Here we all are, sitting on the back porch of Ms Penny and Ms Virginia's place at Jamieson, like we used to all through my childhood. We are having a cuppa and chatting as usual. Suddenly, a huge brown snake shoots out from between a gap in the floor, throwing our casual party into panic. Everybody leaps up and tries to get away from the angry, writhing serpent. It hurls itself at ElectroBoy, who somehow manages tro catch and hold it right behind its head, the way professional snake-handlers do. "Hold it like that! Don't let go or move!" I cry to him. But the snake gets away from him. Penny cries out for Virginia to get her shotgun (this echoes a real-life occurrence many years ago, when Penny tried to shoot a snake. Kind of ridiculous, since Penny - bless her heart - could barely shoot a stationary fox, let alone a moving snake. She ended up coming much closer to shooting my Dad. True story).
Meanwhile back in the dream, patermunkey has got hold of a shovel and a strange two-pronged pitchfork. Now out on the grass, he manages to pin the beastie with the fork and begins to try and chop off its head with the shovel. This all happens terribly fast, and there is a lot of confusion as the snake lashes out at him. I vividly remember seeing the inside of its fanged, fleshy mouth stretching out and gaping in its attempt to bite. After a few blows from Dad's trusty spade, the snake's head is separate from its body and the ground is caked with dark blood. But patermunkey has been bitten on the foot and the hand. Penny & Virginia (both nurses) quickly apply first aid and get Dad laying down in an old mini-bus, to rush him to Hospital. Everyone piles into cars to accompany them, but by the time I rush to get my socks and boots on, almost everyone has already left. The only car with room for me is a four-wheel-drive driven by Kevin Harrington / David Bishop from Neighbours. I don't know when he turned up, but I hate him.
He drives interminably slowly, and takes a ridiculously long way through town. There is a young lady with us also (I can't remember who) who insists we stop for a drink and a meal on the outskirts of Jamieson. She and David/Kevin assure me Dad will be fine, and there's nothing I can do to help anyway (which is true) so I grudgingly agree. There at the café, all the townsfolk are celebrating, because a local has just won the Brownlow Medal. The particularly odd part is that this Brownlow winner is a lively, rather pudgy teenage girl, who laughs and admits she only started playing football this season, and still doesn't know all the rules.
We spend so long at the café that the others all return, with Patermunkey bandaged-up, pumped full of anti-venom and out of danger. Relieved, we all begin to head home.
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It's also no-doubt quite interesting to all the armchair psychoanalatheralogatrists out there that, when I was being hurt by Ryan, I had a dream about being bitten by a snake, and protected by my family... and now that Ryan has ripped-off patermunkey, I have a dream about him being bitten. But I think the important thing to focus on is that in both dreams, the bite-victim gets help in time and ends up safe and well. And in this latest one, the nasssty ssserpent got itsss HEAD HACKED OFF. Too phucken right.
Stand back! The abject is attacking!
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