Ira bares more of himself, building the readers trust through this grounding.  Read on

From his private journal. 

 To tell the unvarnished truth, when I awoke that morning, I had not considered that the first order of business might be to fall off a roof.  Even at the best of times, climbing to any elevated position is not a habit I embrace with any enthusiasm. The idea is contrary to my every instinct.  If you will allow me to purge the trauma by the telling, I will lay the facts of the matter before you in what has come to be known as the Day of the Terrible Tragedy.

 

I had, at a goodly workmanlike hour, issued forth from Soggy Bottom to answer a distress call.  It would seem that an impenetrable wilderness had enthusiastically laid siege to a friend’s garden during an extended overseas posting. Reinforcements were required and were being summoned from all quarters, (experience with nettles, bruised shins and blackberries an advantage).

 

By an overgrown shed, in the rampant garden, I happened on an astonishingly beautiful young woman, nervously  positioning a sturdy ladder.  No force on earth, as I have said earlier will induce me to abandon terra firma, to take leave of all that is reassuringly solid and steady, and take on instead, the insubstantial air; no force on earth that is, save one.

 

What is it then, what irresistible compulsion causes us to abandon, at the first opportunity all of the certainties without which our lives would be as nothing?  What madness causes us to take the tools from the girl and bound up the blasted ladder and onto the roof?

 

The answer’s plain.  The forlorn hope that somehow, by this masterly display, this stranger, this beautiful woman, this cracking bit of crumpet,  forty years our junior will, forsaking all others, devote herself henceforth exclusively to our every whim.

 

In reality, we know there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of this happening, but the bone –cracking ascension is still atavistically irresistible.

As a result I am on the roof, gasping and blowing and clutching a pair of shears, whilst trying desperately not to look terrified. Because of my sprightly ascent, my hips and knees ache abominably, necessitating an elaborate shears adjustment dumb-show for the benefit of a motley group of scattered spectators.

 

It is difficult,  from this point on, to make sense of events. The luxuriant Banksia rose bushes in which most of the shed was buried,  I know I trimmed, cut, chopped and secateured to within an inch of it’s life.  I swept leaves away, tidied up then cleaned gutters, in order to leave all in impeccable order.   At some point, for no apparent reason, I set off for the unknown other end of the roof, where,  for reasons yet to be explained, I callously defenestrated myself.  Strictly speaking,  I’m not  sure if falling through a fibreglass skylight qualifies as ‘defenestration’ but it must be close.

 

In medieval times it was not unknown to take troublesome priests up to the second or third floor of a convenient castle and sling them out of the window.  This process was known as ‘defenestration’,  a euphemism which, without this knowledge, one might easily believe to be a technical term used in brass-rubbing.

 

The helicoptered ambulance took me to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. I was unconscious for the entire trip. This was just as well because, as I’ve said before, I’m not good with heights.