HOW TO DIE LAUGHING

Should I die afore Boxing Day or the Chinese New Year ,I have given my wife firm instructions to forward the funeral demand for payment , which will include an expensive Melbourne gangland casket(coffin) and a wake for all and sundry where Milo will be dispensed in vast quantities, to God’s gift to Seventh Day Adventists, Australian literature, film making and political speechwriting ,Bob Ellis . Why so ?

While recovering from a cardiac operation performed at Adelaide’s Flinders Medical Centre , this decaying person read Suddenly, Last Winter ,another Ellis masterpiece, in the form of an election diary centred around the removal of Kevin O7 and the rise of Julia Gillard. Reading the book caused gales of laughter , blindness due to the frosting up of my useless trifocal new spectacles and insane giggling-on just about every page . My wife said it was fortunate that the cardiac operation had not involved stitches as they surely would have burst due to all my guffawing ,causing spittle to spray and a bit of snot.

Taking shelter from Adelaide's cold weather, I climbed into bed with the book and bombarded my wife with demands to listen to yet another extraordinary passage ,thus ruining it for her when I finally, reluctantly allow the book out of my hands.


I would surely have died laughing had this brilliant book come my way when I was recovering from a triple bypass on Magnetic Island seven years ago . Stitched from ankle almost to the right testicle and the subject of extensive embroidery on the chest , I lay in bed at the time, weak, sore ,clutching a World War 11 Department of Defence whistle with an attached lanyard , once the property of a soldier who built sewerage systems in Malaya before the Japanese pulled the chain on the British and other colonial empires.

The whistle was to be blown when I needed something or felt I was going to cark it. One night I slipped down the bed and could not move, so blew the whistle and my youngest son, Craig, known as Mad Max on the football field, who had come down from Darwin to help , came to my aid , picked me up like a toy,clutched me close to his hairy chest ,and put me on the pillow, in what was described by his brother,Peter, as a trademark crash tackle.

Suddenly Last Winter -an ideal Christmas present – for yourself. If you are tempted to buy John Howard’s book,wait until next year as it will soon end up in the remainder bin reduced to a song and come complete with a free , pre -loved Akubra