Years ago, in between corporate life and having a baby, I worked for some friends at their mobile phone shop. They had two franchises and I would facilitate between both of them.
I worked almost full time there. Doing books and setting up a monumental data base system that allowed them to ensure they were paid from the big mobile network company they franchised for. In between it all I was going through IVF and when that succeeded I worked until a few days before I had my son.
This couple were not close friends, they were work friends. The wife was about my age and her husband was at least 15 years older. He was a nice enough guy in his own incredibly rude and abrupt way. He was of the generation that you said things as they were which was fine by me as I find that quite refreshing (and amusing).
He looked a bit like Terry Thomas who was a terrific English actor from days yore. Mind you, he only looked like him, he certainly was not imbued with the gentlemanly and humorous charm of Terry Thomas.
He shared the same name as well. Anyway, he smoked heavily. And he also drank a few glasses of Scotch when he got home from work. In fact, both he and his wife were like that. It kind of intrigues me how a person could indulge in things that are bound to give you bad breath and yellow teeth. Let alone the health aspects of both.
So, he smoked and he had grey kind of skin and grey hair and a grey old fashioned moustache. He swore like a trooper and the more stressed he was the more often I heard the "f" word.
But at the core of him, he was a really good guy. Really very funny and a loving father. Can't say he was the best husband as he and his wife fought all the time when they were together. They must have gotten on well enough because they had three kids and were planning on another one.
He spent most of his time at a shop that also sold televisions and similar items. The mobile phone aspect came later on. The shop was in an older area and trams rattled past all day long and you could see them through the open door. Nearby was a tired old supermarket and some other obscure shops eking out a living selling bits and pieces.
Right opposite our shop was a
milk bar. It kept a reasonable trade selling newspapers, milk, lunch items and bread. A couple of years beforehand it had been sold to a Chinese couple who were really lovely and gentle people. However, there was a bit of an ongoing issue between Terry and this couple on how to heat a pie.
You see, the meat pie is a bit of an Aussie icon. Most tradesmen eat one for morning smoko. My son would love to eat one everyday but since I am not an Aussie as such, there is no way that is happening. Unless it is a homemade meat pie.
However, I am digressing. A meat pie should be heated in an oven to enable it to be piping hot inside with a lovely, flaky and slightly crisp pastry on the outside. It should not be heated inside a microwave oven as it will just be limp, hot and soggy with not the slightest bit of flakiness in the pastry. Horrible.
Well, this Chinese couple who owned the milk bar just did not get the whole concept of how a meat pie should be. So when Terry went across the road to get a meat pie for lunch he would invariably come back with a microwave heated slop of a pie. It really, really annoyed him.
He would come into the shop saying something like "fucking pie" before throwing it into the bin and complaining for the rest of the afternoon.
On and off over a few months he tried to tell them how to heat the pie. Once or twice they agreed to crank up the oven and do the pie how Terry wanted it but the next day it would be back to the microwave and Terry would despair.
I could hardly blame them. It costs a lot of money to heat up the oven and that would eat up and measly profit they made when they sold it.
I often wondered why Terry continued to get his pies from there when it was obvious that the odds of getting a microwaved pie were extremely high. More intriguing was the fact that only a few minutes walk up the road was a bakery that sold very fine meat pies that were lovely and flaky straight from the pie oven. I did ask him and he said it was too far to walk....
So, this thing continued. Buy pie, come into shop, open bag and then say "fucking pie" before throwing it away and moaning about it. I used to tell him to get a salad sandwich or something instead. It was really funny.
However, one day it obviously got the better of him because he came inside the shop with the hot and soggy pie and was fuming.
"I have fucking had it with this. I am going to do something about it," he said and turned and walked back out of the shop.
I stood up and followed him to see what he had in mind.
He stood in the middle of the road. And I mean in the middle of the road with traffic passing.
He then yelled out to the Chinese couple in the milk bar to come out as he had something to show them. They stood at the door watching.
Then, he took the pie out of the paper bag and threw it with all his might up into the air at least twenty feet high. It came down hard on the road and splattered across like some sort of dead animal.
"That's what I think of your fucking pie," he yelled and then stormed off back into the shop.
The Chinese couple laughed and went back into their milk bar. A few other people just shook their heads and went on.
Then, much to my utter surprise, two days later Terry went across to the milk bar and bought a pie for lunch.
And it was microwaved.
All he said was "fucking pie". Only this time he took a few bites before throwing it into the bin.
I never really understood what was going on in his mind.
Ciao
LC
