Driving on Sunday to catch up with friends, this vision appeared not far away from where I live, and for once I was grateful for having an iPhone. I stopped and pulled a U-turn to ensure I was not seeing things. The industrial-sized roll of Gladwrap needed to wrap up the entire ute and the various tool boxes seemed to defy logic. I am still wondering how long it took the poor sod to unwrap his car. Given the time it takes me to find the end of the plastic wrap on my daily newspaper delivery, I do not envy him. I suspect that a Stanley knife was used. I just dread to think what happened if the Stanley knife was inside one of the wrapped tool boxes.

But I am glad to know that the continuing legacy of playing tricks on your friends is in good hands. It’s a natural progression from picking up the old Mini and turning it around to face the opposite direction, or bribing crane drivers to lift your mate’s car on to the top floor of a construction site. The crowning glory was the time we resprayed a uni mate’s 1960s ute, which he’d purchased for $200 and a case of beer. It was a vast improvement on the purchased car, as it had a different colour on each panel. The only glitch was that we sprayed it mauve. What can I say… the local hardware store had a sale on spray cans that nobody wanted. If I remember correctly, “somebody” forgot to mask the headlights, and we may in our enthusiasm have sprayed over them, as well as the blinkers and a few other vital parts. However, this problem was fixed in the first downpour when most of the “detailing” simply peeled off.