Recently, while lurching about Townsville on his walking stick,still suffering from reflux, it eased the strain / pain when he discovered the above beaut worn 1986 Octopus volume .
The very first story, by Alan Coren , once described as the funniest man in Britain, about a fellow suffering a terrible hangover after a New Year's Eve party , caused the Shipping Reporter to giggle and guffaw when he read colourful details of the guy's suffering , his tongue said to be lying on his mouth-floor like felled cactus .
It became personal when Coren , l938-2007, a journalist , writer , satirist and editor of Punch magazine for nearly a decade, wrote the man felt as if he had a plank across his aesophagus .
The extensive description of the agony of the poor chap struck another accord when the area past his tonsils was vividly described as being like a New Zealand Rotorua mud-spring, in constant state of peristaltic glug. It just so happens that the Shipping Reporter once lived in Rotorua and oft threw his body into the therapeutic bubbling mud and hot water, probably boiling his brain in the process .
The second story in the book , by another Pommie humorist , Michael Green (1927-2018) ,headed The Art of Coarse Sailing , dealt with the vexed problem of yachtsmen who snore . Green churned out a series of humorous books such as The Art of Coarse Rugby, The Art of Coarse Acting and The Art of Coarse Sex , plays , autobiographies.
The unhealthy-green about the gills - coarse Shipping Reporter over the years disrupted sleep and work on several vessels, including a Northern Territory mission lugger , a supply boat on a run from Darwin to Portuguese Timor , a NSW prawn trawler and a Kiwi shark fishing launch by frequent chundering due to seasickness.
