This should keep my blog full for a couple of months.
Cheers
Danny
My first encounter with Hunter S Thompson and how he changed my holidays Part 5
*The Horror The Horror*
That first night we collapsed into our beds in the extension and slept like coma patients, though I do have some recollection of things smacking into the windows at various times.
Since there were no curtains in the building we were rudely awoken by the morning sun which rises a bit earlier and with a lot more intensity than down home, no matter how far I covered my head under the blankets it and my hangover were not going to let me relax, I decided to get up.
Martin on the other hand could have slept through the bombing of Dresden was contently sleeping a string of drool covering his chin.
I got up and played with the kids for awhile, reassuring them Martin wasn’t a goblin who would eat their dolls if they were naughty as their Father told them last night.
Rob and Lin were hosting a Bar-B-Que this night as a get together to introduce us to their new friends and just have a bit of fun, so the day was pretty much a lay back and do nothing affair.
It gave me time to read my book.
I was amazed the the Gonzo style of writing of H S Thompson was only a fraction of his works and he had traveled far and wide and put himself in some dangerous situations, but I was drawn to his weird, drug crazed adventures the most. I had already read the _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ extract three times and thought I go look for the book in its entirety.
So I tagged along with Rob, Lin and the girls on their trip to the shopping centre to see if there were any bookshops.
No such luck but I did find a copy of the video of Animal House and as luck would have it, it was the video shop that my sister was a member.
I thought I could watch that tomorrow why recovering from another expected hangover.
I was a huge fan of the Nation Lampoon Magazine that was responsible for the movie Animal House.
Writers like PJ O’Rourke went onto stellar careers, Chris Miller and Doug Kenney were rude, crude and hilarious and John Holmes was probably the best of the lot until he went to Hollywood and wrote and directed some of the shittest but highest grossing movies of the 1980’s.
Animal house was how every male from 16-23 wanted to live just for a short time in their life.
Plus it had a road trip scene.
When we returned home Martin had risen and was sitting eating a bowl of Corn Flakes dressed in only a pair footy shorts.
It took me half an hour to reassure the girls AGAIN that he wasn’t dangerous.
That day we hung around enjoying the sunshine and preparing for the party.
Mine and Martin’s preparation was to continue drinking and get in the holiday spirit while sitting and wondering where all those Toads and Cockroaches disappeared too.
The people who came to the party were a lovely bunch all in their mid thirties with young families , the majority immigrants from down south looking for the Sunshine state lifestyle.
Both Martin and I got into lots of discussions with couples asking them our unsolicited questions of why would they want to live in a state run by a psuedo-dictator.
It just showed our ignorance, all we heard down in Melbourne was how Bjelke-Peterson beat the hippies and used the police to do his will.
These people were praising his State run health care system, how groceries , petrol and the general cost of living were cheaper and they had wonderful weather to back all this up.
I wasn’t convinced isn’t this what Hitler did (minus the beautiful weather) before he turned nasty.
Eventually we cottoned on to the fact that if we kept up this line of conversation no body would talk to us, so we settled into having a good time always mindful that just beyond the flood light nestled in the damp grass, hundreds of Cane Toads lay in wait for the lights to go off.
There would be no pissing in the bushes tonight.
Most of the families left before midnight due to their young children and as the numbers thinned I heard the tick, tick, ticking I heard last night in bed, looking round I discovered it was winged cockroaches flying into the windows on the unlit area or rooms of the house.
The bastards were trying to reclaim ground by hostile action with their slimey mates waiting in the shadows; nighttime was shaping up to be a scary time in Insect-town.
Later that night I fell into a drunken sleep to the sound of Martin snoring and a squadron of flying bugs searching for a weakness in the glass.
Next week: Part 6 Prelude to Road Trip
