TALES OF THE MIGHTY GRIFFO!!



Alan Griffiths, as a lot of you would know, always kept himself pretty fit and over the years nothing has changed, he still goes for his beach runs and swims pretty regularly.

Last year when he was in Perth for the Surf Life Saving Titles, (Alan still does the beach broadcasts for the surf boats in surf carnivals mostly in Queensland but still does the Australian titles).

For many years Griffo has rubbished Joe Williams about his age and always sent a rude card or email saying something like, happy birthday to the oldest living person I know, it was only recently that Joe found out that Alan was 12 months older than himself, so there has been some rude cards going to Griffo from Perth on his birthday in last couple of years.

Last year after the Surf Titles were over, Alan spent the last night of his Perth stay with Joe, before he went back east. During the day they were in the city of Perth seeing the sights, and on the way home it was peak hour time on the trains and they were both strap hanging. A bloke that was no youngster himself said to Joe "would your Dad like a seat", which of course didn't go over too well with Griffo. Of course, Joe has not let up on the "Dad Jokes since" and has told of the incident quite often to ex members of the Squash Club.

This year the same thing was on. Griffo had a night at Joe's before he went back to Brisbane and one of Joe's mates called in for a yarn. Griffo was telling this bloke of an incident that happened to him recently when he and his daughters went on a boat cruise in Hawaii. Griffo thought Joe was out in the back yard so he felt safe telling the story.

One day Alan spotted a notice on the ship's notice board that a pub crawl had been organised to visit the 20 bars on the Cruise Ship. He thought that sounded like a bit of fun, so he organised some afternoon shipboard entertainment for his daughters and went to the bar where it was all going to start.

About 50 other interested parties arrived, and the leader started the tour, the idea was to have a drink in each bar and towards the end there were a few drop outs but Griffo was still there at the death. When they arrived at the last bar there were quite a few other passengers waiting there to greet them.

Griffo said that he noticed an old lady on a walking frame heading towards him, (Griffo thought she would have been about 90 or even a bit older) and in an American accent she said "Sir I would like to shake your hand", when Griffo enquired why, the lady said she wanted to go on that tour, but her Great Grand Children said to her "Gran there would be no one your age on the tour".

As Griffo finished the story he noticed that Joe had returned from out the back and had heard the story. He knew that it would be a secret no longer.