Its excellent bait for carp, he says. The old fella wades over to me through the mush and says, Gimme a look, what is it your using? Ive never seen a young fella stand about for so long and not catch nothin .. .
Well, I say, I’m not trying very hard, truth is I’m actually hoping not to catch one .. I don’t want to have to kill it. He chuckles.
Look son, getta hold of one a these. He produces a mess of ugly looking brass thingys. Lord Jesus, I say, they stink.
Lapel pins, he says, Union Jack lapel pins.
Well they’re ugly, I say. What are they?
The stuff that dreams are made of son.

Where can you get them, I say.
Oh, I’ll give you a few .. got hundreds of them .. found them dumped out in the Royal National Park .. in some old suitcase .. belonged to some dude called Scotty. They’re no good for anything else, couldn’t even send them back over to England … you could imagine the furore that’d create, they’d say, ‘Oi, what sort of an idiot would cover up those lovely stars with an old crushed beetle? Besides, they’re made in China not in the Mother’s Country’.
Yep, pretty daft, I agree.

So, what do you do with em when you catch one?
Well, he says, the same thing be it King or carp – I kill ’em, they’re both revolting.
Rightly so, rightly so …

Pfft .. tt ..tt .. tt .. fuckin radio ..fuckin regions .. well the news today all seems good – as you’d expect with the Merry Men back at the helm. ADANI ADANI ADANI they’re going to save the world or at least make it cheaper. Amazing what a defined future can do, its a free for all and we don’t have to worry about leaving anything for the kids. Sounds like a pretty good deal for us this ADANI thing, eh? I see Anna Ps dropped the charges against them for polluting all those wetlands up there near the reef .. pittance she says, twelve thousand pieces of gold is nothing, doesn’t even buy an unemployed person – they can keep it. The locals luv ‘er. She’s redefing pollution and slippin’ into corruption.

The locals are chuffed, coal and dust & dust and coal, and solid black water and .. maybe a couple of jobs. They say they do care about the environment as long as its somewhere like .. say, say Tasmania. (Mmm, I thought that may have been marked out for a refugee resort .. its offshore. And cold.) No, hang on, we have a dissenter, Christ, hope the fella can get home safely .. he says ADANI aren’t all they’re frakked up to be, says that they haven’t answered corruption charges or paid their taxes in other countries and have dodged hundreds and hundreds of millions in environmental fines – but, he says, not in Tasmania. Good point, good point. He also says that personally he is a bit worried about his ground water but he’s been told not to worry, they – ADANI? AnnaP? – said they’d flick him a few bucks if they fuck it up.

We’re certainly entering a golden age. I should say coal age but don’t want to be facetious. I expect were going to start making jewelry and kitchen knives out of it .. we surely wouldn’t be stupid enough to burn it?

“All social life is essentially practical .. the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” – Karl Marx.