by Haynes, Jim
And another the seat of his pants.
He’s back on the street, but now he’s obsessed,
‘That Lunch might be a goer.
I’ll go down the Royal and back it,’ says Dan,
‘Before the odds get any lower.’
So Dan staggers off to the other pub,
At the other end of the shops.
Halfway down there’s the Chinese restaurant—
That’s exactly where Dan stops.
And he stares at the sign in the window.
It says, ‘Lunch is 11 to 2’.
‘They’re backing the thing for a fortune,’ says Dan,
‘That minister musta knew!’
‘Fancy missin’ out on 12s,
That’s just the thing to spoil
Me afternoon, I’ll hurry up,
I’ll back it at the Royal.’
Dan staggers on and he’s almost there
When he stops with a strangled yell.
‘Lunch 1 to 2’, says the blackboard sign
At the door of the Royal Hotel.
‘Bloody odds-on, I’ve missed it,’ says Dan,
‘Me chance of a fortune is wrecked!’
Then he slides down the wall of the Royal Hotel,
Booze and exercise take their effect.
He sleeps through the paddy-wagon ride
But he wakes when they lock the cell.
He hears them walking away with the keys
And he knows he’ll have to yell.
‘I wanna know about Lunch,’ yells Dan,
‘And I’ve got a terrible thirst.’
‘Bad luck about lunch,’ the sergeant yells back,
’Cos I’m telling ya, sober up first.’
‘Sober Up first, eh,’ says Dipso Dan,
‘So much for the minister’s hunch.’
He lies down on the bed, ‘Sober Up first, eh,
Thank gawd I didn’t back Lunch!’
BE CAREFUL WITH BABIES
LENNIE LOWER
Lennie Lower was, to my mind, the funniest and most Australian of all humorists. His humour has a zany and often black feel to it and it was way ahead of its time. It’s the kind of politically incorrect stuff that Australians really laugh at, but it seldom gets written down.
Babies are in again. It is in a spirit of kindness that we proffer instruction and advice, which follow:
The top part of the baby is the part with the knob on it.
The ends which wave about are the legs.
It is not generally known that the baby must be held knob part up if the thing is to make any progress.
Babies on the bottle should be taught to use an opener at about three months. The label should be removed, so that the child will not form any prejudices against a certain brand which may affect him in later life.
At about six months, chewing should commence, either on a bone ring or on the doctor’s bill. Things being as they are, we recommend the doctor’s bill, because a bone ring is just about finished in two years.
At two years, the child’s left leg should be tightly lashed to its left ear and rapidly whirled around. This will give it a good idea of what constitutes a good citizen and taxpayer. It will probably kill the kid, but everything is for the best.
THE BACHELORS’ GUIDE TO THE CARE OF THE YOUNG
LENNIE LOWER
I have noticed with astonishment the absolute ignorance of bachelors in regard to the care of the young.
To begin at the beginning. It will be noticed in a fresh baby that it is of a pale, prawn-like colour, and is bald and toothless, exhibiting all the evidences of senility. This is the usual thing, and the minder is not to be alarmed.
The first thing noticeable about the baby is the yowl. This must be stopped at all costs. There are various methods, but the principle to keep in mind is . . . ‘at all costs’. Watches are very good; a firm hold must be kept on the chain, however, as I have on two occasions lost a perfectly good watch through the child swallowing it.
This mania for swallowing and sucking things may be indulged to an almost unlimited extent. Doorknobs are excellent, though the holding of the baby to the knob is somewhat tiring. This may be overcome by unscrewing the hinges of the door and placing it in an accessible position.
Babies of an artistic nature or of practically any nature, may be left with a tin of stove polish or a bottle of red ink or any other medium for an almost indefinite period.
In cases of persistent howling, a belt passed over the top of the head and buckled securely under the chin is an infallible remedy. This must be used only in extreme cases.
In handling, care must be taken that the baby is held in a more or less vertical position, the head being uppermost. The child at times has a tendency to jerk from the holder, and in the case of a beginner this may lead to disastrous results. Sticking-plaster and other first-aid appliances will be found to be very useful on these occasions, and a supply should always be kept on hand.
Where a baby has to be held for any length of time, a short loop of stout twine passed around the neck, and fastened to the wrist of the holder, will prevent contact with the floor.
Never allow a dog to lick the face of a baby, as any number of diseases may be communicated, and, in the case of a valuable dog, this is most serious, and may lead to its loss, or, at the best, a falling-off of condition, and an absence of lustre in the coat.
On two or three occasions I have found the addition of about one third of a cupful of rum to the feeding milk very effective. Only the best OP rum may be used, as babies are very delicately constituted internally. A better way is for the minder to have four or five cupfuls himself, when it will be found that an extraordinary number of ways of amusing the child will suggest themselves.
Should the little one inadvertently eat anything it shouldn’t, thoroughly rinse or gargle the mouth with phenol, lysol, or any other good disinfectant.
In undressing the baby for the purposes of putting it to bed, bathing, etcetera, the beginner will find great difficulty in undoing the numerous buttons, tapes and various other fastenings with which it is lashed. An efficient and obvious method is to insert a penknife between the skin and the clothing and peel the mass off in one operation.
In bathing the child, never fill the bath right up, as it is only in exceptional cases that it will float. A cold shower and a brisk rub down with a stiff towel will have an invigorating and tonic effect.
In conclusion, a little helpful advice to the unwilling minder will not be amiss. Should you have been lured into minding a baby before, and wish to escape a second demand, a convincing excuse must be made. Lodge meetings and appointments, business or otherwise, are received with suspicion. By far the best is the statement that you feel your diphtheria coming back, and that you seem to be breaking out in funny red spots all over the body. This may be said in a conversational manner just as the request is about to be sprung. I have used this or something similar for some time now, and it has never failed yet.
THE MUTE BOY
JIM HAYNES
This is a version of a very common yarn about the stoic nature of the Aussie bloke who never speaks unless there’s a reason to. I put it to rhyme.
The boy had never said a word, his mother was distraught.
He’d been at school almost a year—how could the lad be taught?
A mute for all of his six years—not one word had he spoken,
He seemed okay in other ways but his mother’s heart was broken.
Then one day from his breakfast plate he slowly raised his head,
Flexed his lips a few times and—‘This toast is burnt,’ he said.
His cocky dad stared at the lad and slowly shook his head,
‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ were the words his startled father said.
His mum was overcome with joy and clasped him to her breast,
‘My darling boy, my dearest joy! You speak like all the rest!
Why did you never speak before, dear lad, if you knew how
?’
‘Well,’ he observed, ‘everything was quite all right ’til now!’
TOO MUCH ARGUMENT
This is often quoted as the ‘great Australian joke’—it’s the forerunner of many jokes, including the previous piece of verse. Supposedly it shows the deadpan stoic nature of the typical Aussie male or, more accurately, the typical Aussie bushman.
Two swaggies had been tramping the long roads that stretch away to the horizon for many months, sharing tucker and working together when there was a bit of work, sharing their few pennies and buying tobacco and never bothering about which one had the most tea or smokes or made the camp fire each night.
One day, they tramped past a very dead animal lying several dozen yards off the track but swarming with flies and smelling like your worst nightmare. The object was black and putrid and they hurried on past it as quickly as possible.
That night in their camp, one bloke lit his pipe and remarked, ‘That dead ox was the worst thing I’ve smelled in a long time, didn’t it pong?’
‘It wasn’t an ox,’ replied his mate, ‘it was a horse.’
With that he turned in and was soon asleep in his swag.
Next morning he wakes to find his companion of many months gone, along with his swag and billy and half the rations.
Under a rock near the camp fire he finds a note which reads, ‘I’m humping bluey on me own from now on; there’s too much argument in this camp.’
JH
AUSSIE SPORTING CLANGERS
I have always loved those stupid things that commentators say in the heat of the moment. When you are not working to a script, as you never can be when commentating live sport, it’s so easy to shove both feet into your mouth!
When I was at university in Britain, we’d always note down the funniest radio and television sports commentary blunders and share them at the dinner table.
Even the best and most famous commentators drop wonderful clangers. Back when colour television was coming in, snooker commentator Whispering Ted Lowe once whispered, ‘He’s going for the brown—which for those of you watching in black and white is the ball directly behind the pink.’
Famous Rugby League broadcaster Eddie Waring once said, in a moment of excitement, ‘There’s only one minute and sixty seconds left to go!’ while legendary motor racing commentator Murray Walker said, ‘Excuse me while I interrupt myself to give you the lap times.’
Believe it or not, when I was at university in Wales, we used to listen to Irish radio and they had the snooker on radio. One night, the commentator was so excited he said, ‘And he’s lining up dis very difficult shot and . . . oh, you shoulda seen dat!’
My favourite comment from that time wasn’t from a broadcaster. The Welsh have a wonderful way of putting things and it was the president of the Welsh Rugby Union who said, in his annual speech, ‘Well, we didn’t have a very successful year internationally. We only beat Western Samoa, and it’s a good thing we weren’t playing all of Samoa!’
But I digress. Australian sports commentators are as good as any in the world at saying really stupid things on air. Rugby League broadcaster Rex Mossop was famous for getting tongue-tied when things became exciting. I remember poor Rex having to commentate a surfing competition, of all things, in his early days on television. He wasn’t sure of the terminology and had probably never heard of a wipeout. A spectacular fall from a large wave was described by Rex as, ‘Oh, no, he’s had a prang!’
Rex’s forte was saying the same thing in different ways. My favourite example was the time Cronulla half-back Perry Haddock scored and Rex explained, ‘A great try by Haddock, and he’s only a small, diminutive, little fellow.’
Stating the ‘bleeding obvious’ is a thing that we all do when we put our mouths into gear before our brains. After the adrenalin rush of winning, it’s hard to focus on speeches. Greg Norman once announced at a presentation, ‘I owe everything to my parents—especially my mother and father.’ Richie Benaud’s classic was, ‘That slow motion replay doesn’t show how fast the ball was travelling.’
Norman ‘Nugget’ May was renowned for being excitable and ignoring all athletes but the Australians. We all know his ‘Gold, gold, gold for Australia!’ commentary, but once at an Olympics he completely ignored the winner and runner up and called, ‘Bronze—bronze for Australia!’
Nugget’s best example of stating the bleeding obvious was when he announced, on the first night of an Olympics, ‘Michelle Forde wins Australia’s first Olympic Medal in four years!’
Veteran ABC radio ‘sports-caster’ David Morrow added to the list of classics when he announced, towards the end of a rugby game, ‘It’s very hot and I bet some of these forwards are really looking forward to relieving themselves in the bath.’
That’s a case of not realising that certain words have different meanings. Some blunders, however, are just weird. Let’s end with this one, from ABC’s Peter Wilkins, which just makes no sense at all! ‘The half time score is a great one in favour of Australia . . . Scotland nil, Australia nil.’
Errr—right!
JH
HARE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
JIM HAYNES AND PADDY RYAN
Now, I know this is a true story because Paddy Ryan told it to me himself, and I helped him to write it all down, just as it happened. As you can see, it happened in rhymed verse.
We’ve got real beaut neighbours, we help each other out,
Last June I went and worked for them when they were short a rouseabout.
So, when they took a holiday to the Gold Coast for a week,
They asked if I’d drop in each day to feed their chooks and sheep.
Now, I had this border-collie pup that I was trying to train
He’d yelp and jump and piddle when you let him off the chain.
So I let him run beside me bike when I went next door to see
That things there at the neighbour’s place were satisfactory.
I checked the sheep for water while the pup yapped round my legs,
Then I went down to the chookhouse to pick up any eggs.
I was only gone a minute and yet, when I came back,
I saw a scene of devastation, ’twas an unprovoked attack!
You see, the neighbour’s daughter had a rabbit for a pet,
And what I saw in their backyard—it gives me nightmares yet!
A rabbit hutch turned upside down and you could guess the cause
’Cos that pup stood in a fresh dug hole with something in his jaws.
I nearly died right on the spot! How could that mongrel do it?
I quickly grabbed the rabbit before he had a chance to chew it!
Right away I saw it was too late—the thing was dead.
I coulda kicked myself—but I kicked the dog instead!
The dog shot through and left me with that bunny on me hands,
To stay cobbers with our neighbours I’d have to make some plans.
As I tucked the bunny in me shirt and pedalled down the track
I thought, ‘I’ll just fill the hole in, clean him up and put him back.’
No one was home at our place so I washed him in the tub,
Took Mum’s loofah from the shower and gave him a good scrub.
He seemed to have a lot of dirt stuck to his fur and claws,
So I scrubbed him with Dad’s toothbrush and I combed his little paws.
He was starting to look better—but before I took him back
I thought I’d take a look at all those bottles on the rack.
The shampoo sure improved him, so I thought, ‘Ahh, what the hell—’
I grabbed the other bottle and conditioned him as well.
He only needed drying now—the end was getting near,
So I hung him on the clothes line by a peg on either ear.
An hour later he was dry—I thought, ‘That’s nearly it.’
But I got Mum’s new hair dryer and I fluffed him up a bit.
He was clean and dry and
fluffy—it was probably enough,
But to finish off I touched him up with our gran’s powder puff.
I hid him safely in the shed where he’d be out of sight.
Next day I filled the hole in and I sat the hutch upright.
The day they were due home I slipped the body in the cage.
They’d think he died of natural causes—heart failure, old age.
I checked the stock and tidied up then I was on me way.
Of course, as you’d expect he would, my neighbour rang next day.
He thanked me for me trouble, ‘But here’s something weird . . .’ he said.
‘We found our rabbit in his hutch really clean . . . and dead!
‘His location and his freshness have us puzzled . . . not his health!
See, he died the day before we left . . . I buried him myself!’
APRIL FOOL!
On the morning of 1 April 1978, a barge appeared in Sydney Harbour towing a giant iceberg. Retailer and adventurer Dick Smith had been propounding his scheme to tow icebergs from Antarctica to solve the water shortage, and he had apparently succeeded. The radio stations were full of the news and a large crowd gathered.
Dick moored the iceberg near the Opera House and said he would sell ice cubes called ‘Dicksicles’ for ten cents each to improve the flavour of any drink they cooled. Phone calls started pouring into radio stations and more crowds gathered along the shore. Then it began to rain and the fire fighting foam and shaving cream that the ‘iceberg’ was really made of washed off, exposing the white plastic sheets beneath.
Dick also announced on another April Fool’s Day, when the tunnel sections were being towed into the harbour, that it wasn’t a tunnel after all, but a road, and that it floated during peak hour and sank during the rest of the day.
On 1 April 1975, Adelaide’s This Day Tonight news program revealed that the country would soon be converting to metric time—100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, and 20-hour days. Furthermore, seconds would become millidays, minutes become centidays, and hours become decidays. The report included an interview with Deputy Premier Des Corcoran, who had agreed to give credence to the hoax. He praised the new time system and said South Australia was leading the way with decitime.