By about the fifth round, all of the men were sitting on a forty-five degree angle. This was only made ok by the fact that they were all on that angle and in essence holding each other up. They were like a circle of dominoes placed too close together so that when one fell, the chain reaction merely bolstered the entire circle.
By the tenth round, they were all doing the most infuriating thing a group of people can do in a pub at the snow. They were singing. Loudly. And they were singing one song in particular: ‘There’s snow business like snow business’. And seriously loudly. They were like a super-annoying four-man Ethel Merman.
After thirteen rounds, the men had all but lost the use of their bodies. My father was now standing up, but his head was permanently attached to the top of a table. At his hips he was bent at right angles and he was singing into an ash tray. With all subtlety out the window, he had begun singing ‘snow’ in place of all the words that even vaguely rhymed with snow. And to make the point even clearer he was drawing out ‘There’s snowwww business like snowwww business, like snowwww business I snowwww!’
It was about this time that Dad noticed that Richard’s most recent chorus wasn’t quite as resounding as it should have been. As round fourteen hit the table, he took a close look at it and asked the poignant question: ‘Richard, why does yours have bubbles in it?’
It turned out that Richard had tipped the barman earlier in proceedings and every second round, as everyone else downed the culinary equivalent of aviation fuel, Richard had been swilling soda water. As the group instantly became a mob, Richard offered a feeble explanation about someone having to keep their wits about them to lead the long walk home. Unsurprisingly, the mob didn’t buy it.
That’s the thing about mobs: they are notoriously unreceptive to rationalisation. This may go some way to explaining why mobs seldom achieve anything positive. Mobs never spontaneously improve the world. I’ve never seen five drunken guys get kicked out of a nightclub and show their disdain for the system by picking up litter. For that matter, a mob has never, on the spur of the moment, participated in an adopt-a-highway scheme. The closest a mob has ever come to road beautification is deciding that a bunch of witches hats would look much better up a tree.
On this occasion, the mob was focused on the administration of ad hoc justice. Richard, they declared, would need to drink six shots of slivovitz to catch up. Once the sentence was handed down, they immediately launched into a recital of the evergreen classic ‘There’s snow business like snow business’. With the din of an anarchic show tune ringing in his ears, Richard drank six shots of slivovitz and immediately regretted being born.
When all the men were equally ferschnickered on thirteen shots apiece, they set off for home, stumbling and singing, the long way around the mountain.
And promptly got lost.
Back at the lodge the snowball fight had escalated. There were now five lodges involved, some of whom had big kids who wanted to hurt us. After four hours of heavy skirmishing, things had settled into a stalemate. One of the lodges had set up something of a sniper’s nest on their roof and up there were three big kids with freakishly good eyesight who were accurate throwers. They had a pile of pre-compacted snowballs, could pick off anyone who showed themselves and were holding the entire neighbourhood hostage.
A kid at one lodge had attempted to get them off the roof with a hose, but the hose had frozen, his mum had cracked it and he had to go inside immediately and watch the rest of the fight forlornly from the window. Gee, we envied that kid. He was indoors, safe and warm. We, on the other hand, were pinned down behind a frozen tree, completely unable to move. Pretty soon we descended into trench-talk about all of the great things back home at the lodge.
‘Remember how we used to play that imperfect yet strangely comforting game of Uno?’
‘The one that used to go on forever, no end in sight and no idea how one may achieve victory?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. God I miss that utterly pointless game.’
‘You know what I miss? That game of Kerplunk with dried Milo over the holes so you could only get about five sticks in.’
‘The one with only four marbles?’
‘Yeah. Gee we would play a game of that quickly.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘It’s best not to think about it. Hey, remember Miss July, 1974?’
‘I sure do.’
‘I bet you wouldn’t be so cold if she was out here with us now.’
‘No. But I bet she’d be pretty freezing.’
Laughter.
‘You hear about that kid that got busted with the hose?’
‘I hear he bought it.’
‘Nah. I hear he got a free pass back home. I bet you right now he’s dry and warm and drinking Milo by a fire.’
‘Well, I know one thing. He wouldn’t be missing this godforsaken mess.’
‘That’s for sure. That lucky sonofabitch.’
Meanwhile somewhere on the mountain the men were properly lost. With each rendition of ‘There’s snow business like snow business’ they lost a little more strength, enthusiasm and hope. Before long the song had subsided to something of a mumbled mantra, a suitable soundtrack to a death march. Sensing the group was about to give up and begin carving their wills into the surrounding trees, Richard attempted to take charge of the situation, stepping up onto a tree stump to address the group.
‘Gentlemen. We must . . .’
Richard, overwhelmed by a sense of purpose and a skinful of slivovitz, fell backwards off his makeshift plinth and into a snowdrift. While the slapstick interlude did have the effect of raising morale, it wasn’t quite the lofty address he had hoped for. It took him a while to gather himself and once again clamber up into a speaking position. By the time he spoke again he had everyone’s undivided attention.
‘As I was saying . . . Gentlemen. We must not give up hope. I assure you that I will lead you all back home. For I was a regimental sergeant major and I have extensive field experience in the field of navigation and orienteering in the field.’
There was a half-hearted smattering of applause at this point. The men were reassured by his confidence but unnerved by his overuse of the world ‘field’. Sensing that his support was on a knife-edge, Richard attempted to bring it home.
‘I can tell you exactly which direction we are heading in because I know for a fact that moss only ever grows on the south side of a tree.’
Richard then stepped off the stump and strode towards the nearest tree. With a generous helping of theatre he made a grand gesture of stooping over to inspect the trunk. All the men huddled around to inspect it with him. The sense of optimistic anticipation built within the group, all of them conveniently ignoring the fact that even if they did know which way was south that really wouldn’t lead them any closer to the lodge. This, it turns out was the least of their problems, as they all saw at the same time that moss was growing all the way around the tree.
Maintaining his role as the unflappable leader, Richard stepped back onto the stump.
‘Gentlemen . . . I believe we’re fucked.’
Back in the village things had gone from bad to worse. Amid sporadic fire, we were still pinned down behind a tree unable to move, only now one of the kids in our group needed to go to the toilet. In an attempt to bring about a ceasefire, my sister, Suzie, pulled a white hanky out of her pocket and waved it above her head, making it just visible above our fortification.
‘Hold your fire!’
There was a pause that seemed to go on forever. The world stood still as we waited for a response. And because we were in the snow it was that special stillness you can’t experience anywhere else in the world where you can actually hear the snowflakes falling on your gloves. Finally the snipers spoke.
‘What do you want?’
After some reassurance from Suzie, the unfortunate child spoke. ‘I need to go to the toilet. I want everyone to hold their fire while I walk to the lodge to go to the toilet.’
‘Will you come back?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What if you go inside and go to the toilet but then sneak out the back door and come around and ambush us?’
‘I hadn’t even thought of that.’
‘So are you coming back or not?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You should have to come back and go behind the tree again.’
‘Ok. But you have to not throw any snowballs when I come out again. Do we have a deal?’
‘Deal.’
‘Ok. I’m standing up now.’
He stood up, and was immediately pummelled by heavy fire from a number of directions. He dived back behind the tree and began crying. It was only later that we found out that a snowball had hit him directly in the bladder, causing both urine and dignity to seep out of him. War, as they say, is hell.
And it was here we remained, pinned down, unable to move, never gaining an inch, one of us drenched in his own piss and tears. The sense of futility and constant stalemate gave it the feel of the Gaza Strip in winter or playing Uno in a lodge. As time marched on, it was increasingly impossible to conceive of victory. Until into this frozen battlefield walked the chorus line from ‘Piste! The Musical’.
‘There’s snowwww business like snowwww business like snowwww business I snowwww!’
They took a barrage of snow and, sensing yet another situation they were drastically ill-equipped to handle, collapsed to the ground and gradually crawled into the lodge.
All except for my dad’s mate Harry. Beautiful, kindhearted Harry, who holds the distinction of being the only grown up to have a beaming smile in every one of the childhood memories I have of him. He was known for an extensive collection of hats and enormous, careening dinner parties, the two often going hand in hand. I was fortunate enough to sit at the kids’ table at one such party for twelve adults and ten children. The evening began with Harry, in a pith helmet, serving an entrée of a bottle of wine for each adult and a raspberry spider for each kid. To top it all off he spoke like Terry Thomas, conducted himself through the entire course as a foppish colonialist hosting a get-together in deepest darkest Africa in a time when it was ok to use phrases like ‘deepest darkest Africa’. With each course, Harry wore a different hat and adopted a new character, but never failed to top up everyone’s wine and spiders. All of this worked to create a genuine sense of chaos and distract everyone from the fact that Harry really didn’t have a meal plan to speak of. A supreme court judge served dips. A viking served the entrée. The main course was served by Charlie Chaplin, complete with moustache drawn on with indelible marker. By the time dessert was served, a dangerously jolly Harry had given up on the hats but kept the moustache, giving the impression that Hitler was serving industrial-sized ice-cream tubs topped up with vodka. Above all I remember that from start to finish and without exception everybody at that party was laughing.
But on this day, Harry would be known for selfless heroics that would not soon be forgotten. He stood up, brushed himself off and raised a finger to the sky in the manner one does when they are about to declare something very important or have just invented the light bulb.
‘No! I must save the children!’
As he walked out to meet his destiny, Harry drew some heavy fire. He dropped like a stone. He tried to get back on his feet, but the attack showed no signs of letting up and he was forced back down by a vindictive avalanche.
Things were getting ugly, but we weren’t stupid. We could see that Harry was a once-in-a-lifetime decoy. He proved enough of a distraction for all of us to crawl through the frozen undergrowth, across no man’s land and into the lodge. Just as my face felt the warmth from within the open door, I turned back to see Harry, writhing on the ground and disappearing under a growing pile of snow. ‘God be with you, Harry,’ I thought. ‘You are on your own.’
Inside the lodge it was bedlam.
The men of the lodge were desperate to enthusiastically tell their story of improbable survival in the unforgiving frozen ranges. The women of the lodge, on the other hand, were more intent on enquiring of the men of the lodge as to where all these fuckwits had come from and if it was possible to send them back to the warehouse.
Now, the major problem with fuckwits is enthusiastic solidarity. Whenever a wife would question her husband, his comrades would immediately fly to his defence, invariably in song. An entirely reasonable question like, ‘How could you go and get so drunk this early in the afternoon?’ would not receive even the most fumbling response before the fuckwit ensemble intervened with a spirited ‘There’s snowwwww business like snowwwww business’. It was one of the more counterproductive conversational strategies ever seen and had most of the kids predicting an imminent spate of divorces.
Indeed relations between my parents very quickly hit an all-time low.
‘Ronnie. It’s two-thirty in the afternoon, we had a special dinner planned and you are completely poleaxed. What do you have to say for yourself?’
Now, apart from the phrase ‘there’s snowwwww business like snowwwww business’ my father could only muster one other sentence. With all the misplaced earnestness of a wino tramp telling you the secrets of a successful life, my dad would look my mum in the eye and say, ‘I’m hisstree, Pammy. I’m hisstreeeeee.’
Not surprisingly, this didn’t seem to answer my mother’s questions.
Just as the 1990 Valhalla Lodge Tension Convention looked set to descend into physical violence, the door to the lodge burst open. Like Mawson returning to base, it was Harry, accompanied by a theatrical touch of blizzard and barely recognisable from the man who left the lodge at ten that morning. He had two black eyes, was bleeding badly from the nose and was drenched to his core. His body seemed to be fighting a losing battle with gravity and he was a source of great concern.
‘Jesus, Harry, are you all right?’
As Harry’s head lolled from side to side, everyone moved towards him hoping to catch him should he fall.
‘Harry, say something.’
Harry took a deep breath. The kind of deep breath one draws just before they pass away or dive under water to find their wedding ring on the bottom of a public pool. Just as the concerned gallery got within catching distance, Harry lifted his gaze to the group and bellowed, ‘There’s snowwwwww business like snowwwww businesss, like snowwwwww business I snowwwwwwww!’
And with that the all-singing, all-dancing fuckwit chorus joined in with their most vigorous recital yet. Somehow this seemed to break the tension. Soon the women joined in, a few bottles of wine were opened, and the children were reassured that their parents’ marriages might last through the week.
Shortly after Dad decided that in his historical state, bed was the best place for him. The only problem being that from the kitchen, the bedrooms were at the bottom of a flight of twenty stairs. Realising that walking down these stairs posed a potentially lethal obstacle, my father hatched an alternative method. He sat on the top step, legs akimbo, and composed himself. When he was all set, he turned around to address the group.
‘I’m hisstreee, Pammy. I’m hisstreee.’
Then, as though launching a toboggan, he pushed himself off the top step with both hands, getting slightly airborne, before bouncing his posterior off every step on the way down. He lay in a motionless heap at the bottom of the stairs for about five minutes, before collecting himself and crawling off to bed.
Truly, there was no business like snow business.
The next day, the Mount Buller Hangover Federation hit the slopes. On the first run my Dad took a tumble and didn’t get up. The rest of the group laughed and skied off down the mountain. The Pickerings waited for a while, but when Dad didn’t stir Mum made an executive decision that we should leave him. We skied to the bottom of the run, caught the lift back up and when we skied back down we found that Dad still hadn’t moved.
‘Dad? Are you ok?’
‘No. I think I’ve broken my thumb.’
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br /> We fetched some first aid officers and, en masse, followed Dad to the mountain hospital. His transport was a ski-born stretcher, pulled at about knee-height by the skiing ambos past crowds of curious onlookers. Richard followed close by, drawing as much attention to Dad as possible.
‘Make way, please everybody! This man has a serious incontinence problem! If he doesn’t get to a hospital immediately, we could all be swimming in frozen wee.’ Dad, for his part, was waving to the crowds like the queen passing in a carriage, although dignity was definitely not his co-pilot.
At the hospital, X-rays confirmed that dad’s thumb was broken in two places and his arm was set in plaster. The entire group took Dad back to the lodge and looked after him, which wasn’t easy because he was being a dreadful sook. He was a little hung-over, in a lot of pain and constantly on the lookout for a way to make that apparent to anyone who would listen. Within fifteen minutes of being back on the sofa at the lodge, he was holding court, making a list of things he couldn’t do anymore now that he was missing a thumb.
‘I’ll never write a novel. You need a thumb to write a novel . . . Hemingway had thumbs . . . Can’t do up my fly anymore. I’ll just have to leave it open forever, I suppose . . . Can’t peel a potato. You need mister thumb to peel a potato.’
This last one was weird for two reasons. First, it was an odd activity to be mopey about missing out on. More importantly, I had never in my life seen that man peel a potato. Worst of all, though, he was adamant that nobody was to write on his cast. Everyone wanted to have a bit of fun and write something silly, but he insisted that he needed to look respectable for work on the Monday and under no circumstances was anyone to put anything on his cast.
In the end, everyone had had enough of his bad attitude and Richard wasn’t backward in telling him so.
‘Ron, you’re being a pain, and boring and insufferable and we think that you should just go to bed.’
‘Fine. I will then.’
Impractical Jokes Page 9