The Lovett Bay Bugle had a larger office than its Koala Bay counterpart and was a shop front on the busy main drag, instead of a one-floor walk-up down a side street. Otherwise the basic layout was the same - a receptionist at the front, two sales people and an office manager behind her and then, in a cramped area beyond, the newspaper’s three reporters, who were still there filing their last stories to meet deadline.
There was Ellen - cheerful, personable blonde - who sounded even more like a Kiwi in person than on the phone. She was getting rid of some emails from the subs at South Forest, where the Lovett Bay Bugle was being bedded down. The other reporter was Karen, a thin, intense women who wore no makeup, had her brown hair cut short, and wore round framed glasses. She had aboriginal artifacts on her desk and her first act on meeting Miles was to hand him a pamphlet about an aboriginal rights group weekend workshop. Her boyfriend, a young, bearded activist with an environmental group, came in just after Miles to perch on the edge of Karen’s desk. Being a little earlier, Miles had taken the newsroom’s single free chair.
“Are there any aboriginal groups near here?” asked Miles after glancing at the pamphlet, more in hope of a story than through any political interest.
“All massacred and driven away long ago, mate,” said the boyfriend.
Miles put the pamphlet in his pocket. “What about a group for oppressed journalists?”
Karen smiled slightly. “Union, I suppose. Are you a member?”
As a matter of fact, Miles was; he had thought it advisable to join when he was looking for work. At that point the third reporter, a dark complexioned, dark-eyed trainee called Nathan got off the phone.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Nathan, “getting lots of stories here. Lots of hot stories.”
“Glad to hear it! You must’ve had a better news week than I did.”
“Lots of hot stories… Speaking of things hot, how’s Angela?”
Karen made a sound that was somewhere between a sniff and a click of her tongue. Her boyfriend just grinned.
“Good, I guess.”
“She coming tonight?”
“Don’t reckon.”
“She was here a few weeks back with some guy. Oh man, is she hot!”
“Uh huh!” Having no wish to talk about his colleague Miles changed the subject. “What are these hot stories you’ve got?”
“Hot stories mate, real hot.”
“Like what?”
Before Nathan could answer the receptionist called from the front, “inspectors, Nate”. The trainee shot out from behind the desk with, as the old police reports put it, the speed of a thousand gazelles, and sprinted across the carpet scattering bits of paper. He came back a few minutes later.
“Damn!” he said. “those bastards! Eighty bucks for parking out there. I could have gone to dinner on that.” He sat down behind his desk and slammed his biro down on a stack of council proceedings on his desk, to demonstrate his feelings.
“You park out the front?” said Miles, “when it’s a clearway after four? Why don’t you just make it a rule to park out the back, or round the side street like I did. Almost the same distance to walk.”
“You just walk through the laneway,” said Karen.
“I’m not walking through a laneway,” said Nathan, obviously disgusted at the suggestion.
This last statement was so ridiculous that Miles looked at Karen for an explanation. That reporter caught his glance and, by way of explanation, lifted her shoulders slightly and flicked her eyes upwards.
“The rest of us have to. If I’d known I could walk through the back lane way I’d have done it when I parked,” said Miles. “What makes you so different?”
“I’m not putting up with any shit!” said Nathan indignantly, “they shouldn’t make us walk through a laneway. We should have car spaces.”
“Sure! But you haven’t got a car space. You’ve lost the argument by eighty bucks.”
“Humph!”
As Miles later discovered, that sort of arrogance, which extended to petty issues such as refusing to put together the community notices because it was not the work of a “real” journalist – and that from a trainee on the Bugle Group, the journalistic definition of humble - was the bane of Ellen’s life.
“Car spaces out the back!” said Ellen, who had finished her emails. “Why not ask for bar service and a separate interview room while you’re at it.”
“Yeah, interview room,” said Karen.
“We need car spaces. Why do we have to walk through a back alley?” said Nathan.
“I could always ask again,” said Ellen, “the office guys need a laugh. Why don’t you ask? Time for you to be laughed at.”
“Humph! They should give us spaces,” muttered Nathan.
They adjourned to a seedy pub a few doors down the road. A television installed in a bracket high on the wall showed racing, for the benefit of a mix of the local businessmen and labourers around the bar. There were few women. They pulled two tables together in one corner of the green carpet and ordered - mainly beers.
“Not many for Friday,” observed Miles.
“Place down the road shows music videos,” said Karen’s boyfriend, “trendies go there. We stay here.”
“Wise move,” said Miles, but thinking he might look in on that place later. Then he told them about his battles with Ros, Bronwyn and his encounter with Justin. His listeners made sympathetic noises, but otherwise showed no surprise.
“Jan complained so much about Ros, but it was a put up all along,” said Ellen.
“Bronwyn’s a mate of hers. Justin says he never got any of my messages. She must’ve blocked them both ways with Jan.”
“Bronwyn think’s she deputy editor-in-chief,” said Karen, “’n we’re all scum. But the reason she’s in editorial is because she stuffed up so much in admin.”
“Why doesn’t Justin heave her?”
“He doesn’t care,” said Ellen. “Did he give you that line at the interview about preferring journos from the country because they’ll do the work?”
“Yeah he did.”
“It’s bull dust. Did you come on as contract or one of the union grades.”
“Grading.”
“The grade you’re hired at, that’s what you’re stuck with.”
“No changes,” added Karen.
“You mean the money I got now, that’s what I’m stuck with?” Miles had been hoping that after a few months he could get his fortnightly pay packet pushed up from pathetic to being merely inadequate.
“You been on any of the metros or the wire services or anything like that?“ asked Ellen.
“Course not. Just up from the country.“
“Then you’re stuck with what you’ve got.“
“And they wonder why we leave, ” added Karen, bitterly.
Actually, Mr Charles had a good idea why his journalist turnover rates were well above the industry average, but he also knew that better pay and conditions would make little difference as young journalists were always looking for jobs in more exciting places.
“They may be hiring at the Sunday Telegraph,” said Ellen.
“I’ve still got my guy at the ABC,” said Karen wistfully.
“Herald for me, no question,” said Nathan.
“Maybe you c’d try the Economist?” suggested Miles.
“You mean the Brit magazine?”
”That’s the one.”
“That where you’re going?”
“Sure mate, they hire from the Bugle Group all the time.”
The others laughed; Nathan looked exasperated. “Don’t you think about moving onto something bigger.”
“After my first week? The reason I’m here is that the metros and wire services wouldn’t look at me – just up from the country. Now that I’ve sorted out some issues, it doesn’t seem such a bad place to get my time up.”
“You gotta wait,” said Ellen. “Maybe a wire service after 18 months?”
“Maybe – if I want to follow the Treasurer around, phoning in anything the man says.”
“They watch to see which service gets in first, I hear,” said Ellen.
“That sort of thing worries me,” said Bronwyn’s boyfriend, “the sort of mentality it creates.”
Before Miles could retort that the service was used by markets that traded billions in seconds the party was joined by Jake and Ethan, two of the reporters from the papers based at South Forest. Miles had met them earlier in the day, but had only exchanged greetings. Like Miles they were, at the most, two or so years out of university.
Ethan was a small, dark, quiet man and an arts graduate who also happened to be gay. Far more importantly he was known to be a poor reporter who Justin wanted to force out. Jake was tall and heavily built, with angular features, a clean shaven head and a small ear ring in one ear. He looked more like a gang enforcer than a journalist – an air of menace reinforced by his habitual uniform of brown leather jacket, T shirt and jeans, supplemented with a roll neck jumper in winter. His deep, booming voice, Miles was later told, could be heard all over the South Forest building, and that was when the owner of the voice was trying to be quiet. But Jake’s looks were deceiving. He had recently gained an honours degree in philosophy, along with a gold medal for a distinguished essay, but had turned aside from the academic path to explore journalism. That eccentric whim had landed him a job on the South Forest Bugle with the old hand Tom, writing about garden festivals and problems with sewage outflows. Justin had hoped that Jake might frighten the much older reporter into checking his facts. For despite all his years of experience Tom had a problem with facts. Instead they had become good friends, with Tom taking on the hard task of making Jake’s stories less like philosophical essays and more like news reports. Jake was also aiming for higher things, perhaps an overseas posting via Canberra.
“Refills anyone?” said Jake. Miles held up his schooner and it was taken away. The conversation wandered on. Ethan played the flute seriously, Miles discovered, and wanted to turn professional. Then he would shake the dust of the Bugle Group from his feet. Miles got up to buy and, after downing that one, he found that he had mellowed towards humanity in general and the Bugle Group in particular. Another round arrived. He began to feel silly. It had been a hard, strange week and he was beginning to discover the best part about the Bugle Group – the other journalists in it.
“Have you ever wondered what was beyond beer?” he asked Jake, after hearing of the other reporter’s training in philosophy. He pointed, a little unsteadily, at the glass in front of him. He noted that it now had only a little beer in it. He could have sworn there was more a moment ago.
“Never really had beer in front of me long enough to consider the issue, mate,” said Jake. “Anyway, I generally take a solipsistic view – the only verifiable fact is the existence of self. Everything else is debatable.”
“So you can’t be sure that the beer in front of you exists?”
“As a verifiable fact, no.”
“Then why not give it to me?“
“Cause I want to drink it.“
“But if it doesn’t exist, what’s the problem?” Miles had read well beyond his agricultural college studies. He also became more talkative when drunk. “If you don’t reckon it exists, why do you wanna drink it.”
“If I let that unverified beer mingle with my verified self, then maybe it would gain some measure of verification – only I’d have to drink a lot more before I work out what I mean by verification.”
“So what you’re saying is that this beer will become more real to you, when you’ve stuck it in your gob.”
“In my reality.”
“So if I took the beer off you, you would react.”
“Correct. I’m reacting to my universe as I experience it. Two young guys decided to intrude on my reality in the street around here a couple of nights ago. They must’ve been debating the existence of alcohol earlier, but I don’t think they wanted to discuss metaphysics with me.”
“What’s metaphysics for god’s sake?”
“Investigating the question of existence, as such.”
“Alright, but they weren’t philosophy students?”
“Reckon not.”
“So what happened?”
“One of them had a brief experience of non-existence, when the fist on my physical self as I experience it, interacted with his unverified self. The other buggered off.”
The conversation became more disjointed. The ladies slipped away, more people joined and they all adjourned to a nearby pizza place for food. Ethan left and Jake and Miles went on alone to a second, even seedier pub. Miles found that his jaw had gone numb and that he might have fallen off his chair had he not been leaning against Jake. By that time the bartender was visibly wondering if he could serve them without risking the pub’s licence. Driving home was out of the question - Miles was not even sure he could find his car – but fortunately Jake’s place was within long staggering distance. So they wandered off to it singing as much as they could remember of the Monty Python philosopher’s drinking song.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
And very rarely bable
“Stable, mate,” said Jake, who was much less the worse for drink than Miles. “The line is ‘And very rarely stable’”
“Right! Right! Who was Kant again?”
“German loony who said our senses define everything and we can’t know anything outside our senses. He hung around his home town in Germany and did bugger all for decades except write about philosophy. I gotta gold medal and I get to write about sewerage in South Forest.”
“Kant should’ve been a journalist, mate,” said Miles, who thought it advisable to lean on a power pole which, with great civic foresight, had been placed just where he happened to need support. “Would’ve learnt about real stuff..”
“Mate, he could never’ve handled it. The sewerage system in South Forest is in a shocking state. Where were we?”
“We did Kant.”
“Yeah, yeah! Next is Heidegger.”
“Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel”….
“Mate, mate! Do you know we create hyper reality?” said Jake suddenly.
“We do?.. what’s hyper reality when it’s at home?”
“The way people experience an event involves lots of different types of reality, right?”
“Uh yeah, right. Ooops!” Miles had cannoned into Jake. He righted himself and kept going.
“So when we report stuff it fuses those different realities into one, see. ‘n that’s hyper reality.”
Miles thought about having to search Koala Bay for a story to put on page one and the reality of the Grovers. Then he had a flash of insight of the kind that is sometimes granted to the seriously drunk.
“Mate, I’ve never heard so much bulldust in all my life. I’m from the bush; I know bulldust ‘n that’s it.”
“I don’t get to invent the stuff. I gotta get a few more years up messing around in libraries before I get to invent. I just gotta try and understand the stuff. Hyper reality it is.”
“Then there are some people in Koala Bay,” said Miles, thinking of Mrs Grover, “on a different fucking plane of existence altogether.”
“Mate, you are an eloquent drunk.”
Later he recalled vaguely getting to the flat and Jake producing a bottle of what he insisted was vintage Port. Miles thought it was the best stuff he had ever tasted. He also remembered looking up to see two women. He thought they were angels, and even said so. The evening ended abruptly.
Miles awoke thinking that a blacksmith had mistaken his head for an anvil, to see a women’s face looking down at him - a narrow face, with delicate features, set with bright, gray eyes. The hair on top of the face was light brown and cut short, with the business-like look softened by two small ear rings. She wore a skivvy and jeans which were both tight enough to prove a point.
“It’s alive!” said the face, and put something down close to him.
Miles realised that he was lying on a lumpy couch in a flat that he recognised vaguely from the night before. Someone had taken his shoes off and thrown a spare doona over him. The face had put a cup of coffee on a small table beside him. He sipped it and the hammering slowed. He took a long sip, almost burning his tongue, but he now felt that he would live. He sat up and almost yelped in anguish. His brain was about to hemorrhage! He took another sip of the coffee. Okay, maybe his brain would not hemorrhage, yet. His saviour was sitting at the nearby dining table sipping a mug of her own coffee, glancing through one of the Saturday papers. It was a small flat.
“You’re an angel,” he croaked.
“You said that last night,” she said matter-of-factly, without looking up.
“I did? Okay.. so, you’ve proved it.”
“Thank you.” Miles was rewarded with a glance in his direction and a slight smile which, even hung over as he was, he found interesting. “You also asked me to marry you.”
“I DID?” He clutched at his head and went back to croaking. “I did? That’s embarrassing. What did you answer?”
“I said you’re drunk.”
“True. Good answer. What would you say if I asked you for a date now?”
As he was unshaven, blurry-eyed, in rumpled clothes and had an enormous hangover, the question was ill-advised. But he had already drunkenly proposed he could not make matters worse.
She looked up sharply. “I’d say you’re hungover. Drink lots of fluids.”
“Is that a maybe for when I sober up?”
“No.”
He took another sip of coffee. “I’m Miles,” he croaked.
“I know. You said so last night along with a lot of other things. You also told me you recently had a fiancée, back in where ever it was you came from.”
“Corryong.” I said all that!”
“You did.” The girl flicked over another page of the newspaper.
“I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Anne – I’m a friend of Jake’s friend, Tomasina.”
“The second angel from last night. There were two of you… a lot of light shining around both of you.”
“Your eyes weren’t focusing.”
“It was a moment of spiritual insight; happens to journalists sometimes.”
“Then they sober up, I suppose.”
Despite his hangover, Miles chuckled. “But no date?”
“No date. Recovering from a bad break-up myself.”
“What’s this about dates?” said Jake, arriving suddenly in the living room dressed in an old bath robe and looking rumpled but otherwise none the worse for last night’s binge.
“I’m being naturally selected out,” said Miles. His head was splitting, and now that he thought about his stomach he dare not move suddenly for fear of events becoming messy, but he still managed to make a joke of it. “It’s Darwin in action.”
He noted that Anne half-smiled again.
“That Darwin guy is to blame for so much shit,” said Jake, disgusted. His booming voice made Miles’ head throb. “He needs a real kick up the bum.”
“Who needs a kick up the bum?” said an attractive Asian girl, with an all-Australian accent and manner, coming out of the same door from which Jake had emerged. Miles guessed she must be Tomasina. “So Miles, have you apologised to Anne for last night?” She smiled at him.
“I can’t believe I proposed.”
“You did. You slurred. What every girl wants in a proposal, for the guy to be dead drunk.“
“You proposed to Anne?” said Jake from the kitchen alcove.
“You got me drunk.”
“That’s right!” said Tomasina, rounding on Jake, “you got our visitor drunk, arsehole. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Mate, you’re so country,” said Jake. “This is the city; you don’t propose to girls.”
“Oh, you don’t?” said Tomasina folding her arms.
“You tell ‘em they’re beautiful, tell ‘em you’re working on a doctorate in philosophy and your unfinished thesis is back at your flat; and do they want to look at it?”
“Huh!” said Tomasina.
“Wait! Wait!” croaked Miles. He was thinking hard about his stomach, but he also thought he might need to remember this point for later. “What happens if the girls don’t care about philosophy?”
“Dunno about philosophy, mate, but a lot of ‘em seem to know about Darwin – they do a lotta shit in his name.”
“But is the rejection part Darwin’s fault?” asked Anne. “Maybe it’s the guy’s fault for asking the wrong way.”
Miles wondered if that last statement meant he had chance with Anne if he asked again, when he cleaned up.
“Mate, we work on local papers,” said Jake. “We listen to residents complaining all the time. It’s all someone else’s fault. I know natural selection is not us guys’ fault, so it must be Darwin’s. Before I met Tommo, natural selection was the bane of my life. But now I’m doing muffins. Anyone for muffins and OJ?”
When they had all gone, Miles looking the worse for wear, Tomasina was left alone with Anne.
“Miles seemed nice,” said Tomasina.
Anne shrugged. “He seemed okay. Better when he’s not drunk or hungover.”
“He thinks we’re angels.”
“More fool him but now that I think about it, I’m not interested.”
“Why not? You’ve had worse offers.”
“Sure, but am I really going to tell people I’m going out with a reporter on the – what was it?”
“He’s Koala Bay, so the Koala Bay Bugle.”
“Yes – tell people I’m going out with a reporter from the Koala Bay Bugle.”
“Who do you think I’m living with?”
“Jake has the gold medal and all that – Miles is just a local reporter from somewhere in the bush – Karrajong – now stuck in a corner of Sydney. My men have to do something more. I can’t take .. losers.”
“I don’t think Miles is a loser.”
Anne shrugged but did not reply.