Dave Montomery

If you've ever set foot in the area from Berowra up to Turramurra, particularly around Hornsby RSL after 10pm, then there's a chance you've met Dave Montgomery. You know you've met this guy because he'll introduce himself with his first and last name, then request your full name too. He's lived here for a long time. In fact, Jones' granddad says when he was younger, he'd have dinner with Dave Montgomery up at St. Ives shops on regular basis.

He likes to ask me if I have brothers. He then pretends that my surname is familiar and that he thinks he knows my brothers from rugby results in the local paper. At first I took him for real, but then I remembered that my brothers have a different surname to me, and don't play Union. So now I know he's full of shit. Oh well. He's just a bit funny in the head.

I've met many people from my area who know Dave Montgomery, either by name or description. He even came up and started talking to me in Turramurra Video Ezy once, when picking out videos with my family. My brothers found it kind of weird.

The first time I met Dave actually links in with another interesting anecdote from my past. This is one of those stories that starts "when I was 19". When I was 19, I was waiting at Hornsby for the Nightride bus. Dave Montgomery came up and introduced himself, as already described. He then started talking on with his signature craziness.

He was interupted by another guy sitting on the same seat as me. "Oy Dave", he said, as if he knew him personally. "Dave, do you have any money?"

Dave said "No." The guy said again "Dave, I'm broke, give me some money". Dave and I both thought he was just playing silly buggers, but then he said "Dave, you're going to give me some money or I'm going to have to hurt you"

Fucking great, I thought. Why do I have to be around this? If Dave gets rolled, I'll be next. I was a broke uni student at this point, so this prospect didn't thrill me much. Well... actually... I guess it wouldn't thrill me now either. Some other guy behind the bus stop who seemed pretty off his face and bleary-eyed found it hilarious. Good for him.

Dave was a bit shaken by all this, and after the guy repeated himself a couple of times, he quickly left the bus stop. I felt that it would be a good time for me to follow suit, but the guy on the seat just said to me "Don't go, I was just joking. Don't worry, I'm not dangerous. I just don't feel up to listening to Dave harrass another girl at a bus stop all night with his stories"

I sat back down and started to talk to him. The bleary-eyed high-as-a-kite guy joined in. These guys were really funny. Despite the three of us being strangers to each other, we got on really well. We got on the bus together, I even had to borrow money off them because the cunt driver rejected my concession card.

The weird sense of deja vu set in when the drugfuck guy started to tell an awesome story about him spilling hash oil on his jeans. He got off the train at Hornsby station, right at the end of the school day when the sniffer dogs are rife around the station concourse. The sniffer dogs got a whiff of his illegally stained pants and went nuts. The cops started hassling him and did a full search.

Then he came out with the immortal line "How were they expecting to arrest me for that - cut the stain out of my jeans and weigh it?".

I suddenly realised I'd met these two guys at least twice before, at the same bus stop, and that I'd heard this story as many times before, including that line. In fact, I can't be sure if I'd met them a thousand times, but apparently our weekly routine of being mashed on public transport late at night in hornsby was a ritual we all shared, along with a dislike of Dave Montgomery, and we'd gotten to know each other all over again several times, only to forget it with the next morning's sobriety. It's kind of buddhist ... almost. You know - past lives and reincarnation, being reborn only to repeat much of the same bullshit next time round, with the same unenlightened souls.

Or perhaps that's just reading too much into it.