‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s all calm down. Let’s remember we’re guests here in this idyllic paradise.’
I reached down to pick up my camera. It wasn’t there. A large spider had just eaten it. The spider took a step towards me. It wanted my binoculars.
‘Run,’ I yelled to the kids.
We ran, crashing through the lush undergrowth. Leeches the size of drinking straws leapt up at us. Fruit-sucking moths the size of fruit swooped down on us. Green pythons the size of green pythons (the big ones) stuck their tongues out at us.
‘Wow,’ said the kids. ‘You didn’t tell us rainforests were this exciting.’
Exhausted, dripping with sweat and the rather unpleasant substance that double-eyed fig-parrots exude from their bottoms, I collapsed onto a large moss-covered rock.
The rock moved. It was a giant tree frog looking for a tree that could support its weight.
‘Arghhh,’ I yelled. ‘Please, don’t hurt us, we’re a protected species.’
We ran again. I led the way, sinking into swamps, struggling with giant ferns, wrestling my way past orchids that kept giving me karate kicks.
The kids stayed on the walking track.
Finally we reached the carpark.
I hugged the car with relief for a while, then took a deep breath and turned to the kids.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there you have it. The tropical rainforest, nature’s most precious gift to the planet.’
‘And,’ said Maddy, ‘her most threatened one.’
Dylan nodded in agreement.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Even as we stand here, watching my ankles being nibbled by Herbert River ringtail possums, rainforests all over the world are being burned, chopped, mulched and bulldozed.’
The kids looked at me.
‘We agree those things are awful, Dad,’ said Maddy. ‘But they’re definitely not the biggest threat to rainforests.’
I didn’t understand what she meant.
The kids opened the car and made me sit inside it with a book. Then they went back into the rainforest without me.
Saturday, 16 January
Normally we all feel a bit down in the dumps at the end of a holiday, but not today. We’re all very excited.
We’ve just got our first dog.
She arrived this morning. I think I was even more excited than the kids. The confusion. The noise. The joyful howls (the dog). The puddles on the carpet (me).
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s only tea. Come on, we’ve got a dog to look after.’
I’d read all the dog-care manuals, so I knew exactly what to do first.
Give her a feed.
‘Better let us do that, Dad,’ said the kids, taking the bowl. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
I was indignant. The dog was indignant.
‘Why?’ I demanded.
‘Because,’ whispered Maddy so the dog wouldn’t hear, ‘you’re hopeless with pets.’
I was deeply hurt.
‘That goldfish,’ I retorted, ‘died of a bad cold.’
The kids looked at me sternly.
‘It died,’ said Dylan, ‘because of what you fed it.’
I was even more indignant.
‘The box had pictures of fish on it,’ I said. ‘How was I to know it was cat food?’
The kids looked sad. The dog looked nervous.
I took her for a walk round the block.
‘We’ll do that,’ called the kids, running to catch up. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
I boiled with indignation. The dog tried to hand them the lead.
‘You’re not being fair,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had a single accident taking a dog for a walk round the block. Or a fruit bat. Or a blue-tongue lizard.’
‘That’s right,’ said Dylan sadly. ‘Just a mouse. What on earth possessed you to throw that stick and tell our mouse to fetch it?’
‘With a hungry cat on the loose,’ said Maddy. ‘Whose dinner you’d just fed to the goldfish.’
Before I could answer, I realised I was holding an empty lead.
The dog had disappeared.
We found her up a tree, trembling with fear.
The kids managed to coax her down, but only after I’d made a promise. That when I enrol the dog in training and obedience classes, I’ll enrol as well. Ten weeks for the dog, twelve for me.
Sunday, 17 January
I try to be a good dad, but there are some skills I just don’t have. Like watching TV while I’m being stared at. Specially by a dog with a lead in her mouth and two kids with cricket bats in theirs.
‘Dad,’ said the kids, ‘you promised you’d take us to the park.’
‘Wmpf,’ agreed the dog.
‘Please don’t talk with your mouths full,’ I said. ‘I promised we’d go after I’ve finished watching The Bill.’
‘But Dad,’ they wailed, ‘we thought you meant one episode on telly, not two hundred and eighty-seven episodes on DVD.’
I sighed.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to concentrate.’
I turned back to episode fifteen. Or was it sixteen? This was criminal.
‘We’ll go after I’ve finished watching The Bill,’ I said firmly, ‘and nothing you can say will make me change my mind.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said the kids. ‘But if you don’t get any exercise, you’ll die.’
It was pouring with rain in the park, but I didn’t care because I took a brilliant diving catch.
‘Howzat!’ I yelled through the mud.
The umpire shook her head.
‘Wmpf,’ she said, licking her bottom.
On the way home I decided there must be a way to combine telly and exercise and mud-free nostrils.
That night I experimented.
‘Who wants a lolly?’ I asked, tossing one up and swinging my table-tennis bat.
It was a big success with the kids. They’re such quick learners. When I told them they could have dinner in front of the TV, they just sat there with their mouths open so I could lob the rissoles in with a squash racket and whack the peas in with a golf club.
‘Let him, Mum,’ they squealed happily. ‘It’s exercise.’
My dear wife rolled her eyes in that loving way of hers. And later in the evening, when I tried to feed the dog and sliced my shot with the pool cue and put a can of dog food through the TV screen in the middle of episode nineteen of The Bill, she smiled approvingly.
Thursday, 21 January
Our new goldfish arrived yesterday. And our new telly. We all sat down and watched the news. There was a report about how most men let their wives buy their clothes because they have no idea about fashion.
The family were looking at me and nodding. Which was unfair.
‘I spilt sauce on my shirt at lunch,’ I said. ‘That’s the only reason I’m wearing this green garbage bag.’
Today I decided to show them I do know about fashion. So I went shopping and bought myself a shirt. A very fashionable colourful bright one.
‘Absolutely you, sir,’ said the menswear assistant, putting on a second pair of sunglasses.
I squinted at my reflection. I looked like I’d just staggered out of an explosion in a paint factory.
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Computer screens have got millions of colours, right?’ said the assistant. ‘Well, this shirt’s got even more millions. Definitely suits you, sir. The greens match your complexion.’
I wore it home. Cars swerved, buses ran into each other, and a light plane made a forced landing dragged down by the temporarily blinded birds clinging to its wings.
Not really. As if one shirt could cause a reaction like that.
Except at our place.
When I walked in, the whole family dived for cover, including the dog.
‘Dad,’ winced the kids, shielding their eyes with thick metal baking trays. ‘Take it off. All the neighbours are closing their curtains.’
Patiently I explained why I
needed to leave the shirt on. I was going to their school tonight for a parent–teacher meeting, and I was worried the teachers would lose interest and start chatting among themselves.
‘Bright colours grab people’s attention,’ I said. ‘Look at fire engines, and The Wiggles.’
‘Dad,’ sighed the kids, shielding the goldfish’s eyes with lolly wrappers. ‘When our teachers cop an eyeful of that shirt, they won’t be giving you attention, they’ll be giving you detention.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘Teachers are tough, specially around the eyeballs.’
I was right. At school tonight I had the teachers’ attention from the moment I walked in.
‘So,’ I said to Dylan’s class teacher. ‘How’s Dylan going with maths?’
She just kept staring at the shirt. Her lips were moving, and for a second I thought she was answering my question, but she wasn’t.
‘One million,’ she was murmuring. ‘Two million, three million …’
Saturday, 23 January
The judge looked at me sternly. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘you have been charged with one of the most serious crimes ever to be tried in this courtroom. How do you plead?’
The public gallery was packed and the jury was staring at me accusingly. My mouth felt like a sandpit in the Simpson Desert.
‘Not guilty,’ I croaked. ‘I’m innocent. I didn’t do it. Honest.’
The prosecutor was on her feet. ‘I put it to you,’ she said, ‘that on the fourteenth of November last, at bedtime, you read your children The Twits by Roald Dahl and that you wilfully and intentionally left out the bit about the wormy spaghetti because you didn’t want to miss the start of the footy on telly.’
‘Not true,’ I cried. ‘It wasn’t footy, it was netball.’
The jury stared at me without blinking. Stuffed toys can be very stern.
I put my head in my hands.
‘All right,’ I moaned, ‘I admit it. I couldn’t bear to read all of The Twits again. I’d read it 127 times in the past year.’
My son took the witness stand.
‘That wasn’t the worst example,’ he said to the prosecutor. ‘In July, Dad read us War And Peace and all we got was, Once upon a time there was a war, and then there was peace, the end.’
‘I couldn’t stand it again,’ I moaned. ‘Not for the eleventh time.’
‘And was that,’ said the prosecutor to her brother, ‘the same week he read us Ode To A Nightingale by the very famous English poet John Keats?’
Dylan looked at her sadly. ‘He said it was Keats, but we just didn’t think that, Tweet tweet OK kids time to settle down now The Bill’s started, sounded much like a classic poem.’
It was a long trial.
I was found guilty.
While the main witness for the prosecution returned to his judge’s chair and put his fluffy toilet-seat-cover wig back on, I looked pleadingly at the jury for mercy.
Nothing.
The jury foreman, who’d taken her prosecutor’s dressing gown off, explained to me that the jury was pushing for a long sentence, except for one of the fluffy pink teddies, who wanted death.
Fortunately the judge didn’t agree.
He sentenced me to nineteen years hard labour.
I knew what that meant. Nineteen years hard labour each night before bedtime.
I groaned and reached for The Twits.
Sunday, 24 January
I’ve always encouraged the kids to stand up for what they know is right, and I’m pleased to say I think I’ve succeeded.
Take today for example.
‘We want you to promise,’ the kids said to me this morning, ‘to look after our polluted planet and not make any more unnecessary trips in the car.’
‘I promise,’ I said.
They opened the boot and let me out.
‘Because let’s face it, Dad,’ said Maddy, ‘you are very lazy when it comes to walking.’
‘Not any more,’ I protested. ‘This week I did the supermarket shopping on foot.’
‘Only partly,’ said Dylan. ‘You got exhausted between Frozen Foods and Breakfast Cereals and hitched a ride on someone’s trolley.’
Kids, they don’t miss anything.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘But on Friday I went to the dentist on foot.’
‘Part of the way,’ said Maddy. ‘We had to carry you the last fifty metres, as usual.’
I gave a sigh. Which turned into a gasp when the kids said they wanted us to do our trip to the museum today by public transport.
‘By leaving the car at home and taking the train,’ said Maddy, ‘we’ll be reducing our consumption of scarce fossil fuels and our emission of harmful gases.’
I think that’s what she said. I’d locked myself in the car after the word ‘train’.
‘It’s not a long drive,’ I mouthed through the windscreen. ‘Just a couple of litres of unleaded.’
Using hand signals and the karaoke amplifier, the kids reminded me about our previous car trip into the city. After driving there (2.3 litres), we’d looked for a parking spot (19.7 litres). Failing to find one, we’d parked on the footpath (8.6 litres – it was a high kerb). We’d returned from the museum to find a parking ticket on the car (5.2 litres attending court to dispute the fine, 164 litres getting the car back from Bundaberg after it was stolen from outside the courtroom).
The kids had made their point.
We were on the platform in plenty of time for the 12.15 train to the city. So were lots of other families with environmentally stubborn kids like mine.
A metallic voice crackled above us.
‘The 12.15 train to the city is running eighty-seven minutes late due to running into the back of the 11.47 which was running thirty-one minutes late due to the driver being late to work due to the trains running late.’
I took a deep breath.
Boy, it’s not easy treating our planet with care and respect. I still haven’t forgotten the fiasco with our new solar hot-water system. I mean, where in the owner’s manual does it say, Don’t put block-out cream on the solar panels?
On the platform the kids made a pensioner squeeze up on a bench so I could sit down.
‘Try and relax, Dad,’ they said. ‘Getting angry and breathing heavily increases your carbon output and contributes to global warming.’
The 11.28 arrived soon after one o’clock and we travelled into town.
At the museum there was an old train on display. I asked the staff if it could be returned to service, possibly at 12.15 each day. They explained it was too old. They said they were, however, expecting a newer train which had been donated last year but which was running thirty-seven weeks late.
When we arrived at the city station for the trip home, the platform was packed. The train arrived on time. Applause broke out. The kids told me to stop as I was the only one doing it.
‘See?’ they said. ‘Public transport isn’t so bad.’
Then we noticed that the train had only half the usual number of carriages.
‘We always run smaller trains on the weekend,’ said a railway employee as he disappeared under the surging mob.
We were packed in like sardines in a really small bit of ocean.
The kids didn’t mind, but I was thin-lipped the entire trip home. I tried not to be, but I had someone’s umbrella hooked into one corner of my mouth and someone else’s two-year-old hooked into the other.
We managed to struggle off the train three stops past ours. We made it back to the station carpark before midnight. The car had been stolen.
I’m writing this while I wait for the train to Bundaberg.
It’s running thirty-eight minutes late.
Luckily the kids aren’t here to check my breathing.
Can’t Complain
As soon as the waiter put Petal’s plate on the table in front of her, Petal knew that breakfast was going to turn ugly.
The mushrooms were sliced.
Piffle, thought Petal.
It wasn’t fair. The eggs were perfect, the bacon was brilliant, the sausage was dandy and the tomato was tops. You could see why this was Mum and Dad’s favourite cafe.
It was just the mushrooms.
Petal glanced at Mum and Dad. Maybe she could eat the mushrooms very quickly, before Mum and Dad noticed them. It was possible. Dad was busy on his phone, complaining to a clothing manufacturer that the label on his underpants was too scratchy. Mum was on her phone too, texting a complaint to the neighbours about their squeaky garage door.
Petal grabbed her fork.
Too late.
‘Those mushrooms are sliced,’ said Mum, frowning. ‘You asked for them not sliced.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Petal. ‘Honest.’
‘The waiter asked if you wanted them sliced or not sliced,’ said Mum. ‘And you said not sliced.’
‘I just said that because he asked,’ said Petal. ‘I don’t mind, really.’
Dad put his phone down.
‘I’ll send them back,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘I think Petal should do it.’
Dad thought about this and nodded.
‘Mum’s right,’ he said to Petal. ‘You should send them back.’
Petal sighed.
Coming to a cafe for a cooked breakfast was meant to be a school holiday treat, but this wasn’t feeling like a treat any more.
‘Please,’ said Petal. ‘It’s OK. I like mushrooms sliced or not sliced. I don’t mind how they’re done.’
Mum sighed. So did Dad.
‘Petal,’ said Mum. ‘You’ve got to stop this ridiculous everything’s-OK-in-the-world attitude. Everything’s not OK, and the world won’t improve until more people speak up. You’ve got to start complaining more, Petal.’
Petal wanted to complain now.
She wanted to complain to Mum and Dad that they were making her life a misery with their nonstop complaining. She wanted to tell them that the world would be much more OK if it wasn’t full of people getting cross and arguing and fighting. And complaining about mushrooms.
But she didn’t.
Mum and Dad always won arguments. And then complained about how Petal wasn’t very good at arguing.