There are times, we all know, when words are woefully inadequate and it seems even more diabolically so to those of us who fling them about for a living.
When one of my oldest mates Dave was dying, the words I couldn’t say to him or his wife — both also journos — morphed into penguin-inspired objects, as they were always both quite partial to the creatures.
There were penguin bookmarks, penguin books, penguin ornaments, penguin pencil sharpeners, a penguin pendant, penguin chocolates all posted interstate wordlessly. When the shops ran out of penguins — as being nowhere near the sea they very soon did — I began rewriting the great works of literature to include penguins.
There was the long lost Penguin Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. I rediscovered Esperance — the nanny penguin cut from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet by censors after the Great Penguin Pogroms of the 14th century.
When Dave died, I flew across for the funeral with a five-kilogram glass penguin swathed in half a kilometre of bubble-wrap.
The sheer absurdity of it gave me strength, especially when airport security stopped the X-ray conveyor and demanded to know what was in the suspicious parcel.
“A very heavy glass penguin,” I replied.
The guard looked me with an expression that said, ‘Sure, it’s a heavy glass penguin’.
He then insisted, quite nastily, that I unwrap it — presumably just in case it went off.
And as I held it out for inspection it was clear to everyone that this was a penguin of mass destruction.
Someone behind me snickered.
I didn’t cry, but I didn’t laugh either because I didn’t want the penguin to miss the plane.
