It was a rude awakening for Alice Piddens. Big whoop: most of her awakenings were rude, what with Wes’s snoring, or bellowing from leg cramps or worse still his crazed chortle-guffawing at something that struck him as, Cop this, ha ha. Bullgoose column. Hahahahaha! The most hilarious thing ever. (It never was).
This morning, the rudeness emanated from kitchen regions.
“Now sit up there, you perky thing! Yes, yes, hold it, hold it. Don’t move a muscle. Ooh, the camera loves you, baby. Just a couple more (sings) and when you smile for the camera, I know they’re gonna love it… Lemon Crisp!”
What the very hell, Wes?
Lemon Crisp, it will come back to you!
Wes!
Lemon... Who? What?
Alice takes in the husband, the phone, her very dearest plate, the biscuit. And the nuts.
What the five flavoured Fruit Tingles and very hideous hell are you up to, Wes?
Erm, posing.
What?
Or styling.
Styling what?
The biscuit.
The bisc…? So, you’ve flown to Completely Mad Land and come back an Arnott’s fanboy fetishist?
I relent that remark with the upmost of stern disdain.
Be a dear and pass me that Chinese cleaver. For the common good, I intend to truncate your extremities, starting at the neck. How dare you batter me awake with your biscuit foolishness!
Just a bit of fun. Something different.
Lemon and ice cream pizza is something different. This is… this is… Hand over that phone.
Aww! Don’t delete my snaps, Allie.
Grrr, give it!
Wes complies. Allie googles.
Ah, here it is. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifteenth Edition.
Obsessions, fetishes…blah blah…bicycle marriage, gherkin sniffing, crankshaft worship, mouse trousers, meringue envy… et cetera, et cetera. Nope. No biscuit posing. You’ve arrived, Wes. You have an unique affliction. Take a bow, you posing, styling… barking lunatic!
Not so! Consider Derry Bonut.
What about him?
What does he drive?
I don’t know. Some sort of tricked-up Nissan Cedric?
Precisely. Tricked-up. That thing’s got six hundred horsepower. He chromed the upholstery. Two steering wheels. Rigged it up for right and left-hand drive. It sits two millimetres off the ground and each wheel has its own handbrake. He even got the bloke who tunes the Grand Organ at the Opera House to tune his extractors.
How lovely for him.
And what about Reggie Tedpole? That garden gnome of his. He’s tricked it up so its eyes light up and follow you, and it shakes its little hips like Elvis when you walk past. The kids love it. As soon as Reggie works out how to get its jaw moving, little Elf-is will be singing In the Ghetto and A Little Less Conversation and Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Teen Spirit? That’s no Elvis song. He was dead by that time.
Well, Kurt Cobain is dead too. That’s got to count for something.
That’s the sort of logic that will earn you another plaque in the Lunatics Hall of Fame.
Look, Derry and Reggie have tricked up their stuff. They took something stock standard and tweaked it and modified it and up-specced it. It’s the Aussie bloke thing to do. And look at women with their hairstyles and tatts and piercings. It’s all tricking up.
So?
So, I’m tricking up the Lemon Crisp. Now, stock standard, with that whole lemon plus salt thing, it’s pretty damn acceptable, but I know it’s got the potential to be so much more. Hence the pecans.
I’ll pecan you, you comprehensive loon!
Look. See how the pecans really tie it all together? And the taste, the texture! I’m starting an Insta page, Trick Your Biscuit. It’ll be viral in a week.
If you say so. Well, I’m off back to bed. But before I go, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for the longest time, Wes.
Yes, yes?
Come close. I want to whisper it.
Yes, yes, yes?
Break my plate, you die!
A lesson to us all.
Bullgoose
and then