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The Westside Chronicle is in the mailbox when I get home.

‘It was nothing’ says our Neighbour of the Month

Young Brisbane corporate lawyer Richard Derrington turned recently to his Christian faith when he saw his neighbour, eighty-four-year-old country music identity Kevin Butt, struggling to uproot a stump in his yard.

Richard, who is living in the home his grandparents built in Zigzag Street, Red Hill and bringing it back to its former glory, spent the best part of a day with pick and shovel as Burma Railway veteran and balladeer Kevin kept him going with ‘a few of our old favourites’.

‘Our country needs more like this lad’, Kevin said when nominating Richard to be our Neighbour of the Month, and at the Westside Chronicle, we couldn’t agree more …

Editorial

… It is people like Richard Derrington who give us continuity, who show us Christian concern at a time when values are regarded as ‘old-fashioned’, who show us that the heart of this city is still beating …

And a photo, of course a photo, the photo I had expected, with Kevin and his gleeful menacing teeth and loosely-slung guitar and me looking as though I am straining in some re-enactment of uprooting the stump or fighting against my worsening constipation. I read, and look, as though I’ll go through life with short back and sides.

I eat Tim Tams in the car on the way to tennis. And I play the worst tennis seen since at least the 1520s. Tonight, people would rather have a disease than have me as a partner. So Jeff is stuck with me.

Why? he asks. Why? Why?

I don’t travel well, I tell him.

But you only went to Sydney.

It was a rough trip.

I slow down the game in order to find form. In fact, I slow it down so much that my shots all sound different to everyone else’s. My serve becomes almost silent, and is referred to as the Stealth Serve once it is realised that it crosses the net undetected even by radar. I ace Gerry with a serve that actually stops. It sneaks over, plops onto the ground, bounces twice, rolls and stops. He shakes his head, says, Fuck, under his breath several times and kicks it back under the net.

And this is the high point. Other than that my serve is so poorly controlled that Jeff tells me I am turning tennis into a game akin to hitting a wet sock with a slack hammock. And that that game never became at all popular, for very good reasons.

Afterwards I am full of apology and the others are quieter than usual. I offer to buy all the drinks but they tell me it doesn’t matter. We sit on the benches outside the tennis centre and I eat my Ice Graffiti Icy Pole.

You poor boy, Gerry says. Love has really done you harm.

And I can’t tell him that right now he can’t imagine the harm. For some reason tonight he can’t just leave Love has really done you harm as a passing remark, and a round table discussion about love evolves over cups of Gatorade. And I’m so out of this I even have a problem with Gatorade now. I’m sitting there beginning to feel incredibly tired, focussing on the Gatorade logo on one of the cups and watching it peel off like a T-shirt. Right now my every muscle feels too heavy to lift, and love seems impossibly elusive.

Of course, Gerry says, we argue about this all the time. The basis of our relationship may be love but that doesn’t mean we think it’s the same thing. I think it’s something glorious. Freddie’s hopelessly pragmatic.

You make me sound as though I treat it like a transaction. Whenever you get into this stuff.

Hey, if the EFTPOS fits … And Freddie just glares. Gerry goes on, when perhaps it would be smarter not to. Mister Strong Silent Type here always gets shitty with me when I talk about it in public.

But only because you make me out to be emotionally bankrupt. You’ve got some quite impractical ideas. They’re lovely some of them, but they’re complete bloody fantasy. I think it’s wonderful that someone like you can survive in the real world.

The real world? Since when have I sought any association with the real world? Haven’t I got your big strong arms to protect me from the real world?

Always.

So they’re smiling at each other now. They’ve made it into a joke, maybe even a joke at themselves, and it’s as though any glaring never happened. Gerry turns back to me.

Look, I don’t know what Anna wanted, and I don’t know what you want, but I hope to god you find it soon. You just look so bloody miserable.

At home I microwave my leftover panang nua. I can’t believe how much has happened since the first half of this meal, how different things feel, and not in a good way.