Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Hot dog – Daily Writing- July 25

It always feels good to help, in some way. When I’ve taken wing and flown over the Westgate bridge headed for Altona to aquire that small thing that can only be bought at Bunnings Mega Warehouse homeware discount store – they’re waiting.

The sausage sizzle.

Almost as soon as the door opens the stagnant car atmosphere is swamped by the tempting waft of sausages . A small white pointy marquee contains a handful of happy volunteers working for some worthy cause – guide dogs association, or wheelchair disability or maybe the Rotary club. There’s usually a ruddy faced late middle age man with an apron and a set of shining chrome tongs and a barbecue tool tending his babies. I make note as I prepare to assault the aisles.

I put on a mental mountaineering suit. Emergency ropes are slung around my back, pick-axes and a miners light are on my forehead. In heavy duty boots I walk the canyons aisles. Products jut out at me like sharp dangerous rocks. Crevasses of consumables I could easily fall into keep opening below me. I need to stay focused on the summit, the target: Extension leads – in black.

Back at base camp the sausage sizzle gunslingers are dispensing dogs in flimsy white napkins, hot tomato sauce dribbles out from between clouds of white fluffy bread and slightly strangled sausages point a finger to the future. I reach the peak and scurry back to the check-outs where my fantastic plastic speeds through the slot and my money evaporates somewhere in cyberspace. Outdoors it’s real ‘ker-ching’ money and I have none. In the car I remove the water bottle that hides a supply of ready gold coins and head back toward the enticement of the hot dog stand.