Here’s my advice: don’t take it
Yet today I am not only going to give advice but will also be passing on the advice of others. And this column begins with advice about elephants. In particular the private parts of pachyderms.
The elephant, affectionately known as the heffalump, has always been a favourite animal of mine, second only to the dog. I have fond memories of riding on a heffalump at the Melbourne Zoo a mere 80 years ago and, more recently, trotting around India atop these wondrous creatures. I recall dropping the lens cover from my camera – only to have it swiftly returned to me in the howdah by the tip of the heffalump’s trunk. He (or she?) picked it up from the ground and gave it back in one elegant elephantine gesture.
My partiality to the pachyderm accounts in part for my love of the Australian circus, back in the good-old/bad-old days when Wirth’s, Ashton’s and the others were permitted to have them. Which brings me to the aforementioned advice. I was driving along the Geelong Road near Melbourne’s old Ford factory one day when I saw a circus. And on a hill beside the Big Top was an elephant. A female elephant. Note the gender because this is important. The creature was being scrubbed by a keeper using a bucket and broom; he was beneath its great belly at this point in its ablutions. The bloke popped his head out from under and, apropos of nothing, solemnly intoned the following: “Never never NEVER touch an elephant’s vagina. It drives them crazy!” To this day, dear reader, I never never NEVER have. And I’m here to tell the tale.
A second piece of advice comes from a place I loved as a child – the Downyflake shop, just opposite St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne. Kiddies pressed their noses to the window as donuts were made by machine – beginning with plops of dough extruded from a metal sphincter into hot oil, and finishing with the completed product being dusted with sugar. On the wall was a plaque with a sign reading: “The Philosopher’s Advice”.
It showed a Hamlet-like fellow contemplating a donut as if were Yorick’s skull, saying these profound words...
“As you wander on through life brother
Whatever be your goal
Keep your eye upon the donut
And not upon the hole.”
I’m sure other great philosophers agree with Downyflake – the likes of Plato, Socrates, Confucius, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and their lofty ilk would all concur. Ditto the more prominent theologians.
Put these words of wisdom together – from the heffalump trainer to Downyflake’s Hamlet – and you’ll never go wrong.
But perhaps you could also add a third maxim – the advice given to Boy Scouts and Girl Guides by that old imperialist Robert Baden-Powell: “Be prepared.”
PS. Like me, follow the advice of our road signs. Far more biased than the ABC.
KEEP LEFT.
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On the erroneous assumption that age brings wisdom, this ancient codger is often asked for advice. And from bittersweet experience, my advice is not to give advice. On the few occasions I have, I’ve been proved wrong.