Crocnami Pt 2 - the maelstrom

... which wasn’t likely, ‘cause no bastard was around. The usual sounds of life had completely disappeared. Like completely. No distant sounds of chainsaws hacking their merry way through wood harder than a glass asshole. No air-conditioners rattling their last breath on the roofs. Nothing. He hadn’t noticed the absence of human activity because of bloody John and his dulcet refrains. 

“Fuck” Kev muttered. 

He turned on his heel and ran, well shambled, back inside. “Bruce!” He yelled, “where the fuck are ya! We gotta go fella...” The verandah door slammed shut behind him with a clang. 

Dashing into the hallway Kev burrowed into the hall cupboard and fished out his backpack. Thankfully still half full from his last sojourn into the outback, 3 months ago. ‘Well,’ Kev thought, ‘if there are any dirty clothes in there they’ll be ticketyboo by now.’ Running to his room, then to the pantry, or what passed for a pantry - which was really just a couple of shelves suspended in mozzie netting above a hole in the floor, Kev stuffed whatever he could think of into the backpack. Throwing on a pair of Target’s finest shorts and a pair of Blundy’s, he grabbed two bottles of water, a couple of tinnies (after debating the merits of beer over water for an extra tinny vs the second bottle of water) and one of the dead looking packets of tobacco on the table. 

Out onto the verandah, he yelled for Bruce again, grabbed for his trusty warratah, Bruce the Slayer of Things (Bruce for short, oddly) and fucked off into the bush toward the river. ‘The river, hang on’ Kev thought, something about going near water was a really really bad idea when there was a giant wave coming at you from a few hundred miles away.’ Bruce (the dog) caught up with him just as  Kev hairpinned it for the nearest hill instead, a couple of k down the road.

8 minutes later Kev had cleared the main part of the town and was about halfway toward the hill. Puffing. Only problem was, he realised, he was heading toward the ocean, not away from it. Another really, really bad idea when a wave the size of a mountain was coming. Apparently. He reached into his shirt pocket for his baccy to roll a smoke - to calm his jangled nerves ...and pulled out the pack. As it exited his pocket he got a whiff of something like mint. “Fucknuckle. Wrong pack!” he cursed. This one just wouldn’t do right now. It was what was left of his wonder weed from last night. Kev stuffed it back into his shirt. For later. 

The track he was following skirted by the estuary - which by now should have been swirling with the detritus that only the north eastern part of the Great Southern Land could provide. Living and dead. 

Only it wasn’t swirling. It wasn’t even there. There was just... mud. And flopping things. 

‘Uh oh’ thought Kev. 

Then he heard the noise. Like a jet. Not just any jet. But one that was fast. And noisy. 

Bruce yelped and took off toward the hill. “Bruce!” Kev yelled, “get back here ya yellow bastard.” Bruce wasn’t listening. 

“Fuck!” Kev yelled, and tore off after the dog. 

It was only later that Kev realised the little fucker probably saved his life. He was about 50 feet up the hill when he felt the rumbling, turning to his right he looked out over toward what passed for a beach in Cooktown - well in name only, you certainly couldn’t swim there. There were six kinds of  thing that would kill you before you got within two feet of the water and countless things that would kill you if you dipped even a toe into it. And that was just the stuff that breathed air. 

Now that water was coming right at him.  As a writhing hill of foam, wood and what appeared to be thousands of crocs. Big ones. With mainly teeth. Like Sharknado, only with legs. 

“Fuck!” Kev yelled again, he tore his gaze away from the vision of hell and ran as fast as his legs could carry him... lungs screaming and threatening to burst forth from his chest in a maelstrom of blood and aveoli. 

The noise was unreal, like the soul of the earth was being torn from its bosom. A screaming, louder than Shazza in full flow on all fours. 

Kev was now, by all accounts, fair shitting himself. He rounded a corner to see the wave, below him, thank fuck... smashing itself into the headland. Bits of croc flew high into the air off the rocks, like a torrent of sashimi.  

He crested the hill and collapsed, watching the wave flow round the headland and continue toward the town. Scouring everything in its path. 

Flopping onto his back to stare at the sky, Kev called for his dog. “Bruce! Bruce! Come here mate” He heard a wine from underneath a log and saw Bruce’s poor excuse for a tail sticking out, “come on fella,” he said “its ok, its over.”

“Its not over yet,” a voice piped up from across the hill, “its only just begun, digger, there’ll be more. This is the end of days” It was Dino, or as the locals called him ‘The Wandering Wog’. Suffice to say he was as crazy as a bag of cut snakes.

“Whaddya mean more?” Kev shot back, “that was the tsunami mate, it isn’t as if they are queuing up for a free hand job” 

“They come in waves” replied Dino. 

“No shit” said Kev. 

“No, no, they come in lots of, well lots...” said Dino. 

“What the fuck are you talking about Dino?” asked Kev, who by now thought the crazy bugger was serious.

“I mean that this is the first of a few such waves and quite possibly not the biggest one either,” Dino replied, all too confidently for Kev’s liking, usually he was quite servile and well... weird. This was the longest conversation Kev had had with Dino, in fact anyone had had with Dino. Dino preferred to talk in grunts and hand gestures. And not ones that a nun would be comfortable with either... 

“Okay, so are you telling me that we are due for more sashimi as well?” Kev asked.

“‘Fraid so mate, that was the vanguard, the main battlefront is on its way.... and they’ll be pissed methinks”

“Didn’t know Crocs drank” quipped Kev.

“Not funny mate, we’re fucked. The buggers will be looking for somewhere to dry out. Do you see any other hills around?” Dino shot back. 

‘Strewth, the bastard's right’ thought Kev. He took stock of the current lay of the land. 

Yep. They were fucked. No escape. The headland was now an island surrounded by a mass of croc bits and every other living thing that, in one way or another, will fuck you up.  

He heard a low growl coming from the log. Bruce was now standing to attention, tail out and pointing his muzzle down the track. Kev heard a lot of noise coming from that general direction. Lots of snarling and crunching. What sounded like crocs... Crocs didn’t generally discern between prey and their own family... if it was remotely edible and it was moving, or even if it wasn’t and had been lying in the sun for four days, it was fair game. 

It didn’t sound like it was a party he wanted to go to. More like the sort of party for footy players, a kilo of coke and a ton of jelly.   

“Dino mate?” Kev yelled, “Do you have anything that might stave of a horde of pissed off and hungry crocs? ‘Cause I think the buggers are heading this way...”

There was no answer. 

“Dino?” Kev looked around, Dino was no where to be seen. “Dino, where the fuck are ya?” Kev yelled again. He couldn’t have gone far. There was nowhere to go. Like nowhere... 

More growls ...and in the distance, just coming round the corner, the butt ugly leg of what was no doubt many more legs heading his way. There also seemed to be lots of writhing around the legs. Snakes! Fuck! Kev hated snakes. Minions of the underworld they were. With their legless antics. Slipping and sliding like a German supermodel in a pot of strudel. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck” Kev muttered. He looked around. The only thing he saw was his trusty warratah. Bruce the Slayer of Things. Well he called it Bruce the Slayer of Things because for some reason, whenever he carried it, chicks flocked to him - like moths to a flame.  Well, there were no chicks here. Only pissed off reptiles. He had never understood why chicks dug his rod of iron. Maybe it gave him an air of the knights of old. ...Sir Kev - Knight of Northern Queensland. Now a knight about to have his ass eaten by a rabid horde of crocs. It was not how he thought he would exit this world... 

Kev grabbed his warratah and hefted it, feeling its familiar weight. No broadsword here. Only a rusty piece of iron. Fuck.    

Looking towards the track, he waited...

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.

Pt 2: The safari begins

The safari begins

Finally the day dawned. A subtle sense of dread permeated the Brogency. Offset only by the traditional anticipation the staff had for a night they could completely let their hair down without fear of reprisal. Even the clients knew this. In fact many welcomed this event as an opportunity to do the same. Well, except for the year we had a cage in the middle of the room with a crazed barber who shaved pictures of Che Guevara into people's skulls throughout the evening... That made things a little difficult the next day. Nothing worse than the CE of a large and influential public service agency in a photo opportunity with his minister sporting a back half moon hairstyle featuring Che that he was completely unaware of. How he was blissfully unaware of it was solely down to the Absinthe he had virtually bathed in during the evening. Needless to say, all of the images were shot face-on.  

Adrian disappeared at lunchtime, claiming he had 'things to do'. Apart from Julie, our Group account director and I meeting with one of our blue chip clients in the afternoon to discuss their social media strategy, things were relatively clear. 

At 4pm, Sean our resident copywriter, popped past my desk with a question that I now wish I had paid more attention to. It concerned a phone call he had received earlier in the afternoon from an international number. The line had been quite crackly so he had only got about 30% of the message …and what he did get was in thickly accented english. Russian english. The thrust of the conversation was best described as… well… random. And what Sean did manage to catch consisted of terms like: 'the owl', 'Basel 35', 'vapor vector'  and 'soft cock'. A trifle odd, granted, but due to my headspace being rather distracted by the meeting I had had with Julie and our blue chip earlier I didn't make the connection that was so obviously staring me in the face. Well, not so much staring as shining a bloody great spotlight into my eyes. 

I blame the blue chip. I mean it isn't everyday that you walk into a $1 billion turnover corporate client's office to discuss their social media needs only to be confronted by a series of questions more akin to someone grappling with the finer points of eastern philosophy. There are just some life issues that social media will not resolve and I take great umbrage at being asked what the Tao of Flickr is or whether Instagram can lead a horse to water, make it drink and enable it to see the light. For fucks sake, I create needs and desires for people to buy stuff. I can't help them find themselves.  And Instagram sure as shit is not a vehicle to find God. Any god. Or at least not one with a gun and a beard.  The best I can do is sell them a mirror or a phone with a screen camera… Suffice to say the meeting ended at an impasse. 

Anyway, so I noted Sean's concerns, parked them and didn't think about them again until Jesus started walking amongst us. 

The event was due to start at 6pm, quite early for a Xmas party, but due to the logistics of getting people out to the ass end of the 'Wai'… we had no choice if we wanted people to be back in town by… well… Xmas. 

Participants were to meet at the Railway station to begin embarking procedures. The first of which involved the aforementioned Veuve and some very decadent canapés. Clearly this didn't fit into the theme for tonights evening of frivolity. At least not directly. Later, I realized it was all part of Adrian's plan. It was a fundamental baseline for our trip.

The carriage looked amazing. All 60's and 70s retro chic - it looked like an Airstream caravan on rails, inside and out. To this day I have no idea where Adrian had managed to find the bloody thing. He said he had chartered it from KiwiRail, but I have my doubts. I suspect it came from the collection of some Greek magnate who gapped it and settled on the other side of the world when their home country went to hell in a souvlaki. 

Six pm came and went. Everyone was seated, standing and generally meandering in the carriage drinking the Veuve and making introductory signs of carousing. At 6.15 the conductor made noises about the train having to leave. Unfortunately we were still waiting for Adrian and the bugger wasn't answering his phone. I was a touch underwhelmed by this, as his entourage had apparently arrived. An entourage that consisted entirely of blondes and one stunning red head. This was not alarming on its own as Adrian was well known for his 'liquid charm'. No what was alarming was that they all stood well over six feet tall, were seemingly well versed in the vagaries of quantum physics (as I had found out when I overheard one discussing super string theory with her neighbour) and had figures that would make politicians cry. So to speak.

Julie strongly suggested that we just leave Adrian behind which would have been well within the bounds of reason, given there were five carriages of fare paying passengers in front of us wanting to get home after a busy week. And after a not insignificant amount of pressure (particularly from the conductor who happened to be our super human account lady Audrey's …brother) I relented and we departed for the wilds of the 'Wai'.  

Adrian joined us somewhere between Lower and Upper Hutt. Winched down from a helicopter no less. Straight onto the carriage roof, down through the skylight (closed) and into his entourage's waiting arms. An entrance previously only reserved for a Bond.  I don't want to know how many regulations were broken. But the helicopter was black and there were no markings …so I am figuring it would not have made any difference if any agents of the law had seen it anyway.  

Adrian's entrance was only the beginning of the madness. I don't know how he did it but he managed to time his entrance to some insane psychedelic trance track from the 90's which thumped its merry way through the clearly upgraded sound system within the carriage. Accompanied by strobe lights and dry ice. It was not unlike his failed entrance to a Brogency Monday morning meeting six months ago. Only without the gorilla suit and way more successful. I think this was mainly due to his entourage who took their cue and started pulling the Pussy Cat Doll moves  to the beats that were streaming throughout the carriage.... 

Along the way, as we were clearly distracted by Adrian's entrance, a Serbian looking DJ had also appeared in the corner… complete with vinyl jacket, Aviators and massive straight-from-the-engineering-rooms-of-Jesus earphones. He looked like he had fallen through a time warp. Only his music was undoubtedly the latest thing spinning on underground European dance floors …reminiscent of 80's Kraftwerk but with flavors of Oakenfold's Fluoro label - punctuated by Latino rhythms. Granted, a mishmash, but for some reason it worked. It even made Colonel Hough wiggle his hips. Much to Julie's consternation, as she was having a serious discussion with him at the time and could have sworn that he had a strange twinkle in his eye at the very moment he 'wiggled'. (Later we would term that particular move 'the Colonel'. It was written into the Brogency's constitution for future generations.)

The floor started glowing at about this time and a few pygmies, sorry - Children of the Forest, appeared in the corners - just out of sight and to stimulate the cones in our eyes, (this was for deliberate effect according to Adrian who had whispered quietly into my ear that he would "take things from here" …for some reason I wasn't too worried about it.).

As we entered the tunnel through to the 'Wai' the Veuve was withdrawn to be replaced by smoothies. According to Adrian this was to cleanse our wearied souls before entering 'Rarapaland'. The journey through the tunnel was to be exactly that …a journey. Again, for some reason, I didn't seem to care about how I was rapidly losing control of the situation. None of the senior staff seemed to care very much either. Julie was playing Twister with a couple of Children of the Forest, Kath - our head designer was talking up a storm with one of our art clients and Baz - our new media guru was showing some of our grads how to 'offline the bird' - whatever the fuck that meant. 

Pt 1: Christmas time for teddy bears

Christmas time for teddy bears. 

It was Christmas. Usually this was a time of celebration and excess in the ad industry... and for The Brogency it was no different. Except for one thing:

There was always that little niggle in the back of your mind that something mind-shattering was about to happen. Some idea that Adrian, our creative director, had cooked up in the back of a Valiant, alongside the ubiquitous lined pocket mirror and rolled up hundred dollar note. An idea that would be manifested in all its sordid glory. An idea that would scar the collective psyche of the Brogency, forever.

There was good precedent for this niggle you see. Precedent such as the year Adrian decided it would be a fabulous idea to lace the punch at our client Xmas party with Ecstasy. This resulted in carnage from the seven levels of hell that haunted us for weeks. Carnage such as our media buyer getting naked with her team and Gogo dancing on the cutting tables. It ended with her kneeling and simulating fellatio with Adrian - who was dressed as a Wookie. All while our guest charity client from the Salvation Army, Sarah looked on in horror… 

It was awesome only because of the potential to destroy our relationship with the Sallies for eternity. Poor lass, she was so traumatised she drowned the psychedelic nightmare image of Adrian lit by strobe light - in the punch. Adrian …arching his back, mouth wide open and bellowing Wookie talk, whilst surrounded by a harem of naked men and women on their knees... 

The night ended with her having a torrid liaison with Lewis - our mild mannered but very large dread-locked cleaner, who hailed from West Africa. 

Last I heard she had given her faith away and was pursuing a life of hedonistic glory in fetish porn.

The Sallies didn't answer our calls after that. We were listed on their burn list along with all of satan's minions.  

Fucking Adrian.

So, it is fair to say that this year 's festivities were greeted with more than a bit of trepidation. A great deal of trepidation in fact. All the staff were on edge, just waiting for that moment when the bottom dropped out… of everything. 

That said, Adrian fucking excelled himself with the invites and logistics for the party. It was to be held offsite (thank god) at an old aircraft hanger somewhere in the Wairarapa. He had charted an old Silver Star carriage from the Wellington to Auckland route in the 70's and had somehow managed to convince Kiwirail to attach it to the Wellington - Masterton train. It was so out of the box I suspected his Russian mates had a hand in it, like everything exotic he does - from tigers in glass cages (long story) to the ridiculous amounts of cocaine he always manages to rustle up. 

The invites themselves were pure genius. None of us can figure out how he did it. When asked, he just smiled in that maddening way of his and whispered… "'t'is magic my dear friend, magic!" 

Dick.

They were chocolate flowers you see, with the most delicate petals - not roses but fucking fuchsias. Fuchsias. I mean who does that? And not only were they fuchsias, they were fuchsias with pollen - gold pollen that when shaken out of the fuchsia somehow fell on whatever surface in the shape of letters. In short - the invite  ...an invite made from fucking fairy dust. Amazing. 

The client list for our wee soirée was not as simple as an invite made from fairy dust though. Oddly.

We had to balance our penchant for hedonism with a serious effort at thanking those which made Adrian's excesses possible. And there were a necessary few of them due the nature of those excesses. Careful selection was required due to the delicate nature of some of our relationships. Not to mention a shift roster for our 'suits' to charm these delicate clients in ...what we called the 'Not in there, it's too serious' room - which generally resulted in more than a few horses being traded. Veritable stallions in fact.

Then there was the question of catering, libations and other accoutrements. These we left to Vicky, our office manager - whose claim to fame was that she could literally pull a rabbit out of a hat. Any hat. No shit.

This year's menu had an Eco theme. Wild food, organic alcohol (except for the sparkles which had to be Veuve.... Adrian's sole request) and pygmies. Or as Adrian called them 'children of the forest'.  I had a suspicion that we were courting trouble with the pygmies, particularly since there weren't any that I knew of in the Antipodes. Which meant they were coming from somewhere else ...and that didn't bode well. Even less well if anyone with an Eastern European accent was involved.

A week out from the soirée things were quiet. This bothered me. It was going all too smoothly. Worrying. Very worrying. Adrian was completely on form, pulling the most outrageous creative from his nether regions. Creative that was as inspiring as it was effective. It was so good, the industry was in tatters... No one could keep up!

However, most concerning was Adrian's ego. It was as close to normal as I had ever seen it. It was like he was on drugs - which was impossible ...as Adrian was always on drugs, which lead me to believe that things were about to go troppo in a fashion that would make Marlon Brando's white sepulchre in Apocalypse Now look like a seven year old's tea party.

My premonition of impending disaster proved to be vastly undercooked. What was about to happen was to become myth and legend, not mere history...

In hindsight, I should have guessed. There were clues everywhere if you knew what to look for. The first clue was the location... An aerodrome. A private aerodrome with an enormous hanger. A hanger that we were using and that had, somehow, been transformed into a variation on James Cameron's Pandora. The only thing missing were the Nav'i and I knew they weren't coming because there were pygmies, and there were no pygmies on Pandora.

Unless....

The second clue was the Eco theme. Organic produce, aka food for hippies. Things like carrot cake, Humus, PikoPiko, roasted nuts with Paprika and a non dairy smoothie bar. 

The third, Adrian's choice of music, which had a distinctly 60's theme, including such gems as the 13th Floor Elevators, the Doors, the Animals, Pentangle... All complemented by ambient sounds reminiscent of  Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.

Last up was the bus. Not just any bus but a bus that would not have looked out of place in North Africa.... Or India. There were more beads on this puppy than in a gypsy village.

In short we were hopelessly fucked.

The RSVP's mounted. We had as close to a 100% response rate as you could get without offering free trips into orbit. I mean, seriously, if this had been a direct mail campaign we would have been world fucking famous. But it wasn't and we weren't... yet. The prescience behind that statement was almost unbearable.

Even the Sallies were coming, thanks to some serious brown-nosing by our posse of religiously inclined (at least on the outside) suits. Young, cleanshaven and hungry. But not Mormon-like. The Sallies wouldn't have worn that. No sirree....  How they convinced them to come was beyond the ken of any normal human.  We were to be blessed by the company of Colonel ET Hough, a very senior and puritanical member of Gods army. I figured that all and any shenanigans should be kept to a minimum when in his presence, which was to be largely confined in the "Not in there, it's too serious' room". Especially if any Wookies were in evidence... And without any shadow of a doubt he had to be kept away from the punch.

In fact, I was seriously considering buying a swathe of drug testing kits to ensure that all food and drink was clean. Instead I decided to use the principle of isolation and keep Adrian well away from anything that could be imbibed until it was on the floor, so to speak. As it happened neither option would have made a world of difference.

The Brogency

Mondays were generally the worst. I mean it wasn't like we had enough problems dealing with the start of the week… like all human cogs in the urban wheel of consumerism.  It's just that Adrian, our resident 'off the wall' creative, had a tendency to take Mondays, somewhat brutally, from the real…to the sublime. Fuelled, in the majority, by the last vestiges (if we were lucky) of a chemically enhanced weekend. 

He was a genius but more than a little loose around the edges. Indeed, one of Adrian's halcyon moments was his personal contribution to the Legalise Marijuana debate, which consisted of chartering a DC10 from an old Vietnam pilot and flying it over the central and east North Island to randomly distribute five tons of enriched hemp seed... 

The police didn't like that very much.

Adrian's descent into madness was a bit like watching the ink on a keyboard disappear …slowly and with an immutable sense of impending doom - each passing moment leading to loss …and confusion.  

This Monday was no exception. 

The wip started well. The bagels were warm and the coffee so thick you could eat it with a teaspoon.  We were working our way round the room, each agency warrior explaining what they were up to for the week. Yet fifteen minutes in, thirty seconds was all it took to relegate all that had been said, unceremoniously, to the mists of time. 

First the lights went off, plunging us into that that particular brand of twilight associated with the beginning of a week. Then a strobe light began flicking its actinic fingers into our Mondayed eyes …and dry ice began curling its way across the floor. All to the dulcet tones of an old Chemical Brothers song... 

'Oh Jesus, here we go again' John, the resident suit muttered. 

A rather drawn out crescendo ensued and everything in the room stopped. The strobe ceased, plunging the room once more into darkness. Within seconds, a flash of light so bright it would have put Aliens to shame struck our already overloaded pupils, and the smoke miraculously vanished like it was being sucked out by an industrial vacuum cleaner... powered by fan from an aerospace wind tunnel, (unfortunately, this was not outside the bounds of possibility with Adrian). There in the middle of the room, curled in a foetal position, a bit like when Arnie appeared in the second Terminator movie …was a gorilla. 

Well, actually, we suspected it was Adrian dressed as a gorilla, but you never can tell with him. It could very well have been a real one.  Purloined from one of his Russian shipping mates. 

Now, a gorilla would have scraped in on its own, in the grand scheme of things,  but Adrian had somehow also managed to fit the gorilla into his favorite Armani suit, which was now looking more like a cheap prop from a chinese kung fu movie. Not only that the Gorilla was cradling a goldfish bowl filled with blue and green M&M's which it then started throwing into the air, catching them, somehow... in its mouth.

"Morning all! What a great day this is going to be!" announced the gorilla round a mouthful of splintered candy and chocolate. " Who's up for a game of chess?" 

That was when things just got a little bit too much for Audrey, our accounts lady. Who, while appearing to be the nicest person in the world to the uninitiated, had a temper like Gordon Ramsey on speed. Fuck with Audrey and your days were numbered in fractions. 

[Our clients knew and respected this, we never had a bad debt and all of them paid on time. Some even in advance.]  

So, Audrey gently settles her cup on the chair, takes a slow breath, gets up and walks slowly toward the gorilla in the centre of the room. We all shrink as far as possible into whatever corners and voids we can find.

"You know Adrian" says Audrey, in a quiet and measured voice, (clearly designed to lull us all into a false sense of security.) "I start the day at 6am. Badly. Each morning I am woken by my kids dancing in the lounge to either High Five or the fucking Wiggles. I get them breakfast and I haul my husband's sorry ass out of bed so he can catch his train. I make the kid's lunches while drinking a cup of cold coffee... 

"I drop my children off at school while doing my hair and makeup in the car mirror. I get to work and I…" (it was about now that the volume began to rise) "…look forward to engaging with adults, with people who don't speak in pidgin english and can hold a conversation for longer than 30 seconds before saying 'I want'! …I look forward to talking with people who have something useful to contribute to my reality. With people who don't smear their lunch over their faces! I consider it to be about the only thing that keeps me sane in the domestic circus that is currently my home-life. It is something that if I didn't have… I would spend my evenings rocking in a chair and pulling my hair out strand by fucking strand. It is something I value more than food. More than sex and more than soap. So, I ask you, with the greatest of respect… what in the great name of Fuck are you doing!!? Have I mistakenly taken the wrong turning this morning and ended up having breakfast in a ZOO Adrian!?!  

"No. No I think not. 

"I have turned up for work expecting to get some sense from others about what they will be doing this week. This in turn will allow me to plan my days, safe in the knowledge that they WILL turn out according to some semblance of consensual reality! Not a scene from a deranged after party that maybe your lounge on any given fucking night! Adrian… I do not have time for this… get the fuck out of that ridiculous suit, sit down and try participating in this discussion like something approaching a sentient, if not sober, human being… or I will rip those M&Ms from your hands and shove each and every one of them up your arsehole before feeding you to Henry!" 

(Henry was our resident studio dog. He was awesome. Everyone loved Henry. He was normal in every possible way except for one slightly disconcerting fact. He had a thing for women's underwear. We had to warn our female clients in advance, never to go to the toilet without first checking for Henry…) 

There was an awkward silence. 

With a crack, the gorillas head fell off revealing Adrian with Sunday morning hair.  "Jesus Auds. Sorry... I suppose if you put it that way... Would you like a cup of coffee?" 

It was about then that I grabbed my coffee and ran for the studio. 

I can still hear the screams. 

Belief

Been reading a lot about personal growth lately. It is amazing that even in the plethora of stuff out there, so much of it reinforces the sort of behaviour patterns that seven year olds have. The sort of behaviour that is learned when you are making sense of a very foreign and weird world from the eyes of a self absorbed child ('cause without the benefit of experience and wisdom, they are the only eyes they know). The common belief that others keep you from being the person you are is exactly the same as a four year old saying that the parent made them upset - that they made them feel a certain way.

No one makes you do anything. No one keeps you from being anyone. No one else is to blame. It is always a choice you make, a belief you have, a projection you create. This belief becomes your reality. A very good friend of mine summed it up the other day: does the belief you have serve you? If it does then good... use it, if it doesn't then let it go. It doesn't have to be right, or wrong. It just is. But remember, belief creates your reality, it sculpts your perception. You can't force it on others. The best thing you can do is hack your reality through belief to be the person you want to be. Not the one that you think others want you to be or the one they think you are. Look at what you can give to the world not at what you can get from it. In short, be free.

And always, always remember that each day is a meer blessing, another drop of water on the extended tongue of Suricata-the-wise, master of the multiverse in all its forms...