Dear reader we arrive where we left off. 

With more twists and turns than the Coalition’s climate policy shenanigans we’re almost back to where we started again, which is right at the end of the beginning, or the back of the front. In our futile attempt to find the identity of the heinous oppressor who so basely defiled our Tea-lady in sacred duty as an intern in our nations parliament. 

When all seemed lost Benny-Boy saw the light, and trussing up the world’s arguably most powerful woman, Sophie Mirabella exalted sinecurist of the Fair Work Commission, we realised the tide had turned and Benny was prepared to be a hero at a moment when it really counted. And that was worth celebrating. As little else had gone right since we found ourselves in a bunker full of old pommy nukes under the desert sands of Maralinga. 

Please read, if you dare, and find out if our heroes are pickled or just plain run outta luck? 

“What are we gonna do now’? I pleaded with Ces and Benny-Boy. The air was deathly still, with Sophie visible only as a blank shadow that writhed and squirmed  in futile fits for freedom.  Benny-Boy, seeing his nemesis restrained and gagged gave her a gentle kick every now and then to show us he still cared. 

“We cant just leave her here’? 

‘Why not, she wanted to blow us to smithereens, she was happy to see us atomised, and not given the chance of,  at the very least of a hearing,  before the full board of the Fair Work Commission. She’d slotted us without even an enterprise bargaining agreement. She was gonna do the full Geoff Bezos on us whilst taking a rocket trip to who knows where’!

‘Yup, Benny piped in, she had us all slotted, and the worstest bit, (we winced at Benny’s grammatical inexactitude)  is she was not recognisant of my efforts to civilise the Afghanis as a noble gesture of Anzackery upon the unquestionable altar of Gallipoli’.

‘Yup, she ’s a bit like Scomo all about compassion for the deserving billionaires, and about as subtle as a lump of coal in parliament. What is it with these ex pollies? Is not getting paid squillions for cushy sinecures and privileges and a life post-parliament as a fully paid lobbyist enough’? 

‘Well it aint’, Benny boy conjectrued thoughtfully,’ it all boils down to relevance deprivation! 

‘Ya see’, (Benny-Boy’ was the full bottle on this); ‘they think they actually make change, rather than just being sinecurists and feather-bedders. They’ve got the universal sense of entitlement that comes with not actually working for a living. They think we owe em for letting em screw us over. It’s paradoxical see. The more we roll over and let em do it, the more they think they can kick us’. Benny was waxing philosophical and for emphasis gave the rolly polly ball of anger another kick. 

The ball responded with an audible ‘hrmpphhh’ and tried another kick with a  well aimed Italian designer-house stiletto. 

‘Yep’, Ces interjected; ‘they are sub human in the compassionate sense, but we can’t let em just die, Cos that would be just inhumane.  It’s make make us no better than, (he paused for added emphasis), “THEM’! 

‘So what are we gonna do? 

I dunno, we’ve still got all these nukes, and the empty bottles of grog, perhaps there’s a few more lurking? 

‘And’, Ces interjected; ‘we can’t go up, Angus’s cronies l’ll get us for sure.  We can’t take Sophie with us, cos as soon as she’s out she’ll slot us. There’s nowhere to go! We’re kinda’, he paused for emphasis; ‘stuck’! 

The stuckedness was galling, . After all we’d done, to be so incarcerated.. 

And yet strangely, there was comfort in knowing that with Australia’s most decorated and bravest soldier ‘Benny-Boy’ Roberts Smith we were safe. Safe if nothing ever happened and we didn’t starve to death. ‘It’s just like Scomo on Climate’, Ces enthused, ‘provided nothing ever happens, and no one challenges what we’re on about we can just cruise into the next election,  or in our case catastrophe, reassured that the general public will always put self-interest over the big picture’. 

‘What’s our big picture’? Quent enquired caustically. 

‘I dunno, it was to get to the bottom of who done Ms Culthorpe in, but now I’m not so sure. It’s hard to have a big picture when the whole world seems consumed by  little people with little pictures and vested interests all devoted to themselves. It’s to put a word on it, disheartening’. 

We all looked at the ball of writhing humanity before us, more malignant than ‘the Blob’, knowing that unleashed it would wreak its irresistible fury upon human-kind. ‘You see, it’s not that they lack compassion, empathy, values and humanity, it’s just that they’ve got what we haven’t got’. 

What’s that? Quent asked; ‘They’ve got an overriding sense of themselves. They’d wipe out the whole planet if it meant they could get an edge, and at the end of it, they’re still gonna be unhappy. We should feel sorry for em, it’s a form of psychosis. It’s unstoppable, and yet strangely fascinating. If only their energy could be used for good’. 

We all thought for a while, we looked at the ball of humanity trussed up for its own good, and felt pity. ‘If there is a big picture , it’s mired in the capacity for thinking small. Another paradox’! Ces enthused. ‘The more they grasp, the smaller their humanity. Their big picture is the only picture they’ve got, and it’s infinitesimally small. And what’s out picture’?

The three of us looked at each other, Benny a giant amongst men and us, still dressed in out over-worn safari suits and volley internationals. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it was almost funny.

We wondered;  There must be  a big picture? 

But here in this stygian gloom? 

Like the Feds climate policy if there was a bigger picture, it was more complicated than a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with bits missing all over the place. 

Where we the missing pieces?

Find out in our next compelling episode, ‘a jigsaw and an angle grinder wont bake a cake’, or ‘trussed up and bound to who knows where’?