‘You collect jokes?’

‘Yeah. Got thousands.’ He went over to a cupboard and brought out a file, bulging with cartoons, clippings, jokes from magazines, obscene drawings, and those duplicated rigmaroles – parodies of official memoranda and regulations and so on – that get passed around offices.

There was material here I hadn’t seen since I’d been a schoolboy. Descriptions of horse races in which the runners had such names as Big Prick and Tight Thighs, and which ended in a close finish with Fat Tits getting up a sweat and Big Prick coming up fast on the inside. Cartoons of distended organs – ‘Why do my friends call me a dickhead?’ asked a character who had a penis where his nose should have been and testicles for cheeks. And material I had never seen before such as the following:

We don’t pay no taxes, we don’t make de goods

Just real little Abos, way back in de woods.

Dey pay us to vote, and dey pay us to sin

While dem sweet Goumint men keep de cheques rollin in.

We wait every month, for de slip wid de figures

And dat’s all we do, we dam lucky niggers.

‘How . . . ah . . . Why . . . um . . . I take it these, er, don’t cause offence,’ I said to Rod.

‘Only to people with a very narrow one-track mind and no sense of humour,’ he said. He was in good spirits now, laughing at his collection. More relaxed than he’d been all morning. ‘This is my favourite,’ he said.

ABORIGINAL APPLICATION FOR EMPLOYMENT

(Note: it is not necessary to attach a photograph as you all look alike.)

ADDRESS . . . . . . . . . . (If living in car, give make, model & reg no.)

NAME OF MUVA . . . . . . . . . .

NAME OF FAVA (If known.) . . . . . . . . . .

LATIONS LIVING WITH YOU (Continue list over page) . . . . . . . . . .

MARITAL STATUS: (Common law . . . ) (Shacked up . . . ) (Other . . . )

APPROXIMATE ESTIMATE AND SOURCE (Unemployment benefit . . . ) (Armed robbery . . . ) (Theft . . . ) (Accident compo . . . )

PLACE OF BIRTH (Free public hospital . . . ) (Under gum tree . . . )

(Zoo . . . )

TICK ANY ILLNESS YOU HAVE HAD IN PAST YEAR (Scabies . . . )

(V.D.  . . . ) (Head lice . . . )

AT WHAT DISTANCE CAN OTHERS SMELL YOU: (800 metres . . . )

(400 metres . . . ) (100 metres . . . )