Michael Walked In Like Smaug

He had to call us on his cell phone when we did not hear him rap at our front door. He immediately apologised for his luggage as you do! It turned out that he had 75 thousand bucks worth of his esoteric medical gear in the damn thing! The start of the Melmoot weekend at sunny Brunnie was off to a flying dragon’s start. He was extremely tired, so I took the opportunity to wear him down a little further by an extensive grilling of exactly what he had been up to in the last 5 years. As if I did not know! Just as in Guantanamo bay, he finally surrendered with a shower and off to bed. The Brunnie lad slept for 9 solid hours!

We slipped in to pick up my new Homer book, as you do, from Readings in Lygon St and we debated whether or not to take tea at Trotters before we returned to face the horde at Marion Avenue. Deciding in the negative, we prepared for a frontal Tol Harndor assault back at the Brunswick mansion. First to arrive was Ted and Ros Scribner from Cronulla. Mr Underhill’s spies had already Sir Ted pumping along Sydney Road, Brunswick on the previous day! At this moment he was carrying 3 gallons of his homemade mead when he knocked at our door. What a honey he is this mead bearer. Ros was even more charming than I did remember, with a fund of well timed stories. They both seemed not to have aged any at all since my previous two visits to their seaside home in Sydney. They had XPT’ed down from northern approaches. The next to approach the Grey Thrush attached to my front window was Christine Woodham, who had also come down by train from Sydney. She indeed proved to be a little like Ms Jane Austen of early 19th century fame, proving both clever and durable if a little younger than I remembered Jane. Then followed two local yokels, Gary and Martin Kingsley, who promptly began to settle in to the gathering as if they had been Tol Harndor fiends instead of friends of TH, for all they’re natural born. They purport to be communications experts and thus they fitted in fairly well with the general level of tableside blarney on display. Liz Lynch, the serving wench looked finer than she deserved to do, as she sidled up to the blokes with hot dishes galore. If I had not known better, I would have sworn that she had been paid good money, to get to Hobbiteer’s hearts! The mooch of lunch went on, and then declined into ruder moments of discussions which included comparisons of the sexiness of Robert Wagner (as Prince Valiant) and the love life of Ava Gardner and also whether the Pickwick Papers could be tolerated by our own generation. Dr Karen (Lynch) then bravely breezed into number 6, to meet all these cuddly but brave people for the very first time. We sallied out into the open to waddle down to the Moonee creek and also espy the Moonee Valley racecourse before returning for another round of jousting in the back parlour. The honey hippies departed and left me the remaining two gallons of 1987 mead. Michael and I figured that the mead had improved in quality despite Ted’s calculations to the contrary. Paul left after bruising me slightly in the Dickens department and Liz returned to again provide Christine, Michael and I with some tea. We shazammed a bit, and consulted some maps and other various tomes and scraps of paper for reasons possibly remembered better by the younger humans. Miss Woodham’s left by taxi for her pre Victorian era rooms, and we snoozed in front of Harry Potter. A truly joyous day had come to a close and I discovered in the morning that Michael had slept for 8 and one half hours! We chatted about families and then Michael and I prepared ourselves for the next journey. But that is another tale.

Back to Tilkal, Issue 3, eJournal of Tol Harndor