Bob's Your Uncle or a Modern Adult Fairy Tale
Copyright© 2013 by mthommotoo
Prologue
You may take notes and there will be a written exam at the end of class.
1999
"Yeah, but it's still a good idea to go to school and get an education."
"But they'll all laugh at me in school, Unca Bob."
"They don't know you. When they get to know you, they won't laugh any more." That he's damned sure of! "You know how all the tourists stare at us when we go into town. It's the same thing, only foreign adults are too embarrassed to laugh so they stare instead. Now put on your panties and we'll go." Bob's only afraid that she will kill anyone who laughs at her, "Remember what I said, no hitting unless they've got a weapon on you, and definitely no killing."
The small white, half covered motor cruiser, made its putt-putt bee-line to the long dried out timber wharf. The practice had been to replace the wharf after every cyclone, if there was anything to replace remaining that is. However, about ten years ago the local town council combined with the local indigenous council, which is nigh on the same thing, decided not to replace it unless the State paid for it, as it is almost exclusively for tourist use, which is a State Government initiative. There is absolutely no income made locally in tourism. The local's opinion is almost as one, that the last tourist they saw will be the most welcome. The tourist's money all goes to the foreign tourist companies, who won't let their trusting passengers buy from anyone locally, and the only local manufactured curios the tourists might be interested in, are exotically shaped bongs.
For the last ten years, even the strongest blow hasn't affected the wharf, even without any maintenance. Bob Fischer is the only non-tourist to ever use it on any regular basis, and it is he, and his five year old niece Tilly, who are on the way into town from Garrigeld Island.
Garrigeld Island is about twenty nautical miles off the coast, roughly thirty seven kilometres, surrounded by waters so deep that the thing that makes this area so attractive for tourists, coral, won't grow there. He hasn't told anyone else, that the thing which makes this area least attractive, for the ten months of the year not in the wet season anyway, the stingers, follow the currents away distant from the island to come in right along the coast near Bender Bay, right where the school and township is. The island receives none of the lethal little things at all.
Bender Bay is not officially, as such, a gazetted town under State or Federal government auspices so much as a locality. A fine distinction, but it keeps government authorities away from bothering them.
Garrigeld Island itself, above water, is about fifteen hectares in size, where the sole beach is, has about a hundred metres of island bedrock lightly covered with pure white coral sand of talc consistency, mainly underwater, facing out to sea. It is too shallow, for the main part, for deeper draught ships to approach. For the remainder facing the coast and north and south, except for a very short steep slope, it is about another kilometre below surface level and almost vertically straight down.
Tilly was taught to swim by her Uncle Bob before she was able to crawl and had never been stung. An occasional deep sea shark or sea snake come near but they have their own strategies in place to defend against them. Even Bob was surprised when two year old Tilly dragged a medium sized white tipped reef shark up the beach for her Uncle to skin and cook for dinner.
Sea snakes tend to not to attack something which hasn't attacked them and was larger than they. Actually, initially young Tilly wasn't larger than most of them, but she most certainly was more vicious than they were, and Tilly has made the point to the cook, that she does not like the taste of snake. Just occasionally, Bob will cook one just for himself as his own little luxury.
Even Bob won't touch the Moray eel though, not without a very long pig sticker but they're inedible anyway so they thrive around the island. That is unless Tilly gets a bee in her bonnet and euthanises the local population. She uses the remains to bait her Unca Bob's lobster pots, his only form of income to the knowledge of the Department of Taxation.
The only clothing that they both wear when around the island, is a sheath-knife draped down the back of their neck, and that only when they go swimming. These are stored by tying to a coconut palm near the place where it is best, or really, most convenient, to enter the water.
Getting clothing of any type on her to go into town, for any reason, is tantamount to declaring war. Bob only agreed to the dress and panties because Helen sewed them him/herself, tomorrow it's going to be shorts and a tee-shirt no matter what Helen thinks is proper raiment for a young lady, then he wouldn't get the unanswerable question, to Bob anyway, "Why's I gotta wear two bits of clothes, Unca Bob?" Because ya gotta, doesn't cut it with Tilly or Bob, and that it's a social nicety and norm, means nothing to someone who has to talk to maybe four people a week at most, none of whom wear clothing, as on the island itself they don't use such social niceties at all of any kind. Helen uses his/her time on the island to escape from the rat-race (?) of Bender Bay, population-eighty three-ish - while Rachael Hartley, the town's sole school teacher, uses her time away from the school having her stress levels lowered, even if that is in the middle of the kitchen floor or in the middle of the beach or half way down the tilting floor/ramp or, well, that was last Friday after she finished work while Tilly tried to make a pot of tea for Bob, negotiating around them, with Bob being sort of preoccupied at the time. The angel makes a mean cuppa.
Bob had to repeatedly warn Tilly, not to go swimming in Bender Bay. As much as the water is her natural habitat, so it is the stingers, the Irukandji jellyfish's, natural habitat, and they were there first.
Here is where the initial problem struck. Tilly has only been to the mainland maybe ten times since she was born, and as they walked towards the old rusted tin lean-to shed that the State Government had designated as a school, Tilly was holding her Uncle Bob's hand and gawking around as if she was in the big city, "Where do ya wan' me ta go afta school Unca Bob? Where's Unca Helen's place Unca Bob? Is ya takin' the time to scratch Rachy's itch while you's 'ere Unca Bob? Do ya think..." The reason she so rarely comes into Bender is because she hates crowds and all those smelly cars where there is, on the average usually about five, though only two usually working at any one time.
This is an author's note, so go with the flow because he's not very bright. Young Tilly's speech style is not because she's stupid, or is half black, or even because she's only very young, as those are preconceived biases without any foundation in fact. Her manner of speech syncopation is because that is exactly how Bob Fischer speaks, to every nuance, and shortened verb and noun and omitted syllable. An early life without any education had tattooed into his speech patterns the gutter talk of his youth, and he himself had no idea until he realised that Tilly spoke that way in perfect mimicry.
For an example in modern 'high' literature, consider Willy Garvin in Peter O'Donnell's, Modesty Blaise, and he can write; don't laugh, O'Donnell is PAID to write, albeit, these days mainly comics, are you? To Fischer's intelligent mind, an education will teach Tilly the local manner of speaking like everyone else, and henceforth I'll try to place such verbal diarrhoea into, English, and how she is spoke. Isn't it amazing how, with slight dialectic differentials in written English, US American's speak the same as the English, as do South African's and Australian's. But not Texan's which is odd; but as they say, they are superior to everyone else. Like the English Royal family even though I can't understand a thing Phil the Greek says. Sorry for this synaptic blink. We go onward, ever onward.