Booboo's Barbecue

I have white line fever and wish that someone else would volunteer to take the wheel for a while, but no – they’re all too busy playing Hallucination I Spy, also known as the Timothy Leary Road Trip (pun intended).

“I spy, with my third eye,” shrieks Leila from the suicide seat, “something beginning with E.O!”

“A compound noun, eh?” smirks Tom. “Trust you to be seeing complications everywhere.”

“Compound noun doesn’t start with E.O,” snaps George. “Electric Organ? Elegant Ostrich? Embarrassing Opal?”

“What about Exhausted Octopus?” I offer.

“No! It’sEvil Overlord," shrieks Leila. “Yay, I win! My go again!”

My head is pounding mercilessly, and I pull over, parking the car crookedly on the main street of whichever town this is.

“I spy with my third eye something being with WTF. Why are we stopping, Ella?” demands Tom.

“Because I am tired, headachy, hungry. I’ve been driving for six hours, listening to you shriek and argue over each other’s pretend hallucinations, and I need a break. I’m getting something to eat.”

“But we’ll be at Booboo’s BBQ in a few hours,” shrieks Leila. “Brown Baked Quorn! Bloody Bony Quail! Beef & Beetroot Quiche!”

I slam the car door and scan the lonely street. There’s the obligatory Chinese restaurant called the Jade Moon Palace, but it doesn’t look as though it has served a meal since the late Nineteen Seventies.

“I spy with my third eye something beginning with MSG,” says George.

“Mangy Squirrel Gumbo? My Stomach’s Grumpy? Might Sustain Gastro?”

“Yeah, yeah. Monosodium Glutamate aside, the Jade Moon Palace is closed and the KFC across the road is open. That’ll have to do,” I say. I am sick of these people and no longer want to attend Booboo’s bloody BBQ, but after  having already driven hundreds of kilometres, there is no way I am going back now. I turn my back on Leila, Tom and George and step onto the road.

“Kittens Fight Cuteness! Kill Fat Camels! Kissing Fixes Cancer!” shrieks Leila. I ignore her. It is often a good policy.

Booboo, real name Charlotte, used to share a house with us when we were struggling university students. The house, a gloriously shabby Federation cottage with memorable leadlight windows, no longer exists. It was demolished three years ago to make way for a MacMansion. This is happening more and more in my city – heritage homes are razed and monstrosities erected. It saddens me, because I like old things. I would like all old things to be preserved forever.

I purchase my food quickly. I sit on one of their uncomfortable chairs, and I eat quickly, to get it over with.



I haven’t seen Booboo for five years. I have barely seen Leila, Tom or George in that time, either. We used to be the best of friends in the old days, but these days, Leila can’t stop shrieking, Tom thinks it’s all about him and George is a sulky bastard. I am the only one who hasn’t changed. I am still in the driver’s seat, for example. Once I’ve eaten my chicken, or my KFC, rather, for it surely isn’t chicken, I’ll get back in that bloody seat; I shall keep driving, with my annoying old friends, all the way up the coast to Booboo’s celebratory BBQ. I’m grumpy, but resigned. Honestly, I have never known anybody as self-congratulatory as Booboo. Her new BBQ restaurant, in the coastal hippie town to which she relocated after failing to complete her university degree, has just won some stars, or some award or something. She has therefore invited everybody she has ever met to a BBQ feast without caring that some of us have to drive all the way from Sydney. Told us to bring towels and bathers as well, for a post-BBQ moonlight swim. She knows that I am scared of water, but she doesn’t care.

“What took you so long?” demands Tom as I swing back into the driver’s seat. “Seriously, Ella. We wanna get to Booboo’s before midnight.”

“You want to drive, then?” I challenge him. “Because frankly, I’m over it.” The greasy poultry I have just consumed is jumping on the trampoline of my queasy belly and I would like to sleep on the backseat next to George, who used to be a tender-hearted individual before the last few years changed him to a sulky bastard.

“What – you relinquishing control, Ella? Unbelievable,” says Tom. “Okay then. Pass over your keys and don’t complain about my driving, okay?”

I climb silently into the back of the car. Tom turns the keys in the ignition and we surge out onto the road heading north. A pale children’s moon sits full as an egg in the afternoon sky and I turn my face to watch the landscape progress past me on the movie screen of the window. Universal highway scenery, with scrubby trees and knobbly rocks and road kill, and that lovely moon risen early. On the afternoon I found out that my father had died, there had been a similar moon, and while I howled at it in my grief, Booboo held me, stroked my hair and said nothing, letting me get my grief out as loudly as I needed. I swill from my bottle of water and blink back a tear. Actually, it will be nice to see Booboo again.