…’Madaram sudaram, madaram sudaram, mumbo jumbo, blaggedy bla!’
The bastard’s putting a curse on me!
I give the guy his ticket, and say, ‘have a happy Confest’, and as he drives away he’s like:
‘hope you sleep well tonight mate! Sweet dreams buddy!’…
Confest 2014.
Thursday morning. I’m selling tickets on the front gate. Bloke drives up.
‘How you going mate? Welcome to ConFest,’ I say with a smile. ‘Let me tell you about the fire restrictions…’
‘Nah, I don’t need that. Just take my money and give me my ticket,’ says this hairy looking guy.
I’m like, laughing, cause he’s really agro and just shoving the dollars in my face.
I explain that the Rural Fire Service has told us we aren’t allowed camp fires, and give him the little info flyer, which he screws up, and throws on the ground. The whole time I’m talking he’s making bla bla noises, and rolling his eyes, and generally being a prick.
But, I get his ticket and come back and when I come around the side of his van he’s got some fucking little chicken bone left over from his KFC, and he’s waggling it at me out the window and mumbling under his breath like the high priest in Indiana Jones:
‘madaram sudaram, madaram sudaram, mumbo jumbo, blaggedy bla!’
The bastard’s putting a curse on me!
I give the guy his ticket, and say, ‘have a happy Confest,’ and as he drives away he’s like:
‘hope you sleep well tonight mate! Sweet dreams buddy!’
(The next morning I see him in a drumming circle. He’s sitting on a fourty four gallon drum, pounding away. He’s still there that night when the sun is setting, bashing away on that drum like he’s possessed.)
A battered old Datsun rolls up, and a guy gets out who has to be in his seventies. He walks unsteadily, with a bit of a stoop, up to the ticket booth.
‘Eighty dollars please,’ says the lady at the booth.
The old guy pulls out his wallet, and scrounges through his pockets, but he comes up with only seventy five dollars.
‘I’m really sorry love,’ he says to the lady at the booth, ‘I seem to be five dollars short.’
She shakes her head.
‘Sorry mate,’ she says, ‘tickets are eighty dollars.’
The old fella’s face falls, and he looks humiliated.
I pull out my wallet and hand the guy five dollars.
‘Here you go, mate.’
He turns to me with a look on his face like he just won Lotto.
‘Thank you, son,’ he says.
He pays and gets his ticket.
On his way back to his car, he shuffles over to me.
‘Thank you again, mate,’ he says. ‘I miscalculated this morning. I just come from town, and I got a whole lot of fresh fruit and veg’ to share in the community kitchen, but I guess I overspent a bit, and me pension doesn’t come through again for another week and a half. Nev’s me name,’ he tells me, and shakes my hand.
I wish Nev a happy ConFest, and he climbs in his old car and drives away waving.
After that, I see Nev a few times during the festival. He has set up his tatty little old tent on a busy corner, and every time I walk past he jumps out of his folding chair and gives me a little gift.
‘These mangos are beautiful!’
‘G’day young man, have a couple of bananas!’
‘Would you look at this apple?’
‘Kiwi fruit been real good this season. Here, take two!’
Saturday afternoon. Jo and I head over to the worker’s cottage to do some laundry. It’s been a few days and I am out of clean socks. And clean underpants. And shirts.
I was doing washes pretty regularly during the set-up period, but now Confest has started I have got a bit slack. And toasted.
We have just started putting our stuff into the machine, when a short round man with a grey sargent-major moustache sticks his head in the door of the laundry.
‘What are you doing?’ he demands.
‘Er… laundry’ I reply.
‘This area is out of bounds, mate’ he says.
‘Oh, I’m on the set-up crew’ I tell him with a smile.
‘Doesn’t matter’ moustache snaps. ‘This washing machine is only for the use of first aid crew.’
‘OK… Well no-one told me that’ I say. ‘I’ve been here on site for the last three weeks helping with set-up, and I was told quite specifically that I could use the kitchen and laundry as much as I needed to.’
‘Well, whoever told you that didn’t know what they were talking about’ says moustache.
‘So… who are you?’ I ask him.
‘I’m on the board of directors of this festival, and I’m in charge of security’ he says. ‘I’m responsible for making sure punters don’t come over this side of the site, and I’d like you to leave this area.’
‘That’s ridiculous’ I tell him. ‘I want to wash a few T-shirts and undies. I don’t think that’s going to do any harm.’
‘And I’ve told you the rules regarding this laundry, mate. Do you have some sort of issue with authority do you?’
‘I don’t have any issue with legitimate authority’ I say. ‘What I have a problem with is jumped-up authority; people who think they can throw their weight around and bully other people.’
Moustache’s voice takes a threatening tone; ‘I’ve already asked you to leave nicely’ he says.
‘Yeah, and I will, because I get the feeling if I leave my stuff in this washing machine you are going to fuck with it. Otherwise I’d be going right ahead and doing my wash. I don’t give a fuck, mate.’
‘Know what your problem is?’ he says, eyes narrowing. ‘You don’t respect other people’s property! What If I were to go over and set fire to your tent, how would you feel about that?’
There is a silence. Moustache’s eyes shift a bit. He knows he’s gone too far.
‘Why don’t we try that, and see what happens?’ I say quietly.
Jo and I collect our gear, and exit the laundry.
Moustache is still hanging around the door.
‘Sorry for the inconvenience’ he says. ‘No hard feelings, right?’
We wash our clothes in the river, watching the sun set, and feeling the cool mud between our toes.
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