In 1979 or 1980, our Melbourne, Eastern suburbs public school put on a version of The Boyfriend. You know how it goes: play led by dedicated, passionate teachers, cast presents with a variety of skills, parts largely assigned by costume size available, costumes held together with a lick and a promise and then assembled with great imagination.

I played Polly on alternate nights. Polly’s love interest was Tony, who was actually not really my love interest, but my very good friend, Michael.

Michael had a red Afro and was good at science.  He wasn’t too good at girls yet and often stuck his tongue in during the stage kiss. The other Polly complained to an enthusiastic teacher, who had a word.

So, kissing problem over, rehearsal moved to dress rehearsal. Opening night was getting closer. Toward the end of the play, I was back stage ready for another duet, this time not dressed as a flapper, but as a clown: white satin pant suit with black pom pom trim, a mask. The costume wasn’t awfully flattering though at least the fit wasn’t too bad.

Tony (Michael) was on stage, singing the first part of the song. I hadn’t seen his costume before.

“Poor little Pierette” he sang “Where’s your Pierrot? Why are you all alone?”

That was my cue. Polly enters stage left, singing a high and tricky 1930s aria, a kind of Indian Love Song response to Pierrot’s musical musings. 

Well, I mentioned how parts were assigned by costume sizes, didn’t I? Mick, it seemed, was our exception, as we were very short of boys.

As I’m attempting said tricky aria, there stands Mick, an adolescant boy with a head of bright red curls and he’s stuffed into a short and tight satin clown suit and finished off with pom poms and a mask, long white school socks and black school shoes.

I could hardly aria. He was a vision in black, white & red. I laughed so much my dress rehearsal was a failure for that song, and subsequent performances on go-live night and beyond were questionable.

Now, many years on, I’m delighted to say we’re still mates. I relay the tale to him as often as I can, and it still makes my eyes water. He always says ‘you’re a shocker’.

Skip to the present. My partner, Jack, had prostate cancer, had surgery to get his prostate removed, had his bowel punctured during the surgery, got an emergency colostomy, had a reversal. There wasn’t much laughing going on.

After one of the ops, Jack and I were playing Memory. He had had a suprapubic catheter inserted due to the length of his convalescence and the need to keep the bowel–bladder barrier up. Any movement hurt him terribly.

We were playing careful memory, placing cards face up and down with the precision of a bomb detonation team, as though the game were a pickupstix hybrid. Jack was not winning and, being quite competitive, was losing interest fast.

So I changed the rules. I said that the rules were now these: whomever could knit together a good story, a story better than the other person’s, about the relationship between the two disparate pictures, then the person could take the disparate image set as a pair. And this odd pairing would count towards the final tally of pairs.

Well, Jack did much better from then on. He saw a tiger and a moth and said ‘tiger moth’. (He’s an entertainer/front man from way back, so this is his thing, surfing the edge, not being prepared, not having to remember.)

Then he turned over a picture of some New Guinea Cassowary kind of bird and a ceramic clock with Napoleon on a horse. Ah-ha, I thought, this was my big chance to catch up, when he looked at me and said “Hercule Parrot” (pronounced Parr-oh, like Poirot).

We laughed until we cried. Him from pain (don’t make me laugh)(it wasn’t me, you made yourself laugh) and me from the ridiculousness of it all, and the closeness of Parr-oh to Pierrot, and the disparate match of ungainly kids in odd costumes and in some ways me to Jack. (I’m laughing now.)

Hang in there. The story is a few paras from being over.

I moved to Healesville this year. Very recently some King Parrots have been getting friendly, calling us to come out to feed them. I said to Jack “if they come back, what should we call them?”.

I suggested one could be Hercule and the other Parr-oh but this was quickly occulted by a new set of names: Parr-oh & Parrette! Perfect. And come back they did…