Living Upside Down. John Hickman

say?”

      “I didn’t say anything.”

      Roger plays with Jayne and cuddles James.

      Ignoring the pile on the dining table, he says gently, “He cheers my day with his cooing and grunting.”

      “Let me take him. That’s a changing grunt.”

      It is not long before brochures and pamphlets hinder Roger’s every move. Patiently he moves them from every chair, he turns around, and they are back again. They go from chairs to footstools, then back onto chairs, the kitchen table, the kitchen bench, even their bed.

      Roger’s mutterings of, ‘Musical bloody brochures,’ can be heard around the house.

      Roger finds one on his car windscreen. That makes him more determined than ever as he pries the damp brochure from the glass.

      “That’ll teach you,” he mumbles to himself, “ruining their glossy brochure of their white sandy beaches!”

      The next one he finds on his driver’s seat with a backdrop of mist and flashes of moonlight that escapes through the clouds.

      “They’re your brochures, not mine,” Roger repeats for the umpteenth time. “How’s about you have them close to you? They’re multiplying and I don’t want to look at them! Dodging them is about as easy as swimming the English Channel — and I can’t swim.”

      A stony silence follows. All is not well at Camp Sue.

      At their zoo feeding Sue asks, “Most months here are cold but don’t you think this year seems colder and longer?”

      He sits his lame arse down before saying rather tamely.

      “Yes. I’ve just ordered another load of coal for the central heating system. Damn, the budget’s blown, again!”

      “If we sit any closer to the heaters they’ll become pregnant,” Sue jokes.

      Feeling now that all her ducks may be lined up in a row, Sue is no longer subtle nor as welcoming as an eggy fart at a first date dinner table.

      That afternoon she gives Jayne a quick couple of laps around the bath while adding hot water being careful not to scald her. Her contented sounds and associated crescendos of bath bubbles from under her bottom confirming she is happy with the water temperature. Getting her out and dried off with big fluffy towels before she shivers becomes a military operation, even with the aid of a twin-bar electric fire to warm the room.

      Next morning Roger retreats to the toilet for his morning fart for merry England.

      “I’m going to the library, Sue.”

      His Dad used to take his cup of tea in with him, which always disgusted Sue, but it is far too cold for that.

      Looking at Roger with a practiced glare that would shatter glass Sue hands him the fresh air spray.

      Roger is preparing to curl one out with pride when a glossy brochure slithers under the door and bounces off his foot.

      His turtle head quickly retreats.

      Sighing and rolling his eyes at the lost chance to celebrate something he was dedicated to birthing he comments to the closed door, “That’s below the belt, Sue. Is nothing, nowhere, sacred?”

      With nothing to read and nature proving fickle he reluctantly picks up the brochure.

      What he sees is an overview of climate in Australia produced like a textbook on the run. In the north, it is described as tropical.

      Roger ponders his Rodin’s Thinker pose. Tropical?

      His mind ticks over; maybe a bit too hot and sticky for his pale Saxon flesh.

      I could go a bit of that tropical warmth right now, he thinks, as ice is forming on the insides of his nostrils.

      In the south being the opposite of north, he observes it is cold.

      It is now so cold in the library that Shackleton would not have left a Husky dog outside for long. He is now so cold the poor bastard cannot feel his own testicles. Maybe his turtle is frozen? Perhaps a new archaeological find in the making?

      Looking at the brochure, his attention catches their coastline about half way up the Australian continent on the left hand side. Their summertime is the same as British wintertime because of the reversal of the hemispheres, he understands that, but, from what he is reading, it is warm to hot by British standards.

      With his usual optimism and unclear lateral thinking, Roger suddenly becomes somewhat hooked on the idea of not spending about one third of their disposable income on coal heating.

       Could it be that simple?

      Finishing up with a smile, he even waves farewell to the turtle as the water swirls it away to its watery grave.

      “Amazing how once in a while having a shit can be such a wonderfully revealing experience,” he murmurs as he almost collides with Sue, busy with additional odour neutralisers, her face a picture of concentration.

      “You know, Sue…, according to these statistics a family could live in say, Perth, wherever that is, and never need to buy coal for heating.”

      “Wow! You’re sounding wonderfully positive today.” Sue brightens.

      Sue looks as if she is about to crawl out of her skin from excitement.

      “You’re right,” Roger beams, “optimism is beginning to infiltrate every cell of my body.”

      In a devil-may-care moment, brim full of new found knowledge about fuck-all but temperatures Down Under, they race out and buy thermometers.

      Placing these at strategic distances, in and around their cooker, they plan to get the edge over the highbrow meaning of the statistics.

      “You mean we’ll feel for ourselves what sub tropical temperatures Down Under really feel like?” Sue asks.

      “Exactly.”

      After a while Roger announces shrilly, “It is very hot.”

      “Your hand is almost inside the oven,” Sue says defensively.

      “Trouble is Australia’s in Celsius and our thermometers are in Fahrenheit,” Roger groans staring at their appliances with an air of hopelessness.

      After attempting to do their school day conversions in their heads, and with limited success, they decide rather than go completely bonkers — to take a short cut.

      “How’s about anything above our thirty-two Fahrenheit is a bonus?” Sue gushes.

      Roger toys with this thought for a while before dismissing it. “Here we’re used to a life threatening ten above at peak of day, so a move is looking good, but what about the children?”

      Sue’s smile brightens. “I think it best we take them with us, don’t you?”

      “Yes. I meant how’d you think they’ll cope?”

      “Why? They’re children; they’ll adapt well, probably better than we cope. Your legs are white and skinny. You’ll look like a flamingo.”

      “Presupposing we are to leave this land of our birth. Admittedly a land of benighted fools and spoon fed unremarkable people who’ve been born into unearned privilege,” Roger pauses to collect his breath, and further supposing that I’m even employable in Australia.”

      Sue is hanging on his every word. In her mind’s eye, she is already visualising a life Down Under as a panacea for most of their ills.

      Anything to get out of this mind numbing, grey, lifeless, British climate and the extra distance between them and Roger’s bank guarantees might not be a bad thing.

      “And further surmising other costs measure up similar to here,” Roger continues counting again on his fingers, “whatever is left to spend after taxation