Home For Lunch

I knew that no good could come of this. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

What to do on the weekend when you have a job that requires you to become intimately acquainted with an automobile for the purposes of reviewing it? Well I decided I should probably check in on the Motherload and il Papa, plus I could show off something that has lots of buttons to push and plenty of things that open and close.

So once again it was just me and my best buddy, the open road, screaming down the highway in search of a place less hectic than Melbourne. Along the way to the farm I decided to stop in Rushworth for coffee and a cigarette. First failure of the day, if you want coffee in a town that hasn’t much progressed from its gold-rush era days, be prepared for acidic tasting Nescafe.

Deciding against the coffee idea, I sat in the reserve in the middle of the main drag, watching locals dawdle past in beaten up old Hiluxes or trundling along with the assistance of a shopping jeep. Dear god, that country air must be good, some of those folks would be pushing at least 130 years old.

As I walked back to my strongly on-road focused SUV I caught the sneers of mothers with prams, loading their children into high-rise Land Cruisers and Patrols with hefty bullbars and 9,000 pound winches. More fool you bitches. I don’t need low-range to get up my driveway… try living in civilisation, huh?

A little further on the track and I arrived at the Parental Unit’s farm, to be greeted by no sign of life at the house. That’s not good. Up to the dairy I journeyed, still no one. A quick scout of the machinery sheds revealed all tractors in place and no missing motorbikes. Back to the house, where shock horror, both cars were out. So much for the element of surprise!

So I calls the Motherload, and I says: “Mother dear, loin of my fruits… Where the fuck are you?” To which the Motherload replies: “Oh, I’m in Moama darling. Are you at home? Why not pop up and have lunch?” Deal done then. Back into the car and on my merry way. Half an hour later, on top of the two hours I’d just drove, and I was in the charming little bowrder town of Moama, freezing my cherished items off, searching for my mother amongst a sea of slack-jawed market shoppers.

Eventually I located her, befriending some poor misfit who’d made the mistake of looking in her direction for more than five seconds. I rushed across, greeted my brightly clad fashion mentor and allowed the stranger their only possible chance for escape.

“Oh, you’re looking thin. Must be all that running? Show me your teeth, have you had them whitened yet? Are you getting taller or am I getting shorter? See these pants? I bought them from the mail order. Look over there at that Faustina girl from down the road, you know the one, you used to go to school with her cousin…” And on and on it went.
“So, lunch was it?” I chimed in during a momentary lapse in her recitation of all local events, bankruptcies and relationships occurring in the district during the last month.

With the stern warning that I wouldn’t stay long we went in search of something edible and coffee that could be described as at least passable. Instead we found fish and chips served by a very stern woman, and more instant coffee. So that’ll be a pass on the coffee then, and one piece of flake, two steamed dim sims, a battered sav, six calamari rings, two potato cakes and minimum of chips… What are you having Ma?

All too quickly it was time for me to hit the road, of course that’s not as easy as it sounds. After a solid hour of “Come and have a quick look at this” and “There’s Linda from my quilting group, she asks after you, come say hello” I finally managed to shake loose and dash madly toward Melbourne, leaving the bitter taste of instant coffee in my wake. Two and a half hours of white-line watching turns out to be just the thing you need to reset your cognitive functions to ‘sane’ again.

Or at least as sane as one can get coming from the kind of brilliant stock that would wear a bright red bob, pink specs and burnt orange puffer vest with no regard for the fact she’s approaching 70. Bless her.