Butch aka Travis

“Your license has expired?! How dreadful!”
Rupert Owen

Oh what a night what a night.

First, I take an olde Afrikaaner Friend of mine out on the turps (a colloquial term for alcomohol) and watch him go beer for beer until the 7th pint when he fell very gracefully under the table.. but left me without a drinking partner.

Then to go to a second port and to sit with my olde friend Rupert The Great whilst he consumed a glass of the house’s finest and myself with a tube of Tasmania’s greatest export (bar Mssr Flynn) stuck firmly between my lips

And what a beautiful coup it was for me as some woman, whom I don’t know, rattled off her ‘favourite’ Nouvelle Vogue films, (French New Wave for us Lamens) and then to realise that this woman had NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT. Myself being a willing student of the FNW and being very much acquainted with 400 blows (her favourite movie by the way) and upon my insistent questioning finding nothing but textbook answers, and digging herself an ever steady grave i.e, realising that she had come up against a REAL new wave fan, and finding herself wanting. “Oh my favourite scene is him running along the beach at the end”….. what else happened? I asked in vain. “What was the turning point for you?” Of course she rattled off the usual PRETENTIOUS shit obvious of a typical film poseur (see Margaret Pomerantz
)
My favourite scene of the night was Rupert at his best. After many nights of alcohol abuse. A quick wink of the eye in my direction was all I needed to be informed of his devious plan. (Rupert and I have developed an elaborate set of codes, hand signals, and facial ticks which inform the other of an impending plan, which is about to executed)

I knew straight away he was about to dissapear. Oh, and what a fantastic figure he cut, in his black overcoat, running down a side street, swathed in black, one arm bent, oh so delicately holding a glass of Red wine, whilst running at the top speed he could afford in such a fashion. To hear the two bus boys arguing over who should chase him was shear joy, for I knew, there was no catching the elusive black ghost, many had tried….. all had failed

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The infamous yet elegant silhouette of the ever elusive Rupert Owen aka “The Crimson Glass Tainted Thief”… does he actually exist? We may never know.