Thompson’s Lost plimsole

Part Six

Out and about in the Outback

The item of footwear, now known as Thompson’s Plimsole, had not, in fact, been owned by Thompson. It’s previous owner had been a former pupil who had gone on to sporting greatness in the 1920’s Olympics. Gerald Whiz had won gold medals for the 500mtr and 1000mtr hopping backwards races. Gerald had added to his awards after hopping from Land’s End to John o’Groats in 1921, winning the Great Saharan Desert hop of 1922 and the Perth to Brisbane hop in 1923, a distance of 2241 miles which he completed in 67 days, only pausing to sleep for 2 hours every third day. This feat would have been completed 3 day earlier if only Gerald hadn’t fallen down a disused mine-shaft and broken his hopping leg. This was of course one of the setbacks of not utilising a rear view mirror which most other competitors saw as a necessity, but to Gerald, anything other than a change of underpants and a tube of hemorrhoid cream would have seemed an encumbrance. Luckily, a small tribe of wandering Aboriginals had heard his cries for help and rescued him from certain death. These fellows set his broken leg and created a splint from the strips of wood that should have been covering the mine-shaft, they also managed to ease the pain he was suffering with some hallucinatory herbs that they were carrying. It transpired later that these chaps weren’t actually native Australians but were in fact, the heavily sunburned, surviving members of a jazz sextet who had been wandering this area for over a week after their vehicle had broken down on the way to a gig in Coober Pedy.   They had sustained themselves by drinking water from a borehole near the mine-shaft, smoking marijuana joints and eating the leather upholstery of the vehicle. Gerald would now have to make up for lost time by utilising his non hopping leg. Stopping only to advise the landlord of the only hostelry in Coober Pedy, the Whistling Wombat, of the location of his missing  jazz combo, Gerald pressed on.  

To be continued:

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