A Sheep Called Pepito

After a while they would dry into white spotted marks, and although they would look like stains, they would in fact be the cleanest bits of carpet in the building.

"Damn rain's pissing down out there."

"We need it," Ray told him.

"Not at eight o'clock in the morning when everybody's trying to get to work. Speaking of everybody; what about the god damned traffic!"

Here we go, Ray thought. Here it comes again.

"They're stuffin' maniacs!"

Ray nodded. He found an error on line 32 of an article on a new kind of sheep disease that had been found in South Australia. It was a simple mistake; a word had been repeated. Sheep sheep. He deleted one of the sheep.

"Get this, Ray; some dumb arsehole pulls out of their driveway, doesn't even look where he's going, traffic all over the place, pissing down with rain, chaos everywhere, the road's wet and slippery and he gives no indication of what he is doing."

"So what did he do?"

"He pulls out in front of everybody. The friggin' loser."

"What happened?"

"What happened? Whammo!"

"You got hit?"

"What? Nah, not me. Some other poor bastard."

"Anybody hurt?" Another repeated word. The the. Maybe there was a virus in the computer?

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I didn't stop. I was late for work."

Ray deleted the second the, and then discovered for some reason or other the justification of the entire article was suddenly out of alignment, so he put the repeated word back where it was and ignored it.

"You didn't stop? Christ Noel."

Noel threw his hands up like a Thunderbird puppet. "Ray, I'm on George Street. It's raining like mad. There must be a hundred cars in front of me and another hundred behind. And where was I going to stop? You can't stop anywhere there, Ray. They'll just whammo you up the arse."

Ray nodded. "Fair enough."

"I mean, it was only a front fender that copped it...and the guy was driving a ..."

Wait for it, Ray. Just wait for it.

"Get this; another stuffin' Volvo!" Poole exclaimed as if it had just occurred to him.

"Get out!" Ray scoffed, playfully. "The other day you said there was an accident involving a Volvo, in the same street!"

"Same street, different car, and both of them Volvo's. What are the odds?"

Ray finished reading his article. He opened the next one. It was an article he had written, featuring Blagwort worm infestations in Merino sheep. It was the actual cover story, complete with two high quality black and white photographs; one of a sheep's anus with a severe case of infestation, and the other without. Perhaps we shouldn't have made it the cover story, Ray thought, in hindsight. At least he hadn't put the pictures on the front cover. It probably wouldn't have sold many copies.

"Noel, I think you have got something against Volvo drivers."

Noel choked out a laugh that sounded more like he was clearing his throat. "They're jokers. They think they own the friggin' road. They think, just because they drive these Swedish taxis, they're safe. They're safe in their little mobile block of flats."

Ray laughed. "That's funny. I like that; a block of flats."

Noel laughed with him. "It's not original. I think Dick Johnson called them that once."

"Tricky Dicky?"

"Yeah," Noel said. "Tell you a funny thing I read the other day. I was reading this article about Dick Johnson and it had a picture of his new Ford workshop in Queensland, getting renovated, and you know what the caption under the photograph said? 'Dick gets bigger'."

Ray laughed so much it hurt.