For once I managed a 'Snappy Answer to a Stupid Question'

Plus an explanation for my Substack silence

Hello everyone,

I’ve been absent here for a few weeks. If work is the curse of the drinking classes, then paid writing work is the curse of the Substacking classes who mostly write for free in the hope someone, anyone will smile on them with a paid subscription. (Special shout out to the 3% of my subscribers who have a paid subscription and hint, hint to the other 97%)

What have I been up to? I’ve been knees deep in writing endless drafts of an extended 8000 word travelogue about my journey to Antarctica, some smaller writing commissions, and various bits of corporate ghostwriting. And now I feel like I have the first chance to breathe in about a month. I’m writing this post in one of my favourite Canberra places, King O’Malley’s after having pressed ‘send’ on almost all the products that have been rattling around my waking and sleeping hours for a month.

So, to get me back into the swing of things, a strange story from yesterday in which I managed to do that rare thing: to return a snappy answer to some stupid point in real time rather than think of the rejoinder about a few hours later.

A Fracas at the ATM on a Sunday morning

I needed cash yesterday morning and so went down to the nearest ATM that doesn’t charge fees located in an ennui inducing set of shops a vibrant shopping precinct.

The fellow in front of the ATM had a roly-poly figure a bushy beard and remember thinking he looked like an ancient mariner when he turned around after getting his money out. I was keying in my PIN number when I heard him say as if he was in some pulpit : ‘who on earth was the person who parked this car so close to mine.’ Given that I was the only person around, he was either blind or preferred Socratic dialogue in lieu of direct questions.

‘Twas I. I told him ‘gimme 30 seconds and I’ll get you out.’

And then his passive aggressive caterwauling began. ‘Oh, it’s just as well I don’t need to rush off or else I’d be late’ and ‘what is it with drivers today’ and ‘if I was a toe rag I’d just clink your car and drive off’. His hands were on his hips like a plantation owner of old.

A thought formed in my mind. Should I say it? Probably not but, bloody oath, (as Aussies say, I would. I thought about it for about two more seconds, decided to add the word ‘mate’ to my words to give it some added Aussie edge and then just said it.

‘Mate, if you clink the car, I’ll take a photo of your licence plate, ring the police and tell them that a fellow with a suspicious resemblance to Captain Birdseye clinked it’.

Captain Birdseye (Credit: Birds Eye)

He fulminated for a bit and his eye glinted for a bit but that was largely the end of it all. It wasn’t exactly in the Al Jaffe league of a snappy answer to a stupid question but it would do.

And that’ll do me for now. A more regular service from now on until the siren’s call for the hungry writer of the paid commission returns.