The Best Australian Humorous Writing (4 page)

When I discovered that the word Pajero really is Spanish for wanker, I thought to myself: “It must be my birthday!”

And just so we are clear, bush folk, people towing horse floats and the like, you're off the hook. I'm talking about the people driving tanks to do the shopping and drop their kids off at school.

I can't be fagged unpacking the arrogance of the space they take up on the road, which is the equivalent of taking up eight seats at the cinema and wearing a refrigerator as a hat. And I'm not going to get into their environmental impact, as there must be at least one 4WD that is greener than the lowered Commodores with mags that fang down my street blowing blue smoke. But you'd have to be an idiot not to put together the basic larger-vehicle-equals-more-fuel-necessary-particularly-on-city-roads equation.

Need the space? Try a station wagon, roof racks or a little inconvenience. So your kids have long legs? Where are these kids with the two-metre legs? The only place I've ever seen them is in the Moomba parade and I thought they were actually normal-sized people on stilts.

So let's get this party started and crack open an icy-cold can of facts, shall we? Let's slip into something a little more uncomfortable with the 4WD safety myth.

Research conducted by the Monash University Accident Research Centre has concluded that 4WDs are almost twice as likely to roll than a car, resulting in their drivers being 3.4 times more likely to be killed due to crushed cabin space.

The centre has pointed out that 4WDs “are not subject to the full range of design rules applicable to passenger cars and their derivatives”.

A team from Imperial College London and University of Queensland found, after a study of more than 40,000 vehicles, that “4WD drivers were almost four times more likely than car drivers to be using a mobile phone and 26 per cent more likely not to wear a seatbelt”. The researchers concluded that 4WD owners take more risks because they feel safer.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found that half the 36 children killed in driveway deaths between 1996 and 1998 were struck by large 4WDs. They have also found: “The proportion of alcohol intoxication amongst 4WD drivers involved in fatal crashes
(29 per cent) was higher than for all other types of vehicle.” And: “In 4WD crashes involving multiple vehicles, passenger car occupants accounted for the largest proportion of fatalities (64 per cent). 4WD occupants accounted for 18 per cent.”

Children are at risk because they are little and these vehicles are high. As far as proximity sensors are concerned, they do bugger all to protect children. According to NRMA Insurance's Robert McDonald: “They only work about a metre from the car, unless you are travelling extremely slowly. Your reaction time is not going to be quick enough to at least not knock someone over before even realising they are there.”

In 2005, NSW's senior deputy state coroner, Jacqueline Milledge, recommended that 4WDs weighing two tonnes or more be banned from school grounds and within 200 metres of schools. She also recommended that the drivers be required to hold special licences after five-year-old Bethany Holder was run over by the driver of a Nissan Patrol with a bullbar.

Due to their weight and the bullbars being positioned at perfect head and chest height, drivers of vehicles hit side-on by 4WDs are 26 times more likely to be killed or suffer serious injury than if they had been hit by a standard-sized passenger vehicle, according to ABC's
Catalyst
program.

But apparently they're fashionable. If pick-up at your school is a procession of kids being collected from school in a car the size of a three-bedroom house, you may want to consider the values of that school.

Will it take a 4WD to back over the child of another 4WD owner for these status-obsessed fashion slaves to realise that these vehicles are potential killers?

Here's a cheaper alternative to buying a 4WD. Just buy a normal-sized car and put a sticker on the back that reads: “I DON'T GIVE A STUFF ABOUT YOU AND I VOTE.”

SUZANNE EDGAR

 

The pigeon on my window-sill

adores a bird of wood

that gazes from this other side

as if she understood.

 

Brought here from America,

she wears a perky crest

feathers brown with a hint of pink

adorn her lovely breast.

 

The pigeon on the outer ledge

believes he woos a dove

and cannot comprehend the glass

that keeps him from his love.

 

If only I could speak with him

of love's elusive flame

I'd cure his sad obsession with

the bird he cannot claim.

 

All day he paces up and down

and pecks upon the pane

his doting morse-code plea for sex

like any featherbrain.

PHILLIP ADAMS

The world was agog when Ralph Fiennes was sprung having sex on a Qantas flight with an accommodating member of the cabin crew. Fornicating in the flying loo of a flying roo. My response? Not so much prudish as astonishment. Qantastonishment. For how the hell did they do it? Those jet-propelled toilets can barely accommodate a Mickey Rooney, let alone a full-sized thespian and a hefty, heartily hospitable hostie. The mind biggles.

(Oops! Boggles. For some reason I suddenly thought of the books of Captain W. E. Johns. Biggles and Archie squeezed into their cockpit. Sharing a joystick.) This sort of thing seems an occupational hazard on Qantas. Consider the fact that on another QF flight I slept with Janette Howard. And we don't even like each other. Here's how it happened. When Mrs H flies on official business with Mr H they enjoy the convenience of Australia's version of Air Force One. It's nothing like as comfortable as the Bushes' Boeing, though not too bad. But when the PM's busy schedule means he has to stick around, Mrs H must return with the lower orders on a scheduled flight. And on two occasions, both on the Brisbane/Sydney run, some wag at Qantas has plonked us side by side.

The first time we looked at each other aghast. And, being chivalrous, I suggested that we seek reallocation. Which was, with
some difficulty on a full flight, organised. But last time I was too tired for the rigmarole and said, “Don't worry, Mrs H, I'm going to pass out anyway.” And putting on my little eyemask, I did.

With a shameful lack of discretion or gallantry, I went on air two hours later and announced that we'd slept together. Yes, I'm a bounder and a cad.

I've also slept with the Greek Minister for Culture. That splendid actor Melina Mercouri (
Never on Sunday, He Who Must Die, Topkapi
) had been given that high office when democracy returned to Athens after the overthrow of the colonels. She was on an official visit to the many Greeks of Melbourne at a time when I had the preposterous title of president of the Victorian Council of the Arts—and I was required to take her to the opening night of a Wagner opera. She was suffering jetlag from another Qantas flight and began lightly snoring as soon as the curtain went up. So I joined her until the interval, when we roused from our slumbers for drinky-poos with the dignitaries.

Despite my training as a theatre and film critic I often sleep through screenings and performances. But it's Qantas's fault. Arriving in London I had to go straight to the West End for
Evita
, and slept through the whole thing. Don't Snore For Me, Argentina.

Ditto through the opening screening of a sequel or prequel of George Lucas's
Star Wars
in New York. Having queued for hours to get in, everyone around me clapped and cheered from the first chord of the familiar theme, but I instantly lapsed into unconsciousness. For which I was extremely grateful, as I needed the sleep and detest Lucas movies. The only reason I went was to write a column on the “
Star Wars
phenomenon”. Star Wars, star bores. From Skywalker to sleepwalker. The only phenomenon is how anybody manages to stay awake during these ponderous, soporific epics.

To be fair to Lucas, my own humble presentations also put me to sleep. At 2UE, my producer noticed a tendency for me to nod off during interviews. In my own defence, they lined up some boring
farts as interviewees. And at the ABC I sometimes fall asleep during our opening theme. Well, it is a latenight program, so the listeners are asleep, too—and many of my international guests are groggy because it's 5am for them. Or after midnight.

Though a lifelong insomniac who can't get to sleep in beds, I go to sleep in cars, whether driving or being driven. Dr Karl's stern TV admonishments about micro-sleeps while motoring are wasted on me. I have macro-sleeps in taxis and, behind the wheel, like to drift off on long trips. Three cheers for cruise control.

But the worst place for narcoleptic behaviour is, for me, the meeting. Who needs sleeping pills when you've got an agenda? I'm out to it during “the minutes of the last meeting”. And, having chaired many a board, it's been a bit of an issue. Meetings go better when the chairman's awake, banging his gavel and shouting “Order!” Or at least asking if someone wants to move a motion. Whereas I've invariably drifted off.

I had various tricks. Like leaning forward and putting my head in my hands so as to look a) heavily burdened by my responsibilities; or b) deep in concentration. But those light snores betrayed me. And the noggin slipping from my hands and hitting the boardroom table was a dead giveaway.

S'cuse me. Need a nap.

SHAUN MICALLEF

It was 1943. My father had just been voted the prettiest boy in Gozo.

He was 4 years old and, judging from the crumbling photographs he still insists on showing everyone, looked rather like Shirley Temple.

His duties were to act as a mascot during the Gamm ta' L-isfargel Quince Festival. This mainly involved climbing a step-ladder and pinning St John the Apostle badges onto members of the Civil Service while dressed as Little Lord Fauntleroy. But on Saturday he also got to receive any VIP guests arriving at the Port of Marsaxlokk.

During the previous year Malta had earned the highly dubious honour of becoming the most heavily bombed place on earth.

So said a plaque fixed to a giant monument of Valettian limestone which, for at least 12 months, enjoyed the irony of being the only piece of construction in Malta not reassembled from rubble. Both Hitler and Mussolini had dive-bombed, torpedoed and strafed the small clutch of Mediterranean islands with everything they had. I appreciate they didn't do it personally, but my guess is they were responsible for it somewhere along the line. For the Axis powers,
the country was a stepping-stone to the oil fields of Persia. For the Allies, Malta was the keystone to victory in North Africa.

By the year's end though there was no food, no fuel, no ammunition, no roads and nowhere to live. My father and his family were actually sleeping in a cave. For their troubles the Maltese were awarded the St George Cross. Just the one though.

Presumably they all got to wear it on some sort of roster basis.

By the next Christmas things would be very different. Italy had surrendered, rebuilding had begun, the quinces were bountiful, rabbits could be heard singing (although only according to Crazy Joe Muscat, the town lunatic) and arriving at the Port of Marsaxlokk on the evening of the 24th were Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and King George VI. They disgorged from their launch armed with gifts for the populace (toys for the children, cigars for the menfolk and lingerie for the ladies), waving and smiling and getting covered in what they took to be confetti but was in fact desiccated coconut stolen from the stores of the USS
Ohio
before it was scuttled. There to greet them was an impressive concord of local dignitaries headed by my 4-year-old father. He got to shake hands with the King of England and was given a pair of silk stockings by President Roosevelt. The stockings later found their way into my great-grandmother's Christmas stocking, which must have been confusing for her.

A lavish civic reception was held at the most magnificent mansion in all of Malta, the Torre Dei Cavalieri. The King was a big fan of bel canto opera and it had been arranged for Maria Callas to sail over from Greece and sing selections from Donizetti, his favourite.

Unfortunately, she couldn't come for some reason and so my father, a precocious child even then, took her place. The fact that he couldn't speak Italian, let alone sing it, did not, on his telling, detract from the fun of the evening.

“I just la-la-la-ed,” he says proudly today. Apparently His Majesty very much enjoyed my father's scat version of Lucia di Lammermoor and did not at any stage of the evening ring up Hitler and ask him to resume bombing. I can only assume that the sound of Donizetti spinning in his grave like a turbine carried sufficiently from Lombardy to drown the whole travesty out.

It had been a wonderful night; wine had flowed, legs had danced and the travails of '42 had been, if not forgotten, then politely not mentioned. But the evening was not over yet. Roosevelt stood up and tapped his glass for attention. An aide leaned into him and reminded him he was in a wheelchair. Roosevelt quickly sat down again. He announced:

 

My friends, for many months we have wanted to pay some little tribute to you who have contributed so much to democracy, not just here but all over the civilised world. In the name of the people of the United States of America, I salute the Island of Malta, its people and defenders, who, in the cause of freedom and justice and decency throughout the world, have rendered valorous service far above and beyond the call of duty.

Under repeated fire from the skies, Malta stood alone, but unafraid in the centre of the sea, one tiny bright flame in the darkness—a beacon of hope for the clearer days which have come. What was done in this island maintains the highest traditions of gallant men and women who from the beginning of time have lived and died to preserve civilisation for all mankind.