Cacofunetics

Explaining jokes always seems a bit daft, especially if they were originally told in a different language. Let alone when they are based on puns. This is actually the case, but I’m going to run the risk nevertheless and tell three stories about three men from Coniandale Road and their respective names:  Thomasiu Crane, Thomazt Urbates, and Jacinto Pinto Aquino Rego. No, I’m not joking and as a matter a fact I won’t be able to comment much on their deeds, for their names are actually real.

Craneland

Well, sort of. Young Thomasiu’s surname for instance wasn’t really Crane, but he was originally from the Ukraine. Thomasiu was one of those rare types who really ‘shouldn’t be there’, in the sense that there were plenty of reasons for him not to be there. He’d come from a rather fortunate background, had had the benefit of a good education, had a full-time job, but more importantly, Thomasiu hadn’t really deserved to have got what he got for what he’d done. Or had he? He’d been sentenced to one year of imprisonment for trespassing and criminal damage, which many think is alright given the fact that one is usually released on parole after having done half. Truth is though, once there, even a week is too long. After all, who wants to be deprived of his liberty? Thomasiu did seem like a nice kid with no apparent malice whatsoever. He’d recently graduated from business management back home and decided to travel the world before getting a permanent job, just like many have done, myself included. London is usually a good start due to the (then) cheap flights and the relatively good opportunities for making money. He was a big fellow and got a job in construction straight away so that he could also keep fit while making money, and he worked and partied just as hard for nearly a year. He then bought his round-the-world ticket and was due to leave London off to New York first then Hawaii and Thailand within two months from that fateful dawn. They were walking back home after a night out celebrating life and as the sky gradually became more colourful and their state of inebriation diminished, the imposing silhouettes of those monsters at the building site where they spent most of their days suddenly seemed to have hypnotised them. After a long staring pause they looked at each other grinning simultaneously. “Are you thinking about the same thing?”  Laughter. “No fucking way, dare you!” “A hundred quid?”  Laughter. “A hundred quid!”  Laughter. “Go on then, get the flag!”

Young high-spirited boys, too much energy accumulated and a dash of bad luck is all it takes. Thomasiu tied the Ukrainian flag around his neck like a cloak and climbed the crane all the way up to the very top, literally hundreds of feet high, completely drowned by his excitement and totally unaware of the life-threatening risks of such an inconsequent act. He hung the flag on the tip of the machinery arm and started shouting off the top of his lungs “FUCK ENGLAND, YOOHOO!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

They do say that trespassers will be prosecuted, and in fact it didn’t take very long for a couple of police cars and a fire engine to arrive on site with the sirens on. Apparently someone had seen the duo climbing the gate and phoned the police. They let the boy on the ground off but took Thomasiu to the police station, and at that point he was still enjoying himself  so much that he never really thought he was just about to swap his one-year round-the-world trip for a one-year round-the-corner stay behind bars.

At Coniandale Road they called him Mr. Crane from the Ukraine.

***

Older Thomazt had a more unfortunate and rather embarrassing story, and his comic full name was in fact tragically prophetic. Mr. Turbates was the authentic  nomad type; he was about 35 and had been travelling the world for almost 20 years. He had worked on king-crab fishing boats in Alaska, he had worked in the rice paddies of Thailand and he had picked fruit in the Australian fields. He had slept in many streets and Salvation Army shelters and when he arrived in London his first job was to sell Big Issue Magazines. He was a tall, dark and handsome man and he had a charismatic smile which provided the impression that he was always in a good mood. As soon as he heard that some people earned pretty good money by walking the dogs of the wealthy ones in Kent he bought some decent clothes,  did some interviews and eventually got the job. One of his clients was an old lady who had an incredibly sexy and attractive daughter in her early twenties. It was one of those rare sunny days in British Summer. Thomazt had just entered the property to get hold of the three greyhounds and as he crossed the upper garden along the swimming pool he just couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw her lying there, completely naked, sunbathing by the pool. He hadn’t had sex in a long while and got a little overexcited, so he ran to the loo downstairs in the basement and relieved his sexual tensions right there, on the spot, fantasising about what he had just seen.

Bark

Thomazt wasn’t really sure whether somebody like the housekeeper had seen him in action through the little window or whether he’d left some sort of incriminating vestige behind. The fact is that later in the same evening he received a phonecall from the agency just informing him that his services were no longer required. The next thing he learned a couple of days later was that he was being arrested and charged with sexual harassment. Thomazt Urbates, what an irony.

***

I still haven’t had much contact with Jacinto. He only just got there last week. I was with my colleagues doing induction, which is when we talk about and try to explain the importance of education and then assess the new-comers’ levels of literacy and numeracy so that they can sign up for the courses they might want to do. If they are non-native speakers they are referred to me and I’ll attempt a brief chat in order to try and precise their level of English. As soon as Jacinto realised I was Brazilian he frantically exposed his frustrations with the fact that he had been registered with the name that was on his fake Portuguese passport instead of his real name. Thinking that he was merely concerned about the fact that Mr. Pinto did not quite exist, I replied naïvely: “don’t you worry about that. If that is the name they want to use, it should be their problem, and that should not affect you in any way”, to what he replied with with his fast-paced accent from Ceará which kept on reminding me of Didi Mocó “no, you don’t understand, the name that the motherfucker who made the passport gave me is Jacinto Pinto Aquino Rego and I can’t stand this fucking shit!” It was like an old joke really happening right in front of my eyes, and poor Mr. Pinto looked so cross that there was no way I could laugh about the fact that he’d been given this combination of Portuguese names which even though are real and plausible for someone to have, no one would ever do (well, perhaps in Portugal), for it sounds exactly like saying something like “I feel a cock up my arse” in English.

***

These paronomastic anecdotes brought back some amusing memories of my childhood when I used to think that the iconic Brazilian actors Tarcísio Meira and Ney Latorraca were actually two actresses: Tarci Zumeira and Neyla Torraca.

Nerso