Return to a Sexy Island [antikvár]

vaijie^ f MY next-door neighbour was going to hit me. He was actually going to punch me in the face. This wasn't the Australian Dream, not a sober Australian dream anyway. Owning your own home—now that's the Aussie dream and I'd already done that. I had bought into the whole suburban ideal, complete with lawnmower, cream-coloured picket fence, leaf-blowing machine, the lot. My garage was filled with household items that had once been obscure but were now apparently essential: weed killer, lawn fertiliser, Z-shaped lawn-edge cutting thingies, tins of paint and even secateurs. I didn't even know what secateurs were but I still knew that I had to have them. I still don't know how to spell the damn things (I had to spellcheck these ones). Once I was bending over the driveway trimming my beloved, hand-reared indigenous plants when the neighbour said, "That's a nice pair of secateurs you've got there." I thought I had a hole in my shorts. In truth, I often did have a hole in my shorts but that only added to my newfound Australian masculinity. Weekends were spent oiling decks, painting window frames, assembling bookcases, landscaping gardens and adjusting garage roller doors (usually by smacking them with a hammer and shouting, "Open, you little bastards."). I even