Haiku for a Poo!

 

Haiku for a Poo!

My search for the perfect Loo!!

At the Easter SHOOOOOOOW!!!

 

Some people search for The Holy Grail. Some people search for true love. My quest is for the perfect toilet at The Sydney Royal Easter Show. Ahhh! Such are the dreams of a simple man. My search began in earnest about five years ago. We had promised to take the kids to the Easter show & they were super excited. About 2 days before the big day I came down with one of the worst stomach bugs I have ever experienced in my life. I won’t to go into too much detail except to say that it wasn’t very pleasant. Anyway I dragged myself out of bed & off to the shoooow! Throughout the course of the day I had to make several trips to the loo & what I encountered were small grubby toilets with an endless procession of people waiting in line. I found myself thinking that there’s got to be a better way than this. There’s something very obscene about waiting in line to go to the toilet. I kept on thinking to myself, “It’s not a frigging ride people!” Especially when the guy two in front of you is still eating a hot dog & then after his turn leaves the cubicle & greets everybody with an apologetic, “Sorry Dudes!” 

 

 

NO!!!! I went home from that Show with singed nose hairs & a burning determination that things had to change. Never again would I be subjected to another, “Sorry Dudes!”

& So began the quest…

The next year I was lucky enough to find the adequate toilets located in the Howie/Dog Pavilion, just across the road from where they sell all the showbags. Very clean, well maintained & hardly used. This Pavilion is truly the pooping place of Champions – Portraits of all the past greats adorn the walls!! But, unfortunately they’re just not the two legged kind!

 

 

The year after that I got serious in my endeavour & became a member of The RAS. They had much better facilities, but they were still a bit over used & a tiny bit grungy for my liking. I knew I could do better than this…

 

 

 

The following year I stumbled across the little gem in bewteen buildings on the animal walk. Very nice for public toilets & hardly ever used. But, still… I longed for something with a bit more tranquillity, style & ambience. Are magazines & elevator music too much to ask for?

 

 

 

Last year I came close to perfection. Definitely, the best toilets I’ve found so far. The private toilets in the animal housing enclosures off Clarence Avenue. Very large. Very spacious. Luxurious even & also comes with the option of a shower if one so desires. Not bad, but still my heart or should I say my bottom yearned for more…

 

 

Then this year whilst looking for the Skyview Ferris Wheel I spotted it. Eureka! El derado! The Legends were True! THE JUDGES/COUNCIL SECTION of the main arena. I noticed they had burly security guards on the front doors carefully monitoring people’s comings & goings. The place looked harder to get into than Fort Knox & I thought to myself what could they possibly be protecting in there? Fruit cake recipes??

 

 

I took this photo of the front entrance. Sorry it’s a bit grainy, but I was trying my best to be covert. Notice the people being moved along by the expert people movers. You can almost hear them cooing, “Keep on Moving People! There’s nothing to see here!”

My arse there’s nothing to see here… what’s with the big expensive looking flower arrangement then!

& then it came to me like a flush of yellow lightning!! Like a bolt out of the poo!!

Those cagey buggers in their flash R.M.Williams suits & boots were keeping guard of the most precious thing at the Royal Easter Show. The perfect loo! I knew in a second what it looked like. I could see it all in my mind’s eye. The opulence. The Grandeur. The Sheer Theatre of it all!! Gold plated toilet seats. Marble bowls. A guy called Geeves to give you mints, comb your hair & perhaps even wipe your bottom. Music, magazines & perhaps even a little trickling waterfall.

 

 

I always thought the sign on the door. R.A.S stood for The Royal Agricultural Society. But now I know better. Yes, my friends! They are mocking us!!! They’re secretly laughing at us & telling us what they’ve got inside their facilities.

For what R.A.S really stands for is:

Royal Arse Shitters!!

That’s right, that’s where they keep The Royal Arse Shitters. The really flash ones!!

& I knew at that moment that I had found my Everest & that my climb would not be to the top, but to the very bottom of things. & next year I promise you this, that I shall gain access to the inner sanctums of The R.A.S. or at the very least give them the shits trying!! either way, I’m going to give these toilets one damn fine crack!!

Wish me well my friends!!

For it’s going to take luck & a hell of a lot of arse!!

 

 

Cyrano De Bergerac & his Cat

 

OH CYRANOSE

I SUPPOSE I KNOWS WHAT I KNOWS

BECAUSE OF YOUR NOSE 

 

Getting dressed up for the Asterion video started me thinking about some of the other times I have gone fancy dress in my life. I was sort of having a laugh to myself about book parades and other such things & it brought back some pretty funny memories.

Some of them possibly even repressed…

It started me thinking about some of the dodgy costumes that you always see at book parades. Go to any book parade in any part of the world & I’ll guarantee you will see:

a Wee Willy Winky costume – translation: parents forgot (1) = wearing the pyjamas you woke up in, a sock on your head & a candle in your hand.

Or The Ghost – translation: parents forgot (2) = worst sheet in the house with 2 holes cut out…

Still the worst costumes can often be much better than the best…

Take the following tale of woe, for eg:

I remember in 1st class one of my mates, Ray went as a Dalek. You know the killer robots from Dr Who. Absolutely fantastic costume – really elaborate & well made. It was sort of round & big enough to fit a small person in & it was made from some type of metal, which had been painted dark silver. It had all these buttons & gadgets glued to it & 2 big extendable arm type claw thingys. It had a thin eye slit cut out of it for vision & bars that you could place on your shoulders & lift it up with. His mum had to deliver it to school in a ute & his dad had spent weeks (maybe months) making it for him. It looked really realistic & Ray loved it – so did everybody else. There were only 2 problems with it. The first was that it was way too heavy for a little 7 year old kid to lug around. It took about 6 kids, his mother & a teacher to get the thing on top of him. So whilst everybody else would walk in a big circle around the playground about 5o times for book parade… Ray could only manage about 6 quick steps & he would be exhausted. He’d wait about 2 minutes & then he’d go again. 6 quick steps & then down. Classic! The 2nd problem was that it had no ventilation & it was a stinking hot day. After about 30 seconds in that thing he was sweating like a pig. So to solve the problem they put him in his undies underneath it. It was pretty funny! Every time you went past him all you could see were these fevered sweaty little eyes peaking out of the eye slits. The dude looked desperate in there. Then he’d take 3 or 4 quick steps & go down again. We still laugh about it whenever we see each other. On a happier note he did win 1st prize…

 I also remember some other absolute shockers. I remember my mum once dressed me as a leprechaun. Sounds cool, but all she really did was dress me in a pair of her green slacks, a very feminine shawl & glued cotton balls all over my face for a beard. I wasn’t a leprechaun – I was a 7 year old drag queen with a shaving problem! Stuff like that can ruin a guy in primary school… My brother went as Robin Hood & the elastic in his tights broke. He spent the whole day with his arse hanging out of his pants. Poor guys nearly 50 & he’s still traumatized. He goes into the foetal position if he sees a Robin Hood movie on TV. My sister got dressed as Prince Charming. Sounds cool.  But when you think about it my mum sent her to school as a dude! & my personal favourite… my wife got sent by her mum as a team costume with her sister.  Her mum dressed her sister as Dick Wittington & sent my wife as ‘and his cat’. Together, standing next to each other they looked great & made sense. “Dick Wittington & his Cat”. But unfortunately, my wife was in kindy & her sister was in year 4 – they didn’t stay together for long. So my poor wife had to walk around all day on her own with a sign that read “and his cat”. Nobody knew who she was – not even her! I still call her “& his cat” for kicks.

Those times were complete bedlam. Chaos! I remember kids walking around in garbage cans as R2D2 … people wrapped in aluminum foil as robots… mummys wrapped in toilet paper… kids just covered in cotton balls & socks – I still don’t know what they were supposed to be??  It was torturous… I’m surprised that there’s not a separate therapy group just for victims of book parades. I know I’d be a proud member of The VBP & I’d take & his cat along with me. Take Ray the Dalek, my cross dressing sister & my bum flashing brother along too!

 My next memory of fancy dress is a bit of a doozy & I have kept it repressed for as long as I could, but it’s time to come clean. It involves the story behind that comical & tragic photo at the top of the page. I’m about 7 or 8 & my parents get invited to a fancy dress party at one of their friend’s houses. My mum gets all excited & dresses the whole family up. She says it’s for kids and everything. Mum always had a thing for romantic literature so she decides to dress me up as Cyrano De Bergerac. You know him – The guy with the big nose who hides behind bushes & whispers poetry to his mate. Anyway, her version of Cyrano De Bergerac looks like this. Very tight Black tights. Big black pointy boots with silver buckles. A frilly white dress shirt with puffy sleeves. A bright purple padded parka that you’d wear to the snow. A big red cape. A round black hat with a huge apricot ostrich feather on top of it. A plastic sword on my hip & if that wasn’t enough… she draws a fake moustache on me & then glues this huge fake nose made of plasticine over my real nose. It was hard to breathe – & it made my 7 yr old voice even squeakier. Believe me I didn’t want to leave the house! But mum convinces me there’s cake waiting for me at the party. I’d like to say it took more than that – but I’d be lying – the 7 year old me would go anywhere for cake!

So anyway we get to the party & everything’s going great except for one thing. It’s an adult party – it’s not for kids! My mum got it wrong! Yes kids were invited, but not to the fancy dress party. What they were invited too was to be locked in the backroom & just sit there. You know the type of room – filled with angry teenagers & pre-pubescent’s that have been dragged to some crap party by their parents; Angry monosyllabic snarling youths. None of them dressed up or anything – just angry! They’re all wearing Kiss & Abba T-shirts & in rocks me in my purple parka, fake 4 inch nose & apricot ostrich feather on my head. They all look at me in disbelief & some kid with pimples all over his face snarls at me “Who the f@#! are you supposed to be?” & I say in a shaky voice “Cyrano De Bergerac” & another angry kid yells at me, “Who the f#@! Is that?” & I scream out in a sort of pig like squeal “I DON”T KNOW!!!” I can’t remember much after that – I think I may have passed out. Either from fright or the plasticine nose stopped me from breathing!

On the brighter side… at least now I know why Cyrano had to hide behind all those bushes!!!