Brit was the result of Barry inserting his Cumberland sausage into Linda’s Yorkshire pudding in the Marina car park 25 years ago. This unholy consummation of Pommy love created a young girl who seems to think she’ll die if she ventures south of Reid Highway.
It’s a beautiful summer’s day so Brit assembles her Northern gaggle and soaks up the ambience of the harbour at The Breakwater – because she wants all the other Harbour peasants to know she’s better than them.
They chat while the stench of rotting whale carcass blends effortlessly with the stench of Lynxed-up children on the afternoon breeze.
Brit chats nostalgically about the Masters Milk Carton Regattas of her childhood. She recalls her bushy moustache’d dad driving from house to house and raiding their neighbour’s bins for chocky milk cartons.
T’was a simpler time, back when Hillarys was a seedy fest pit of sock & sandal wearing English immigrants and slack-jawed beach bums that had no desire to be caught up in the rat race of Perth city. So much has changed… wait… ah, forget it.
After spending half her paycheck on a feed and a few drinks at the Harbour, Brit decides to go for a swim in the giant aquatic day care centre the harbour has become.
Unfortunately for the girls, there is a pack of unruly youths making an excellent case of retrospective abortion. She decides to take the party back home for now.
They sit outside on her dad’s beloved synthetic grass and prepare for a wild night out at Bar 1. Northerners are drawn to Bar 1 in the hope tonight is the night they introduce Afterpay and she can make financial decisions that make the GFC look like a minor snafu.
She spots one of her own people on the dancefloor. He’s severely sunburnt and doing the Brexit bounce – to Brit it’s like Dr Zoidberg doing his mating dance and she is very into that right now.
They dance into the early hours of the morning and through a sweaty clenched jaw he asks if she’d fancy checking out his antique SS Ute. She’s never gone to heaven in a collector’s item before and they recreate the accidental magic that happened 25 years earlier in this very car park.
Sometime later a squirt test confirms her suspicions. Her father is remarkably stoic about the situation, “like I always said luv, I’d rather you get knocked up by some Englishman you barely know than be married to an Australian”.
With those loving words, the circle of life in the North continues.
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?