Princess Pissy Pants The Greedy Cheese Eating Bitch written and performed by Joanne Brookfield. Canberra Theatre Courtyard Studio, September 6.
Arf! Arf! Arf! This is me, Murphy, bounding up the hallway to the front door, because I can hear Joanne’s key turning in the lock. Of course, she thinks I’m doing this out of doggie loyalty and unconditional love, but I just want to see if there’s a chance I can charge outside, do a big poo right in the middle of the footpath that will really embarrass her and maybe attack a small WFD (white fluffy dog) instead of having to endure WFDs attacking me because I’m kept on a lead because I’m a middle-size dog and people who have small WFDs think they don’t have to be bothered obeying the rules that Joanne doesn’t really think she should have to either, except that she gets to feel guilty if she doesn’t.
Especially the one about picking up my poos. As she said, she wouldn’t pick up yours, not even her own, but she comes from Frankston, which she thought was a bit like Gungahlin in Canberra, and in the end the poo-poohing by all those women who think they are ladies who come from Mt Eliza (which has to be said the Queen-like way they say it) where she takes me for walks because she would rather I mess up Mt Eliza than her street in Frankston, in the end it got to her and she started taking a plastic bag. Then she could walk with me on the lead and my poo in the bag, and make a kind of statement about the nature of society.
It wasn’t her that called me The Greedy Cheese Eating Bitch. That was one of her flatmates, not the one who left the terrific Vietnamese takeaway on the coffee table, I don’t remember him calling me any repeatable name.
I don’t think Princess Pissy Pants was really fair. After all I was really old, had arthritis and could hardly walk. And I didn’t know Joanne thought it was great to tell me to “Stay” after I was dead, because that was the only time I did what I was told. But she also thought I was great when I kept licking her tears from her eyes when she was crying until she stopped being angry with me and we had a growling and giggling game. The salt tasted nice, and I like playing growling. Of course, when those burglars tried to get in the back door with the key they’d hidden after the time they broke in when I wasn’t there, I wasn’t playing when I growled, and Joanne was really pleased with me for defending my house. You should have seen her telling all those people about it at the theatre, except I was dead by then.
By the way ARF stands for ACT Rescue & Foster who rescue healthy dogs from euthanasia. Look up www.fosterdogs.org if you want one.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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