He sidled up next to me as I paid the bill. He was short and fit looking, about 55 with balding cropped grey hair; a dark green "I am making a statement" sort of casual, but expensive t-shirt. He had been sitting outside on the verandah with a tall skinny guy and a slightly older lady at the birth place of our nation, as it says on the sign entering Tenterfield.
"Are you Barnaby?" he said out the side of his mouth in a sotto voce way to my left ear whilst my credit card did its magic on the Thai curry and rice. "Yes" I said with a smile ready for an informal engagement with a happy constituent. He said, well actually I can not say what he said, but in translation, it’s four words starting with "You're a", then an active verb in old Saxon English rhyming with fire trucking and finishing with another old Saxon English informal gynealogical term.
Generally I am good at the bon mot but he had me on the ropes so what was my reply. "So are you". How pathetic. Is that as good as I could do? "But you do not know me”, was his reply. Now there he had a point, and he counted with “but I know you and you are a.”, and we know what comes next.
My wife was starting to stare toward the counter and the good lady across the till who had my card and a pen to sign the docket was looking slightly perplexed and a little anxious.
I counter punched, I thought, by instantaneously reasoning that obviously I was worst dressed but far more intelligent and my sophist’s instincts would impale my interlocutor with logic. "Why do you say that?" I said glaring over my left shoulder. His reply, "Because you are.” Well that would have been the reply wouldn't it. "Well so are you" I said. Damn repetition and lack of new material always means you’re lacking depth in your argument.
He had taken a pace or two back and was revelling in my confused discomfort. I think he and his retinue had been drinking a beer, most definitely an imported one to match his "I am 55, wish I was 25 mutton dressed up as lamb t-shirt".
In my distant past life as a bouncer at a pub 250km down the road this was generally the part where I would win the argument, but alas I knew and he knew that the consequences of "real action" would not be appreciated by my colleague Tony Abbott and would once more have me returned to a pastoral lifestyle, after a brief court appearance.
There is something in the male primal instinct that at times we tend to forfeit everything for an absurd moment of retribution or self affirmation. Like a businessman that states that he would give up everything just to put on a Wallaby’s jersey and run on for Australia. I could have been the champ. This could have been part of my repertoire in those ridiculous testosterone driven conversations that blokes have when they run out of things to talk about.
I was dreading the L'esprit del'escalier, those wonderful one- liners that come to mind in the car when the perpetrator is long gone. I had to say something and say it now or it would torment me for the rest of my day. "You would have to be a dead set fool to come up to a person in a restaurant", that word that now seemed a little overdone for the current situation, “and say what you just said to me". That was it. That was the best I could deliver. I had been neutered by my public office and the decorum that it therefore insisted. I was not to walk out as Clint Eastwood but more like Derek Zoolander.
I had to relive the experience and ignominy as my wife asked for a blow by blow description in the car as I sullenly drove south. The winner of an encounter such as this is the person who forgets about it first. Unfortunately, I think he might have won again. The joys and trimmings of public office.