No further postings

 There won't be any further postings on this blog. Please go to brucemcalister.com

A Belt, A Bra And A Harpy

 This is a true, but short tale about an incident that happened at Woollies, yesterday.

First of all, a little bit of information that will make sense later. When I wear jeans, I hold them up with braces (suspenders), This just stops the jeans ending up around my ankles, while walking around in public. I also wear a belt, which is just just for appearances, because I think jeans without a belt looks wrong.

Yesterday, my wife and I were doing a bit of food shopping in Woollies and were waiting at the fairly crowded Deli counter, when I was approached by an elderly woman and her female friend. I think they were in their late sixties. I didn't ask their ages because it would have been rude and I didn't care.

In a voice, just loud enough to carry to all the other shoppers at the counter, she said, "Why are you waring a belt AND braces together? A bit un-neccesary, don't you think?"All went very quiet and I thought, "What the f***?". I then noticed that she had quite a large bust, so I replied, "I may not need to wear a belt and you certainly don't need to wear a bra. I'm pretty certain that you could tuck them into your panty hose, without too much effort".

Some of the guys, standing at the counter started to laugh. One even clapped. The elderly lady was visibly angry and stormed off, saying that she was going to write a letter to the Woollies' manager. She was probably going to ask him if he wore a belt and braces at the same time, too,

A few minutes later, while still walking around the store and shopping, my wife had had time to mentally process what had just happened and she started to giggle. Loudly. For about ten minutes. Attracting a fair bit of unwelcome and embarrassing attention.

This incident helped support a theory that I've had for some time, That is that many elderly people can't help talking crap, at any time, loudly and without fear, myself included. It's an endearing trait which all younger people will get to experience, later in life.

Drums, Dope and a Dunny.

 Whoa! I bet that's got you intrigued. This is another sad, but true, story. 

I've been playing drums, since I was 12. After WW2, in Adelaide, the children of ex servicemen could get free music lessons at The Adelaide College of Music. My mother loved the trumpet, so she enrolled me for twice weekly lessons. 

There were two problems. First of all, I could never get any noise of a trumpet, probably because I didn't like the instrument. Secondly, I loved the noise coming out of the drum studio next door, so I transferred there, without telling my mother. Imagine her reaction, when, three years later, she came to a concert at the college, expecting to see me out front, on the trumpet, but finding me happily sat at the back, belting the hell out of a kit of drums. 

Not a pretty aftermath at home, but the damage was permanently done. I was drummer and, over the years, played in several rock and metal bands of no repute 

So, what has any of that got to do with this story? Pretty much nothing apart from padding out the story. also, of no real importance, my favourite drummers are Ginger Baker (Cream et al), Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones) and Michael Shrieve (Santana '69-'71). Santana still remains the best band in the world. That's just my opinion. As you probably already know, opinions are like bums. We all have one and they are often both full of crap.

                                Carlos Santana (R) and Michael Shrieve (Drums) Woodstock 1969

To the story.

Way back, in the 1990s, I was living in Cairns and helped create a band with three other, very interesting characters who were a decade or so younger than me. We decided to only play our own original songs. The lead guitarist was a talented singer and guitarist. The rhythm and bass guitarists were adequate and I was the drummer and lyricist. We practiced for a couple of years and had over 40 original songs, From experience, I thought we were well and truly ready to gig, but the lead guitarist never felt confident, so out of sheer frustration, I left the band, which continued with a new drummer but, even after another 2 years, still never gigged and folded.

                                                          Not my drums, but very similar.

Now to the Dope and Dunny bit.

I have never done drugs, in spite of growing up and playing in bands during the 60s and 70s. My main vice was, and still is, a fondness for single malt Scotch whiskey. However, the other three band members were absolute pot heads so, as you can image, after about 30 minutes, what was great music turned into a wailing cacophony of sound.

To protect myself from the stinking smell of marijuana, I strategically placed my drums under an open window, with a fan behind me. It worked. Except for one day that it didn't. That day, we were experiencing the tail end of a cyclone, with strong winds and pouring rain, so the open window wasn't an option. 

I kept the fan on, in the forlorn hope that it would keep the smoke away from me, but it had the opposite effect. It just made sure that I got a super dose of it. I have a bad reaction to marijuana and it makes me violently ill. Hence the dunny bit.

I was so ill that I got the other guys to phone my, lovely but long suffering, wife to come and pick me up, which she duly did, only to find me hunched over the toilet, loudly singing "Europe" The problem was that she thought I was drunk, which was a huge no-no in my house, so I copped a whole lot of grief from her, on the way home and for some time afterwards. I was too ill to explain what had actually happened until the next day, so the gief was long lasting, although undeserved, or so I thought, in my misery.

Strangely, I refused to attend band practice on future wet and windy days. I still feel ill, just thinking about it.

I continued playing my drums until about a year ago when arthritis made it difficult to hold the sticks and diabetes made the bass and hi-hat pedals too painful to operate. I still love good drum music and always will. Watching the ever changing drummers in Santana (all excellent) is a passion.

                                                                          Santana 2016

 

1950's Kids, a Bonfire and a Sack of Snakes.

 Yep, this is a true story. It's based around a few kids in the 1950's, aged around 7 or 8, living in a poor neighbourhood, on the edge of bush, just north of Adelaide. A kid's life was a lot different than today. 

It was just after the end of WW2. There was not much money, so very few toys. There was no TV, just a radio, which the adults huddled around in the evening, listening to the news or serials. Very boring for kids. So we made our own entertainment, which more often than not, got us into a lot of trouble with our parents, neighbours teachers and, on occasion, with the police. 

The police weren't too bad. If you were caught doing something evil or illegal, the local cop would give you a firm clip around the ear and took you home and toid your parents why. Then, all hell broke loose. I lost count of the times I felt my fatherther's belt buckle across my back and legs. I think that's when I learned to hate him, also because he was usually drunk at the time. 

Despite that, I had an amazing time with my mates, running around in the bush, hunting for rabbits, lizards and snakes. Yep, snakes. Usually very poisonous brown snakes, which we used kill and cook on a small campfire and eat. Surprisingly, none of us ever got bitten by a snake or poisoned from eating them. The only danger was the belting my mother would give me with her wooden spoon, when she found out.

                                                      Typical kids from the 50's (not us).

One of our favourite days was Guy Fawkes Day. This was always celebrated on November 5th. and celebrated a failed attempt by the aforementioned Mr. Fawkes to blow up the British Houses of Parliament, way back when. A worthwhile cause, I always thought.

Every neighbourhood used to get together and build a huge bonfire, let off some fireworks and drink beer. It was a great night, even if we kids didn't get any beer.

                                                      A typical Guy Fawkes Day bonfire.

This particular year, one of my more adventurous mates and I, decided to spice things up a bit. As I mentioned, we used to hunt snakes. It was November, which is quite warm, and meant snakes were easy to find. We decided that a sack full of live brown snakes thrown onto the bonfire would be an exciting distraction that everyone could enjoy, so we went hunting, with a large burlap sack in tow.

                                                                      A burlap sack

I took us almost all day to catch enough snakes to half fill the dack. I think we had around 20. That was heavy enough to easily and safely carry that many squiming, hissing, bad tempered brown snakes to an area near home, where we carefully hid them until the bonfire. I know what we were about to do was wrong and, today, anyone, who is a conservationist, myself included, will be horrified at our intentions. Bear in mind, we were two eight year old, semi wild, definitely feral kids of the 1950s.

                                                         About a sackful of brown snakes,

Later that night, the bonfire had burnt down, all the fireworks were finished and, most of the adults were drunk or working on it. It seemed like a perfect time for our little surprise, so we snuck off and  retrieved the bag full of snakes, undid the rope holding the sack closed, and chucked it on the fire. The snakes were less than happy and burst out of the sack at what seemed like 100 miles per her hour and took off in all directions, as did all the drunk or almost drunk adults.

Only us kids ,most of whom were in on the prank, were rolling around on the ground, pissing ourselves laughing. 

The bruises on my back and legs, from my father's belt buckle, took longer than usual to fade. This was because his dinking mates blamed him for not keeping his kid under control and almost causing a mass snake bite event.

It was seriously worth every bruise!!

 

Mapies, Boxthorns and a Ladder

 

It’s that season again!

                                 

Yep, it’s almost magpie swooping season again. Some people hate them, others love them. Either way, they are just protecting their nests. I’m in “love them” category. Why? It goes back to my childhood.

In my early school years (1950s), my family lived in a, somewhat less than salubrious, town called Salisbury North, just north of Adelaide. It was, however, a young kids’ paradise, being on the edge of the bush.

We spent every spare moment in the bush, hunting rabbits, lizards and snakes. Yep, snakes. That leads me to another story about a sack full of snakes and a community Guy Fawkes Day bonfire. I’ll tell that one later. We also went hunting for fledgling baby magpies to steal from their nest, to keep and raise as pets. They make great pets. We never cut their wings and they were free to fly away at anytime, which they usually did, after about a year.

As you may imagine, pinching baby magpies from their nests was fraught with a smidge of danger, due to their parents being slightly more than a little pissed off.

Jmagine this. Two 8 year old boys, bare footed and wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts, with no head coverings, riding their rickety old bicycles down a dirt country road while each holding the end of an old, wooden ladder. “Why would we do that?”, you ask, or not.

Along side that dirt road, grew large boxthorn bushes, upon which the maggies built their nests. Hence the ladder. One of us would scoot up the ladder as fast a we could, grab a couple of baby magpies, almost ready to leave the nest, gently put them inside our shirts and escaping, with parents in hot pursuit, swooping the hell out of us, almost all the way home. We always abandoned the ladder for a few months for safety’s sake, while whizzing a long piece of bamboo above our heads and riding like hell.

The downside was multiple chunks of skin missing, due to successful swoops from angry magpies and deep scratches from the bloody boxthorn bushes. The upside was we each had a beautiful pet magpie that, almost instantly became part of the family for the next year, until they flew away.

I always called my pet magpie Foster Williams, who was a player/coach of the Magpies (Port Adelaide Football Club). 

That’s why I love magpies.

                                              

Fos Williams

The Tropical roof, the Depth Chargers and the Hookah.

 Hah! I bet that title gotcha!

I lived in Cairns, Far North QLD. for fourteen years, from '89 to 96 and again from '03 to '11. The seven year gap was spent in Japan. None of that is remotely relevant, apart from this story having happened during a few crazy days in days in '91.

I was part of a group of five, tight knit friends who enjoyed anything to do with the ocean, including swimming, fishing, sailing and diving. This story is about a diving trip to Cooktown over a long weekend holiday. The targets of our dive were Painted Crays (Google it).

The drive to Cooktown from Cairns was a long one, often taking most of the day, due to heavy rain and unsealed roads. We used a battered, old Toyota Landcruiser with over 1M kms on the clock and broken air conditioning. Fortunately, it was fitted with a tropical roof which kept the sun off the car's roof. For the uninitiated, a tropical roof was a rack mounted, usually wooden deck, fitted over the roof of the vehicle, designed to keep the tropical sun off the roof. It worked.

As the weather was quite wet and parts of the road seriously muddy, requiring a lot of slow 4WD driving, we decided to make a day of it, breaking up the monotony by having a pub crawl. The idea was to stop at every pub or booze shop and have one beer. Here's where I introduce "Dockie". Dockie was a Kiwi (not his fault) who had a habit of always going one step too far. For example, although we had agreed to the "one beer per stop" rule, Dockie chose to drink Depth Chargers. These were a schooner of beer that had a full shot glass of whisky dropped in them. You can guess the result.

We had music playing throughout the trip so it wasn't too long before Dockie wanted to dance. Yep, I'm serious. Fortunately he fell asleep before trying to dance in a car with four other big guys and diving equipment. It wasn't until we were about 45 minutes out of Cooktown when he woke up. At this point, we were driving very slowly through thick mud. 

Having just woken up, Dockie decided he needed to pee but, when he looked out the window and saw the mud, he chose to climb out the window and on to the Tropical Roof to do the business. We told him that we couldn't stop because we would become hopelessly bogged in the mud. He said not to stop and he'd be OK on the roof. Once on the roof, after about ten minutes of grunting and swearing, he proceeded to piss all over the windscreen which, because we had all the windows open due to the heat, filled the car with a foul stench and a fine spray from the pee and rain from the wipers.

Then he decided to dance.

On the roof.

How he never fell off, I'll never know. We'd all had enough of him by then, so we happily left him there, dancing. As we started to enter Cooktown, there was a loud banging on the roof and Dockie was screaming at us to stop the car. Fortunately, we were finally driving on bitumen, so we pulled over and got out to stretch our legs....only to see a fearful sight!

Crouched down on the roof of the car was Dockie. Absolutely stark naked! The silly bastard had been doing a strip tease and his clothes were strewn in the mud over the past 20kms. On top of that, the idiot was seriously sunburnt, all over. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you cant burn on a cloudy day, especially in the tropics!

We found a pair of shorts and a T shirt for him and drove him to the local chemist who sold us cream and pain killers for him, then booked into a motel for the night. For some reason, Dockie declined to have a drink in the bar with us.

The next day, we loaded all our diving gear onto the boat that we had hired for the day and headed out to The Great Barrier Reef, about 25km offshore from Cooktown to go cray hunting. It turned out very fortunate for us that Dockie was so sunburnt and could bear straps on his skin, as we didn't have to draw straws to see who was going to be in charge of manning the hookah gear, while rest of us dived.

For those of you who don't understand what Hookah is, it's a portable air compressor that feeds air, via a long hose for each diver, enabling him to stay down longer. Strict decompression rules apply, so I only recommend it to very experienced divers. Seriously!!

Hunting for crays has it's hazards. We never speared crays, but used a steel hook to pull them out from under coral and put them in a netting bag that was attached to our weight belts.

Hazard 1. Sometimes you pulled out a moray eel instead of a cray, Seriously unfriendly buggers.

Hazard 2. Sometimes your hookah hose got caught in coral. NEVER try to just pull it free.

Hazard 3. Live crays often make a snapping sound with their tails, while in the nets. This is a dinner bell for sharks, of which there are plenty, That's why we all carried spears guns with power heads.

Hazard 4. A malfunction with the Hookah on the boat meant your air is suddenly cut off and you had no emergency reserve, so you had to curb your panic and surface slowly, expelling the air in you lungs all the way up. Don't do that and you could get the bends and/or die.

Yep, you guessed it. The four of us experienced Hazard 4 in about 15 metres of water. Fortunately, we were all very experienced divers and surfaced safely. We all arrived at the boat to find Dockie sitting there with a glum look on his face.

As you can imagine, none of us were happy, to put it very mildly. When we asked Dockie what had happened to the Hookah, he replied, "I turned it off because I was feeling lonely".

It was a very silent trip in the boat all the way back to Cooktown, as was the long drive back to Cairns. 

The two outcomes from the trip were we did get an impressive haul of crays and Dockie was banned from all further diving trips, despite his begging.

The great Gold Coast restaurant saga

  Wait!! 

Before you read this, pour yourself a drink or make a cup of coffee, prepare some snacks and take a toilet break. This tale is kind of long! That's probably why I called it a saga.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my mate and I had a habit of having boozy Friday lunches that stretched into the early hours of Saturday mornings. At this time, in the mid 1990s, we were both living on the Gold Coast. He, in his penthouse in Labrador and me in my modest canal front home in Broadbeach Waters. Why do you need this information? I have no idea.

As a hobby business, we had formed a partnership, buying failed restaurants, turning them into Mon. to Fri. business luncheon restaurants employing a chef/manager and selling the business to the chef/manager after 12 months. This was a great win/win deal for us and the chef. We received the profits for a year and then picked up a standard sale price of $60k. We also arranged finance for the chef to buy it, which meant he could own the business that he had built up over the past year with no upfront personal cash outlay. We did this 22 times, over the years. Eighteen times it was very successful and 4 times we crashed and burned.

Back to the saga.

Our pig farmer Prime Minister, Paul Keating, had just given us "The recession we had to have", part of this meant that people could no longer claim a tax deduction for their "business lunches", This unsurprisingly killed off the business luncheon trade and our hobby business.

The fateful day that created this saga happened at our Friday lunch, during the recession  There were three factors that caused this. My mate having a whinge about the demise of our restaurant business, three or four bottles of Wolff Blass Grey Label shiraz and my fat mouth.

During this discussion, my ego and fat mouth conspired against me to the point I where I told him that I bet I could still do it and, what's more, I could do it for under $1000. My mate saw an opportunity for quick dollar and bet me $1000 that I couldn't do it. I took the bet, but he gave a 3 month time lime limit to do it. I agreed. The next morning, I woke up feeling like death and then remembered the bet. Since then, I have never ever drank Wolff Blass Grey Label shiraz.

GETTING THE RESTAURANT

Finding a vacant restaurant on the Gold Coast was seriously difficult in the 90s, due to the influx of "wanna be entrepreneurs" trying to join "The White Shoe Brigade" (Google it) who infamously inhabited the area. Those wannabes, with pockets full of borrowed or misappropriated cash snapped up every business premises lease as soon as it hit the market. Most of them went broke almost as quickly, ensuring that the feeding frenzy continued.

Meanwhile, I had to find a restaurant quickly, if I was to have any chance of winning the bet. Having been a resident of the Gold Coast and an existing business owner (Marketing Consultant), I had the very real advantage of local knowledge. It came to my attention that a small, 48 seat restaurant was available fronting the Gold Coast Highway and had been empty for more than a year. There were no "For Lease" signs in front of it, nor was it listed with any agents.

It was located on the ground floor of a large residential high rise complex and screened from the road by tropical plants. Ideal for my purpose.

I located the owner, who owned the entire building and lived in the penthouse He was a very nice, elderly man who had deliberately left the restaurant empty to make sure the noise wouldn't disturb his tenants. When I explained to him that the restaurant that I planned would be a business luncheon  business, only operating mon. to Fri., 12pm to 5pm he was quite happy. When I further explained that it would have topless waitresses he actually roared with laughter and promised to be regular customer A promise he kept.

I signed a 3x3year lease and didn't have to pay any goodwill, as it wasn't a going concern. This was important, as the bet that I made with my mate  limited my start up cost to $1000. At this point, I had spent less than $200.

What I haven't mentioned was that the restaurant was completely set up. The kitchen was totally fitted out. The only things a chef had to bring were his pots and knives. So were the bar and dining room, right down to the crockery, cutlery and bar glassware.

STARTING THE RESTAURANT

I kept the restaurant's original name. Why? Simple. The name was already assigned to the premises along with the required licences, so it saved money.

Now, ten days had passed since the bet, so I had to get a move on. I advertised for topless waitresses and a chef in The Gold Coast Bulletin which cost about $50. The response was amazing! I only needed 6 waitresses and received 100+ applications. More than 20 chefs applied for the one vacancy, so I called on my mate to interview the waitresses and choose 6. I had absolute faith in him, as he a lot of experience in other restaurants we had owned in the past and he didn't let me down.

I deliberately decided to interview the chefs myself, because I was looking for a specific kind of person, plus a spare. All will be explained in good time.

The starting chef had to be a home owner/buyer, a family man and an excellent chef who had no experience in working with young, bare breasted waiting staff. As I said. All will be explained in good time.

I explained to all the chef applicants that they would not be paid a wage, but would get all the profit from the kitchen, while I would get the bar profits and the entry fee ($10/head). Running costs would be shared. 

Most of the chefs were OK with that, because they would make more than a normal salary. It was good for me, as I would not have to bother with stock control or wastage in the kitchen. I also explained that I would require a $1500 bond because they were an unknown quantity to me and were responsible for running half the business and they would have to sign a contract as a sub contractor, not an employee. The bond stocked my bar, keeping that cost to zero.

The other firm rule was they were only there as a chef and NO harassment of the staff would be tolerated.

So, there I was. Three weeks in and about to open the restaurant and still only spent less than $400.

THE OPENING AND THE DEMISE OF CHEF #1

The week prior to opening, each day I placed a small "Bookings Essential" ad ($70) in The gold Coast Bulletin. By Wednesday we were booked out. Two weeks later, we were booked out two months ahead on Wed, Thurs. and Fri. Before long 75% of our bookings were permanent. The problem was that I wasn't getting the income from the kitchen. I found this annoying because it was totally my idea and hard work that started the whole thing.

Fortunately, fate stepped in, which made my problems go away. It came to my notice that the chef was starting to act inappropriately towards some of the waitresses and they felt uncomfortable collecting meals from the kitchen. When I confronted him about it, he became defensive and abusive. There was absolutely no way that I was going to accept that so, in collabaration with my mate' s partner, the chef's wife got an anonymous phone call, asking if she knew the kind of restaurant that her husband worked in. She didn't believe the caller, who then suggested that she go through the restaurant's kitchen door around 3pm on Friday and check for herself. The caller then hung up.

Why 3pm?  Food service had ended then and a couple of waitresses were in the kitchen, helping to clean up.

I was busy in the bar when the chef's wife arrived around 3.15, so I'm relying on the report from the waitresses working in the kitchen at the time. Apparently, she literally stormed in, took one look at the waitresses and grabbed the chef by the shirt and dragged him out the back door while screaming abuse at him.

There are two things to learn from that. Be honest with your wife and treat employees with respect.

To continue, a locksmith arrived at 5.30 to change the locks and my "stand by" chef, who only wanted to work for a salary, was told to report foe work the next Monday.

SAYING GOODBYE TO THE RESTAURANT

As I mentioned earlier, many of my customers had permanent bookings. Two of my regulars were a lawyer and his accountant mate. They were great customers but, after a few too many drinks, would call me over and tell me that I had the best job in the world. Little did they know how full on it was. So much so, that it was affecting my main business, the Marketing Consultancy, and I had already decided to sell the restaurant.

After about 6 months, on a Friday, the lawyer and his mate called me over, as usual, and started on their "best job in the world" routine, so I asked them why didn't they buy it. Of course they asked how much and I told them $60k, walk in walk out. I went home and never thought any more about it. On the following Monday, the lawyer walked into my Marketing Consultancy with a bank cheque for $60,000 and a contract of sale. We did the deal in record time and we both parted, very happy. I never set foot in the restaurant again.

A  PARTY AND THE POLICE

Shortly after the restaurant opened, my mate, who lost the bet and graciously handed my $1000 winnings, decided to have a party on board his 12m game fishing boat, to celebrate the restaurant's success. His parties were legendary, so I readily agreed and having just pocketed $1000, I offered to pay for the booze. He "forgot" to tell me that he had invited about 15 other people. No wonder the booze bill was closer to $2000 than $1000. He hates to lose as much as I do....bastard!! Great party, though.

Now for the police bit.

A few months after I sold the restaurant to the lawyer, I had knock on my front door from the police. They wanted to know if I had sold the restaurant to that particular lawyer for $60k. When I said that I had they told me that the lawyer had used his clients trust account funds to buy it as well as to cover his gambling debts and they required me to refund the money.

I explained to the police that I was not involved in any of his illegal activities and was paid with a perfectly legal bank cheque and had a legal bill of sale for a legitimate business and would not be returning any of it. I then gave them my lawyer's business card and told them to take it up with him. I never heard from them again,

I later heard that the lawyer who bought the restaurant had been charged, found guilty, disbarred and jailed for six months.

Here endeth the saga.