tiger, tiger coffee bar

"E' don't drink. Don't gamble. And reading them books all the time.'

We called Harold the Viceroy of Misogyny for the litany of foul shit that came out of his mouth: like the way he went on about getting a blow job on the Ferris Wheel, and the way he leant over the young girls as he belted them into the dodgems.)

Changi would go on all night; his information seamless against the Merle Haggard tapes whirling away behind him; oscillating between facts and threats.

‘Get up to speeds of 60 miles per hour.'

‘Well, Changi, get ‘em some runners, get ‘em in the Stawell Gift and get us the fuck out of here, eh. Who's go?'

‘It's a shame your legs don't run as fast as your mouth, Terry; or you'd be able to race. Raise me. I catch anyone cheatin' at my cards I'll chop the fucker's hand off and feed it to Queenie and Tarzan.'

‘We've no doubt of that, eh Changi. Looks like they could do with a bit of a feed...'

We gave him shit about whatever came to our heads, ruing him for the tapes he brought off the Ark with him and the Vegemite glasses that bordered the mantle above his television. Harold tried to stir him up about old Joycey, asking him whether he'd been up her yet.

‘Dirty old bird like her, Changi; might teach you a thing or two...'

We all shouted at Harold to shut his fucken' mouth or we'd shut it for him, but he just giggled at himself and sunk back into his paperback.

And around dawn, with the wind doing an about turn and quietly rattling the van, we left him, crazy and rueful with piss and parlance with the past: a time when he had dreams far exceeding the cheaply painted plywood world he now existed in.

I asked him once, while he fed the cheetahs, why he never married. He looked at me sharply.

‘Who said I aint?' His look embarrassed me, and I never asked again.

We had fun with him though; I remember the Tamworth show a couple of years back; leaving Changi's van at dawn, fuelled by a dozen beers, some strong smoke and a good win of damp notes balled in the corner of my pocket, Terry and me breaking into the cat's cage and taking a photo of the sleeping Tarzan with Terry's cock in it's mouth. And the next day, getting the film developed and the snap photocopied twenty times; plastering it all over the show, everywhere, just out of the view of the public. So Tarzan came to be re-christened, by way of Xeroxed attrition, Lady Cocksucker. Even Changi laughed at that, gruffly, under his breath. But you had to. Terry's cock in the cheetah's gob. Fucken' priceless.

We all had stories, it only depended on whether we wanted to share ‘em. Even Harold, the Viceroy of Misogyny: him with his three-book a week habit and neatly clipped moustache. Terawera Terry and his past peppered with tales of trout fishing at Lake Terawera, New Zealand.

‘Three and a half hours outta Auckland; bitta traffic until the Bombay Hills, then it's an easy drive all the way till you hit the lake, eh bro.'

Every opportunity he had, talking up the plump trout that literally jumped out of water so clear you could count the number of fish crowding round the hull. And Joycey, doling out the ride tickets with her painted-on Kewpie-doll smile and ice-cream hair heaped up and brushing against the low roof of the booth; tut-tutting and wondering whether the parents of the kids roaming the fair knew where their children were; ruing her own parents for never knowing where she was at that delicate age, a long gone precursor to her ticket-doling life.