"SAY AGAIN, OVER"
CAPTION COMPETITION

If you can think of a clever, witty caption to this picture, send your entry by e-mail to armynews@defencenews.gov.au (remember to send it sec: unclassified) with caption competition in the subject line.

Army Jimbo's official guide

To excuses

In a recent door-to-door survey of my local area, I discovered that most people regard not having a good excuse when you need one as among the top five problems we face on Earth. World hunger also featured and a few people mentioned “get out of my house before I call the cops”, but for this edition I’d like to focus on the excuses problem.

The trouble these days is that people don’t plan ahead. Don’t go around believing you’ll be able to think up an iron-clad excuse on the spot, that’s when you wind up saying something like “well of course I was speeding officer, I just robbed a convenience store”.

So, your homework for this week is to start an excuse book – kind of like a telephone book for excuses – and fill it with every justifiable defence you can think of.

That way the next time you’re delayed getting to work, you simply look under L for late and you’ll never be left using the same tired old “is it Wednesday already?” again.

Just make sure that the excuses you put in your book don’t need too many props to be believable. Take it from someone who once claimed to be rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital when he suddenly realised he didn’t have a pregnant wife on hand to corroborate his story, nor did he have a car and he wasn’t actually being booked for speeding, rather he was being asked by his RSM what he was doing sleeping in a shopping trolley in the middle of the parade ground without any pants on.