Brian the Banker Lends a Hand
Tuesday 7th November 2006


“Those thieving bastards! My post hole digger’s gone, along with about 200 litres of diesel. This is getting seriously out of control.” Clayton Piles was on the warpath. “What did you lose, Harry?”

Uncle Harry looked at the list in his hand, “that new generator I bought after the snow, a few power tools. Oh yeah, and they drove my 4-wheeler into the water race.”

Clayton and Harry were comparing notes on the latest in a series of farm thefts. “I phoned the police but they’re not interested. It’s time we took the law into our own hands, Harry.”

“What should we do?”

“I dunno, but I’ll be in touch when I think of something.”

Clayton’s ute spun out of Harry’s yard in a cloud of dust. It rattled down the gravel drive, passing a powder blue Holden inching towards the house along the grass verge. Harry’s heart sank. Here was more trouble – Brian, from the bank.

The Holden slipped quietly into the yard. It was a marvel: glossy, polished, totally unmarked by mud or dust. Since bank managers had started coming out to farms Harry and Gladys had noted their efforts to fit in to rural life: the spray-on mud and carefully-aged gumboots. One even had a bale of hay and a few woolpacks in the boot of his car.

Brian was not one of those. He made no secret of his hatred for dirt and dust, for the muck and smells of farming life. Brian drove on the grass to protect his bodywork and parked as close to the house as possible, to save wear and tear on his guccis.

Brian was tall and gangly, about 30, with a permanent five o’clock shadow, an irrepressible grin and a voracious appetite for Gladys’s scones.

He was also good at his job, which was usually bad news for Uncle Harry.

Harry walked over to the Holden as Brian unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, propped his sunglasses onto his forehead and grinned broadly, “gidday Harry, how’s the cash flow?” he gave his usual greeting.

Harry skirted the obvious answer. “Come and have a cuppa, Brian.”

“Any chance of a scone?”

Over tea and scones Brian got down to business. “It’s the same old problem for you crop and lamb fellas, you’re not earning enough.”

Gladys chimed in. “I’ve been telling Harry we have to diversify. You know, get a bit more income.”

“Your situation’s like this,” said Brian through a mouthful of scone. “You’re sitting on this block of land whose value has gone through the roof, but you’re not benefiting from it. Meanwhile your overdraft’s getting bigger and prices are down.”

“And you’re going to tell us we should increase our mortgage,” said Harry wearily.

“Well, that would help the overdraft and give you some working capital. But I know you won’t go for that so I’ve got another idea. Why don’t you do a bit of trading?”

“What? Livestock?”

“Anything. I’m talking about TradeMe. You can buy and sell anything. I’m right into it. Look at the stuff in this room alone.” Brian swept his arm around Harry and Gladys’s kitchen. “See those candlesticks on the mantelpiece?”

“They were a wedding present,” gasped Gladys.

“Polish them up, stick a photo on the website and you’ll be surprised what people will pay.” Brian was in full cry, “at home I sell off all the birthday and Christmas presents I don’t want. Then you get a bit of capital and you do a bit of buying, a bit of trading and you’re in business.”

Harry could see Gladys was not impressed. “Perhaps we’ll start with a few things from around the farm,” he offered.

Out in the yard Brian was a fountain of suggestions. “What about that hay shed? D’you need that? Or that cattle crate?”

“Perhaps the cattle crate could go, but I’d forget about the hayshed - it belongs to my neighbour.”

“Does it? I can never work out where your place ends and Clayton’s begins.”

“Mine ends at the pine trees, Brian, same as always.” Harry had given up trying to describe his boundaries to Brian. “I’ll tell you what. You set up this TradeMe thing. Start with the cattle crate and see what happens.”

Brian had his laptop open in seconds.

A few days later the cattle crate was gone and Harry had a few thousand dollars in his TradeMe account. “I’m doing a bit of buying for you,” quipped Brian over the phone. “You’ll be getting a few packages.”

Uncle Harry forgot about TradeMe for a day or two. Another round of farm thefts saw him lose a stack of fence posts and half a dozen chooks. Gladys got a call from Clayton’s wife Joan the same day to say they’d lost some chooks too. Now the women were on the warpath.

A few days later a courier van delivered 30 large cardboard boxes. Harry opened one and pulled out a plastic garden gnome.

“Why the hell are you spending my money on garden gnomes?” he barked down the phone to Brian.

“No worries, Harry. We got them dirt cheap and they’ll move nicely in the Christmas trade.”

A week later the gnomes had gone, replaced by 400 metres of curtaining from a refurbished hotel in Tauranga. But the promised windfall had yet to appear.

Harry called Brian again. “Look, Brian. I appreciate you’re trying to improve my cash flow but perhaps we’d better stick to selling stuff off the farm that I don’t need. If you want to buy something just get Glad a few new chooks”

“Sure, no worries, Harry. I’ll drop around at the weekend and scope a few more items we can put up for auction.”

Harry missed Brian’s next visit to the farm. He spent the weekend with Clayton and a few of the neighbours planning some strategies to manage the farm thefts. “The police reckon the beggars will try flogging off the stuff they nicked,” asserted Clayton, “so we have to keep our ears to the ground.”

Early on Monday morning Uncle Harry was surprised to see the blue Holden purring up his driveway. Brian shot out of the car like he’d won LOTTO.

“Brian, how’s my cash flow?” asked Harry.

“Gone through the roof, Harry. The stuff I posted really hit the spot with buyers. In fact I shot in here last night to ship off some of what we’d sold.”

“And what exactly did we sell?”

“Well, there were those drums of weedkiller in the back of the shed, that old auger you hadn’t used in a while and the irrigator from the far paddock, which went for a packet to a guy down in Fairlie.”

“What irrigator?”

“The one over in the paddock behind the pine trees.”

“Bloody hell, Brian!” Harry exploded. “That’s not mine, it’s Clayton’s.”

“Hang on. You said your property ended…”

“…at the pine trees. Not on the other side of them.”

Just then Clayton roared into the yard in his ute. “They stole me bloody irrigator, Harry! But don’t worry, we’ve got the thieving buggers!”

“Oh yes,” said Harry guardedly. Brian was edging towards his car.

“Yeah. Y’know I said they’d try to flog it off? When I told the police they ran a check. Apparently somebody sold an irrigator on TradeMe yesterday and the police say it’s a local account. Imagine that, Harry. One of our neighbours has been doing us over! Wait until we catch the scumbag. We’ll teach him a lesson, eh?”

The blue Holden was creeping quietly out of the yard.

“What’s up with your banker?” asked Clayton. “Typical, isn’t it. They always vanish just when things are looking up.”