Is it wrong to brew tea in a moccasin?

Hello friends,

I'm sitting here at Dog central watching the elves having a fairy bong, trying not to breathe in the heady brew of mushrooms and tinsel that they pack in their tiny silver cones.
I don't really mind that its a bit cramped in the smokey, curly booted office where I work or that the place is lit with glow worms (although replacing them with those curly, energy efficient worms was a bit of a pain in the arse) as the elves are generally a good hearted bunch who refuse to carry mobile phones.

There is just one phone here, quietly resting in the corner. It is a large thing with a proper dial and no hash key.
If there's someone here when it bo-jangles, it gets answered. If not, it just rings it's tin tits off to the sky.
No answering machine either.
"Just another pain in the arse " say the elves .

And they are right.
Mobile phones turn you into a horrible parasitic creature that lives on miscommunication and suckles on battery life.
To add insult to insolvency you then work twenty-eleven hours a day to pay for the inconvenience of being harassed by every ning nong who forgets which end of the pencil makes the writing happen and rings you up to ask where the gear box on the kettle is.
It now takes 14 finger draining calls to meet with someone to have a cup of coffee.
You pay $104.50 a minute to say nothings like "I'm at the tram stop wearing a hat" and "I'll be ten minutes late. Order me a Foamachino and a slice of Lo Fat treacle spam".

"Humans are dickheads too stupid to realise it" say the elves "They love shooting themselves in the foot and then complaining about uncomfortable shoes". Once again, can't argue.
But they seem to think I'm ok and treat me with the same respect circus audiences treat Orang-utans who can ride a small motorbike and blow insouciant raspberries on cue.

I looked at the calendar the other day and realised that before too long I'll be cranking over the big 40.
It's that time of life where your body starts to give you the shits and you are in the free floating zone where young people's taste in everything is still ear blisteringly awful and yet you still can't quite admit to yourself you've become a conservative, multi chinned curmudgeon who thinks people with loud motor cars should be beaten to death with their own missing mufflers.

I think they call it middle age because everything seems to be in the philosophical mid ground.
Your passions have been tempered by insistent hangovers, you shop at IKEA for your dreams because they are easier to assemble and love becomes a dog that was cute as a puppy but now tends to wheeze a bit when it's on the job and unfailingly drops it's romantic guts at the dinner table.

You suddenly become your own micro barometer, able to detect draughts four rooms away and scurry about like a mad Breeze Goblin to stuff towels up things, marvelling at your own ingenuity but fretting about extra washing.

You see adds for full length wedding scarves and admire the forethought, chucking to yourself about how many chilly receptions you been privy to.
Spacious underpants become a small oasis of calm after years of squeezing your gooligans into censorious pants designed to take a foot hopping hour to get out of when you finally manage to wrangle a live one back to your flat.

( How many years off my life have I spend ruining the "Vibe, man..." by trying to unlace a sneaker, remove a pair of Houdini designed trap daks and take my jocks off over my head all at the same time? That bizarre, frugging barn dance you do when you try to get naked at the speed of sound. The way everything in your room can be smashed to erotic smithereens by a falling horny idiot because you decided that lace up chaps would pull the chicks and, now they have, they have left you springing around the broken room, tugging at buckles and braces as your nads turns blue and she reads a book. I wonder....)

You see, not so long ago I was a vibrant and brassy young bastard I could live in denuded tree and piss on my own foot to keep warm.
I seemed to be like a marvellous ape who could live on pan scrapings and still dance all night like a jigging Ferris wheel.
I remember one Summer where I walked nude through the Simpson desert because i thought some chick on the other side would give up her charming groceries when I arrived, even if I was burnt to a heroic crisp and my doodle was aflame with butane desire.

I lived in share houses in the 90's where the roof was often optional.
I remember one place where it blew off completely during a Liberal Government induced hurricane and we were too stoned to notice.
I was rained on repeatedly and all I did was shout out that God was a pussy and if that's all He had in store for me He could go suck a fart.
One year on the dole I think I lived on beer and lawn clippings. I also made a garish humpy out of floorboards and steam and lived there, happy as a millionaire clam.

Now, as I approach my trenchant 4th decade, I find I desperately own an electric blanket made from synthetic kitten fur and often get buzzing cramps in my ear holes if I hop in the shower too soon.
My knees mangle at me like bruised accordions. My neck will suddenly lock if I look to the left too quickly on frigid mornings when I ramble to the coffee shop.
The kind and beautiful girls there take pity on me and pour frothed milk on my head until my vertebrae thaws.
This means I don't have to spend the day walking around like a jazz crab that shuffles sideways and makes be-bop screams when It trips over things.

I look at old photos of myself, practically living in the bins and yodelling with joy.
I found an old snapshot the other day where I'd burnt my hair off with a toaster to protest the high price of hair cuts.
Another showed me doing a wheelie on a motorbike down the dairy aisle in Coles because I thought the cheese looked lonely.
I find old curled bits of news paper with "Local artist does Macbeth with dick" and "Man eats cloud" adorned with black and white shots of me, my wing wang pushed through a Scottish castle drawn in texta or hanging upside down from a biplane with my mouth open wearing a provocative t-shirt reading "Fuck you gravity!"

"Who was this screaming rascal?" I think as I measure my Milo-lite into my "Yay for Talk Back Radio! " cup, with the free teaspoon I won after being able to name all the characters in Dad's Army during an ABC lunchtime quiz.
Where has this mad beast of a man gone? What's on television? Did I put the bins out? Maybe I should turn the heater up? Who are you people and what are doing in my house???????

"I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled".
T.S Elliot wrote that and it's still a beaut line.

I do like the idea there's some dude who looks in the mirror one day realises he's now officially an elder citizen and says "Bugger it! I'm bringing the ankles out!" and so he does, rolling up the breeches until his knobbly shanks pop out like really budget fireworks.
I imagine him strutting down to the post office the day he realises that it's all over, the terrible pressure that evolution puts on you to root and achieve and go like the clappers and have moderns opinions and to dress in fashions you didn't make yourself out of curtains, all of that vibrant nonsense passed on to somebody else.

I like to see him walking past pretty girls and just being happy such lovely things exist, his ankles gleaming in the morning sun, dogs sniffing them in furry headed amiability as if his whole legs were dandy newspapers.

I see this venerable cat, a body replete with much panel beating and re-sprays, his joints needing regular WD40'ing, his eyes on permanent low beam, rolling through the day like a stately old Kingswood, scratching his arse at will and parking for long periods of time in warm spots where the grass has perfumed itself with mower fumes, while birds conduct their trilling choruses about rooting and bees, wondering how he got here and thinking about making soup for lunch.


Til next time

Mick "Get that helicopter off my lawn you goddamn kids!" Dog