The Big Bad Boof...

Let me tell you the story of The Big Bad Boof...

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Boof. He was born on either the sixteenth or the twentieth of February in Nineteen-Forty-Four. By all accounts he was a most striking baby with a mass of thick Blood-nut red curly hair- and at the age of two he won a Most Beautiful Baby contest.

If only the story had ended here.

Little Boof got his name when he joined the Boy Scouts and received a hand-me-down uniform from another ginger-headed boy- known only as Boof. What happened to the first Boof is less clear- though I have it on good authority what the Little Boof I grew to know and hate got up to in his younger days.

When he was five or six he shot his Sister(my Mother) in the leg with a B-B gun. He stabbed her goldfish with forks. He lynched her pet kittens on the clothesline and laughed as she tried to save them. Later, when he was about sixteen and already an alchoholic, he shot a lady in the face with a shot-gun and almost killed her. When he was in his early twenties there were rumours of him being found in a compromising situation with a German Shephard. There were accusations against him of incestual acts with his then eight-year-old Sister (my Aunt) from when he was only fifteen to when he went to War. To cut it short- he was Filth.

The Vietnam War saw Boof volunteer TWICE for the privilege of legalised murder. How he used to love to regale us- as children- with his stories of screaming babies and of raping women as their villages' burned. He worked sporadically, after the war, as a Painter and Docker at the wharf-yard; often dangerous work that paid well enough to spend most of his days off drinking it all away. By now he was a chronic alcoholic- his stomach swelled and distended with the tell-tale signs of cirrohsis of the liver. It suited him so well.

My own memories of Uncle Boof stem back to when I was three or four. He was still living at my Grandmother's house on the Hill over-looking the Bogey Hole. The hallway leading to his bedroom is long-and my cousin Gnome and I are outside his door- peeking in every now and then to see if he has fallen asleep on his piss-stained mattress while reading his war novel that's folded in upon itself. We want to raid the floor beside him for the loose change that's fallen out of his drunken pockets...

He's still awake. We start calling out to him "Boofie's a Poofie" before running away down the long corrider. Suddenly He's after us; drunken and raging. There were two flights of stairs; we are half-way up when he catches us by the legs- dragging us back down with him. He bites Gnome on the neck, though she is only about five, and me on the leg- almost drawing blood- before letting us go. A few years later- in the exact same spot-he drunkenly pulls a gun on Gnome when she was bravely giving him shit for being the arsehole that he was, and still is. She was only about eleven then. And No. She wasn't shot- but I think that was more good luck than anything else.

All of this explains the recurring dream I had until I was about fifteen years old- it's like a scene from The Company Of Wolves where she is running through her Grandmother's house being pursued by the wolf. He is big and black and I am running blindly up the hallways and through a maze of stairs. My heart is bursting out of my chest as I risk sneaking a peak behind me as I am still running- running as fast as I can-fear caught in my throat like a frozen scream.

Now- I haven't had this dream for many years- but it's finally all made sense why I had this dream in the first place. I told a few of my friend's about it recently- I had CC in stitches of alternate horror and mirth, screaming out to me "We love Boof!" to my "No!! We hate Boof!"'s- while Macca sagely listened on and sporadically offered his own nuggets of Family Gold. And then we went on drinking...

Cut to the Friday night before last...

I am sitting at the pub with Twinkle Toes, Fudge Boy and Miss Fancy-Pants. It's Macca's fiftieth birthday bash tommorrow night and we're all starting just that little bit too early as usual. We all throw two bucks into a betting syndicate- and when it's finally my turn I look up at the screen to make my selections.

Race Six. Richmond Greyhounds. Number Two.

Boof The Wolf.

I point out the name of the dog to Macca- who puts twenty on the nose to win. A bloke at a nearby table overhears us talking and throws him into his trifecta at the last moment.

And all of us were winners... except for my Uncle Boof, of course. One time my eldest Sister and I gave him a glass of tick poison to drink- we were hoping he might die- but even though he drank it he suffered no ill effects. Sadly.

Unfortunately- that's just another true story that will have to wait for another day....