ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
When Bob Hawke explained to parliament in 1988 that the most emasculating thing a bloke could do is ask for a drinks tray, he meant it.
Since then, carrying four schooners of full-carb beer from the bar back to the boys has been a life skill passed down from father to son, mate to mate. But for one effeminate Sydneysider, the task of ferrying the four piss jars back to the long table has always been impossible.
“I have tiny hands,” said Patrice Everesté, a private wealth manager from Sydney’s Upper East Side. “The boys always hang shit on me when I come back from the bar with a tray, like some sort of girl.”
Not being able to carry four schooners has taken a significant toll on the 29-year-old’s self-esteem, as his friends simply will not let up on the insults and personal criticisms.
“They ask me if my boyfriend likes my little hands,” he said. “I’m not gay, by the way. But you know, it’s 2016 and there’s nothing wrong with being a petite-handed boy-kisser. Plus, I hate beer. I’d rather just settle in with a nice bottle of Mudgee pink and people watch.”
However, just when things were beginning to look up for the soft-handed nice guy, one of his mates noticed that he also had comically small feet.
Explaining to The Advocate that he doesn’t really care that Patrice has size-seven feet, drinking friend Joe McCombmac stated categorically for the record that he thinks Everesté has “cute, but petite feet” and “weak little hands that couldn’t even open a tin of soup.”
“Yeah look, mate,” said McCombmac. “I know we always rouse on Pat about being a little gay boy who can’t carry four schooners and having the feet of a child, but he’s a pretty good bloke and tells ripper yarns. I understand he’s pretty good at his job,”
“They must have a tiny keyboard for him to use [laughs].”
More to come.
Dear Sirs,
As a Western Australian I find myself unimpressed at reading of this sort of childish, silly bullying of a probable sodomite by these loud-mouthed buffoons.
By way of explanation, both Mick Henderson and Faisal the Mussulman had sub-average sized hands when I worked with them on a long bullock drive I did once from Billiluna right through to Leonora, and both were very useful chaps.
Faisal’s small hands meant he was somewhat limited with regard to what belongings of yours he could lift and carry-off at any one time – and that was always a strong selling point when it came to choosing which Mussulman camel handler you hired. His pint-sized mitts also proved jolly nimble at repairing and re-inserting the camel nose-pegs whenever they fell into a state of disrepair – which considering that none of us really wanted to be savaged and bellowed at by camels any more than was necessary, that was a particularly fortuitous situation – and he seemed to be fairly resilient when it came to camel bites and never developed a serious enough limp or gangrene to the extent that it ever made him a liability.
Mick’s small paws may have amused these New South Wales oafs if they’d seen them, but let me tell you in a community of real drinkers they were priceless. If this Everesté chap’s mates are such pillow-biters that they think drinking out of glasses is a sign of masculine normality then they should be glad they never walked into Leonora pub when old Charlie ‘Beagle’ Bassett was running it.
‘Beagle’ was a serious man’s-man publican, and only ever served beer in troughs which you filled yourself with 5-gallon buckets which were replenished at the bar. The no-hoper who ran the pub before ‘Beagle’ was a fairly slack bloke I’d have to say, and you’d often find a dead sheep in your trough when you were filling it, which was always a huge pain in the arse as it meant you were continually wringing it out during the evening because it kept soaking up the grog. He was also a fair pig of a man as well as being an unhygienic slacker, and whereas ‘Beagle’ always served a good drop with a decent head on it, and always had the troughs meticulously sluiced before he opened his doors to the clientele, this other mongrel had beer as flat as the surrounding countryside and used to drop his dacks and fart in your bucket (and have the audacity to charge you an extra half a sovereign for the “service” I might add) if you pointed out to him that there seemed to be an absence of the usually-expected bubbles. No tears were shed when he eventually sold out to ‘Beagle’ and was then run out of town – beer that someone’s farted in doesn’t really satisfy, and I don’t care how long you’ve been on the hoof since the last drop had passed your lips. I heard he eventually got another job as bartender at the Weld Club in Perth.
Anyway, I appear to have gone off course even worse than Colonel Warburton this time, because the point I wanted to make was that Mick’s small hands were perfect for gripping and transporting the 5-gallon buckets. The size of the paws is an irrelevancy – good upper-body strength and firm triceps are what counts for speedy trough replenishment, and Mick had both in spades and was a firm favourite amongst the men come trough-time. Particularly as Faisal wasn’t available for co-opting into service because of his Mussulman beliefs regarding alcohol and his preference of an evening to sit with the camels and plan the eventual overthrow and destruction of white men everywhere – which always cheered him up and kept him occupied and even distracted him away from lifting our belongings with his small hands.
So, to this Patrice chap I’d simply tell him that he needs to choose his company a bit more thoughtfully in future. Men who drink out of glasses aren’t real men at all, and no real man really gives a shit how many glasses you can or can’t hold as long as you can keep up a consistent pace transporting buckets between a beer tap and a trough. These poofters that you’re hanging around with are making you look bad son. Lift your game.
Regards
Ron Muppet
Geez Ron
Farting in the beer trough seems a low act. With his effervescent build up of flatulence, I wonder if he sold the tailings of that batch as a ‘Sparkling Pinot Grigio’ ?