Episode 49 – Merry Boguemas

Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to …

THE BOGUE & BOGUETTE SHOW!!!

(THE SCENE: 2pm on Christmas Day in BOGUE and BOGUETTE‘s townhouse in St Marys. BOGUE and BOGUETTE have an outdoor table set up in the rear courtyard, with a disposable Santa Claus-themed tablecloth and surrounded by stackable plastic chairs. SHEVONNE and BOGUETTE are sitting at the table next to each other, chatting amicably and smoking. Sitting opposite is MUMMY BOGUE, a frail woman in her late fifties, whose every atom is stained yellow from nicotine, wearing a pink dressing gown and hair rollers strewn through her floppy, greying, curly hair).

BOGUE, who is wearing a novelty apron featuring fake breasts, opens the rear sliding door while carrying an assortment of trays and bowls containing salads, cold ham and turkey, and prawns, and places them on the table.)

BOGUE: (organises plates on the table) Honeybunch, once your folks get here and me brother gets back, we’ll get stuck in, hey? Oh, Shevonne – we was gonna cook fish fingers for ya, but we figured that, you probably get that every night of the week! Geddit? Haw haw haw!

SHEVONNE: (pokes tongue out) Hardee har har!

BOGUETTE: For Christ’s sake, it’s Christmas Day! Can you just lay off her, for just one second? Please!

BOGUE: Don’t get yer knickers in a knot, bitch. I was just having me fun! Ain’t a bloke allowed to have fun no more?

MUMMY BOGUE: (in one of her rare breaks between cigarette inhalations, with a voice that sounds like gravel being crushed) So, where’s Ryan gone to?

BOGUE: Oh, it’s a surprise, Mama. Don’t you worry about nuffint!

(A loud knock on the front screen door. BOGUE gets up to see who it is.)

BOGUE: Ahh, it’s the in-laws. Come through, we’re out the back! The door’s open!

(MUMMY BOGUETTE, a sensible-looking woman in her early fifties with a neat bob and wearing a blouse and slacks, enters with DADDY BOGUETTE, a broad-chested, reliable-looking, neatly-groomed man with a slight cockney accent and a chequered shirt from Rivers, who could easily be Longfellow’s village smithy standing under the spreading chestnut tree, carrying even more food)

BOGUETTE: Mum! Dad! Great to see youse! (hugs and kisses her parents)

MUMMY BOGUETTE: Great seeing you too, darling. Anyway, look what we brought you, we know you’ve been having a rough time lately and stuff, and it must be real tough not being able to have our grandkids with you for Chrissie … honey, did you bring that bottle of champers?

DADDY BOGUETTE: Bottle of champers? What bottle of champers?

MUMMY BOGUETTE: You know, that real expensive one that I bought the other day, that I told you to pack in the car?

DADDY BOGUETTE: You never told me to pack no bloody bottle in the car!

MUMMY BOGUETTE: Yes I did! I told you this morning, just before you had a shower …

DADDY BOGUETTE: Well, you should have told me afterwards, that was hours before I packed all the stuff up!

MUMMY BOGUETTE: But I shouldn’t have to tell you twice! You should be able to remember …

DADDY BOGUETTE: Oh, sorry, Little Miss Perfect! You could have asked before I put the key in the ignition …

MUMMY BOGUETTE: Oh, well. We’ll have to give the bottle to her some other time. (turns to BOGUETTE) Sorry. So sorry!

BOGUETTE: Oh, it’s nuffint, believe me!

MUMMY BOGUETTE: So tell me, any more news about the kids?

BOGUE: (turning sausages and steaks and kebabs over on the barbecue with tongs in one hand, while holding a can of Jim Beam & cola in the other) Oh, yeah. Me and the missus have been complainin’ to everybody left, right and centre. Puttin’ Aiden in with a bunch of fruitloop Jesus freaks! We’ve complained to the state MP, the federal MP, the Minister for Community Services, the Ombudsman, the DOCS district manager, the local rag, everyone we could fink of!

BOGUETTE: Yeah, and it’s payin’ off. The foster mother called me the other night, it was so bloody funny! (imitates ELLEN) “You go to the Member of Parliament and tell lies aboot me, you go to the Ombudsman and tell lies aboot me, you go to the DOCS district manager and you tell lies aboot me, you run around filling everybody’s head with lies aboot me and you tairn everyone against me!” She was even sobbin’ and shit!

SHEVONNE: Sounds like a total nutjob bitch to me!

BOGUETTE: Yeah, she’s totally off the planet!

MUMMY BOGUE: (smokes two-thirds of a Horizon cigarette in one drag, exhales and coughs) Love, all them foster parents … they’re either kiddy-fiddlers or Bible-bashers. Take your pick. Think about it – who else could be bothered lookin’ after other people’s kids? They’re the only ones who’ve got any reason to. Cough, cough, sputter!

BOGUETTE: Great, now you’ve got me worried! The other foster parents don’t seem too religious or nuffint to me … at least they let me give Braiden, Jaiden and Kaiden their Chrissie prezzies! Oh, Mum, Jaiden absolutely loves the nerf gun you gave him! He says he’s gonna use it to escape and come back home!

DADDY BOGUETTE: Haha, that’s the spirit!

BOGUE: Yeah, just like his old man taught him! Me kids have got fire, hey? Because in this family … we’re all fighters! That’s what I was taught by me old man, and that’s what I teach me kids too!

(The front door opens and closes, and RYAN walks through to the rear courtyard, looking down at the ground, with his hands in his pocket)

BOGUE: Ahh, you’re back, you took your time. So … where is he?

RYAN: You wouldn’t believe it …

MUMMY BOGUE: Where … cough, sputter … where did you go?

RYAN: Well, I went to Dad’s boarding house in Summer Hill. He was there, like he promised. But he was drunk as a skunk. Funny, because he called me last night from the public phone, he sounded sober, but you know what he’s like, he’ll look and act perfectly sober until he’s on his twelfth beer, then he’ll turn into a monster … anyway, I got there, he’d been drinking all night and all morning. He promised me, f$#kin’ hell, he promised me, he promised you, that he would be lay off the booze, for just one night! We were even going to let him drink when he got here! Anyway, he agrees to come with me, but I said, no beer in my car, I don’t want to get the seat fabric in my Audi damaged … and he’s in the car for scarcely ten minutes when he sees a bottle shop up ahead along Parramatta Road somewhere near Burwood. He goes “let me out! Let me out!” And I say, “No! I told you, no drinking in my car! I just don’t feel comfortable you drinking in the car, you understand?” And he explodes. “What! What the fark! Sho it’s all roit for everyone elshe to get pisshed, but not yer old man? Ish that the way it ish, ish it? Pull over!” So he opens the door … at seventy K’s an hour! And I say, “No! It’s a clearway, I’m not stopping!”

BOGUE: (jaw agape) Man … Christ … man …

RYAN: Anyway, there was a red light up ahead, so I had no choice but to stop. He gets out, while the car’s still moving, and I shout “How are you gonna get home? There’s bugger all transport out here on Christmas Day!” He just snarls, “I’ll find a way. Get farked!” And … that’s where I left him.

MUMMY BOGUE: What? You mean to say … you really mean to say … that youse two were gonna have that dickhead in the same house as me on Christmas Day? Is that what you was gonna do?

BOGUE: Well … umm … yeah …. what’s wrong …

MUMMY BOGUE: What’s wrong? I tell you what’s wrong. I never wanna see that f@#kin’ pr!ck again in me life. You hear me? Cough cough …

RYAN: But … you don’t understand … he’s dying …

MUMMY BOGUE: Good! (angrily stubs out a cigarette and promptly lights another one)

BOGUE: And well … me and Ryan thought that … well, just one last chance, to be like old times … when me and Ryan were little kiddies … one happy family again …

MUMMY BOGUE: Farkin’ hell, we never was a happy family! You know, when youse were little, youse came this close (holds thumb and forefinger two millimetres apart) to being taken away by DOCS yerselves, because of his drinkin’ an’ shit. You know, Darryl … yeah, he’s just a “farkin’ greyhound trainer”, that’s what yer Dad always called him. But at least he treats me with a bit of respect. No “$lut this” or “slag that” or “bitch whatever”. No throwin’ the dinner that I spent half an hour cooking against the wall, smashing the plate. Naah. Yer Dad can kick the bucket and the world would be a better place. The sooner, the better!

(BOGUE and RYAN are distraught; BOGUE doing a better job at holding back his tears than RYAN, who runs off to the bathroom)

DADDY BOGUETTE: Umm … err …well, where were we?

MUMMY BOGUETTE: Oh … oh yes! I made up some White Christmas! I’ve put some in cling wrap too for you to give to the kids when you get to see them next … darlin’, did you put the White Christmas in the esky?

DADDY BOGUETTE: White Christmas? What bloody White Christmas?

MUMMY BOGUETTE: You know, the white dessert stuff with rice bubbles and glacé cherries and sultanas I cut up into cubes that I put in that blue tupperware container?

DADDY BOGUETTE: Oh, that! I didn’t know we were meant to take that!

MUMMY BOGUETTE: What did you think it was? Dog food? Of course we were meant to take it!

DADDY BOGUETTE: Nyah-nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah! Everything’s always got to be perfect …

(Another knock on the door. BOGUE goes to answer it, and finds DADDY BOGUE standing there, wearing trackpants with holes in the knees, thongs and a faded old t-shirt with the sideseams coming apart)

BOGUE: Oh … Dad. It’s you.

DADDY BOGUE: Farkin’ hell, of courshe it’sh me! Are ya gonna let me in or what?

BOGUE: Umm, I guess. (lets DADDY BOGUE in, who stumbles through the living room, around the double-door stainless steel fridge still standing proudly in the middle of the kitchen as a memorial to BOGUE and BOGUETTE’s past life, and reels unsteadily into the courtyard. The whole ensemble falls into deathly silence, the only sound being the meat sizzling on the barbecue)

DADDY BOGUE: Well … c’mon, shpeak up, people! What’sh the matter! Did somebody fart or shumfint?

SHEVONNE: Umm .. everyone, this is my cousin’s father-in-law, and umm …

RYAN: (comes back out of the bathroom and into the courtyard) Uhh … Dad. Umm … how did you get here so quick?

DADDY BOGUE: Well, that bottlo you let me out at, it was shut, being Chrishmas Day. Anyway, I see a taxi, I hail it, and I had your brother’s Chrishmas card in my pocket here … it had his addresh on the back … and I won shix hundred dollars on Keno the other night, had more than enough for a cab fare …

MUMMY BOGUE: Bloody hell … you really have made a mess of yourself …

DADDY BOGUE: Oh, hi, love. It’sh been a while … anyway, where’sh the grog? I’m thirshty!

MUMMY BOGUE: Wow … the boys were saying you haven’t been well … they weren’t wrong … cough splutter cough! Christ, I didn’t realise you were this bad …

DADDY BOGUE: Yeah, thingsh have been rooted for me … ever shince I lost that job at the telly factory … bloody cheap crap importsh …

BOGUE: Dad, grab yourself a beer from the laundry tub. And then everyone, I’d like to make a toast.

MUMMY BOGUE: Christ, me sons shoulda told me that their Dad was this bad! He looks like he’s already got one foot in the grave. Cough splutter cough!

(DADDY BOGUE fetches a beer and sits down at the table while BOGUE stands at the barbecue)

BOGUE: Here’s to family. Because there ain’t nuffint more important than family. It don’t matter if you’re a millionaire and livin’ in a farkin’ mansion, or povo and livin’ in rags. Without family, you got nuffint. And well … as you know, it’s been pretty tough for us this year and stuff, me missus losing her job, losing our house, and now DOCS has abducted our kids. But we’re still together. We still all love each other. Even you, Shevonne. Yeah, sure, you’re a dyke,  you’re a nutjob, you’re a bludger and you’re ugly. But still, you’re family, and I’m proud to have you in me family.

SHEVONNE: Umm well, gee, thanks! (gives BOGUE the bird)

BOGUETTE: (whispers to SHEVONNE) Oi, don’t complain, that’s as good a compliment as you’re ever gonna get from me hubby!

BOGUE: So, here’s to family!

ALL TOGETHER: (raise drinks) To family! (all take a gulp from their respective beverages)

DADDY BOGUETTE: OK, we’d best be along now, we have to visit our in-laws and other daughters now … how about we go to Cheryl’s first?

MUMMY BOGUETTE: Cheryl’s? Why do you want to go to Cheryl’s? They’re not starting their lunch until 4:30 because Ian’s got to pick up Josephine from the airport. Let’s go to Gerald’s instead.

DADDY BOGUETTE: Gerald’s? I didn’t think you were speaking to Gerald after that incident involving your crimping iron falling into his tropical fish tank. I say, we go to Cheryl’s first. We don’t need to see Josephine …

MUMMY BOGUETTE: No, Josephine’s got a fiancé I’m dying to meet! Let’s go to Gerald’s place, it’s on the way to Cheryl’s anyhow.

DADDY BOGUETTE: Nyah-nyah-nyah, everyfint’s always got to go your way!

MUMMY BOGUETTE: My way? What about all the times things have gone your way … (departs with DADDY BOGUETTE)

THE END

A message to my fans: The Bogue & Boguette Show will be taking a short break. I’m about to head interstate on my annual Christmas journey “home”, which is a good thing because every twenty-four hours spent in Western Sydney provides me with enough source material for approximately seventeen new episodes of B&B. I’m also in the middle of starting a new job and leaving my old one, so it might be a couple of weeks before I get the chance to publish a new episode. I wish each and every one of you a great Christmas, and my sincerest best wishes for 2012 and all that it may bring. See you in the New Year!