Dead Dad Dictum

  I pulled the clingwrap from the pantry, tore off a sheet and wrapped the phat bud I had sitting on the kitchen bench tight. Then I grabbed my hair gel and pushed the wrapped bud down to the bottom.   Later, when I got off the plane to Tokyo and made my way to the hotel, Eliminator Jr, who was doing research in Japan at the time, pinged me from reception and made his way up to my room. I dug out the bud, rolled a doobie and we got supremely baked, spending the arvo wandering around Akihabara before finding ourselves in a small bar off some side street.   We kinda stressed that there was no more bud, but as I rolled a smoke from my pouch of Champion Ruby tobacco, I realised I’d left another bud in there, unconcealed, that I’d somehow forgotten about. Back to my hotel, another phat boy and more time wandering through neo-Tokyo.   Another Tokyo trip. Eliminator was doing research at a lab in Tsukuba and took time off to meet me in the city. He’d scored tix to Canadian ...

  It was that liminal moment when one class has finished but you’ve yet to make your way to the next period. She walked out onto the veranda of the demountable building school had installed while the permanent classrooms at the ‘new school’ were being built and told me to wait a ‘sec.   I had probably lingered longer outside class than was strictly necessary. Next period was maths and both the subject and teacher – Mrs Grindley, who oversaw enforcing uniform violations by doing things like getting the girls to kneel and then measuring the distance from the bottom hem of their skirts to the ground, and whose extremely hairy legs were visible through the sheer stockings she wore in winter – were not favourites.    English, on the other hand, was a favourite. I loved reading and I loved books. And our new year ten English teacher, Miss Cusack, was excellent. She made the books come to life, and I looked forward to her classes. It was 1988. The Bicentennial Year. I’d bee...