After my last post I seemed to be the butt of a bit of toilet humour but the deepest wound was inflicted by a prolific author and altruist I admire who suggested that my effort was not only long, it was shit. Milder wounds were inflicted by a meerkat who used American literary precedence to suggest that not only was I talking shit, I was shit. An antipodean commentator admitted that he had lost interest half way through this alleged verbal shit of mine but for them, when it comes to literature, anything longer than the instructions necessary to inject coins into a vending machine and get a cold tinny out are superfluous and, therefore, shit. And if you ask the maid who had to chuck water down my non flushing dunny, there was nothing fucking alleged about that shit.
I put my heart and soul and just about everything else I could expel through my shredded arsehole into that post and you lot are taking the piss. I mean the shit.
Now I could bleat and whine about how Bloggers are supposed to encourage other bloggers.
But you know that’s not my style.
So, Gentlemen, I hope your next shit is a hedgehog. No need to name you, you'll know who you are in the morning.
Thinking about it, you have been such nice guys so I wouldn't want you to suffer terribly. So stick the band aids and the toilet paper in the fridge. It'll make it easier. Trust me.
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Friday, 9 March 2012
Infidelity
My loo is quite an interesting place. Not aesthetically, you understand. It has white tiled walls and floor and the usual amenities. No, what makes my loo special is the window high up the wall overlooking the hard standing to the side of the shop along with its outstanding acoustics.
Mine is but a village shop. I suppose being in Africa and on a river by the sea it should be called a trading post and I should wear breeches and a pith helmet. And maybe change the name of this blog from a Hippo on the Lawn (since there are no hippos although we saw a croc the other day, just a little one but enough to remind one that it must have a Mum and Dad somewhere) to A River by the Sea.
I have a lot of regulars now and from about seven in the morning the shop is busy. Like all village shops (although just a rose tinted memory in UK), it has become a community centre. I even dug out all my dining room chairs and put them out so that villagers could sit, natter and of course, buy more. The fact it is still a building site bothers none. The fact that just recently they have either had to time their visits according to the tide or accept taking their shoes off and wade to get to it seems to bother them even less. They know that at the end of their damp journey is a dry oasis (?! If it is dry, can it be an oasis?), where they can sit and drink an ice cold beer (so it IS an oasis after all).
Normally, they like to clog the hard standing in front of the shop but occasionally, if the conversation is to be private and, as anywhere in Africa, animated, the combatants will retire to the hard standing coincidentally opposite the window of my loo.
Late yesterday afternoon Marcia made me Calalu (a fishy stew), beans cooked with palm oil and funge. I love this dish but as I was busy I left it to eat later and promptly forgot all about it. Thinking that I would be eating it within ten or so minutes, Marcia merely covered it with another plate and also promptly forgot about it. We managed to close the shop at half ten, did a bit of admin and prepared for bed. That’s when I realised I was bloody hungry so I asked Marcia where she had put my food.
‘I left it on the table in the Jango, you’re not going to eat it are you?’
‘I’m starving, it’ll be OK’
‘Let me reheat it properly for you…’
‘Don’t bother, you should have seen some of the stuff I ate on operations in the jungle.’ Old soldiers, you see, never die. They just get very boring.
It must have been around three in the morning when I woke up not knowing quite why. Then my abdomen moved in a manner reminiscent of a scene from ‘Alien’.
An hour of misery later, Marcia stuck her head around the bog door.
‘Are you alright?’
‘Oh God Marcia!’ I groaned.
‘Is there anything I can get you? Some water?’
‘Please. Fetch me a torch, my book, my fags and a glass of whisky.’ She made to move.
‘Wait, better bring me the whisky bottle, I’m in for the long haul’
She came back with everything I had asked for and, thankfully as it turned out, a couple of litres of mineral water and an extra bog roll.
I was still there when Marcia woke up and brought me a cup of tea. It was only then it occurred to me that Marcia had never once said, ‘I told you so’.
Anyone with even half a mind knows that if you want to end it all, eating a fish supper that has stood for six hours in this climate is one way of doing it but a bullet through your head is a damn sight quicker and lot less painful. But bent up double with legs paralysed through lack of blood flow, even though I knew the white tiled wars and floor would make mopping up afterwards easier, I knew I stood no chance of making it around the building and to my desk drawer in which I knew I had the ultimate 7.65 mm pain killer.
Marcia came back in again and replaced the two empty bottles of mineral water with another and noted I had not touched my whisky. I was wracked with another sudden spasm at the thought.
‘Oh Please, Marcia’, I gasped, literally scared shitless she was going to pop in again and offer me a plate of the eggs and bacon I could smell her cooking.
Since I had screwed up the plumbing yesterday, I could not flush so had to rely on the water stored in a big plastic bin and a bucket. You have to understand, I was in agony and had sweated like a thrashed race horse all night long and was in a confined space. It was deeply unpleasant. So I dipped the bucket into the cool water in the bin next to me and, still sitting on the bog, poured it all over myself. Alerted, perhaps by the flood of water out from under the toilet door, Marcia had another look to find me drenched and clutching the sodden roll of toilet paper I had forgotten to lift off the floor before taking my unconventional shower.
‘I’m off to town for more stock,’ she informed me, ‘Edu will look after the shop. Here is your mobile, I have put more credit in’. A minute later she was back with a new bog roll. I heard Marcia and the driver exchanging a joke I couldn’t quite catch but must have been very funny and then they were gone.
The drenching must have done me some good as I started to feel better as well as less disgusting. I tried smoking a cigarette and, apart from the usual early morning hacking cough, enjoyed it. I turned to my book which, in the dark of this truly awful night had been ignored because, having tried all ways, I had decided it was impossible to hold a book, a torch and simultaneously hang on to a bog seat. Feeling slightly better and in dawn’s light, I could now free one hand for the book and keep one dedicated to my stability (I did mention my legs were numb and useless, didn’t I?)
I reached the point in Richard Benson’s book, ‘The Farm, The Story of One family and the English Countryside’ where his parents had just sold their old farmhouse (the farm business having gone bust) and were now living in caravans and hopefully (I cannot predict the end of the book) by self building, jumping up the property ladder the same way my father did and this reminded me of when our family lived in two caravans in a farmer’s field.
Sleep deprivation is recognised as an effective method of extracting information along with the more controversial ‘water boarding’ favoured by the Mafia and the US Military. My sleep deprivation was involuntary, I cannot claim it wasn’t self inflicted as I had ignored Marcia’s advice after all, but I had voluntarily water boarded myself so clearly my mind was wandering. I remembered how wonderful it was to be out of the town and slap bang in the middle of the countryside. TV seemed less important as there was so much for us kids to do. The farmer showed us a badger sett and, oblivious of the fact that badger baiters would only come well after our bedtime, we spent hours guarding it. The farmer showed us how to catch and bake hedgehogs in clay and once, while guarding his fox ravaged duck pond, hiding quiet as mice in the shadow of a wall, we saw the vixen on another raid pass no more than a few feet away from us through the autumn mist and onto the little bridge leading to the island and its duck house and we jumped up and shouted and chased across the bridge after the fox who, having run a complete circle causing us to jump out of the way, sprang into the pond and swam for it.
‘We SAW it!’ we insisted, half soaked and covered in mud, ‘I jumped in and tried to catch it,’ I added. I was the wettest and muddiest so I could get away with such a blatant lie. I had been so scared when it ran back at us I had fallen in.
‘It’s well dark’, the farmer grumbled, ‘yer mother’ll be worried an’ you’ll catch yer death. Best clean yersel’s up at the sink’.
‘He never even said thanks’ I said to my brother as we washed up.
‘Well, YOU didn’t catch the fox, DID you’ replied my brother, clearly pissed at me for claiming I had tried when in actual fact it was he who had remained on his feet to face the fox down and then had to haul me out of the mire.
Mrs Farmer asked us to hurry home. She said she would have phoned our parents to say we were all right but she knew we didn’t have a phone in the caravan. I was suddenly depressed, everyone knows we are poor, I thought. Even the kids at school took the piss. I had no idea what a Pikey was but apparently my Dad was one and so were we. Every time I fancied a girl and tried to talk to her she would say, you’re the family that live in the caravans. In retrospect I have to confess that the ‘vans were pretty bleak. Drop a bar of soap in the shower and you had to go outside, crawl under the ‘van and retrieve it, there were so many bloody holes in the floor. And in winter it truly was an experience. I have no idea how my mother coped. Dad had a plan and he had clearly convinced Mum and she was right behind him, 100 per cent. Every day she would make sure his suit was immaculate, he had a clean shirt (Dad, ex military, polished his own shoes) and would make sure we all had a decent breakfast inside us before Dad left for the office and us for school. As the temperature dropped, Dad installed Calor gas heaters. A gas heater blazing away in a cardboard, plastic and wood framed mobile hut would, by today’s HSE standards be considered a marginal fire risk but I now assume he had realised that the risk of Carbon Monoxide poisoning (CO being heavier than air) was minimal as it could escape through the holes in the floor, and he always positioned the heaters very carefully and told us that under no circumstances were we to put anything near them or even touch them. At night, in our highly inflammable, non kite marked, impossible to get out of in hurry sleeping bags, we snuggled up to them as close as we could.
Us having washed up, Mrs Farmer told us to cut along quick. ‘Here’, she said offering a brown paper back (you remember them?). ‘No peeking and don’t drop it. This is for your Mum’. As we turned to leave, without looking up from his paper Mr Farmer said, ‘I wouldn’t want to try and grab a vixen wi’me bare hands. Would you Dot?’ Mrs Farmer winked at us and we left.
When we got home, Mother beat the crap out of us and then opened the bag, In there were a dozen ducks eggs and a big bag of freshly made Welsh cakes.
Such thoughts wander aimlessly through the minds of those afflicted by the very rarest form of dysentery, for this is what I decided I had, an affliction so unique it is pointless for me even to attempt to describe as, with out experience, no one could ever comprehend its symptoms, not even a doctor who, forgetting his Hippocratic oath would hastily scribble out a prescription for antibiotics and get me out of his office as quick as he could, thereby missing the chance of a Nobel Peace prize for medicine. In civilised countries the greatest killers are not heart attacks or cancer, it is Man Flu. What I was suffering from was far more lethal. Man Dysentery. I had struggled into the bog weighing three thousand two hundred and eighty nine kilograms and now I was so light I was in danger of being dislodged from the toilet seat by the beat of the wings of the mosquitoes who had added to my hell all night long.
I won’t go into awful details but you get pretty bored losing your mind in a 2 x 2 metre khazi and I decided that had I opened the bog door, I could have been deadly accurate at up to twenty paces.
Then I heard the voices. Clearly they had retired to the side hard standing and where now being captured by the unique acoustics of my loo.
Angolans always gob off. Their stereos do not have volume controls, they only have on-off switches. These two were going full tilt at each other.
I recognised the voices before I picked up the thread of the conversation. They were going at each other hammer and tongs. Any moment blood would be spilt. I was in no fit state to lend a hand but I definitely wanted to see it if only to stop them bashing each others heads against my shop window.
‘Well, I think it is scandalous!’ That came through, clear as a bell. Mr X, married man, works weekends at the nearby Universal Church as a chef, comes in every day first thing in the morning during the week, drags over two beers until lunchtime before switching to wine and buying a slab of beef or pork ribs and a sack of rice which he takes to cook at home.
‘How can YOU say it is scandalous?’ Ah Mr Y. Fisherman. Single. Goes out according to the tides. Since it was now (I hurriedly consulted my mobile display) 7.45, he must be back by now. He is good for two tins of sardines, fresh bread, a small jar of mayonnaise, some tomatoes, a litre carton of red wine, a chicken and two packets of spaghetti. If he has had an average night, I swap for his fish and always throw in a couple of extra tins of sardines. He always asks for tinned sardines but I am sure he cannot see the irony. If he has had a good night, he can walk away with 500 bucks in cash. With all the high tides, he is earning more than me at the moment.
Bugger the regular business, I like them both and really did not want to be peeling either of them off the concrete but as far as relocating my evil body was concerned, my effective range was about a yard and a half.
‘You know Miss Z is mine!’
‘How can Miss Z be yours? You’re fucking married!’
‘I was shagging her before you!’
‘And now she’s shagging me, so go back to screwing yer missus, no-one else will!’
Shitty fucking death!
This required a Herculaneum effort and sensitive diplomatic intervention on my part so I hauled myself up on the bog seat so I could stick my head out the window, thought about it briefly before yelling:
‘Oi! You two. Knock off the fucking soap before I come out there and shag the pair of you instead.’
I can’t believe it. You’ve got a married man screwing another girl and he is outraged by her infidelity. Christ. With all the waves I would have thought that at least I deserved a shit in peace.
Mine is but a village shop. I suppose being in Africa and on a river by the sea it should be called a trading post and I should wear breeches and a pith helmet. And maybe change the name of this blog from a Hippo on the Lawn (since there are no hippos although we saw a croc the other day, just a little one but enough to remind one that it must have a Mum and Dad somewhere) to A River by the Sea.
I have a lot of regulars now and from about seven in the morning the shop is busy. Like all village shops (although just a rose tinted memory in UK), it has become a community centre. I even dug out all my dining room chairs and put them out so that villagers could sit, natter and of course, buy more. The fact it is still a building site bothers none. The fact that just recently they have either had to time their visits according to the tide or accept taking their shoes off and wade to get to it seems to bother them even less. They know that at the end of their damp journey is a dry oasis (?! If it is dry, can it be an oasis?), where they can sit and drink an ice cold beer (so it IS an oasis after all).
Normally, they like to clog the hard standing in front of the shop but occasionally, if the conversation is to be private and, as anywhere in Africa, animated, the combatants will retire to the hard standing coincidentally opposite the window of my loo.
Late yesterday afternoon Marcia made me Calalu (a fishy stew), beans cooked with palm oil and funge. I love this dish but as I was busy I left it to eat later and promptly forgot all about it. Thinking that I would be eating it within ten or so minutes, Marcia merely covered it with another plate and also promptly forgot about it. We managed to close the shop at half ten, did a bit of admin and prepared for bed. That’s when I realised I was bloody hungry so I asked Marcia where she had put my food.
‘I left it on the table in the Jango, you’re not going to eat it are you?’
‘I’m starving, it’ll be OK’
‘Let me reheat it properly for you…’
‘Don’t bother, you should have seen some of the stuff I ate on operations in the jungle.’ Old soldiers, you see, never die. They just get very boring.
It must have been around three in the morning when I woke up not knowing quite why. Then my abdomen moved in a manner reminiscent of a scene from ‘Alien’.
An hour of misery later, Marcia stuck her head around the bog door.
‘Are you alright?’
‘Oh God Marcia!’ I groaned.
‘Is there anything I can get you? Some water?’
‘Please. Fetch me a torch, my book, my fags and a glass of whisky.’ She made to move.
‘Wait, better bring me the whisky bottle, I’m in for the long haul’
She came back with everything I had asked for and, thankfully as it turned out, a couple of litres of mineral water and an extra bog roll.
I was still there when Marcia woke up and brought me a cup of tea. It was only then it occurred to me that Marcia had never once said, ‘I told you so’.
Anyone with even half a mind knows that if you want to end it all, eating a fish supper that has stood for six hours in this climate is one way of doing it but a bullet through your head is a damn sight quicker and lot less painful. But bent up double with legs paralysed through lack of blood flow, even though I knew the white tiled wars and floor would make mopping up afterwards easier, I knew I stood no chance of making it around the building and to my desk drawer in which I knew I had the ultimate 7.65 mm pain killer.
Marcia came back in again and replaced the two empty bottles of mineral water with another and noted I had not touched my whisky. I was wracked with another sudden spasm at the thought.
‘Oh Please, Marcia’, I gasped, literally scared shitless she was going to pop in again and offer me a plate of the eggs and bacon I could smell her cooking.
Since I had screwed up the plumbing yesterday, I could not flush so had to rely on the water stored in a big plastic bin and a bucket. You have to understand, I was in agony and had sweated like a thrashed race horse all night long and was in a confined space. It was deeply unpleasant. So I dipped the bucket into the cool water in the bin next to me and, still sitting on the bog, poured it all over myself. Alerted, perhaps by the flood of water out from under the toilet door, Marcia had another look to find me drenched and clutching the sodden roll of toilet paper I had forgotten to lift off the floor before taking my unconventional shower.
‘I’m off to town for more stock,’ she informed me, ‘Edu will look after the shop. Here is your mobile, I have put more credit in’. A minute later she was back with a new bog roll. I heard Marcia and the driver exchanging a joke I couldn’t quite catch but must have been very funny and then they were gone.
The drenching must have done me some good as I started to feel better as well as less disgusting. I tried smoking a cigarette and, apart from the usual early morning hacking cough, enjoyed it. I turned to my book which, in the dark of this truly awful night had been ignored because, having tried all ways, I had decided it was impossible to hold a book, a torch and simultaneously hang on to a bog seat. Feeling slightly better and in dawn’s light, I could now free one hand for the book and keep one dedicated to my stability (I did mention my legs were numb and useless, didn’t I?)
I reached the point in Richard Benson’s book, ‘The Farm, The Story of One family and the English Countryside’ where his parents had just sold their old farmhouse (the farm business having gone bust) and were now living in caravans and hopefully (I cannot predict the end of the book) by self building, jumping up the property ladder the same way my father did and this reminded me of when our family lived in two caravans in a farmer’s field.
Sleep deprivation is recognised as an effective method of extracting information along with the more controversial ‘water boarding’ favoured by the Mafia and the US Military. My sleep deprivation was involuntary, I cannot claim it wasn’t self inflicted as I had ignored Marcia’s advice after all, but I had voluntarily water boarded myself so clearly my mind was wandering. I remembered how wonderful it was to be out of the town and slap bang in the middle of the countryside. TV seemed less important as there was so much for us kids to do. The farmer showed us a badger sett and, oblivious of the fact that badger baiters would only come well after our bedtime, we spent hours guarding it. The farmer showed us how to catch and bake hedgehogs in clay and once, while guarding his fox ravaged duck pond, hiding quiet as mice in the shadow of a wall, we saw the vixen on another raid pass no more than a few feet away from us through the autumn mist and onto the little bridge leading to the island and its duck house and we jumped up and shouted and chased across the bridge after the fox who, having run a complete circle causing us to jump out of the way, sprang into the pond and swam for it.
‘We SAW it!’ we insisted, half soaked and covered in mud, ‘I jumped in and tried to catch it,’ I added. I was the wettest and muddiest so I could get away with such a blatant lie. I had been so scared when it ran back at us I had fallen in.
‘It’s well dark’, the farmer grumbled, ‘yer mother’ll be worried an’ you’ll catch yer death. Best clean yersel’s up at the sink’.
‘He never even said thanks’ I said to my brother as we washed up.
‘Well, YOU didn’t catch the fox, DID you’ replied my brother, clearly pissed at me for claiming I had tried when in actual fact it was he who had remained on his feet to face the fox down and then had to haul me out of the mire.
Mrs Farmer asked us to hurry home. She said she would have phoned our parents to say we were all right but she knew we didn’t have a phone in the caravan. I was suddenly depressed, everyone knows we are poor, I thought. Even the kids at school took the piss. I had no idea what a Pikey was but apparently my Dad was one and so were we. Every time I fancied a girl and tried to talk to her she would say, you’re the family that live in the caravans. In retrospect I have to confess that the ‘vans were pretty bleak. Drop a bar of soap in the shower and you had to go outside, crawl under the ‘van and retrieve it, there were so many bloody holes in the floor. And in winter it truly was an experience. I have no idea how my mother coped. Dad had a plan and he had clearly convinced Mum and she was right behind him, 100 per cent. Every day she would make sure his suit was immaculate, he had a clean shirt (Dad, ex military, polished his own shoes) and would make sure we all had a decent breakfast inside us before Dad left for the office and us for school. As the temperature dropped, Dad installed Calor gas heaters. A gas heater blazing away in a cardboard, plastic and wood framed mobile hut would, by today’s HSE standards be considered a marginal fire risk but I now assume he had realised that the risk of Carbon Monoxide poisoning (CO being heavier than air) was minimal as it could escape through the holes in the floor, and he always positioned the heaters very carefully and told us that under no circumstances were we to put anything near them or even touch them. At night, in our highly inflammable, non kite marked, impossible to get out of in hurry sleeping bags, we snuggled up to them as close as we could.
Us having washed up, Mrs Farmer told us to cut along quick. ‘Here’, she said offering a brown paper back (you remember them?). ‘No peeking and don’t drop it. This is for your Mum’. As we turned to leave, without looking up from his paper Mr Farmer said, ‘I wouldn’t want to try and grab a vixen wi’me bare hands. Would you Dot?’ Mrs Farmer winked at us and we left.
When we got home, Mother beat the crap out of us and then opened the bag, In there were a dozen ducks eggs and a big bag of freshly made Welsh cakes.
Such thoughts wander aimlessly through the minds of those afflicted by the very rarest form of dysentery, for this is what I decided I had, an affliction so unique it is pointless for me even to attempt to describe as, with out experience, no one could ever comprehend its symptoms, not even a doctor who, forgetting his Hippocratic oath would hastily scribble out a prescription for antibiotics and get me out of his office as quick as he could, thereby missing the chance of a Nobel Peace prize for medicine. In civilised countries the greatest killers are not heart attacks or cancer, it is Man Flu. What I was suffering from was far more lethal. Man Dysentery. I had struggled into the bog weighing three thousand two hundred and eighty nine kilograms and now I was so light I was in danger of being dislodged from the toilet seat by the beat of the wings of the mosquitoes who had added to my hell all night long.
I won’t go into awful details but you get pretty bored losing your mind in a 2 x 2 metre khazi and I decided that had I opened the bog door, I could have been deadly accurate at up to twenty paces.
Then I heard the voices. Clearly they had retired to the side hard standing and where now being captured by the unique acoustics of my loo.
Angolans always gob off. Their stereos do not have volume controls, they only have on-off switches. These two were going full tilt at each other.
I recognised the voices before I picked up the thread of the conversation. They were going at each other hammer and tongs. Any moment blood would be spilt. I was in no fit state to lend a hand but I definitely wanted to see it if only to stop them bashing each others heads against my shop window.
‘Well, I think it is scandalous!’ That came through, clear as a bell. Mr X, married man, works weekends at the nearby Universal Church as a chef, comes in every day first thing in the morning during the week, drags over two beers until lunchtime before switching to wine and buying a slab of beef or pork ribs and a sack of rice which he takes to cook at home.
‘How can YOU say it is scandalous?’ Ah Mr Y. Fisherman. Single. Goes out according to the tides. Since it was now (I hurriedly consulted my mobile display) 7.45, he must be back by now. He is good for two tins of sardines, fresh bread, a small jar of mayonnaise, some tomatoes, a litre carton of red wine, a chicken and two packets of spaghetti. If he has had an average night, I swap for his fish and always throw in a couple of extra tins of sardines. He always asks for tinned sardines but I am sure he cannot see the irony. If he has had a good night, he can walk away with 500 bucks in cash. With all the high tides, he is earning more than me at the moment.
Bugger the regular business, I like them both and really did not want to be peeling either of them off the concrete but as far as relocating my evil body was concerned, my effective range was about a yard and a half.
‘You know Miss Z is mine!’
‘How can Miss Z be yours? You’re fucking married!’
‘I was shagging her before you!’
‘And now she’s shagging me, so go back to screwing yer missus, no-one else will!’
Shitty fucking death!
This required a Herculaneum effort and sensitive diplomatic intervention on my part so I hauled myself up on the bog seat so I could stick my head out the window, thought about it briefly before yelling:
‘Oi! You two. Knock off the fucking soap before I come out there and shag the pair of you instead.’
I can’t believe it. You’ve got a married man screwing another girl and he is outraged by her infidelity. Christ. With all the waves I would have thought that at least I deserved a shit in peace.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Water
Today I had my first delivery of water.
Not the sea water which comes free with every high tide but good, honest, I’d nearly but not quite trust it to drink sort of water.
Despite the damage to my land, the invading sea water only ever came perilously close to flooding the actual accommodation confining itself to knocking down a few half built cottages.
I have been busy. I have not spent all my time staring at or writing gloomy reports of biblical floods. I have been doing Man stuff as well. In UK, water systems work under the pressure a decent head of water gives. Here, unless you mount your tank on a high pedestal (making it impossible for the tanker to unload), you need a pump.
First job then was to install the pump and make the connections to the 15,000 litre above ground water tank. Simple, eh? A couple of hours later the tank was connected to the pump and the pump ready to plug into the electrical supply.
Next connect the pump to the building pipe work. Took me a while of digging around the foundations but eventually I found the inlet pipe to the building. Cool.
Another hour and everything was connected up ready for the arrival of the tanker.
Ten thousand litres of the cleanest water I had seen in over a month. I cupped my hand under a leaky union on the tanker and swilled a bit around my mouth. It wasn’t salty, it had no grit or bits in it. I was pleased.
I stuck the plug of the pump lead into the generator and it kicked into gear. Once the system is pressured up, it should stop running. It didn’t. I opened the outside tap and water gushed out. Clearly the pump was pumping and not spinning air so it wasn’t a priming problem. I closed the tap and the pump kept going.
Shit, the toilet I thought. I can’t call it a bathroom as it has only a bog and a sink, no bath or shower. Sure enough, the sink tap was wide open so I turned it off.
Still the pump kept going.
The building I am talking about is destined to be the kitchen and the male and female toilets of the restaurant. Until shortly before we arrived it was in a raw state and I asked the contractor to fit a toilet and sink in the Men’s lav, leave the ladies lav and fit windows and doors to make it our temporary accommodation.
Still this bloody pump would not switch off.
I checked the toilet again. Tap closed, no leaking toilet cistern.
Must be the pressure switch on the pump, I thought. I pulled out the screw driver and started to tweak.
Still the pump ran.
Come on Tom, don’t get angry or frustrated, nip to the shop, help yourself to a cider, have a quiet smoke and think this one through.
So there I was sitting comfortably by a racing water pump, halfway through a bottle of Savannah and smoking a tab when I heard this almighty scream and Marcia came hurtling around the building shouting the Portuguese equivalent of ‘What the FUCK are you doing?’
Have you ANY idea how fast and how far water, powered by a good couple of metres of head and a 1KW pump, can spurt out of the end of an uncapped water pipe?
Yes, I had turned the tap off in the loo, but I had completely forgotten the not-connected-to-anything pipework to the kitchen that was our temporary bedroom and the ladies loo that was now our kitchen.
In a few hours I had achieved all by myself what the sea and the moon had been trying to do for the last few weeks.
And Marcia had only just started talking to me again.
Still, it has been good drying weather today.
Not the sea water which comes free with every high tide but good, honest, I’d nearly but not quite trust it to drink sort of water.
Despite the damage to my land, the invading sea water only ever came perilously close to flooding the actual accommodation confining itself to knocking down a few half built cottages.
I have been busy. I have not spent all my time staring at or writing gloomy reports of biblical floods. I have been doing Man stuff as well. In UK, water systems work under the pressure a decent head of water gives. Here, unless you mount your tank on a high pedestal (making it impossible for the tanker to unload), you need a pump.
First job then was to install the pump and make the connections to the 15,000 litre above ground water tank. Simple, eh? A couple of hours later the tank was connected to the pump and the pump ready to plug into the electrical supply.
Next connect the pump to the building pipe work. Took me a while of digging around the foundations but eventually I found the inlet pipe to the building. Cool.
Another hour and everything was connected up ready for the arrival of the tanker.
Ten thousand litres of the cleanest water I had seen in over a month. I cupped my hand under a leaky union on the tanker and swilled a bit around my mouth. It wasn’t salty, it had no grit or bits in it. I was pleased.
I stuck the plug of the pump lead into the generator and it kicked into gear. Once the system is pressured up, it should stop running. It didn’t. I opened the outside tap and water gushed out. Clearly the pump was pumping and not spinning air so it wasn’t a priming problem. I closed the tap and the pump kept going.
Shit, the toilet I thought. I can’t call it a bathroom as it has only a bog and a sink, no bath or shower. Sure enough, the sink tap was wide open so I turned it off.
Still the pump kept going.
The building I am talking about is destined to be the kitchen and the male and female toilets of the restaurant. Until shortly before we arrived it was in a raw state and I asked the contractor to fit a toilet and sink in the Men’s lav, leave the ladies lav and fit windows and doors to make it our temporary accommodation.
Still this bloody pump would not switch off.
I checked the toilet again. Tap closed, no leaking toilet cistern.
Must be the pressure switch on the pump, I thought. I pulled out the screw driver and started to tweak.
Still the pump ran.
Come on Tom, don’t get angry or frustrated, nip to the shop, help yourself to a cider, have a quiet smoke and think this one through.
So there I was sitting comfortably by a racing water pump, halfway through a bottle of Savannah and smoking a tab when I heard this almighty scream and Marcia came hurtling around the building shouting the Portuguese equivalent of ‘What the FUCK are you doing?’
Have you ANY idea how fast and how far water, powered by a good couple of metres of head and a 1KW pump, can spurt out of the end of an uncapped water pipe?
Yes, I had turned the tap off in the loo, but I had completely forgotten the not-connected-to-anything pipework to the kitchen that was our temporary bedroom and the ladies loo that was now our kitchen.
In a few hours I had achieved all by myself what the sea and the moon had been trying to do for the last few weeks.
And Marcia had only just started talking to me again.
Still, it has been good drying weather today.
If all else fails, Pray.
Still two more days of high tides to go. Nature is relentless and I cannot believe how calm I am. A couple of years ago I would have been crawling all over the walls and ceiling and lashing at anyone or anything in sight.
This afternoon, after today’s high water I went and inspected the damage. I have not been sleeping too well. I can hear when the waves start breaking over. From a distant swish the sound becomes a more insistent and longer drawn out woosh and I know I am being flooded again. I know that the cresting water has no way to roll back into the sea and drawn by gravity, must find an alternative route back to where it belongs. I agree it took millions of years to erode a barren wasteland into what is now the Grand Canyon but that was only rainwater over hard sediment. Imagine what the Atlantic Ocean can do to soft soil in only a few weeks.
Naturally, my neighbour bringing in some heavy plant and building a dyke to deflect the onslaught of the waves around his property and across mine instead has had a slightly exacerbating effect. My inspection of this afternoon revealed I have lost a quarter of my land as the deflected sea water runs in torrents to the river scouring topsoil away and the remaining two thirds is a lake. Where I once had a ramp to launch boats, I now have a tidal estuary. During the night, the tide will be high but tomorrow, it will top two metres above average. Even the once confident and dismissive locals (this happens every ten years, don’t worry) are coming to me and asking me to print off tide tables. For why? What are you going to do, shout at God and wave your printed forms and say the tide is higher than Google says it should be?
Whatever is going to happen will happen and there is sod all that we can do about it. Better to hunker down, hang on for the next few days (Saturday will be the last night) and then on Sunday, after Church, go and inspect the damage. Then, as a Community we can decide, according to need, what needs to be done.
Maybe God is related to Gordon Brown and I am being punished for not paying taxes these last twenty years but it is still no reason for me to run around like a headless chicken and beat myself to death against one of my few remaining palm trees or step into a new ravine to be swept out to sea and be devoured by sharks.
Out of the blue, I received two emails. One from a fellow blogger suggesting she might be able to find a donor to pay for the water filtration system for the village. Fresh, potable water forms about the most essential part of disaster recovery so the timing was excellent. Would that all agencies could react so quickly, the disaster hasn’t even played out yet but we already have a plan.
Now I realise that most of the village is built on higher ground so will ride all this out a little better than me and so long as my shop survives they will all be happy, because if it doesn’t, they’ll be back to boiling brackish water again and the under fives will be dying either from beasties in their guts or an overdose of salt. So this was a really cheery email and lifted my spirits enormously.
The second email, and I am typing fast as I can as I can hear the waves whooshing again, was from a dear friend of many years who told me that every time he responded to the Tyler’s Toast, he thought of me.
Then 'ere’s to the sons o' the Widow,
Wherever, 'owever they roam.
'Ere’s to all they desire, an' if they require
A speedy return to their 'ome.
A verse from the Tyler’s Toast
Just when you need a bit of a lift, two really inspiring emails.
A single drop of water is all a seed needs to germinate and I am grateful for the chance to have a crack at the water treatment plant (don’t want to say too much now in case I hex myself). Imagine the power of a single offer of assistence let alone the addition of an emotive reminder of a fraternity. So W. Bro. Paul:
Thanks to want me ‘ome,
I'd really like t’oblige,
I still owes a clinic see,
an’ a water treat aside.
The sea will smash us stupid,
an’ the kids’ll start to cry.
They’ll choke on salty water
An’ the crops’ll start to die.
Bastard waves will carve out bays,
And wives will start to wail
But fishiemen still need their pie
So it’s dooty to comply.
So please take a sip for me,
an’ enjoy yer festive board.
This Widow’s Son, and 'is mates,
need the prayers from all.
Four verses of shit from me. So what shall we call it? The lament for the fisherman who has to venture out in a dangerous sea to catch fish while his Missus is bailing out his house but if he does not go out his kids will starve? Not catchy enough.
According to these woefully inaccurate tide tables, it’ll all be over after Sunday Mass which will provide the priest, along with the best damp footed congregation he has ever enjoyed, further evidence of the power of the cloth. As he holds the Host up on high, the waters will miraculously recede allowing us to kneel on Terra Firma without drowning and as he says 'Corpus Christi'. we'll say 'Amen' and get our first bread snack in days.
Right now I am praying like mad and writing poetry. How can I still be so cynical?
This afternoon, after today’s high water I went and inspected the damage. I have not been sleeping too well. I can hear when the waves start breaking over. From a distant swish the sound becomes a more insistent and longer drawn out woosh and I know I am being flooded again. I know that the cresting water has no way to roll back into the sea and drawn by gravity, must find an alternative route back to where it belongs. I agree it took millions of years to erode a barren wasteland into what is now the Grand Canyon but that was only rainwater over hard sediment. Imagine what the Atlantic Ocean can do to soft soil in only a few weeks.
Naturally, my neighbour bringing in some heavy plant and building a dyke to deflect the onslaught of the waves around his property and across mine instead has had a slightly exacerbating effect. My inspection of this afternoon revealed I have lost a quarter of my land as the deflected sea water runs in torrents to the river scouring topsoil away and the remaining two thirds is a lake. Where I once had a ramp to launch boats, I now have a tidal estuary. During the night, the tide will be high but tomorrow, it will top two metres above average. Even the once confident and dismissive locals (this happens every ten years, don’t worry) are coming to me and asking me to print off tide tables. For why? What are you going to do, shout at God and wave your printed forms and say the tide is higher than Google says it should be?
Whatever is going to happen will happen and there is sod all that we can do about it. Better to hunker down, hang on for the next few days (Saturday will be the last night) and then on Sunday, after Church, go and inspect the damage. Then, as a Community we can decide, according to need, what needs to be done.
Maybe God is related to Gordon Brown and I am being punished for not paying taxes these last twenty years but it is still no reason for me to run around like a headless chicken and beat myself to death against one of my few remaining palm trees or step into a new ravine to be swept out to sea and be devoured by sharks.
Out of the blue, I received two emails. One from a fellow blogger suggesting she might be able to find a donor to pay for the water filtration system for the village. Fresh, potable water forms about the most essential part of disaster recovery so the timing was excellent. Would that all agencies could react so quickly, the disaster hasn’t even played out yet but we already have a plan.
Now I realise that most of the village is built on higher ground so will ride all this out a little better than me and so long as my shop survives they will all be happy, because if it doesn’t, they’ll be back to boiling brackish water again and the under fives will be dying either from beasties in their guts or an overdose of salt. So this was a really cheery email and lifted my spirits enormously.
The second email, and I am typing fast as I can as I can hear the waves whooshing again, was from a dear friend of many years who told me that every time he responded to the Tyler’s Toast, he thought of me.
Then 'ere’s to the sons o' the Widow,
Wherever, 'owever they roam.
'Ere’s to all they desire, an' if they require
A speedy return to their 'ome.
A verse from the Tyler’s Toast
Just when you need a bit of a lift, two really inspiring emails.
A single drop of water is all a seed needs to germinate and I am grateful for the chance to have a crack at the water treatment plant (don’t want to say too much now in case I hex myself). Imagine the power of a single offer of assistence let alone the addition of an emotive reminder of a fraternity. So W. Bro. Paul:
Thanks to want me ‘ome,
I'd really like t’oblige,
I still owes a clinic see,
an’ a water treat aside.
The sea will smash us stupid,
an’ the kids’ll start to cry.
They’ll choke on salty water
An’ the crops’ll start to die.
Bastard waves will carve out bays,
And wives will start to wail
But fishiemen still need their pie
So it’s dooty to comply.
So please take a sip for me,
an’ enjoy yer festive board.
This Widow’s Son, and 'is mates,
need the prayers from all.
Four verses of shit from me. So what shall we call it? The lament for the fisherman who has to venture out in a dangerous sea to catch fish while his Missus is bailing out his house but if he does not go out his kids will starve? Not catchy enough.
According to these woefully inaccurate tide tables, it’ll all be over after Sunday Mass which will provide the priest, along with the best damp footed congregation he has ever enjoyed, further evidence of the power of the cloth. As he holds the Host up on high, the waters will miraculously recede allowing us to kneel on Terra Firma without drowning and as he says 'Corpus Christi'. we'll say 'Amen' and get our first bread snack in days.
Right now I am praying like mad and writing poetry. How can I still be so cynical?
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
High Noon (I mean high tide)
The sea is misbehaving itself again. Apparently it is something to do with an Equinox but with all the shortages evidenced by the largely empty shop shelves we endure here I am not really surprised that I have not heard of the latest Chrysler MPV or personal hygiene product, especially as I do not drive anymore and wash in a river. My neighbour, who being a white South African has absolutely no comprehension of irony tried to correct my vision of the cause. ‘It’ll get worse over the next few days with the tide peaking at an unusual two metres over mean on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and that means 40 cms over the top!’ he said with inexcusable earnestness. What we’ve had so far then were just the free aperitifs poured out by cost conscious diplomats at the Embassy Cocktail party but now we were in for the full three day pub crawl hosted with the largesse only the biggest multi-national of all, World Oceans Inc., could throw.
But I have jumped ahead a bit so let’s wind back time say, ooh, ten minutes?
I was sitting in the Jango reading my book. A lot of people read books to take their minds off the reality that is theirs which, according to my father were generally desperate but then he was a soldier all his life and read a lot of Kipling and retired from the Army just in time for Heath’s government, the four day working week, power cuts, rocketing petrol prices and a job with the gas board. In Business they say timing is everything. By that standard my father was a lousy businessman but, with the impeccable timing that had eluded him throughout his life, he had the decency to die in his garage six months before retirement so my Mother cashed in the full military, company death in service and widow’s pensions. Inland Revenue call that unearned income, so have most of that away but still, when he keeled over, it was the thought that counted.
I was reading because I hadn’t anything else to do and, apart from my fractious relationship with Marcia, hadn’t a care in the world. Even the fact that the sea was swilling around my ankles didn’t bother me. Sand, under an African sun gets bloody hot so a cool saline footbath was very welcome especially since I have only just been able to start breathing properly and can once again carry a full a pot of tea in my right hand.
The Soba and his crew splashed by on their way to their fishing boat and the Soba called out, ‘What are those guys doing?’ and pointed behind me.
I looked over my shoulder and saw what looked like a chain gang working along my fence. I hadn’t a clue what they were doing. I could only see the top halves of them anyway but they were clearly doing something and putting a lot of energy into it. And then a front loader with back hoe arrived.
In UK, or anywhere else civilised for that matter, interaction between neighbours is generally quite formal and brief. A nod and a wave over a communal boundary fence, a bit of jealousy over the new Mercedes or instructing lawyers about a particularly horrible extension. In Angola, it can all get terribly interesting so if you do decide to get nosey, be prepared for the long haul. So I pocketed my fags, a spare lighter (these Chinese made ones always fuck up when you are a mile away from a replacement and amongst a group of non smokers); into my back pocket went what in America they call a ‘Fifth’ of whisky and what I call a ‘nip’, and into my hand went a cold beer out of the fridge as I was faced with an indecently long walk of over two hundred yards to get to those now industriously engaged on my boundary.
I think I mentioned that the Atlantic Ocean is busy trying to eat that bit of Africa I bought until it can unite with the Indian Ocean and that I had decided it was pointless fighting nature so if it wanted to swamp over my land creating a lake and a river, so what? I would let the flowing water decide on the route back to the river it was most comfortable with and then construct a garden with a free water feature around it. You can’t buy one of those in B&Q and the modern version of Inigo Jones is well out of my reach.
Evidently, my neighbour was less sanguine. A fully equipped basic Cabana runs to about $60,000 US here and he had lost 15 of them (I only lost one and five halves, the five half built ones and the nearly complete one with the thatch that was to be our new home). Me? OK, I crapped myself when it happened and scared the life out of my brother in Germany when I stood there up to my arse in the relentless onslaught of Atlantic waves and phoned him saying I and everything I owned was going under, literally. You buy a beachside plot in a place like Angola, or anywhere really, and you are playing baccarat at a high table where Nature has the shoe and she can load the cards in any order. What did I drop? About a hundred grand? My neighbour dropped nearly a million and that is not including lost revenue (apart from scoring three fishing rods and reels from my clients on Saturday, I have had no revenue). Now that’s a serious kick in the nuts for anyone who can’t spread the misery across a load of shareholders and Lloyd’s names and still claim his bonus. The thing is, though, the sea is relentless so I could understand my neighbour’s agitation when I strolled up barefoot and shirtlless clutching an ice cold tinny.
I have never seen Rico do anything that might cause him to break out in a sweat so I was mildly interested when I realised that under a hot sun he was supervising a load of guys swinging enschadas and digging a ditch round his property leading straight onto mine. Naturally, the sea was keen to exploit such industriousness and the resultant weakness to soil structure and I realised why I had enjoyed both a cup of tea and a foot bath at the same time. Some people who know me, or think they do, always assume I am a pessimist and stop there in their analysis. They are the ones who are shallow. Of course I get upset occasionally. Of course I rail at the Gods of Misfortune that have plagued me all my life. Other people think I tend to violence too easily, a proclivity to throwing punches rather than resorting to reasoned discourse. If something goes badly wrong, it is human nature to be disappointed and if the man responsible happens to be in front of you then a quick smack on the jaw can be a tremendously rewarding, if only fleeting thrill but grounds for further grief. If one faces a disaster, then thoughts of murder, suicide and getting smashed out of one’s head pervade. It is either that, or suffer on in silence and take it.
‘Rico’, I said, ‘are you flooding my property?’
‘Oh, It’s you’ he said. ‘I have to do something. I’m losing everything.’
Now this situation was a real disaster for both of us but only relatively speaking. If I lose a 100k he would have to lose a million to hurt as much I guess but we were united and on common, if now unstable ground in that both of us faced ruin. Even though I had tried hard to like the guy and he had rejected every such consideration, right now I felt was a good time to bury the hatchet and co-operate.
‘Rico, we can engineer our way out of this. I am happy to lose a bit of my land and using your back hoe we can dig drainage that would take the stress off your land and release it through mine. I would end up with a lake but that would be a stable hydraulic sump to absorb the stresses between sea and river. All we have to do is get through the next few days and then we can do the civils to stabilise the drainage infrastructure afterwards’
‘You are not using my digger. I will just end the drain here’, he indicated the boundary to my property, ‘and what you do after that is your problem’.
Like I said, a hard to like guy.
The lads who were digging muttered about digging drains onto a neighbour’s property being illegal. A lot of them were local and bought beer and groceries in my shop. I could see they were uncomfortable and having seen me break my hand on an official’s nose I guess they were wondering what I would do to a white man.
‘Ah well,’ I said, ‘Just don’t bust my fence’
If someone nicks your wallet, spends all the cash and has sold the credit cards you have already cancelled and you catch him later, that’s the guy you punch. If someone trashes your car and you know he is never going to be able to compensate you so you have to swallow the hit, that’s the guy you punch. If you have some Angolan official who is so low down the pecking order and is crude enough to try and sting you in front of witnesses, that is the guy you punch. On the other hand, a guy that breaks the law in front of witnesses very sympathetic to you the results of which will cause some very obvious damage to your property, that is the guy you do not punch. That is the guy you are real nice to while searching for the before photos on the laptop and taking the after photos which will be duly presented to the relevant authorities deciding the level of compensation.
Marcia was all for rabble rousing, the village turning up with burning brands but I hope she has seen it my way now.
There are times when swift action is appropriate. There are others, usually when it is a real disaster, that merit calm contemplation.
I poured myself a scotch and went back to my book.
By the way, it is called No Angel by Tom Bower, the secret life of Bernie Ecclestone.
A very good read. Especially if you need any hints about fucking someone over.
But I have jumped ahead a bit so let’s wind back time say, ooh, ten minutes?
I was sitting in the Jango reading my book. A lot of people read books to take their minds off the reality that is theirs which, according to my father were generally desperate but then he was a soldier all his life and read a lot of Kipling and retired from the Army just in time for Heath’s government, the four day working week, power cuts, rocketing petrol prices and a job with the gas board. In Business they say timing is everything. By that standard my father was a lousy businessman but, with the impeccable timing that had eluded him throughout his life, he had the decency to die in his garage six months before retirement so my Mother cashed in the full military, company death in service and widow’s pensions. Inland Revenue call that unearned income, so have most of that away but still, when he keeled over, it was the thought that counted.
I was reading because I hadn’t anything else to do and, apart from my fractious relationship with Marcia, hadn’t a care in the world. Even the fact that the sea was swilling around my ankles didn’t bother me. Sand, under an African sun gets bloody hot so a cool saline footbath was very welcome especially since I have only just been able to start breathing properly and can once again carry a full a pot of tea in my right hand.
The Soba and his crew splashed by on their way to their fishing boat and the Soba called out, ‘What are those guys doing?’ and pointed behind me.
I looked over my shoulder and saw what looked like a chain gang working along my fence. I hadn’t a clue what they were doing. I could only see the top halves of them anyway but they were clearly doing something and putting a lot of energy into it. And then a front loader with back hoe arrived.
In UK, or anywhere else civilised for that matter, interaction between neighbours is generally quite formal and brief. A nod and a wave over a communal boundary fence, a bit of jealousy over the new Mercedes or instructing lawyers about a particularly horrible extension. In Angola, it can all get terribly interesting so if you do decide to get nosey, be prepared for the long haul. So I pocketed my fags, a spare lighter (these Chinese made ones always fuck up when you are a mile away from a replacement and amongst a group of non smokers); into my back pocket went what in America they call a ‘Fifth’ of whisky and what I call a ‘nip’, and into my hand went a cold beer out of the fridge as I was faced with an indecently long walk of over two hundred yards to get to those now industriously engaged on my boundary.
I think I mentioned that the Atlantic Ocean is busy trying to eat that bit of Africa I bought until it can unite with the Indian Ocean and that I had decided it was pointless fighting nature so if it wanted to swamp over my land creating a lake and a river, so what? I would let the flowing water decide on the route back to the river it was most comfortable with and then construct a garden with a free water feature around it. You can’t buy one of those in B&Q and the modern version of Inigo Jones is well out of my reach.
Evidently, my neighbour was less sanguine. A fully equipped basic Cabana runs to about $60,000 US here and he had lost 15 of them (I only lost one and five halves, the five half built ones and the nearly complete one with the thatch that was to be our new home). Me? OK, I crapped myself when it happened and scared the life out of my brother in Germany when I stood there up to my arse in the relentless onslaught of Atlantic waves and phoned him saying I and everything I owned was going under, literally. You buy a beachside plot in a place like Angola, or anywhere really, and you are playing baccarat at a high table where Nature has the shoe and she can load the cards in any order. What did I drop? About a hundred grand? My neighbour dropped nearly a million and that is not including lost revenue (apart from scoring three fishing rods and reels from my clients on Saturday, I have had no revenue). Now that’s a serious kick in the nuts for anyone who can’t spread the misery across a load of shareholders and Lloyd’s names and still claim his bonus. The thing is, though, the sea is relentless so I could understand my neighbour’s agitation when I strolled up barefoot and shirtlless clutching an ice cold tinny.
I have never seen Rico do anything that might cause him to break out in a sweat so I was mildly interested when I realised that under a hot sun he was supervising a load of guys swinging enschadas and digging a ditch round his property leading straight onto mine. Naturally, the sea was keen to exploit such industriousness and the resultant weakness to soil structure and I realised why I had enjoyed both a cup of tea and a foot bath at the same time. Some people who know me, or think they do, always assume I am a pessimist and stop there in their analysis. They are the ones who are shallow. Of course I get upset occasionally. Of course I rail at the Gods of Misfortune that have plagued me all my life. Other people think I tend to violence too easily, a proclivity to throwing punches rather than resorting to reasoned discourse. If something goes badly wrong, it is human nature to be disappointed and if the man responsible happens to be in front of you then a quick smack on the jaw can be a tremendously rewarding, if only fleeting thrill but grounds for further grief. If one faces a disaster, then thoughts of murder, suicide and getting smashed out of one’s head pervade. It is either that, or suffer on in silence and take it.
‘Rico’, I said, ‘are you flooding my property?’
‘Oh, It’s you’ he said. ‘I have to do something. I’m losing everything.’
Now this situation was a real disaster for both of us but only relatively speaking. If I lose a 100k he would have to lose a million to hurt as much I guess but we were united and on common, if now unstable ground in that both of us faced ruin. Even though I had tried hard to like the guy and he had rejected every such consideration, right now I felt was a good time to bury the hatchet and co-operate.
‘Rico, we can engineer our way out of this. I am happy to lose a bit of my land and using your back hoe we can dig drainage that would take the stress off your land and release it through mine. I would end up with a lake but that would be a stable hydraulic sump to absorb the stresses between sea and river. All we have to do is get through the next few days and then we can do the civils to stabilise the drainage infrastructure afterwards’
‘You are not using my digger. I will just end the drain here’, he indicated the boundary to my property, ‘and what you do after that is your problem’.
Like I said, a hard to like guy.
The lads who were digging muttered about digging drains onto a neighbour’s property being illegal. A lot of them were local and bought beer and groceries in my shop. I could see they were uncomfortable and having seen me break my hand on an official’s nose I guess they were wondering what I would do to a white man.
‘Ah well,’ I said, ‘Just don’t bust my fence’
If someone nicks your wallet, spends all the cash and has sold the credit cards you have already cancelled and you catch him later, that’s the guy you punch. If someone trashes your car and you know he is never going to be able to compensate you so you have to swallow the hit, that’s the guy you punch. If you have some Angolan official who is so low down the pecking order and is crude enough to try and sting you in front of witnesses, that is the guy you punch. On the other hand, a guy that breaks the law in front of witnesses very sympathetic to you the results of which will cause some very obvious damage to your property, that is the guy you do not punch. That is the guy you are real nice to while searching for the before photos on the laptop and taking the after photos which will be duly presented to the relevant authorities deciding the level of compensation.
Marcia was all for rabble rousing, the village turning up with burning brands but I hope she has seen it my way now.
There are times when swift action is appropriate. There are others, usually when it is a real disaster, that merit calm contemplation.
I poured myself a scotch and went back to my book.
By the way, it is called No Angel by Tom Bower, the secret life of Bernie Ecclestone.
A very good read. Especially if you need any hints about fucking someone over.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
A Fish Supper
The clients came yesterday. I am used to African time so even though they had told me that they would be leaving the city at six in the morning, I figured I would be lucky to see them by ten. At dawn I had more or less found a comfortable hollow in the mattress and an arrangement of pillows that allowed me to rest without the fear of spearing a lung with a bit of shattered rib or instinctively slapping a mosquito with a busted hand. The night before I had blasted myself with half a bottle of scotch for medicinal purposes and was feeling pretty bloody fragile. As I lay there, the sun reminding me it was a new day and I had a business to run, I gave up and crawled out of bed.
I like routine, I think I mentioned that I hate it when people mess with my desk and move so much as a pen, never mind having the temerity to tidy it up. I have only been here a month and am living on a building site but already I have my routines. During the day, I have the doors and windows open and Alex is anyway roaming the countryside or splashing in the river but when it is time for him to sleep, I stop smoking and have a place for my cigarettes and lighter so I know exactly where they are when I stumble out of bed the following morning. The ashtray is always positioned closer to my hand than my drink, be that a scotch or the only non alcoholic drink I enjoy, my morning cup of tea, so that I do not spill ash into the drink.
My desk may appear chaotic but it is organised. Having read and enjoyed a particular book, I am reluctant to consign it immediately back to the bookshelf like a whore I have paid and used so they stack up a bit. Sometimes I have three or four books on the go as I need to do the author justice by re reading passages as often, my interpretation of what someone appears to say or write is not what they mean, or is at least open to some interpretation or at the very least, careful consideration.
The middle draw of the right hand bank of my desk contains those tools every man needs to prove to his partner/wife/concubine that he is useful around the house. The top drawer of the same bank contains items in high demand such as paperclips, nail clippers, spare batteries, my hairbrush, a bicycle pump, heart pills and spray, and ink for my fountain pen. The remaining four drawers are similarly organised, each with a more or less generic role. Imagine if, in extremis and blinded with pain, you grasped hurriedly for the nitro lingual and died having sprayed WD 40 down your throat all because someone fucked around with your desk.
I really feel uncomfortable if someone messes with mine.
So my strict adherence to routine but an inability to get up on at least this particular morning found me greeting my clients clad only in boxer shorts, tea kettle unboiled and a toothbrush stuck in my mouth.
I had spent the night coughing up what I was convinced were lumps of congealed blood. At least one of my lungs had collapsed and other injuries had forced me to cancel all forthcoming piano recitals and there I was standing mostly naked on a dirt track, bereft of tea, with two guys offering me an ice cold cider at eight in the morning. Cider.
What a cool start to the day.
And it just got better. I packed them off into their boat and although they didn’t hook into a big one, by the time they got back I was properly shaved and dressed and the barbecue was lit. I had warned them that I wasn’t open yet so they had turned up with half of Waitrose. I am supposed to be running a restaurant but all I did was supply them a boat and a grill and they did the rest. They served us the best meal we have eaten in ages. The wine was divine. The conversation so refreshing. We were sat in a building site but they still said so many encouraging things and convinced me they were looking through the same rose tinted spectacles I was. Even Marcia was infected, producing a delicious salad and new potatoes doused in olive oil kissed with salt and even addressing me directly on occasion.
They told me that they had been reading my blog and expressed their disappointment that neither Dominic or Alex where there before giving Marcia fine Italian patisserie, a bag full of pretty much everything a three year old like Alex would desire and fishing rods and reels for Dominic.
Before they left, which was far too soon, they asked to settle up. Settle up? For the rest of their lives these two guys will stay and eat here for free. I realise that this is not the way to run a business but since this business is mine and I do not have a bean counter on my back anymore, I am so happy to be able to make an incontestable executive decision.
Marcia, who as I have found is not averse to breaking backs for carelss altruism was also entranced. So much so she even slept in the same room as me last night. Not in the same bed, I have to confess, but on a sofa but one at least twenty yards closer to me than the bunk she chose the previous night so, given the confines of the room and the reletive locations of bed and sofa I would say that this was about a thousand percent improvement, so something to be optimistic if not wholly cheerful about.
I had chartered the boat for the whole day and the lads had only used it for two hours but I explained to the owner that a day’s charter was a day’s charter so stumped up the cash on the nail. A deal is a deal as far as I was concerned and after all, just the rods and reels they left for Dominic at Angolan prices were worth miles more especially as Dominic is thirteen on Friday and giving a lad what he wants on his Birthday is priceless.
The boat owner was bloody reasonable. He knows I am a keen fisherman and he pointed out that I had paid all the fuel and mix and now a full charter so this morning he took me out fishing.
I hooked into everything. At one point I had to tell the man to kill the engine and help me as I had two on the go. These are only small skiffs with a 40 horsepower on the back so there are no fancy fish boxes or anything like that. We were skidding on the deck with nowhere to plant our feet as it was swilling with fish, big buggers, all between 20 and 25 kilos. I was sunburned to shit. My hands were all cut up from grabbing leaders over the side so Bota could get them with the gaff. This evening I realise that my right hand is size extra fat again, I have teeth marks all over my remaining fingers from tugging lures out and my ribs are really killing me but then, there out on that water six or seven miles into the Atlantic with all those fish? I reckon you could have drilled me with a 12 Gauge and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Finally Bota says that unless we want to paddle back (and, by the way, we don’t have paddles), we need to head in as the fuel is gone. How many times have you sport fishermen been out there and finally given it up because you have endured a whole day without a nibble and have run out of beer? Imagine throwing in the towel through lack of fuel when the fish are trying their hardest to give themselves up? Well I’ve never been there before. This was an outstanding day cut short by poor logistics. All I can say with absolute confidence is that unless you were debilitated by sea sickness (and the sea was rough), under the same circumstances you would be madder than a sack full of cut snakes.
We got back in and started to unload and clean the fish. The locals pitched up and then Marcia appeared and asked Bota how much for some of the best ones she had her eye on.
‘Ask Sr. Tomas,’ he said, ‘It’s his charter and he caught them’
What a decent bloke. I let Marcia choose a couple and then offered the rest to Bota. He offered my charter fee back.
This evening I cooked Marcia and the family a fish supper during which Marcia actually engaged me in animated conversation. It was pretty good, (the fish supper I mean as, with only a side of decent ribs left and one clandestine attack with a broom behind me I was on my guard a bit at all this unexpected civility), at the end of which Bota once again offered me the fee back in exchange for all the fish that, as far as I was concerned were already his.
Bugger that, I said, keep the fish and the fee and let’s go fishing again.
I think we are looking at the start of a beautiful relationship.
I like routine, I think I mentioned that I hate it when people mess with my desk and move so much as a pen, never mind having the temerity to tidy it up. I have only been here a month and am living on a building site but already I have my routines. During the day, I have the doors and windows open and Alex is anyway roaming the countryside or splashing in the river but when it is time for him to sleep, I stop smoking and have a place for my cigarettes and lighter so I know exactly where they are when I stumble out of bed the following morning. The ashtray is always positioned closer to my hand than my drink, be that a scotch or the only non alcoholic drink I enjoy, my morning cup of tea, so that I do not spill ash into the drink.
My desk may appear chaotic but it is organised. Having read and enjoyed a particular book, I am reluctant to consign it immediately back to the bookshelf like a whore I have paid and used so they stack up a bit. Sometimes I have three or four books on the go as I need to do the author justice by re reading passages as often, my interpretation of what someone appears to say or write is not what they mean, or is at least open to some interpretation or at the very least, careful consideration.
The middle draw of the right hand bank of my desk contains those tools every man needs to prove to his partner/wife/concubine that he is useful around the house. The top drawer of the same bank contains items in high demand such as paperclips, nail clippers, spare batteries, my hairbrush, a bicycle pump, heart pills and spray, and ink for my fountain pen. The remaining four drawers are similarly organised, each with a more or less generic role. Imagine if, in extremis and blinded with pain, you grasped hurriedly for the nitro lingual and died having sprayed WD 40 down your throat all because someone fucked around with your desk.
I really feel uncomfortable if someone messes with mine.
So my strict adherence to routine but an inability to get up on at least this particular morning found me greeting my clients clad only in boxer shorts, tea kettle unboiled and a toothbrush stuck in my mouth.
I had spent the night coughing up what I was convinced were lumps of congealed blood. At least one of my lungs had collapsed and other injuries had forced me to cancel all forthcoming piano recitals and there I was standing mostly naked on a dirt track, bereft of tea, with two guys offering me an ice cold cider at eight in the morning. Cider.
What a cool start to the day.
And it just got better. I packed them off into their boat and although they didn’t hook into a big one, by the time they got back I was properly shaved and dressed and the barbecue was lit. I had warned them that I wasn’t open yet so they had turned up with half of Waitrose. I am supposed to be running a restaurant but all I did was supply them a boat and a grill and they did the rest. They served us the best meal we have eaten in ages. The wine was divine. The conversation so refreshing. We were sat in a building site but they still said so many encouraging things and convinced me they were looking through the same rose tinted spectacles I was. Even Marcia was infected, producing a delicious salad and new potatoes doused in olive oil kissed with salt and even addressing me directly on occasion.
They told me that they had been reading my blog and expressed their disappointment that neither Dominic or Alex where there before giving Marcia fine Italian patisserie, a bag full of pretty much everything a three year old like Alex would desire and fishing rods and reels for Dominic.
Before they left, which was far too soon, they asked to settle up. Settle up? For the rest of their lives these two guys will stay and eat here for free. I realise that this is not the way to run a business but since this business is mine and I do not have a bean counter on my back anymore, I am so happy to be able to make an incontestable executive decision.
Marcia, who as I have found is not averse to breaking backs for carelss altruism was also entranced. So much so she even slept in the same room as me last night. Not in the same bed, I have to confess, but on a sofa but one at least twenty yards closer to me than the bunk she chose the previous night so, given the confines of the room and the reletive locations of bed and sofa I would say that this was about a thousand percent improvement, so something to be optimistic if not wholly cheerful about.
I had chartered the boat for the whole day and the lads had only used it for two hours but I explained to the owner that a day’s charter was a day’s charter so stumped up the cash on the nail. A deal is a deal as far as I was concerned and after all, just the rods and reels they left for Dominic at Angolan prices were worth miles more especially as Dominic is thirteen on Friday and giving a lad what he wants on his Birthday is priceless.
The boat owner was bloody reasonable. He knows I am a keen fisherman and he pointed out that I had paid all the fuel and mix and now a full charter so this morning he took me out fishing.
I hooked into everything. At one point I had to tell the man to kill the engine and help me as I had two on the go. These are only small skiffs with a 40 horsepower on the back so there are no fancy fish boxes or anything like that. We were skidding on the deck with nowhere to plant our feet as it was swilling with fish, big buggers, all between 20 and 25 kilos. I was sunburned to shit. My hands were all cut up from grabbing leaders over the side so Bota could get them with the gaff. This evening I realise that my right hand is size extra fat again, I have teeth marks all over my remaining fingers from tugging lures out and my ribs are really killing me but then, there out on that water six or seven miles into the Atlantic with all those fish? I reckon you could have drilled me with a 12 Gauge and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Finally Bota says that unless we want to paddle back (and, by the way, we don’t have paddles), we need to head in as the fuel is gone. How many times have you sport fishermen been out there and finally given it up because you have endured a whole day without a nibble and have run out of beer? Imagine throwing in the towel through lack of fuel when the fish are trying their hardest to give themselves up? Well I’ve never been there before. This was an outstanding day cut short by poor logistics. All I can say with absolute confidence is that unless you were debilitated by sea sickness (and the sea was rough), under the same circumstances you would be madder than a sack full of cut snakes.
We got back in and started to unload and clean the fish. The locals pitched up and then Marcia appeared and asked Bota how much for some of the best ones she had her eye on.
‘Ask Sr. Tomas,’ he said, ‘It’s his charter and he caught them’
What a decent bloke. I let Marcia choose a couple and then offered the rest to Bota. He offered my charter fee back.
This evening I cooked Marcia and the family a fish supper during which Marcia actually engaged me in animated conversation. It was pretty good, (the fish supper I mean as, with only a side of decent ribs left and one clandestine attack with a broom behind me I was on my guard a bit at all this unexpected civility), at the end of which Bota once again offered me the fee back in exchange for all the fish that, as far as I was concerned were already his.
Bugger that, I said, keep the fish and the fee and let’s go fishing again.
I think we are looking at the start of a beautiful relationship.
Saturday, 3 March 2012
No Problem
I have my first clients coming tomorrow. Not clients as in customers for the shop but clients who want to come here, go fish, eat and drink.
But I am not open, I pointed out to them. No problem.
But it is a building site, I said. No problem.
Next door is a smart place with smart sport fishing boats, airconditioning, they even have BUILDINGS! No problem, it is the idea of slumming it that attracts us.
Well, thanks for that. But… My first clients. I am putting in a shit load of legwork. I need to rent the best boat in the village. That would be Sr. Bota. I don’t have his number and can’t nip round his place because Marcia is busy in town instructing lawyers to legally separate me from her and everything I have which is all in her name anyway but in the meantime I am in charge of the shop and cannot leave it unattended as she’ll need all the profit if she is to afford those outrageous lawyer’s fees.
This being a real community, however, with everyone knowing everyone else and, as I discovered this morning, their business as well no matter how private, it was easy for me to persuade someone to nip round to Sr. Bota’s on my behalf and give him a message to contact me.
In due course the runner returned and said Sr. Bota was not there but his brother said please feel free to ring him. But I don’t have his number, I said. No problem. The runner ran off and returned with the number and I rang Sr. Bota and explained my problem, I needed a boat. No problem, says Sr. Bota. Yeah, but there is another problem, I need the kit as well, the rods, reels, lines and lures. No problem, he said. These guys want to leave town at six in the morning so they will probably be here ready to go by eight. No problem.
Then my brother rang from Germany and said that Marcia had just sent him an sms asking for help. No problem, I said, tell her to fuck off.
Look you ALL must know by now that I am a misogynist and can’t stand bleating, whining, ungrateful, emotional, weepy, unstable, expensive, vindictive, unreasonable and irrational females and the only reason I have anything to do with them at all is that God blessed me with both a dick and the occasional urge to park it somewhere. Some blokes are lucky and were given light rear echelon duties with their own kind but some of us, no doubt in the interests of the procreation essential to the survival of any species, were born to be frontline troops and must endure the not inconsiderable artillery women have at their disposal as any reasonable bloke who has head butted a Le Creuset casserole after an agreeable night out with colleagues will testify. Women claim to be intelligent adults and want equal rights, well if that is so and if they don’t like the person they chose to live with, why waste hours of good TV and a whole mealtime pointing that out at the tops of their irritatingly strident voices, rather than just going away and leaving an honest chap in peace?
They talk about pre nuptial agreements and marriage contracts. What the hell is wrong with: You live with me, I’ll provide you a roof over your head, put food on the table, let you watch your soap on TV for an hour a night and in exchange you will keep the house tidy, look after the kids, cook all the food, wash and iron all the clothes, run the shop, carry water from the river and let me shag you if and when I feel like?
No problem, says Micky, I’ll talk to her.
Micky is a sop. He is the sort of guy that writes poetry about women comparing the only bits of them I find useful to soft scented flowers, twittering skylarks in azure blue skies, the gentle kiss of an early morning dew over freshly mown green grass. Like I say, he’s a dickhead and probably the right person to talk to Marcia.
In the meantime, relationships of whatever kind are to be enjoyed, not worked at. In the absence of physical abuse, which are altogether different circumstances, if you are not enjoying it any more, just go, and resist this awful tendency to make the other poor sod’s life a misery. If the relationship is less than harmonious, take a long look in the mirror before starting to throw the crockery. And that’s another thing I do not understand about women. Life without the finest Meissen porcelain would be unbearable so you go to Dresden and melt the card but that’s the first thing they’ll toss on the floor. Women complain about everything, whereas I can put up with virtually anything. All I ask is an occasional bit of peace and quiet and for no one to mess with my desk or bookshelves. Is that too much to ask? Shit, I even bloody cook.
Have you ever noticed how you can pass the whole day in icy silence and the moment you pick up a book, or start typing, the dragoness from Hell decides that Now is the moment to bring up some grievance from days, weeks, months, years ago or even a period when she was living with some guy in Palma who according to her had a longer dick, a deeper wallet and something that never occurs to ex girlfriends, evidently more sense ‘cos he dumped her? And if you happened to have been indiscreetly reaching for the whisky decanter at the moment she decided to let loose, you duck and make a mental note to buy more Meissen shares. That’s what I am talking about.
Look at how many Gentleman’s clubs sprang into existence providing an ambience agreeable to the exchange of intellectual ideas. What do these bastions of the fundamental foundations of male dominated society have to compete with? The Women’s Institute. ‘I am sorry love, I have no idea what an atom is made up of or how to wire up a plug but we do a nice cup of tea and you should try the scones’.
Desperate, the Associated Examining Board tried to show some equality for those studying English Literature by including, surely only by default, that awful tome Wuthering Heights. ‘Oh be still my beating heart’. Centuries of English Literature students could have been spared what seemed like decades of mental anguish if only Heathcliffe had just raped the shit out of Cathy in the first chapter and done what any decent bloke would have done and stabbed everyone else in the chest, especially Hindley. Instead Emily Bronte is up there with Shakespeare but should have been burnt at the stake for inventing soaps.
Shakespeare was pretty good if you treat his output as fairly incomprehensible contemporary political satire (I did spend a week in a Stratford upon Avon theatre one night and the ghosts around me seemed to know what was going on but then they’d had centuries to digest it while I had an exam at the end of the week) but it was still pretty dull for a teenager only intent on boning the young girl in Bird’s The Confectioners just down the road from school where we got our sticky buns and were all desperate to leave one of our own. But school rules and an irritating inhibition on her part precluded shagging her over the counter, especially in uniform as this would not be deniable. I believe that some of my contemporaries did go into politics but have no idea what became of the reticent sticky bun vendor but rather suspect she married the lad most likely to endure a well insured mortgage and an apparently successful career in local banking before hanging himself on the landing.
In the time I have taken to write this, scribble a few words with a smashed hand while attending the shop, Marcia has returned. Naturally no words have been exchanged and the Atlantic Ocean must be frozen half way to Brazil by now. She has just brought me in an outstanding fish supper. I would like to eat it as I am starving. I ought to eat it as it represents an olive branch, an unspoken admission if not of defeat, women never throw the towel in, but at least an honourable armistice. Of course she could have transferred everything into her name at the lawyers today and the fish is now laced with poison which means that a few hours from now I will be vomiting my liver onto the floor, a feat in itself and a monster task for those people they send in afterwards to clean up but it is also just as likely to be an honest fish supper.
And this is what women do not understand. They expect us men to be Alpha males. They would never have allowed us to shag them in the first place otherwise. They want us to slug our way through life, casually destroying opposition while remaining impassionate and unperturbed. Men are supposed to compartmentalise, kill people during office hours before returning home to tuck the kids in and read them a story. I have done that literally but I can imagine it is just as hard for a man who has just duelled his way through a whole day of office politics without the aid of a Z84 sub machine gun which is truly excellent for stopping an argument dead in its tracks. Women, of course, demand that men recognise that they have something wholly unique to them called hormones and fatigue granting them licence for the only legally accepted form of homicide, death by Meissen Porcelain the only requirements of which being that the (male) victim is married to the (female) discus thrower. Having run out of Porcelain, Marcia used a broom on me which she cunningly swung while my back was turned. Even I had to admit that was a good move having all the hallmarks of an adept bar fighter being both vicious and unexpected so in addition to a smashed hand I now have a couple of broken ribs. This osteoporosis shit is really starting to piss me off. I never used to break so easily so I guess I need to drink more milk.
The best of it though, and something that really irritates homicidal women, is that having given me her best shot I turned round, looked at the stump of the broom handle in her hand and the rest of it shattered on the floor and said, 'Did you just hit me?' Believe me, I wasn't trying to be a hero, I just had not realised how badly she had hit me or why, for that matter. I know that once a month she goes crazy for a couple of days but this has been two weeks of fucking hell and I am not sure how much more I can take. Not all of it her fault by any means, I broke my own hand after all and I know she is trying to make up but I only have so many bones in my body and believe me, when you lie in bed at night, every broken one demands attention. I can't breathe for a start and I have clients coming tomorrow so wiil have to spend the day bouncing around in a boat with a rib cage that doesn't work and a hand as about as much use a chocolate fire guard. Bliss.
I need to eat this excellent fish supper but I can’t. I know it is all heat of the moment shit but it really cuts deep when the girl you love nearly as much as your two boys says she never loved you. When she says she’ll fuck you over good and proper and you’ll walk out of here clad only in underpants by the time the lawyers have finished with you. In addition to the food She has brought me cold beer and despite the sms earlier today telling me to leave off the expensive scotch, she’s brought me a bottle in.
I don’t say stuff like she did. The most you will get out of me is an admission of regret that it all should end this way and perhaps she would be decent enough to close the door on the way out. Because of the mosquitoes, of course. Now this strikes me as perfectly reasonable but appears to drive women nuts and send them running to engage legal services for reasons utterly beyond my comprehension.
The dinner, the cold beers, the scotch, I know what she is trying to say, but like all women, she can’t say it out loud and like all men, I shan’t be nursing just a bust hand and a couple of floppy ribs, but a far more grievous wound and I won’t talk about it either and retreat instead to my desk, leaving the beautifully prepared food to go cold on the table.
I lived by the sword but recognised that the pen was mightier. A noble sentiment I thought so I fought hard, accepted any injuries with stoicism and tried to learn how to write (and get a less dangerous job).
But try dealing with the ill considered lash of a loved one’s tongue.
I am tempted to retire to a corner with the dogs (far more loyal than women; come when they are called, don't hog the bed and know their place is in the back of the pick up) and lick a few wounds but, as everyone around me today has said, ‘No Problem’, I can hardly appear prissy about all this. And which real man failing to turn up for morning parade would offer as an excuse, 'My Missus beat me up'
Besides, I have my first clients coming tomorrow so if no one else is going to man the burning deck...
But I am not open, I pointed out to them. No problem.
But it is a building site, I said. No problem.
Next door is a smart place with smart sport fishing boats, airconditioning, they even have BUILDINGS! No problem, it is the idea of slumming it that attracts us.
Well, thanks for that. But… My first clients. I am putting in a shit load of legwork. I need to rent the best boat in the village. That would be Sr. Bota. I don’t have his number and can’t nip round his place because Marcia is busy in town instructing lawyers to legally separate me from her and everything I have which is all in her name anyway but in the meantime I am in charge of the shop and cannot leave it unattended as she’ll need all the profit if she is to afford those outrageous lawyer’s fees.
This being a real community, however, with everyone knowing everyone else and, as I discovered this morning, their business as well no matter how private, it was easy for me to persuade someone to nip round to Sr. Bota’s on my behalf and give him a message to contact me.
In due course the runner returned and said Sr. Bota was not there but his brother said please feel free to ring him. But I don’t have his number, I said. No problem. The runner ran off and returned with the number and I rang Sr. Bota and explained my problem, I needed a boat. No problem, says Sr. Bota. Yeah, but there is another problem, I need the kit as well, the rods, reels, lines and lures. No problem, he said. These guys want to leave town at six in the morning so they will probably be here ready to go by eight. No problem.
Then my brother rang from Germany and said that Marcia had just sent him an sms asking for help. No problem, I said, tell her to fuck off.
Look you ALL must know by now that I am a misogynist and can’t stand bleating, whining, ungrateful, emotional, weepy, unstable, expensive, vindictive, unreasonable and irrational females and the only reason I have anything to do with them at all is that God blessed me with both a dick and the occasional urge to park it somewhere. Some blokes are lucky and were given light rear echelon duties with their own kind but some of us, no doubt in the interests of the procreation essential to the survival of any species, were born to be frontline troops and must endure the not inconsiderable artillery women have at their disposal as any reasonable bloke who has head butted a Le Creuset casserole after an agreeable night out with colleagues will testify. Women claim to be intelligent adults and want equal rights, well if that is so and if they don’t like the person they chose to live with, why waste hours of good TV and a whole mealtime pointing that out at the tops of their irritatingly strident voices, rather than just going away and leaving an honest chap in peace?
They talk about pre nuptial agreements and marriage contracts. What the hell is wrong with: You live with me, I’ll provide you a roof over your head, put food on the table, let you watch your soap on TV for an hour a night and in exchange you will keep the house tidy, look after the kids, cook all the food, wash and iron all the clothes, run the shop, carry water from the river and let me shag you if and when I feel like?
No problem, says Micky, I’ll talk to her.
Micky is a sop. He is the sort of guy that writes poetry about women comparing the only bits of them I find useful to soft scented flowers, twittering skylarks in azure blue skies, the gentle kiss of an early morning dew over freshly mown green grass. Like I say, he’s a dickhead and probably the right person to talk to Marcia.
In the meantime, relationships of whatever kind are to be enjoyed, not worked at. In the absence of physical abuse, which are altogether different circumstances, if you are not enjoying it any more, just go, and resist this awful tendency to make the other poor sod’s life a misery. If the relationship is less than harmonious, take a long look in the mirror before starting to throw the crockery. And that’s another thing I do not understand about women. Life without the finest Meissen porcelain would be unbearable so you go to Dresden and melt the card but that’s the first thing they’ll toss on the floor. Women complain about everything, whereas I can put up with virtually anything. All I ask is an occasional bit of peace and quiet and for no one to mess with my desk or bookshelves. Is that too much to ask? Shit, I even bloody cook.
Have you ever noticed how you can pass the whole day in icy silence and the moment you pick up a book, or start typing, the dragoness from Hell decides that Now is the moment to bring up some grievance from days, weeks, months, years ago or even a period when she was living with some guy in Palma who according to her had a longer dick, a deeper wallet and something that never occurs to ex girlfriends, evidently more sense ‘cos he dumped her? And if you happened to have been indiscreetly reaching for the whisky decanter at the moment she decided to let loose, you duck and make a mental note to buy more Meissen shares. That’s what I am talking about.
Look at how many Gentleman’s clubs sprang into existence providing an ambience agreeable to the exchange of intellectual ideas. What do these bastions of the fundamental foundations of male dominated society have to compete with? The Women’s Institute. ‘I am sorry love, I have no idea what an atom is made up of or how to wire up a plug but we do a nice cup of tea and you should try the scones’.
Desperate, the Associated Examining Board tried to show some equality for those studying English Literature by including, surely only by default, that awful tome Wuthering Heights. ‘Oh be still my beating heart’. Centuries of English Literature students could have been spared what seemed like decades of mental anguish if only Heathcliffe had just raped the shit out of Cathy in the first chapter and done what any decent bloke would have done and stabbed everyone else in the chest, especially Hindley. Instead Emily Bronte is up there with Shakespeare but should have been burnt at the stake for inventing soaps.
Shakespeare was pretty good if you treat his output as fairly incomprehensible contemporary political satire (I did spend a week in a Stratford upon Avon theatre one night and the ghosts around me seemed to know what was going on but then they’d had centuries to digest it while I had an exam at the end of the week) but it was still pretty dull for a teenager only intent on boning the young girl in Bird’s The Confectioners just down the road from school where we got our sticky buns and were all desperate to leave one of our own. But school rules and an irritating inhibition on her part precluded shagging her over the counter, especially in uniform as this would not be deniable. I believe that some of my contemporaries did go into politics but have no idea what became of the reticent sticky bun vendor but rather suspect she married the lad most likely to endure a well insured mortgage and an apparently successful career in local banking before hanging himself on the landing.
In the time I have taken to write this, scribble a few words with a smashed hand while attending the shop, Marcia has returned. Naturally no words have been exchanged and the Atlantic Ocean must be frozen half way to Brazil by now. She has just brought me in an outstanding fish supper. I would like to eat it as I am starving. I ought to eat it as it represents an olive branch, an unspoken admission if not of defeat, women never throw the towel in, but at least an honourable armistice. Of course she could have transferred everything into her name at the lawyers today and the fish is now laced with poison which means that a few hours from now I will be vomiting my liver onto the floor, a feat in itself and a monster task for those people they send in afterwards to clean up but it is also just as likely to be an honest fish supper.
And this is what women do not understand. They expect us men to be Alpha males. They would never have allowed us to shag them in the first place otherwise. They want us to slug our way through life, casually destroying opposition while remaining impassionate and unperturbed. Men are supposed to compartmentalise, kill people during office hours before returning home to tuck the kids in and read them a story. I have done that literally but I can imagine it is just as hard for a man who has just duelled his way through a whole day of office politics without the aid of a Z84 sub machine gun which is truly excellent for stopping an argument dead in its tracks. Women, of course, demand that men recognise that they have something wholly unique to them called hormones and fatigue granting them licence for the only legally accepted form of homicide, death by Meissen Porcelain the only requirements of which being that the (male) victim is married to the (female) discus thrower. Having run out of Porcelain, Marcia used a broom on me which she cunningly swung while my back was turned. Even I had to admit that was a good move having all the hallmarks of an adept bar fighter being both vicious and unexpected so in addition to a smashed hand I now have a couple of broken ribs. This osteoporosis shit is really starting to piss me off. I never used to break so easily so I guess I need to drink more milk.
The best of it though, and something that really irritates homicidal women, is that having given me her best shot I turned round, looked at the stump of the broom handle in her hand and the rest of it shattered on the floor and said, 'Did you just hit me?' Believe me, I wasn't trying to be a hero, I just had not realised how badly she had hit me or why, for that matter. I know that once a month she goes crazy for a couple of days but this has been two weeks of fucking hell and I am not sure how much more I can take. Not all of it her fault by any means, I broke my own hand after all and I know she is trying to make up but I only have so many bones in my body and believe me, when you lie in bed at night, every broken one demands attention. I can't breathe for a start and I have clients coming tomorrow so wiil have to spend the day bouncing around in a boat with a rib cage that doesn't work and a hand as about as much use a chocolate fire guard. Bliss.
I need to eat this excellent fish supper but I can’t. I know it is all heat of the moment shit but it really cuts deep when the girl you love nearly as much as your two boys says she never loved you. When she says she’ll fuck you over good and proper and you’ll walk out of here clad only in underpants by the time the lawyers have finished with you. In addition to the food She has brought me cold beer and despite the sms earlier today telling me to leave off the expensive scotch, she’s brought me a bottle in.
I don’t say stuff like she did. The most you will get out of me is an admission of regret that it all should end this way and perhaps she would be decent enough to close the door on the way out. Because of the mosquitoes, of course. Now this strikes me as perfectly reasonable but appears to drive women nuts and send them running to engage legal services for reasons utterly beyond my comprehension.
The dinner, the cold beers, the scotch, I know what she is trying to say, but like all women, she can’t say it out loud and like all men, I shan’t be nursing just a bust hand and a couple of floppy ribs, but a far more grievous wound and I won’t talk about it either and retreat instead to my desk, leaving the beautifully prepared food to go cold on the table.
I lived by the sword but recognised that the pen was mightier. A noble sentiment I thought so I fought hard, accepted any injuries with stoicism and tried to learn how to write (and get a less dangerous job).
But try dealing with the ill considered lash of a loved one’s tongue.
I am tempted to retire to a corner with the dogs (far more loyal than women; come when they are called, don't hog the bed and know their place is in the back of the pick up) and lick a few wounds but, as everyone around me today has said, ‘No Problem’, I can hardly appear prissy about all this. And which real man failing to turn up for morning parade would offer as an excuse, 'My Missus beat me up'
Besides, I have my first clients coming tomorrow so if no one else is going to man the burning deck...
Thursday, 1 March 2012
After the Party, the Hangover...
I only have the remains of two fingers on my left hand, the rest of it (it, the hand, not them the fingers) being only heat induced scar tissue, and my right is, since yesterday, pretty bloody useless so I really can’t type the usual 3,000 word missive that John Gray only reads when he is on night shift on the IT ward armed with a cup of hot cocoa and a spare underpaid decade or two.
Marcia, having slept in what will be the bar of the restaurant while I tried to sleep in what will be the kitchen of the restaurant has gone to town to get much needed stock for the shop. Before she left Alexander had his first lessons in all those skills necessary for a successful diplomatic career with the Foreign Office. All communications between Marcia, the Government and I, the filthy aggressor were this morning directed through him with all the frostiness and ambiguity one would expect from Whitehall Mandarins principally concerned with status and deniability.
‘Ask your father if he wants a cup of tea’
‘Ask your mother if she doesn’t feel that it would be better for her to swap the battery from her phone to mine, which is fully charged because I can plan ahead, as I can recharge hers while she is in town and still maintain effective communications’
Some yoghurt knitting tree huggers would suggest that I was overloading a three year old. I just felt that his evident lack of comprehension, inability to pass on a simple message, stupidity even, stemmed from his mother and that his finer attributes, being bigger than his peers and able to impress upon them his will in two languages and a couple of fists backed up by determination were confirmation that individual sperm are seldom as inebriated as their donor. Further justification, if any were needed, that I had made an awful mistake hooking up with a girl who, instead of planting laurels on my head and bandaging my hand, a hand damaged in the defence of reason, spent more time stopping the albeit pretty impressive nose bleed of some corrupt scumbag and telling the police I was an uncontrollable thug.
I hate that kind of disloyalty and my hand still hurts like hell.
So, like all so called ‘Hard Men’, I am being petty. At least that’s what women, all of them stupidly emotional and unreasonable would call it. So now every kid that comes by gets a free sweet. If they bag a sack of litter, they get a handful. Marcia is going to come back to two hectares of litter free country side and a few empty sweet jars.
And I am still going to build my clinic.
So there.
I’m off to put my hand in the river. I tried sticking it in one of the shop freezers but it kept coming out with a cold beer attached and Marcia gets really pissed with me if I drink the profits.
Marcia, having slept in what will be the bar of the restaurant while I tried to sleep in what will be the kitchen of the restaurant has gone to town to get much needed stock for the shop. Before she left Alexander had his first lessons in all those skills necessary for a successful diplomatic career with the Foreign Office. All communications between Marcia, the Government and I, the filthy aggressor were this morning directed through him with all the frostiness and ambiguity one would expect from Whitehall Mandarins principally concerned with status and deniability.
‘Ask your father if he wants a cup of tea’
‘Ask your mother if she doesn’t feel that it would be better for her to swap the battery from her phone to mine, which is fully charged because I can plan ahead, as I can recharge hers while she is in town and still maintain effective communications’
Some yoghurt knitting tree huggers would suggest that I was overloading a three year old. I just felt that his evident lack of comprehension, inability to pass on a simple message, stupidity even, stemmed from his mother and that his finer attributes, being bigger than his peers and able to impress upon them his will in two languages and a couple of fists backed up by determination were confirmation that individual sperm are seldom as inebriated as their donor. Further justification, if any were needed, that I had made an awful mistake hooking up with a girl who, instead of planting laurels on my head and bandaging my hand, a hand damaged in the defence of reason, spent more time stopping the albeit pretty impressive nose bleed of some corrupt scumbag and telling the police I was an uncontrollable thug.
I hate that kind of disloyalty and my hand still hurts like hell.
So, like all so called ‘Hard Men’, I am being petty. At least that’s what women, all of them stupidly emotional and unreasonable would call it. So now every kid that comes by gets a free sweet. If they bag a sack of litter, they get a handful. Marcia is going to come back to two hectares of litter free country side and a few empty sweet jars.
And I am still going to build my clinic.
So there.
I’m off to put my hand in the river. I tried sticking it in one of the shop freezers but it kept coming out with a cold beer attached and Marcia gets really pissed with me if I drink the profits.
A bad day and what looks like an even worse night...
I had a bad day today over the clinic I want to build when a bunch of people, including to my utter dismay my wife, who says she is going to leave me in the morning and is now sleeping under a mosquito net in the jango, said I could not do this so I got mad and punched someone and bust, so I am told and ironically by the same Doctor who will inherit the donated facility currently under dispute, two Metacarpals and a Proximal Phalange belonging to me and an Upper Nasal Cartilage belonging to someone else. All I know is I can’t even hold a cup of tea let alone type properly and it bloody hurts; my right hand is as big as a football and Marcia is so pissed with me she is sleeping in the yard. But you should see the other guy. 53 in May and I can still lay them out. One day someone will kill me. Probably an exasperated Marcia but I hope I will hang on until at least 93 before being shot by a jealous husband.
This clinic business is getting very political. The police came, after all I am a foreigner who just snotted some Angolan official so hardly an unexpected turn of events so I said. ‘All I want to do is donate a clinic!’ and they took one look at Marcia and said, ‘Oh, it’s a domestic’ and fucked off again. Good lads, the police, but then I do feed them breakfast every morning and the community were right behind me.
I will build this blasted clinic.
This clinic business is getting very political. The police came, after all I am a foreigner who just snotted some Angolan official so hardly an unexpected turn of events so I said. ‘All I want to do is donate a clinic!’ and they took one look at Marcia and said, ‘Oh, it’s a domestic’ and fucked off again. Good lads, the police, but then I do feed them breakfast every morning and the community were right behind me.
I will build this blasted clinic.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
I need one. Not just want one, I neeeed one!
The red ferrolytic soil here when mixed with 5% cement and a little water and then compressed into forms makes excellent bricks. Strictly speaking, planning regulations governing land close to rivers or the sea prohibit concrete or brick buildings, wood should be used instead but considering that I have had no complaints about the shop or the kitchen toilet block I know that I can get away with bending the rules a bit.
As you know, I am busy trying to put something back into the village that sold me my lovely, if sometimes rather damp piece of land and welcomed me into their community. And it is a community.
Yesterday, I suffered my first bit of shoplifting. Trying to instil an ethic of patient queuing is I am afraid, a waste of time. It was during one of the occasional rushes we get that some oik decided to help himself to our most expensive whisky which we foolishly presented on the shelf closest to the entrance. Naturally, when Marcia returned from town and noticed the loss (I had not), it was all my fault and further evidence, if any were needed, that I am a dizzy, forgetful doddering old fool. Marcia even checked with me in case I had drunk it all which says a lot. Well, too much really.
Marcia phoned the Administradora, the person responsible for the administration of the village, told her what had happened and of her intention to close the shop for one week, denying the service to the whole community. This morning the missing whisky was paid for. Naturally, no one could lose face and, notwithstanding my stolen generator which was clearly an ‘outside’ job, no one in the Barra de Kwanza is dishonest so the excuse given was that the purchaser was in such a hurry to catch the bus that leaves on the dot (about the only punctual thing I have seen in this country), so he helped himself since I was so busy, with the full intention of paying for it later. I should put an Honesty Box on the counter and save myself all this grief.
Hopefully this week the trucks will arrive from the lumber yard down south and the first three buildings; the new shop, our little house on the prairie and the clinic will start to go up. The lads were here today installing the 15,000 litre water tank and pump so maybe by the weekend, I will shower in tankered in fresh rather than bathe in the river.
Bathing in the river is not at all an unpleasant experience but, unlike my brother who is hung like a bull elephant in musth, I was never particularly well endowed, even by Caucasian standards so am occasionally a little self conscious washing my bits in front of men doing the same but who presumably have to stand on the toilet seat in order to piss without getting the ends of their dicks wet.
Angolan bureaucracy raised its ugly head again a couple of days ago. I was expecting a visit of a delegation from the Ministry of Health who, together with the Administradora would position the new clinic. A convoy of 4x4s duly arrived and a fat ‘Suit’ was helped out. He came into the shop and studied everything on the shelves, demanding prices as he browsed and also my recommendation for the best wine. I told him I had a half decent Cabernet Sauvignon which was light on the palate or a Merlot which was a bit more full bodied. There was no sign of the Administradora or the Doctor responsible for the district.
The counter now loaded with my best wine, choicest cuts from the meat freezer and a case of cold beer, he introduced himself as an official from the Ministry of Commerce and told me that it would be him that would grant the licence allowing me to operate a commercial clinic.
I asked him how a clinic donated to the community via the Ministry of Health could be considered commercial.
He waved his arm around to encompass the shop. ‘Are these not commercial premises?’ His hangers on sniggered dutifully.
'This', I pointed out, ‘is a shop’
'And citizens come in here and buy things!’
Now I know I am a bit slow but I defy any of you under similar circumstances to divine the point he evidently felt he had just driven home so I just stood there looking, I suppose, like a retard.
He ordered me to fetch my Ministry Of Commerce licences which I did. The licences give the name of the company, the date of its incorporation and a list of codes for the commercial activities authorised under the licence. They are to me incomprehensible but being a bureaucrat, he knew them all off pat and read them out to me: supermarket; import export; tourism; alcohol sales; restaurant.
‘See?’ he demanded. No, I didn’t see and shook my head like a donkey that had been thrashed once too often.
‘No licence for medical services!’ He slapped the docs onto the counter hitting the wet patch left by the last sale of ice cold beer like a marksman.
Oh.
Some people feign stupidity. Right now it was coming naturally. A sort of instinctive bewilderment, the desire to lash out tempered by the thought it could all be a misunderstanding. Had this conversation taken place in the Bull and Lion half way up Market Street, Ashby de la Zouch, I would have decked my interlocutor with a bar stool, accepted with good grace my month's ban from Jake, the proprietor, and that would have been the end of it.
He then went on to inform me that licences for clinics, as they involved the provision of services to high and strictly controlled legislated standards were difficult to obtain and that I would have to prove through University certificates and my CV that I was competent to establish and run a clinic but, after a great deal more of the same, concluded that he could be of definite assistance.
So that was it. Only days after I offer a free clinic, I am getting a shake down.
'But this is a charitable donation' I pointed out.
'In that case it should be handed over to the relevant Government department'
I knew all about the 'relevant government department' from my time helping the two orphanages. They need mattresses for the kids but you have to hand the cash over so the 'Department' can decide the greatest need which invariably translates to new lounge furniture for some functionary's girlfriend. In the meantime, the kids sleep on the floor.
The Fat Suit and his entourage outnumbered my genuine customers who clung to the walls of my shop with the sort of intense concentration on the proceedings that only vested interest provokes.
I looked at them, all clearly worried that the idea of the clinic would be still born or maybe praying like mad that I could afford to cough up and they would still get their clinic.
I looked at the Fat Pig (I mean Suit) and said, ‘Thankyou’
Now it was his turn to look confused so I dived in working on that ever so useful precept that when dealing with bureaucrats, if you talk faster than they can think and appear to agree with them they are quickly lost, so I confessed my gratitude that he had informed me of all this before I wasted my money as, quite clearly, I was in no way competent to meet the exacting requirements that would be demanded of me.
‘So I won’t build the clinic’ I concluded.
There was a collective groan from the villagers and the Fatman knew they would all henceforth look at him as the reason why they did not get their clinic and his crime would be all the more heinous with every telling. Some were probably already stabbing his car tyres.
‘But, but you HAVE to build the clinic’
‘No I don’t’ I said as I totalled up his purchases, ‘It is my money and if you are telling me if I build one I might have problems, I won’t and, speaking of my money, you owe me 23,900 Kwanzas’ I handed the last shopping bag over the counter.
Not to offer to pay now would be all the evidence the villagers needed that this had been a shake down.
‘I only have a Multi Caixa card’ he said. A good move that in what was now becoming a very interesting game of chess. Technically he had made the offer to pay, an offer steeped in the confidence that a little river side trading post like mine with its crude shelves and absence of strip lights and plug sockets, salutary reminders of how effectively the shop had been cleaned out by the same thieves who nicked my generator, would not have an electronic link to the banking system. But, like all poor Generals he had underestimated my reserves and in this particular game, he had completely overlooked my queen, native of Uige and not to be fucked with, my dear Marcia who had installed Multi Caixa.
I pulled the machine from beneath the counter and swiped his card, hoping like mad it would reject so causing him the worst embarrassment of all but it went through. Clearly God thought I had better not push my luck too far.
After he left the villagers erupted. The bastard! The gatuno! He just wanted to steal from you Sr Tomas!
‘What will you do now, Sr Tomas?’ asked one of the older villagers.
‘I’ll build the clinic, what else?’
Over a hundred quid from one customer is pretty good and if the bastard does try to give me grief then I know people too… But, I ain’t stupid. Before he even walked into the shop I had seen the quality of his cars and guards so knew he was low rank shit. Nowadays I will only allow myself to be intimidated by someone in a Savile Row suit and driving a fully loaded Mercedes G Wagen and besides, the really dangerous ones don’t come to visit you, they have you fetched during the night.
So the clinic will go ahead even if I have to raise a village militia, overturn hay carts (or fishing boats) to block the road and shoot ‘Furriners’ on sight.
Next on the list is the water treatment plant. Seems pretty ineffective to spend all that money to treat diseases and not do anything to eliminate the vectors of those diseases which, apart from malaria, are principally water borne. So we need at least five tonnes of purified water per day. Since the water source is brackish, I need a reverse osmosis plant with sand pre filters and UV treatment. I’ll get that. No problems. I have already been warned that all the sources, the factories producing bottled mineral water are owned by the generals or senior party officials and that they will do all they can to stamp out the awful precedent of ‘Free Water’. Fuck em. We’ll just roll over a few more hay carts or fishing boats and encourage the women to praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Maybe Raschman or SBW can get me a Remington Sendero and then I can start knocking the bastards off a mile away.
I’ll do my little bit to improve the health of the community but what is equally important is a way to improve the economic turnover of the village. I am in no way denigrating the hard work of fishermen but, let’s face it, anyone can catch fish. Any one who retails fish for a living knows that as a commodity, it is bloody fragile and spoils in 24 hours. Unless you have access to hygienic processing facilities, cold storage, packing and transport, you are selling it by the roadside at knock down prices determined by the relatively few numbers of punters that chance by.
Now I cannot afford to electrify the village and get everyone walk in coolers and freezers but what I can do, using primarily local materials, is build a cold smoke house. There are some very nice fish out there, even types that are ideal for Sushi but the majority are ideal for cold smoking. The only cost additional to building the smoker (a few bags of cement and a bit of hard labour), will be the vacuum packing machine from Germany so that we can properly conserve and market the resultant product at ten times its raw net value.
Being a dyed in the wool socialist, of course, I would form a Co-operative so all fishermen putting fish in would get a share of the profit coming out. Then they can buy their own small generators and fridges to keep their beer cold, watch the shopping channels all night and enjoy their filthy capitalist consumerist lifestyles.
From Italy I can get the very best artisan juicing machines which will allow me to make the Horseradish and Hot Pepper sauces vacuum packed with the German machine to accompany the smoked fish, the ingredients for which the village can grow so long as they can keep the feral pigs at bay.
Then there are the pigs. From them we can make bacon, smoked sausages, salami and Parma style ham. At the moment, the villagers raise pigs for slaughter and immediate consumption. I can afford to buy the product, cure it and wait nearly a year before I start to see a return on investment having added considerable value to the raw material.
The pre fabricated clinic is paid for and is on the way. I am working on the water treatment plant (still short of a few funds but one way or another I will get them, we are not talking millions after all, just a few thousand) so what I need now are designs for a traditional, artisan built cold smoker. While the professionals are putting up the clinic, me and the lads could be making mud pies and turning them into a smoker and a way of adding value to fish. That way the fishermen would earn more so instead of raping the sea with fine mesh nets, they can use hooks and lines and target the right size and species of fish knowing that just one would generate enough income to feed the family for a week.
In all that, there’s a plan somewhere.
Sunday, 26 February 2012
On being Spineless…
Last night I saw for the first time a documentary entitled ‘Bomb Hunters’.
I knew from the Association of Ammunition Technicians that this documentary was in the pipeline and was produced some time ago but these sort of programmes take time to get as far south as I am. I am sure that you have all heard that old soldiers never die, they just get very boring so since my military career is now in the dark and distant past, I felt no reason to bang on about it to Marcia or any one of my new friends. Sometimes, though, it is impossible to ignore the indiscreet enquiry of a dinner guest so I usually restrict myself to a hopefully humorous anecdote before changing the subject.
Marcia and her brother were sitting on the sofa, the second largest piece of furniture we have managed to squeeze into our temporary accommodation and next to the bed, the largest bit of furniture when the programme came on. Before I could tame my tongue, I blurted out, ‘Blimey, that guy was one of my instructors!’ I was referring to Sidney Alford, one of the leading lights of the Institute of Explosive Engineers and the man who has probably had a hand in training every single bomb disposal officer for the last forty years and has been responsible for many of the innovations that kept, most of them at least, alive.
Marcia and Edu were enthralled. I found the programme vain, shallow and self promoting, not the qualities looked for in your average ATO. Its only saving grace was that it was as factual as such a short narrow brush stroke over decades of service by bomb disposal officers of all arms from inception to the enormous demands now being made of them could be.
I was mildly irritated, for example, at the suggestion that defusing aerially delivered bombs or magnetic underwater mines during the Second World War was essentially less risky than defusing Improvised Explosive Devices ‘because the operators had technical manuals’. In the Army I was trained to deal with IED’s and, yes, the programme authors are correct, there are no handbooks, no circuit diagrams save for the essentially historical technical information rushed round the detachments each time some new, yet more cunning type of device was successfully neutralised. The initiative lies always with the verdant imagination and skill of the often highly intelligent and well informed bomb maker. But such an outrageous contention denigrates the unsurpassable courage of those with little or no training, even less technical knowledge (despite the odd out of date manual) and specialist tools that were only developed in response to the death of yet another operator, many of whom dug down to these bombs knowing that there was every chance it wasn’t a ‘dud’ but was in perfect health and fitted with a variable time delay pistol behind which was probably an anti handling device.
I am in a position to make a direct comparison because although being trained to dispose of conventional munitions (for which we had detailed technical manuals and established procedures) and IED’s which required the mental set of a specially trained chess player, in Angola, with none of the experience and knowledge that Royal Engineer bomb disposal officers enjoy, I found myself having to deal with albeit (and thankfully) much simpler iron bombs tossed off Migs and Sukhois.
Having sought his advice, the ex East German equivalent of an ATO (and, therefore, ironically my former cold war enemy) explained how to defuse these things armed only with a basic tool kit comprising primarily of set of Allen Keys, a monkey wrench and a couple of screw drivers. He went on to say that these bombs were very reliable so if they had not gone off on impact, they were likely fitted with a time delay mechanism no more sophisticated than a glass ampoule of acid shattering on impact and a copper wire the thickness of which determined, as the acid ate through it, a delay of anything from half an hour to twenty four, although, he added as he took another swig of his whisky, he had seen some go off a bit quicker.
To qualify as an Ammunition Technical Officer I had undergo days of psychometric testing (to, according to the documentary, eliminate those motivated by self aggrandisement or possessed of a death wish) before attending the Royal Military College of Science and then undergoing more practical and theoretical training at the Army School of Ammunition. Now I was being taught to defuse aircraft bombs in a bar using the only visual training aids at our disposal, beer soaked napkins and a lead pencil. Clearly, the psychiatrist that examined my results all those years ago had overlooked something.
The final piece of advice he gave me was that sod’s law meant the bomb’s orientation after it had discarded its tail on impact (the presence of which on the surface was often the only indication we had of where to start looking and then digging) invariably meant the pistol pocket was on the lowest and most inaccessible side (if anything round can have a side) and that once I had loosened the annular ring , praying all the time the bomb would not settle suddenly onto me) I should watch out for a face full of acid. Further improving my confidence, he reminded me that the time delay itself was as powerful as a grenade so I should get rid of it as quickly as possible (he said ‘Ab in die Wüste’ meaning I should sling it into the desert pretty damn quick) but if I had survived thus far it was then merely a requirement to remove the bomb to a safe location before either detonating it or burning it out.
As an aside, I was pretty rubbish at burning these things out once I had them somewhere safe as they always burnt to detonation so since I had to take all the precautions for a massive explosion, I thought I might as well just frag the bloody things. It was only when I was working in Nigeria years later that I ran into a guy who had done the same sort of stuff while, if anything, even less qualified than I was, and he told me how he used to pack champagne bottles to make shaped charges which would always initiate a successful burn. But then he came from a fashionable regiment and not a Corps so was probably more familiar with champagne bottles and their alternative uses than I was. Without going into the technical details, it won’t work with whisky bottles the only alternative uses for which I can think of is the advantage they give as a weapon in a drunken brawl.
I don’t think I am blessed with any particular form of courage. I know I am not. Lot’s of things scare the shit out of me. Heights. I cannot bear heights. You want to see my knees buckle and me wee my pants? Stick me up on a high building and ask me to look over the edge of a balcony. If it is high enough (more than three storeys) I’ll vomit as well. I feel vulnerable swimming in the sea ‘cos I’ve seen Jaws, and snakes scare the crap out of me. In fact, the older you get, the more nervous you become. Last time I was in UK and I saw the yobs dominating the pavements and park benches I was more scared than I was walking through the shanty towns of Luanda, Lagos or Johannesburg.
I didn’t particularly fancy digging down to something which left to its own devices would detonate destroying whatever remaining bits of essential infrastructure were left to a debilitated population, a population oblivious to this insidious threat who, assuming the raid was over would throng the streets and move back into the danger areas. Dealing with landmines was bad enough and they don’t go off unless you do something stupid or innocent, like step on them, or poke them too hard or fail to realise they are connected to something else. Scatterable munitions are small and rockets relatively so, so you can usually get away with blowing them up in situ or, if you really understand what you are dealing with and have balls the size of planets, you can collect them up and execute a controlled demolition. The local police used to collect the smaller stuff and bring it to me in buckets, which was as good for waking up as an ice cold shower, but the archetype big as bastard hell ticking bomb? I dealt with one which just as I got to it, a wall gave way and I and it clanged into a bloody dark as hell full of crap basement, my torch now buried in the collapsed tunnel. Adrenalin is brown and sticky but amazingly, the cellar stairway was clear and I scaled it faster than a burning rat up a drain pipe, leaking undies notwithstanding. But then someone had to go back down there again and finish the job.
I think it was probably the awful carnage of the First World War that raised if only a guarded recognition of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That young men, especially poorly trained and essentially unmotivated conscripted young men, would crack under awful stress is now no surprise and that they should be treated with compassion and given reasonable assistance seems, on the face of it, the least a decent society could offer.
I for one, however, believe that just as much as wrapping a child up in cotton wool produces wimps, some members of society over value their contribution and, more importantly, the rewards that should accrue to them when really all they deserve is a swift kick in the teeth and an uncompromised instruction to get on with it and for God’s sake stop whining.
‘Another great lesson […] has been the restatement, in terms that everyone who wishes can understand, of the old political axiom that every right carries a corresponding duty. […] It is well to have been reminded of it, for in the development of modern social ideas there has been an increasing tendency to look upon the state as a universal provider, from whom everything is to be expected, to whom as little as possible is to be given. Such a tendency is in direct conflict with our old national ideals and our old national character. It is subversive of discipline both in private and public life. It opens the way to political corruption and to all the social evils that have led to the decay of empires. It is destructive of that power to combine for the common good and for the maintenance of any idea above self.’
Clearly, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC was prescient when he delivered this speech on the 14th of May 1919. It isn’t so much that his dire prediction of the decay of our society holds good today, it is more valid as an ‘I told you so’. The decay has long since set in and as inhabitants of UK plc, we are tenants of a house beset with woodworm, wet and dry rot, death watch beetle and even termites from abroad.
In the same vein, demonstrating prescience and naivety in equal measure, General Robertson stated ‘That he held strongly that the utmost should be done for the welfare of men and their families, and that they should be trusted not to abuse the privileges granted to them.’
Robertson was bang on. We needed a welfare safety net to take care of those who contributed selflessly to their country and its residents, and I suppose we can forgive him the fact that having grown up in a society that both knew how to spell Integrity and understood its import, it never occurred to him that his trust could so easily be betrayed. We are now cursed with a disparate community for which honesty, service and integrity are wholly alien and is led by the corrupt politicians predicted nearly a hundred years ago.
Society is less interested in mutual co-operation than individual gain. Rats fighting each other to get their noses into the corn sacks that are our security for hard times, or climbing over each other to abandon a sinking ship when those lean times inevitably arrive. Arguably no longer a society, a definable entity the members of which willingly accepting a form of mutually agreed governance for the common good with the implicit self sacrifice often required, but more a return to a survival of the fittest, in modern society a case of who steals the most and works less thereby getting an easier deal is somehow ‘cooler’. The gloating in the wine bar about the magic deal just pulled down.
Courage can be expressed or is evidenced in many forms. Are the medical staff who work exhausted through one shift after another to patch together the young men, now horribly wounded, who charged with insane bravery an enemy position any less courageous than the rather battered remnants of humanity they are now treating? Is the fireman who with scant regard for his own life entered a burning building to rescue a child no less deserving of the nation’s highest accolade? Why is it that only serving military personnel can be awarded a Victoria Cross and civvies have to make do with a George Cross? Why should such recognition not carry a financial reward? Perhaps a generous annuity merely for having done one’s job? After all, if London Transport employees feel they deserve recognition merely for driving fuller buses and trains during the Olympics I think we should introduce a new supertax on those who hold down any kind of remunerable employment to fund a ‘get out of bed’ incentive. Naturally, captains of business should receive rewards independent of performance.
The term ‘Hero’ means little now. If I walk down any suburban sidewalk and am attacked by a dog, I am a ‘victim’ and will immediately engage a lawyer in the invariably successful pursuit of compensation. A postman if barked at through a letter box will be a ‘hero’ and also engage a lawyer to sue his employers. Firemen will demand compensation because ‘it was jolly hot inside that burning building and we saw dead bodies’ and will be described as heroes. Policeman will complain that some unruly brute resisted arrest and called them something nasty. Dustbin men will quite rightly refuse to handle the dirty, filthy contaminated waste from equally filthy capitalist swine in their three bed semis unless it has been safely packaged in a manner commensurate with the intellectual capacity they would have acquired at school if they hadn’t played truant so often. An office worker will slip on a damp washroom floor or trip on a blindingly obvious cable and claim like everyone else, they are suffering from stress, a heroically endured condition unique to public servants and one wholly inapplicable to the majority of society who wilfully endure lives of quiet desperation (those in or genuinely seeking gainful employment). The rest are either on the take or trashing society or both. The really genuine hardship cases, of course, slip to the bottom of an administrative bureaucratic nightmare.
Real heroes are very thin on the ground. Nowadays just doing your job with all its inherent risks is classed as heroic and if, God forbid, you are hurt or traumatised in its execution, you are somehow entitled to lifelong support.
Haig summed it up far more eloquently than I ever could, suffice to say the attitude now endemic in our society is little more than that of a street side beggar confident that the state has castrated the courts, immigration control and mandated that every passing taxpayer must give a percentage of his hard earned cash. The rot has permeated not just general society but also the establishment, our politicians and even the military.
I cannot and would not even presume to give you the definition of a hero or try describe the unique qualities that set him apart from other ordinary men since I have never met one but I am willing to have a bash at describing a good citizen, or a good soldier, by paraphrasing Generals Haig and Robertson:
Every right carries a corresponding duty. Everything should be done to ensure the welfare of a man and his family and they should be trusted not to abuse the privilege.
It's Duty. You know? There is no reward. For the sake of the common good, you just do it.
Now for an anecdote. I still haven’t had the courage to tell Marcia that I shall deplete our already straightened reserves by building a clinic for the community hence the title of this post: Spineless. I really am the biggest coward on earth. Back in time to 1987…
I received a phone call from the tasking authority, the Joint Service Explosive Ordnance Disposal Reporting Centre in the middle of the night telling me to go to Felixstowe, a port on the East Anglian coast to deal with some sort of mine. Now a mine is considered a ‘Conventional Munition’ rather than an ‘Improvised Explosive Device’ and as such, had probably been there since the Second World War which was the last time live munitions were distributed gaily and with considerable abandon around the countryside in anticipation of a Nazi invasion. So there was no rush. If It had been there nearly fifty years, so long as no one poked it with a big stick or played football with it, it wasn’t going to go off and I could return to a decent night’s sleep, and deal with it after breakfast.
The lads, and ladies, that manned the JSEODRC, especially at night, were at the most just corporal signallers responding to requests for EOD assistance from police forces all around the country. They were nowhere near as well trained as us bomb disposal experts and you can imagine how they felt at waking up a Captain in the middle of the night but if my name was on the duty list, it was their duty to ring me. No matter how crap it was.
JSEODRC was a good system. It stopped every Tom, Dick and Harry from contacting a very thin and often overstretched resource directly (in what we called the ‘silly season’ we received a hundred taskings a month) and it also allowed JSEODRC to task the most appropriate team.
I explained to the kid on the end of the line that this was a CMD task and not a blue light job (I was still thinking of the rest of the night in bed followed by a decent breakfast) when he asked me to ring Felixstowe nick directly. This was unusual.
‘Tide’s going out see and we just found it there. Big bugger ‘nall. We were lucky cos Charlie wuz on shift and he lives down sea front so guz ‘ome that way and he saw it.’
‘Saw what?’ I said.
‘I dunno. Charlie sez it’s a beach mine. He seen em before when they were clearing the beaches at end of war. Sez they mek a hell of a bang’
‘Alright, cordon that area off with a few Constables and I will be there at first light to deal with it’
‘No, that’s no good, it’s the spring tide see?’
No, I didn’t bloody see (or sea) but it was my duty to find out.
Much of the level of the land on which Felixstowe had been built was, like most of Holland and all my land here in Angola either just at or slightly below sea level. Unlike me now, Felixstowe town council had the funds to invest in some pretty spectacular sea defences which were now threatened by a bloody great beach mine which, on the only authority they had, our Constable Charlie, they where convinced would make one hell of a bang. The duty Sergeant then went on to say that they had woken up the Mayor and the Chief Constable and that the Chief Constable had ordered all off shift policemen to report back for duty and that the Mayor had woken up the council to initiate the emergency flood plans.
I thought it only sporting that the Army should attend as well so tasked my team.
On arrival, the problem was immediately obvious. It was a type C beach mine containing 25 lbs of Amatol that were hurriedly laid when the threat of invasion was imminent and between 1943 and 1947 a 151 men died trying to remove them. This one was sitting right on the bottom step of the sea defences. I could just blow it in situ as I really felt that an untamped detonation would see the blast directed out to sea but had to confess I wasn’t entirely sure I could guarantee the structural integrity of the sea defences thereafter, defences about to be tested by some severe tides and all the time the tide was now coming in and I had a Mayor and a Chief Constable and their considerable entourages breathing all over me. Talk about deciding under pressure. Speaking of pressure, I knew from the books that a type C anti tank mine required 50 lbs of pressure to set it off but that with corrosion of the mechanism this could be reduced to 4 lbs ‘or less’.
Standard Operating Procedures dictated that I waited until daylight, had the area cordoned off and then blew it in situ. Under these circumstances, the police where always very hospitable and would offer me and my number two a berth in their cells and I could claim NRSA, the Nightly Rate of Subsistence Allowance of nearly forty quid. A nice night’s work in other words but even I could see that ignoring the mine until a particularly vicious tide had had all night to rattle this thing against the sea defences was hardly professional and that just blowing it in situ sort of defeated the object of calling me out in the first place, especially when just behind the sea wall was a beautifully constructed, glass fronted edifice all the panes of which were guaranteed to be history a nano second after the bang and possibly under water, along with much of the rest of the town, a few minutes later.
The sea defences where a series of concrete steps and I knew that I could walk along them about half a mile to the end carrying the mine and then I would reach a shingle bar where I could leave the mine and deal with it in the morning. It was three in the morning so there was no one on the sea front so if the worst happened, most of the blast would be directed upwards and since I would be holding the mine, there would be no intimate contact between it and the sea defences so most of the blast would be dissipated.
I explained to the police what I intended to do and that I wanted a rolling road block to run along the sea front above me as I walked.
My Number Two, Andy Grey, dived into the back of the bomb wagon and emerged carrying the spare 5 shot semi automatic 12 bore Browning shotgun we had as part of the team kit and started to load it.
‘What do you want that for?’ asked a copper.
‘If he Fuck’s up,’ said Andy pointing at me, ‘I’ll keep the Seagulls away’
Saturday, 25 February 2012
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