Right. Just today I was digging grade trenches, for the irrigation tubes. It's thirsty work, and hard yacker because it's so difficult. I kept digging a hole in the red sand, but the sand at the edges of the hole kept pouring back into the hole again, filling it up while I'm emptying it. There's nowt under the sand but more sand and a layer of shincracker stones. So I keep digging the same hole over and over, and just then Dicko walks past me with a thingummy for the soil evaporation cycle. So I put my shovel down, and I slap a crabfly away from my eyes while I says to Dicko: "Phwor! Sure is hot in this part of the scrub, innit, mate?"

Dicko gives me a shonky look, and he says: "I keep tellin' yer, Bodger. We're not in the scrub. This ain't Australia, remember? This here is Nwoz, on the planet Terry Nover."

"Well, what's that when it's at home, then?" I ask him.

"You boof-head, I've told yer before." Dicko puts down the heavy donk he's carrying. "Give a listen this time, and maybe it'll stick in yer noggin for once, right? Here's the drum: we're on the second planet orbiting a star called Delta Pavonis. The planet's been divvied up, y'see, into zones to be colonised by different Earth nations. The Yanks took a slice of this planet, the Pommies took a slice, and such like. This here crust of the planet is at the arse-end of nowhere, so of course they gave it to the Australians."

"Izzat why it's so hot, then?" I asked him.

"Nah, mate," says Dicko, with that smirk he gets when he's all up himself with a chance to show his cleverness. "This here planet Terry Nover is orbiting in yer bog-standard type of synchronous rotation round the yellow subgiant star Delta Pavonis, innit? The planet's sidereal period is almost pr'cisely equal to its orbital period, so the planet keeps one side of itself always facin' the sun, and t'other half always skivin' off nightside. There's one ridgy-didge section in the middle of the planet, where the la-di-dah posh colonists from Earth live, and where the sun Delta Pavonis rises and sets on a reg'lar basis, on account of planetary libration an' that. And beyond there is Totherside, where I'm told the sun never rises at all. But you and me, Bodger, we've got ourselves stuck into the Evernoon zone, in the zero meridian, where the sun's always within a few degrees of zenith. So it's always noon here, and you'll never see a nightfall till the day you cark it." Then Dicko picks up his thingummy and he hoicks it towards the donga hut.

"Dicko," says I, "how come you're such a cluey brains artist?"

"Can't help it," he says. "I was compozzed that way, same as you can't help it that you're compozzed to be a nong-head with a hole in yer brain for the memories to leak out. The Terryform Division scripted my DNA to make me smart, with high memory retention, and they scripted yours to make yer otherwise. The Terry Divvers figured you'd be good for repetitive physical labour if they brewed yer brain to have low memory retention. I keep tellin' yer this, and you keep forgettin' it every time I explain it. Now shift yer freckle, and let's get back to work on this here irrigation line."

"Right you are, Dicko," I says. "But it's a hot day, an' that. I wish we could choof off workin' for a while and just sit back with a couple of coldies."