Heartbeat: Australian Style OR What to do when your daughter borrows a puppet theatre

Originally posted August 28th, 2008

Last toy library day we borrowed a sizeable puppet theatre and ten puppets of differing sexes and occupations. Keira demanded a proper show. I tried, but quickly gave up. She was bored. I was bored. I couldn’t think up of a ‘nice’ story to tell.

Bad news for someone who tries to do this sort of thing for a living, eh?

Until I looked at the puppets in a different way. MY way.

I gave up trying to tell something for a ‘child’, but something I’d like to listen to as well.

This is what came to me:

 The show opened with Farmer Dave going to hospital in a serious condition after being bitten by a Funnel Web Spider. A pretty standard kind of injury, perhaps, for a outdoorsy kind of fellow, but not Dave.

You see, he’s an agoraphobic hydroponic black tomato farmer who hasn’t been seen outside his series of greenhouses in years.

Worse, he arrives at the hospital saying that he’s been the victim of an attempted murder; that the only way a spider – or any creature large or small – could get into his place was if they were deliberately placed there. And Farmer Dave is pointing the finger straight at someone – Ms. Greensbottom, his neighbour, local primary school teacher and, until recently, his mistress. Dave secretly thinks the break up has mentally unhinged his rather flightly former love, who would do anything to jeopardise his potential reconciliation to his wife, Florence, who sells Avon.

Dave whispers into the ear of the local policeman his suspicions and accusations and the policeman – Marv, local yard glass beer drinking champion, once upon a time – promises to do a discrete investigation.

{This is as far as I got before I got very thirsty and begged for a break. My daughter, caught up in the [cleaner version] of the narrative, said, “No! No! More!”}

For the life of me though, I don’t know how to include this character. He calls himself ‘The Doctor’. I call him by his real name: Kevin Rudd, MD.

 I am here to heal you

  

You can trust me

 

Just look into my eyes 

  

 Deeper…

 

I will help Australian working families.

I haven’t decided whether ‘The Doctor’ will be the hero or the villain yet.

What say you?