Old Blue: The Back Story.

Today I am penning a verbal portrait

Of my slightly eccentric but lovable mate.

His exploits will all be familiar to you,

So you’ll know I’m referring, of course, to Old Blue.

Old Bluey has led quite a colourful life.

Though he’s not married now, he did once have a wife;

And the reason they parted seems obvious to me,

He just wasn’t marriage material, you see.

He’d been caught up in what he now calls ‘the great scam’,

That had got him conscripted and sent to Vietnam,

And the things that he’d seen there had shaken his mettle

And left him disturbed and unable to settle

He tried his hand shearing and driving a truck

And even prospecting – without any luck.

He’d come home in between for a few weeks or so,

Till his demons reclaimed him and off he would go.

And a wife soon grows weary, it has to be said,

Of sleeping alone in the marital bed.

And raising a daughter and keeping a home

While her husband is off chasing ghosts on his own.

They parted without too much rancour it seems,

But it left him alone with his ghost-haunted dreams,

And he drifted through life, from one job to another,

A TAB slip in one hand, a beer in the other.

It might have destroyed him, but old army mates

Stepped in to extract him from these dire straits,

They told him they’d all faced their own private hell,

And the help that they’d sought could assist him as well.

Old Blue was outraged, “No head shrinker” he said

Is going to go poking around in my head.

If that’s your advice you should bloody well quit,

This counselling lark, is a pile of old squit.”

But his mates, unrepentant, held out and held fast

They continued to plead and cajole, till at last

When he realised their nagging was not going to cease,

He agreed to see somebody, just for some peace.

He admits now his counsellor’s ‘not a bad bloke,’

Though he’s finding the sessions a bit of a joke.

(Well, that’s what he says, but if I’m guessing right

He’s too proud to admit that his friends got it right.)

For the counselling’s pulled him right back from the brink,

Of a mindless existence of drifting and drink.

He hasn’t gone walkabout for several years

And his drinking’s confined to a few social beers.

(And he’s learnt from his recent experimentation

It’s not a good option for self-medication)

So it looks like our Blue has at last settled down,

He’s bought a small property not far from town

Where he lives with his chooks and a tortoiseshell cat,

That he calls Feather Duster – but of course you knew that.