The bottom line

MUM was in hospital at the time and, initially at least, that was a bit of a worry.

However, she was pretty perky when I saw her and it turned out to be only for a couple of days, so Step decided to take us both off to the pictures, to get our minds off Mum’s problems.

I can’t recall the film but I think it featured Richard Widmark who usually played the wiry little bloke with a curled lip and smoking gun. Depending on his role, he was battling with goodies or baddies — it didn’t matter much because his acting never varied — and he competed, too, with the occasional rattle of Jaffas down the sloping timber floor of the old Bug House, as “His Majesty’s Theatre” was fondly known.

It would have been ten or fifteen minutes before interval when it happened.

A pong.

An absolute nasal-knocker.

One of the worst in history. So tangible you could almost touch it. It must have suffused the entire theatre. Certainly, it suffused the area where we were sitting — middle stalls, just off the right-side aisle. No noise. No preceding drum role. A real sneaker.

And, before you could say “dead fish”, Step launched himself.

“God, Nicholas, can you smell that? What filthy lout would do a thing like that? Absolutely disgusting. Foul. We should get our money back. What self-respecting theatre would permit such filth?”

Sell a pen of very old ewes in a high wind in the middle of a drought

All of this at the top of his voice. It was the kind of noise you hear when you listen to an auctioneer trying to sell a pen of very old ewes in a high wind in the middle of a drought. And all of it soon joined by a muffled chorus of shooshing and tutting. Except for one very cultivated voice that asserted “…some of us have come to see the film.”

“You’ve obviously lost your sense of smell….”, yelled Step, adding “….and anyway how can you watch a film through that fart?” This quashed the debate and also coincided with, two rows in front of us, a frail figure standing up and, after bumping his way past a dozen or so knees, hurrying out of the theatre.

By this stage, I had slid so far down the seat that I was barely visible.

“Ha’, bellowed Step, “the culprit sneaks out.” There then followed an eerie silence followed by his roar of “GOOD RIDDANCE.”

Now, I have to tell you that, to this day, I remain convinced that Step was responsible for that fart. I can’t prove it but there is no doubt in my mind that he did it. A lot of things gave him away — the self-satisfied smirk as he lined up for ice-cream during the interval, the texture, the characteristic nutty pungency. Oh yes, he did it alright but he never let on. Never. Not even on his death bed. I reckon the other chap left the theatre before the interval because he was either dying for a pee or because he had dropped a little one and thought it was really him who was responsible for the humdinger.

I tell you all this only because my family has a long history of interest in bodily functions with a particular orientation to the rectal area. It is an interest that, to my direct knowledge, covers four generations and seems, always, to quickly embrace those brave enough to marry into the family.

It would be quite routine to wander into a family living room mid-morning and find an animated discussion on politics or the relative merits of Lindwall and Trueman suddenly halted by the emergence of Aunt Ethel or Cousin Eddie from the toilet. “How’d it go?” “Everything OK downstairs?” A few such questions would roll out and the answers would flow just as readily — “Quite satisfactory, thank you” or “Nine out of ten. Terrific.” The group would then return to cricket or politics — or sometimes both at the same time — as if the interruption had been the most normal thing in the world. In our family it was.

Perhaps the most active practitioner of this interest was Uncle Gus. Uncle Gus was uncle to no one in our family nor, as far as we knew, to anyone else. Back in the distant past, Gus had a fiery affair with Granny’s sister, Hortense, but within only a few days of the wedding Hortense left town with an acrobat from a visiting circus.

A belly dancer on the North African nightclub circuit

There was no subsequent direct contact with Hortense but we did hear that she made a name for herself as a belly dancer on the North African nightclub circuit. Anyway, that history aside, Granny was so distraught at Hortense’s cavalier treatment of Gus — indeed, of the whole family — that she invited Gus to live in the family home or, at least, in a comfortably renovated extension to the back verandah. This he did for some forty years — through his work years in the statistics section at the municipal council offices and into his retirement before he passed away on the very day that Hawthorn won their first premiership. As an enthusiastic Hawthorn supporter he would have regarded that as a nice touch.

Family rumour had it that Granny and Hortense had once been competitors for Gus’s affection. However, no family member could recall ever having seen any evidence of this in the subsequent behaviour of either Granny or Gus, even though whisky got the better of Grandpa when he was only fifty seven and Granny never remarried.

Gus could tell you how many miles of footpath were under the Council’s jurisdiction — disaggregated by sealed and unsealed paths — how many tons of sewerage, how many tons of rubbish, how many gallons of stored water, how many parking spaces and much much more. He was a remarkable source of statistically valid information on the full gamut of Council activity. It was well known that, in the twilight of his career, he would have enjoyed promotion to higher office had he accommodated the change to decimalisation with greater enthusiasm. However, he considered decimalisation an unnecessary and offensive “foreignism”, as he called it, and insisted that it was all a devious plot by those countries that had “lost the war but won the peace.” His views on this matter were widely known, not least because he bombarded the press with them.

Yet, for all his statistical skill, Gus’s greatest expertise lay in the area of poo. Uncanny he was. He could judge the success or otherwise of a departee from a toilet whether the person concerned emerged from a public toilet at the football or at home. It was in the domestic environment that he excelled whether it be a family situation or the occasional party. He or she who emerged with a satisfied grin would be greeted with a warm “Well done.” If, on the other hand, his attention was caught, as it often was, by a pale, tense face awash with perspiration, Gus would go for the jugular. “Woops’, I heard him say once, ‘a bit of trouble getting the horse through the kennel door, eh?”

The need for Gus to have an operation for haemorrhoids was the occasion of his greatest triumph — as well as his most painful experience — in this area of paramount personal interest. He approached the whole event with enthusiasm and great good humour. He seemed to see it as some kind of recognition — a sort of endorsement, a celebration — of a life’s commitment to the wellbeing of his “food processing paraphernalia”, as he often described his nether regions. He was admitted to the hospital with all due ceremony, accompanied by most of the family, including Granny whose public appearances had become confined to major family events. And, through the five days of his “confinement”, as he called it, the family continued to pay daily homage.

Both Gus and the surgeon declared the operation a complete success, as a result of which Gus glowed for a day or so. The glow faded, however, as each day passed because Gus could only reply in the negative to the nursing staff’s routine question — “How are things going, Gus? Been yet?” Gus, you see, was being hoist on his own petard. Unbeknown to the nurses, they were using Gus-speak to remind him of deficient performance in the one area in which he saw himself as pre-eminent.

After a couple of days, however, a battalion of nurses employed an enema to clear all obstructions after which they discharged him. They did so with style, singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow” as Cousin Eddie drove him away in his ute.

Do not belittle Gus or our family because of this esoteric interest. It takes all sorts, you know.