The Reluctant Bootscooter

I s’pose you've heard of Tamworth and the shindig there each year, where country music reigns supreme and all its stars appear. They’re in the pubs and all the clubs and arcades 'round the town and Peel Street is just full of pics all strumming up and down. In years of late another breed of artists have appeared; Bush Poets with their rhyming verse, who are now quite revered. The Longyard and Imperial pubs and Leagues Club host a few, while golf and bowls clubs house more mobs and Peel street has them too. It happens that I'm one of them and have for six straight years performed to folk my style of verse - The Laughter and the Tears. You make them cry, you make them laugh, you keep your tales true blue, for that is what the folk demand: be Aussie through and through. Most folk they see us poets as the ocker type of bloke and know we see line dancing as some kind of flamin' joke. They stream to Tamworth each year and stretch out along Peel street. These hordes of blokes and sheilas with their fancy prancin' feet. They’re shapes and sizes are diverese, no two frames look the same, with fancy shirts embroidered with the place from hence they came. They tuck their thumbs behind their belts then line up in a row and when the music kicks on in they boot scoot to and fro. Each year they have this ritual, that really is a bore; They try to break the record they procured the year before. Like locusts they assemble and I watch them with disdain 'cause surely they've got Buckley's chance of doing it again. [CONTINUED]