The Book of Bloke (7 page)

The Veteran is a hardy and resilient Bloke found most commonly in suburban and regional areas, generally staying out of the city because it’s too loud. Veterans are notable due to the wealth of life experience and wisdom they possess, which they employ mostly for the purpose of complaining at great length and volume about all those younger than themselves. Most varieties of Veteran are intensely angry most of the time, although – fortunately, for the sake of public order – their expressions of anger are limited mainly to letter-writing and other forms of low-level civil protest. The Veteran has much in common with the Bogan in that he tends to be driven by resentment, but whereas the Bogan’s resentment springs from being labelled a Bogan, the Veteran mainly resents the number of computers there are nowadays. As such, Veterans tend to loathe Geeks; then again, most Veterans can find a reason to loathe pretty much anyone. Certainly, they have no great love for Bogans, even if they used to be one – Bogans who drive their cars too fast and play their music too loud are particular bêtes noir of the Veteran. Tunesters are also enemies due to their love of loud music, and Leftites and Snags are regarded with almost limitless loathing and also a good deal of psychosexual terror. For similar reasons, Artists are normally unwelcome in Veteran homes, unless their art is painting portraits of angry old men. However, there is no doubt that, among the ranks of Blokes, Veterans reserve a special level of intense, bestial hatred for Fauxkes. It is when confronted with a Fauxke – especially a Wanksta or Drainpipe – that a Veteran is likely to get most vocal, and, in extreme cases, violent. There are extensive records of vicious Veteran attacks on Fauxkes, including instances of young Fauxkes being tripped with walking sticks and slapped with felt hats. Like a bee that gives up its sting, a Veteran who launches such an attack has most likely doomed himself, however, as the excitement frequently brings on cardiac arrest, and the vast majority of Veterans who attack Fauxkes have ended up either dead or in need of a nice cup of tea.

The Bloke’s Bloke is the only Bloke variety who tends to get the Veteran’s approval, mainly because most Veterans used to be Bloke’s Blokes, or at least have managed to convince themselves they were. Athletes and Farmers are especially lionised within Veteran society as the apotheosis of what a true Bloke should be, and Veterans will use their example frequently to berate their own offspring to the point where they stop visiting, whereupon the Veteran will start complaining to everyone he meets about how his children won’t visit him. Although the Veteran is a big fan of the Bloke’s Bloke, this does not mean the Bloke’s Bloke is immune to his wrath, and an alpha Veteran will still let loose upon a Bloke’s Bloke if the opportunity arises, particularly if he is mowing his lawn the wrong way.

Veterans also have a lot in common with Ranters, but will usually deny this. It is suspected that most Veterans actually were Ranters at one point, although attempts to verify this have proven unsuccessful as the Veterans under observation kept swiping their newspapers at anyone who got too close.

In fact, the whole issue of the origin of Veterans is a vexed one. Some maintain Veterans are merely the mature stage of the life cycle of other varieties of Bloke, while others insist that Veterans arose spontaneously, fully-formed, from hot springs many years ago, the chemicals in the springs having reacted powerfully with naturally occurring corduroy fibres. This theory was supported by a study several years ago in which laboratory mice, when exposed to Veteran DNA, began to move noticeably slower and put on a hat before driving.

The habits of the Veteran tend to be sedentary and largely predictable, with much of their time spent at home, alone. Although some Veterans do have female partners, many do not, either because their wives got fed up with the moaning, or, according to theories advanced by some Blokeologists and neighbourhood children, because their corpses are stuffed in a barrel under the house. Those Veterans who do have wives tend to spend a lot of time not talking to them. While at home, the Veteran occupies himself by taking notes on offensive TV shows and writing letters, particularly if the Veteran is a Correspondent (
see below
). The Veteran’s main diet is tea and biscuits, although when let loose he has the capacity to consume large amounts of alcohol before being carried home. He also likes steak, but can’t eat it because of his teeth. The Veteran also enjoys an obscure activity known as ‘gardening’. This is done in the garden, and, according to the most reliable field observations, involves the Veteran shuffling slowly around his yard, making a constant low growling noise and occasionally poking the ground a bit. This gardening, or ‘pottering’, has been the subject of much study and debate over the years, but as yet nobody has determined the exact purpose of it. The prevailing wisdom at the time of writing is that it is some form of religious ritual – it is thought that the Veteran god is appreciative of his poking of the ground, and will reward a diligent poker with healthy azaleas.

When outside his natural habitat, the Veteran generally becomes even more irritable, and it is on these occasions that he can pose a threat to people’s physical safety and/or patience. The main social activities of the Veteran are walking slowly in front of others, muttering to themselves, telling incomprehensible stories to strangers, and drinking half-price coffee from McDonald’s. They also sometimes enjoy going into supermarkets and confusing the checkout operators by purchasing surprising items, like a washing basket and a jar of cumin, or a single small tin of cat food that they pay for with a cheque.

Veterans have been a constant presence throughout history, and have contributed almost nothing, although there are records of Veterans and their ancestors stamping their own distinctive mark on the world: for example, the Elderly Crusade of 1136, when thousands of proto-Veterans banded together and wrote to the Saracens to ask why ‘the young people today don’t know proper English’. Such collective action is rare in the Veteran of today, who doesn’t have time for such nonsense, what with the azaleas and all.

Veterans came to Australia in 1788, in a ship sailing slowly in front of the First Fleet and swerving whenever the fleet tried to overtake. Since then, many notable Veterans have helped define the spirit of Australian Blokehood, such as Billy Hughes, the first Veteran Prime Minister, who attempted to introduce conscription because the young people were getting too soft and thought they could get away with murder. Hughes, the Veteran’s Veteran, proved just how committed he was to his Veteranhood by staying on in parliament even after losing the prime ministership, and continuing his baffling interjections and rambling, directionless anecdotes in the House of Representatives until his retirement, at what historians estimate was the age of 248. His legacy has been carried on by many other political Veterans, including Wilson Tuckey, Bob Katter, and Christopher Pyne, the latter making history by being verified as Australia’s youngest living Veteran. Veterans have also stood out in other fields such as sport: Donald Bradman was a famous cricketing Veteran who spent most of his life telling younger players they were doing it wrong – although one school of thought claims Bradman was not a genuine Veteran as he actually was as good as he thought he was. Bradman’s love of tea and bad music would seem to qualify him, however. Another well-known sporting Veteran is Greg Norman, who is a fine example of the Denialist Veteran, or
Delusionarus Veterani
– a Veteran who refuses to accept he is a Veteran. Also there is Kevin Sheedy, who is the most dangerous kind of Veteran – a Veteran who thinks he’s funny.

In the world of entertainment, Veterans have made a major and occasionally interesting contribution. Legendary Veteran actors such as Bill Hunter and Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell spent many years making Australian movies seem slightly better than they actually were, and, on television, Logie-winning Veteran Ray Meagher has been delighting audiences for decades, not even letting his death in 1961 prevent him from advancing his craft. In the world of music, the most famous Veteran is John Farnham, who only became a Veteran recently, but wisely has been preparing for it for over forty years by only making music that old people like. Likewise, the entire Australian country music industry is a Veteran.

There is not a massive amount of variation within the Veteran population, and most of the behaviours which define the different breeds of Veteran can also be found in other breeds from time to time. Nevertheless, the strength of a Veteran’s commitment to one area of endeavour will clearly mark him as a particular strain. These include:

The
Road Warrior
. This Veteran has a love of travel and movement, and will spend more time than other Veterans exploring the highways and byways of this great country. The Road Warrior’s natural habitat is the Volvo, and he is recognisable by his unattractive hat and fixed, straight-ahead stare. When behind the wheel, the Road Warrior enters a trance-like state, similar to hibernation, in which his heart rate will slow, his breathing will become shallow, and he will become completely oblivious to everything around him. It is thought that this state of ‘living death’ is the reason for what appears to be an evolutionary hiccup in the Road Warrior’s basic make-up – the inability to correctly recognise numbers. Although the Road Warrior has the ability to read speed-limit signs, an anomaly in the connection between optic nerve and brain causes him, without fail, to subtract 40km from every one. This phenomenon has been exhaustively studied under controlled conditions and appears to be indisputable, but it is uncertain exactly why it occurs. One theory is that primitive Veterans’ main predator was an animal with a strong sense of guilt, meaning it would avoid preying on the slowest members of the herd for fear of feeling it was being a bully. Whatever the truth is, it is a fact that Road Warriors will always drive 40km/hr slower than they need to. If the speed limit is 40km/hr or less, the Road Warrior will stop altogether and sit in his car muttering to himself until he falls asleep and can be safely pushed out of the way.

The Road Warrior is a generally harmless Veteran, except for the odd occasion when an impatient driver will try to overtake him, and the enraged Road Warrior will suddenly veer sideways in an attempt to defend his territory.

A less mobile, but nevertheless extremely active Veteran is the
Correspondent
, or Mailhawk. This Veteran is notable for his uncanny ability to sniff out and accurately identify any and all social problems besetting the country, and to correctly recognise that they all have the same solution: letters.

The Correspondent’s letter-writing ability is unparalleled among the known Bloke kingdom. Some Correspondents have been timed at a speed of thirty letters per hour over short distances, and there are records of Correspondents writing up to three thousand letters in a single month. What makes this prolificacy even more remarkable is that Correspondents, like all Veterans, eschew computers due to their associations with the occult, and write exclusively with paper and ink. Some Correspondents have been known to use typewriters, but these are becoming less common nowadays.

Most of the Correspondent’s output is directed towards newspapers, and can cover a wide range of subject matter, from young men’s visible underpants, to the lack of decent, wholesome shows like
The Good Life
on our TV screens, to the Americanization of the language, to young women’s visible underpants. Homosexuals are frequently referenced, with Correspondent opinion divided as to whether they are irredeemably sinful perverts, or socially destructive radical communists. Women are also a popular topic due to their habits of dressing wrongly, having too much sex, complaining too much, not being ‘enough like women back in my day’, being unable to take a compliment, not smiling enough, refusing to accept that they’re different from men, and carrying around an excessive amount of bottled water. Most Correspondents’ letters will conclude with a polite request for someone to inform the Correspondent as to where it will all end, or a demand that everybody be forced to join the army. In their mellower moments, the Correspondent will write letters that whimsically recall their youth or the brand of hair cream people used on their street in 1937, or else they will compose limericks about current events. This is the point at which most public health experts recommend euthanasia.

When not writing to newspapers, Correspondents like to write to government departments to deny they owe, or to demand more, money; to major corporations complaining about the quality of their product in the hope of getting something for free; and to their relatives to pass judgment on their lifestyles and tell long, dull stories about the Correspondent’s day-to-day life that won’t end until the writing becomes illegible.

Correspondents’ physical appearance is the subject of much conjecture, as it can’t be ascertained with absolute certainty that a Veteran is a Correspondent without observing his domestic habits and stationery drawer.

A more publicly visible Veteran is the
Anzac and Bitters
, a gnarled and bad-tempered Bloke whose natural habitat is the pub, and whose diet consists entirely of alcohol and cigarettes. This species is known for its short fuse and pungent odour: a mixture of tobacco, mothballs, and regret.

The regret stems from the fact that the Anzac and Bitters is a Veteran in two ways: both in the scientific, taxonomical sense that we use in this book; and in the sense that he has served in his country’s military, or at the very least has seen a lot of war movies. Now that his military service (or the military service of some Blokes he knows) is over, the Anzac and Bitters regrets ever serving, since his country has all gone to hell anyway. Many people who live in Anzac-and-Bitters-infested regions are quite familiar with the plaintive cry of the breed, ringing out clear across the suburbs: ‘What the bloody hell were we fighting for?’ Some consider this a beautiful, almost musical accompaniment to daily life in Australia, although God knows who they are.