Chapter Two

IN HIS OWN IMAGE

And it was the second day of the Creation; and Bruce removed His pencil from His ear and studied thereof the matter affixed to it; and scratched He His lower parts; and thought He for a sore age about the heaven and the earth.

For, he had to admit, His soul meet had a good point. After all, He thought unto Himself, what good’s a deep if it’s got darkness upon the face of it? And come to that, what good’s an earth if it’s without form and void?

And then in a flash, as swiftly as a blowie will descend upon a steaming dag, divine inspiration didst dawn on Him. And He threw down His pencil, and He jumped into the air, and He shouted, "Let there be light!" And there was light; and He saw the light, that it was good; and hadst He gotten around to creating the moon, He would have been over it.

Then He held His heaven and earth plans before Him, and He cleared His throat and said, "Let the waters under the firmament be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear". And it was so; and this Creation lark was money for old rope, He thought unto Himself. And he called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He seas; and he had absolutely no idea why he had called them such; for He could have called them virtually anything.

And it was now fairly late on the second day, yet a task of great importance was before him; for what would be the point of creating a heaven and an earth if He only had His nosey neighbours to glorify Him in His greatness and, perhaps, a few of His mates from down the pub? So, in the blinking of an eye, He created Man in His own image; and male and female created He them; and He blessed them and said unto them, "Go forth and multiply, but go easy on the old horizontal jogging because I haven’t had time to create the Pill yet".

Then He said, "Bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and the feathered fowl that may fly above the earth, so that Man may pass his time by blasting them out of existence, just for the fun of it"; and it was so. And He created abundant fishes, and crabs, and oysters, and lobsters thermidor, and a multitude of other delicacies which Man could pluck from the seas in order to sell to expensive harbourside restaurants at grossly inflated prices.

Then, although His tea was on the table, He created every winged fowl after their kind, paying particular attention to those that went nicely with a cranberry sauce; and, despite His soul meet, Gaylene, loudly threatening to despatch His tucker to the dunny, He created great whales and placed them with the fishes unto the Seas. Then He said, "Let the Earth bring forth an abundance of cattle after their kind, and other hoofed creatures thereof"; for winged fowl which may fly above the Earth certainly hath their uses, but are a bit annoying on your average barbie, what with all those feathers and things.

And in an instant it was so; but Bruce wasn’t finished yet, for what good was a barbie without creatures which creepeth, and insects which biteth, and, yea, those big fat blowies which landed on your food and vomiteth. So, between Home & Away and Neighbours on the second day of the Creation, Bruce created every small thing that creepeth upon the Earth, and every insect that doth have sting and that buzzeth about the firmament, and placed them unto every back yard of the Earth; for, verily, Bruce loved His little joke.

And He saw that it was good; and He hadn’t enjoyed Himself so much since His granny had dropped her dentures into the wombat stew down at Ned Kelly’s Fill-Yer-Face Gourmet Tucker Shack all those millennia ago.

And, with Gaylene screaming commandments to Him about taking her to bingo, Bruce reluctantly called an end to His work of creation for the day; and, although he had accomplished a great deal in a short time, His Grand Design had clearly shown that seven days would be the limit of His housekeeping budget; and He had a distinct feeling that He would be scratching for cash long before that.

Chapter 3 - Man's Dominion