ with its ‘machine-washable cover’.
‘Just one anecdote would be enough,’ says the, clearly desperate, producer.
Don’s appearance on The Late Show was sixteen years ago. I give her the only thing I can recall.
‘I do remember that after the song, after the credits had rolled and the audience had left, we were all in the make-up room cleaning up. It had only just hit us that this was the end of the show, probably forever. Everyone went very quiet. Nobody knew what to say.’
‘This is good. We can use this. Where does Don come in?’
‘Well, it was all very solemn. No one had said anything for a couple of minutes, when suddenly a production assistant burst in and said, in a very loud voice, “Has anyone seen Don’s Hair In A Can?”.’
There’s silence on the line. Then: ‘Ri-ight…’
‘That’s it. That’s all I remember.’
‘Okay. Do you have a number for Pete Smith?’
***
I’m walking past the vet’s, the one where I have, on occasion, had to take my dog, a labrador, for a ‘weigh-in’. (Her customary ‘walk of shame’ back to the car speaks to the usual result.) But, on this occasion, I don’t have the dog with me. I wonder if anyone would mind if I popped in and weighed myself on the big scales in the foyer? I’m guessing they won’t even notice.
‘Excuse me, sir, what are you doing? Where’s your animal?’
‘Um, she’s at home. I was just…’
‘It’s not for people. Why are you here?’
‘I was just using…er…’
‘You came in just to weigh yourself?’
‘I was walking past and…’
‘Feel free to bring your animal in anytime,’ she says, pointedly. But it’s the second time she’s referred to my ‘animal’ and I feel I really should say something.
But I don’t. I just step off the scales and leave.
This, I think, is progress.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). Click here to see an extended version of his video shops report from ‘The 7PM Project’.
Back
