>What's in it for Blair??? Yoshie
>
>-------
>
>Hmm. That's a tough one. Let's see...
>
>How about his very own chair in the dock for the trial of the United
>States, George W Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, et
>al. and the United Kingdom of Great Britain for war crimes and crimes
>against humanity at the Hague?
Ah! My ultimate fantasy. Sigh.
Which reminds me of a story my partner's father told me the other day. Her parents have been staying with us for the last 4 weeks, visiting us from their home in Kingaroy Queensland.
Laura's dad, a retired brickie, is as racist and reactionary as you would expect of someone from Kingaroy. I'll never forget the culture shock of my first dialogue with him many years ago, I recall for example his explaining to me how the local aborigines who live on the nearby aboriginal reserve at Sherbourg had it so good. "Not only do they have HOUSES, some of them even have CARS!" He snarled, furiously. For some curious reason I was never able to understand, he felt this was terribly unjust.
Mind you, old Barry also hated the now almost legendary Joh Bjelke-Petersen, reactionary Lutheren farmer from Kingaroy, who ruled Queensland for nearly 20 years. Barry was a Labor voter, which in Kingaroy made him a quite lonely figure, politically.
Later of course he became a fan of that more recent Queensland political reactionary - Pauline Hanson. But it wasn't so much Hanson's racism that attracted Barry, but John Howard's uniform national gun laws, which Hanson, almost alone, opposed.
Barry is a gun collector you see. His career as a brickie led him all over the state for decades and he explained to me that whenever he was working for some farmer he would make a point of asking if they had any old guns lying around. Of course they all did and often they would give some old relic to him, or sell it cheap. He has a really interesting collection of old octagonal-barrel lever-actions, muzzle-loaders, ancient ex-army rifles, as well as some more modern stuff.
He also used to be a regular shooter, making regular trips out west to go pig-shooting and so forth. Like many shooters I know, John Howard's gun laws were the source of a hatred so deep and profound that it is almost impossible for people who don't share their passion to understand. Pauline Hanson was the beneficiary of that anger and frustration.
Barrie told me, with passion, that since "they" had "done over" Pauline Hanson, he had made it his business to merely scrawl obscenities on his ballot paper. There was no doubt in my mind that he would never vote for anyone else again.
But I digress somewhat. We were talking about ultimate fantasies, while Barry was ear-bashing me he also told me his. He told me about a dream he had once.
In his dream, Barry was out western Queensland again. Pig shooting. He goes off on his own, following the dogs through patchy scrub then suddenly comes into a big patch of cleared ground. In the middle of the clearing the dogs are holding something at bay and as Barry gets closer he can see it is John Howard, buried up to his neck in the sandy ground.
As the dogs snarl and bark at the terrified Prime Minister, Barry raises his rifle and carefully draws a bead right between Howard's bespectacled eyes. Slowly, with a sense of overpowering satisfaction, Barry begins to squeeze the trigger.
"Then suddenly, I woke up!" exclaims Barry. "It isn't fair, it just isn't fair," he groans. I can't help sympathising with the poor old bastard. Even in his own dreams, his ultimate fantasy, he has been robbed.
OK, I guess the story is a bit irrelevant, but it just came to mind. Thank Christ they've gone anyhow. Barry and his missus never stopped arguing.
As it happens, I found an old muzzle-loading shotgun out in the garage while he was here. Had it for years, the stock was nearly completely missing. But Barry was thrilled when I gave it to him and it kept him busy, soaking it in molasses (of all things) and cleaning it down every day to remove 100 years of rust, stripping and dismantling it lovingly. He carefully parcelled it up to take with him back to Queensland and I was a little surprised how little trouble he had taking it with him as part of his luggage.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas