There is a story Paul Desmond told of, after a Brubeck Quartet gig somewhere in the mid-West, jumping into a taxi, asking the driver to take him where the action was, & ending up at an illegal fishing spot.
It's the sort of thing I could imagine happening in this place. Actually, I lie—even a spot of illegal fishing is far more exotic than what goes on here. The height of excitement, it appears, is to steal the genitals off one of the fifteen or so bull statues dotted around the town. Apparently it happens often enough for them to now have them cast as modular parts. Screw out, screw in. Screw it.
For the last week or so there's been an amateurish "float" parked on the river—cabin cruiser, pontoon, big papier-mache fish, handwritten sign—advertising, I think from memories of such a thing happening last year, the Barra Bounty tag & release competition, or who can catch the most meters of barramundi now that the season's opened. Which means, I suppose, that catching them at any other time would be illegal. Wow, the town's growing up! & today, as I meandered off home about two o'clock—yes, Martha, it is POETS day & I'm pissing off early—down to my riverside carpark, there were a number of outboard-motored boats out in the river between the bridges, each with a couple of guys—always guys; chauvinist heaven here—with their lines dangling in the water, silent, nothing happening, every so often shifting the position of their boat to another place, where nothing would once again happen.
Talk about yr fucking school of quietude…..
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