TheBanyanTree: Some musings

[Peter Macinnis]

My back is bad (but I have been to the physio and it is getting better), 
so I have had an extra glass of red, and I am about to launch into an 
essay that starts "Douglas Jardine had been born and bred a gentleman, 
but by sheer determination alone, he managed to overcome this misfortune..."

This will, if nothing else, tax the diplomacy of my editor, so while I 
fill out the wrinkles in my skin-full, here is a tale of me being 
diplomatic, and a brother-officer being less so.

The last time I heard my mate Brian use his favourite line "who won the 
bloody war?" we were there, forty-strong, in a German-themed place in 
Sydney, run by the brother of a recent Prime Minister.  We had been 
there the year before, and knew we had been ripped off.

So this time, we were ready.  I was the designated non-drunk who, late 
in the evening, was questioning the fact that they had:

(a) delivered unordered drink to our table after getting strict orders 
that all orders would be made by me alone and recorded by me;

(b) padded the bill with stuff that I and the drunks had never seen; and

(c) made a massive error in the addition.

I also let it be known that I was on first-name terms with the local 
police superintendent.  This was a slight but justified half-truth (I 
mean, I did know the bloke's first name, didn't I?).

I am sure we would have been short-changed as well, but as bagman, I had 
the right money and explained that they could keep the change, which is 
when my mate Brian bobbed up and said "Yeah, and remember who won the 
bloody war!"

Even beside me, Brian looked like a gnome, and he had other 
characteristics to match.

Give me a dwarf, any day: they may be undiplomatic, but after they've 
headed you, there is little chance you will recall the incident. Few 
people know how many wars are averted by the application of a dwarf to 
the right forehead at the right time, but I have wandered from my story.

The regrettably undwarfed people in the bar with whom I was dealing (if 
applying a cheese grater to tender regions while brandishing a mincing 
machine falls within the expression "dealing" as defined by the 
legislation) were all (a) too young to even remember said bloody war; 
and (b) not very German.  His line still worked for us.

The last time I ever saw Brian was later that night when all forty of us 
had moved on to a more honest if less salubrious venue, and freed from 
responsibility, I was trying to catch up in the insobriety stakes. 
Somebody attempted to affix a candle to his bald pate with melted 
wax,and I decided it was too late to catch up, that it was best to quit 
while I was behind.

This is one of those concepts that is difficult to convey to the young.

Anyhow, that night, I must have drifted into the edges of incipient 
middle age, but whatever the cause I drifted off into the edges of the 
crowd and away, unnoticed.  They called Brian The Phantom.  Had they but 
known, I was Keyser Soze.  And poof, just like that, I was gone.

The next day, people were impressed with my recollection of incidents 
they had inexplicably forgotten, but which merged with items they not 
only recalled, but had mentioned ten minutes ago.

OK, the real me has emerged, my head is clear, so back to writing about 
cricket, which is what tonight brings me to.  Do you believe the above? 
  Answers on a postcard please, attached to a homing pigeon.  If you add 
a brick, it will improve the pigeon's stability in flight.

*****

Note: my brief "army" career saw me play the role of a pastiche of Milo 
Minderbinder and John Yossarian, with a veneer of Chief White Halfoat as 
he would have been if he had no Flume to play with.


-- 
Peter Macinnis, Manly, the birthplace of Australian surfing
feral word herder, also herbal remedies, bespoke fish
hooks, umbrellas mended and budgerigar requisites
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/