Sunday 2 April 2023

April Fool? By Steve Way

 

Perhaps if I’d had yesterday morning’s slot I could have tried out an April Fool trick on you. Possibly I could have claimed they’d discovered that Roald Dahl’s books were all written by a prototype bot commissioned by the MOD, so it’s all their fault and not his, or that The Society of Authors had made a bit on our behalf to buy Manchester United…

But of course I can’t now the day after… or even the afternoon of April 1st. Who made that rule up? Someone who didn’t like April Fool pranks I imagine. However, the timing has made me think about April Fool’s Day tricks and such like. It’s probably because I’m an ignorant under-read oaf but I don’t know of any children’s stories based around, or even involving April Fool’s Day. If any of you know of any perhaps you could enlighten me (though possibly you should only be allowed to convey that information via a flying giraffe.)

I was recently called upon to teach the meaning of ‘pulling someone’s leg’ to my classes of Spanish students learning English via the internet. I used the example of the time my dad successfully ‘pulled my leg’.

When I was around 10 or 11 years old, it was my job on getting home from school, to repeatedly fill up a watering can and water the plants. I’d been doing this day after day for some time when I got home on a rainy afternoon. “As it’s raining, you’d better put your raincoat on before doing the watering,” my dad suggested as I entered the house. Dutifully I did so and after filling up the can strolled out into the now driving rain to water the plants. It was as I was pouring water into the sodden ground at the base of a rose bush, with my back to the house that a sense of something not being quite right began to dawn on me. I turned back to the house to see dad and my two sisters standing at the window watching their daft son/brother watering in the rain.

It seems it took me a long time to grow out of being naïve. When I first started at university I was billeted with some of the third year students with a couple of other wet-behind-the-ears first years. In the bar of our pretend college there was a pinball machine which was a focal point of activity and discussion. One of the third year students explained to us that in recognition of the gradual decline in the number of pinball machines in pubs etc. in tangent with the university’s desire that they not be lost to posterity that within the centre of the university library the ‘Pinball Memorial Library’ had been instituted with the aim of preserving the rarest and most significant examples of their kind. I can only be grateful for being unable to find a member of staff at the library to ask where to find the memorial library when I first visited the library and after located the book I needed. Just as it had done in the pouring rain all those years ago the penny finally dropped!

At least in later life I managed to play a couple of April Fool’s tricks of my own.

In the good old days before mobile phones, I called my best friends, Roger and Linda from a callbox. Linda answered. “Good afternoon madam,” I began, making my best attempt to imitate something like a Mediterranean accent. “Zis is Pablo’s Exotic Pets. I am delighted to tell you that ze Boa Constrictor zat you ordered is ready for delivery. She iz a beauty! We with be able to deliver ‘er zis afternoon…”

Hearing the panic in Linda’s voice as she insisted that they had never ordered a Boa Constrictor I had to come clean.

In days long gone by, that my doctor would have approved of rather than glaring at me, as he does now every time I stand on the scales, I used to regularly go jogging in the woodland close to our village. On returning home one April 1st I adopted a concerned expression when my wife asked how the run had been. “Well, you wouldn’t believe it,” I replied. “The woods were full of police officers, firemen and people from a zoo.” Naturally Jan demanded to know why and I continued, “It seems that at the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill, two zebra that were being transported from York Zoo* to Chester Zoo escaped from the van they were in and ran into the woods.”

“Oh, the poor things, what can we do should we go and help?” Jan demanded, always the first to support the unfortunate. If only I had been able to keep a straight face, she would probably have tried to muster together a rescue to team of friends and neighbours…

One other year we had been invaded by the gas board. They dug a trench in our back yard in order to replace the old pipes. The pipes were replaced but the trench remained unfilled for week after week. Not only was the hole unsightly, it was barred off by warning barriers that we had to walk around in order to get into and out of the house. It was like living in a permanent building site. We even got the local paper, The Wakefield Express, to do an article about it (our neighbours had all suffered the same fate) though the cowards failed to name the company responsible.

April 1st that year happened to fall on a Sunday. While making the morning cuppa to take up to Jan I knocked on our door and pretended to have a conversation. As I passed Jan her tea, I told her how impressed I was that anyone would work on a Sunday.

“What to you mean?” Jan asked.

“Well, it’s a bit like how the guides and scouts used to do jobs for people but this time it’s trappist monks. They’re going from house to offering to help with any jobs they need doing. They saw our trench and they’ve volunteered to fill it for us. They’ve just gone off to find a cement mixer…”

I didn’t actually finish the last sentence because Jan leapt out of bed like a rocket on steroids.

“I’m not having trappist monks working on my house!” she roared, ready to take on the High Priest in a fist fight if necessary by the looks of it.

Well frankly after the zebra incident she should have known better.

*I was pretty sure there isn’t a York Zoo but I gambled on Jan not knowing that – they needed to be crossing Yorkshire somehow to end up passing through our village!

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In light of the awful and tragic events associated with Ofsted I wanted to remind you about my story cum criticism of the pressures placed on teachers, including the dreaded inspections, Escape from Schoolditz. (ISBN 1720047944 ASIN B07H2KSBJB) Each night the four teachers who are locked in the staffroom each night plan their escape. The visiting Ofsted inspector accidentally discovers and destroys one of their escape routes that are inspired by the escape attempts made at Colditz.



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