Friday, September 27

Marilyn's Air Fryer has done sterling service for years but finally turned up its toes this week.  We don't bother to get things like this repaired.  A technician would have to charge a couple of hours to take it apart and re-fix the broken wire, or whatever, so we will consign it to landfill and buy a new one.  Apparently, they come in two styles: ones where you open a lid on top, and others which have a drawer at the front.  There is another that look like a mini-oven but they're too pretentious.

Marilyn decides we'll have one with a drawer.  I do my research, decide we'll buy it from Harris Scarfe, Jamie offers to pick it up to save us a trip into town and I open Click and Collect to place the order.  Perhaps it was a mistake to order it at 6 o'clock in the morning when I woke early because, when I received the confirmation email, I had ordered two of them. Bugger!

I sent off an email admitting my blunder but, if all else fails, I'll just return one for a refund.  I'm sure they'll understand.  Who needs two air fryers?

Never Mind is the title of today's story:

NEVER MIND                                                                                              NOVEMBER 11, 2022

I’ve been waiting for thirty years to tell this story.  It hasn’t been my story to tell but I heard just last week that the last of the characters involved has died in prison so I figure there’s no one left to criticise or tell me I’m a liar

You’ve all seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption where a basically decent fellow finds himself in prison where his true nature comes to the fore and he becomes a shining example to his fellow inmates, carries out the best-ever prison escape and lives happily ever after.  Well, this story’s not like that.  The hero of this story ended up in prison, certainly, but he deserved to be there and a stint in prison didn’t help rehabilitate him.  His prison experience would only ensure he would, before too long, end up back in the same place.

I can tell you, now that he is dead, and that his name was Brett.  He was born in a small town in the north of Tasmania and got up to all the usual mischief that kids of the 70’s thought of as rites of passage: pinching stuff from shops, ‘borrowing’ other kids’ bikes, breaking windows and running away, even low-level arson: all of which could be written of as juvenile high-jinks except that Brett eventually graduated to stealing cars, breaking and entering and more serious damage to property.

He even had a couple of stints in Ashley Boys’ Home where he honed his skills, learning from more accomplished crooks, and he looked forward to the day when he would be returned to society and he could take advantage of his enhanced abilities.  The day he left, the senior supervisor took him aside and spoke firmly to him, man-to-man.

“You’re at a crossroads in your life, Brett,” he said.  “When you leave here you can go on as you did before or you can make a break from that life.  Never mind what you’ve been in the past; you can be anything you want to be in the future and your life will be much better if you keep to the straight and narrow. I’d hate to see you back in here or, worse, banged up at Risdon.”

He might as well have saved his breath.  Brett had already mapped out his future.  One of his friends had told him about a fellow in Hobart who could help him carve out a career on the wrong side of the law.  He would probably start with low-level stuff: shop-lifting, burglaries and the like, but it wouldn’t be long before he graduated to drug dealing and, when he was a bit older, the sky was the limit.  He had a few dollars saved and the bus fare to Hobart was pretty cheap.  He had the fellow’s ‘phone number in his pocket; he’d go straight there without even calling in to see his Mum.  She’d only try to talk him out of it.  He could hear her, pleading with him to stay.

“Don’t go, Brett.  Stay here and I can look after you while you find a job. You might even go to TAFE and get a qualification”.  Brett laughed to himself at that thought.  None of his family had ever had a qualification.  They’d all worked for peanuts if they worked at all. No, his idea was the better one. His future lay on the wrong side of the law.  He liked the sound of that.  Being an outlaw had an heroic ring to it.

He'd never ridden on the bus to Hobart before and, when it stopped at Ross, he got out to buy a snack at one of the cake shops.  First, though, he visited the toilet in the Main Street.  The only stall was occupied and, when the door finally opened, Brett was surprised to see it was a fellow-inmate of Ashley who had been a notorious bully of the younger boys.

“Well, if it isn’t young Brett!  Can you lend us ten bucks, Brett, for old time’s sake?” the bully asked.

“Get lost, Wayne,” replied Brett and gave him a push.  The bully fell backwards to the floor, hitting his head on the hand basin on the way down.  Brett didn’t wait to see how he was, hurrying back on to the bus, without even stopping to buy his vanilla slice. 

Brett read in the next day’s newspaper that Wayne Smith had died as a result of a fall in the toilet.  Perhaps the police didn’t think there was anything suspicious about the incident, or they didn’t connect it with any of the passengers on the bus which just happened to be parked near the toilet at the time.  Or, perhaps, the police were just relieved that a local trouble-maker was no longer ‘on their patch’. Whatever, the circumstances, Brett was never under suspicion.

So, Brett was free to follow his ambition to take up a life of crime.  He was not a particularly successful criminal, spending more time in prison than out of it.  However, he was never charged with any more serious crime than trafficking drugs 

I don’t need to tell any more of this story.  You’ll know by my introductory words that Brett ended up back in custody and that his life did not turn out well.  He was in and out of prison until the day he died, in the prison hospital aged 63 years.  Not a happy ending but, never mind, happy endings are only for fairy tales.