“They’re doing a 5km run at my new work,” Mad Father says, sipping his celebratory Billygean-is-not-thick-after-all-and-I-have-a-new-job pint.
“Ooh, are you going to do it?” I say, remembering when I tried to jog to the post office and genuinely thought I had an embolism.
“Maybe,” he says. “It’s to raise money for things like township in Africa and-”
“Township?” I say.
He looks at my face for a moment.
“Yes,” he says. “So they can get to work and reduce their carbon footprint.”
“Oh.”
I am silent for a few moments, sipping my wine, thinking it through. You can, according to MindReader, see the cogs.
“So, this boat…”
“Yes,” he says, fiddling with a beer mat. “Basically it takes a load of people to work. Since it has a sail it works on wind power so it’s better for the environment.”
“What if the wind’s blowing in the wrong direction?” I say.
“Well, then they use tacking,” he says, demonstrating the zig-zag movement with the beer mat.
“Oh, I see. What about people who need to get to town, but don’t live near the sea?”
“They’re all on wheels, none of these are waterboats. That’s why they’re called townships. They have sandyachts in flat beaches in Britain so you can still use the boats when the tide’s really far out,” he says.
“Ohhh,” I say. It all makes sense really. “Well, these townships are good then, aren’t they? A good idea,” I say, nodding wisely.
I have since wikipedia’d township.
There will be words in the morning.
