Steve Braunias gives the low down on his life to the Statistics Department. Photo / Getty
Water bills, friendship and anxiety. Steve Braunias is put on the spot, for the sake of the nation.
The lady from the Department of Statistics was lurking by my front door the other day. "I've been expecting you," I said. The department had sent a letter. It was really very
interesting. It said that I was among the chosen few who had been selected to tell the department a vast amount of personal information in order to form a better understanding of our great nation. It said that a representative would be visiting. It said that I was bound by law to answer all their questions.
The lady from the Department of Statistics wanted to know when I would be available. "Tomorrow at six," I suggested. She said that would be okay. She said that it would take a long time. I said that I was a busy man, very busy indeed, but I understood that it was a legal obligation to submit to her interrogation, and in any case I wanted to help, was really very keen to make a meaningful contribution to an accurate portrait of our great nation.
The lady from the Department of Statistics turned up at six on the dot. She phoned a minute or two after the dot; I hadn't heard her knocking on the door, had in fact entirely forgotten the appointment, and was really very unprepared for visitors. "I'll be down in a second," I said, and then I changed out of my pyjamas, brushed my teeth, turned on the lights, put away the dishes, put on the kettle, straightened the magazines on the dining room table, and went downstairs in the name of our great nation.
The lady from the Department of Statistics set up her gear on the really very tidy dining room table. The cat jumped up on it. He'd wrapped himself around her feet when she was lurking by my front door the previous day, and wanted to renew their friendship. It was getting dark outside. The falling light outside the windows had a quality of despair, gloom, death; all over our great nation, in farmhouses and apartments and cottages and mansions, families were sitting down for dinner. I made tea for two.
