Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Nightmare on Bourke Street














It's a wintry afternoon and I'm thirsting for beer and yearning for a handful of greasy, hot dim sims.

The longing is powerful enough to send me out of the house, onto the dodgy Number 57 tram alongside a man sniffing paint from a plastic bag until I step out again into the flotsam and jetsam of Bourke Street Mall.

I don't recall seeing too many pubs around here: a few cafes that are probably licensed, but tucked away into discreet alleys and not on the mainstream shopping strip itself. As for dim sims, they'd be more than likely sitting in some bain maries in noisy food courts, skins hardening and drying the longer they're in the salmonella-graded, not-quite-hot-enough heat of a stainless steel tray atop an ancient element.




















I keep walking and idly wonder if I should just buy a bottle from a wine store and roll it in my hands so that it becomes warm. Yeah, I want it to be room temperature, Old English Inn style, with the yeasty smell mingling with the post-binge vomity bile that soaks into the carpets by the pub's fireplace, forming a lasting reminder of what makes beer the unforgettable drink it truly is.

I want the dim sim to be inhospitably chewy on the outside but moist and pink on the inside, tasting uncomfortably raw with a lingering after taste of fatty pork, sweaty chicken meat and a few slivers of unidentifiable bone fragments. A flaccid little snack with dubious nutritional value and an unnaturally yellow skin. Yeah, that's what I need....















I see this Dream Boat sleeping and nudge him awake. "Hey fella," I ask, "Where can a girl like me find a good warm beer and some dodgy dimmies?"

The rude git flicks me the bird and settles back into his phlegmatic snoring, leaving me to keep searching the mall on my own. My stomach is grumbling in complaint - it needs its fix and needs
it now.

Maybe I should just get back on the Number 57 tram and ask some of the fairly malodorous occupants where they'd go to find----- wait a minute ----- what's Love Chunks doing here?

He's seated on a toilet right in the middle of the mall, situated rather precariously between the two tram tracks; trousers and jocks bunched around his ankles and flanks exposed to the elements. He doesn't see me as he's too busy grimacing and concentrating on what he's - ahem - producing and is also oblivious to the shoppers crossing the tracks around him.

Then I spot my daughter. "Sapphire! Sapphire! Sweetie, can you help me with Dad, because he's-----"

She looks up vaguely because her attention is on the banana she's avidly unpeeling and eating. Our adored dog Milly is beside her, cleaning her own teeth with colgate mild mint, her tail wagging happily. What the hell-----

It is then I sit up in bed and note the evilly acidic bile angrily flippity-flopping in my stomach. This is what warm beer and dim sims must feel like.

Groping for the side table as a lever, I slip out of bed and brokenly feel my way towards the dark bathroom, cursing as the bubble packing refuses to budge and then pops wildly, pinging all the pellets of Panadeine to the edge of the bath tub. I scrabble around the floor and eventually find a couple that, whilst covered in a bit of stray towel fluff and pubic hair, get shoved rapidly and gratefully into my dry mouth.















It all makes sense now: Mr Migraine has arrived again, and is focused on using his new hand-powered screw driver to burrow a clearway between my left eye socket and right temple.

Goody.

12 comments:

River said...

At first I was horrified; beer and dim sims?? Has Kath gone crazy? Then I got to the part about Love Chunks and thought, thank goodness, it's a dream. by the end though I'm feeling sorry for you again. Another migraine. yech!! Can you get something stronger than panadeine? Or take three instead of two at the beginning of the headache? Just to knock it back a bit further a bit quicker. Not that I want you to become a druggie or anything, just, feel better faster. Talk to your chemist? Some chemists sell their own brands of painkillers with the maximum amount of codeine allowed without a prescription, that's what I take if mine gets really bad, which is rare. mostly i take Mersyndol which has 9.6mg of codeine. Always with food.

Miles McClagan said...

Mr Migraine was a neighbour of Mr Tickle...the hijinx they got up to...

eleanor bloom said...

Yeah, I take that Mersyndol crap too (the cheaper versions). Don't think any painkiller really touches a migraine though. Are some pills you can get through the doc which i'm guessing you already know all about.

I was excited re dim sims to tell you about what a great dim sum/yum cha i had today! All was yummy but i didn't finish my chicken's foot (especially as my dining partner reminded me how they've walked in shit all their life).

hope you feel better soon kath.
(bloody migraines!!!!!)

Cat J B said...

Yuck, migraines are something I thankfully do not suffer from....knock, knock. And after that description, no more dim sims for me either, erk. Feel better soon.

Kath Lockett said...

River, I take two to start with and if after an hour they haven't helped, I take another two.... but only if it's unbearable. Any more than that and I end up vomiting them back up, which KILLS when your head's pounding.

Give me Mr Tickle any day, Miles: at the very least I could tie knots in his arms.

Eleanor I LOVE dim sum/yum cha but just not the dim sims that have the pork and chicken in them - they always taste undercooked and the fried ones from the take-away shops .... ~shudder~ .....

Thanks, Cat. Had a good sleep today which is why tonight finds me sleepless and goofing off with the internet.

Baino said...

Haha I thought you were brave poking he sleeping man and wondered had I missed some exotic toilet sculpture in Bourke Street! Sorry about the migraine. Glad you're feeling better . . .all this stuff about the Swine Flu and they can't cure migraines or the common cold! GAH!

deepkickgirl said...

I started to worry a little around the warm beer point but I was still enjoying the journey up until LC turned up on the loo in the middle of Bourke Sreet Mall. Then I started to get a glimpse of what was coming.

So sorry Mr Migraine is back. Hope it's just a very short visit.

Mind you, now I could really do with a dim sim. Mmmm... I can feel a yum cha coming on...

Jack42 said...

Hey, I want that camera that you have that takes pictures of things your are dreaming about. That fat guy sleeping on the wall looks just like a person from the real world. I just have one question: How do you download the photo from the dream camera into your computer.

;-j

wine information said...

That dude totally rocks! I feel like him sometimes when I get home from work!

drb said...

Hope you have recovered from your last attack by now.

NOt sure about your new photo next to the dummies book...

redcap said...

Oh dear. You poor blossom. Great bit of nightmare writing, though!

My sister ordered steamed dim sims once, only to be presented with fish shop dimmies in a horrible pallid shade of dead. You think they taste bad fried? You ain't seen nothin' yet, sister.

ashleigh said...

I'm with redcap - fish dimmies, steamed are rather unpleasant. As is Mr M.

There's some hideously expensive thingy you can get from Mr Dr that you shove up your hooter and sniff. It's supposed to work - and about about $20 per dose so it damn well should. Trouble is, every time me or 't other 'alf have had to have recourse to them, they don't damn well work.

Once upon a time you could get Ergodryl or Caffergot. The ergontomine in them is not very nice but it whacks Mr M into the next street. They were cheap too. Trouble is you can't get 'em any more. Wonder why.