during the late afternoon or on the weekends dad
sat mucking around in the garage with fishing
lines & bait/ with his transistor radio on/ tiddly &
pissing in the garden/ mum used to call dad's
friends 'the boyfriends'/ since he was hanging
around blokes twenty years younger than him/
gilbert, roy, big dick ashburner, who we called
'hashburner' & little erik/ i didn't see anything
wrong with it/ but once i got fed up & told gilbert
to 'fuck off & get you own father'/ i was tired of
dad being the 'good bloke' or being everyone else's
father but ours/ dad always said he would defend
me against anyone that tried to hurt me but he
never did/ big dick who had been making passes
at me for two weeks called me a slut when he was
stoned in the kitchen with the munchies & dad
never did anything/ he said he was raided the next
day because i kept calling out at the backdoor
'pass me the heroin dad and give us the needle'/
before mum left she was very angry & told 'the
boyfriends' to 'scoot' or 'get home'/ dale turned
to dad 'mum said you're rooting them down the
side trellis'/ but they kept coming back/ the
attraction of dad at our house/ soon he collected
every dysfunctional twenty something year old
male within the area/ dad picked them up like we
picked up the stray dogs & cats/ dad's other
interests included: mowing the lawn around sunset
or watching the news saying 'quiet the news is on'/
he mainly liked the headlines/ after that he seemed
to lose concentration/ the news irritated him & so
did the rear vision mirror in the ej holden/ when
mum was nursing brendon who we called 'boof
head'/ occasionally his head would bump the
mirror & dad nearly drove the car off the road/
trying in his frenzy to straighten it/ his face
turning red/ dad never took us out much/ if he
did it was always around sunset/ either because
he slept in late with hangovers/ or because he
liked to avoid the crowds at the beach/ or in the
traffic where he perpetually took short cuts known
as 'dad's famous short cuts'/ that ended up twice as
long/ mum was always restless & so ended up going
out to the football each week with us kids/ & our
neighbour martin hamilton in the green fibro house
across the road/ dad saying 'your mother has gone
to the football with that bloody train driver who is
a compulsive gambler'/ dad took us to sandy point
whilst he got salt water worms or to the tip/ we
collected aluminium cans to crush with our shoes
or bottles to smash with hammers in the driveway
so that we could sell the glass to the bottlo/ dad
kept getting up late for the beach when mum wanted
to go early/ as punishment mum made him take us to
places like 'paradise gardens', 'bullen's animal world',
'the african lion safari' & 'adventure land'
