A story from my un-legendary past for Sunday afternoon entertainment:
Towit: When sheep went bad in the early 90s we leased the farm and took up residence in our Melbourne home, which we kept for Consuela's use, given the travel logistics of her high fellut'n CEO eminence in the Big Smoke.
Faced with twiddling my thumbs, I was offered a two year contract with a government agency as a freelance book publicist and spin-doctor. As lucrative as that was, it took up a small portion of my day, given I concocted the press releases in the wee small hours and conducted most of my business with the authors and the media via my new and expensive mobile phone. So my thumbs still had plenty of twiddle time. What to do?
So I struck upon the idea of doing an advanced, anti terrorist driving course to fill in the vacancy of time, which was conducted by retired police officers that specialized in such work. On completion, one of the trainers approached me with a proposition, given I had come top of my class and could now make a car dance the light fantastic. He was also aware of my other relevant skills.
"Meet me at such and such eatery on the corner of Flinders and X with a bottle Dimples and I'll make a phone call," he says with a wink.
So I did, clandestine and armed with a brown paper bag containing said spirit, we made the exchange; trading the brown bag for a scrape of paper with a single phone number and a name. "He's expecting your call," was all he said as he drifted back into the city crowd.
And so began my new duality of professions from the year of 91 to 94; an on-call 24/7 specialist driver and protector for the worlds visiting uber riche, royalty and the famous, and contract spin doctor/media consultant for a government agency and their authors.
Of stories I could tell herewith, but think on it as Ernest Hemingway's 'Ice Burg Theory,' and what lays beneath, and living in the land where names and places and happenings are forbidden territory.
