Thursday, March 10, 2005

Return To Timbertop: Part 2

By the time the sun rose Charles had already gathered bush tucker, started a fire and had a pot of billy tea going. Ever since Timbertop Charles has been an early riser which is not really our style. We knew we could luxuriate in the tent cos Charles is one of those aristocrats who love to 'play servant'. After breakfast we set off for our bushwalk. It was a beautiful day, the dappled light through the eucalypti made us proud to be Australian.

We didn't waste anytime getting to the crux of things because a chopper was coming to collect HRH in three hours. He had to do a meet and greet in Sydney at lunchtime (the doppelganger can't do official duties because he has a high voice like David Beckham). After assisting Charles with the fastening of His parasol harness - His large sausage-like fingers fumbling with the buckles - we asked Him about the appointment of The Knights of the British Commonwealth. Charles chuckled and rolled His eyes, "Tony just tells Mother who's worthy in his opinion. If you ask me it's like Top of the Pops these days," He said. We agreed with Him and expressed our distrust of one Sir Mick Jagger and one Sir Paul McCartney. Sure, they were both part of some important movements in music history, but we have issues with both of them. Like once, we nearly came to blows with Sir Mick after climbing a volcano in Bali. It was at the time of the French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Mick and some of his sychophants were banging on about Evian mineral water. We could not take the boredom any longer as we had been led to believe that Sir Mick was an intellectual, so in our best Australian accents we damned the French, their bombs and their stupid chalky tasting mineral water. Sir Mick's reaction was very extreme; his face went all red and the veins in his neck were protruding as he shouted at us "You Australians have no right to complain! You knew this was part of Chirac's platform and you did NOTHING about it until now!" The sychophants were aghast and clearly unsure as to what to do next. We were also under pressure to come up with something smart as a retort. We shut Mick up by informing him of the simple truth that what the French were doing in the Pacific was out of synch with modern thought. Charles nodded sympathetically. "He just missed the point, didn't he?" He said as He handed us a banksia, which was lovely but we couldn't stop staring at those sausage fingers consuming the flower.

Sometimes He walked on ahead of us because He is rarely alone with nature. We felt privileged to be party to His meditation. We sat quietly whilst Charles had a snuggle with some Messmate Stringybarks (eucalyptus obliqua). With bits of bark and tree falling all over the place, due to the parasol bashing into the trunk everytime He nuzzled in, Charles recited them a haiku about the origins of their name (our black brothers say they 'make a bloody mess mate'). He also took lots of photographs so that He could paint the landscape during the English winter in the Balmoral studio He shares with Harry. It may have been the heat or some kind of allergic reaction to the Messmates but we could not help noticing that the royal sausages were getting quite taut. He Himself seemed uncomfortable with their size, and tried to keep His hands in His pockets. We tried hard not to stare and resisted the urge to prick them, like any self respecting Australian would. His vulnerablilty apparent, we felt it was a good time to ask THE question as to why His Mum wasn't going to the townhall part of the wedding. He went all quiet and for a minute we thought we'd bitten off more than we could chew but He turned to us, and with a look of relief said "punk, blanket, Mother is surrounded by ancient twits who give her bad advice". After that we observed a distinct deflation of his ballooned digits.