A Herd of Old Ladies

Almost every morning my male staff takes Badger and I into the nearby little town of Cooroy to do a bit of salad shopping for us and to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper for him, though actually the newspaper is for us really because it ends up lining the bottom of our cage.  He puts us in the child seat of the shopping trolley and wheels us around the little supermarket, occasionally knocking over towering displays of breakfast cereal and running into the back of other shoppers legs.  We like that of course, it’s always fun to watch elderly ladies hop around clutching one of their ankles while hissing curses at my male staff. It’s never his fault of course. It’s always the fault of the shopping trolley, which he claims has a mind of its own, which is more than can be said for my male staff.

Anyway today as usual we had to walk past the community hall to get to the shop. The door was open and music was wafting into the street along with what sounded like an extended heavy machine gun salvo. It was in fact a herd of old ladies hopping up and down in very noisy shoes. It looked as though my male staff had been let loose in an old folks home with his shopping trolley. More interesting still though, was the sign outside the hall. “COOROY’S GOT TALENT CONTEST” it read. I’ve seen these contests before on the telly. In Britain there’s “Britain’s got Talent”, while here in Australia surprisingly enough it’s “Australia’s got Talent”. I’m sure there’s one in the United States and I understand that even Pakistan has one. Osama bin Laden won that one a couple of years ago with a disappearing act. He was favourite to win it again this year too until the judges finally gave him three Xs. There's a "Saudi Arabia's  got Talent" but there are very stringent rules. For example each competitor - male or female, must have their own pair of testostricles.

The early rounds of these talent shows are usually the most entertaining, before the judges weed out the most talented people and we end up with a bland crowd of second rate singers and dancers. I love watching the contestants whose chief talent is incompetence. The fire-eaters who singe their nostril hairs, the magicians who leave a pool of blood on the stage when they saw their assistant in half and the gum leaf whistlers who accidentally inhale their gum leaves and have to have the heimlich manouevre performed on them. These are the truly talented types.

There’s a one thousand dollar prize too, so now my staff are wracking their feeble brains, trying to think  which category they could enter Badger and I in. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a “Poop Scattering” category or even a “Basil Munching” category. My female staff teaches belly dancing. She’s really good at that, so my male staff says she should enter. I think she should too. A thousand dollars would buy an awful lot of basil. She says she’d prefer to enter as a piano/singing act. Male staff said that he doesn’t think a small town like Cooroy should be subjected to that kind of abuse, and in any case there’s likely to be kids in the audience, so the strong language that my female staff uses when she hits a bum note wouldn’t be appropriate. (See my last blog post.)  http://pemery.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/imagine.html 

And so it’s down to my male staff so I fear that the prize money is well out of reach, especially if last year is anything to go by. He entered as a didgeridoo player. If anyone out there doesn’t know what a didgeridoo is, it’s an ancient aboriginal instrument, originating Australia’s Northern Territory. Basically it’s a long straight tree branch which has been hollowed out by termites. In the hands of an expert it makes a hauntingly beautiful sound that perfectly compliments Australia’s wide, brown landscape. A good didgeridoo player can make the instrument talk. My male staff on the other hand can only make it fart. Nevertheless at last year’s event he received a standing ovation when he got his tongue stuck in the hole and had to be freed by the local State Emergency Service with a chainsaw.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
I once tried tap dancing but I kept falling into the sink.