You Know Where You Pick Up A Barracouta?

Grimy, tanned and wearing a FUBU wind jacket. Very low St Kilda.

"I'm 44 and haven't worked for over three years. I used to work at Fawkner Cemetery. I was a landscape gardener."

"Yeah, I dug graves. What do YOU reckon?"

He didn't look 44.

"I got a redundancy. You know what a redundancy is? Now I go fishing. What else is there to do?"

The two fish in his bucket were drastically undersized. He said he was going to eat one and the other, he would give to his mother.

"I've got no friends."

I thought he was talking about bait and he wanted bread. "You've got no bread? I've got some. Want some pipis?"

"I've got no friends."

Instead he was setting the bait. "But you have family," I said. "What about your sister, your mother?"

"My sister? She's gone years ago. And you know what my mother says? What she said to me this morning? Why don't you go fishing? And where do you pick up a barracouta?"

Back to fishing talk. I've heard him give the tip already five times. His look was stern as if I'm the bad son."No, where do you pick them up?"

"The GILLS..... The GILLS. You pick up barracoutas by the GILLS. Anywhere else is too dangerous."

A Poem By Spike Milligan

Welcome Home
by Spike Milligan

Unaware of my crime
they stood me in the dock.

I was sentenced to life....
without her.

Strange trial.
No Judge.
No Jury.

I wonder who my visitors will be.


From Spike's 1979 collection, Open Heart University.