Gift of the Gab Read Online Free Page B

hugged him. She looked concerned too.
    â€˜How do you feel about that?’ she said.
    Dad glanced at me. He must have noticed I was feeling anxious too.
    â€˜OK,’ said Dad, ‘I s’pose.’ He frowned, then gave a sort of grin. ‘Perhaps I’ll get my own series.’
    Normally if he said something like that, Claire would tickle him till he begged for mercy. This time she just chewed her lip.
    I tried to look on the bright side.
    Sergeant Cleary must have given the TV people Dad’s name as a colourful local personality with a relative who died in World War One and good teeth.
    Which is fine except for one thing.
    Some people can feel really hurt if unkind things are said about them on national TV.
    Things like ‘one of the biggest ratbags in the district’.

It was worse than I’d feared.
    I tried to keep them away.
    I got up really early and stuck a big sign on our front gatepost. ‘Danger,’ it said. ‘Root Weevil Plague. Keep Out.’
    They ignored it. Their van just roared up the driveway. Perhaps TV people aren’t very good at reading.
    By the time I got up to the house, they were already talking with Dad in the lounge­room.
    I pressed my ear to the door, trying to hear what they were saying. It was no good, I couldn’t catch a word. Erin was crying in her room and she’s loud enough to drown out tractors with holes in their mufflers.
    Then Claire hurried into Erin’s room and the crying stopped.
    I pressed my ear to the door again.
    â€˜Cock-eyed,’ I heard Dad say. ‘Totally and completely cock-eyed.’
    Claire appeared, jiggling Erin.
    â€˜Ro,’ she said. ‘Fair go. How’s a bloke meant to be his sparkling best in an interview when he’s being eavesdropped on?’
    I lifted my hands to protest, but Claire just grinned.
    â€˜Anyway,’ she continued, ‘you won’t miss anything. The minute they’ve gone he’ll be dancing around telling us everything he said.’
    I went outside and did some digging.
    Digging’s my best thing for stress. There’s something about shoving a spade into dirt that really takes your mind off tension and worries.
    I’m digging Erin a sandpit. It’s a surprise for when she’s old enough to hold a bucket. Up till today it hasn’t been a very big sandpit because I haven’t been stressed that much lately.
    It’s pretty big now, but.
    And I still couldn’t stop worrying.
    What had Dad meant by ‘cock-eyed’?
    Was he saying he’d rather be described as cock-eyed than a ratbag?
    Or had he just been telling his funny story about when he sang a country and western song at his uncle’s funeral and the congregation just stared at him cock-eyed, mostly because he was at the wrong funeral?
    The more I dug, the more I reckoned it was the funny story.
    Finally I heard the TV people drive off in their van.
    I raced indoors, grabbing my mouth-organ off the verandah in case Dad wanted some music played while he entertained us with the best bits of his interview.
    He didn’t.
    I could tell from the way he was sitting slumped forward. And from the way Claire had her arms round him and her head against his neck.
    My insides went splat like an over-ripe apple.
    â€˜What happened?’ I asked.
    Dad had his face in his hands and Claire was staring at the floor, so they didn’t hear me.
    I knelt down in front of them.
    Claire jumped. She seemed alarmed to see me. She gave Dad an anxious nudge.
    â€˜Didn’t the filming go well?’ I asked.
    â€˜They didn’t do any filming,’ said Claire. ‘They want to do it later in the week.’
    â€˜Eh?’ I said, using the special sign me and Dad have worked out for a stunned pit bull terrier staggering out of an apple-polishing machine. ‘Later in the week? But Anzac Day was yesterday. Why are they taking so long to do the segment?’
    â€˜Turns