With Danny Baker’s audiobook ‘Going To Sea In A Sieve’ my aural companion, I commence this second blog of the day with dusk taking over the Northern hemisphere baton from Friday’s daylight watch. Amongst the dark times remit’s ascension, the overseeing of all things COVID-19 related.
With a triumvirate of governmental heads, including prime minister Boris Johnson, exhibiting symptoms of coronavirus, UK deaths rising and some of the populace bereft of loo roll, we’ve entered into a higher plateau of COVID-19 impact severity.
As I write, contingency hospitals are being created countrywide, along with a huge morgue in Birmingham should the worst come to the worst casualty wise. If you’re after good news troops, there’s little in the way of whimsy to raise that cheer.
The best I can offer is an anecdotal escape relayed to me in the 1980’s. A yarn recounted by a team mate in the dressing room of Gateshead Fell cricket club. The storyteller a lad who also played for the rugby section of the club. A raconteur of note who’d a wealth of whimsical tales from a colourful sporting career.
This particular anecdote surrounding the pretty lame but oft heard joke ‘Why are there no aspirins in the jungle? ….. Because the parrots ate em all!’
As told by the raconteur, this quip was aired during a post-match drink in the Gateshead Fell rugby club bar. Folklore which apparently led to everyone in the congregated group sighing at the ineptitude of the wise crack. All, that is, apart from one rather dim prop forward who to everyone’s amazement laughed uncontrollably at the insipid gag.
Fast forward a couple of hours, while still rugby club bar in situ, the same prop forward was overheard retelling the joke to a different group of players. Colleagues who became witness to a legendary episode that far outstripped the humour levels of the earlier correctly relayed wisecrack.
Showing a remarkable misunderstanding of the punchline, the idiosyncratic rugby forward’s version of the joke was retold in the following manner :- “Why are there no aspirins in the jungle?” After a period of bewildered silence amongst the throng of egg chasers, the birdbrained prop forward proffered “Because the parrots ate all the f***ers!!”
Anecdotally, there followed a period of silence prior to the bemused prop forward’s audience dispersing to other parts of the club lounge in a state of bewilderment at the baffling comedic fare they’d just been party to.
Apparently, after the players scattered the prop forward stood at the bar and, while ordering another beer, disgruntledly informed an elderly rugby club member that his team mates were “A bunch of humourless t*ssers!!”
