Cue, Karen and Richard

An evening of deep chats and light slaps.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to drop a quick note to say thank you for all the nice comments and support around last week's post, and welcome to all the new subscribers who decided to sign up as well. I hadn't expected the post to connect like it did, but it was a nice surprise nonetheless. I certainly wasn't thinking about any of this when I decided to draw a picture of a man accidentally reversing a bird's beak because of an absurd scenario where, via a phone, you could connect to nature and an actual bird, but also a log as well. But as I said, it was a nice surprise.

It's also how I plan to continue things going forward. Not so much reversing bird beaks, but just to keep playing around with different ideas. My newsletter is a bit random in this way, but I think the connective tissue is that I like to observe and then wonder about things, collect the crumbs of life if you will, and then present this back in hopefully a thoughtful and funny way. Sometimes this is an essay, sometimes it’s purely visual, sometimes it's a silly short story or a collection of observations and drawings from my sketchbook. Either way, I hope you'll continue to stick around for it.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this week's post.

We met Karen and Richard in Cue. A tiny country town six or so hours drive north of Perth, Western Australia.

It's a fairly quiet place, more of a ghost town these days, but at one point in time it was a booming gold rush town that I read somewhere described as 'bustling'. I'm not sure how many people warrant a bustle. A fair few I imagine. Enough to see some brushing of shoulders, perhaps a jostle or two. None of which happens now though, and any jostling these days might be interpreted as a very deliberate attack, such is the plentiful space along the sidewalk.

Like a lot of the other people in town, KB and I had stopped in for a night as part of a big roadtrip up to the north of the state, and that's what it's mostly used for these days. A stopover place. And coming from the city it's an ideal first stop because you feel like you're in a proper country town, in the actual outback. Beyond the town, there’s just space. Lots of it, stretching off into the horizon. The dirt is a deep orange, on its way to red just a little further up the road. The main street is big and wide and lined with old, historic shop fronts with faded signage. It looks like an open-air museum.

Walking around there isn't too much to see. It's one of those places where you can go on a ten minute walk and you're done. It has a caravan park - where we were camping - a mining village for some of the workers still in the business, and some historic old buildings.

We'd had a wander during sunset and most of the street had dimmed aside from a small hill with a huge stack of graffitied, jagged boulders that filled an empty lot next to the old fire station. The reddy-yellow tinge of the rocks were lit up by the late sun, and glowed like giant embers. Closely watched by whichever ghosts happened to be on duty at the abandoned-looking fire station next door.

The whole thing looked like an art installation. It was mesmerising.

We climbed up to the top and surveyed the town, watching the last of the sunset before eventually making our way across the road for dinner. Despite there being not much else around, like every country town, there is a pub, and it's the only place for a drink and a proper meal on a Friday night.

In stark contrast to the rest of the town, it was bustling inside. Very heavy on the brushing of shoulders. On one side of the pub was the area for the regulars. This seemed to be marked by a sign hanging from above that read 'Far Cue Bar'. A classic bit of rude country pub humour (best to sound it out quietly if you’re sitting in a library or communal space). It also seemed to be marked by a strict dress code of heavy fluoro yellow - the uniform of the mining workers and tradies¹. Under the pub lighting, it glowed brighter than the graffitied rocks from earlier on, so much so that I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen a few moths heading in that direction.

On the other side of the pub - which if I'm following the proper naming convention would have made it Near Cue compared with that of Far Cue (not you, sorry) - was for all the one-night stopover crowd. And after a bit of floundering around trying to find a non-existentent free table, of which there weren't many to begin with, we saw two people waving at us, gesturing for us to come over.

We thanked them profusely, and sat down at the table. They introduced themselves as Karen and Richard. Like us, they were staying over the road in the caravan park. They were on their way back to Perth though, and had their own caravan. Both were in their 60s and retired, had smiley faces and seemed curious in a warm and welcoming way. Karen had amazing posture, sitting perfectly straight-backed, while Richard toggled between leaning back with arms crossed, and then forward with elbows on the table, which somehow probably averaged out to a straight back at the end of the night. Although I’m not sure that’s how it works.

We chatted for a little bit about our travel plans before I got up to order. Richard joined me and we talked a bit about caravanning. I wasn't able to offer much, I just asked a lot of questions. Richard said they'd bought a bigger one recently, but he preferred their old one.

'Harder to manoeuvre, the big ones. A lot wider. You gotta put special side mirrors on the car to see around it.'

'Ah ok. That makes sense'.

When we were all sitting back at the table we started talking about our jobs. When KB shared that her background was in psychology, this prompted a big reaction from both of them. Richard let out a big 'Oohhhhhhhh' and leaned back in his chair, looking off to the side and rolling his eyes. Karen let out a small chuckle and looked over at Richard knowingly, in that way where two people have the same anecdote stored away in their mutual filing cabinet. One that has been recounted tens if not hundreds of times. This one had seemingly been categorized under 'psychology'.

Richard leaned forward again, having excitedly retrieved the file from the filing cabinet, and starts telling us about his ex-sister-in-law who was a psychologist. As he says psychologist, he puts air quotes around it and I can't quite tell whether this is because she wasn't really a psychologist, or that he doesn't believe being a psychologist is a real job. Either way, I don't have time to clarify as he continues on with the story.

'Her kids…'

'4, 6 and 8', Karen interjects with.

For this story, I notice Karen has taken on the important role of 'supporting detail assistant'. That's because every telling of a story or anecdote where two or more people are involved requires a storyteller and then one or more people to chip in with any key details that get left out. On some occasions, the roles switch halfway through a story but either way, it's crucial that the 'supporting detail assistant' is ready to go with key facts.

Richard continues, 'Her kids...4,6 and 8...can't even use a knife and fork!? They can only use a spoon!'

He says this in a way as if to have proven a point. And I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what that might be.

'They only use spoons at meal times', Karen follows up with.

KB and I play along, laughing and saying something neutral like 'Oh that’s interesting.' The uncertainty in our voices doesn’t seem to prompt any further clarification from their end.

Richard then cracks a rude joke about psychology which gets a rise out of Karen.

'Richard!!'

She quickly slaps Richard on the back of his shoulder, who doesn't flinch. This happens multiple times throughout the night. I try to picture the back of Richard's shoulder, imagining a hand-sized groove worn away from decades of slapping. Like water slowly smoothing down a rock.

It's always funny to observe a couple's little quirks from the outside. This is clearly a thing where Richard misbehaves and Karen scolds him, and they both enjoy it. Karen has a smirk on her face and I'm sure Richard needs it too. In their universe, Karen helps to create a kind of Newton's Third Law effect. Her slaps providing an equal and opposite reaction to Richard's cheeky behaviour that keeps a kind of equilibrium in their relationship, which would otherwise send Richard spinning off into space, completely unhinged, telling all sorts of wild jokes.

As I'm psychoanalysing Karen and Richard, I wonder what Richard would think. Whether he might accuse me of being a spoon-eater too. Perhaps he’s planning to test me when my food arrives.

Richard then starts telling us about his job. He's retired. Worked in the same job for decades as a sort of controller at a plant. Got paid well for it too and was able to retire early.

'That's all work is. A paycheck, having a laugh with the lads, and not working too hard'.

He says this with arms folded across his chest. We ask him more about his job and he shares more details but always finishes with some form of the above statement.

Turn up, collect your paycheck, stick it out.

He never actually says that he hated his job but it seems fairly obvious. Karen is nodding in agreement the whole time. She's heard some form of this many times. When Richard is done, we ask Karen what her career was in.

'I was a nurse' she says, lighting up. She goes on to tell us how much she loved her job at the hospital. How rewarding it was being a nurse. And that she loved helping people, and loved her coworkers. She's really energised as she's saying all this and excited to talk about it as we ask her more questions.

Noticing the variety of viewpoints on work and career at the table, I try to summarise things, offering up something to the effect of: ‘well I guess we’re all different and all want different things from our work’.

'Exactly', says Richard. 'That's all it's about. Earn enough money and then retire', managing to somehow completely miss the point entirely.

Reflecting on things afterwards, it was fascinating to me how Richard had constructed this entire philosophy around what work and career is, perhaps as a way to make sense of it all. Perhaps even as a form of protection. And by being so completely steadfast that This Is How Things Are, he somehow hadn’t clocked that his own wife was evidence of an alternative.

Maybe for him at least it did work out for the best. He and Karen both did seem happy. Each had their own stories about work that made sense. They also had a family, had their hobbies, and seemed to care for each other despite Karen physically assaulting Richard in public seemingly dozens of times a day. In a way, Richard was only doing that thing we all do, which is to construct narratives and philosophies in order to make sense of our own lives. The fact that Richard was seemingly unable to even hear any alternative did seem to be telling however.

It also made me wonder if psychology scared Richard. Whether the whole spoons thing was a way to dismiss this woo-woo idea of talking about your thoughts and feelings, of which any tinkering with could destablise an entire worldview. And even whether he had constructed other narratives that were tenuously linked to certain professions.

Oh don't get me started on firefighters. I had a second cousin who was a firefighter and he refused to wear shoes!

We finished up our dinner and drinks and chatted a little bit more, before saying our goodbyes and wishing each other safe travels. For all their quirks and interesting viewpoints and ideas, largely from Richard with a supporting actor credit for Karen, they were kind and generous people, and it'd been a fun night hanging out with them.

We had been guests not just at their table, but also in their constructed realities. The world they had created, made up of a lifetime of stories and narratives.

We stepped out into the cool night, and it felt nice to be out in the open air again. Free to return to our own familiar reality.

Away from the busyness of the pub. Not just all the bustling and jostling, and even brushing, but all the slapping too.

1. In Australia we call tradespeople ‘tradies’, because we obviously have to shorten everything and don’t have time to say the full word. Or something.