Ever So Clever

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Ever So Clever

Ed and I were at the pub one sultry evening, having a chinwag about the prospects of a bonza day to follow, when this stocky middle-aged bloke rocks up to the bar and plants himself on the stool beside us.

"Reckon you'd be wrong there, cobbers," he butts in."We're in for a spot of heavy rain tomorrow."

"Heavy rain?!" says I, laughing into his face with gusto. "Are you not familiar with the balmy climes to which we are accustomed here on the Sunshine Coast? Go back to the Black Stump, you ignorant fly-swatting bushie."

He lights a rollie and smiles serenely back at me. "Fair suck of the sav, mate. It's the good oil, I tell ya. There'll be forty millies at least."

"Forty millies? Ha! ha! ha! What part of the Never Never did you just crawl out of, you shonkie dill? Do you not watch NNC via Satellite which keeps us informed of all things Australia? I'll be donnin' the budgie-smugglers tomorrow and headin' straight for the beach. No worries."

"Well, better take your stormstick, cobber. The heavens are set to open. Ridgy-didge, it's a dead-set cert."

Now I myself am normally a mild-mannered sort of bloke, but this stickybeak fruit-loop has got me right ropeable cranky with all his raw prawn conjecture. "Fair-dinkum there's a few roos loose in your top paddock, sport. She'll be a ripper tomorrow. Saw it live on NNC this arvo."

"Direct from Hollywood?" he chuckles. "Let's just say it's my job to know these things, and NNC's not worth a brass razoo."

"Bloody oath, you'd be one up-yourself dipstick!" says I, brushing aside a squadron of mozzies. "Your job? Pig's arse it'll rain tomorrow! I'll be in me cossie and thongs knockin' back tinnies and tossin' snags on the barbie. Now rack off back to the Back of Beyond and tell your porkies to someone who cares."

He just puffs away on his cancer-stick; smug as a pink-eyed Koala with a gob-full of gum. "Strewth," he turns to Ed, "your cobber's mad as a cut snake. Just tryin' to put him right. What's he chuckin' a spas over?"

Ed flashes a gobsmacked mug my way. "Crikey, Joe! Why spit the dummy, mate? This bloke sounds like he might know a thing or two."

"Aw, fair crack of the whip, Ed. You wanna stay and yabber with the drongo, good luck to ya. But I'm headin' out for a macka. Spot ya later."

Well, Ed's not much of a conversationalist on anything besides pest control and fumigation services, nature of our business, but they're still at it when I return to the bar an hour or so after. At least this self-acclaimed dipstick 'weather guru' has the gumption to make himself scarce when I walk in the door.

"Hey, Joe," says Ed. "You'll never guess who that was."

"Some full-as-a-boot nong with his head up his own arse?"

"No. Bruce Rosakis, head of the National Meteorological Service, author of several books on atmospheric science and editor of the Sunshine Coast Weather Review."

"Oh yes," says I. "And what would he know?"

*

Next day it pours and pours, cats and dogs. There is no let-up til evening, at which point I don the driza and wellies and make a dash through the flooded streets to join Ed at the pub. We sit at the bar and watch the NNC coverage of the Sunshine Coast rains. Only thirty-nine millimetres had fallen.

"So, you see," says I to Ed. "He was wrong."

End