Impractical Jokes (4 page)

‘This,' said Richard to himself, ‘could get interesting.'

If this request had been made today, Richard would have simply sent a group email, cc'ing all of his local and overseas contacts, asking all of his fellow mens-wear magnates if they could spare a solitary unit of the sports tie equivalent of a hen's tooth. Within forty-eight hours he would have heard from most of them and he would know one way or the other if his quest had been successful. But the turn of the nineties was a different time altogether. Over the next few days he put out the feelers with what, at the time, could only be described as an all-out campaign of hi-tech telecommunications. He wrote letters, rang phone numbers and even sent a fax. Yep. This was hard core. He then played the waiting game, knowing full well that it could take weeks or even months before he had any idea if one of these ties was still in circulation.

A few weeks after his initial request Geoff rang again and Richard had the unfortunate honour of telling Geoff that he hadn't heard back from any of the overseas distributors.

‘It's not looking good, Geoff.'

‘No luck, huh?'

‘I'm pretty sure if somebody had something they would have called me by now.'

‘Oh, well. At least you tried.'

‘Sorry I couldn't get a better result.'

‘Never mind. I'll see you next month at the suppliers meeting?'

‘Of course. Wouldn't miss it.'

Richard cradled the phone. He was not looking forward to that meeting. He and a dozen other suppliers would meet annually with Geoff and some other honchos to discuss strategies. Normally this was a cordial and pleasant gathering, but now Richard would have to attend having failed to meet Geoff's request. This would doubtless be made fodder for some jocular ribbing and other shenanigans that could rapidly turn cordial and pleasant into bothersome and tedious.

Luckily for Richard, the next day, a package arrived from London. Inside, sealed in plastic, was an authentic, rare and highly valuable Triple Crown tie. Richard thought about ringing Geoff, but decided it would be better to surprise him at the meeting. What better way to get things off to a jovial start?

A few days after that, a package arrived from Auckland. A Kiwi associate, All Blacks fan and rugby tragic had managed to dig up a Triple Crown tie, still in its plastic, from a local collector. Later that week another Triple Crown tie arrived from Edinburgh. Richard began to think that the Triple Crown tie was perhaps not the rarity its reputation suggested, but was nonetheless happy with the success of his international network. ‘Faxes,' he thought. ‘The way of the future!'

Over the next two weeks, a steady stream of packages arrived at the rate of one every two days. They came from all corners of the Empire, all in pristine condition, and all of them giving Richard the distinct impression that he really should find a good use for them all.

On the day of the annual suppliers meeting, Richard met Geoff early in a café to discuss some minor outstanding business. As matters were wrapped up, Geoff brought up the tie.

‘Still no luck with the Triple Crown?'

‘Nothing, I'm afraid. Not a whisper. You've clearly got great taste, though, because those things were popular!'

‘Oh, well. Maybe they'll win again next year and we can get in early. Let's get to this meeting.'

They walked into the foyer of the building where the meeting was to be held and headed for the lift. As they stepped inside, and told the lift operator their floor, Geoff spotted the man's tie and his heart stopped beating. He instantly recognised the red, white and blue stripes and accompanying insignia. In a state of genuine shock, it was all he could do to gasp, ‘Is that the . . . ?'

‘Triple Crown tie, sir? Yes it is. And what a beauty it is too.'

Richard, pretending not to hear the conversation, kept his eyes straight ahead. Geoff was barely able to collect himself by the time the doors opened at their floor.

‘Mind your step, sir.'

Geoff stepped out in a daze and, as he walked to the boardroom, barely heard Richard call out, ‘I've left something in the car. I'll be back up in a minute.'

Geoff was first to the boardroom and took his seat at the head of the table. A member of the catering staff arrived with the tea trolley and asked Geoff if he would like a drink.

‘Just a cup of tea with . . .'

He trailed off as he noticed the tea boy was also wearing the unmistakable red, white and blue stripes of the Triple Crown tie. He didn't have time to ask the boy where he'd got it from before the door opened and in walked the first of the local distributors for the meeting. Geoff almost fell off his chair when he noticed that the distributor, too, was wearing the precious tie.

One by one the other attendees arrived, stepping through the door, looking resplendent in rugby's most prized tie. And one by one they struck up conversations with each other, avoiding the gaze or inquisition of Geoff, who by this point was just about having a seizure. By the time the twelfth Triple Crown tie entered the room, he regained the power of speech.

‘Bloody Opie!'

As the room erupted in laughter, Richard made a triumphant entrance and presented Geoff with his Triple Crown tie in collectors edition presentation packaging.

That's my dad's best mate, Richard. The only thing he enjoys more than making people laugh is the satisfaction of a plan coming to fruition. A very dangerous combination.

1 Ok. I know that if you are a military enthusiast of any kind you will right now be saying, ‘Hang on. The US equivalent of Regimental Sergeant Major is Command Sergeant Major. This guy doesn't know jack about squat.' While that may be
technically
correct, I hasten to add that I am talking about the portrayal of certain ranks in cinema, not the actual military equivalent. If you find this footnote hasn't satisfied your grievance, you may consider writing to the publisher or perhaps just giving up on this particular book altogether. That said, please don't do either of those things. Just shrug your shoulders, say, ‘Oh well' and carry on with the book. I promise to keep all military parlance to a minimum for the duration. I also apologise on behalf of the bookstore where you purchased this volume in the unlikely event that it was mistakenly shelved in the military history section.

3

A Shot Heard Around
the Restaurant

T
here is still conjecture as to how this war began. Some say Dad was the initial aggressor; others are adamant he was merely returning fire in defence of himself and his family. Yet others believe it all began when my father assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

What I know for sure is this: Like many of the world's great conflicts, the beginnings were both complicated and simple; different sides have different versions of events and history will most likely remember it as it is first written down. With that in mind, I will recount events as best as my subjective memory will allow.

It was 1986. Picture, if you will, a boom time, where markets were high and spirits higher. Boy George had just made a cameo appearance on
The A-Team
and, quite understandably, anything seemed possible. The French and English governments announced they would tunnel under the Channel, the Russians launched the formidable Mir space station and the children of the world gathered en masse to be disappointed by Halley's Comet. These were heady times.

But, despite the epoch of progress in which they found themselves, the group of friends gathered for a barbecue at the house of Richard and Cheryl Opie had no idea they would witness the start of something that would never be forgotten. This barbecue would come to mark the beginning of an obsession that would consume the lives of many, and inconvenience the lives of so many more. Ten years from this moment people would look back and say, ‘What the hell just happened?'

The social barbecue circuit of the mid-eighties was a phenomenon amongst my parents' friends, and a wonder to behold. Men had the choice of a Crownie or a Swan Lager and any woman not drinking chardonnay was drinking a chardonnay-based wine cooler, recently promoted by a cheeky advert featuring a young woman in a convertible, sporting impressive breasts barely reined in by a Ken Done bikini.

These gatherings had a special energy to them. Everyone there was old enough to not be young, yet young enough to not be old. In essence, this was probably the last time they could have young hair. Or at the very least the last time they could have young hair without it being just a little sad. Their children had grown up to such a point that they no longer needed constant supervision and could be left to their own devices. Parents who had spent the better part of a decade of parties checking on bassinettes and cutting food up into little pieces were finally free to get together and have grown-up adult fun.

Now don't get me wrong. By grown-up adult fun, I don't mean that these were swingers' barbecues. That is not the ‘special energy' I'm talking about.

The barbecue in question was playing out largely as planned. The parents were talking and laughing in the backyard while the kids had absolute run of the house and were having a ball. Well, all the kids except me. I was the only boy. All the other families had two girls. Whilst there was always the option of going off with my sister, Suzie, and the other girls to talk about girl stuff, at the age of nine it never felt right. It was like an American playing cricket or a white person trying to crump.

That isn't to say that girl talk was never of interest to me. Far from it. As I grew older and began to take an interest in girls, time spent with my sister and her friends would prove an invaluable resource. I would crash Suzie's sleepovers, birthday parties, study groups and phone calls, desperately hoping to hear confidential information that would help me crack the code of women. My sister, to her credit, was enormously patient. Despite the fact that I was cramping her style in the most inconsiderate way, she didn't get angry, tell me to ‘rack off' or any similar vulgarity popular at the time. She included me. When I had a crush on a girl, she would give me advice, when I had a question about birds, bees or, more importantly, intercourse, that I could never ask Mum and Dad, she would do her best to answer it. On one occasion when, at the age of twelve, I was worried I might never kiss a girl, she was good enough to ask around her friends if any of them would give me a sympathy pash. I owe my sister enormously for many, many things. Not the least of which that thanks to her I never saw girls as an alien species, but rather a prettier version of my own species that, with hard work and good advice, I would still never fully understand.

But at that barbecue in 1986, thoughts of researching girls, dates and romance were still a few years off my radar. Instead, my usual barbecue activities revolved around trying to get in on the conversation of the grownups, and in doing so hopefully hear some jokes I wasn't supposed to. When such pearls became too few and far between I would generally get bored, go exploring, hurt myself and get rushed to a hospital needing stitches. This was pretty much accepted as a fait accompli and was the only salient reason why one of my parents was always the designated driver. Over time, hospital-worthy emergencies became so regular for all of us that the only exciting part was guessing just how I would hurt myself and which hospital I would need to be taken to. Which was in turn dependent on whose house we were at, how much red cordial I'd had and if they had a trampoline.

On this particular afternoon I was still in phase one and things were going quite well. I had heard a joke about an Englishman, an Irishman and a Jew placing bets on the unlikely death of the pope. In hindsight it was a breathtaking barrage of clearly racist stereotypes, but as a child I didn't know what racist stereotypes were and therefore just thought it was funny. I also heard a joke about a blonde woman having a football team back to her place for a sleep-over. I didn't really understand that one. Apparently my knowledge of bigoted but humorous stereotypes was largely nationality-based and had not yet covered the mythical sexual appetites and stupidity of blonde women.

Around this time, Richard decided that the event was moving a little too slowly for his liking. Perhaps he'd been expecting a swingers' barbecue after all; perhaps he wanted to try one of the hip new wine coolers but wasn't willing to endure the teasing; or perhaps he was offended by the portrayal of his fellow Englishmen in a recent joke. Such details have been lost to history, but clearly he was a little bored, and chose to remedy that by pushing my dad, fully clothed, into the pool.

Needless to say his actions brought the house down. There were cheers and applause, Richard took a bow and Dad obliged everyone by splashing around violently, floundering in shock and fury. The rest of the Pickerings loved it. As a child, seeing my fully-clothed father pushed into a pool by another adult was a beautiful moment. It will stay with me for life.

Admittedly, pushing my dad in the pool wasn't one of Richard's smarter jokes. I mean, military gennies on parade was an instant classic that took instinct, discipline and strategy. This was more an ad hoc frolic—a lark, if you will. But despite its clearly improvised nature, the effects of this piece of mischief would be felt for a long time to come.

My dad got out of the pool, sopping wet, and trudged around to confront Richard. The gallery fell silent, fully expecting some kind of physical retribution. What people really wanted was for Dad to grab Richard, wrestle comedically on dry land for a bit before holding him tight and leaping into the pool in some kind of mutual death plunge. The people, on this occasion, were to be sorely disappointed.