Sunday 9 September 2012

Lord Have Mercy...



Having enjoyed a few days at the Barra de Kwanza, the last of the family who all descended on us for Alex's birthday party have finally departed.  Family visits are notoriously awkward.  Visitors are, after all, like fish.  After a while they start to smell.  Not in this case though and I was sorry to see them go.  Especially Dominic who like me, acquires an odd spring in his step when surrounded by Marcia's nieces.  Sod the loopy Kardashian's, they should be filming the Francelina da Graças.

With such pleasant diversion lost to me until their next visit, I was looking forward to going fishing today. I allow a few people park their boats on my property, it saves the owners having to trailer them to and from town, a 160km round trip a third of it through awful traffic.  I refuse to accept payment. Decently, they all offered to cough rent for their spaces but as I am still too poor to buy my own boat, I prefer compensation in kind.  I’ll supply the cold beers from the shop and they provide me the fishing.  So far it has worked like a charm. 
Last night the owners of one particular boat turned up settling themselves into Rico’s bar and  then invited me over to join them for a drink.  As they sluiced suds down their necks they asked me if I fancied a trip offshore.  Is the Pope Catholic?  This would finally give me a chance to properly test the spinners and lures I was gifted from Fish Creek Spinners.  They warned me that they would be setting out at six in the morning.  No problems, Gabby the Goat makes an excellent alarm clock even though she has only one setting, 5am and bloody loud.  I finished my drink and left them to it so I could stroll home, get the video camera on charge and the rest of my kit ready.

Marcia has found an excellent supplier of brine cured hams, ideal for boiling and then roasting with a honey and rosemary glaze.  I tried one the night before last and enjoyed it so much, I made it again last night and invited Nice Paul to join us.  As the restaurant opening is now nearly a year behind schedule, I want to keep my hand in and like any kitchen tart, I thrive on praise.

He looked a bit frazzled when he arrived. 

One of the partners in the fishing lodge next door where Paul works is determined to suck the juice out of life and anything else he fancies.  Every now and then but clearly still too often for Paul, he pitches up with a mini bus full of girls following his massive and blinged to shit Nissan Tundra and takes over the lodge, five rooms this weekend just for his doubled up bedwarmers (it is chilly this time of the year but, really!  No wonder he looks like a dried dog turd in the mornings).  I usually avoid going over there when this partner is in residence. I hate the noise and I bloody hate it when some tart buttonholes me for a cigarette exuding all of the partner’s second hand authority.  ‘R says give me a cigarette’ ‘Tell R to go soak his head, I don’t work here love’. 

You might think that being a fishing lodge, most of the clients would be young fit huntin’ an’ fishin’ types and a lot of them are but there are also a surprising number of what I would call adventurous retirees, usually Germans from Namibia and with all the prissiness of the Weimar Republic they try to replicate in an unforgiving desert that looks nothing like the Gruenewald amongst the trees of which I was apparently concieved.  There is no room service to the cottages in which the lodge accommodates its guests so residents have to repair to the main dining room where a buffet is set up three times a day.  On one, memorable occasion I happened by, Mr R had set up a disco inside the dining room and a trio of his fillies clad only in miniscule G strings were dancing provocatively on one of the dining tables.  ‘Good Grief!’ I thought looking forward to a leisurely gin and tonic.  ‘GOTT IN HIMMEL!!!’ exclaimed the elderly German couple trailing me into the dining room.  Somehow, I don’t think there will be any repeat business there.  I kip far enough away from the lodge to fall over about half a dozen times on my way home and I couldn't get a wink of sleep because of the noise of the disco, God knows what it must have been like for tired and hungry guests (the old couple had immediately lost their appetite) begging for enough Egyptian PT to have the strength to get the hell out of there the following morning berthed as they were, only yards away.
It wasn’t Mr R who was straining Nice Paul’s world class patience, though, it was the two guys who had promised to take me fishing the next day.

‘You won’t be going fishing’, he told me with unusual gloominess, ‘they’re pissed as rats’.
To be honest, I had never seen either of them sober so they must have really been pushing the boat out if there was such a marked difference in behavior.  Apparently they kept dropping glasses out of nerveless fingers and had tried to feed each other, a revolting display of dribbling food over themselves, the tables and the floor.  The last straw for Paul was when they tried to persuade a couple of Mr R’s girls back to their cabin.  Paul warned them of the distinct possibility of Mr R having the two men in jackets and shades following him around everywhere tying something heavy around their ankles and them ending up on the bottom of the river sipping sewage but it made no difference.  So Nice Paul joined us for dinner rather than be witness to a Mob hit.

At five this morning I was up, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  By six I had done the shit, shave and shampoo bit, Gabby the Goat had a gutful of milk inside her and me a gutful of tea.  Goosie had scoffed the left over rice, Charlie and Doggie were gnawing on pork bones still juicy with meat until about thirty seconds after I threw them down.  At seven I made coffee and choked down another cigarette.  At eight Marcia and Alex crawled out of bed so I made more tea and platter full of pancakes.  Half an hour later Nice Paul pitched up so I made yet another pot of tea.

‘Where are these guys?’ I asked him.
‘They crashed their boat off the jetty and instead of killing the throttles, they ran full tilt up the beach.  They’re trying to dig it off now’

Ah well, that’s that then.  I guess Fishcreek will have to wait a little longer for their review.  Bollocks.
As Paul and I sat there slurping gobfuls of English Breakfast Tea instead of the effluent I really hoped these tossers were drinking, they drove up towing their boat. 

‘You fat fucking Boer bastard lightweights’ I called out to them, 'what's Wanker in Afrikaans?'
‘Oh, THAT’s nice!’ one called back.

‘About as bloody nice as making a chap crawl out of bed at five to be ready to fish at six!’.  I think I used the plural of the 'C' word as well just to round it off.
‘Bugger, we forgot’, was all he said.

Now I thought they were going to join us for a restorative cuppa once they had finished parking their boat up but instead Paul and I saw them driving off down the road.  Paul rang the lodge.  ‘Did those two arseholes pay their bill?’ he demanded.
Paul hung up and looked at me, ‘Do you have their telephone number?’

‘Nope, why?’
‘They’ve just done a runner’

Now why didn’t we see that coming?
I read recently in the Telegraph that the EU are funding to the tune of millions ‘Project Indect’ which aims to use CCTV surveillance and internet usage patterns to identify abnormal behavior, presumably to detect and prevent crime before it happens.  Thought Police.  That’s scary.  I wonder if the Thought Police will offer a reduced sentence if one confesses to a crime before committing it?  ‘I confess to this dream, M’Lud and I ask for twenty three other lurid dreams principally concerning my nieces to be taken into consideration…’







“I confess to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts but not my deeds, in what I have dreamt about but have so far managed to avoid, not out of any sense of decency or fear of God, but sheer terror of Marcia's unquenchable wrath.”
Amen.

13 comments:

  1. You, Sir, are a total cad, am utter bounder and a filthy old voyeur - you'll never get to heaven. Well done!

    I went fishin' once. Vegetarian, un-tested pacifist peacenik, dog-kissing, unsporting hunt-saboteur that I was. Midnight, taken to to some lake in Norway by some very friendly Norwegianisters (their way of saying Hello and welcome to Norwayland, since none of them spoke the Queen's English and I speak little Viking).

    Guess which of us caught nothing and which of us caught every rare and protected species known to man simply by dipping his rod & line thingy into the water? Fling-dip, ooh it's a coelacanth. Fling-dip, ooh it's a Borna Snakehead. Fling-dip, yikes, look - it's a gold-plated fairy-squid with young still in its snodgoblet.

    It was a nightmare, I tell you, a nightmare fishing for England's public foreign relations (I wasn't about to offend my hosts).

    Still, back to you bein' a cad, a bounder and a filthy voyeur. Have I mentioned that you'll never get to heaven? Dreadful place anyway, apparently.

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  2. Loved your photos of the Angolan scenery - so many hills and dales it reminds me of Yorkshire. It is the rarely admitted or revealed inner fantasies of men that are God's cruel way of wreaking vengeance upon us. As my pretty god-daughter, Gabby would say in her high-pitched tone "Baaaay! Baaaay!" before shitting on the floor.

    Why do your accounts of Angola remind me of the American Wild West?

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  3. You clearly like chocolate. And you are honest as to your tastes. How so very refreshing. No deception there then.

    What were your nieces auditioning for? You or a tad pole? It's not only their bodies that lure. It's the deliberate poses and suggestive eyes. At that age? So glad that you, Tom, are not the father of a daughter. Cap on the other head and all that.

    U

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  4. Sir Owl, ye gads man, it's sport! Besides, if you believe the Evangalistas, heaven would be empty anyway.

    Mr Pudding of the North, how poetic! Beautiful as that fair county of Yorkshire is, your hills and dales aren't nearly as tender and inviting, are they?

    Ursula, I like Milky Bars as well but they are hard to come by here.

    The girls weren't auditioning for anything as far as I know. I didn't even take the photos, they just borrowed my camera and mucked about with it. They are wicked little minxes and delight in my obvious discomfort when they flirt with scant regard for my emotional stability. They just enjoy teasing their old uncle. And yes, in the spirit of honesty, I enjoy it as well. I just pray Marcia never asks me what I am thinking about when I make love to her... Bugger pitching for a reduced sentence from the Thought Police, Marcia would just stab me through the heart.

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  5. I'm surprised your nieces don't have scads of boyfriends. And you might be old, Tom (to their young eyes) but you're aren't dead!

    Milky bars, lol. That would be me.

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  6. I come here via The Owl Wood and enjoyed what I have read so far. I wonder when and if you have or will ever get the review for Fishcreek written. Great scenery in Angola. I will browse more at my leisure. Attracted here by your blog name after all who cannot love Hippos? Well the toy ones I mean!

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  7. OH MY!those girls!(you need a starched nanny around)x

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  8. Hi Megan, I am sure they have boyfriends, they certainly have enough admirers. All the girls in Marcia's family are very beautiful. I don't try to understand what she sees in me, I just thank my lucky stars.

    Cuby Poet, I'm so glad you popped over for a visit. I really like Sir Owl of the Wood's blog. His is witty and refined, mine is somewhat less so.

    John G, with Marcia around a starched nanny would be superfluous.

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  9. Those aren't nieces - those are nice-ies!

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  10. Parrot Basher, nice-ies, that's what I meant to write. Damn this spell check...

    Rebecca. Wow, yes, certainly. By getting my heart racing they are unwittingly extending my life.

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  11. Sakin,

    I always wondered who was reading my blog in Rumania.

    Yes, they are beautiful girls but bear in mind their ages. The first one, for example, has only just turned 14.

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