The Grand Hotel by Gregory Day

price penalties of driving their car.
    â€˜There you go,’ I said to Rennie, feeling some normality coming back into the area of my larynx. ‘As if we’d ever not think of you hillbillies up there. You get the discount. And an extra feed as well, being our main beer supplier.’
    I stood with Rennie and his tall dark girlfriend, Lee, at the bar then, as Joan Sutherland poured the Laphroaig for him and a Bundy and Coke for her. Joan and I bashed their ears about how well The Dancing Brolga Ale was going and Rennie seemed quite chuffed. He skulled his dram, stood back, and looked around the room from his great height. ‘Pretty weird bar you got here, Noel,’ he rasped.
    â€˜Yeah?’ I replied. ‘What’s so weird?’
    â€˜Well for a start it just looks like a living room with extra tables and chairs. There’s no TAB, there’s weird shit all over the walls, you’ve boarded up the fuckin’ windows and, for once, everyone looks like they’re having a great time.’
    â€˜It’s the beer, Rennie,’ said Joan, as he poured him another Laphroaig. ‘The Dancing Brolgas.’
    Rennie snorted and gave Lee a smiling wink. ‘Thought as much,’ he said, proudly. ‘Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.’
    Big Rennie’d come to regret those words.
    Despite the announcement that any feedback should be addressed to Frankie and Pippy, as the night progressed into the late hours people started to come up to me to talk about what was going on. I was uncompromising in my answers, stressing the fact that without The Grand Hotel there would be no hotel anymore in Mangowak and because it was my hotel I’d run it how I liked. The only concession I made was when Joan Sutherland’s wife, Jen, quietly suggested that the ‘no light beer’ rule was a bit hard on the oldies. She said they drank light not only because of drink-driving concerns but also for health reasons. She said some of them were diabetics, some had dodgy tickers. I said that was fair enough and that not everyone could put it away like Kooka. We agreed right there and then to amend the charter to include light beer for people born before the Black Friday bushfires of 1939. It was as good a cut-off point as any.
    Most of the discussions I had, though, were positive, and inebriated. Givva Way for one was inspired. The town earbasher had been a bit quiet of late, bewildered as he was by the Plinths, the indoor creek and Wathaurong Heights, but now he was off, full of praise for The Grand and swooning reminiscences of the old Mangowak pub in the 1970s. He raved on about all the bands that used to come through on their tours to Adelaide. He brought up the time that he and my brothers Walker and Jim had smoked bongs all night with Colin Hay from Men At Work. Their famous song ‘Down Under’ had twenty-seven verses back then, Givva told me, not for the first time. Eventually, after slapping me on the back with his thick house-painter’s hand, he said, ‘Better go off and have another chat to Duchamp.’
    It is proof of my simple pleasures in the days of The Grand Hotel that you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face after hearing Givva Way say those words.
    By midnight I was dancing with Nan Burns to The Barrels’ version of the theme from the cartoon Top Cat and couldn’t care less about anything. We were already an hour over the licence, Dylan and Dougie Sutherland had taken to pouring beers behind the bar under their father’s guidance, and the general mess was incredible. I could see Veronica and Darren and Jen Sutherland busily trying to tidy up. Plates and glasses were strewn everywhere, beer and wine were spilt and ashtrays were overflowing in the sunroom and beyond. It was obvious we had a bit to learn but for now I was content to dance with Nan, to watch the new grey strands in her red hair fall across her face, to smoke her