I'm packing the sunscreen and seasick tablets for the Dad's Army fishing expedition.
This caper takes bumbling officers and men to the waters of the Great Unknown - that is, wherever in Fiordland the boat guy takes us.
The idea is that for five days we administer a sharp lesson to cod and crayfish. Presuming the fish prove obedient, there'll also be five nights of Fish'n'Speight's.
I enjoy fish but at heart I'm an unreconstructed red-meat man, so by the fourth night I'll be desperate for some blood on the plate.
A mooing steak or even a plate of pork sausages.
The sun is still setting late, so what can occupy the evenings?
Even Dad's Army can't discuss golf for five nights solid, and I doubt the CO is up to leading the men in reflective readings from Coleridge and the Romantic poets.
So, for culture's sake, I'm learning some shaggy dog stories.
Remember these painful, long-winded ‘‘jokes''?
They have all but vanished. We've become used to entertainment that's slick and fast-paced, so the shaggy dog story is, sadly, confined to the kennel.
Its point is its tale, not its tail.
The shaggy dog is meant to tease and frustrate as it meanders down obtuse byways until reaching a ‘‘groan'' punchline which is pointless, irrelevant or downright stupid.
The perfect shaggy dog story is the equivalent of a 10-minute Christmas cracker joke.
But it's a licence to any half-decent teller of stories, and makes stirring campfire entertainment.
The best shaggy dog I've heard was told during a cricket test, by Australian commentator Kerry O'Keefe.
O'Keefe often shared his radio duties with Harsha Bhogle, an Indian with English so plummy he'd be laughed from the House of Lords.
O'Keefe, in contrast, speaks polite Strine, and owns the most famous laugh in broadcasting - a snorting, hiccupping bray, tonally similar to a bagpipe exiting via the tradesmen's entrance.
Miked up during a dreary patch of play, O'Keefe meandered through The Frog Story between balls. It developed roughly like this:
‘‘A frog marched into a bank, and sat down in front of Mr Paddy Whack, an Irish-born loans officer.
‘‘I want to borrow 50,000,'' the frog announced. Whack rolled his eyes and made discouraging noises, but the tiresome frog persisted.
‘‘My name's Kermit Jagger and my dad's Mick. He's terribly famous, and your manager knows us personally. So a loan shouldn't be a problem.''
(Harsha Bhogle, dubiously: ‘‘Short, outside off stump, through to the keeper. Will this take long, Kerry?'')
(O'Keefe snorts, but suppresses the wheeze).
‘‘So Whack told the frog: ‘That's well and good Mr Fro ... I mean Mr Jagger - but for 50,000 you'll need to put forward substantial security. What can you offer?''
‘‘No probs,'' said the frog. He reached into his suede briefcase and pulled out a tiny pink elephant - about an inch high, perfectly carved, with a rajah astride. The loans officer, trying not to snigger, said: ‘‘OK, I'll take it in to the manager and see how we go.''
(Bhogle, by now into the next over, and politely near the end of his rag: ‘‘Batsman pats the ball to mid-off. Honestly, are we just about there?'') (In retort, a whistling, hiccupping giggle).
‘‘So Paddy Whack tells his manager: ‘I've got this frog outside says he knows you. Calls himself Kermit Jagger, and claims his dad's Mick.
''He wants to borrow fifty thou, but what sort of chump security is this?' he asks, and proffers the pink elephant for inspection.
The manager stares icily at his subordinate: ‘‘It's a knick-knack, Paddy Whack, Give the frog a loan.
''His old man'sA Rolling Stone.''
There you go. I'm not sure that would be Sue Wootton's first choice for today's Monday poem, but it gets a go in Wit's End. At New Year, I told the Frog Joke to a family group in their 30s.
They looked at me as if I'd stripped a cog - which shows it's perfect for the more mature intellects of Dad's Army.
● John Lapsley lives in Arrowtown.
