Belvedere Jehosophat - Thursday, 17 April 2003
Insidious shenanigans—possibly treasonous, certainly seditious—were sounded by a loud telephone on a train between Riverwood and Kingsgrove today. The scene had been set; the wheels were in motion.
The search for witnesses to observe what was going down revealed only a nearby passenger reading a well-thumbed copy of Dylan Thomas's Selected Poems, some sporadic types of an unsavoury nature and a desire for a more efficient railway system.
Then there was nothing, silence, followed soon after by a whirlwind of heat, flash, and phone activity that allowed the few passengers within earshot to get a grasp of what had, and what was, transpiring. The story stood thus:
A shipment (contents unknown) destined to go to a theatre company didn't make its appointed destination.
Several rushed phone calls were made wherein it was discovered that said shipment, though having had arrived at a theatre company, had, in fact, arrived at the wrong theatre company.
The following story was delivered to potentially antagonistic employers:
A (the) courier had mistakenly delivered the wrong shipment to the wrong theatre and would rectify the situation the next morning by sending the correct shipment to the correct theatre.
However, there was a final piece to this increasingly obtuse and difficult puzzle:
One last surreptitious phone call was made during which time the phrase "it was the couriers fault, just letting you know so we have our story straight," was uttered verbatim. This served to betray the series of half-truths that had previously been conveyed to the unwitting employers.
The slow elucidation of hazy lies yielded thus:
There was no courier; it was an inside job. Blame had been misdirected, punishment averted.
Further investigation revealed only a splitting headache.