Mr Beau Tia and the Magic Water.

I get in the car and Madame M deposits a large ginger cat in to my lap.

'What's this?' I ask with my hands up in a position of surrender.

'Mr Beau Tia is coming sailing with us, aren't you Mr Beau Tia! Yezzz you are! Yezzzz you are! He likes sailing.'

Mr Beau Tia looks at me with an unusual blend of resignation and terror.

As Madame M backs out of the driveway he shoves his head in to my armpit and remains there quietly shivering.

I don't mind a cat. As long as its got a bit of personality and doesn't sit there preening and silently judging me. But I am allergic to them and if I touch one and then accidentally touch my face I end up with welts, my eyes seal themselves shut and I am transformed in to John Merrick “I am not an animal, I am a human beinggggg.” I delicately mention this.

'Aw, me too,' Madame M nods. 'Just don't touch your face.'

That's how it is with Madame M. I frequently find myself in situations that give me pause and find that I only have two paths of recourse: Bluntly refuse and ruin everything. Accept that it is happening and broadly assume I won't die. It's working out pretty well. So far.

She has a brief conversation on her mobile;

'I'll pick you up now,' she says and disconnects.

'Who are we picking up?'

'Lawrence.'

I never really know what's going on. I'm usually told what the destination will be (though not always) and she's very bossy about my wearing the appropriate clothing;

'It'll be freezing. Here have this hat, scarf, gloves, boots, raincoat, galoshes, cape, umbrella, survival pack.'

'It won't be freezing. It never is.'

'Put them on.'

But I never know exactly what the plan is and often there are other friends involved. I wonder how she holds down a full time job and functions at this level of organisation until I spend a few days with her and see how she interacts with others. She just invites everyone to join in. Always. No matter what it is she has planned. And most of the time the person being invited will instinctively go to decline and find themselves nodding. When someone does have the audacity to express uncertainty or a very specific reason why they absolutely can't join in Madame M will just think up an immediate solution or incorporate their plans in to hers:

'I'd love to come for a drive in the mountains but I have been vomiting consistently for six hours and I'm in agony.'

'Aw well then the fresh air will do ya good. We'll stop at a chemist on the way.'

'A cigar and whiskey night sounds great but I'm a recovering alcoholic and I have a collapsed lung.'

'Aw well I'm sure they serve coffee and you still have that other lung.'

Only one of those is true.

She'll invite Methuselah and an eight year old to partake in the same activity. She throws people together that otherwise wouldn't think to tread the same piece of carpet. And it more often than not works. The thing that I like about Madame M's particular brand of bossiness is that its not about getting her own way. Its about trying to make every available opportunity as inclusive and as fun as it can possibly be. And on the occasions where I do say no, I only have to say it eight times before she shrugs and laughs and tells you she'll see you tomorrow for that other thing or wednesday for that thing you thought was just a possibility but is actually booked and written in stone.

We pick up Lawrence whom I would describe to you but he doesn't take his cap or sunglasses off for the next eight hours.

When we arrive at Madame M's parents house she calls out to her dad who comes to unlock the gate which is heavy with ripe looking passion fruit. Randall is easy to describe. Think salty sea dog. He has long white wild looking hair in a pony tail and an open friendly smiling face that looks like its been slept in. He greets me with a big tight bear hug and I like him immediately.

We enter through the garden which is full to the brim with growing vegetables, salad, herbs, coffee beans, fruit and five or six fat paranoid chickens who waddle around at great speed looking flustered and terribly busy. I don't know what kind of chickens they are but they look like pom pom balls and their legs are far too far apart making them rock from side to side as they dash about. They are the Liberace of chickens.

Randall and his wife used to own Antique shops and both the inside of the house and the garden are rammed full of interesting things to look at. A moroccan lamp shade hangs next to a glitter ball suspended above a naked male mannequin. I sit and smoke whilst Randall makes coffee, Madame M wanders around with a basket collecting fruit and salad for our lunch later and Mr Beau Tia sits imprisoned in a separate part of the garden for his own and the chickens safety.

Randall comes out with a glass of almost clear liquid.

'Taste this,' he says. 'It's a coffee liquor I've been making from those beans over there. It's very subtle.'

I take a sip and the back of my head melts on to the floor behind me.

'That is not subtle,' I rasp.

'Aw yeah, its overproof. Its what I call an 'End of the day' drink. I mix it with a bit of fresh whipped cream. Lovely. Pour some in your coffee, not all of it mind.'

I swear I go from stone cold sober to emotional in less than a thimbles worth.

He goes on to tell me that he uses a sour mash whiskey recipe and he's cultivated a way of ageing the drink quickly using a freezer. He talks about fractured particles as I blink at the vapour trails forming in front of my eyes.

The car is packed up and we head down to the harbour where Randall's magnificent sailing boat is docked. It is bright red and white and old and I am very excited. He has brought Swordfish steaks for us to BBQ and a couple of trays of oysters for later. I'm disinclined to have the oysters after the whole anaphylactic incident in Nimbin which makes me a bit sad. We also passed a place earlier called 'I got crabs Seafood Cafe'. Everywhere I turn I'm taunted by crustacea.

Five minutes out of the harbour and we see half a dozen tiny sailing boats bobbing around on the water nearby. They look like toys, their individual sails bright paintbox colours. In each boat sit two people in a stunning amount of safety gear.

'That's the rotary club members,' Randall explains. 'They take out the disadvantaged once a week.'

'Hmmm?' I ask staring at a man who is swatting flies in one of the boats.

'Aw most of them don't even know where they are,' he says.

I grit my teeth to stop myself laughing. I'm the sort of arsehole that laughs involuntarily at funerals.

'Think how lovely it must be though. To get out of the prison of a wheelchair for a few hours,' he observes, and the desire to laugh leaves as quickly as it came.

It's lovely to be on the water. We glide along. Lawrence is sat on the edge fishing. Randall is stood behind the big steery thing (sorry) drinking beer. Madame M is curled up on a bench on the deck with Mr Beau Tia in her lap reading a book. I crane around to see the title; The Power Of Now. I want to take it out of her hand and frisbee it overboard. Just look up, my friend, that's where the thing you're searching for lives. Easy for me to say though eh. I'm on the holiday of a lifetime, I don't have to work and I can fill every day with the things I want to do (turns out I really like lying on my back staring at the sky and doing nothing much at all). We'll call it Faux Enlightenment.

Randall shows me how to light the stove using a blend of white spirit and his own concoction which has a skull and cross bones drawn on it and I make a pot of coffee which I drink on deck watching the water and the sky and never getting bored. Randall points out Peel Island which used to be a Leper Colony.

'I don't like going on the island,' he confides. 'Its too sad. And I always think of that old wives tale that leperosy can be caught through the feet.'

We dock on an island somewhere round the corner from Moreton bay and ask to use the public BBQ. Randall buys us scooners of beer and he and Lawrence go about cooking the fish whilst Madame M and I prepare the grandest of salads.

As we eat the most delicious swordfish I have ever tasted I tell Randall about my reaction to the bad Mussels and how my throat still feels swollen and scratchy. He tells me to drink some of his magic water. Madame M rolls her eyes but as he explains she starts chipping in and it seems that this is something they believe in. Randall only drinks rain water. He filters it through, I think glass or porcelain, then leaves it to rest with pieces of silver and gold sat in it. And then he adds lemon from his garden.

'Water is where it all begins,' he says. 'Get control of your water and the rest will follow.'

I call him a wizard and he laughs. I drink the water and my throat is fine within minutes. Maybe because I really like Randall and want to believe him.

We get back on the boat around four pm because Randall wants to collect the crab baskets he dropped in the ocean on our way out and he wants to do it before it gets too dark.

We're all a lot quieter on the way back, tired from the sea air and the good food. I sit on deck and watch the colours change as the sun sets. There's a moment when the sea and the sky are indistinguishable and everything is washed in a pale blue grey. I miss my dad very much. He would have loved this. Maybe because Randall is such a good father, or maybe because he's such an old sea dog but I have the most childish irrational want for him to be back in life, sat here, drinking his rum, his pale blue eyes squinting out to sea, the smell of his cigar wafting around. He would have told me something about the sea that I don't know and I would have remembered it.

Before long it is pitch black and I go below deck and lie on the long cushioned bench which has been heated by the engine. It is the most comfortable thing and I fall asleep on my back and dream that I am lying on a magic carpet staring up at the night sky.

When I wake we are docking and once everything is secured we sit around the little wooden table with its lamp light at one end and I eat cheese from Tasmania and passion fruit from Randall's garden whilst the others gorge on oysters and we all yawn and agree that a thoroughly good time was had by all.
Mr Beau Tia says nothing.