With the enquiry into Ms Culthorpe stiffed until the enquiry into misogyny in parliament report is released in 2525, our heroes must wait, and time waits for no one.
Dear reader, for those of you who’ve been following this saga, and been distracted by reading the extraordinary efforts of the Australian government to leave the poor, the weak, the femininely inclined, the former allies and compatriots to rot in Kabul, we return to the main game. The story of our heroes forced under the brute force of Sophie and ‘Benny-boy’ to a subterranean cavern beneath Maralinga, and the realisation that Sophies reach is nuclear. They endure a final soliloquy to what could be a bigger big bang! And all of this because as mere citizens, we tried to get to the bottom of who defiled our tea lady Ms. Culthorpe when she was an intern in our Federal Parliament. As you may recall, we return to a cavern full of pommy nukes and 1950’s Australian wireless and valve technology.
The Golden Age, when good men knew how to shoot baddies and not just fourteen year olds in an onion field.
Sophie, then, tossing the Sobrani aside before inserting another into the holder and lighting up looked straight through us. ‘I’ll tell you why? You see, this, all of it, was manufactured in Australia before Gough killed it all by taking the tariffs away. This was our golden age”! Sophie waved her arms expressively at the ancient infrastructure.
Ces interjected, “what’? A load of crappy telly and over-priced stereos’? Sophie would not be diverted, she continued with an icy steel in her voice;
“Once I’d bumped Angus off and that pesky Xi, and destroyed Chinese manufacturing with imports of radioactive cobalt and other precious metals I was gonna re-ignite the furnace of Australian manufacturing from its heyday, and ensure that these names, Pye, Astor, Qualcast and Austral Villiers would be famous the world over. And the world will tremble from Australia’s MIGHT! Of its industrial might and KNOW-HOW! And kiddies will sing praise to the great progenitor, the ONE that made it happen, the MIGHTY, the IRREPRESSIBLE, the INDEFATIGABLE, the INFLEXIBLE and un-impeachable MAJESTY of …. She paused… ME’!!!
‘But don’t you see Soph’,
Three great men, ardent monarchists and believers in the boons of CIVILISATION!
‘Excuse me’,( she interjected) my official name’!, Ces exasperated, reasoned; ‘as a former senator, now exalted Fair-Work Commissioner don’t you see that these nukes may go off sooner than you expect, and any false movement, any knock will be liable to set em off, and we’ll all be blown’, he paused for further dramatic effect, ‘be blown to ATOMS’!!
I added for emphasis, for my own sake in obliteration of ourselves, Maralinga, the vast reserves of Cobalt and other precious metals, and the fact that in spite of my comprehensive and encyclopaedic knowledge of Australian manufacturing from the golden era, and names that were bywords for quality and durability, the unalterable fact that not even a nuclear physicist could unlock the mysteries of Lucas electrics. Indeed, (upon reflection as the words formed within my subconscious) Lucas, more than anything else, the Fall of Singapore, the Suez crisis, and Ming’s anointment as the knight of the cinq ports could be solely attributed even after the successful testing of nuclear devices in a far flung colony, spelt the end of the British Empire! , ‘Yes’ I added….’To ATOMS’!!
‘So Fucken WHAT’, Sophie countered, hoping that post Gina she could mix in the more rarified circles of The Sussexes, and the Wales’s and fill the gap left by Harry and Migraine, because above all Sophie was an ardent monarchist and appreciated just how much the monarchy had done the world over in improving the lot of those who use the status quo to garner wealth and influence over the great unwashed, ‘Blown to atoms, but they’ll be on my agency, and those atoms anointed by MY HAND to demonstrate BRUTE FORCE and ALL CONSUMING POWER’!
The Cambridges are just an ordinary working family
Sophie was on a roll, clearly megatons of nuclear capability just increased her heft, and in this, the final minute of the final hour, she was going to demonstrate to us her ‘Vision’. A Vision which even our exalted PM, who was not only the Prime Minister of Australia, but more importantly the Prime Minister of New South Wales, and of Sydney, and pre-eminently the prime Minister of Scott Morrison. But not even that was enough protection from the tyrannical and righteous megalomania, ( being a powerful word of Greek parentage) exerted underground and in our presence, by the former member for Indi, now fully functional member of the Fair Work Commission giving us her final soliloquy. As I whispered to Cec’s. ’Spose a final soliloquy has gotta be better than A final solution’? Ces nodded in agreement.
‘SILENCE’!!!,Sophie Boomed! ‘You think this is the end? That’s where YOUSE, (again we winced), like all of em are WRONG! And soon you’re gonna be DEAD WRONG’!!!
‘ALL OF YOUSE! (we were staggered by her continued use of Union Shop steward argot, clearly as Fair Work Commissioner she’d learnt much), I’ll be outta here, to deal with Angus alone, whilst youse and that bully boy colossus here’, She pointed directly at benny-Boy, ‘can just BLOW’!
Man of VISION! A Great Australian tells us as an unalterable fact that after twenty years, the war in Afghanistan was an OUTSTANDING SUCCESS!
And there in that forsaken chamber we stopped stock-still. For as Sophie waved her bejewelled hand, and the largest of the Mount Argyle stones, (a gift from an adoring Gina) on her ring finger glanced the surface of the warhead, something odd happened. It was only the merest glancing blow. As a feather upon a concrete surface, or the touch of a swans neck by a princely hand, a grain of sand, soft- flounced upon the littoral…..From within the steel chamber, the great bomb- shaped carapace of blue-grey steel we listened in acute shock. For from within, with a methodical and metallic sense of irreconcilable certainty, a dull ticking could be heard.
Sophie, turned to us her megalomania tempered by pure fear, she pointed to the three of us and screamed; “DO SOMETHING”!!!
Pye encouraged men to ‘strangle a sheila at home’, a move popularly endorsed by Australian males ever since….
Will our heroes be blown to atoms? Will the Atoms, * being old- school British atoms) be E.U or Brexit Atoms? Or, like the deserving and hapless allies who helped our noble cause in Kabul be left to rot? Find out in the next radioactively nuanced episode, “ A glance in the dark”, or “ Two Tickets to Kabul, and no returns’!