"He Died With a Felafel in his Hand" - John Birmingham

I've just finished reading this book again and what a brilliant book it is. For those of you who have not read it it is a loose narrative of John's experiences in various share houses in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. It tells the tales of huge parties, bucket bongs, pissing in fridges, crazy goths and the fact that no one ever wants to wash the frying pan. It's written in this loose flowing form that makes you feel as if you are sitting on the brown couch with John while he tells his tales over a longie and a few bucket bongs. Ferreted through out the book are tales from the people John lived with telling some of their own lurid tales. One the whole it's crass and very Australian. the perfect book for me.

I guess one of the reasons I really love this book is it reminds me of my own share house days. My first house in Armidale where a flat mate fled complaining of stress and heart palpitations, the guy who replaced him, eventually throwing his huge model ship through the front window, thinking it was kind of funny at the time. The time my mate spewed half a case of pale ale on the front step, and everyone stepping over it for days as we refused to clean it until he came back around. Living in Glebe with a responsible junkie (he paid everything except our rent, which we found out one eventful morning) and a full time professional paintballer, who stalked the house with an imaginary gun in his hands making a ticka ticka noise while gunning you down (but this was forgivable as he was a barista and made the most amazing coffee) The house down the road which was slowly been demolished from the inside day by day.

Anyway, i could go on for ever, the thing is, if you haven't read it, read it! And if you have...read it again. take a moment to delight in some of my fav moments......

"He died watching Rage with the sound turned down. One of the hip inner-city cops who turned up to investigate said he probably snuffed it half way through the hot (sic) one hundred. Just like a junkie. There was a night club stamp on his wrist, bruises up and down his arm. The felafel's chilli and yogurt sauce had leaked from the roll and run down his hand in little white rivulets. For a brief, perverse moment it seemed to me that he himself had sprung a leak, a delicate stream of liquid heroin escaping from the seams of his fingers"

"Now don't get me wrong, I'll get into a binge as quickly as the next man, but there is such a thing as dignity. And flaking out under a blanket of old pizza boxes isn't even close"

"He was coming out of a doomed relationship with a bikie chick and was knocking back two or three bottles of overproof rum everyday. There were some dark forces at work inside him, manifesting themselves in the black Special Forces tee shirt, jungle camouflage pants and white running shoes which he never took off. We told people the white running shoes were the last vestiges of his human personality trying to hang on. When they were replaced by army boots it would be random sniper time."