Thursday, April 23, 2009

I like to lable my tabels so I know where to ladel*

*not relevant; this post is about veterans and, later, piracy

Saturday is ANZAC day. For anyone not from Australia or NZ, ANZAC (which stands for Australian & New Zealand Army Corps) Day is the national day of commemoration for soldiers who died in war. Not any specific war, just war in general. Well. Any of the wars that we've attended. (It also gave rise to a delicious biscuit but the war thing is more important.)

This is the first ANZAC day since I was about 8 that I won't be parading about in the middle of a brass band (yay!) but I'm going to go to the parade and service anyway. I considered going to the dawn service but then I realised I totally wouldn't get up on time. I mean, I respect the war dead, but not 6am respect. Sheesh.

My grandfather, like many people's grandfathers, fought in the Second World War. Unlike many other people's grandfathers, he also managed to find time to appropriate an Army truck and go on a brief, unauthorised tour of Italy with a comrade-in-arms. I don't really know the full story of that and can't ask Granddad (he is dead) but I must remember to ask Nana. My grandfather and I got on well - he had a wicked sense of humour and wrote some hilarious stories about his time in the war. My favourite memory of him is an ANZAC one - I played the Last Post at an ANZAC day service a few years ago, and it was pure straight bloody awful. I've never played anything that badly in public before or since. My grandfather was at the service and I was quite afraid to face him afterwards, having essentially crapped all over the solemnity of the service with my Godawful trumpeting, so I apologised to him in a very very wee voice. He didn't mind at all, because apparently his regiment's bugler kind of sucked and my rendition was suitably authentic. So I'm going to the service to honour his memory, rather than out of any desire to sit through an hour of churchin'. Wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea.

Also, the PZS Acronym Competition finishes tomorrow at whenever I get up, so if you want to enter now's the time. You have some Pretty Zany Shit to beat but I'm sure you're up to it. The competition is about five posts back; I was going to put a hyperlink to it here but I'm not on my laptop (power cord = broken) and so I don't have the page where I learnt how to put hyperlinks in neatly bookmarked. Don't even bother trying to make sense of that last sentence, just go and find the original post; the title is a dead giveaway.

Today I had a half-baked notion to start a webcomic but nothing was funny and all I could think of was puns about ostriches. Maybe tomorrow. Or, if you're lucky, not.

My life currently consists of a lot of minor diversions linked by threads of bullshit conversation. I lack a vocation. Andrea said I should be a pirate but I do not have a boat. Does anyone have a boat I can borrow? Or a better suggestion.

6 comments:

Holly said...

You used to parade in brass bands!? Hahahaha! I don't know why, but they (in general, nothing to do with you) really really REALLY amuse me. :P

I'm going to an ANZAC service this year too, thanks to Girl Guiding NZ. Thankfully though, they have deemed 9am a much more appropriate time than 6, so that's when I get to go to mine. Along with a bunch of 5 year olds whose collective attention span will probably be about 40 seconds!

Haha your Granddad sounds much more exciting than either of mine. Especially more exciting than the one who died when I was 5 and who I don't remember anyway!

LOL at your badly played Last Post. I'm sure it wasn't that bad though, if you were going to do it badly, why would you have been asked to do it? Either way, it makes for a good story. :P

I second Andrea's pirate suggestion. That would be pretty awesome. *waves sword*

IT IS ALLY said...

Did you not know? I was the biggest band geek ever until the start of this year, when I moved back to Chch. Seriously. I will do a post about my brass band escapades at some point, complete with picture of me resplendant in marching uniform, leading the Christmas parade. No, actually.

The Last Post actually was that bad, sadly. Anyone who was there will back me up on this.

My other Granddad died when I was very wee...guess my other one was enough fun for both of them?

I shall think of you when crew recruiting time comes around. YARR

AnzacBiscuit said...

What wonderful stories you must have. Thanks for sharing. ;)

Andrea Eames said...

Why are tabel and ladel spelled wrong? This is bothering me, I hate to miss out on an in-joke.

IT IS ALLY said...

In my defense, I did also play the LP very well at a later service which my grandfather also attended. But that isn't such a good story.

Andrea: I'm not actually sure why they're spelt that way. I think 'tabel' was a misspelling and then everyone got over-excited

Holly said...

Hahaha! Guess who/what I thought of this morning at my GG ANZAC service? *headdesk*