Long gone are the days of “jungle-drums”, smoke signals, telegraph, carrier pigeons and “the grape-vine”; even letters and ordinary phone calls are becoming old-fashioned! Chris and I are such modern people nowadays that we get our news first-hand from our friends and family around the globe and listen to it on Whatsapp over the breakfast table. Take this morning for example, our friend Roland in Brisbane thought we’d enjoy a giggle while Chris ate his cereal and I had my porridge (he was right – I certainly needed something to take my mind off my porridge – I hate porridge!). The following is an edited transcript from Roly’s verbal message:

“Something funny happened to me when I came home from work. Well, first I had better tell you about my method of folding the washing; I’m not like you, or Pat (she was the same as you) – I know you take the clothes off the line and fold them nicely into the basket, then you might put them in the dryer and pull them into shape before folding them nicely again and putting them in the drawers. I don’t pull my underpants into shape at the crotch – we’re talking underpants here (hope you don’t mind) – I just grab a handful off the line, fold them any old way and put them all into the underpants drawer in one go, same with the socks – all in in the one go.

So, going back to a bit earlier on… I needed a shower and shave (I hadn’t shaved yesterday because I was out fishing in the boat) so I got out a fresh pair of pants – my high vis ones – think they were orange or they could have been yellow – in fact I could check if I looked up my shorts leg (not my short leg!) but that’s irrelevant so I won’t bother. Anyway, as I took my high vis Bonds out of the drawer I noticed that they were a bit creased but I thought ‘Oh that’s just the way I threw them in’, and I put them on, and I put my shorts on because it’s warm tonight – twenty-eight degrees or there abouts!

So, because we took the boat out yesterday, and had to clean it out when we got home, we took all the stuff out and I thought I’d put it all back in so we won’t have to mess about with it next Sunday if we’re going fishing again [Roland chuckles.] As I was picking stuff up I got a pinch [he chuckles again], I got a pinch in my nether regions and I thought, ‘Ooo, what’s that?’ I thought something must’ve got caught – I can’t explain it – if you know what I mean? So I did an adjustment, as people do, and I carried on. I went to pick something else up and I thought, ‘Ooo, another pinch!’ [He guffaws.] It’s making me laugh to think about it. I thought to myself, ‘What the hell is that?’ It felt like a splinter but I couldn’t believe there could be a splinter in there so I stretched one leg one way, then the other, and made little re-adjustments, as you can imagine. I carried on working for another thirty seconds or so and had to lift something else up – oddly enough what they call a grab bag (sea-faring talk) – and I got this massive pinch and I thought, ‘What the hell?'”

[I looked at Chris over the table and mouthed the words, “I think I know!”]

“So I went into the bathroom to sort myself out,” our friend’s message continued, “Guess what was in my pants, right in the undercarriage part of my high vis orange pants? A piece of Velcro with the sticky tape part and the hooks, so that’s what had been making my pants creased. Every time I bent down the Velcro hooks had been grabbing my hairs and pulling them out. It was only a little piece – about a half inch – and how it got into my pants I couldn’t guess. Ah, but of course, Velcro is what I used to stick my new bait-board onto my boat… but how did it get into my pants? You couldn’t imagine how a little piece of Velcro could get into a tub of washing and find its way into the crotch of the matter, so to speak. (He said this in a very high-pitched voice!) You just couldn’t guess – could you?” Roland finished his story.

No, I couldn’t have guessed it was Velcro hooks. I thought it was a fishing hook – didn’t you? The bait and tackle doesn’t bear thinking about!