Tues 5th January 2010...

We’re driving through north Tasmania & its beautiful countryside. Around lunchtime we drive into a small town, village, no, hamlet really, called Derby.

We stop at a lovely tea shop & the homemade muffins are a delight. From nowhere this boy appears. On closer inspection he is not a boy but a man with a boy’s face. Obviously much older than he first appears, his best years now passed. He proceeds to bluntly proposition every female in sight including Janet. Janet laughs & gently rebuffs his advances, but he is persistent. Once every female has declined his less than subtle advances he seems to calm down, a look of resignation crosses his laughter lined face.

We start a conversation & we introduce ourselves. His name is Gazza Peterson, Derby’s very own paid Lothario. Apparently, it is his paid employment to proposition any & every women over the age of consent that enter Derby’s boundary. We ask what his success rate is & he answers dejectedly, “Not as good as it used to be & not as good as my mate, Christopher Parsons.” We hear both his best chat up lines & how he once ran alongside a car doing 30mph down the high street & pulled a 48 year old, one-eyed mother of eight. He seemed rather too proud of that conquest. “..1998 that was, remember it like it was yesterday.”

He sighs.

He has held this role since 1987 when he turned 18 & was voted 3 years running ‘the boy most likely to’. “Most likely to, what?” we all ask. He grins like a Cheshire cat with wind & smirks, “..you know, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.” Oh dear we seem to have walked onto the set of Carry On Lothario.

We slowly get him off his favourite subject & onto work & football. Interestingly he worked for the now defunct tin mine as a draughtsman & he tells us that his town, Derby changed their name 7 years ago, from Derby Town to Accrington Stanley as they did not want to be associated with the team with the same name in England.

Gazza’s aftershave is beginning to make us feel light headed so just as his best mates Mal Smiff & Christopher Parsons turn up, we take the opportunity to leave & bid him farewell & wish him a quick conquest to cheer him up.

Funny old world...

love & twilight zone hugs,

Jeff & Janet