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out delivering gas cylinders to holiday houses. Pity he couldn’t deliver both at once. Flick could see it in her head.
    ‘One small Aussie and one large Elgas. That’ll be fifty-three dollars, please.’
    So the people who would normally sit at home waiting for a pizza delivery had to get off their butts and walk or drive to the store to collect their orders. Some of them were not pleased. One large man with a puffy purple face like a beetroot and a posh voice who sounded like he was used to people jumping when he spoke, was most irate.
    ‘It says home delivery ,’ he snapped, pointing to thesign. ‘That’s false advertising and I could sue you.’
    ‘Normally we do have home delivery, but we’re a staff member down and as you can see, we’re very busy,’ said Kay, trying to keep her temper.
    ‘As the customer it’s not my problem. It’s your problem!’
    ‘It’ll be your problem in a minute, mate, if Kay upends that Mexican with extra hot salami on your thick bald head,’ Flick muttered to herself, as she scooped up some ice-cream to plop into the milkshake she was making.
    ‘This is the trouble with private enterprise,’ said Purple Face loudly to the other customers in the store. ‘Deregulation. People think they can do what they like. The worst thing to happen last year in this country was the sacking of so many public servants. I’m struggling to run a government department with a skeleton staff but do I let my standards slack off? No, I do not !’
    ‘Der,’ said Liz with her head down in the freezer as she searched for a Caramel Fudge icy pole. ‘Imagine working for him !’
    ‘I understand your irritation, but I can’t spare anyone to do deliveries,’ said Kay in a voice that meant any minute she was going to lose it and let fly with a barrage of words that would weld thisguy’s ears flat to his head like melted cheese onto corn chips.
    ‘Say, I’ve got my car and some spare time,’ said Rob, who’d come through the door in time to hear the end of the conversation. ‘Do you want me to run the pizzas around, Kay?’
    A dunny budgie delivering pizzas? Kay looked across at Flick then she made up her mind.
    ‘Okay, but give your hands a good scrub first. On second thoughts, you’d better wear gloves. Have you got a clean T-shirt? And shorts?’
    ‘What’s wrong with the ones I’m wearing?’ Rob looked down at his bulging belly, torn shirt and dirty shorts.
    ‘If you’re delivering pizzas you need to look clean,’ Kay explained quickly. ‘People associate clean clothes with clean food.’
    ‘I’m clean.’
    ‘I know, I know, but frankly, Rob, you can’t have your dunny budgie image getting mixed up with your pizza image.’
    ‘You’re going to let him deliver the pizzas?’ said Purple Face, looking horrified.
    ‘You got a problem with that, mate?’
    Rob put his hands on his hips and glared. Purple Face was not in choice physical condition. Robwasn’t exactly Mr Universe either, but he was certainly fitter than the overweight city pencil-pusher standing before him.
    ‘You can wear Cam’s clean overalls,’ said Kay quickly. ‘Now, sir, do you want to take your Mexican now, or wait till Rob suits up and delivers it, by which time it will probably be stone cold and need reheating.’
    ‘In which case you’d better make me another one!’
    Things were getting nasty. The other customers were looking annoyed. They had families waiting at home or in the camping ground for them to bring back hot food for the evening meal: they didn’t want a full-on blue in the store and aggro from this pompous twit who might be a big wheel in his own narrow little world but certainly wasn’t one here in Coolini Beach.
    ‘Listen, mate,’ said a bloke who was built like Godzilla and was wearing black motorbike leathers, ‘would you just take your bloody Mexican pizza and get outa here?’
    Purple Face took in the tatts, leathers, ham-fisted hands, tough-looking face with broken nose and