ODE - DITS - POEMS

[jbryce1437]

The Buffers Party.
When I joined a certain navy establishment by the sea, I had to spend time on the buffers party, emptying dustbins and skirmishing to pick up any rubbish. This one day me and Paddy was told to go to the skipper’s house and clear any rubbish from the adjacent field, but on no account was we to ditch it over the cliff edge, onto the beach below, like the last pair of skirmishers had done, because the captain’s wife often walked on that beach, and last evening, had discovered it strewn with rubbish, thrown there by the two lazy previous skirmishers, who were now deep in the shite. So, we were given two sacks, for the gash and warned that there was an old donkey in the field that was usually quite tame, but just in case it got a bit aggressive, we just had to stand still and face him, and he would turn away.
Well, we’d been working for quite a while, when right in the middle of the field, we discovered an old Bofors gun barrel. Paddy tried putting it in his sack, but it was so big and heavy, he couldn’t lift it. I said, “don’t be daft mate, we can’t take that back to the Buffers store, just leave it there.” But then I remembered the buffer had said that a contractor was coming in tomorrow with a machine to cut the grass., and that we had to remove anything that might damage the machine. So, I said, “we’ll have to just pick it up between us, and drop it over the cliff, hopefully when it hits the beach it’ll be going so fast it’ll get buried in the sand, and the skippers wife will never notice it.”
So, we dropped our sacks and each took an end of the gun barrel and started crab walking towards the cliff edge. Suddenly Paddy said, “I don’t want to worry you but that bloody donkey is showing an interest in us and is walking towards us looking pissed off.” I said, ‘OK, stop, turn to face him and stand still.” Almost at once the donkey seem to lose interest in us, and commenced chomping grass. Quickly Paddy and I picked up the gun barrel and sidled over to the cliff edge and swung the heavy barrel over the cliff. Almost at once paddy yelled, “look out” and I caught a brief glimpse of the donkey, in attack mode. racing towards us. In a bit of a panic, I pushed Paddy away from me and by luck, the raging donkey burst between us and jumped out into space, in what I could only describe as an attack gone wrong that resulted in self-destruction, suicide.
Badly shaken but unhurt, Paddy and I collected our sacks and walked over to the field gate, where we spotted the padre pushing his bike, who came over for his usual overly cheery chat. “Oh! you chaps have made a good job of cleaning up that field, the captain’s wife will be pleased, by the way, where is Pollyanna?” and when we looked confused the padre said, “you know the captain’s daughter’s, much-spoiled pet donkey, well, she can’t be far away because she’s tethered to an old Bofors barrel.”