Laugh Breaks Out at Travisty Meeting

Arun Prabhakar continues to deprecate a publication written largely by himself

Well readers, like an officer despatched to inform the modest 1950s housewife with the red-and-white flowery dress that her son has died a brave death at war, fighting for Queen and country against the dastardly - well, don’t ask me how he managed to die at war in the 1950s, let alone die bravely -, but whomst officer also has a completely debilitating stutter, I don’t know quite how to say this. So I’ll say it the only way I know how: at great, and florid, length. It happened one drizzly Thursday at Vespers. The weather wasn’t quite terrible, but it wasn’t very good either. It fell out of the realm of the pleasant, but lacked the conviction to dive so far down as to make it as a pathetic fallacy. It was the Selwyn of weathers: neither here nor there, and certainly not close to anywhere you want to be. I was walking back to college from a secret location in the tower of the University Library where we had been conducting Trinity Philosophy Society initiation rites on freshers. Portboarding: it’s traditional, you see. I was also being chased by some debt collectors who looked like something out of a Tintin comic, but who are most certainly not relevant to the matter at hand and should in fact be expunged from your memory, as should any and all allegations, suggestions, and even suspicions that I may have racked up a rather large sum of owed money on account of the veritably Bacchanalian quantities of wine consumed over the course of remarkably few individual evenings, and I wish to make it, dear reader, absolutely crystal clear that I have had no history at all with the courts in this regard (or any other), not least over any issue that father might have had to pay a hefty sum to hush up, on account of which he has cut off my Scotch ration for this term which I am not happy about at al- [Let’s get back on track, shall we? -Ed.] I was walking back to college from the Sidgwick site, where I had been hard at work on my dissertation. The weather was, not to mince my words, dismal, and it was a Thursday evening. After grabbing a quick potato-fried potato with mash from hall, I headed to the JCR for our weekly writers’ meeting. (Since of course nothing recounted in this article really happened, we can simply stipulate that the Wuhan bat never left its cave.) Everyone was there: Skinny B, Skinny P, Divestronella, Vito Cannelloni, and the online thesaurus I use to help me write light verse. We gathered around the poker table to address the matter at hand. Then, once we had secured the shipment of transgender

flags to Caius, we moved on to the question of Travisty. It was the usual talk at first. New Year’s Resolutions, moderate puns, one-liners. But we noticed that something was amiss. In the corner of the tavern sat a shadowy figure, wearing a long, dark trenchcoat, and a hat completely covering his face except for two oddly round white eyes which were clearly visible against a sea of black. All eyes now turned on him, and he stood up and walked, slowly and deliberately, towards us. He held one side of his coat open as if to show us something, and whispered “Psst. Kids. You want some jokes? I’ve got some really good stuff here.” This was puzzling, as there was nothing beneath his coat. I don’t know quite how he expected that one to play out. The verdict was reached (by referendum) that we did want some good jokes; after all, we were suffering withdrawal symptoms, you could say. Then the chap, who for diplomatic reasons I will name only as Pseudo-Dionysius the Anonopagite,1 leaned in over the table and said—

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

We waited to hear why the chicken crossed the road.

And then the punchline came.

First it was only a sniffle. I believe it was Divestronella who cracked first; the poor lass always did have a weakness for humour. But then the dam broke. We laughed for literally seconds, we did. It was the best laugh we had had in months. The best joke we had heard, too. We laughed with great mirth. The Skinnies B and P for some reason took this as a cue to knife the Anonopagite, but I wiped away the blood and explained that it was all just a misunderstanding. Vito Cannelloni actually laughed himself to death, and surprisingly early on in the story, too. In doing so he revealed that all along I had been stealing a joke format from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, or perhaps it was And Now for Something Completely Different (don’t ask me, it should be clear that I wasn’t paying attention during the comedy film). In a word, I was entertained. So, there you have it. The whole story. From beginning to ending: from cradle to grave. Oh of course, the relevant authorities were called, the porters for a noise complaint, the Junior Bursar to defund us, etc., etc., I digress. But I ask you this. Shocking though these events are, can we really be blamed? Nobody expects to find humour in their life. It’s like cancer, or a pair of odd socks that came out of the washing machine. So when it comes, sometimes it’s just too much for us to handle. We fail to maintain our composure, and fall away from our time-honoured standards. Normally

Travisty has all the comedic value of a funeral, and normally swallows fly south in the winter. But every now and then, one of them thinks ‘fuck it, I think I’ll get an Egg McMuffin instead.’ And you know what? It goes and gets an Egg McMuffin. Indeed, sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder how I could have acted differently. Should I have paid my debts, in the normal, legal way? No, probably not. But for the inordinate outbreak of laughter, can you, dear reader, forgive us? God willing, at least we can safely say it won’t be a repeat offence.

1 This is actually an intensely funny joke, not that anyone will get it.

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