Brrr. It’s cold. Ice cold. Just the way I like it. Never have I known it to be this cold.

I would
not be surprised at all to see a mammoth…gallop across the horizon.

No. Two ants. Snap-frozen within the ice. One’s holding aloft a bread crumb. Or is it an egg?
Difficult to perceive… poor little pricks. Hey, there’s another two caught in the act. Like Mum
and Dad… Life goes on.

It’s stopped. Dead on Twelve. Noon. On a day like this. Silence. No moving forward. No time.
For the moment. No tick-tock. A continuous and silent avalanche. No sun. Perhaps it’s
midnight… and the North Pole has slipped south. Or vice versa…

Ah well. All progress is an illusion anyway. Besides, if time has stopped, there is more of the
present to dwell upon the past. That pleases me. The past is something to which I always
look forward. So cheer up.

To imagine that I could’ve retired to a rich temperate country estate. Pastures of thick and
succulent grass.. green all the year around. Avenues of elegant poplars. Merinos the size of
stud bulls. Caddilac. Grannaries bursting at the buttocks with Lucerne and newly sliced hay.
A hill of bauxite. Dormer windows… the milk and honey odours at dawn of young maids….
Perfumes of Piccadilly aftershave, cider, and clean sheets.

Not for me.

They’re all dead. The whole miserable pack of them. They retired to the country and died of
the city. Tumours. Cheer up, you morbid prick.

Come to think of it, it’s been several years since I’ve had a visitor…. Mort was the last one I
remember.

Mind if I join you?

Perhaps you’d welcome a tomato? No? A radish? Odourless onion? Broad bens? Caustic
Soda? All home grown. You’d prefer a stick of celery? You would. What? Yes, you heard
correctly. It’s not a celery district. Too hot. Too dry. Too wet. Too cold. Cactus yes, celery no.
The sirocco, you know. Flattens the pricks.

Difficult bastard.

It’s not often I have the privilege of a guest.

Excuse the lack of etiquette, but what’s your name? Mort. I’m Monk. Monk O’Neill.
Delighted to make your acquaintance. Welcome to the oasis.

What brought you here? The view? Magnificent is it not?

It’s just on dusk, Mort. Little point in setting off now. Replenished as you are. Stay the night.
Join me in a round of canasta, euchre, Russian roulette, you prick. Sorry, I didn’t mean that.
Listen, stretch out under the stars. Sleep is what you need son. I’ll fetch you a blanket. You’ll
be as warm as a woman. I did just that... brought out a thick old Onkaparinga… and laid it
gently over his slumberous limbs. I walked out next morning and found him still asleep.
Dead. A corpse. Snap frost during the night. Just like this one. Brrrr.

There was something I had to remember today. I remembered yesterday.

Mmmmmmm. Here we are. Of course… alter my will.

The last will and testament of Monk O’Neill. I, Monk O’Neill, being crisp of wit and hale of
health, do hereby bequeath all my lands and property, goods and chattels, to the Aboriginal
peoples of Australia. In the advent of extinction of the Aboriginal at the time of my decease,
I would then bequeath my estate to the populous Oriental nations of the north… I am very
favourably disposed towards the Chinamen. On no account must my domain fall into the
clutches of the predatory and upstart albino. I believe that the tides of history will swamp
and wash aside this small pink tide of mistletoe men, like insects. Change insects to dead
leaves. As a coda and codicil I would like to add that I deeply regret the feeling of this
hillock’s one tall tree, and to redress this wrong, I daily nurture and fertilise with my own
nitrogenous waste a feeble but promising sapling in the hope that this scion will one day
attain the grandeur of its pristine sire. It is my sincere and daily deathbed wish that this tree
be nourished to adulthood by those that follow. Signed, Monk O’Neill, on this the…what’s
the date?

It’s my birthday. Precise to the night. This calls for a wake.

Hello, ants. Enjoying the thaw? Gallop, gallop.. all muscle and instinct. Come join me at the
table, friends… Permit me to toss you a crumb or two.

And don’t worry. I myself have taken the liberty of excavating my grave… over there… on
the slope… looking east. The traditional six feet with smooth walls of baked red clay and an
inner-spring of silk on the floor. Yes. I shall crawl, on my last legs, to its edge, cast a fleeting
but longing look over the pastures then tumble in… fall onto the mattress, not quite dead… I
shall lay there a while, breathing my last, listening to the corpuscles choke, ruminate on life
and gaze up at the lowering sky, for it shall be evening, and discern that lurid neon… the
Southern Cross, laugh a little… blaspheme the icon of it all… and fee the clay cave in… croak.

Well, where to celebrate? I could do with a snack. Al fresco I think. The best of everything. I
shall not stint on the trough tonight.

And one last drink.

Ice cold. Just the way I like it.