This amusing story from Dad the other day. A perfect opportunity for some black spoof, methinks.
I had to go to Sydney again the other day.
Oh?
Yeah, we buried another old digger. Had never heard of this guy, and he was heavier than the last one. It came at really short notice.
Hm?
Well, funerals are always at short notice, but we didn't hear about this one until the day before. So there was no time to form a new funeral party. We just went "ah, what the heck, call up the other one". Now we're the official funeral party of *X* Squadron. Two of our members had moved on, so we had to train up some new guys. Turns out one of them used to teach funeral drill.
He WHAT?
well, someone's gotta. So our officer was out there, muddling it up, and this guy was correcting him: "nono, sir, you've got it wrong. The call is (*readers, assume fake military tones here*) COFFIN- LEFT!
nice work.
as it turned out, when we got down there we discovered something we hadn't planned for. The church had not one aisle but two. Tiny little church, two aisles, one on either side of the door.
So you had to pull a Coffin Right and then a Coffin Left?
There wasn't any room. We had to go up some stairs, and then there was no room for a coffin right, so it was a matter of Coffin Snake. And then we hit a problem- each aisle had a pillar on either side. The blokes on the left of the coffin saw that there was suddenly a pole in their way. I could see that there was a pole on my side too, so i just kept on going. But then they all execute a neat step right, driving me into the pole and the coffin into the side of my head. I saw stars. I nearly fell down, except that if i had fallen down I would've taken the whole column with me and the coffin would've ended up on top of me.
So really, it's a good thing I stayed on my feet.
and this from an email he just sent me:
3. I learned a new weasel word today. I asked a rupert* a question. He
e-mailed me back to say that he had "socialised" it with his boss, and
would get back to me. I replied and asked if that meant that he had
workshopped it while networking over lunch. Rupert replied that it
meant getting a verbal agreement while his boss was a) occupied with
other matters, and b) not aware of all the facts. Later, his boss will
most likely sign the paperwork, on the basis that he had already
agreed to it, although he may not clearly remember why he agreed to
it. I replied that this was a sneaky and low tactic, and I would like
to use it some time.
*An officer, a la Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment
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