While the girls had giggled about one of them having a flatulence problem while they were using the toilets, they were anything but amused by this very strange young man hanging around the toilets asking them about it.
"Piss off you weirdo, or we'll call the police," said one girl, she and her friends hurrying away.
Cornelius would have preferred to continue loitering around the toilet to see what would happen when a disabled person went into their lavatory to find the toilet covered in piss and them unable to do anything about it, but this probably wasn't going to happen, and Cornelius had other things to see and do on his excursion to Newtown.
A short way along, Cornelius saw three women walking a dog, the dog squatting down and taking a shit on a small patch of grass. Watching a dog having a dump was amusing to Cornelius, and when the dog finished and the lady who was walking it looked through her handbag for a doggy waste bag to clean up her dog's excrement, he decided to make things even funnier.
Cornelius stood with his back to the dog shit, then lowered his arse down over it, contorting his face to make it look like he was straining while defecating, making flatulent noises with his mouth while laughing. The women with the dog and the people passing by however were not so impressed or amused by Cornelius's antics, some crossing the road to get away from him.
Moving away from the dog shit, Cornelius made his way to his next destination, a couple of rubbish dumpsters. Cornelius, who had a plastic garbage bag folded into his back pocket, dived into one of the enormous bins like an ibis, rifling through the trash looking for cans and other items that he could recycle for extra money. On some occasions, he also found other interesting items he could scavenge, such as pornographic magazines.
Today, Cornelius was successful in his efforts and when he had finished his dumpster diving, had not only a garbage bag full of empty drink cans but an inflatable crocodile lilo and two blow up sex dolls, one male and one female. Cornelius wasn't sure exactly what he would do with them, maybe use them to freak out his Dad in a practical joke, but carried them back to his car along with the bag of cans. His Dad would probably go off his head again if he saw the cans, having previously banned Cornelius from bringing garbage back to the house after his scavenging expeditions, but Cornelius didn't give a shit.
In the disabled bay where he was parked, Cornelius could see council parking inspectors doing their rounds so increased his pace, getting into his car and driving away at speed and avoiding a fine for parking in a handicapped space.
All that dumpster diving and rummaging through rubbish had made Cornelius hungry, and it was getting close to noon. Cornelius drove to a fast food restaurant, and stood in the busy lunchtime queue behind two clearly gay young men, who ordered two hot dogs.
"Two sausages there, boys?" Cornelius laughed.
The two gay young men turned around. "Excuse me?" the first one asked.
"Do you have some sort of problem?" enquired the second.
"No, no problem," said Cornelius. He watched as the two gays turned their backs to get their order, then pretended to sneeze loudly. "Ah, ah -- faggot!"
The two young men glared at him as they went on their way.
"Bye homosexuals, have a nice day eating your sausages!" Cornelius called while waving, before going up to the counter. The staff were clearly wary of him, but given that they wanted to avoid a likely scene if they refused him service and asked him to leave the restaurant, they served him his order of a hamburger, large fries and cola, hoping he would leave without making a fuss, which for once in his life Cornelius did.
Cornelius ate his lunch in his car, as the noise and activity of bustling Newtown went on around him, planes either taking off from or landing at the nearby airport. Heading for home, Cornelius was driving back across the Harbour Bridge, this time at the correct speed limit and in the center lane when he noticed the packaging and empty drink container from his lunch, and thought he probably should have disposed of them back in Newtown.
Not to worry, there was an easy solution. Cornelius simply opened up his window and chucked the fast food containers and cup right out the side and onto the road, a van beeping as the lid of the soft drink cup came off and melting ice cubes went all over the windscreen.
Noticing but not caring Cornelius drove into the northern suburbs heading for his parents' house, only stopping briefly at a delicatessen to buy a carton of chocolate flavored milk. Nearing home, Cornelius looked at the skies over Sydney.
Today was typical weather for a coastal sub-tropical city like Sydney in the autumn. It was a fine and sunny morning but now clouding over, with rain coming in for the late afternoon and a likely thunderstorm tonight. Cornelius wished it was raining now, as he spied the much hated Mr. Cole from across the street walking down the road that led to the street where he and the Hawkins family lived.
He was on the other side of the road from where Cornelius's car was driving so Cornelius couldn't emulate the prank last night of beeping his horn at him, but then an idea entered his mind and he turned into the street, parking on the lawn of his parents' house.
Henry Cole did not notice Cornelius's car as it drove by him, but as he turned into his own street and walked to his house he noticed the vehicle at the Hawkins house and glared disapprovingly at it through his glasses, hoping the owner was nowhere nearby. Mr. Cole had spent the morning running errands. These included lodging the latest official complaint about the Hawkins family with authorities, drawing out pension money at the bank with his passbook and getting his prescription filled at the pharmacy, Mr. Cole a Type 2 diabetic bordering on Type 1, and also suffering high blood pressure and angina, all conditions that required regular medication.
Pausing to check his mail and extricating a water bill, Mr. Cole had no idea just how close Cornelius actually was to him, a matter of a few feet, his much younger adversary lurking in the cover of the oleanders that grew around the front fence.
While hiding in the bushes waiting, Cornelius looked at the two things that would enable him to play the best ever prank on Mr. Cole to date. One was the carton of chocolate flavored milk, which Cornelius had opened, but not to drink. At school, there was a practice known as 'choc-milking', which involved tossing a full, opened carton of chocolate milk at another student, very popular with the boys. Now Mr. Cole would get to experience the joys of being choc-milked for himself.
The second thing Cornelius had was a small tape recorder on which was a cassette of vicious dogs barking and growling. Cornelius kept it in his car at all times, and it was just great for practical jokes. He had pranked his wife with it, but Danielle had PMS when he had done it so wasn't very impressed. Cornelius had also pranked his parents with it, leaping out at them in a darkened room, but they weren't impressed either, Alistair punching Cornelius in the head for it.
Best of all was the reaction when he used it on Erica, his nervous younger sister screaming and leaping about six feet in the air and presumably needed two things afterwards, a roll of toilet paper and some clean knickers. Erica had always been cannon fodder for some of Cornelius's jokes, such as the time in high school where in English Cornelius's class had to write about a problem and how they would attempt to solve it.
Cornelius had written about his concerns about his sister, how he had noticed her hiding food and disposing of it later, making herself vomit either in the bathroom or down the back yard and had laxatives hidden in her bedroom. Given skinny Erica's willow-like frame and nervous, high-strung personality, by that afternoon she found herself in the office having a meeting with the school psychologist, guidance officer, deputy female principal and Mrs. Hawkins to address her eating disorder. It had taken a long time for the mortified Erica and her mother to convince the authorities that Cornelius's claims were lies made up to get attention and that she was not an anorexic or bulimic.
Smirking at this recollection, Cornelius got into position as Mr. Cole drew level, then leaped out of the bushes, playing the tape recorder of the barking, snarling dogs at full volume. Cole went rigid and spun around in shock, before Cornelius let fly with the carton of chocolate milk.
