Wednesday 2 January 2013

Oh God, The Day After!

Or in my case, the day after the day after.

OK, this wasn't me last night.  This was me in Angolan Intensive Care about fifteen years ago but you get the picture.  Note the walls free of Super Bugs, clean bed linen and all the expensive monitors.

It has taken two days and finally a plate of hot food but I am slowly beginning to recall exactly what I got up to on New Year’s Eve that left so many people, including Marcia, strangely reluctant to talk to me.  Indeed, some locals (clearly of Middle Eastern origin) wished me a Happy New Year by throwing rocks at me.

Apparently, I got into a fight.  Not unusual I hear regular readers cry but this time it was with a dog.  A big mangy critter that terrorizes the neighborhood and I happen to detest.  And then I had an altercation with some bloke who was upset about his dog having a sore throat.  All I know is that I woke up bursting for a slash,  covered in blood, couldn’t find my truck and appeared to have lost my girlfriend.  Note the priorities there.

Dominic and I had spent the whole day loading wood up onto the truck and then taking it off again on Rico’s beach to build a bonfire.  By the end of the day we were pretty filthy and I was exhausted.  By then our guests had arrived, Rodrigues (Roddy) and his wife coincidentally also called Marcia. Roddy used to work for me but he was so cool that I helped him start a security company and now he is of independent means.  It was hilarious when we first met and I heard him talking to ‘Marcia’ on the mobile in a way that made me so unreasonably jealous I ordered him to stop the car so that I could have it out with him on the side of the street.  A sort of Mano e Mano thing.  It was so unfair.  For a start he hadn’t a clue why his new boss was at his throat and, being a decent and loyal employee, he was reluctant enough to defend himself as convincingly as his manly bulk might suggest thereby giving me the edge.  Oh, how we laughed about it afterwards.

I had showered and changed and since Roddy and his Marcia had arrived late, I took my Marcia and the boys over to Rico’s place and that’s when the dog appeared, jumping and scrabbling up the side of the truck in an attempt to sink its teeth into my arm.  I decided to run it over and that is how my truck ended up bogged down in the middle of the beach.  But it didn’t end there.  Having subjected my passengers to a hair raising ride then leaving them stranded, I leapt out of the cab, chased after and caught the dog and then tried to strangle it.  Now dogs are very tough, especially maniac dogs like this one, and don’t take kindly to having their throats crushed.  Since clearly the gloves were off between me and him, he had no hesitation in raking me with his nails and biting the shit out of me.  As I hung on with grim determination and squeezed with all my might Dominic, ever the reasonable one, came up alongside and said, ‘Dad, I think you have made your point.  Can we go to the party now?’

Only a few minutes before, I had been immaculate (I do scrub up nicely).  Now I looked as sartorially elegant as a Robinson Crusoe who had been dragged by a homemade boat over a coral reef and nipped by a few sharks on the way.  I hate to be a party pooper so I told them to make their way across the sand (Marcia did quite well in her cocktail dress and high heels) to the party while I went home to change.

With the truck all but buried on the beach, I was on foot and cursing myself so I didn’t notice the guy hurrying towards me, frothing and shouting a bit until he was on top of me.  Why do ALL fishermen carry a knife?  OK, on the boat, fine, fill yer boots.  But Chef’s don’t walk around Knightsbridge at midnight tooled up with a fileting knife, they leave the tools of their trade at work.  So me and him had a little discussion during which he made his point about me trying to kill his dog spilling a bit more of my port and I showed him just how comfortable sand can be as a mattress before continuing my weary trudge home.  I was going to celebrate that night alright.  I couldn’t wait to see the back of 2000 and effing 12.

We are still living in the sixteen square metres that will be our restaurant kitchen so it is bedroom, withdrawing room, reception all rolled into one.  It also does not have a lock on the door so when I barged in I was treated to the sight of Roddy’s Marcia naked and toweling herself down.  Man, she is a work of art.  In all my years of screwing around I have never, ever touched another man’s wife but I couldn’t help drinking in this vision of heaven.  She, on the other hand, had suddenly found her privacy violated by a wild eyed, blood soaked maniac and reacted as one might expect.  Roddy sorted it out.

Last thing I remember was burning my cottages and loosing off all the pyrotechnics.  Actually, that is a lie.  I recall the photos Dominic took and I posted yesterday.  Dominic did tell me that I won a bet when I managed to hit that blue and white plastic caravan of the seas boat on my land with a Pains Wessex parachute flare but now that I have managed to peel my eyes open I see it hasn't burnt to a crisp so I will settle for a recuperative G&T award for good marksmanship instead.

It has taken me two days to recover.  I slept in a tent rather than the matrimonial bed (not by choice but my Marcia was decent enough to give me a pillow and a sandy, high heeled kick in the teeth in lieu of unbrideld sex) and Dominic swabbed the wounds I'd somehow collected throughout the evening.  He’s only thirteen but would make an outstanding EMT.  Marcia, may not be talking to me but she did feed me lunch today so I suppose that’s encouraging.  Best I don’t tell her that I dreamt about Roddy’s Marcia last night.  Thinking about it, best I don't tell Roddy either.  Nice Paul came over today, sank a few and told me that it was safe for me to swing by Rico’s and dig my truck out as Wesley, the manager, had locked Rico’s hunting rifle in his office (there’s still some gaps here that may never be filled, I just hope to Christ I never made a pass at Rico's wife).  It can’t all have been bad though because Nice Paul went on to say that if I hauled a cable over, Rico would connect me to his generators.

They say that dragging cables and hauling trucks is a sure fire hangover cure.  Think I’ll give it a try before the sun goes down.

15 comments:

  1. Well if you can survive an iTu like that you can survive ANYTHING.... Oh I do enjoy the wild wild west nature of your life....... It's as if colonial 1850 has been dragged kicking and screaming into 2013
    And bless you for it.
    I have just repeated some of this tale to the RFWF
    He chortled and said "that's my sort of bloke"

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  2. Good god, man! Have you no sense of decorum whatsoever? No wonder you were asked to let your membership of The Tufty Club lapse.

    Why ever did you escalate the fight with the canine beyond Queensberry Rules? It's a eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - the correct form is that you face each other over a card table or small servant, the dog takes a bite, then you take a bite, you both rinse and repeat until the matter is sorted. You simply can't roll around in the surf strangling things and expect people to not notice.

    I don't suppose that anyone has had the balls yet to tell you yet about the machine-gunning of the P&O Cruises ship? As far as we can tell you only hit the funnels, but they're still doing an inventory of the passengers and crew. I suspect that they will mark you on maritime maps as a hazard to shipping and have to end the close-shore running. I doubt that this will have the slightest effect on your behaviour, but the safety-tether on a surfboard is SUPPOSE to fastened be around an ankle or wrist, even if you ARE stark-B and happy to see the new year.

    Really sir, you must reign yourself in or we shall be forced to ask for the return of your pith helmet.

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  3. I have to admit, much as I want to with you and Chris, I'd like to be sinking pints with the RFWF!

    Anyway, free electricity is not something you turn down lightly so having just pulled the cable, I now need to dig a trench across the road and bury it. Bugger the truck, I'll get it in the morning! The sun is on it's way down, can´t waste time. If I manage to get the lights on, I might get a leg over!

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  4. No, not the pith helmet Sir Owl, anything but the pith helmet. The sight of an Englishman bare headed in front of natives is too cruel.

    Please accept my unreserved apology. If that is insufficient, is the mess Webley and the Blue Room free? Naturally I expect you to add the clean up costs to my mess bill.

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  5. ARE the mess Webley and Blue Room free, not is. You see, you have me all in a dither Sir.

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  6. BTW John, don't take the piss out of an Angolan ICU, at least I got my own corner!

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    1. They are braver nurses than I would be
      I would n't corner you if you were pissed.....not unless I had an elephant gun

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  7. Actually John, all these nurses and doctors were men, and all armed to the teeth. This was a 'patch them up and ship 'em out' station where they stabilised their patients for air transport to definite medical care in Luanda, the capital. That's where they operated on me 24 hours after this photo was taken. I know it is shit by our standards but these guys worked really hard to patch us up with what they had and all the time within range of the front line.

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    1. Tom,
      I have worked with African nurses a lot
      Laid back and fucking talented!

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  8. Apology acepted Sir, given that you have already shot yourself in the knee this week the committee has deemed that sufficient.

    Now, we just need you to kiss the dog and make up and no more will be said.

    Actually, on the bright side - at least you got the truck bogged down above the high-tide line ...

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  9. Sir Owl,

    You saw that last post of mine entitled 'Surprise'? Well I was effing surprised when my lad, the young and ever more adventurous Dominic pointed at the article leading photo of the sun settling in the Atlantic somewhere over Brazil and said to me, 'I think your truck, Dad, is somewhere about there'

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  10. When i worked on the boat, i always had a knife close at hand. I had a sheath for it and wore it whether on the boat or on land. In fact, when my last day of work arrived, and the cab came to the shipyard to pick me up, i still had it and only thought about it when i sat in the back seat and felt it lay against me at an odd angle when i clicked the safety belt in place.

    I figured the chaps at the airport wouldn't like it, so removed the sheath from my waistband and placed it and the knife in the top part of my carry on bag. (This was before 9/11, so no one thought twice when they looked in the bag.)

    I never found myself in a situation where i had to consider using it as a weapon rather than a tool, but i suppose if i did, i would have.

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  11. The Angolan sun clearly has got to you. At least you won't be short of Vitamin D. Mad dogs and Englishmen come to mind. Fighting with a dog, Tom? You stare them down. Having said that, my father once shot a huge black panther type tom (!) because it kept eating the swallow fledglings nesting underneath our garage roof. Naturally, all knowledge of such deed was denied the next morning. I know a dead cat when I see one. May my father keep that skeleton in his cupboard. And live with his conscience. Did he really think I'd shop him to the neighbour? Who wants to be orphaned.

    Other than that I am keeping a chart of your marital bed. It reads a bit like those you have to fill in with your morning temperature in order to ascertain the nature of your 'cycle'. There will be a high point (once a month) amidst blips.

    Happy New Year, Tom. I won't ask you to stay out of trouble because I don't like making futile wishes and, anyhow, I do like a good read.

    U

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  12. John, my dear boy, I agree wholeheartedly about African nurses. When I was in the burns unit of Musgrave Park Hospital with my arms tied above my head and bagged in plastic and Eusol, it was an African nurse who understood when I begged her to send me a male nurse to give me my bed bath as I could no longer stand her doing it any longer and demonstrated that intuition on her next night shift by providing appropriate relief. Bet you don't get that on the NHS!

    Megan

    I don't mean this in any kind of sarcastic way, but I bet you are a bundle of laughs, a knife weilding schooner chef!

    Ursula

    How delightful to know that the Mad Bitch on the Blog has made it to 2013!

    I concur, if a dog goes for you, stare it down. But it was me that attacked the dog, it was merely defending itself the only way it knew how.

    Regarding the marital bed, Marcia and Alex tell me it is very comfortable this year. I wouldn't know as since last year, well, New Year's Eve anyway, I have been sleeping in a tent in the Jango. Still, that has given me the opportunity to catch up on my reading and munch cheese and crackers in bed (if you call a blanket on a tiled floor a bed)AND I don't get shouted at if I fall asleep and my beer bottle drains out over me. This morning, just before dawn, I snuck into the old bed. Wasn't allowed to exercise my conjugal rights but at least I got a feel of what I was missing. Look, it was worth a try... I figured if I could hold on to her left breast long enough, I might thaw an icy heart.

    I am sure the stories will keep on coming...

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  13. Well life here is positively tame by comparisom and long may it stay that way!

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