Why Don't They Get Their Own Place Names?

Rebecca sighed with ill-disguised contempt as Chris came at her with another one of his mind-bendingly inane observations.

"You know one thing I've never understood babes? Why are so many towns and cities in England named after places in Australia and America and stuff? They should get their own place names," he said, sipping on his latte.

She measured him cooly. They were sat outside at a cafe in Carlton - "I was doing this way before that bastard Murphy," Chris would insist, overlooking the fact that he'd been in WA for five years - reading the papers and drinking coffee.

She saw his prematurely balding pate, his affected metrosexual outfit that never seemed to hang right, heard the way he managed to mispronounce the fancy coffees he'd order, the way he just tried so hard but never quite managed to pull it off.

And it wasn't just in his personal life. Rebecca had been watching his games more intently and noticed that the commentators glossed over a lot of his mistakes. If you weren't watching closely, you'd think Chris could do no wrong.

If another player was tackled and dropped the ball, the commentators would pillory him. When Chris did it, they make some excuse about how 'strong Judd is through the core to stand up in that tackle'. It was embarassing.

Now he was droning on and on about the foreign news. Rebecca wasn't a bloody idiot. In fact, with her speech pathology degree, she'd demonstrated she had far more education than him. What precisely had Chris ever done? He got into a posh school on a footy scholarship and while he'd got a good score on his ENTER, well, these days, if you could tie your shoelaces right they pretty much gave you 90 and over.

Sure, he was doing his MBA but then George bloody Bush had an MBA. And this MBA hadn't kept them from him losing a ton on his 'investments' in the financial crisis had it? And this bullshit 'environmenmtal ambassorship' at Visy. The fuckwit still thought it actually meant something, even as people would openly snigger whenever he brought it up.

She tried to block out his voice as he went on and on about the refugee crisis in Sri Lanka, obviously just discovering the news for the first time. Listen dipshit, she wanted to shout, I've spent the last six weeks doing some pro bono work with Tamil kids suffering speech impediments brought on by shell shock.

Trying to bury herself in her own copy of the paper was no better. Gategategate. What the fuck was that all about? Who was this bloody Sam harpy anyway? What gave her the right to swan through life making up bullshit about people anyway? So Brendan wanted a sex change? WHAT the hell was so wrong with that? It wasn't even a full sex change. Just a boob job. Thousands of people got it done every day. Yet when brendan does it, its suddenly front page news.

Deep breaths Becks, deep breaths. She looked up and saw Chris lost in the article about the Sri Lankan bloodbath, his huge forehead furrowed with creases as he struggled to digest some of the bigger words, his lips moving as he silently sounded them out, index finger under each and every sentence of newsprint.

Cars went by on Rathdowne Street with honks and grey plumes of exhaust,. The trees were sparse and bereft of leaves. At the kerb, a large crow pecked savagley at a rubbish bag.

Jesus fucken Christ, thought Rebecca. I'm young, I'm smart, I'm gorgeous and its come to this. The only thing she had to look forward to was a particularly savege clitty fiddle later on once Chris has gone to bed, the stench of his aromatherapy candles making the bedroom virtually uninhabitable for hours afterwards.

It was no life for a lady.