mabati

In my first year of high school the funniest, and at that time the naughtiest, joke I knew went like this:

Q: What is the nosiest thing in the world?
A: Two skeletons shagging on a mabati roof.

That joke used to make me collapse in a fit of chuckles all the time and it still does. Especially in shags during one of those intense rain storms where the rain really batters at the mabati. I thought the guy who originally told me the joke was a genius since he grandly informed us that he had come up with the joke himself.

Imagine my shock when reading a brief biography of Sir Thomas Beecham last week I found out that he hated the sound of the harpsichord claiming that its’ tone sounded like, “two skeletons copulating on a corrugated iron roof.” Somehow I think the guy would be pleased to find that his quote had survived the decades and was being repeated in school corridors.