Dimmick paid his more reliable members a wage to mix drugs. It wasn’t a ton of cash, but it meant that they could leave their jobs and devote more of their time to the Riders, and less to the outside world. The president fostered this commitment/indoctrination with regular piss-ups, bong nights, trips, strippers, free pros and whatever else he could dream up to keep everyone happy. The house was always well stocked with food, although he could never seem to keep enough piss in the place to keep everyone drunk, now that the bedrooms were full every night.

The daily speed production shift started at dusk, all concerned agreeing that it was safer to cook at night - the temperatures being cooler and their comings and goings less visible. The club’s backyard was big enough to be considered a small paddock, but not so huge that the shed was out of sight of the neighbours on either side. But Dimmick wasn’t about to give his neighbours any reason to complain, and tried to cultivate cordial relations with them. The noise of the bikes was the only thing they had to complain about and, by the looks of them, they had their own reasons not to start a dialogue with the cops.

By three o’clock, about 10 Riders were at the house, many folded into the two non-Squid couches working on the next carton of VB while fighting over one of three video game consoles, a few out the back tinkering with their bikes on the weed-strewn pavers behind the house. A couple had even stopped what they were doing and blithered out to the shed to check on the night’s production like they were supposed to. Read the rest of this entry »

According to the sign, along with a couple of other chi-chi businesses, Duncan J. De Walt worked from an office in a converted two-storey sandstone mansion in the Eastern Suburbs’ cash-cow central – Double Bay.

The guy had been surprisingly accommodating. I decided applying a battering ram to my comfortable two-bedroom fortified bunker could wait, since De Walt had agreed to move things around and see me as soon as I could get over there. He was presuming I wasn’t already around the corner polishing my Lambourghini with $100 notes, I noticed.

I was wondering how many clients a guy who could meet me at a moment’s notice could have, but it was obvious that De Walt was doing very nicely thank you. No Philip Marlowe-style shoebox office above a Chinese takeaway for this gumshoe.

No doubt many a rich, disgruntled socialite had trod the path under the gigantic fig trees before me, their minds humming with plans to have Watts catch hubby boning his personal trainer in order to retain their dignity and retire to the Seychelles with their personal trainer. I followed the discrete signs up a central stone staircase and along a second-floor balcony to De Walt’s quadrant, making a largely useless attempt to straighten up my stinking whites. I could actually see the cartoon stink lines radiating away from my person. Read the rest of this entry »

Got two minutes? Want to improve your writing? Here’s a bite-sized reminder of a few tricks that will help us be better writers.

The news that there’s a writing group perusing this site has prompted me to pull my socks up and put an end to all this self-indulgent tomfoolery. (Coff, gack!) Or, since that’s laughably unlikely, at least engage with those who are keen to improve their fiction writing, and contribute something to the greater good. So,  class of the superinterweb, let’s all (me, especially) reacquaint ourselves with a few tricks of the trade…  Read the rest of this entry »

My brother’s couch should have its own page in the Guinness Book. As far as share house brown couches went the fetid monstrosity took the biscuit, not to mention the car keys, loose change and the odd iced Vo-Vo. “Most Three-Dimensional Stains”, “Most Buttockly Penetrative Springs” and “Stuffing Most Resembling The Great Mountain Ranges Of Europe” - a multiple record-holder.

I was discovering that robbery and attempted murder has a tendency to sap the will to sleep, so I spent what was left of my night alternating between not allowing Sean’s couch to enter my “secret place”, and pacing the hours away and muttering my problems at the muted infomercials on TV.

There was no sense to it. Thieves break into a house, hold some guy hostage and presumably make off with all the electronics, CDs and collectible spoons they can carry. Then they vamoose with their bags marked “swag” to pawn the stuff and search for the next well-tended house in the ‘burbs. OK, I could live with all that.

But why not wait until there’s no-one home, no car out the front. Why shoot up the place, scream and hoo-ha and wake the neighbours? And why does it take the entire line-up of ZZ Top to do it?

I sat there in my baggy-arsed boxers and a threadbare KB Lager T-shirt I’d found in the laundry, itching, scratching, squirming, wondering. Not being a student of petty crime, perhaps the intricacies of the good old-fashioned break and enter were lost on me, but I would have thought the game was more about junkies smashing a window to help themselves to CDs and extra-strength cough syrup than mass organisation and a cast of thousands. 

Neither my brother or his goth-punk flatmate had surfaced by seven - Sean was working strange security guard hours and me banging on the door at 3am all wild-eyed and demanding cab money hadn’t helped - but it was time to beat the feet, even if I was wearing undies with low groinular security and a paint rag T-shirt.

Then another punch in the guts: What do I tell Honen?

Back at the ranch, the ranch may as well have been a prison. Front door locked, windows bolted - it was shut up tighter than a Scotsman’s coin purse.

I bashed on the door until I set dogs barking and the curtains twitching at Mrs Cavanagh’s place. An ear to my door revealed what may have been the faintest of sounds inside, maybe the scrape of a chair - but fuck, it could have come from anywhere. I stood there for a while, unsure of what else I could do. I scouted around the back of the block, among the washing lines and rubbish bins, craning my neck to catch any signs of life up in the bedroom windows, but the windows were dark and blinds drawn. It looked like Karen had even shut the bathroom window I sneakily left ajar for emergencies. You had to go and borrow a bloody long ladder to get up to it, but it’d saved me a couple of cold nights in the car.

Eventually the acrid taint of dogshit on the wind convinced me to give it up. Short of asking my blind and deaf 80-year-old neighbour if she’d seen or heard anything (And, by the way Mrs C, mind if I doss on your couch?), there was no way to tell if Karen was in there or likely to come back. And spending the night with my feet up at Honen’s was preferable to destroying my front door or facing the old crone’s disapproving stare. She already thought I was a bit of a slacker ladies’ man. She was still the only person I’d seen look me in the eye and use the term “ne’er-do-well” in a sentence.

I slunk back to the car, dug out Honen’s details on the scrap of paper he’d given me, and grabbed my mobile. No answer, so I told his voicemail I’d be taking him up on his offer, and selected the sweet sounds of Depeche Mode to calm me on the drive over.

The address led to a surprisingly substantial Art Deco house in North Randwick, one of Sydney’s more recently gentrified Eastern Suburbs. He was renting back in ‘99, so he must have got in before the property boom, after which house prices got much shorter and ended in “m”.

The house wasn’t far from the SCG, just across the other side of Centennial Park. It occurred that I could have been here five minutes after the game had I not chosen the play a round of Storm Curly’s Citadel.

I doublechecked the number on the mailbox, locked the car and sauntered up the garden path. It was a dark brick house on a roomy quarter-acre block.

It was all sizeable front lawn bordered by underlit shrubbery against shining Federation woodwork. I pictured Paul in thongs and Stubbies proudly pushing his mower across the lawn in summer, then winced. That’s probably what happened to Pete Forrest.

I was as natural as a guy with a brick and crowbar, extricating the front door key from a gap in the brickwork where Honen said it’d be.

The door opened silently. “Hello?” No sign of Spicy Joe and Honen would have been at his mystery woman’s by now. I made a mental note to ask what this one’s name was. Time to feed the pooch, clean out the fridge and pass out on the couch in front of a movie. The least action you can have with your pants partially undone.

It was a beautifully restored place, and the more I moved around, the more I realized the bachelor in question had some hobbies that I was unaware of.

I followed the tasteful Persian rug down the 1930s-wide central hallway, pushing open doors, peering in rooms and generally mooching about. A bedroom in maroon and beige with all the Art Deco trimmings, another one in Federation green, the next themed in white, and onto a royal blue and white bathroom with leadlight windows and a claw-footed bath Cleopatra would have been proud to park herself in.

An open-plan living room and dining room, with the Great Wall of Electronics neatly packed into a monolithic entertainment unit. I skirted around a pair of leather couches to fiddle with the boys’ toys. A huge flat screen TV was the centrepiece, flanked by more components than I could name. I prodded a few buttons to no effect. I tweaked a knob, flicked a switch, then noticed a note taped under the TV.

A grenade exploded next to me, followed by the frenzied screams of a panicking crowd. There was a disc rotating somewhere and I’d somehow set the surround sound at an ear-liquifying volume. Bowel-trembling bass was travelling from the floor up my legs, about to conjure the beginnings of a conniption fit. As choppers buzzed past my left ear I spun the biggest dial there was, hit every stop button I could see and tried to control my breathing.

Then fast footsteps, and something hit me from behind.

The rest of the day’s play passed without incident, which was just as well because I was just about ready to expire, especially after being banished to the outfield to chase leather all afternoon. Pity that, at this rate, I’d be doing the evening’s  passing out in a park somewhere.

The game had turned into a bat-fest, us declaring with 600-odd on the board and the Queenslanders well on their way to a squillion of their own.

After the game, I kept my head down in the locker room and skulked off for a shower, hiding under the hot water until my head looked like a walnut. By the time I emerged the place had cleared out a bit and there was no sign of Kat, which was the idea. Probably off doing the post-match media guff – something I’d always been barred from.

Across the room, I nodded at my mate Paul Honen, who was chilling out, gently picking at a big toenail the colour of bitumen. A talented left-arm medium-pacer, he was of a similar size and vintage to me, but had been a fixture in the Blues team for an age, even threatening a national call-up with good hit-outs in various Australia A sides. We’d met at Sydney Uni when he’d been a player from the Glen McGrath school of batting, and I’d offered to work with him on his skills with the willow.

From the ages of 17 to 21 it seemed like all we did was chase skirt, squander precious university resources – the Vice-Chancellor’s words, not mine – and play cricket. For our clubs, for the university, for fun in general. Faced with a lack of any other real skills, apart from the ability to fit a fist in our mouths after half a dozen pre-mixed margaritas, we decided to try our luck as professional sportsmen.

The irony was, my coaching ended up being successful enough to see Honen leave me in his cricketing wake as he rose through the ranks, and we seemed to lose contact outside my stints in the state side.

We’d still been tight when, at age 24, most of the follicles at the front of my pate decided to pogo out of my skull and set off in search of greener pastures in the shower plughole. He hadn’t been the one to coin my chortlicious nickname, but he made sure it stuck.

In fact, as I sat there vigorously toweling my man-parts, I realised we hadn’t spoken much for nearly five years. But good on him. It was fair to say he was always a bit more driven, and a lot more ruthless than I was, so good luck to him.

When he’d finished examining his fetid foot he came over, kitbag in one hand, Hector protector in the other, towel round the middle. He dropped Hector and held out his hand.

“Curly. Nice innings for an old fella. We haven’t had a proper catch-up up since you’ve been back.”

There was no option but to shake. “Er… Yeah, cheers, mate. Nice to middle a few. A bit unlucky, I thought.” I ran the hand across my own towel.

“Doesn’t matter, mate. The final beckons.” He was cheery, but seemed to be skirting around something, looking for an approach. I left the air dead. I suspected I knew what was coming, and wasn’t about to help him fill it with the point.

“Mate, that hoo-ha with your missus at lunch… Maybe we can help each other out.”

At lunch, I was putting a brave face on things. At the long players’ table in the Members’ dining room there were two topics of conversation: the likely brevity of “Shattered” Simpson’s cricket career, and my freak dismissal. I was in no mood to contribute to either.

Instead, I sat inhaling tuna and salad sarnies among the other grazers and concentrating on putting a half-century gloss on my 39 my sheer cheery force of will.

Showing the compassion of a Nazi brownshirt, Jimmy Maher was sashaying down the memory lane of freak dismissals, arriving at the MCG in 1982/83 for the Fourth Ashes Test. You remember: Thommo edged one to Chris Tavare who parried it to fellow slipper Geoff Miller, breaking a 70-run last-wicket stand to win the Test by four runs. Someone else brought up Mark Taylor’s “Moscow circus” catch on his back right here against the Windies in ‘96.

I kept my head down and jaw working.

Then the chat stopped abruptly; I glanced up to see all eyes on me.

I re-fixed my grin, until I worked out the focus of attention was behind me.

Karen. In the Members’ Bar. In the Members’ Pavilion. At the SCG. In a skimpy summer dress, caught between presenting her best side to the assembled talent and boring her dead stare into me.

My eyes were drawn down her bare legs to the duffel bag beside them, glands squirting electricity.

“Kaz… what’s… How did you get in?”

“I got the security man at the back entrance to run an errand for me.”

The poor bastard. Whatever this scene was, odds-on it wouldn’t end well. The guy may as well trot off all the way to the dole office.

A clock ticked. Two rows of staring cows chewed their cud around me. Askew on my chair, my grin was starting to hurt. “So. We’ll be getting back out there soon.”

Jimmy Maher piped up again, nodding at the clock. “Another 20 minutes, Curls.”

“Cheers, mate. What are you, the talking clock?”

I turned back to the wolf in girlfriend clothing. “So, how are… things?”

Karen flashed her vacuous smile. “I just came to return the rest of your stuff.” She unzipped the bag at her feet and shook the contents into the carpet – jocks, toiletries, a few trophies, and it looked like my entire top shelf of ’80s albums - CD and rare vinyl.

She flung the bag aside with a flourish and stabbing a toe at the shiny pile – Did she even remember to flex her calf for the boys? Good God – and added, “I knew you’d be suffering without your decade of drivel. When you can move on with your life, let me know. Since you’re moving out, I’ve already changed the locks.”

Delivered like a Bold and the Beautiful bit player.

I looked at the pile, nearly hysterical. “First off, there is no Supertramp or Dexys Midnight Runners here. And by the way, I own the fucking unit!”

The chewing stopped. Behind the wide mahogany bar, a glass shattered; in front of it I thought I heard a distinguished-looking member lose a small fart of shock.

All I could do was sit there, white with rage, and suck it up. In a room full of blokes, misty eyes, glossy lips and a smattering of wounded indignance was all she needed.

The electronic pen scribbles across the TV screen.

Now. Keep in mind the Bulls’ Chris Simpson has his eyes on the ball at this point. Clearly even if he manages to catch the ball – here – he’ll have to step on the boundary rope – here – to do so. Now if we shuttle forward: he doesn’t pull out… look at how he’s still making very good ground and … he’s at full tilt and twisting to his right, his eyes have never left the ball… he sticks out his hands, opens his mouth and…

I’m still mid-pitch, bat wilting, as the ball sticks. Simpson is a hero, but a hero that’s out of control. I get up on my toes to watch as he sums up the situation and flings the ball back over his head just before he treads on the squishy boundary rope. Now, do I watch the ball or Simpson?

I watch the kid turn his ankle and skid on the side of his foot, sliding in the splits position, headed straight for a knee-liquefying collision with the fence. The crowd holds its breath.

Simpson doesn’t disappoint.

To avoid shattering his ankle in the boundary gutter he leaps, but that only means the advertising hoarding catches him across the shins and helicopters him into the crowd.

Next time you’re having one of those spirited conversations down the pub over a coldie or seven, and someone questions the commitment of the modern sportsperson, how they’re just grasping prima donnas chasing their next six-figure contract, two words: Chris Simpson. I guarantee every male shifts in his seat, winces and changes the subject.

The rest doesn’t bear thinking about: Clinton Perron sprints in from mid-on, dives for Simpson’s over-head throw and collects it inches from the grass. The crowd applauds. Celebrations begin, blah, blah, etc.

If the replays were tedious at home, try being out in the middle. We must have stood around for 10 minutes watching replays on the big screen, unsure whether Simpson got rid of the ball in time or Perron got his paws under it before it touched turf. And was the whole farrago even legal anyway?

Eventually the stretcher left and red light came on - the third umpire, match referee, Pope, and Chancellor of the Exchequer all in agreement that I was a dead duck.

By that time we’d all gone over to tut and say nice things while the unconscious Simpson was scraped onto a stretcher.

And all the while I’m thinking, Thirty-nine is a solid effort, right?