The RAZZ -Chapter 13

© surmon 2009

Walking the Dog

The following weekend, I went out to the garage and tipped out the bagsful of Vespa pieces onto the floor. It broke my heart to see my beaut iful motor scooter, my pride and joy for a mere three months, diced into trillions of bits, lying on the floor like an unmade jigsaw puzzle. And that thought is what gave me the idea to try to put it back together with superglue. Why, you may ask. Well, I said, Why not? I'll bet that's how they put them together in the factory in the first place - millions of motor scooter bits fall out of dirty big hoppers onto conveyor belts where they are assembled to resemble motor scooters by people whose commitment to quality is equalled only by a government's concern for its elderly. Other than the elderly of its own political family, that is. The point is: motor scooters don't grow from seeds, they are assembled from little bits, and I had a garage floor  covered with little bits. All I would need was a large tube of super glue— perhaps a very large tube.  Although I feared that such a thing might be expensive, I considered myself extremely lucky that Tats managed to find a carton of glue for me at the reasonable price of two dozen stubbies.

It was hard to know where to start. It really was a puzzle. Then it hit me. Of course. I knew how to make it easier. I brought from my room the polaroid snap Veronica had taken of the bike with me perched on it and used it as a guide, just like the picture on the lid of a jigsaw box. And it really did make it much easier.

After a number of hours I managed to find two pieces that might fit together and applied the glue.  Being  aware of super glue's reputation for sticking,  I wore gloves so I wouldn't stick my fingers to the scooter parts or to each other. And I didn't. But I did manage to stick the rubber gloves to the parts I was glueing together. Fortunatley, Tats came to my rescue again and found me a box of rubber gloves - about 6 gross of pairs of gloves, to be exact.  Then the fun escalated. As a glove stuck to the bits I was trying to glue I would slip my hand out of it and into another. And why not? I had nearly 2000 of the frigging things, what's one or two stuck to the scooter? I could always cut them off when I'd finished.

***

When I got the last glove stuck I admitted to myself that it was never going to be the same scooter it once was. As far as motor scooters went, it looked like a pile of dragon vomit sprouting alien-looking glove shaped fungus.

I decided to throw it out; to remove it and the pain of seeing what it had become from my sight forever, but, in my eagerness to try to do a good job, I had used all - possibly a tonne - of the glue, which had dribbled downwards and firmly anchored the whole pile to the floor. And I mean firmly! I bent a crowbar trying to lever the thing off the floor. The only way I could budge it was to knock it over with a sledge hammer. I got it loose after only thirty or forty thumps but it a dirty big piece of the garage's concrete floor came up with it when it eventually toppled.

By now I was more angry than ever about the way things had turned out so, using a block and tackle I found in the shed, I lifted up the amorphous, fungusoid-looking blob with its concrete base and dumped it in the wheelbarrow. I then rolled up my sleeves and trundled the barrow and its load down to the local council to show them what had happened and tell the them that it was their fault and they should do something about it.

When I got to the council building to lodge my complaint there was such a crowd of people complaining about other things that I had to join a queue that looked about three weeks long. While I was waiting, moving forward at one centimetre per hour, I noticed there was some kind of art show going on at the council chambers so I decided to kill some time by taking in a litle culture. I took my barrow and its load in with me so it wouldn't get swiped and parked it next to some piles of junk that other people must have bought in to complain about.  Before going for a bit of a wander I stuck a piece of paper on my pile of glue, scooter and gloves with its concrete base, and scribbled on it: "waiting for the council to do something", as a grim warning to others who may be hoping to get some civic injustice rectified.

Anyway, when I went to retireve the barrow after thrity minutes of gawking at some of the most diabolical scrawlings and aggregates of pus you could ever imagine, I noticed that somebody had slapped a ticket on my pile of scooter. Realising I was in the council chambers and expecting the worst - like a blister for parking next to a heap of crap made of bicycle wheels and tea bags that bore the title "the jolly modern swagman", I snatched the ticket off my poor Vespa and  - you probably won't believe this - discovered that the show was actually an art contest and, not only had I won first prize in the modern sculpture category, some poor old duck, dripping with ‘jools’ and lathered in an "arts patron" obsession bought my 'sculpture' off me for an undisclosed amount.

I could disclose a bit of an idea how much that amount was. I was able to buy brand new red motor scooter, pay off my plastic card debt, buy a bag of concrete mix to fill in the hole in the shed floor and treat Tats and me to one hell of an Indian curry night. With non-stop Singhah beer!

At last, I felt as though I had reached and passed a crucial point in my struggle. I was ahead. Not far, but enough to give me a sniff of the good life, the fortunate life, a life where a bloke wouldn't have to think twice about hopping on his scooter and riding over to the next suburb to the good fish and chip shop, for cod - not flake - and chips and calamari. And why not treat myself? I could afford it now.

And I knew that this was the attitude I would have to foster if I was to be comfortable with Ronnie; really comfortable, that is, like I was one of "them".  I wasn't silly enough to think I could manage to do this with only my new-found attitide. I knew I would need more money. But, with my new attitude sparking up my brain, like it must do for all other big-timers who come up with new ways to get rich by taking money off people right under their noses, I quickly came up with a brilliantly easy way of making the extra money I would need to hold my head up with the silver spoon goons.  I would walk dogs!

I go the idea while watching a neighbour grumpily walking his dog - or it may have been his wife's dog - I don't know. All I knew was that he didn't seem to be enjoying it so I asked him why he was walking the dog if he didn't want to do it. The bloke said that if the dog didn't go "walkies" it would drive him crazy at home, leaping up and pawing him and piddling everywhere. He had to tire out the stupid thing or it kept them awake at night roaming around the house.  I asked how much he would pay to have someone walk the dog for you? And he said five bucks, six days a week. His wife walked the dog on the other day and he was happy to have both of them out of the house for an hour.

Some quick figuring told me that at five bucks per walkies for six days would certainly put a slab in the fridge and juice in the scooter but it was no way to get rich. However, I calculated that if I took five or six mutts for a walk at one time, six days a week I would make... er... umpty-um dollars. And, if I used my scooter to keep ahead of the hounds, I could walk them in double quick time, without getting tired myself, dump the lot of 'em when they were too stuffed to take another step and pick up a new bunch. A happy, carefree, perhaps even diamond-studded, life with Veronica was getting closer and closer.

Finding customers was easy. I walked up and down every street in our neighbourhood, whistling and banging gates. I found more restless dogs than you could shake a stick at in a month of Arbor days and quickly sold their owners on the idea of my mutt-walking service.

On my first excursion I had to manage seven dogs. Six really, the odd one was a stupid-looking toy poodle with a fat fluffy fur coat that made it look like a balloon. I tied ropes to each collar, attached the ropes to the back of my scooter and set off to make money by the mutt.

The first problem I had to overcome was that the big dogs were running pretty fast and were starting to overtake me so I gave the scooter a bit of a squirt to give the overactive dopes something to do. That took care of that problem but created another. The toy poodle couldn't keep up with the bunch and was only managing to touch the ground every few seconds.  Keeping in mind that majority rules I squirted the scooter a little harder and presto, the little poodle took off like a party balloon and floated along behind, leaving me free to work the big dogs. While I was busy tring to figure out a way to tire out the foolish little fop, my scooter began to experience traction problems.

That blasted poodle, the one I was so worried about, was sailing along in the breeze pulling faces and wagging its date at the dogs below who, annoyed at being the underdogs, were leaping and jumping in the air, trying to puncture the poodle’s pride. This was causing the back of my scooter to lift up in the air and, in short, we started going nowhere.

I hauled off the lot of them to my house and strapped the poodle to a skateboard to keep him with the bunch but then the other dogs got jealous and went on strike. Then I had another of my brilliant plans — put the horse before the cart and come out ahead!

There was an old go-kart frame with wheels hanging up in the shed. I got it down, cleaned it and oiled the bearings, and then I simply harnessed the hounds to the front bumper rail. There still seemed to be a problem with the poodle. Tying him up with the team didn't work because they were still a bit snappy towards him but, inspiration hit me like a wet flannel. I tied the little poodle to an old fishing rod, then I sat in the cart seat and dangled it out in front of the team — a canine carrot, so to speak. As soon as the team clapped their peepers on the little pest we took off like a jet sled.

The whole thing worked like a dream. Waggle the poodle over to the left and the team would bear left. Jiggle him over to the right — it was all too easy. In fact I should have thought of the idea a lot sooner but later was better than never. While I was busy both congratulating myself for the idea and wishing I'd had the foresight to wear a full-face helmet to keep the slobber spray off my face, an awkward thing happened .

A stupid cat came wandering around a corner and fluffed itself up with a nasty fizz when it saw the canine chariot hurtling towards it. You can just about guess the rest without having to read on. Don't go, though. At least let me tell you the story in case it turns out different to what you can imagine.

The whole team of canine incompetents took off after the moggy who, being smarter than the whole dog population put together, led us through some pretty rough off-road terrain at breakneck speed. The dogs were yelping with glee, the wheels where spinning so fast they were whistling, and I was almost shitting myself with excitement. Even the flaming poodle-on-a-stick was trying to get into things, yapping encouragement at the slavering, slobbering mob below it.

At that time, I remember that I had completely forgotton to re-connect any of the brakes on the kart and so found myself in a tense situation as the cat belted into someone's driveway and we followed like the proverbial rat up the drainpipe. I wanted no part of trespassing so I stood up to try and jump out but the cat had led the dogs under the clothes line in the back yard and all I managed to do was get smothered with a whiter than white sheet. While I was trying to get rid of that the moggy took us through a hedge which ripped the sheet to shreds, into the next yard and then it stopped dead, right next to a swimming pool. The dogs also propped when they saw the cat stop - most dogs don't actually want to catch the cats they chase - and the kart slammed into the bunch of them, causing great panic as they tumbled towards the cat. But, I, forever being a slave to mass by acceleration, kept going in a pool-ward direction at space-shuttle speed, pointing my way with the poodle-on-a-stick.  I smacked the water hard, making an enormous splash that drenched the surprised crowd enjoying a barbecue by the poolside, and scard the crap out of the animals.

The cat took off with the dogs and kart in hot pursuit leaving me and the poodle to cop the rap. As luck would have it, the people in the yard were so stunned by the whole business, and struck speechless at the sight of me  clambering out of the pool with my sheet all torn and dirty,  and my poodle-on-a-stick,  that none of them could manage to move or get a word out.

It took me hours to find the kart and give back all the dogs. I retired from the business instantly, even though the poodle owner practically begged me not to because her little 'poopsie' seemed to have had such a good time. I got many requests from those seven satisfied customers to exhaust their dogs again for small but enticing of money but, I wasn't up to it and  had to quit. It was a severe blow to my plans to be independently wealthy be the end of the month but for the time being, I decided that my my ego needed a little protection from any more bruising.

Also, I learned that a description of a linen thief, animal abuser and gate-crasher that sounded remarkably like me was being circulated around the adjacent suburbs and prudence dictated a little laying low for a while.

o-0-o

To:Chapter 14 - Food for Thought