Crocnami Pt 1 - the quiet.

6am.... there's nothing worse than your day starting with the Little River Band. But today it did. Must have been the Fates. Fuckin' fairies...

You can't control the radio. At least not in Cooktown. And Kev had his tuned to the local station, well the only station.... and it had a thing for Ozzie music. The only thing. It was all it played. Dawn to dusk... Now, LRB was okay when you were peeling back a few tinnies to wash down a snarler or two in the arvo, as long as Cold Chisel took on the mantle later in the evening - when you were curled to the eyeballs and using the beer goggles to distinguish between the local herd and the Sheilas ...but seriously, at 6am? Nuh, it just wasn't the done thing.

So Kevin, not in the most salubrious of moods this morning ...on account of a bottle of Bundy and Shazza's undies in his face the night before (right focus on the goggles last night, thank god), decided enough was enough. He cracked an eye that would make a stoner jealous, located the radio and kicked it soundly off the crate.

LRB, describing a parabola that even a Nasa engineer working on the Colombia would be proud of, sailed elegantly across the room and out the window.

"Fuck off John..." He muttered.

A quick roll to unstick his bum from the sheets and he found himself face to face with Bruce, his mutt-of-dubious-pedigree  ....who at that moment was yawning his chops and using his tongue as a canine octopus to establish dominance over the ants that had found their way from the floor to the remains of the bundy on the pillow. Next to Shazza's  undies.  They weren't interested in Shazzas undies. Nothing was. Not even Shazza.

LRB followed by dog breath. Not a great start.

Feet on the floor and straight into his y-fronts (thank god). Bit crusty but fuck it, they'll do. Kev levered himself up and staggered into the kitchen scratching his nuts. It was another pearler day. The sun was just coming up over the treeline. No clouds just that orange blue thing that happens in the morning when your brain is still figuring out which way is up. Like when you take too much acid and you find yourself in a caravan with a horny Swedish gymnast. He emptied a coffee cup of the ubiquitous ciggie ends and oily coffee, wiped it with a spare rag that looked a little less stained than his gruts, hit the switch on the jug then looked around for his roll-yer-owns.

After a considerable time scanning the room, he found them peeking out from under a D-cup on the table, 'Thank christ!' he thought, 'but what the....? Did Shazza shoot home starkers last night? Or ....bugger me! Was she still here!?' He ducked outside and checked the Dunny in case she had timed out whilst chasing the proverbial. Nuh. Thankfully. 'Maybe she had just forgotten... Her tits spent most of their time down round her knees anyway...' he thought to himself. 'Same with her undies.'

The jug jizzed steam all over the room as it tried to turn itself off. It failed miserably, like it did every morning. Kev threw a couple of spoons of coffee into his cup, four sugars and two lumps of milk... rolled a smoke, poured - then headed out to the verandah to welcome the day on his favourite chair.  Staring out over the trees he found himself humming Lonesome Loser.

Fucking clock.

Bruce ambled out to sit next to him, farted then gapped it across the yard. Kev could have sworn the little fucker was laughing at him as he gagged into his cup.

It wasn't until the second cigarette that Kev realised that the clock was still going strong from round the side of the house. Only John had stopped his crooning. Instead, someone was talking ...and not just the usual hawking of Dr Johns erectile dysfunction oil, or 40% off a set of Ginsu steak knives, but real news type stuff. 'Strewth, sounds serious' Kev thought to himself. Swirling the dregs of his coffee and chucking it down his neck, he levered himself out of the chair and staggered off the verandah and round the corner so he could hear what all the fuss was about...

Snatches basically, but only due to the fact that Bruce had found the clock and was knawing at it in the only way that dogs can. You know, that way that makes you never want to touch the item being knawed at again. At least not without a bio suit and a gallon of hand sanitiser.

".... Earthquake... Papua New Guinea... Tsunami.... Residents of Northern Territory and Queensland told to evacuate... Perfect storm... Crocodile mating season.... Density.... Salt water crocodiles.... Largest ever...."

And that was about it.

Kev wasn't so sure about the last bit. Crocs were just part of the scenery in Cooktown. Literally. Dead ones were used as median barriers on busy roads (well Cooktown busy, which meant more than four vehicles a week). But the first bit was bad. Real bad. 'Cause Kevs truck was fucked. Not just broken but completely rooted. Bloody thing had exploded two days ago when he was Roo hunting with some mates up Up Creek road. He thought the Roo was going to dodge left. Bloody thing hadn't. It had stopped, turned, stared him straight in the eye and bounced straight at him. Fucker had lifted its legs over the bars and gone straight through the radiator and into the engine block. Boom. Goodnight nurse. Kev could have sworn he had heard it say 'suck on that one... fat boy' as it shuddered its last breath while he was trying to pull it out of what remained of his motor.

So wherever Kev was going, he was walking. Unless someone could give him a lift.

Pt 3: The Elysian Fields

The Elysian Fields

I guess in hindsight, the journey through the tunnel was a bit like a trip through the birth canal. Really confusing, quite painful, somewhat of a mystery and ultimately... well... freaky as fuck. The exit out the other side into the 'Rarapa' was like entering into Mirkwood. Only by association though.

Strange things had started to occur within the confines of the carriage.  Adrian's harem had donned what can only be called amazonian mountain gear, accessorised with bows that would not be out of place in the Hunger Games and knives that made Bear Grills' look like a choir boy.

I wasn't sure what to make of that.

I was even less sure what to make of Adrian's codpiece, which he claimed, had been carved from the shell of a giant crustacean from the Kaikoura. It was a piece that would make whole villages run screaming. Even Giger would hide. In one of his chairs. Backward.

Actually, perhaps that wouldn't be a good idea.

A ground mist had started to gather around the carriage as the train stopped somewhere near Carterton. The only thing missing was the steam, the whistle and the creepy guy with the lamp on a cart. And Clydesdales.  The carriage alighted onto a platform of sorts while the pygmies (sorry, Children of the Forest)  distributed faux fur coats to all and sundry - even though it was summer. I guessed it was something that appealed to Adrian's sense of drama.

Which was out in spades this evening.

The pygmies (bugger the Children of the Forest nomenclature) then lit torches and set off into the fields. Singing. The guests all started following in small groups. Led by Adrian, or rather... his codpiece. Which was big enough that it required an Amazon on each side to lift it over hummocks.

All that was missing were the satyrs ...and needless to say, they came later. I still don't know what had happened to the bus..... I think it was shadowing us to pick up any stragglers. There was a deep rumble just out of sight, the whole way through the fields.

A 20 minute journey over hill and dale and we ended up at the airfield, upon which sat something out of the Cold War. Large, imposing.... and very, very Russian. How Adrian had contrived its arrival in Aotearoa is another thing beyond the ken of us mere mortals.  But who are we to mess with the acts of advertising demigods like Adrian...?

Cold war artefacts aside, the hanger within which our efforts from the last two months of frantic organisation lay was blazing with a fire that would put Elven jewels to shame. The pygmies lifted their soulful tunes and somehow managed to segue into the psychedelic rock and roll melodies that were wafting through the doors of the hanger. The 13th Floor Elevators in full stride no less, dropped with a drum and bass beat. No doubt the work of another of Adrian's underground DJ's from the eastern block.

By now I had completely given up on any hope of salvation at the hands of sobriety. As had most of the suits within the Brogency.

Adrian now had all our meagre souls.

We entered the hanger as a group - like the Pevensies entering Narnia. Blinking and cawing like small birds.

The place was staggering. Seriously staggering. Elysian Field staggering. Nothing should look that staggeringly good. Ever. Seriously.

...Which made me wonder what state I was actually in. I had only had a few glasses of bubbly on the train so things definitely should not have looked this good. But they did. Fuck did they ever. Even Colonel Hough was speechless. Poor bastard was inches away from falling to his knees raving in tongues.  Except he couldn't speak.

There were trees in the hanger, with walkways. Like an Ewok city. And meadows of flowers. Flowers that glowed... dotted by tents that would not have looked out of place in illustrations of The Arabian Nights. Replete with the oiled semi naked bodies of men and women wielding fans of peacock feathers.

In fact, there were too many tents and too many trees to fit inside the hanger - but they did... stretching away into the distance with people. And Satyrs. It was mildly alarming. I made a mental note to ask Adrian how in the fuck he had managed it.

It was about now that I noticed everything sort of breathing.... in an out like the lungs of a giant being of Fabulous.

Then it clicked. Like a thousand seat belts sealing their owners into those mechanical four wheeled monsters we idolise. I looked around to stare at the faces of clients and staff alike. All agog at the sights and sounds that assaulted them from all sides. Like children at a carnival.

Oh fuck. Adrian had somehow managed to manipulate the set (a time of celebration) and setting (a hanger safe from the prying eyes of institutions) in order to accommodate a social experiment. In short - the bastard had sent us all on a Lysergic (or similar - the providence of this night was yet unknown) Odyssey.

But how he had dosed the lot of us at the same time I couldn't figure out. Then...  <click> oh fuck... fuck! <click> The carriage. The dry ice.... The bastard had somehow laced the dry ice. All of us were now in the hands of a crazed creative and his Russian friends. Stuck in a psychedelic playground.

I turned my rapidly glazing eyes to Adrian, who happened to be staring right at me. He raised his glass, threw his trademark smirk my way and ....winked.

Bastard. We'd be lucky if we didn't wake up in a Harem somewhere in Havfuckistan....

We were comprehensively fucked. In all senses of the word. Oh well, my rationally deteriorating mind thought...  if you can't beat them join them. No point in getting upset about what you can't control. I may as well throw myself into the arms of whatever hedonistic gods decided to turn their gazes to this dimension of flesh and trees.

So I shrugged my faux fur coat off my shoulders, grabbed a glass of something green and skipped into the clearing where the dance floor seemed to be. Joining the pygmies, Amazonians, blue chip clients, Colonel Hough and my staff ... boogieing until the sun rose, the cocks crowed and the pixies gave us our minds back. With a soy latte and eggs bene, over easy.

Postscript
In the early hours of the morning, when my mind had started returning to normal, the reentry cushioned by an age old herbal remedy. I figured out how Adrian had managed to make the inside of the hanger like the Tardis.

Scale Models. Pygmies and Bonsai. The perspective carefully worked out.  Adrian's talent for the esoteric was simply prodigious.

Bastard.