snowdropping

“When it rains it pours but when the sun shines on winter snowfields you can see your reflection multiplied in each microscopic crystal.”

So said a senior member of my Special Operations Group.

We were conducting surveillance while playing marbles on the nature strip at the intersection of Hoddle and Johnston St. When that senior member of my team made the comment stated above we were surprised by its sophistication, although playing marbles has never been a simple task. The Hoddle St. bus halted at its stop. There, the woman we had been surveilling for the last month. Black hair, firm breasts, stately hips and an equine face provoking wild speculation among us as to which clothesline in Collingwood her underwear would dripdry from that night.

We followed the woman at a discreet distance, trying not to fall over one another’s feet. When she stopped outside 83 Hotham St. we saw an outline of her body through her transparent cotton dress. Pleased as we were to see her curves and pointy bits we did not detect the presence of a white bustier circumnavigating her midriff. A bad sign; a very bad sign. The woman threw her head back and laughed. We might have been motherless louts in a motherless world but that night we would mount a successful snowdropping operation and steal her white bustier as it dripdried overnight.

We went home to our commission flat on the 13th floor in Wellington St. It was late, approximately 10.30 pm. My father, an unfortunate alcoholic, was not yet home. I cooked tinned spaghetti on toast for my hungry comrades and their excitement over our forthcoming operation soared into the air, until it felt like the delicate bones inside my ear would splinter. Why, I wondered, was I always left to care for myself when my mother should have been pampering me the way a mother should pamper her child ? In a fit of pique’ I threw the pot of spaghetti against the wall then ordered my comrades to make haste and reconnoitre 83 Hotham St. I hit my bunk, dreamed of being embraced in my mother’s arms, only to be woken by my father arriving home drunk at 12.30 am and once again, as he had done so many times before, wishing to impart his thoughts concerning ‘The Reproduction of the Species’.

After two hours of indoctrination the order to move finally arrived.

My father said: “Go and see your mother”.

And I was out of that flat like a light bulb at the last of its one thousand hour life span.

After floating through the streets of Collingwood I arrived at 83 Hotham St. and discovered my comrades peering through nail holes at rear of the premises. Surely, every home had a clothesline and every woman who carried with her an unstated seductive allure owned a white bustier and washed it every Wednesday night. I had seen this in my dreams. We leaped the back fence, only to be confronted by the leaves of several giant tree ferns and an inbuilt rock pool that contained the flashing underbellies of a school of Golden Carp. So we crawled across the manicured lawn then manoeuvred into the sideway. There, extending from one side of the woman’s weatherboard home, a portable clothesline upon which was pegged skirts of several variety, bra, numerous dresses, and a parade of multicoloured panties luminous in the moonlight; but no white bustier. So we stuffed down our fatigues as many pairs of panties as would fit, and departed rear of 83 Hotham St. The woman would never know we had been in her backyard. Would believe her luminous panties had immolated in the moonlight. But like that other famous military strategist, we also would ‘Return’.

And return we did; to our commission flat on the 13th floor in Wellington St. I secured our booty in a locked trunk under my bunk. Upon my waking in the morning the parade of multicoloured panties wafting before an electric fan would brush against my face and chest. Pamper me as a mother should pamper her child. But this would only be a fleeting instant in a long and tiring life. A commando is trained to commit himself to the task at hand. Soon, my father would wake from his imbibed sleep. My comrades and I would once again conduct surveillance by playing marbles upon the nature strip at the intersection of Hoddle and Johnston St. That woman would alight from her bus. We would follow her to her house. My father would arrive home drunk and after a further rendition of ‘The Reproduction of the Species’, my Special Operations Group would once again begin its search for that elusive white bustier while engaged in the stealthy act of snowdropping.