WHO ALL?

Vowed to start 2013 in dulcet fashion with at least one entry in the 'Piece of Work' canon.

I don't feel much like writing but needs must.

Now and then when discussing the theft, I'd quote some opinion or observation that I'd heard from one of the Corfu crowd ... usually referred to as 'everyone', as in "Everyone keeps asking me 'What news of the theft?', which they did each time my brother came over and especially when Anna was over and 'everyone' thought the thieves might spot her as a good way of returning the jewels via her rather than suffer the excruciating shame and excrement of handing them back direct to me. (Didn't happen; excrement still dripping off them)

In knee-jerk panic, shock and shame, they'd go "Who all?", as if it was inconceivable that anyone else could be interested.

I got so fed-up with reeling off the different communities I kept regularly updated, I came up with a list that I thought might be easy to remember.

GOD
GROG
GRUB
GARDEN
GAB
GIRLS
GUITAR

In other words, pillars of the community I'd meet at

Apres Church
Drinkies
Dinners chez Sans Lucre
Garden visits
Gossiping chatting
Chats about my girls
Guitar strummeries.

SYNONYM ALTERNATIVES FOR THEFT: to my disgust, a few people couldnt even hear the story of the double theft without shuffling nervously and looking away at the use of 'thieving'. Fucking wimps.

So I'd have a list ready to shove at them, "Go ahead, choose your preferred description, but remember, it can't be 'borrow' or 'relocate', it has to have the same weight of taking behind the owner's back, transporting on the sly, and then handing it over also on the sly with no intention of letting slip that you'd done the deed.

Here're some suggestions, choose but make sure it stinks the same.

"Appropriation, cheating, filch, fleece, grab, heist, hustle, job [or Piece of Work], larceny, lift, loot, pilferage, pinch, purloin, rob, score, snatch, **steal**, swiping, thievery, thieving"

Chitter-chattering today at the usual debonair new year drinksies, suddenly I felt it, the same emptying blow to the plexus.

I'd been watching Thank you for Smoking, marvelous witty movie, then i noticed my jewel box on the dresser. Didnt think it was mine, of coure, so i ignored it, didnt dare look inside ... in case.

It was and my emotions were 'mixed' ... rage, murderosity, the lot.

Up I trod the stairs to my bro's study where both thieves were there ... oh, where was my Bushranger?

Now, here's the deal. As I went up the stairs I felt more scared than violently angry. Scared of what might come out in my anger? Say something I might regret?

These were people I trusted and counted on ... had spent my life caving in and kow-towing to.

What was I going to say?

I entered the room and looked left and straight ahead at the people who'd had the cheapness to perpetrate this casual offnce ... and all moral authority drained from them. It was a physical feeling as wrenching as a violent bowel movement. Utterly unforeseen and gut-wrenching. I probably lost a bit of balance, certainly my voice must have lost some resonance of indignation.

I saw their faces as they realised they'd been totally busted, the cake-mouth guilt and lack of words, and I felt the utter disgust and nothingness of looking at nobodies.

In one fell swoop, I was no longer interested in a single thing they were selling.

This stayed with me, a distance that could not be crossed because I wasn't going to set one foot in the slime and excrement of their world.

Nothing ever made me re-think or revise my opinion, not the gyaku gire shouts of cornered protestations, not their refusals to return the girls' property or refusals to explain ... empty. In an instant. Not a single damn'd thing more on offer to the world you and I live in.

Standing there today exchanging the usual waffle banter, I remembered the thud and drain ... a space craft loosing its capsule ... dump of a turd.