ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
“What are you doing?” she thought.
“Why are you stopping in the middle of the intersection? Why are you telling me to go?”
“Who gave this gibbering old fool his licence? He is going to get somebody killed.”
No, Maggie Hallend hasn’t woken up on the wrong side of the bed.
Mercury isn’t in retrograde at the moment – and she’s not a cynical Gemini hellbent on being mean for the fuck of it. In fact, the 28-year-old is an overly polite and painfully meek Cancerian who avoids confrontation like it’s Tooheys New at the Breakfast Creek Hotel.
Maggie has just encountered the dumbest man in town.
Her drive to work this morning at the Diamantina Credit Union in South Betoota was accosted by Peter Costigan, a sexagenarian with a reputation that precedes him all over town.
Whether it’s an unsolicited chat at the Elephant & Pogostick Hotel of an evening’s time or his inability to merge while on the move, almost everybody in our fine desert community has had a run in with Peter fucking Costigan.
Just last year, Peter was driving into the sun down Mullholland Road in Betoota Heights when he ran up the back of The Advocate‘s editor, Clancy Overell, on his brand new Giant road bike as he trained for the gruelling Tour De Betoota Putain.
Clancy walked away with only a bruised coccyx, ruptured eardrum and a nipple lost to road rash but somehow, Peter managed to hold on to his licence.
Our reporter, by some miracle, managed to run into Peter this morning at the French Quarter Baker’s Delight, just minutes after almost causing a car accident that would’ve probably claimed Maggie’s birth privilege to walk and feed herself.
When asked if he feels that he’s a menace to other people while on the road, Peter laughed and said no.
“Everybody is in such a hurry,” he said, eating his 10 am neenish tart.
“So I let all those rushing people go before me. It doesn’t matter who has the right of way, I like to be as helpful as possible.”
One gobsmacked French Quarter denizen delighting in the bakery turned his head to see what type of moron was speaking such tripe.
But after noticing it was Peter, they went back to ordering their cheesy bacon roll.
More to come.
He’s from Esperance.