TheBanyanTree: A Comedy of Errors - Part the Second

[Woofie]

  ....or Act the First, seeing as I have been doing the unpoetic licence thingy....confused? Well..I am and my space bar is driving me nuts cuz I have to keep hitting it hard to make it make a space!

The Woofess has just returned from a whirlwind trip to our Nation's Glorious Capital, AKA Canberra, AKA Can't Borough,AKA C*ntBorough. It is actually somewhat more Glorious since our last PM, Grotty Lil Johnny the Turd, got the boot last month.

Would you believe that the Woofess flew thousands of miles from one end of the country to the other just to have a pedicure (hind pawicure?) Well it is true..she did. But, while she was there, she decided to check out Parliament House just to make sure Lil Johnny really had gone and was not hiding under a bed somewheres like a bogeyman, leaping out and scaring small children.

She also thought she would pop in to see her daughter's and her daughter's boyfriend's {Lawrence] graduation and meet her daughter's boyfriend's parents, who had flown over from Hong Kong...and yes..the parents are wonderful folks, but that was to be expected because Lawrence is such a sweetie:)

When I arrived in Canberra, after a rather hairy flight through violent thunderstorms from Melbourne ( after the red eye special from Perth...all planes from Perth  fly at midnight (well OK..not all, but it seems that way!), cuz it takes them night to get to the east and arrive just as the night curfew is lifted.) it was pouring with rain. This was really weird  cuz Canberra has been under severe water restrictions for years, due to drought...in fact it has been so bad that folks were only allowed to drink powdered water.

Laurence was steaming (partly due to evaporation from all the rain) mainly because he couldn't go for an off road bike training ride. He had flown over from Hong Kong with his bicycle so he could ride it here, even though he had only come for a couple of days! Yes...totally loony..which is why he fits in with our family so well!:)

The famous or infamous (depending on your point of view)  artificial Lake Burley Griffin had water up to its gunn'ls. In fact I think they will have to pull its plug out soon and let some water out before it floods the place. Despite having to wade into the pedicure place, the Woofess managed to get her hind claws all prettied up while falling asleep in the massage chair. After dinner and after extracting a commitment from daughter to wake her dear ole mum up early, the Woofess crawled into bed and watched cable teev till she fell asleep..

Next morning she woke up..ack! It was 8.30 am..wasn't the hoo hah ceremony gonna be at 9? Where was the Royal Lupine's wake up call? The Woofess flew onto the dunny and was right in mid stream when daughter arrived. Daughter freaks when she finds out her mother has only just awoken...

"I thot you were going to wake me up," the Woofess said lamely to her daughter.

"I thought you were joking," replied daughter, "Don't you have an alarm thingy on your mobile phone?"

"Yeah, probably," replied the Woofess, "But I dunno how to work them things!"

With much eye-rolling the daughter gives her mother 5 mins to get dressed for the big ceremony...you will be pleased to know the Woofess achieved this feat! However, it was hard, seeing as she had missed breakfast and didn't even have any coffee to kickstart herself.

Surprisingly, we actually got to the hoo hah ceremony in plenty of time..even more surprising, there was plenty of free real coffee on tap there..it was a good thing the Woofess got some coffee, cuz she had to miss out on the free booze and nibblies after the hoo hah event...that seriously hurt, folks...it hurt even more when the reason for having to miss all the free booze and stuff was in order to catch a plane what ended up being two hours late anyways...bah!!

These hoo hah ceremonies are divided into two parts by an intermission thingy in the middle. The first half of the ceremony is for the common herd or the unwashed masses to receive their degrees...hey..wait on a minnit..I am only one of them lot meself<G> The second part of the ceremony is for the ivory-towered elite to get their awards.

I was seated next to two of Miz HM's friends. One friend, Lucy, says to us:

"I have been to tons of these ceremonies, so I always come prepared."

She opens her bag and pulls out some new novels and a cookbook and offers them to us to read. It must be common to read at these things, cuz the dude sitting in front of me was reading a book which he was trying to hide in an open ceremony booklet.

After dutifully clapping the thousands (well it bleedin well felt like that many!) of the Great Unwashed Hordes, the intermission thingy was a welcome relief. Now folks, this was an intermission with a difference! First of all a filly in black trots out on the stage. She is followed by a giant harp wot trotted out on the stage...well..it looked like the harp was doing the trotting, but on closer inspection  it could be seen that the harp had actually harnessed 4 human powered trotting devices for motility. The harp then discarded its human motility devices and another dude started plinking it and the filly in black started singing some opera-ish song. She sung for precisely 15 seconds and then stopped. She starts singing again..a different opera-ish song for another 15 seconds..she bows and trots off the stage. The giant harp thingy attaches its 4 human powered trotting devices and trots off the stage.

It had to be the most inane thing I have ever seen folks, so natchurly I got the giggles!

Next came the ivory-towered half of the ceremony. For this a fancy chopping block was wheeled out on the stage...I had no idea what this was for...

As  the first name of elite was read out, the name's owner advanced across the stage, bowed his/her head and knelt down on the chopping block...aggghhh! The Chancellor dude proceeded to bend over and guillotine???!!! the hapless dude...agghhh! Was this what was meant by the "Brain Drain"?

I turned and looked at Lucy questioningly.....ARRRGGHHHHH!!!!

SHE WAS KNITTING, FOLKS, KNITTING!!!! SHE WAS KNITTING A HUMAN GLOVE COMPLETE WITH THUMB AND FINGERS!

I wanted to ask Mme Lucy Defarge if she was knitting with human hair, but I was too busy trying to obtain photographic evidence of the slaughter on the stage. I was also having problems with one of my three mobile phones (don't ask,OK?) ringing in my handbag, and I couldn't find which one was ringing, so I was yelling at the lot of them to shaddap!

Thankfully Laurence and Miz HM managed to keep their heads attached after the guillotining...Miz HM was saved due to her long hair..obviously the guillotine blade bounced right off it...not sure how Laurence managed it, though..a quick sideways parry as the blade descended?

Relieved that the offspring were still intact, I had a look at the programme guide thingy to see what was said about our darlings. It told us what those two had been spending their time on for the last 3 or 4 years. It also explained their research in words that we could understand:

Laurence's thesis was on Synthesising Steroidal Bike Clips.
Emma's was on Investigating  New Methods for tipping rows of artificial vegetarian dominoes.

Well something like that..

Having been deprived of the free champagne and nibblies, I checked the messages on me phones....Ooops...it was the female manager of the hotel where I was staying...I was supposed to have checked out at 10 and I hadn't...she was gonna have me guts for garters or me first male born child or summat.

Laurence and Miz HM raced me back to the hotel to pay penance...they call her the Big Hair and she is a real dragon...Miz HM described her to me:

"She wears low cut tight dresses, even though she is elderly...she has massive cleavage, wears makeup that is set on thick and hard like concrete..and has this hair all teased out and sprayed solid...she is one scary female!"

Thankfully, I did not have to face this paragon and I was thankful, I can tell you, cuz if Miz HM reckoned someone was scary, they would have to be akin to Attila the Hun or one of the Mongol Hordes, cuz Miz HM, as you all know, is no shrinking violet;)

Although I had to pay half a day's extra rates, I scored a bottle of the hotel's own vino (with its own label, folks...this is major tacky and thus a collector's item!) for free, cuz the nice, cute guy on reception was so upset about being forced by Attila the Huness to charge me more money..

So..all was not bad and now daughter and boyfriend were titled folks after having been guillotined or knighted or wotever by a dude wearing a tiger suit and what was even better, their heads were still attached firmly to their heads and their brains hadn't drained:)

Pics of Mme Defarge and others here:
http://www.pbase.com/woofess/graduation

Woof,
PS..just got a message from Miz HM, saying she has arrived safely in Hong Kong (and still has her head attached) and loves the place:)


-- 
Best regards,
 Woofie ,                         mailto:woofie at woofess.com

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"Woofess is right, as usual.." maxdog (Tallahassee, FL) 27/1/98

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Website: http://www.woofess.com
Photos: http://public.fotki.com/woofie/
Photos: http://www.pbase.com/woofess
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