Gordon and The Bish Go On Holiday: Part Three
by Shoe
Continued…
“Seems an important scientific fact, Bish. The longer a toad like Toad settles in one district, the less likely are its chances in its lifetime of pulling in big crowds, I reckon. See, toads travel and further and faster than a toad’s predecessors.”
“Gord, Toad was doomed on his own whatever way I look at it!”
“Bish, Toad likely had a bad back too. Toad was in no shape to be on racing. Toads get spinal arthritis. Because they walk further faster. Not a word of not trew truth.”
Gordon and the Bish are both sobered.
“A population dwindles and individuals like Toad head out in a random pattern called toad dispersal. They mate with other dispersing toads. They breed more offspring than their predecessors and even faster toads that can travel even further again.”
‘Awesome,” the Bish says. “How do you know all that, Gord?”
“Shoe told me, Bish. She read it on Ogle.”
“Shoe’s awesome. Gord, we’re going in the wrong direction. I’m staying at Sandy’s. Remember? He’s in the manse across from the car park? Behind the Pig’s Arms?”
“Bit of a walk. What were we thinking. I had better go back with you to the good Father O’Ways, Bish. We can have a night cap. Better not tell him in the confessional. About Space World. The toad never happened either.”
The Bish muses as he and Gordon struggle to keep the pavement steady to turn around.
“Int’resting though, Gord. I like a toad story with an int’resting ending. Shoe is so awesome. Shoe wrote the frog joke, eh.”
“Yes, she did.” Gord lets out a tiny sigh. “You know when she says she did to people who like it and on tell it, she would like to make new friends or she wouldn’t say. You know it’s been in other people’s books and voted best joke
and on television and someone clever made a funny film about how much they don’t want to hear it again. The people don’t talk to her when she tells them. Shoe’s lonely.”
“Shoe? Lonely? IS she?”
“Of course she is. People running in the opposite direction.”
“We’re friends. We’re all friends. Shoe’s a friend. Wonder if she’ll write another frog joke.”
“Nah. Unlikely, Bish. She misses the frog too much. Ought to ask her if she’ll write a toad joke and cheer us up.”
“Great idea, Gord. How about we ask her will she make it a good long story with some joking around in it about a toad. The frog joke isn’t really a read, is it.”
“Here we are at the manse already, Bish.”
Gordon and the Bish walk in the dark with care past the mail box swinging on its hinges from the old gate post. They can just make out the familiar brass lettering of the name ‘FATHER O’WAY’ and the front path littered with debris. The garden is a mess.
When his mates clatter and clang the brass knocker on his front door to get him up off the sofa where he sits in the late evenings reading Pigs Arms porkies and laughing, Sandy O’Way is slow to stir. He gets up on thinking on it. He remembers the Bish is in town.
It’ll be a night.
The End
honshades said:
Quite a coincidence to share with the PA bar.
Last night couple hours before midnight our time I received an FB message from the now middle bloke in New Zealand who took the photo attached, who wanted to touch base. Not heard from him in quite a while and it was a deep and meaningful sharing. When he realised it was shortly my birthday he undertook to see it in with me. We took a break for him to attend to family and he cooked a feed for his while I finished doing myself a midnight feast. He was back a few minutes before midnight to do a countdown my time in South Australia and he had made me a video of himself carrying his baby and teaching him it was my birthday time. He went walking around the home where this photo was in fact taken. Lol I quite forgot to even mention his photo is up at the bar.
I thanked him for turning up in my life as he has totally unexpectedly since he was 14.
Sounds like a party eh? 67 too. Who thought it possible. 🙂
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vivienne29 said:
Amazing how things can happen. Had a similar experience recently when daughter No.1 was in Queensland and texted about meeting this terrific chap, Tom Griffiths. Gawd, I replied – my new favourite author. She got his autograph and a note to me. She did not know of him or his book The Art of Time Travel (2016). Turns out he’s also a friend of one of our longtime best friends going back to 1976.
Where is the photo you mention at the bar?
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honshades said:
Hello Viv, I may have gotten my own story of a coincidence garbled. The photo of me that Mark chose to paste at the end of this latest tale of mine and you were all admiring is the one I meant and it was taken by Tony in the doorway of his home in NZ. It was just such a coincidence it was current conversation here at the bar and Tony, innocent that it was current, happened to contact me, but as well in time to celebrate my birthday in with me. I’d not heard from him in such a long time. Funny aren’t we, us humans that our sentiments become so emotion filled when great coincidences happen.
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vivienne29 said:
Just lovely Shoe. Thinking on the frog joke is such a good feeling. Beautiful photo of you.
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honshades said:
I am so pleased you enjoyed it, Viv.
Viv, you’ve been such a warm friend to Frog for so long, yet another person and I never knew. Honest, it’s a story in itself. And my landlord telling me his son had it on his phone. I am so glad you and I were brought together through this medium that I found out you have loved the frog for so long. Part of the incentive to write this story was a drive to stand up for both Frog and Frog’s fans in light of now considerable experience of watching and learning what joking means, what communication is set up through joking and enabled.
That photo did make a nice photo taken by mine host at the time in Taranaki. Thank you, Viv.
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vivienne29 said:
Just listened to Kerry’s telling of it on Grandstand. Such a pity the author never gets acknowledged. Did he know where it came from I wonder.
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honshades said:
Aside no doubt people are anxious about copyright when they are making a living out of their collections of stories and joke telling its a sorry thing I have learnt and the reasons it is sorry are complex. The writer is a warm, alive, live human being. On the other hand, Kerry makes a comment in his joke book in the chapter titled The Frog Joke that refers to not thinking it would work as a written joke ‘because it was a radio joke’. I happened on it in his volume on my neighbour’s kitchen table (dinkum) and picked it up to have a read. Surrounded by a group of people chatting and oblivious to my involvement in the book I was reading, I honestly was amazed my blood hit boiling point in an instant. That has never happened before in all my obversation of the frog going uphill and down dale round. I willed it to cool. I do not want to feel like that.
It will be seen as an innocent remark by a bystander who has not given the depth and range of thought to this that I have, I nevertheless think he spoke like a proprietor of it.
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honshades said:
Poor choice of word there on my part. He’s hardly a bystander. He took it to a grandstand. His comment alone showed to me it seemed to not have occurred to him it had a genesis quite outside of what he applied it to. It has background. It has a template. I’m the only person who knows the template.
Anyone who goes somewhere in the popular imagination however unexpectedly on the back of something they do not own I’ve learned from this needs to exercise a considerable amount of care putting forward its genesis or implying it, if for no reason other than showing respect. Blew me away.
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vivienne29 said:
I think you’re spot on Shoe. I’d be very annoyed.
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honshades said:
Thank you for your empathy, Viv. I have deep and affectionate feelings for the frog as we do a child we understand.
I so understand Donald Duck, you know when he makes all his squishy quacky noises sounding off. 🙂
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algernon1 said:
Well you’ve really taken the biscuit with all those photo. Now where have aI seen them all before?
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honshades said:
Now I’m worried.
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Mark said:
Sorry, I missed this before, is there a problem?
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algernon1 said:
All these pictures I purloined from the interweb, turning up again. You do realise that the home of Father O’Way was once a prison. Still nice to see them get a new lease of life.
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Mark said:
Yes and that’s why I commented that we all ended up in jail. As I have said before I get them from the PA’s library and really have no idea where they come from except maybe the album covers you provide which are incredibly hilarious. I scroll through the library till I find a picture that either matches the story or I can use somehow in a funny way however I don’t believe that you can claim all of these pictures especially in shoes last trilogy. So from this point I will use new pictures every time.
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algernon1 said:
Calm down Hung, my comments are tongue in cheek and I’m not trying to offend, If I have I’m sorry.
I’m actually quite chuffed that some of these photos are being reused in a different light. The kid pegged to the clothes line recently and the old fellow trying to get into the bricked up garage are some of my faves. I don’t claim ownership to any of them.
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honshades said:
I am glad that seems to have been cleared up between us. I was sincerely worried.
On the other hand this is a departure for me that we are posting pics without credits and I had at moments been feeling queasy about it. However seeing them the way Mark has presented them was so much fun I cast off concerns, only to fear algernon, you seriously needed a bookplate reference and of course, of course if that were needed by all means or, otherwise by consultation with brother Mark we select new ones.
Goodo, brother’s, let’s proceed with the carousing. Clink! Clink! Clink!
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Mark said:
Sorry shoe my response came after numerous posts from Algernon about the origin of the photos, something that Algernon even admits that he does not own them anyway. If it was so okay for him then why the comments. I am no longer sure that I will be involved in the Pigs Arms in the future. Totally sick of having to defend myself to be honest.
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honshades said:
typo… brothers, not brother’s..
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Big M said:
Sister Mark, no one’s having a go at you. I think of you as a Merv like figure, with talent, holding the pub together with humour and love for your fellow patrons. Please don’t go fucking off! Who else would put the artistic icing on my turd cake contributions?
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honshades said:
Hung, don’t leave me with my pages bare. And in my godforsaken part of the land where I’m so lonely and you brought me companionship and so much laughter. You leave and my world that feels as if it has begun in your creative companionship falls apart again. I am serious. What you have brought to these pages is so funny and as well extraordinarily sensitive. I swear you can read my mind. Please don’t, Hung.
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Big M said:
Fuckin’ hell, it’s a cornucopia of smorgasbords of really funny stuff. Love the way the fellers found their way back into the world of the Arms, or at least the carpark, or the manse up the lane near the carpark. And a photo of some smokin’ hot lookin’ sheila at the end. Foodge will be up all night!
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honshades said:
Big, if you got lots of in-house laughs and sometimes chuckles, but sentiment too not neglecting a twist of laughter, I am happy. Couldn’t believe how much angst I got into sometimes tearing away chunks I wrote into this and patting it back into shape like plasticine. Thank you for your laughter.
Y’ know the photo of me, that Mark has chosen to add, surely must be now getting on ten years on. One of my lads snapped it. I’m looking at him out the side door of his place as he left for work. He’s a new daddy again in the previous year plus and clearly fulfilling the dream of an older dad to do everything they can that’s right especially to use the experience gained by having children young. How time flies. How fortunate to have faculties and acuity and so on. Thanks, Big M. It nevertheless is nice to be told that (ten years on regardless lol) by a hot bloke particularly with a hot position of employment like you have. Honest, such adoration from us here at the pub. x
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Mark said:
Great picture still shoe. Love your hair and you look fab. Nothing wrong with that.
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honshades said:
Thank you, Mark. No nothing wrong with that if you mean saying it. Nothing wrong with that if you mean the photograph and my appearance. I must have been a beautiful baby.
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honshades said:
It was nice you put a photograph of me up. Thank you. I enjoyed seeing it there.
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Mark said:
I liked how we all ended up in jail.
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honshades said:
That’s not funny.
Well, ok, it is a bit.
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honshades said:
Truth is I spontaneously laughed without a thought but for the humour of you.
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honshades said:
Hahahaha. A DOG joke. Hahahaha. I am in stitches. You are priceless Mark.
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Mark said:
A good fun story. Well done. 🙂
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honshades said:
I’m going nigh nighs. Thanks Mark. You made it really fun.
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Mark said:
It’s great fun poking in photo’s with either stupid unrelated captions or captions that are unrelated and stupid. 🙂
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