Chez Piddens. Wes knocks off from his mechanical muckings-about and associated greasery and goes up to the house for some morning tea. Allie greets him at the back door.
Not so fast, Buster. Eeeuw! I smell diesel.
Well then, be happy you own a functional nose.
You’re covered in grease.
You say that like I do it on purpose.
Can’t you be more careful?
Sorry, no can do. All my care is used up avoiding crushed fingers, barked knuckles, grit in the eye, sunstroke… dropped bolts, missing springs, flying circlips. I mean…
Why can’t you get your filthy gear off and wash up outside?
I find that suggestion coarse and vulgar, Alice. You know that I am modest by nature.
Shut up!
But then again, I may reconsider your lewd suggestion should you offer to join me.
I hate that word.
What? Lewd?
Stop saying it! And don’t leave filthy grease marks all over the basin!
You’re sounding like my Mum.
Here we go!
“Wes Piddens! Stop leaving greasy paw prints on my light switches! I swear, one day you’ll be the urination of me.”
Charming. You want a cupcake?
Cupcake?
Yes, a cupcake.
Nah.
What?
No thanks.
Why not? There’s nothing wrong with them. I got them from Pouncy, that single mum renting Brasco’s place. Got that little roadside stall.
Oh her. She’s got a blue dog that sleeps under the stall and fangs you if you don’t put something in the Honesty Box.
I gave her some cuttings and she gave me the cupcakes for free. Have one. They’re yum.
Nah, I’ll pass.
Wes Piddens, noted Tooth Man, nixing a scoff? Are you sick?
Nah, I’m just over baking.
Baking?
I blame those TV shows, Bake Off or Bake Champ or whatever. All young women want to do in the kitchen nowadays is bake, bake, bake. The last thing Australian men need is more sugar and empty carbs. Bloke comes in from a hard day on the dozer or the computer or the couch. He’s craving a beef taco or a chicken stir fry, or some spag bol, but what does he get?
Inform me.
He gets “wipe your hair, comb your feet, you smell like diesel, take off those muddy hands. Now sit down. I’ve made this Portugese Upside Down Croissant Danish Chocolate Fairy Floss Cake. Who’s a clever girl?”
Is that so?
You know it is, Allie. What’s the bloke supposed to do? Tell her he’d prefer something meaty? Nope. He’s no idiot. He eats it, says ‘yum’, asks for more, says ‘yum, yum’, and she feels proud and validated and trots off to social-brag to her friends, one of whom sends her the recipe for Twenty-Seven Layer Black Forest Cake with Champagne Toffee Glaze, and the whole vicious, cardiotoxic cycle starts over again.
Wow! This has really got up your gastric goat, Wes.
Too right. And sourdough! They’re always baking sourdough! Bleeugh! It’s sorta OK, but no wide way in the willywonky world is it any substitute for real, yeasty bread. Can’t these young bake-a-holics smell the difference?
It’s better for you.
Oh good. Fantastic. They feed you fifty-three thousand kilojoules of baked sugar and what? A couple of slices of sourdough are going to re-vamp your arteries? Besides, just the smell of real, yeasty bread is therapeutic. Honestly, I’d eat carpet or cat leather if it smelled yeasty enough.
Are you sure you don’t want to lie down for a little while? I haven’t seen you so worked up since TV news reporters started saying ‘a large amount of people have gathered outside the embassy’ instead of ‘a large number of people have gathered outside the embassy.’
Well it’s just sloppy. The rule is simple: if you can count it, use ‘number’; if you have to shovel it, use ‘amount’. I learned that from my old English teacher, Mrs Brontifoscu.
I’m sure she’d be very proud of you too, Wes.
Yeah, well I didn’t always pay attention, but I learned that much. She wasn’t a bad old stick, Mrs Brontifoscu.
She was probably about thirty.
Probably.
Dog barks. Knock on door.
I’ll get it, Allie.
It’s probably kids selling P&C raffle tickets.
Hello, Frebecca.
Good morning Mr Piddens. Wanna buy some raffle tickets? It’s for our excursion to Movie World.
Movie World, eh?
Yes. There’s the Batman Ride, Parrots of the Caribbean Dinghy Race, Barbie’s Wave Pool, plus you get to watch them making a TV show.
Yeah? Which one?
Austria’s Biggest Bake-Off I think.
Give me strength, er, is it just you selling tickets on our road?
No, there’s a large amount of us.
(Aaaargh!) So, there’s a large number of you.
Yes, Mr Piddens, a large amount.
Ok, Frebecca, put us down for twenty please. What’s the prize?
Four dozen cherry sherbet chocolate cupcakes with toffee cachou icing. They’re yum-spesh. You’ll love them, Mr Piddens.
!!!
A lesson to us all
Bullgoose
and then