CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A local pub patron has today been met with the universal sign that his mates have left the venue momentarily.
After coming from taking a Brad Pitt in the pub’s secret bathroom that backs onto the pokies, local man Derrigan Lewisham (29) was surprised to find the once roaring table of shit talk had all but vanished.
With a meal buzzer on the table and five near-full schooners on the table, Derrigan knows they can’t have gotten far.
First of all, one of them’s obviously ordered a feed. Because nobody keeps a meal buzzer that has already gone off.
And second of all, they’ve sealed these schooners off from the outside world with the pub’s cardboard drink coasters on top of the glass.
As is common knowledge in Australian pub culture, a coaster on a schooner is the official sign of ‘be right back’.
Derrigan begins to weigh up the different scenarios to deduce how long it will take for them to be back.
The days of the boys ‘stepping outside’ to engage in an alcohol-fuelled street fight with another group of similar drunk males might be behind them.
And it’s far too early in the evening for an ATM run.
There is the possibility that they have gone outside to bare witness to some other sort of drama, but if there was in fact a punch-on happening between two third-parties – Derrigan figures they wouldn’t have had time to carefully place the coasters on their glasses.
Then he remembers that one of the boys had stumbled across a packet of grey-market Chinese breath mints from a dodgy local tobacconist.
They must’ve ducked out for a Tina Turner, he decides.
But with the vast majority of them no longer burdened by a dependence on nicotine, the idea of this entire group heading outside for burner is also quite a throwback.
It’s almost just as likely as the boys getting caught up in a biff.
Derrigan decides he better go outside and check, incase they need him to fly in with a haymaker from the side.
MORE TO COME.
