My current Town Googler mission is to find out how to make the ash that aboriginal people use to mix with their chewing tobacco. Greta, one of the hostel residents, has been asking for it and no one at the hostel knows how to get it or make it. Googling never fails to amaze me - I've found a list of common plant species used for exactly that purpose, with photos. So perhaps I will soon be seen wandering the local desert in a loincloth, carrying photos and singing lamalamalama to myself with the didgeridoos going in the background, frowning at mulga bushes. But first I'm going to test this so-called indigenous culture stuff and see if I can find an aboriginal person who isn't busy sculling down cartons of Emu beer & is willing to put their alleged bush lore to good use (my bet is on Google).
I also have my most obscure, arcane and sniggeringly funny assignment to date, which is helping Gary with his Grandified Order of the Regal Snuffaluffagus research. He belongs to two of these organisations and both are about to put him through his Secret Escalation Into Divine Heffalump Seventh Degree or something, so he has to study all these bizarre rules & memorise various top-secret declarations and god knows what in preparation for his Test Of The AntePreCambrian Brotherhood Of The Funny Hats.
Because he can't type and his handwriting is in Giant Capitalised Scrawling Diesel Mechanic font, he's asked me to type out the answers to his written assignment. This is challenging, because as a woman AND a non-member I am forbidden to know any of the Heffalump Secrets. I have promised him I will immediately erase all of it from my mind, which won't be difficult because it is in archaic strange semi-biblical phrasing such as "In such suppenstance as beholding the Brother thus accused notwithstanding thereto of the passage of yea 12 moons". I sit there, shaking my head & snorting with laughter. "Wait til we get to the bit about the smiting," says Gary and we both end up in hysterics.
He says he's got terrible memory and trying to memorise his Exalted Declaration Of The Big Poobah or whatever it is has got him freaked. This brought up another topic, because I pointed out to Gaz that he has an incredible memory for anything mechanical or geographical. It's the old story - told he wasn't smart at school because all the reading & writing stuff wasn't his forte, then years later who do we all go to to get our complicated cars & trucks fixed? The guys who retreated to the workshop feeling stupid because they didn't "get" Shakespeare.
Anyhow, with Gary's permission I read the Divine Windiness Of The Mordorian Templar Beast or whatever it is out loud while recording it into GarageBand on my laptop, and now he can play it on his iPod. I bet the original Great Heffalump back in 532 BC never dreamed that would happen.
It's probably a smiting offence.
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