ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota Heights father of two has needless harangued his son this morning because he went out over Easter and got pissed in the park with his mates and some NIMBY yuppie dog called the cops on them.
“You’re 16-years-old! You should know better,” said Walter Rohl to his son, Fred.
“I can’t believe how drunk you were. I’m so embarrassed. The police had to bring you home, which was nice of them considering one of you threw a full can of Tooheys New at their paddy wagon. You’re lucky they didn’t charge you. Who were you with? Were you with that scabby-mouthed beanpole from school? What’s his fucking name? Were there any girls there? What’s wrong with you?”
“Sort your life out, son. If you keep fucking around, you’ll be a fuck up for the rest of your life.”
Walter is from Essex, a shithole in the United Kingdom, and used to have an impressive mane of hair. He’s 50 now and all his hair has fallen out. Since 1996, he’s called this great but problematic continent home and even married one of us and had some kids.
Fred and his sister, Camelidae, know that their old boy was a bit of a wild cat back in the day and his deep love for heavy metal indicates this.
In fact, Walter told this reporter in an unrelated conversation in 2008 that he went to Poland in 1994 to see Iron Maiden play a show in Warsaw.
While he was there, enjoying the tracks, someone offered him some gak and Walter snorted it off a stranger’s key then put the key in his mouth. He looked over and saw someone injecting some gak into a vein underneath their tongue, which he said was cool but pretty confronting for a junior printer salesman at Xerox like him.
He was only 22 and had the world at his feet but somehow, he ended up in this desert out here in South West Queensland with the rest of us.
Fred gave us a bit of insight into his old man after he detailed the haranguing above.
“I like country music. Dad doesn’t,” he said.
“The other day we were driving to soccer and I put on that newish Luke Combs song he did with Jameson Rodgers, Cold Beer Calling My Name and Dad said he’d put the car in the table drain at a buck twenty if I didn’t turn it off. Fuck he’s a cranky old Pom,”
“But I put something like Hallowed Be Thy Name on and he takes his hands off the steering wheel and sings the intro pitch-perfect like he’s the fucking Phantom of the Opera or something. He’s a strange bloke but if your Dad isn’t a space cadet, did you really have a dad?”
More to come.
