Carter - Dont tell Mum I work on the rigs: she thinks Im a piano player in a whorehouse Do not tell Mum I work on the rigs

First and foremost, Id like to thank Erwin Herczeg, for watching my back on more occasions than I care to mention and proving to be the perfect role model. Thanks also to Drew Gardenier for getting me started in the first place, and letting me get away with a damn sight more than I deserved to. Special thanks to Sally and Simon Dominguez and Lou and Doug Frost, and Susan Coghill, without whom this book would never have happened. My thanks to all the boys who backed me up, covered my arse and listened to my bullshit over the years; you know who you are. To the team at Allen & Unwin, especially Jo Paul, Lou Johnson, Alexandra Nahlous and Catherine Milnethank you and sorry I cant spell. Last, but certainly not least, all my love to Clare, Elinor, Johannes, Allan and France. God bless.

A name formerly given to a tropical fever or delirium suffered by sailors after long periods at sea, who imagine the ocean to be green fields and desire to leap into them.

196987

I WAS BORN IN THE UK to a German mother, an English father, an older sister and a cat called Brim. Brim was an overt snob who would only drink his milk after I had popped any bubbles that floated on the surface. My father would inevitably end up walking by these goingson and step on the edge of Brims saucer, sending milk directly up his trouser leg.

My early life was not happy; I dont recall any memories of Dad that make me smile, just overwhelming fear. Brim and I would regularly jostle over the best hiding places, while my father, with his milk-stained trousers, would look for us.

My father was in the Royal Air Force, a navigator. He was a children are seen and not heard kind of dad, and so my sister and I lived a disciplined life. In all our family photos we look like we are having our picture taken for a police line-up.

These should have been the times when life was just an endless romp in the sun and tomorrow didnt matter, when parents were neither a fear nor a worry but something so dependable you would look for that peace of mind in adult life and marry it.

For the Christmas holidays, I was sent to visit my respective grandparents, one year with the Germans, the next with the English. Every year the standard holiday war movie would play on or around Boxing Day, and every year it was something like The Great Escape or The Dirty Dozen. Throughout the movie, my English grandfather would cheer and clap and when it was over he would pull out his medals and tell me war stories. My German grandfather, on the other hand, would curse and cringe at every standard scene of a single American soldier gunning down countless Germans without once reloading his weapon. When the movie was over, he would crack open a bottle of Schnapps and get blind drunk.

Needless to say we never got together to have nice family dinners with my grandparents.

I think I was around six when I saw The Magnificent Seven, the first movie I remember seeing. It had a profound effect on me. My father was away a lot so I took all my male cues from TV. After that movie I wanted to be a cowboy. Just like Steve McQueen.

Then one day, after I had been a cowboy for some months, my father returned from service in Canada with a real Western gun holster. The belt went from just under my nipples to the top of my bellybutton and the holster itself was almost as long as my right leg. All my cap guns just dropped straight through it so I replaced them with my drink cup. It was one of those kiddies plastic cups with a screw-down lid, it had Charlie Brown on it, but when it was wedged down into the holster all you could see was gun leather and a blue cup handle.

I would parade around the street quick-drawing and slurping cordial. My mother called me The Milkshake Sheriff and wherever she took me the holster came along, Church, Sunday School, the local pool.

The Milkshake Sheriff made only one real enemy in town, a huge Old English sheepdog named Benny. He would spot the Sheriff strutting across the park, bound up, and with one paw knock him down and start shagging him. I hated that dog.

A few years later on a visit to my German grandparents I sat down to watch the post-Christmas movie and this time it was The Great Escape. There was Steve McQueen again. I loved it. By the end of the movie my grandfather was hammered on Schnapps as the Germans lost again and I was ready to trade the holster for a motorbike.

I tooled around the neighbourhood on my pushbike, trying to jump it over peoples back fences. I would try to appear surly and indifferent. Looking through one of my mothers magazines one day, I found an article on Steve McQueen. It said he was a man who liked fast bikes and fast women. So I tried to find fast women, but at the age of ten I misunderstood what that meant. I started with the babysitter So, you like Fisher Price music baby? She sent me straight to bed with a firm Therell be no Starsky & Hutch for you Mister.

My mother was a saint; she made up for my fathers insanely strict parenting routine with boundless love and affection. One day she got the strength to leave. My sister and I were bundled into the back of the Mini and that was that. Dad ended up leaving the Service and spent the rest of his working life as a directional driller on the rigs; coincidentally my mother ended up working for a major oil company and that led to our eventual emigration to Australia. One of the strange things about the drilling industry is that it is global but very small, and every now and again I run into some old drilling hand who knew my father.

Mum moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, and my sister and I went to a new school; home life, although devoid of the luxuries of my fathers house, improved a great deal. We didnt have any money for the kinds of things a ten-year-old boy wants, but we loved each other and Mum made me the man of the house, or rather man of the tiny rundown council flat. I could get away with murder.

When I was fourteen I suddenly started getting bullied at school. His name was Athel, he was thick and had been held back a year because of it. Athel didnt like my glasses. Mum could not afford to take me to an optometrist so I had National-Health-black-one-size-fits-all nasty grownup glasses; I looked like a midget Michael Caine.

After Athel was finished I had to tape them together.

My mothers solution to Athel was that I should get a big stick. Instead I talked her into getting me an air rifle. (I had been mildly obsessed with guns since I was five, when I was given a pair of Star Trek pyjamas that came with a phazer gun water pistol.)

The idea was simple. Athel had a gang of boys who kept jumping me and beating me up. He cut the tyres on my bike with a flick knife, and told me he was going to cut my pecker off. So I was going to kill him with my new rifle. It had worked in the war movies

I stole wooden pallets from the loading bay of a nearby supermarket and constructed a hide-out overlooking Athels backyard. I lay there for hours with my BSA .22 air rifle in hand. I knew Athel stole his fathers cigarettes and hid near the shed to smoke them. All I had to do was wait. And sure enough out he came, so I let him have it. The pellet hit him square in the forehead, sending him backwards into the shed door. His screams soon had his father over him, but Athels sniper-in-the-tree-line story and bleeding head quickly became unimportant as his father realised he had been smoking. Then it was Athels father who was screaming. I looked on in mute fascination. Athel was not dead, and thats a good thing; he never bothered me again.

Life, as they say, comes down to a few moments. That was one of them. My glasses were never a problem again. A few years after shooting Athel I joined the Gordon Highlanders 2nd Battalion ACF. Thanks to my father I was already totally indoctrinated into the military systemhe would check that my toys and clothes were always stowed where they should be, and my room was freakishly tidyso the military was no surprise. The drill sergeant was scary to the other lads, but compared to my dad he was just a man who yelled a lot. I knew he couldnt hit me. The Highlanders was a great experience, and I managed to fulfil all my childhood firearms needs.