Pervert wombat
POLICE in Motueka, South Island, New Zealand, found it a bit suspicious when a man phoned in to say he was being raped by a wombat. The wombat, a dassie-like creature, is native to Australia, not New Zealand.
But Arthur Cradock insisted he was being sexually assaulted by the creature at his home. Worse, he told the police, the experience had made him speak with an Australian accent.
Then he phoned again to say he was withdrawing the rape complaint against the wombat.
"Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right you know," he told police.
Cradock, a 48-year-old orchard worker, was picked up and taken to court where he pleaded guilty to using a phone for a fictitious purpose. He was sentenced to 75 hours' community work.
Prosecutors said alcohol played a large part in Cradock's life. Who would believe it?
I myself have always had difficulty distinguishing between Australian and New Zealand accents. I was once startled to be told by Mark Loane, former Australian rugby skipper – who also put in a couple of splendid seasons for Natal in the amateur days – that he couldn't tell the difference between a New Zealand and a "Natal English" accent.
Clearly neither of us had ever had any kind of liaison with a wombat.
Ask a gran
ALAS, it seems I was wrong when I wrote this week that medium-fast bowler Alec Bedser scored England's winning two runs in a cricket Test at Kingsmead in 1948.
Norma Webster writes in to say the Test was actually in 1950 and the winning two runs were not scored by Bedser.
"It was Gladwin, of whom at the time the commentator John Arlott said: 'England need two runs from two balls, and it's the worst batsman in England to face.' But history was made.
"It was in the same match that Godfrey Evans, the wicketkeeper and a very short man, asked the umpire for his jersey. The umpire obliged but when Evans donned the jersey it was discovered to be Alec Bedser's. Well, that brought the house down and Evans played to the crowd.
"They say if you want information, ask a grandmother. I'm 82 and still enjoy watching cricket."
So true. I must keep Norma's phone number handy.
Wheelbarrow
ALAS again. As they say in the Free State, when you fall over a wheelbarrow in the dark you keep falling and falling and falling. My wheelbarrow is this Alec Bedser thing. My old pal and fellow-scribe Cosmos Desmond takes me to task for saying Alec Bedser was the last person to take Don Bradman's wicket for a duck.
He says: "How could you confuse Alec Bedser, of whom I was a long-standing fan, with Eric Hollies? It was surely the latter who bowled Bradman for a duck with his second ball. As you will doubtless recall, it was suggested that Bradman was so moved by the farewell ovation he received from the crowd and from the England team that he had tears in his eyes and so could not see the ball.
"That will cost you at least a double Jameson."
Cos is quite right. What I meant to say was that Alec Bedser had been the last surviving bowler who got Bradman for a duck. It happened twice, and in fact Bedser dismissed Bradman six times altogether over a long career – which is phenomenal.
I now owe Cos a double Jamesons whiskey or two. I'm sure that between us we will get the cricket records straightened out.
Out of control
ANOTHER snippet from Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books):
Workers at a mining site in Utah were amusing themselves by rolling an eighteen-hundred-pound road grader tyre back and forth when the tyre got out of control, bounced down a hill to a road, rolled three-quarters of a mile into the nearest town, bounced thirty feet in the air and demolished the second floor of a house. No one was injured.
Tailpiece
A WOMAN goes to the hotel reception desk.
"Can you check me out, please?"
The porter looks her up and down, up and down.
"Sure baby. Not bad, not bad at all …"
Last word
America will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options. – Winston Churchill
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
No comments:
Post a Comment