Back in the Daze

                       

We couldn't afford emotions. Well not complicated ones anyway. A friend of mine was wistful for a couple of days, but both his parents were lawyers. I remember being unhappy but that was only for a day and I had to scrimp for months. As for complicated crap like feeling "conflicted", forget about it. We just didn't have the money. My parents had to save up for ten years just to be in debt. You lot have got no idea what it was really like: long brutal hours in the coal mines,  little kids forced to clean chimneys, orphans dying in the street - reading Dickens was pure hell.

No-one talks about it anymore but there was bugger all gravity around until about 1957. True. My mother spent half her time running around glueing us to the floor . The fact is that the space race was mostly about getting out there and bringing back some gravity. We didn't want the Russians to have it all. You kids have no idea what it's like working without enough gravity. Those old sepia photographs you see from like 1890 or whenever and it looks like everyone's really serious ? Not so. Just concentrating really hard on not floating away. And we had no colour anyway. Not until 1943. Of course I wasn't born then but we were so poor we had to keep living in an old black and white area. We couldn't afford colour till about 1986. Didn't matter though because the war was in black and white. Not everyone realises that. And let's not forget who actually won the Second World War. That's right it was Carlton. No, just shitting you, actually it was Collingwood.

We may not have had much but we were happy. It was probably all the drugs they filled us up with. Mum loved all those natural remedies: opium, alcohol, cocaine. All good stuff from mother earth, she'd say. At least I think that's what she was saying. She was trashed. And she spoke Russian most of the time. Everyone in the eastern suburbs did back then. Not many people know that. And we ate coal. And loved it.

The war was great. I died for you bastards. Had my brain blown out.

(And if any reader can tell me where that joke was stolen from, there's prizes. I need the name of the show, and the name of at least one person in the sketch. Post it on my facebook page. Go to Jeff Browett.  WIN WIN WIN)

I have to go now. I borrowed this brain for half an hour & its owner wants it back. And no, I can't imagine what for either.