Life’s certainly full of surprises, isn’t it? I rang the Zanzibar Dating Service and said that things weren’t quite right with Golda. So Zelda sent me to Bondi Junction to meet Edna Bagge. Edna smoked, had bleached blonde hair, 30cms of make-up on, talked through her nose and had a scar on her chin. She also wore cord jeans, ugh boots, a flannelette shirt and several rings and studs in each ear. There was something familiar about her though. Then I saw it, underneath the flannelette shirt as she got out of the car. The other scar between her neck and her shoulder where another head had started to grow that she’d had cauterised off. Edna was from the Central Coast. Worse. The Entrance. I couldn’t believe it. I came down to Sydney to get away from these mules. What was going on? If this was Florida in the God fearing USA I would have gone down to the nearest Kmart, bought an M-16, a grenade launcher and 50,000 rounds of ammunition, gone out to Punchbowl and shot up the Zanzibar Dating Service. Especially that frump Zelda. Then I remembered, I wasn’t paying Zelda, I was blackmailing her. So it was hello Edna. How’s things? Edna had lived in Sydney three years, worked at a fertiliser factory in Rosebery and was saving to go to Bali. I told her I lived in Stanmore and worked at the local council as a ratcatcher. I liked my job and the conditions — $500 a week and all the rats me and my dog could eat. Edna agreed I was on a good thing. She got freebies in her job too, so if I wanted some fertiliser she had a few spare bags in her bedroom. I said thanks but I had no room in the boot. Edna said that was okay, I could put it in the back seat. Yeah. Righto. How can you argue with logic like that? So where do you take a peroxided scrubber from The Entrance who works in a fertiliser factory for dinner? Kirribilli House? I took her to No Names in Darlinghurst.

Actually, that’s not taking anything away from No Names. It’s tops. I’ve been going there for yonks and taking Edna pooh bag along was giving her a spoil. No Names is where you go if you want a quick, tasty feed of good, gut filling tucker at the right price. And that’s it. There’s plenty of room, windows on the walls, bread on the tables and you can help yourself to the Palmer Street cheese and orange cordial.

I wasn’t all that hungry for some reason so I decided I’d just have a spaghetti bolognaise, which was a meal on its own. I sat down with my back to the blackboard menu, but it’s all up there. Fish, osso bucco, soup, schnitzel. Not a vast menu, but everything that’s on it is tops, which I think is a good idea.

I suppose another way to describe No Names would be Italian home cooking. Edna said the restaurant was nice, but if it was Italian, how come there was a Chinese cook and waiter? I said they worked at the No Names on The Great Wall of China and they were on exchange. Edna nodded that was a good idea. She used to be an exchange student once as well. They exchanged her name for a number. None the less, she was a woman of good taste and went for the scaloppine. Both meals arrived along with lettuce salad almost as soon as we sat down and away we went.

My spaghetti was excellent, as it always is there. No Names is famous for its spaghetti. Evidently, the Gestapo tortured 15 Italian partisans to death during the Second World War trying to find out the recipe for No Names spaghetti. Edna’s scaloppine was beautiful. A stack of tender, sliced beef covered in a rich, lip smacking, finger licking sauce that tasted of oregano and tomato. I dipped a crust in the sauce and Edna gave me some, and I reckon I might go for the scaloppine next time I’m in there. We finished our glasses of cordial and got ready to leave for the theatre. When I couldn’t believe my eyes. Edna jumped up, pulled a rock lobster out of her kick and offered to pay the bill. What a gal. But being an old fashioned chauvinist, I couldn’t cop that, so after a bit of pushing and shoving I produced a twenty myself and settled up. I got around eight dollars change back from the twenty and if that’s not value I’m Richard Gere.

It was a bit crowded downstairs, so to shut Edna up I let her shout me a coffee at some place across the road. The two coffees were grouse and cost Edna about three bucks. So after all that whining and dining, where does one take a woman as beauteous as the fertiliser queen from the Central Coast? The Nimrod Theatre? The ballet? I took her to see Beverly Hills Cop 3 at the Hoyts Centre.

Unbelievable. I cracked it for a good movie as well as a good feed. BHC 3 is a bit like No Names — satisfying. Only instead of oregano and tomato sauce on the fare, you get laughs. I reckon even Shere Hite would get a laugh out of this. The start is a crack up. It kicks off in a big garage full of hot cars in Detroit. A chop shop. Being Detroit, they’ve got a ghetto blaster playing Motown tracks and these two fat panel beaters start miming ‘Baby Love’ by The Supremes. It’s a killer. Unfortunately, these are the first ones to get shot. Bit of a shame that. Evidently, just as Eddie Murphy and his walloper mates are about to bust the chop shop on a routine thing, a bunch of baddies arrive intent on killing everybody. And away they go with the best machine gun shoot up I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some rippers — Rambo 2, Predator, Bonnie and Clyde. This beats them all hands down. And Eddie Murphy proves conclusively that you can get 60 shots out of a .38 pistol without reloading. I remember seeing the baddies reload. Maybe the big feed of spaghetti slowed me down. Eddie could have reloaded.

Whatever, when they’ve finished shooting up the panel beaters the baddies take off with Eddie after them in a Porsche and they shoot up all the light posts, cars, garbage tins, stray cats, old ladies and the cops. Unfortunately, during the ensuing melee Eddie’s boss done takes a slug in the chest and croaks in Eddie’s arms. So Eddie’s off to Beverly Hills again to avenge the murder of, dare I say it, his mate. His old china plate. Once in LA it takes Eddie about a NY minute to find out the baddies are up to no good in a fun park.

There’s a bit of frizzle frazzlin’ around, Eddie risks his life to save two kids, gets hold of some heavy ordnance and it’s on. More action and laughs. Naturally there has to be a head baddy, and who better to be head baddy than John Saxon? We’re talking big B baddy here. Even when he tries to be a goody he’s still a baddy. John Saxon is a turd. As soon as he appeared me and Edna banged our feet on the floor, screamed obscenities and threw rubbish at the screen. Then laughed like drains when he got shot amongst all these mechanical dinosaurs.

But what about Eddie Murphy and his LA cop mate from the other two movies? They both get shot too. At least twenty times each. I counted the bullets! And praise the Lord, they live. They’re both in the last scene when they re-open the fun park. Bit of plaster and bandages here and there, but good as gold and Eddie even gets the girl, despite his wheelchair. Glory hallelujah! It’s a miracle. Whatever. It was still not a bad movie. Heaps of laughs, action and guns going off. What more do you want on a rainy night in Sydney? I asked Edna and she agreed. Not a bad flick. Adding Eddie Murphy looked funny in one part, walking around dressed up as a purple rabbit or something, and the soundtrack was all right: I hadn’t even noticed. How ignorant of me. I apologised to my guest as we picked our way through the empty machine gun casings and headed for the car.

Edna seemed happy enough when I was driving her home. I asked her if she had an enjoyable night? She said she did. Thanks Bob. You’re a sweetheart. We pulled up outside her flat, she asked me did I want to have a cup of coffee and pick up that bag of fertiliser? There was an old raincoat on the back seat, the car didn’t smell all that good and Edna didn’t look all that bad in her flannelette shirt and matching ugh boots. I thought, yeah, why not? It’s not as if I have to get up in the morning.