A midget teaching penguins to dance the fandango

Liam left the office with Caro on the phone, cackling like a pantomime villain.

“He didn’t, he didn’t? That man ith thuch an animal,” she croaked to some other crone at the other end of the line.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers thought Liam. She might only want stories with a distinctly Freudian air, but he was better than that. He was going to get a proper story, one so good that she’d be forced to acknowledge it and hopefully stop harassing him to try and find photos of Nick Riewoldt with his pants down at Seaworld.

There’s one true indicator of a good journalist. Send them out into a city the size of Melbourne at 10AM and by 5PM, they’ll be back with something.

For Liam, as he sat in his car scrolling through his phone contacts, that something was a someone – Mopsy, his old mate from school who now worked in the Richmond press office.

“Mopsy, mate, its Liam,” he said.

Five minutes later, after reminding Mopsy that he could email those pics from last seasons footy trip to the soon to be Mrs Mopsy any time he wanted, Liam had secured a guided tour of Punt Road.

Mopsy met him at the front administration office. They shook hands.

“Let’s get this over and done with. I’ve got a surprise for you though,” he said.

The initial part of the tour was normal. Men and women sat in offices and cubicles and did office and cubicle things.

They passed down a long corridor. At the end , walls on three sides of them, they stopped.

“What are we doing?” asked Liam.

Mopsy gave him a ‘I can’t believe I’m about to do this’ look and pushed hard on the right hand wall.

A huge creak announced the opening of a secret passage. As the wall retracted fully, Liam poked his head through to be greeted with the most amazing sight.

A vast space opened before him, the size of an aircraft hangar. Strange birds flew close to the roof, emitting comical cries as they wobbled in ever shortening drunken circles.

The walls swirled with everchanging day glo patterns, green daisies and purple roses and smiling sunflowers mixing as one. In a corner, a midget in a tuxedo was teaching penguins to dance the fandango. A monkey driving a miniature fire engine buzzed by their feet, clanging his bell maniacally.

Then Liam spotted the players. They were dressed in the style of 30’s silent movie strongmen, complete with striped one-piece costumes and slicked down hair. They were lined up in front of a large hoop which had been set alight.

One by one they ran toward the hoop, launched off a springboard hidden in the floor and vaulted through the hoop, the more agile of the squad performing graceful somersaults. As each played landed with aplomb, a large seal that was perched on a candy striped barrel behind the hoop clapped its enormous flippers and barked joyously.

“Welcome,” Mopsy said sadly, “To the Richmond football department.”