LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
According to local dad Barry McBean (62), he only looked away for a few seconds when the whole world changed around him.
“Phones, doors, cars; everywhere I look there’s a camera that’s already seen me first,” stated McBean, whose childhood memories replay to him in sepia tone.
“No one even cares about visiting the moon anymore. Why would you? In a world where everything is a hoax, do we really care about what’s actually there?”
With young adult children that often make him feel like a reanimated lifeform spliced with frog DNA and blood from amber encased mosquitos, McBean has needed a break from the world and has returned to the only thing that makes sense to him.
Waiting for his family to retire to their respective bedrooms, under the cover of night McBean turned on the oven, cranked up the heat and arranged himself a tray full of oven chips.
McBean then waited by the oven for thirty minutes, wondering if he’d ever finally crack and figure out how to use the ‘so-called airfryer’ that his kids would seemingly starve without.
Pulling the chips from the oven, McBean hit them with a few honest shakes of table salt and not the chicken salt his kids brought home which should reside in takeaway shops only.
“With tomato sauce not aioli. That’s how things should be.”
Popping the family sized serving of chips into the massive bowl his eldest uses for that weird Indonesian version of 2 Minute Noodles, McBean popped on some broadcast TV which happened to be showing a politically incorrect old Aussie film dear to his heart.
“Desmond’s Dream! No way! Look at young Sam Neil, wasn’t he just the man?” mused McBean, shoving his mouth full of hot, starchy sticks of distraction during one of the 48 ad breaks he would endure during the film.
“That’s his brother Chris Neil! Real talent in the family in my opinion. Add Nathan Neil and you’ve really got a precursor to the Hemsworths that my eldest daughter just loves.”
“I remember my dad going on about the Daddos. He was always asking ‘Why do we need three?’ He just didn’t get it. Or maybe he did? He loved his chips too.”
Reflecting on the father he had and the father he became, McBean never slipped too far into the depths of nostalgia and innocence lost, as the nourishing chips banded together like a life raft that allowed a clear vista of life’s sunset.
Yet once the chips were done, reality reappeared for McBean in the form of whatever band his daughter was listening to upstairs.
“Popstars used to be cool, didn’t they? It’s a new thing that they are a bit daggy right? I mean, they all look daggy in hindsight but these ones look daggy now.”
