ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
When asked by his boss where he went for an hour this afternoon, Kevin Poole said he was simply using the toilet.
There he was, a 30-year-old man wearing cargo shorts and a dirty t-shirt. He was standing beside his desk as his boss looked him up and how.
Two red marks above his knees told the boss he wasn’t lying.
“How long does it usually take you to go to the toilet?” the boss asked him.
“I dunno. Sometimes, I get distracted looking at my phone. Sometimes, I read the ingredients in shampoo bottles and deoderant cans,”
“Probably about an hour, usually.”
As soon as he said that, he knew it sounded wrong.
“An hour? What the fuck do you eat?”
Kevin had to think.
On Monday, he got the wok out from under the bench at home. He bought two kilos of kangaroo mince and six cans of crushed tomatoes. After frying off some onion and garlic until it was almost back, he dumped in the roo mince and tomato.
For nearly 45 minutes, he watched the mixture bubble away. When he thought it was almost done, he dumped in a full bag of ‘tube pasta’ and went back into the living room after giving it a stir.
He forgot about it, then came back into to find the pasta cooked to the point where it fell apart like a slow-cooked lamb shoulder.
It’s all he’s been eating since Monday.
“I’ve just been eating normal shit,” Kevin told his boss.
“Maybe I just have a slower metabolism?”
More to come.
