MY UNFORTUNATE FRIEND
A friend of mine was a distinguished classical scholar.
Last year his wife planned a special birthday treat for him.
It was a cake, carefully decorated with quotations from ancient Greek.
Unfortunately, it tasted terrible.
Which only goes to show, we can’t have archaic and eat it too.
But he loved his wife very much.
He wanted to buy her some anemones, her favourite flower.
Unfortunately, all the florist had left were a few stems of the feathery ferns he used for decoration.
The husband presented these rather sheepishly to his wife.
"Never mind, dear," she said, "With fronds like these, who needs anemones?"
They made a great couple.
When they first met they were both practising architects.
They made a great cupola.
He’d been married once before but when his blonde wife faded to brunette he sued her for bleach of promise.
She remarried.
Her new husband was so obsessed with backsides he almost died from ass-phyxiation.
Together they formed a sort of mutual aberration society.
On their first trip to the beach they both got more sun than they basked for.
They started acting like two Santa Clauses on the morning after Christmas Day - a pair of real beat Nicks.
Anyway this friend of mine sold his enormous art collection and purchased a yacht.
"One of the unfortunate aspects of collecting 17th and 18th century art," he told me, "is that if you buy too much of it you end up completely baroque."
He decided to give his sailing crew a Christmas party in port.
He came ashore to round up evergreens, food, musicians and gifts.
When he returned he discovered all the plants he’d ordered were being installed on the wrong yacht.
"Ahoy!" he shouted. "You’re treeing up the wrong barque!"
On one of his circumnavigatory expeditions he uncovered a legendary treasure.
Afraid of being arrested and deprived of his loot he hid it in his grandfather’s apiary.
He sent me a scrawled telegram which said, "Booty is in the beehives of the older."
Later I heard he quit sailing and turned his attention to animals.
"You see," he explained, "it’s a little known fact that while the animals went onto the ark 2 by 2, by the end of their voyage many had multiplied. Thus Noah became the first man to have bred his cast upon the waters."
He especially loved horses.
When he tried to smuggle his dapple grey pony into a local hotel they had to be put up in the bridle suite.
He wasn’t so thrilled with rabbits, though.
He’d always wanted to become a writer but he couldn’t concentrate because this big longlegged rabbit, a drinking buddy of his, kept breathing down his neck.
He always swore he’d missed out on literary fame by a hare’s breath.
He loved snakes so much he set up a serpentine midwifery clinic.
Once a patient of his swallowed a rubber ball and she soon gave birth to a bouncing baby boa.
Later still he became obsessed with auctions.
His features grew stern and serious.
"Pleasant-faced people are generally considered the most welcome," he advised me, "but the true auctioneer is always happy to see a man whose appearance is for bidding."
He once bid $15,000 on a certain antique writingdesk that he said he simply had to have.
His bid was successful, and when he got the writingdesk home and opened it, a dozen people fell out.
Apparently it was a missing person’s bureau.
Last thing I heard he was in a car trying to beat a speeding train to an intersection.
He got across, alright - a beautiful marble one.
The end (R.I.P.)