Matt Whistler’s carbonie manoeuvre

I was taking a thinking walk, when the phone rang and Andy Nicholls from Latest TV called and said “Matt, can you pole vault over a fence in Preston Park?”

So I troddled through town when an old open top, black Audi swerved in front of my tracks and without hesitation the driver said with pride, that was a ‘carbonie manoeuvre’. The driver turned out to be my old mucker Merv and he continued to explain his ‘carbonie manoeuvre’. I asked him where the name carbonie came from and Merv seemed to think it has Italian Mafia origins.

Spontaneously I decided to go along for the ride through town and five minutes into the journey Merv pulled into a tight gap, my specs and hat fell off and Merv said, “I’m really getting into this Carbonie manoeuvre.”

My further investigations in an old 1937 Oxford English dictionary showed me that the only word close to Carbonie was Carbonari… meaning members of a secret Republican society. Or on Google, the only meaning coming close was Carbon Industrial Chemicals Paints & Food Ingredient Suppliers, Ireland.
On the way towards the A23 I noticed a small bus outside Giovanni’s Salon on London Road so I tapped Merv on the shoulder and said in a poor Italian accent, “You wanna see a carbonie manoeuvre, I will show you a carbonie manoeuvre.” I entered the salon and five minutes later came out with the owner who drove me in a small miniature bus all the way to Preston Park. Merv tailed behind in his car and watched me ram the fence at Pride in Preston Park at a hefty speed of 4mph. On impact I tried to jump the fence but the calamity led to two more methods to get into Pride and resulted in a nose bleed and absolute failure.

Later that day Merv sent me a text saying: ‘I think that was more of a Matt Whistler manoeuvre.’

See the outcome of the carbonie manoeuvre disaster at Preston Park http://thelatest.co.uk/7/mad-matt-16