A Hippo On the Lawn

Leaving Blues

2012-01-29T00:34:00.002+01:00

Akwá, a diminutive of what a waste of rations

I don’t mind. Really I don’t. If I tell myself enough times then maybe I will believe it and avoid spending the rest of my life in an Angolan prison having been convicted of mass murder. Maybe, if I squeeze my eyes shut really tight and click my heels I will wake up in an intensive care unit in Europe with all of me well and truly smashed up being fed via a tube up my nose and realise that the last twenty years have been but a bad dream.

Given the horror stories we see on the various news channels, the poverty, the deprivation, the corruption that is Africa you might be surprised when I attest that this is the ultimate disposable society.

We are well into the Africa Cup of Nations. Just pause and think about that for a second. What we are talking about is a bunch of African national teams (eleven guys per team all playing as individuals in the hope they will one day play for Chelsea so, as teams they are rubbish) competing for the title of best team in Africa. So why isn’t the competition called the Cup of African Nations?

I detest soccer. I used to be a good schoolboy player and really enjoyed a good kick around but those were the days of Nobby Stiles when you barged on the ball, tackled hard and if your legs were chopped out from under you, you got to your feet and unless you had suffered a compound fracture AND it was pissing blood, you carried on playing. We wore shin guards for a reason. Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer played half a match in the 1970 World Cup semi final classic against Italy with a broken collar bone. Yes, Beckenbauer had a fracture but there was no blood so he soldiered on. Nowadays it is a pissy game for pissy girly prima donnas out for an Oscar, whistle happy referees and followed by the same sort of moron that believes professional wrestling is a sport.

As an aside, and just to assure the reader that I really was very keen on soccer, 26 years after what was described as the Game of the Century between Italy and Germany at the Aztec Stadium in Mexico City, I took a team there to play in the Cup of American Nations, representing Belize, and we opened the tournament against Columbia and scored the first goal. Columbia did recover and banged half a dozen into the back of our net but still, I join a relatively small group of player/manager/trainers (we were short staffed) who can claim to have scared, however briefly, the shit out of a team like Columbia. Although we lost all three of our opening group matches, we managed to score in every game against world class teams. Which isn’t bad, considering our team consisted of cooks, bottle washers and mechanics and we were blown away by both the altitude and the evening delights of Mexico City’s Zona Rosa.

I suppose I still love the game. After all these years I still remember the very first goal I ever scored. Bugger bending it like Beckham, I had the ball in the back of the net from a corner kick and I was a damn sight better at taking penalties. Now, the beautiful game is painful to watch. I was in Uganda moving an oil rig during the 2006 world cup and drove miles to the only tourist lodge on the shores of Lake Albert with satellite TV so that I could watch the Angola matches. Agony. Like many African teams, certain players are selected because they have connections. The poor trainer or manager is told who he will field. Angola lost their opening match, a blood match with their old colonial masters, Portugal. Only one nil but still a loss. Portugal is not a sniffy team but the maddening thing was Angola could have had them. The problem was their star striker, Akwá. He was going to win the World Cup single handed. If he didn’t get the ball, he refused to play. If he got it, he refused to pass, preferring a hopeless shot on goal or diving instead. I admire the balls of the manager who dropped him after that game. Angola drew the next two matches proving they had the talent but it wasn’t enough.

Our bairro, or neighbourhood, has had no town power for three weeks. All my neighbours have bought generators but apparently they are all bust. My generator has been running for nearly five years. Yes it is a bit wheezy and I bet it isn’t delivering the power on the label anymore but it still runs and it has clean oil and new filters. These bastards will buy a gennie and then keep stuffing fuel into it and running it until, with a choked up radiator and oil the consistency of water it seizes with an almighty bang leaving them in complete darkness. Then they will get a likely lad who will strip it, try and repair it before finally declaring it dead.

So now that the African cup of Nations is on, guess where they all pitch up? No problems. I can read a book, or type on the old laptop but it is hard to ignore a football match and that’s when I go crazy.

That wasn’t a foul.

You’re telling me that was a foul?

The bastard dived

Look, there’s the replay. Where was the contact?

Why is he being stretchered off?

Effing poufters.

Or:

Cross it!

For Feck’s sake! CROSS IT!

Oh fer God’s sake, what a wanker.

I can assure you, this sort of running commentary does not go down well here. There has been a bit of scandal in UK about racism in football recently. I can confirm that even if it is my house, my TV and my fridge full of cold beer and Coca-cola, all powered by a generator I maintained, with a house full of uninvited Angolans you do not say that African football is shit because all black players are mincing diving tarts and Vinnie Jones, who just happens to be white, holds the record for opening whistle to red card and would kick the shit out of the lot of them.

Being forced to watch football with a bunch of tossers though, is not the real needle.

Every plug socket in my house has a charging phone attached to it. I appreciate that a charged mobile phone is fundamental to existence now. They are the elixir of life, God’s breath into parched lungs and salvation in an emergency so I do not begrudge my neighbours the opportunity of squeezing a bit of life into them. But if they are going to leave them under my charge, so to speak, why can’t they switch the bastard things off?

At first, I ignored them but in Angola the mobile phone norm is that if the call is unanswered, just keep hitting the redial button. Irony is wasted on your average Angolan, undoubtedly something being lost in translation so instead of answering the phones, I switched them off. This got me into hot water as there was no record of missed calls. I am now an expert on Nokia, Samsung and any other make of phone. I can quickly change them over to silent mode and back again when the owner comes to collect it and I have discovered that redial tenacity can be curbed by answering, ‘Ministerio do Interior, Investigação Criminal’ (Ministry of Interior, Criminal Investigation). No one, no matter how desperate for social interaction wants to get involved with those guys.

The neighbours know I have sold the house and will be moving shortly.

‘How soon will you be moving out’ said the neighbour comfortably ensconced on my sofa with an ice cold beer of mine, not even looking at me while he watched Mali get thrashed by Ghana.

‘Not for another week’, I said.

‘Great, we’ll catch the final’.

I am so looking forward to getting out of here.

Child Psychology

2012-01-27T15:58:00.007+01:00

Regular readers of my blog, and I gratefully acknowledge you gallant few who wade through the ‘Long Form’ as SBW calls it (I haven’t a clue what he means and can’t be bothered to look it up assuming it means nothing more than rambling and long winded), will know that I am an avid follower of a blog penned by a Nurse hailing from Sheffield and now living with his partner Chris in Wales on a small holding that, according to John (for that is his name) and much to the irritation of my half brother, Vladimir from Kyyiv, looks like a Ukranian village.

John’s blog has all the ingredients of a soap opera, a Welsh one. Some may call it banal, who wants to read about the day to day activity of a Welsh crofter? But believe me, just like any soap, once you are drawn in you are hooked. John is a sucker for a sob story, especially if it involves animals. Not a week goes by without him adding to his menagerie. God knows how his partner, Chris, copes and when John recently displayed the human fallibility we all have by allowing a sink to overflow and flooding the house I could only imagine Chris’ reaction when he was issued a set of flippers, mask and snorkel in order to swim into the kitchen and fix his breakfast (presumably Sushi, the only necessary ingredient of which he shot under the floating kitchen table with the spear gun the ever considerate John provided him). And we have all read about how careful John is with anything valuable, such as antique furniture.

As I said, John is a nurse by vocation. And nursing is a vocation. If it were considered a profession or even just a trade, nurses would enjoy a decent salary and the respect they deserve. John is basically one of those really nice guys the rest of society use as foundations for their own existence. If anything goes wrong, there will always be a John. Won’t there?

I will be the first to admit that while I read every single comment on my blog carefully and with consideration, and have never deleted a critical comment, I do sometimes skim read the comments posted to the blogs I follow. However cursorily, though, I do take the time to read them as often, they can be the best part of the blog post even if they drift way off topic. Imagine how boring the dinner party if you, as guests, were only allowed to discuss the one topic your host had presented?

I was scrolling through the comments on one of John’s posts when I came across one from a Nick. Nick was complaining that John had posted a comment on his blog that had caused controversy and that John should hurry over and clarify what he meant.

John? Our John? Controversy? John causing controversy would be about as likely as the singing nun doing a striptease on Oprah. So I had to click the link to Nick’s blog and see what all the fuss was about. Nick’s blog is easy to read and entertaining. Some of the posts are frankly brilliant but I do live in Angola so anything even half well written is likely to be entertaining in comparison to state controlled media. And this is what I like about the blogosphere. I can’t remember how I first stumbled across the blog of a Welsh St Francis of Assisi (John) but undoubtedly it was through a link on someone else’s blog, and I discovered Nick’s blog the same way, through John’s.

Nick’s post detailed the trauma of a mother accused twenty five years ago of killing one of her sons. Her husband left her taking with him with her one remaining son and she was ostracised by her community. After a quarter of a century and a life of abject misery, she has finally been cleared of wrongdoing.

John’s comment suggested that the death penalty would have helped in this case.

Evidently, the concept of irony, so fundamental to English Sangue Froid and humour escaped many of Nick’s readers as some of the subsequently posted comments expressed varying degrees of disquiet over John’s comment. Even Nick admitted he did not understand it. For all I knew, John could have been on a night shift and by the time he returned home, had slept himself back into some semblance of humanity, speared some Sushi in his kitchen and logged on, he could have been nothing more than well flamed charcoal. So I dived in there and posted my own comment explaining what to me was blindingly obvious, that John felt this was yet another example of why we should NOT have the death penalty, a post that was graciously acknowledged by Nick.

Skim reading the comments, however, I had failed to notice that a poster called Ursula had already made this point, a correct supposition that neither Nick or I had acknowledged, something that evidently upset her enough to provoke her to post a further comment leaving us in no doubt how she felt. I read her original comment carefully and there was no arguing, she had hit the nail on the head early on. So what was the controversy Nick referred to? As far as I could see it had been cleared up within hours of John’s comment appearing on Nick’s post. So I posted another comment apologising to her. After all, I was new to Nick’s site and would hate to have upset one of his regular readers. She came back with a caustic but very witty response and I suggested that since this was Nick’s site, and we were now off topic, a very serious topic at that, we should go over to each other’s blogs and continue. In the meantime, I swung over to Ursula’s blog to learn a bit more about who had briefly clashed swords with me on what was turning out to be an enjoyable jousting field.

Ursula, I have decided, is barking mad. Sadly, this isn’t the sort of yoghurt knitting, tree hugging lunacy so easily dismissed. She is witty but the wit I am talking about is not the beer fuelled ready riposte one might expect to be flung from one end of the village pub bar to the other, this is a wit born of serious intellect but tempered by a lifetime’s experience I could not begin to fathom. Mad as a hatter yes, stupid no. After all, she was the first to correctly interpret John’s comment, the catalyst for all this. I am told that it was impossible to have a serious conversation with Einstein and I know that senior Army officers were always nervous of subordinates with any notion more abstract than climbing over the top when ordered to do their duty and bayonet the enemy. I have no idea who Ursula is or where she calls home so I am relying on the remoteness of Angola to prevent me, moth like, being entranced into her orbit only to be found the morning after our night out at the Chinese Restaurant porcupine like having been stabbed with every chopstick to hand merely because I suggested sex with her. All I know is that really clever people make normal people nervous.

Nick posted that he agreed with me, it was his blog and, rubbing salt into an unexpected wound, not only deleted all our comments but posted a comment telling his readers he had done so going on to say that if we did not understand why we had upset him so terribly (he laid it on a bit thick) he had nothing further to say. Gosh. I am reminded of the expression that when one is up to one’s arse in Alligators it is hard to remember that one’s original intention had only been to drain the swamp. I really would like to be able to visit John in Wales and see his Ukranian Village but, if I go out for a pint with him I might think carefully about swinging a punch again on his behalf. So far I have only been savaged.

My father was quite fond of dinner parties. Except he never referred to them as such. He merely invited a few friends around for Supper. Sometimes he would delight my Mother, reminding her how important she was to him, by pitching up after work with the as yet unwritten guest list in tow, pulling fridge doors open and muttering there must be something in there and what the bloody hell is a microwave for before drifting off to the drinks cabinet.

His was truly an open door policy and if he did realise that one of his guests was being insufferable, he would pour two large scotches and invite him for a walk in the garden claiming a sudden irresistible urge for a puff of his Three Nuns tobacco. There, no doubt, they would look at the stars together while my father explained how, in the Western Desert, he would navigate by them. If that proved insufficient, he would then talk about conkers. His trees, he would say, have produced champion conkers. All the school kids from miles around would come to gather his conkers. If a boy was particularly polite, he would even show him how to tie the best knot so the conker would hang in there despite the most intense thrashing. Even the most belligerent guest would return subdued to the dining table.

I have been wading through a book by Kate Fox called ‘Watching the English’. To acquire the material for the book she put in a lot of field work, much of it consisting of identifying a particular norm of behaviour acceptable to the English and then deliberately disobeying it. She is an anthropologist so I guess it is her job. It is entertaining and I would commend it to anyone, even be they English, to read it if they are even remotely interested in what makes the English, well, so identifiably English.

I have learnt, for example, that I am not ‘posh’. Posh is a working class term. Neither am I ‘smart’ (not an indication of my intelligence but a measure of my status in England’s class ridden society) because I have always referred to the place I sit now, typing this, as my lounge. Smart people recoil instinctively from anyone who calls his sitting room a lounge, merely tolerating them from then on rather than accepting them. It is an interesting book, certainly more so, and a damn sight easier read, than Debrette’s bible on etiquette.

I’m not really into abstract study. I like empirical measurement. Hit someone annoying you hard enough under the jaw and he will fall down. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support this and laws designed to preclude further casual experimentation in the high street along such lines.

When it comes to children (and I have a three year old that refuses to sit anywhere else but on my lap as I type), we adults have to resist the temptation to introduce our offspring and their many, invariably highly irritating companions, to the soporific effect of a swift kick under the chin.

Alexander is too young to understand what a ‘baleful’ gaze is. Perhaps someone should take a photograph of me as I observe him and his delightful little friends trampolining on my lounge (sitting room) furniture while I struggle between paternal love and homicidal instinct.

Sorry, I have to return to this distinction between lounge (not very smart) and sitting room (terribly smart). If we follow Ms Fox’s very illuminating line of reasoning based on her accurate observation and then progress slightly, are we suggesting that smart people lounge in their offices all day before returning home to sit in their prescribed place on a Sofa in a room set aside for such purpose and so named to avoid confusion while explaining to Mummy (smart people refer to their mothers as ‘mummy’ until mummy dies after which they contact their solicitors to contest the will, Daddy long since having shot himself in the drawing room) how busy they have been since breakfast and how much they are looking forward to Supper since lunch was so ghastly? And that Plebs sit in their offices all day before returning home, collapsing on their settees, complaining about the crap dinner in the company canteen and lounging, in a room set aside for such indulgence and appropriately named, while their wives cook tea?

I have drifted on to the subject of food through the misery of boisterous children, only one of them attributable to the issue of my loins. The staple diet here in Angola, and the rest of Africa, is pounded yam, manioc, a tuber given many names but essentially starch. It fills the stomach. It doesn’t just fill the stomach, it pastes it, glues it into one glutinous mass. A full belly and an overloaded digestive system will stave off the pangs of hunger and help the child to sleep but this stuff provides no nutritional value whatsoever. Bereft of protein and the vitamins and iron only found in meat and green vegetables, these kids exhibit all the characteristics sadly associated with Africa: indolence and distended bellies, an inability to concentrate and a consequently retarded physical and mental development.

I cannot compare Alexander with his European contemporaries but here, he is very big for his age. He is as big as an average five year old. He has taken to wandering the neighbourhood to visit his friends so I have taken to ensuring the gates are kept closed. He has taken to jamming himself between the waterpump housing and the main gate and forcing the gate open so I have taken to ensuring it is padlocked. He has taken to climbing over the six foot high boundary wall so I have taken to giving up. Short of chaining him to the wall, about as acceptable as knocking him out every time he wakes up, I am at a loss.

Every morning, therefore, I unlock the gate and let the kids in. I abandon any notion of Sky News and switch over to Cbeebies or whatever the channel is called. I am fluent, as far as, ‘Please do not jump all over my blasted furniture’ is concerned, in English, French, German, Portuguese and the Lingua Franca of their various tribes. Inadvertently, I am running the local crèche.

Come lunchtime, I have to feed Alexander. It is no use asking him what he wants. He likes Pappa, a mealy porridge. He likes Funge, the wallpaper paste made from manioc I mentioned earlier. Meat, vegetables? Forget it. But he will bite your arm off for a lollipop. So with Alexander, I learnt to be sneaky. No good placing a plate in front of him with meat and two veg clearly delineated on the plate. He’ll just ignore it. I made stews, exotic stir fries, dishes baked in the oven all of which he helped me to make (sort of), all of which concealed the essential elements of healthy nutrition. He wised up in no time. If it wasn’t accompanied by an enormous pile of funge, he’d feed it to the goose.

It was the same with my Crèche kids. Obviously with a houseful of snot nosed little bandits I couldn’t just feed Alex and leave them to starve so I made for everyone. I even laid the table with place settings and glasses for all. Unless it was pappa or funge, they ignored it. Sure they drank all the juice off the table and checked my desk drawer for lollipops (Alex knows all my hiding places) but would they eat a decent meal? Not a bleeding chance.

Last night I made a frankly quite outstanding stir fry. This had everything good in it. Beef filet, countless Chinese vegetables, mushrooms, the most exotic sauce. Everything these kids refuse to eat. I made a bucket full of it and once it was cool enough, I stuck it in the fridge and went to bed. The kids had turned my furniture into the Somme and having shouted a mere ‘Halloo’ over no man’s land in defence of John I was now nursing a gutful of internet shrapnel.

This morning I was ready for the little bastards. I am rebuilding my truck so there are bits all over the yard. All morning I had them wheeling truck tyres from one end of it to the other. There are plenty of verandas to sweep so I had the girls doing that and picking litter.

In the past I have put an extraordinary amount of effort into getting them to sit around the table. So long as I remember to switch off the TV they will do this but they won’t eat. This time when I called them in, there was no table nicely laid out. On the coffee table, in front of the TV, there were a dozen forks and one, nicely reheated, bloody great pot.

Alexander went first and hauled out a forkful of Chinese cabbage and grimaced. Not to be outdone, the other kids went for it. Alexander, realising he was losing ground, started to fork like mad. It was a race, who could stuff the most into their face, Cartoon Network no distraction whatsoever. In no time at all, the pot was empty and they were clamouring for juice to drink. Competition. It is healthy and yet there was no animosity, just a shared joy and some pretty full bellies. I was pretty chuffed too. Finally I had managed to get the little bandits to eat a decent meal. So I unlocked my desk drawer and fetched out the lollipops.

With the kids content I checked my emails and surfed the various blogs. Nick has expunged me. He has even eradicated his own replies to the comments of mine he deleted such as ‘Hippo - Thanks for that. Clearly none of us quite understood the irony John intended, even though I for one am solidly English!’ and ‘Hippo - Please do put a link on your blog. The more links, the merrier!’.

The fact that Nick hates me enough to try and eliminate me from history should be no impediment to you visiting his blog, it is rather entertaining. But be warned, catch him on the wrong day and he can be bloody sensitive. So just be careful what you say.

Ah well, John’s impeccable reputation remains intact, I have been barred and, best of all, I have finally found a way to get the kids to eat using psychology. Thanks Ms Fox.

.

1984

2012-01-27T14:27:00.002+01:00

The Daily Mail (yes, I read the Daily Mail but I also read the Telegraph and Spectator) has run an article today on how Google tracks users in order to identify trends and demographics in order to tailor the irritating advertisements that pop up all over the web pages we visit.

Deep within Google’s massive databases, every site we visit, every search term we enter, is recorded and used to slot us into virtual pigeon holes. So this is news? All big organisations and especially governments spy on their customers or citizens. The digital age has just made it easier.

What made this article interesting is that it pointed out to me something I did not know, that we can access the information held on us, Google’s subjective view of our like’s based on our browsing history.

I briefly considered my browsing history and some of the search terms I had used, took a deep breath, and clicked on the direct link. This, apparently, is what Google thinks floats my boat:

Arts & Entertainment
Food & Drink - Cooking & Recipes
Jobs & Education - Education - Standardized & Admissions Tests

These are my ‘Categories’. Google have not made their minds up about my demographics stating that no demographic information is held for me. Funny that, half the adverts are served up in Portuguese.

Hang on a sec, I am supposed to be a roughy toughy, not a dear little luvvie. Am I really THAT boring? What about the shooting and fishing sites? What about London Pride and Scottish Distilleries? What about Piston Heads and all the other motoring sites? No wonder I keep getting adverts offering me on line degree courses or cooking holidays in bleeding Tuscany, I am 52 years old for goodness’ sake, what do I want a bloody degree for? I have just sold the house and will shortly be cooking for a living so it’s too bloody late to start learning now.

You can, though, add or amend information about yourself. I am going to enter my interests as fishing, shooting, fast cars and women of less than strict moral virtue and see what kind of adverts I get after that. That should be a giggle.

Home Alone III

2012-01-17T05:50:00.003+01:00

I entered 2012 full of optimism. The house is sold, the money is in the bank, the crew who will finish off the restaurant are mobilising and a bit more spanner action will see the truck back on the road again.

I was so confident, I was already recruiting. Flordita is quite a way out of town so some key personnel will have to live on site, especially over the weekends, which is when we expect to be busy. No sweat, I’ve got it all covered. I will poach Natalia from my old employer and she can be the head housekeeper and Roddy will sort me out a driver, again from my old company. There are a couple of secretaries who would rather work for me, even only as waitresses so I’ll have them as well because I know they are all loyal, honest and bloody pissed off in their current posts. Down at the Barra de Kwanza, we’ll all be one happy family and just rake it in.

Naturally, I needed a qualified accountant. One familiar with the ever changing reporting requirements of the Ministry of Finance and MAPESS, a government sponsored organisation any ardent socialist would have been proud of as it has made this country, Angola, officially recognised as the most difficult in the world to discipline or sack an employee. If the person helping me slide by that shit was a family member, so much the better. If that person was also about to qualify as an accountant, only a few months short of finishing a four year university degree, paradise.

Marcia’s nephew knew he would walk straight out of university and into a family business. Marcia was pleased. I knew she liked the guy and I did too. 22 years old, obviously intelligent and very personable. He knew that we are kicking into gear and that next week he and I were going to work on the spreadsheets we would need to control expenditure and receipts and keep MinFin and Mapess off our backs.

Saturday morning he went over to Mussulo, invited by some eighteen year old he was shagging. They call it an island but really it is only a long bar 30 kms in length so everyone nips over the bay by boat rather than face the long drive. Compared to Luanda, it is heaven on earth and all the smart set have their beach houses there. The restaurants are no better than anywhere else but with such a location you could serve tinned dog food and get away with it so the fact they serve lobster and curried fish soup along with ice cold beer and mind numbing Caipirinhas makes the place an absolute hit, especially for young lads keen on scoping girls in string bikinis.

Saturday afternoon they pulled his body out of the bay.

As soon as Marcia received the news, she pushed off to her sister’s place to give her whatever support she could.

I felt bloody awful. I lost my nephew when, aged only two, he drowned in a swimming pool in UK. In South Africa, or in many other countries but still not in UK, legislation recognises the right of a citizen to have a pool or a pond but demands a fence around it to prevent this sort of accident. But this was no pool, it was the Atlantic Ocean and he was a fit young man, not a child. Maybe he had enjoyed one Caipirinha too many and failed to realise as he splashed in the sea, perhaps showing off to some girl clad only in a bootlace, that his prospects for being a father, let alone a grandfather were becoming increasingly bleak until it was too late. It is sad, but it happens.

Marcia and the rest of her family were obviously waiting for the body to be released. The lad died on a Saturday afternoon so his earthly remains stayed in the morgue until today so that a post mortem could be conducted. In the meantime, the family had collected together and rolled around in the dirt wailing and screaming, Marcia among them I guess.

No one should belittle or ridicule the way Africans mourn their dead. When I heard my nephew had drowned, much to the alarm of my employees, I kicked my desk to matchwood before getting a grip of myself, retrieving the phone and booking myself a flight to UK. From that moment on and to this day, I kept it all buried. The grief, the unbearable grief. Africans, they just let it rip.

The autopsy report came out this afternoon. There was no water in the lad’s lungs. Evidently he was dead before he went surfing so we are looking at a murder enquiry.

This is Angola. They do not have sophisticated crime scene investigation, they cannot collect and analyse DNA, who could from a body washed up on the tide? It would be a miracle if they could even establish the real cause of death unless he was riddled with bullet holes which he wasn’t.

All I know is that three days ago some fucker killed my wife’s nephew and he is probably going to get away with it.

It is Marcia’s birthday today. She’ll be 31 but don’t tell her I told you. I’ve been alone, looking after the house which is sold anyway. Talk about a spare prick at a wedding. In the drawer of the desk on which sits the computer I am writing on I have a loaded Cz 83 the magazine of which I would love to empty. If only I could recognise a legitimate target.

Do you know what it is like? You are as mad as hell and want to take them on. Your wife is real miserable so it hurts even more. Your three year old kid is understandably bored with watching his aunts roll themselves on the deck and wants to come home and watch CeeBeebies instead. You may be in your fifties but you know you can still hit a running Gatuno at two hundred paces if only God would give you the bastard chance, the only problem being you don’t know who is ‘them’.

A tough Weekend, I had to do something decisive. Anything to take my mind off boiling frustration.

So I baked Marcia a birthday cake. It is as close as I could get to a Black Forest Gateaux but I had to use strawberries instead of cherries and dipped the strawberries I used to decorate the top in molten chocolate and used a sweet liqueur instead of Kirschwasser to lace the chocolate sponge. It’s in the fridge now.

Sometimes I am less than fond of this place.

H2S

2012-01-10T22:54:00.009+01:00

HS2 is a symptom of the disease Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. Although superficially similar to Haemophilia in that both afflict the ruling classes, Haemophilia is hereditary whereas VVOV is contagious and affects mainly commoners elected to high office, a typical vector being the socio biological mechanism tentatively understood by psychologists and some medical practitioners to be Honores Mutant Mores. With one it is the host that bleeds to death while with the other, it is the carrier that enriches himself by sucking the blood out of others.

VVOC in its HS2 variant is distinctive because as a subject it is colourless when debated, in its physical form is politically poisonous and has, as a briefly recognisable characteristic to those about to succumb, the odour of rotten eggs. An interesting diagnostic clue to extreme poisoning by HS2 is the complete absence of anything of value in the pockets of its victims, the humble taxpayer.

Utopia to Dystopia. Fritz lang warned you in 1927.

Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas: 'Vanity of vanities; all is vanity'. Also, and far more poignantly translated as, 'Meaningless, it's all meaningless', an allusion to selling one's soul in this life for what, in the ultimate scheme of things, will be transient gratification regardless of the numbers trampled underfoot.

Honores Mutant Mores: 'Honours change the customs'. In other words, the higher up the food chain you are, the less the law and common decency apply.

And they say Irony is the preserve of the English.

A sense of humour, perhaps?

2012-01-09T23:40:00.012+01:00

Neither photograph has been Photoshopped. These are genuine establishments trading in Luanda, Angola.

Portas Janelas e Acessorios translates as Doors Windows and Accessories. I mean, look at it. At least he is being honest.

'You want doors or windows Guv? Give me yer money and I'll Fuck you over'.

"Any sauce with that?"

"Oh c'mon. Or rather don't, I can't wait that long"

I haven't managed to acquire photos of the following two establishments (it can be surprisingly hazardous taking photos in the street here) but there is a store selling car parts called 'Lady Diana Autoparts'. Just don't go there to buy Mercedes brake pads.

Not to be out done, across the road the photo and photocopying stand renamed itself 'Paparazzi'.

I kid you not.

Credit for the photographs go to my very esteemed colleague and intrepid reporter Ed Corbett, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Please Mr Bursar Sir! Can you give me an education?

2012-01-08T19:51:00.013+01:00

Dear Sir,

I am a British expatriate living in Angola. I have a 12 year old son, Dominic, who is bilingual in English and Portuguese. He has been educated at a private Angolan college in the capital, Luanda. Without wishing to be critical of my host country’s education standards (the long running civil war only ended in 2002 so the country has a lot of catching up to do), I am concerned that my son will, in comparison to his developed world counterparts, be left behind.

I have relatives living around Ashby de la Zouch and it is the proximity of family able to provide support, plus the impressive presentation on your website about School House and its facilities that leads me to write to you.

I would be most grateful if you could send me details of admissions procedures and full boarding fees. I understand that admissions are awarded on the basis of interviews, not exams and that I will be required to travel from Angola to Ashby with Dominic for this. You will excuse parental pride but I am sure that once you meet him, you will be impressed by his intelligence, an intellect malnourished under the Angolan education system. He loves sporting activity but also has a keen interest in nature which I encouraged by providing him a microscope and field observation kit and was rewarded when in December 2009 he rediscovered an incredibly rare Phasmid, first recorded in 1889 described from a single female collected from Golungo Alto in 1856. Apart from brief details of that record, nothing has been published since and the archive containing these records in Lisbon was destroyed by fire. Dominic is now credited on the British Natural History Museum’s website on Phasmids with the only photo of this Phasmid in existence

Sadly the face on which the stick insect is crawling (to give a necessary idea of scale he insisted although I suspect it was due more to his sense of humour), is that of his father.

I am sure that with the help of the extra curricular cramming sessions you offer (or the additional ones you deem necessary), he will be a credit to the school. More importantly, his particular skills and interests could be identified and developed.

On the sporting side, and I am very pleased to note that you recognise a healthy body leads to a healthy and receptive mind, his latest desire is to represent Angola in some future winter Olympics at Biathlon, an urge borne of his skill with a .22 target rifle and the undeniable ease with which he learnt to ski on a recent holiday to Germany. He learnt to ride a junior motorcycle aged only four and holds a local record for catching a 90 kg Tarpon which, typical of a boy who believes one should only kill that which is intended for the table, he elected to tag and release rather than land. With his Olympic ambitions in mind, he is currently training so that he can beat his father’s personal record (achieved twenty five years ago, I hasten to add) of running three miles in fifteen minutes across country. That will give him the stamina. I shall have to leave it to my brother in Germany to develop his Langlauf skills during the winter holidays.

Is there a nearby Army or Combined Cadet Force he could join in addition to all the many other extra curricular activities you offer? And does nearby Heather Hall still offer riding lessons? There used to be a tailor on Market Street. Up the road from Natwest Bank and pretty much opposite the Bull’s Head where I scored my first illicit pint in the company of the luscious but finally ungenerous Sally Bent, forget the name. Is he still in business? He (or probably his son by now) could measure Dominic up for all the suits and jackets he would need. I still have the suits they made for me in 1984.

I am reluctant to admit to you that I attended Ashby School because if my records still exist, you will find I was hardly a credit to the establishment despite best efforts by long suffering staff who, I am sure, wanted to throttle rather than nurture me but with admirable restraint, forced enough education down my throat to allow me to enter the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and be commissioned into the Royal Army Ordnance Corps as an Ammunition Technical Officer. Mr Jagger, Head of Sixth Form at the time lamented, I am sure, the moral decline of a once proud Army reduced to such desperation when it came to recruiting although he was kind enough to swallow his bile and congratulate me on my unwarranted success exhibiting all the good humour of a man finally able to shrug off an intractable burden, one that legislation had prevented him from thrashing daily. I served as a Bomb Disposal Officer in Northern Ireland, England, Germany, Bosnia and Latin America before leaving the Army to run humanitarian mine clearance projects in Mozambique and Angola, a country which, in spite of all the mayhem, I fell in love with and, to the undisguised pleasure of many in UK and Germany, finally settled down somewhere, anywhere, but gratifyingly far away.

Dominic has dual British and Angolan nationality so although England is a country foreign to him, he is technically not a foreign student. He can converse happily in English but his written English will be poor for his age. He is also, like his father, weak in mathematics. His date of Birth is 9th March 1999 so, subject to vacancies and a satisfactory interview, I would be looking to get him in this coming September.

I did not do so well at school, largely due to immaturity but also because what I wanted to study, art and literature, did not coincide with my mother’s desire for me to become an Architect and follow in the footsteps of her very successful father, and my father’s contention that all artists were unemployable left wing anarchists (Citizen Smith was the comedy programme on TV at the time). Although not entirely sure whether it was merely due to an adolescent knee jerk reaction against right wing racist parents or a deep rooted conviction, I remain a socialist to this day, my twenty years in Africa leaving me with the firm belief that it is the duty of the state, the representatives we elect to run the country on their citizen’s behalf, to provide affordable drinking water, education and energy and not tax the shit out of individual enterprise.

I tried to get away from home by signing up as an apprentice deck officer with the Blue Star line but needed the parental consent which wasn’t forthcoming as my mother felt I would lead a debauched life. In spite of the fact that aged sixteen I was selling enough paintings at local exhibitions to pay for a family holiday, my parents insisted that Maths and Physics were best for me so I failed my ‘A’ levels and ended up a bomb disposal officer. A rewarding career if, after a 'job' you have the time to realise that you won this particular game of chess and aren’t so much fertilizer spread all over the countryside. Miserable and scary as hell. Bosnia was the weed seed of all my nightmares and I never painted again. Instead, I became intimately familiar with every den of iniquity and the girls inhabiting them from Lagos to Cape Town acquiring along the way a predilection for distilled grain and a firm conviction that the only tolerable funeral was the one you couldn't remember until the day after.

Given the benefit of hindsight, I am sure my Mother would have still dug her heels in regarding the Blue Star Line apprenticeship but would have bought me more Yellow Ochre and Cobalt Blue for my paint box, and my father would have lashed out on the green parka and cherry blossom Doc Martins (de rigeur for any 70's revolutionary), let me grow my hair long and allowed me to pretend to study Economics while I listened to Jimmy Hendrix dancing whacked out all along the watch tower.

I would like my boy, under the guidance of professional educators in a well run institution, to be allowed to make his own mind up, to develop and mature and walk the path he chooses, not the one thrust upon him. In Angola, he stands no chance at all and I certainly do not want him to follow in my footsteps.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Gowans

Tony Blair, RIP

2012-01-04T20:08:00.016+01:00

Publius Quinctilius Varus, a man not averse to wealth who, rather like the fox that lost its tail in Aesop's Fables and presumably for the same reason, decided that affordable dentistry should be denied to the masses

The BBC have recently been accused of being insensitive (making a change from accusations of bias) by commencing the research they need to film an obituary for Tony Blair, presumably knowing full well that the bugger is still very much alive and advising some very dodgy governments on how to stone women without attracting publicity and complicating the Palistinian question while bemused, but still patriotic Englishmen, sit freezing over Christmas in slit trenches in Afghanistan wondering why he sent them there.

"Leading Labour figures were said to be shocked to be approached by BBC producers putting together the tributes to Mr Blair"

Tributes? TRIBUTES?

In June 2007 BBC Newsnight held a competition for the best maximum fifteen word epitaph for Blair's political career. Sadly, I missed that but can now see it as the vicarious authority driving the BBC.

I am forced to revise my opinion of Labour MP’s. It appears that they are, after all, decent human beings who have their ethical limits. Claiming for double mortgages or employing half of one’s family at the taxpayer’s expense are one thing (or two in the case of some clumsy MPs educated in Comprehensive schools leaving them bewildered by the simple mathematics required to fiddle their accounts) but no one could reasonably be expected to stress their integrity so far as to come up with a tribute to Tony Blair.

Tony Blair is on the left. The guy on the right is some dead bloke he sucked up to.

Lacking original thought, a gift bestowed sparingly upon those at the front of the very long queue I backed up before joining the even longer queue for willies, I quote Valleius Paterculus:

‘He came to a rich province a poor man, but left a poor province a rich man’.

OK, seventeen words rather than fifteen, but who would quibble about two extra words except Blair’s PR team? Nevertheless, wouldn't that be the most appropriate epitaph?

I know he is only 58 but maybe the BBC know something we don’t. I wait with the sort of mildly detached anticipation I do the recent threat by Greek authorities to drag their unproductive country out of the Euro if the UK, German and French taxpayer funded bailout for them doesn't work.

Old People

2011-12-31T21:31:00.008+01:00

It is New Year’s Eve. Most of us can think of a million people to call and, blessed with British Telecom or Orange contracts we can blag away convincing aged and lonely relatives that we really care even though we could not be arsed to climb into the car and drive over, favouring a hot and sweaty disco serving lukewarm spumante instead.

I saved my beer tokens, investing them in recharge cards instead and prayed like mad that the system would not overload and called my Granny in Germany.

I got through.

She is 93 years old but as soon as she heard my voice, delivered via an African telecommunications system and fed into God only knows what sort of international satellite system before being delivered to her aged and inefficient ear she said, ‘Andi?’

My father was English and had an excellent sense of humour, an acerbic wit that perhaps I have inherited to a degree. He and my German mother didn’t really get along, much to my distress and also that of my Grandmother who, like all grandparents, provided that rock, the definitive bearing on the chart of one’s life that could be relied upon to steer a certain course. To the rest of the world I am known as Thomas. To my Granny I am known as Andreas or Andi for short. Long time since anyone called me Andi.

What do you say to a ninety three year old who more or less brought you up yet you have only seen three times in the last fifteen years? When my Grandfather, von Borken senior died I was in the middle of Lake Albert moving an oil rig and I remember her authorative voice over the satphone telling me it was my duty to finish the job off and that Opa, since he was soon to be in his grave, would wait for me. Prussians to the end.

I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. How badly I missed her. How much I would like to be by her side, even just to make her a cup of tea and serve it to her or to hold her hand as she fell asleep while I looked upon the peaceful face of the most beautiful woman in the world.

She asked me how things were going so I lied and said ‘fine’. She isn’t stupid, if it really was ‘fine’ I would have been able to shell out for the tickets for the family to travel from Angola to Germany and pester her for the whole five minutes it would take her to get irritated and tell us to piss off. Instead she asked me about my heart.

It is pointless lying to your Granny. Grannies have intelligence networks stretching over generations so I said ‘it’ll be fine once I get the operation’.

She said, ‘you know that Opa and I gave up smoking years ago?’

How the fuck does she know I am still smoking?

‘Granny, please don’t give up’ I said.

That came out all wrong. She had binned the tabs decades ago but she knew what I was bleating about.

‘The Lord will call me when he is ready’ she replied. Well that's good. Since God is an Englishman and all his postal workers are on strike, I was in with a chance here but I didn't explain that to her in detail because she was German after all. Imagine, praying your whole life in the wrong bloody language and not being able to understand the deadly telegeram when it eventually arrived.

‘Can you at least hang on until I go? Then we will be able to meet Daddy and Opa together?'. I had just sacrificed twenty or thirty years of my life but really it was bugger all if we consider the longevity of the female members of my family against the fragility of the males who generally gave up the ghost in middle age. I guess my time was up.

‘I’d like that’, she said. See? Even my Grannny thinks so.

Then I ran out of credit.

I need to pack in the fags. If Granny is going to hang on for me, I’m going to make sure it is a hell of a long wait.

Just call me René

2011-12-31T16:30:00.010+01:00

To paraphrase Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas message to the Nation in 1992 (God, was it that long ago?), 2011 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure…it has turned out to be an 'annus horribilis.

Sure, there were those moments of startling success, as when three gorgeous ex employees of mine came to visit at an hour early enough to catch me clad only in a towel, just to see how I was getting on after my heart attack, reminding me of my strong views about Bosses sleeping with staff members and the fairly obvious fact I was no longer their boss. Dressed the way they were and with the barely disguised ‘come hither’ looks of the unbridled temptress, another heart attack was almost guaranteed.

But, in what would prove prophetic for the rest of the year, such brief moments of triumph were all too quickly followed by a rapidly accelerating rug under my feet, as several hours later Marcia returned and drew the inevitable conclusion suggested by the sight of her semi naked husband in the company of three startlingly attractive young ladies, the skimpiness of their attire leaving them to the casual observer, I suppose, pretty much semi naked as well. While women are pretty adept at faking an orgasm as well as hiding credit card receipts and collecting shoes, they are also pretty skilled at disguising arousal if needs must, while men are left trying to hide something as obvious as a lighthouse in the desert and, under the keen, malevolent gaze of an irate girlfriennd, about as useful.

For the rest of this awful year I have had to make a point of not dressing until two in the afternoon claiming that Englishmen (I try hard to make the distinction between 'unemployed' and 'of private means' but I suspect Marcia is wising up), do, when relaxing in their own homes, dress thus as a matter of course and there is absolutely nothing remarkable about it. I think Marcia is beginning to believe me about the dress code, if not the state of our finances, as she has tired of beating me and conjugal rights have recently been re-installed.

Foolishly, I ignored the warning signs apparent during 2010. I could not see how the global economic down turn would affect the Angolan economy, based as it is on ever higher oil prices. The fact that I could not draw hard currency from my dollar account was an irritation, not the salutary warning of impending disaster.

I was an asset millionaire and could ride out all this. Beer tokens I could earn doing the odd consultancy job. I had started a new company in 2010 and won some good international contracts in 2011 and was happy for revenue to be reinvested. After all, there is nothing as safe as houses and I had three of them along with acres of building land.

Then the money dried up. Clients now wanted to pay in local currency, not good old USD. Transfers abroad meant changing Kwanzas on the street at outrageously expensive rates of exchange and then using Western Union or Moneygram to get the money out at outrageous fees. The property market collapsed. What were once million dollar houses were now being sold for a couple of hundred thousand with maybe the sweetener of a decent second hand four by four thrown in. A once vibrant cash economy is rapidly reverting to a barter economy. Banks are woefully undercapitalised and business loans have dried up. It is the rest of the economically depressed World times ten. Meanwhile, I choked on local cigarettes and ‘whisky’ imported from India.

Nela, the very attractive spinster who moved in next door (Marcia hates her as well) is raking it in baking and decorating birthday and wedding cakes. Colonel Henriques supplements his salary with the revenue from his club, the Esplanada Triangulo, so named because of the shape of the plot of land on which it stands. Sr Filipe started his tiny little shop selling staples and alcohol and has now bought a bloody great truck to collect the stock he needs to keep the shelves of his now vastly extended premises full.

I am proud of the security and investigative services I provide my clients but in today’s competitive market, it’s a difficult way to make a million and as anyone knows, pride is both hard to swallow and not particularly nutritious for the family clustered expectantly around a dining table. Given my explosives and firearms skills I could always knock off a few banks or liquor stores but, as anyone who has read Elmore Leonard’s ‘Swag’ knows, it’ll all end in tears. Mind you, in addition to reminding me how difficult it is to walk a straight path on a winding route, the book did give me a taste for ‘Salty Dog’ cocktails.

Apart from the Air France contract and a foiled attempt at a ménage a quatre, my only genuinely satisfying success in 2011 was managing to grow smuggled English Horse radish in my garden. Now that really is sad.

‘As far as I can see’, I told Marcia, ‘the only things that make money in a recession are food, alcohol and sex. Building houses is a mug’s game’.

For once, Marcia didn’t disagree.

I have been banging on for years about the Barra de Kwanza and the restaurant and hotel I am going to build there but now I am bloody serious. I have taken a huge hit on the house in Benfica in order to get the capital I need for my mate Julian and his crew to go through the site like a dose of salts and finish it off so that I can open.

So, I will enter 2012 homeless. I have converted the roof over my family’s head to cash and will launch them on a new and exciting venture, one based on food, alcohol and sex.

I will provide the food and alcohol, it will be up to the clients to see if they can score with the waitresses or any girls attracted by the bright lights but, given Marcia’s skill with drop forged steel kitchen knives, I shan’t be interviewing potential female staff clothed only in a towel.

I am off for a shower.

Official: Wonkers Run the Country!

2011-12-29T19:41:00.017+01:00

Wilkins Micawber. A frugal man, sadly fictitious

I link to Ian Cowie’s blog. If you are reading this, it is there on the right hand side of your screen if you scroll down to ‘Interesting blogs’

What I did not realise was that the Daily Telegraph use that link to feed any and all financial articles so when I click on it, often as not, I don’t get Mr Cowie (erudite, informed and sympathetic to his readers most of whom are bereft of a PhD in Economics), I get someone else entirely.

Today, I got Andrew Lilico and his article entitled, ‘On what is and is not an argument about Ricardian Equivalence (long and wonkish, but politically relevant)’

Merely the title he gave his tome should have served as an urgent health warning to anyone foolishly trespassing within reach of his intellectual wit. Having been fooled by the ambiguity of it and walked off that very short pier a simple mouse click entails and then floundered hopelessly in the mire of his tortured logic, I was only saved by the divine intervention that caused my laptop battery to fail (clearly God is not ready for me yet). All I can say is, don’t go there unless you are a fairly determined but as yet undecided suicidal. Even the most awful death would be a blessed release.

The worrying thing is, though, that clearly governments are being advised by an army of Lilicos (just read his CV and the comments below his post, assuming you can make it that far before suffering a cardiac infarction). There are loads of Economynists out there and not one of them can agree with the other.
George Osborne, a gullible man, sadly all too real

I self administered a couple of squirts of Nitrolingual and a handful of Inderal tablets and pressed on finally getting to the penultimate paragraph:

“Relative to a tax-funded programme, deficit-funded spending isn't expansionary in this case, because if consumers face a one-off tax increase of $100 billion they will not cut their consumption by $100 billion in the first year, either. If the spending is expansionary at all, it is precisely as expansionary whether funded by taxes or by debt. Krugman is mixing up Ricardian Equivalence with the claim that consumers are forwards-looking (which is a requirement for Ricardian Equivalence, not the theorem itself).

'Forwards-looking'? I guess that with a name like Lilico, English might not be his mother tongue but being a thick bastard, I have obviously missed the point. Besides, I really did not want to kill those few readers I have by cutting and pasting his more lethal paragraphs.

If this is the sort of educated yet conflicting advice that grocer’s daughters or Selfridge’s towel folders get when assuming office, flushed with an ardent desire to heal the world, no wonder we are in such shit and they age so quickly.

Financial markets, the basis of our economy, are based on a fiction. While exhorting Joe Public to be responsible, to go easy on the store cards, to beware the £1000 instant credit for the new plasma and to invest 70% of their income in personal pension plans and private health insurance, the government injects yet more taxpayer funded cash into the economy through the banks to stimulate yet more lending, resultant debts, however bad, that can be repackaged and turned into bottom line assets and sold on to other financial institutions some of whom, you may be shocked to learn, fail.

Western governments ridicule African leaders for their vanity projects but how would you classify Trident nuclear submarines and a high speed train link from London to the north? Who the hell wants to go up there at high speed? If I am heading north, I would at least like the time to get smashed. The Olympics, the most internationally visible expression of self adulation pale into insignificance in comparison and all are funded on the ‘never never’ of government borrowing.

Lilico described his own article as ‘Long and Wonkish’. Well, it was definitely long. I am not sure about ‘Wonkish’ though, mainly because like the rest of his article, I haven’t a clue what it means. Perhaps it is an economist’s term for gratifying one’s self over the first draft of one’s manuscript. All those big words and obscure references that plebs will not be able to understand, but the giggling Wonkers behind the bike sheds will.

Personally, I subscribe to the greatest, yet sadly fictitious, economist of all time. Would that our politicians could absolve their responsibilities for a whole country as efficiently as some of us run our own households based on the Micawber principle:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

You cannot borrow yourself out of a hole. All you can do in such a situation is skulk at the bottom of it, foregoing the nuclear deterrent, alternative power and the plasma TV until you can afford to pay cash for the ladder to get you out again.

Mr Lilico may have given us a decisive insight, who's to know? Certainly not I. It is all Greek to me.
Andrew Lilico. Self confessed Wonker and educated person

Get thee behind me, Soldier

2011-12-27T15:18:00.041+01:00

The Sun in UK has just run an article under the blazing title, ‘Squaddies Are Living in Squalor in UK’

So what is new?

What I found remarkable were some of the comments posted by members of the public in response to that article. Most were supportive but a significant proportion suggested that the soldiers smashed their own accommodation (being little more than animals I suppose and a contention hard to refute, after all, when have you ever heard of a council house being trashed or anyone puking up or pissing in the street let alone engaging in riotous asssembly? Clearly, only awfully uncouth servicemen do that). Others suggested that they should pay into a kitty and perform the necessary repairs themselves (good point, perhaps we could extend that to council house tenants). Worryingly, quite a few felt that knowing what they were letting themselves in for and having signed on the dotted line, accepting the Queen’s shilling as it were, servicemen and women should shut up and get on with it, I quote from one telling comment, 'These guys volounteered and have no rights...especially if they killed in Iraq'. But convicted criminals who turn out to be illegal immigrants do have rights? And how about the fact that the taxes the poor old squaddie pays which, unlike any other ordinary expat earning his salary abroad he must pay, go towards funding 'acceptable' accommodation for asylum seekers yet Cavalry Barracks, the very barracks he lived in before deployment, was deemed unacceptable by the relevant government department responsible for housing refugees? Clearly, for refugees and asylum seekers, including convicted foreign nationals and illegal immigrants, the post code for free housing must be SW7. For soldiers SH 1 T will do.

Obviously, there were also those who blamed the officers. An easy accusation, especially in the light of articles produced in the UK media such as the one written by a clearly very bored Daily Mail correspondent with bugger all else to do but sup his pint and consider his editor's deadline. In it, the rather insensitive author, Christopher Leake, referred to General Sir Peter Anthony Wall, KCB, CBE, Chief of the General Staff and head of the British Army as 'General Two Dinners'. Why? Because ten years ago (ten years ago), while visiting Scotland as commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, Sir Peter ordered a young major to get him two portions of fish and chips. So he was hungry. I have accompanied senior officers on these sort of whirlwind tours and believe me, you survive on Twix chocolate bars from the petrol stations you fill up at. No helicopters for the hoi polloi, even if they are knighted Generals, unlike some politicians I could mention. On arrival (I cannot speak for my General) I could have eaten the arse off a live cow as well as two measly portions of fish and chips, although I always prefered curries with all the trimmings (mint yoghurt, mango chutney, the red stuff guaranteed to give you burning bum by morning) and at least half a dozen Naan breads to mop up the sauce. Besides, Leake is clearly a peasant. Even Northerners, never mind the smart set, know that fish and chips is a supper, not a dinner.

And General Wall's crime? One worthy of several column inches in the Mail?

I quote directly from the article in which Leake (wonderful name, fodder for all school bullies dedicated to giving wimps a healthy thrashing) accused General Wall of being 'measured up for a new Service Dress uniform at a cost of £1,000, which he paid for himself'. Gosh. 'Man Buys New Suit, Film at Eleven!' Yet another Daily Mail scoop. Rather than try and create a story out of a fifty five year old soldier who has given his best years to the country and has now put on a bit of weight (I still wouldn't argue with him, he is a hard bugger) Leake might, if he had been astute, have noted the General's thrift. Had he been measured up at Thieves and Hawkes, General Wall would have spent twice as much and it would at least have been gracious of Leake to note that while Officers get a small (taxable) uniform allowance, it in no way covers the cost of the uniforms which, traditionally, officers are required to have but must pay for themselves. In any case, a grand for a suit is chicken shit in the city. A politician, of course, would have found some way of claiming for it.

I sense a bit of Army bashing.

Anyone remember the accommodation in Bessbrook Mill? Or Airport Camp in Belize? Or how about the transit accommodation on Hohne Ranges? Or the tenement blocks that were the married quarters in Monchengladbach, islands of British destitution and nothing more than English speaking ghettos in the midst of German affluence?

Once I was commissioned, I remember standing there in the luxuriously appointed offices of the Government appointed agency for property services begging them to fix up my lad's blocks and married quarters only to be dismissed with ‘I’m sorry, Sir, there is just no money’ and when I suggested, OK, just give us the materials, the paint, the brushes, we’ll do it ourselves to be told, ‘No chance, Sir, the work can only be carried out by qualified personnel’.

‘OK’, I said, ‘Give me one of your qualified supervisors to oversee the work’

‘Sorry, Sir, they are all busy’

‘DOING WHAT!’

Good job I did not have my swagger stick with me, I was sorely tempted to put it to good use around the smug bastard’s well fed chops.

The lads suffering Cavalry Barracks in London know it is classed as transit accommodation and transit accommodation is at the very bottom of the fetid pile that comprises housing for our service personnel, be they married or single. The singlies can put up with a lot so long as they have a bed space and somewhere to shit but how would you feel to see your kids growing up in squalor and your young wife going slowly mental wishing she had married that Polish plumber instead? Love has its burdens but some are far too heavy to bear.

And for the soldier feeling his way cautiously along some explosive laden track in Afghanistan, his mind half on the immediate business of his own survival, the other half worried about his family, it must be hard for him to reconcile his own poorly rewarded contribution to the honour of his country with those who would use the threat they pose to the honour of the same country for cynical financial gain. How can London transport employees sleep at night after threatening to disrupt the London Olympics unless they are paid some ridiculous bonus just for doing their very safe, very cosy and better remunerated jobs? Jobs. let’s face it, requiring only the intellect that even those creatures with gravel rash on their knuckles are blessed with never mind the quick wit and extensive training the average Section Commander needs to not only keep his men alive, but get the bloody job done in conditions far more primitive than a short shift in a comfortable train or bus cab. The ‘C’ word inevitably comes to mind.

With the lousy pay servicemen are expected to survive on for doing all they do in the service of their country, one can hardly expect them to dip into their own pockets to fix up accommodation they will only occupy for short periods of time risking their claim for compensation of expenditure (another suggestion by a very bright Sun reader) being turned down because it was unauthorised. And quite frankly, were we reduced to this it would be a situation close to madness. I realise that by seriously considering sharing an aircraft carrier with France we are already dancing gaily down insanity beach but aircraft carriers, or the lack of them, bear only a passing relevence to this story.

Most of the lads would happily sacrifice a couple of days on some windswept, freezing bog of a training ground in favour of fixing up their own accommodation but only if the materials were provided. Sadly, this would be against some monopoly or other. Are these civilian contractors seriously suggesting that all squaddies are thick as pig shit and that in an Army that has electrical, mechanical and civil engineers there is no one qualified to mend a pump or splash some paint on a wall? Are they saying that if a ship is pounded to shit by the enemy Admiral Lord Nelson would call in a civilian company to come to the battle zone and patch up the hull and get the engines going again? Are they saying that of all those from every walk of life who join the services amongst them aren’t a few brickies, painters and decorators or plumbers? If service personnel are reallly so incompetent, how come every back garden in UK does not boast the wreckage of a badly maintained RAF aircraft?

The fault does not lie with the lads ‘trashing’ their accommodation, a term which is in any case sensational, but what incentive do they have for taking care of the shit hole they have temporarily inherited?

Yes, there will always be one or two that abuse their accommodation but then the lads usually sort the ‘Grunges’ out themselves. Give the guys smart accommodation, something they can be proud of and they will look after it. That has been my experience anyway, on both sides of the fence. At 3 Base Ammunition Depot, we turned the otherwise spartan room we were issued into a veritable palace, for a soldier in the British Army, five star accommodation but then we knew we would, apart from the occasional ‘emergency tour’ be there for three years. Nowadays with redundancies and a never ending, ever increasing burden on manpower resources, none of the poor sods can be confident of where they will be next week.

It is not the fault of the officers either. God knows I tried to lobby on behalf of my soldiers and non commissioned officers but was always met by the impregnable wall of civil service bureaucracy. I inspected the cooker of one of my married personnel having been told by the property services agency that it could not be replaced because it was still serviceable. How can you cook a family meal on a cooker with only one working burner and an oven which would not bring a cup of water to the boil? So I told my driver to go and get the jack handle from the car and I smashed the cooker to pieces, went back to the PSA and told them that I had inspected the cooker and it was definitely broken. The family had their new cooker and I received a month’s worth of extra duties. With the most outrageous insouciance, it had even been suggested that the damage was malicious so I would have to pay for the replacement cooker myself. Fortunately my CO had a sense of humour (but told me to wind mine in a bit).

The fault lies with an enormous and desperately inefficient bureaucracy farming out maintenance contracts to monolithic civilian agencies against which there is no redress of grievance.

The fault lies with UK governments of every colour who want a Rolls Royce Armed Services so they can continue to conduct diplomacy by other means and maintain the fiction of being a player on the world’s chess board but are only willing to pay for a second hand Ford Mondeo.

The fault lies with a bloated civil service the mandarins of which could not give a shit so long as they get their Knighthoods and gold plated pensions.

But all of this is nothing new,
the suffering of the Few
Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Tommy' knows,
just like he says below:

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

(Rudyard Kipling, 'Barrack Room Ballads')

'Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.'-Samuel Johnson, 1778.

Why can we STILL not look after them and treat them with dignity?

As an aside, the Sun article also included: 'SAS hero and Sun Security Adviser Andy McNab said...'

Oh please...

Spot the Difference

2011-12-22T21:27:00.023+01:00

I like his Tom Jones' hair style, let's hope he has 'the voice'

Alex, my three year old son managed to get Marcia, his mother, arrested this afternoon.

Alex had spent the night with his aunt and cousins and on the way back from picking him up, the taxi broke down so Marcia hopped a bus. Thinking he might not be going home after all, he started screaming, in English, 'I want my Daddy!' over and over again. The driver spotted a transit policeman sitting astride his motorcycle by the roadside and stopped his bus.

All the passengers testified that Marcia was kidnapping a white English toddler.

So she phoned me but I was having a kip and missed the call. Thinking I might have run out of credit on my phone and could not respond to a missed call, she persuaded the police, for by then there were many and the bus was long gone, to allow her to buy credit and send it to me. But I was still miles away in dreamland. Takes a lot to distract me from Kylie Minogue.

She (Marcia, not Kylie) just got back now and woke me up, none too kindly either and at the speed only a very irate Angolan girl can shoot off Portuguese told me what happened.

'I pulled out your photo from my purse and said "look, his father is white", she said she had told them, 'of course the boy will look white as well!'

Marcia dragged the photo of me out from her purse, waving it inches in front of my face for emphasis. Without my glasses, I could not focus properly but there was no question about it, I was white.

'Gosh' I said.

'And that black whore's son policeman told me I was too black to be the mother of Alex, as if that chimpanzee would know!'

'Outrageous' I agreed, thinking both of the Policeman's impertinence and Marcia's colourful language.

'So he asked me what your name was so I told him, "Thomas" and he turned to Alex and said, "What is your father called?" and Alex said, "Daddy", so I explained to the Copper that Daddy was English for Pai so the policeman asked if Daddy had another name and Alex said "Dad" so I said to Alex, "No, no, what else do you call Daddy?" and he said, "Andy" so I tried again and he said, "Honey?" Can you believe that?'

Marcia paused for breath while I contemplated how terribly awkward for her the results of that line of questioning had been and how I had always hated her calling me 'Honey'. Far too American sitcom for me.

'So how DID you get out of it?' I ventured.

'Oh!' she said brightly, 'the paediatrician that delivered Alex came by in her car, saw us and stopped. She confirmed that she remembered you. Do you remember the fuss you made in the hospital when they would not let you in to see the birth? Anyway, that Doctor. She told the police that she remembered you well. Do you know who I mean?'

'Would that be the one who called security, had me pinned to a chair by two big bastards while the Corporal waved handcuffs in my face and after the birth told me I was the rudest man she had ever met?'

'Yes that one, she drove us home'

'Why didn't you invite her in?' I asked.

'She didn't want to for some reason'

Well. This is an amazing tale. For one thing I am grateful that ordinary citizens have the courage of their convictions, even if they turn out to be wrong. I am extremely grateful that members of the public were willing to dive in to protect my son. In how many cultures would people just have Tut-Tutted at such an unruly and noisy child before minding their own business? One can only admire the patience of the Police who while doing their job allowed Marcia repeated attempts to contact me, even calling over one of the street vendors who (illegally) sell telephone recharge cards on the street.

Finally, apart from the enormous coincidence, it just shows how sometimes it pays to stand out. If I hadn't made such a fuss, if I hadn't been so incandescent with rage at the stupid bloody rule they had here in Angola prohibiting the presence of the father at the birth of his child, maybe the good Doctor would not have recognised Marcia and simply driven by.

As an after note, the good Doctor is, as I later discovered, the top consultant paediatrician in Angola (which probaly explains the heart stopping $6,500 bill I received for her attendance and an overnight stay for Marcia in the clinic although a good portion of that could have been a sort of revenge tax). A couple of months after Alex was born, the Doctor was on the telly being interviewed on one of these human interest programmes. Ironically, she was arguing very convincingly that fathers should have the right to be present at the birth saying that it is a good thing for them to see how a woman suffers and how their presence would help calm the mother, so long as they behaved themselves. She then went on to describe in all too graphic detail an incident during a delivery she supervised that made me feel very uncomfortable.

I am reluctant to relate some of the terminology I had used to describe the professional who trained in Europe but refused to allow me to be present at the birth of my son and yet here she was, on TV, arguing my very contention.

All she had been doing was enforcing the rules as they were at the time but was clearly an activist trying to change them. I felt like a complete shit.

Apparently now, fathers can be present at the birth if they want to.

This is the second time she has helped Marcia and Alex. It is three years too late but I think a bloody great bunch of flowers and an unreserved, grovelling apology are in order. That and finding the loudest ring tone for my phone.

Wogs begin at Calais

2011-12-18T19:14:00.020+01:00

Nicolas Sarkozy, the small man of Europe, with Uncle Sam

It is interesting that now the Euro is imploding, dragging with it countless economies and creating more than just a little ripple through the world’s financial markets, it is the French and to a lesser but not insignificant degree the Germans who are incensed that the product of one of England’s rather more prestigious schools and now the leader of our nation is finally aware of his own balls rather than the Balls sat on the opposition benches of Parliament.

By exercising Britain’s right to veto a proposed new European Treaty, he has poured battery acid onto swimming pool chlorine with all its attendant pyrotechnic results and the caustic effluent has scoured its way viciously through UK and European politics. One effect of its erosive properties has, however, been to remove the veneer of cynicism and expose farce.

Let me remind you of a few facts. Britain had already dipped deeply into its reserves buying the kit it needed to prosecute yet another European conflagration under the ‘Cash and carry’ scheme with the US. With an absurd irony that would become apparent after the war, a vitriolic, anti-colonial country (the US), also accepted ceded British colonial territory as payment. Recognising it really is impossible to squeeze blood out of a stone, the 'Lend Lease' programme was introduced.

After the Second World War, the UK economy was trashed. Despite the beneficence of the US and then an extraordinarily generous renegotiation whereby the UK was allowed to retain the equipment ‘lent’ to Britain under the Lend Lease programme, equipment that was effectively unreturnable because it lay smashed up across various European battlefields, for a nominal value of only 10% of its true value, we still owed the US £1.075 billion. If I hired a car and failed to return it because I smashed it to scrap metal, I suppose I’d be delighted with a bill of only ten percent.

Still, a billion Sterling was hardly a shabby amount in 1945 although at only 2% interest and repayments over fifty years not bad terms either considering it was an investment which allowed us to hang on to a whole country. Mind you, they did force us to give up the Jewel in the Crown, India and then all our other colonies went like falling domino stones which made it harder for UK to service a debt at even only two percent. And while the Marshall Plan modernised Germany’s industries, UK factories retooled from Lancaster bombers and with the same old kit went back to producing pre war cars for which, suddenly, there was no longer a market. But such cynicism is best left alone.

The UK defaulted a couple of times but finally paid off its debt to the US for the assistance it received during the Second World War on the 29th December 2006. Sixty seven years after the war started. We English often accuse the Americans of being late to get stuck into a European war but no reasonable man could ever accuse them of starting one and, thankfully, they had deep pockets. Britain still owes the US £866 million from the First World War at 1934 exchange rates. Adjusted by the Retail Price Index, this would amount to £40 billion in today’s money and if calculated against growth domestic product it would be £225 billion. No wonder the hair of all newly appointed UK Chancellors turns white thirty seconds after first sight of the country’s accounts.

Believe it or not, the country is still paying interest on ‘Consul’ loans used to fight the Napoleonic Wars, erm, against the French. On the subject of the debt situation in 1934 and at 1934 prices Britain, in turn, was owed an astonishing £2.3 billion. Imagine what that would be worth in today’s money. 1934 is significant, by the way, because that was when UK’s debtors, including the French, ceased servicing their loans from which we can only conclude that while the US has always been very reasonable regarding the debt owed to them by UK, tolerant if tight lipped when the country defaulted, even declaring a moratorium on repayments to provide relief, the UK is absolutely bloody incompetent at collecting debts. Instead of all these esteemed economists employed on outrageous Day rates, perhaps we should appoint Vinnie Jones as George Osborne’s enforcer (I mean Personal Assistant) on a percentage. Bet we get a better return.

The idea of a European Union of one sort or another gained momentum in the late fifties and in 1958 the EEC began. The UK, fearful of the effect of relinquishing control to a central, essentially foreign authority, of its trade with its traditional trading partners and increasingly 'former' colonies baulked, instead setting up with Nordic countries and, ironically given the situation today Portugal, the European Free Trade Area in 1960.

After the war, there was a belief amongst the so recently liberated French, enduring to this day, that Britain had let France down by failing to make the decisive stand at Dunkirk before victoriously rolling the Germans all the way back to Danzig, the French Generals at the rear choking down the exhaust fumes of British tanks, Disque Bleu’s and bottles of unlooted Dom Perignon in hot pursuit. It was this cowardly act of the British, fleeing across the Channel or ‘La Manche’, as the French who have never managed to dominate yet still insist on calling it, that forced them to capitulate in a hurry and then through their Vichy government collaborate with their Nazi oppressors. The British fleet even had to shell the French fleet to oblivion to prevent them handing their ships over to the Germans providing yet another reason for the French to hate us and for us to sigh deeply and buy up their old farmhouses and turn them into holiday rentals..

There were some noble Frenchmen of course, a lot of them betrayed to the Gestapo by Vichy Police, their own countrymen, but as victory seemed imminent, it wasn’t them on the streets of Paris sniping at fleeing Germans, it was opportunistic French Communists who have ever since played a significant role in the more often than not turbulent politics of their nation. An attempt was made to reconcile rather shabby wartime performance post liberation when, like something out of a ‘Tale of Two Cities’, the mob emerged from their cellars and shaved the heads of all the young ladies who had survived the war by opening their legs to the Germans while ignoring, with Gallic selectivity, the many profiteers who, for a few years at least, enjoyed an unprecedented monopoly.

These were the stark, conflicting views of two erstwhile allies. Rather than allowing healthy national pride to concentrate on each nation’s triumphs and successes, discreetly ignoring the many and sometime shameful failures, now that a common threat had been removed, xenophobia and prejudice once again raised its ugly all consuming head. Hardly conducive to the spirit of European Union.

Such a stain on the French national character could not go unpunished so when the Conservative Prime Minister of UK, Harold Macmillan blinked first in 1961, recognizing that the once mighty nation he now led was to all intents and purposes bankrupt, and asked if we too could join the EEC, an absolute chancer, a man otherwise destined for a very undistinguished military career before fate dealt him a once in a lifetime hand leading to fame, prestige, a Presidency, and more than a few attempts on his life had no hesitation in exercising his veto against the country that had succored him while his own countrymen suffered. As a result, the UK’s application failed in 1963. Two years from application to rejection. Surely prescient of how European bureaucracy would work in the future?

De Gaulle’s veto was quickly followed by Adenauer’s of Germany. Amazing to consider how quickly these two former adversaries jumped into bed with one another other.

Opposition leader, Hugh Gaitskill, the leader of the Labour party, was passionately opposed to membership and issued a warning as to the effects membership would have on the UK’s sovereignty. The nub of the argument now. Those even remotely interested in British and European politics will be aware that opinions on Europe within Europe are divided and cross party boundaries. Observers might, however, be as bemused as I am to note that party policy flutters like a butterfly from one side of the Channel to the other.

The next UK leader to suffer humiliation at the hands of the French was Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister who tried to apply for UK membership to the EEC again in 1967 to the delight of de Gualle, who was given an unprecedented second chance to kick ‘Le Boefs’ in the dangly bits, not only avenging Dunkirk, but Agincourt as well. Hardly surprising, that the anti hero in the book and subsequent film written by Frederick Forsyth, ‘The Day of the Jackal’, was a refined Englishman.

Finally, the evidently onerous task of getting Britain into Europe was left in the hands of part time politician, subtle orchestral conductor and clumsy sailor, Edward Heath a Conservative, whose chances had been considerably enhanced with the death of that old nemesis, de Gaulle. Sadly, as anyone who grew up in the Seventies will recollect, we entered the EEC as the ‘Poor Man of Europe’. While the Germans were banging out one brand new Mercedes after another, we were on a four day working week with power cuts and the Japanese were invading our streets with cut price cars twice as good as anything coming out of Longbridge.. Mr. Heath’s reign was short lived but we still struggle on with a legacy imposed on us by both main parties (the liberals since the war having declined to insignificance so Nick Clegg should take the advice of any old soldier and keep his head down in Europe since so many of all nationalities on the Continent have had them shot off, and remember that the English take a very dim view of disloyalty, which is probably why his party is so far down in the polls).

Given the current economic situation, the awkward relationship we have with the rest of Europe, it is hard to reconcile that it was the Conservatives that brought us into Europe against the sound advice of the Labour party at the time yet it is now the Labour party, and the Liberal part of the coalition that are castigating a Conservative leader for trying to, if not get us out, at least minimize the threat posed to the democratic institutions we invented, had enshrined in the Magna Carta and reinforced by civil war, that a Mr Gaitskill, a long dead Labour politician predicted half a century ago.

It is a farce. The French delayed our entry by twelve years using their veto. The first time the UK uses its veto they slam us. Forty years ago we were bankrupt, had given up our colonies and were pushed into Europe instead, a shotgun marriage to a woman with Prada tastes who now expects us to wash her dirty dishes, pay off her credit cards and provide her ever extending family entering from outside Europe through her soft and fertile loins, taxpayer funded accommodation and Human Rights so long as they all go to UK.

I do not hold with domestic violence (and we are part of a European family) but we do find ourselves in some unholy alliance so all credit to Mr. Cameron for swinging a good old, bespoke English leather boot right where it will make Sarkozy’s eyes water.

UK, still suffering the economic burden of two World Wars in quick succession, its colonies gone, its economy on increasingly expensive life support and ravaged by internal dissent, still reeling from the shame of Suez, the final nail in a once mighty empire, may well once have been the poor man of Europe but today, Sarkozy is the small man of Europe. In every respect. He, and his rather odd Finance Minister, have turned serious debate on the fundamental issue of equable economic relations between European States, and the rest of the world into farce.

British Admirals and Generals have regularly humiliated their French equivalents on the fields and oceans of battle resulting in the almost internationally recognised two fingered salute, now not only interpreted as a sign of victory.

Master Bowman David, Son of Cameron, an impeccably dressed English Gentleman aged fourteen and a half, pictured on the field of Agincourt by our intrepid reporter after England's most glorious victory on Friday, 25 October 1415 said, 'Old 'Enery gave us a bit of verbal before we got stuck in like, so we stuffed the Frogs in their Le Creuset armour wiv are arrers but after a hundred years service, I am a bit worried about me penshun. Still got me fingers though. and brekfust wus fucking brilliant apart fom the beer being shit and the women not laying it out like but we've come up wiv a sort of common policy, but on our terms'

Now that the Uk, however, has conceded that the costs of aircraft carriers are a burden that can no longer be carried by the exchequer (the revenue for which is derived from the humble tax payer to be dispensed with gratifying largesse by unelected Permanent Secretaries), I ask our allies who call constantly on the ‘Special Relationship’ to recognise that our cupboard is bare and consider that our only remaining alternative: the few remaining aircraft we can afford to put up in yet another ‘out of area operation’ in support of the US (my apologies, I mean in support of UN sanctioned International foreign policy) will be launched off a French aircraft carrier.

The humiliation.

To conclude, a documentary, historical, covering Britain's first two attempts to join the EEC. Note carefully the distinct differences in diplomacy. On the one hand abuse, on the other, self righteous arrogance and how at the end, the English retreat across the Channel (La manche). Note also the ingenuity of the British serviceman who, faced with the lack of kit resultiing from defence cuts, can improvise.

The Power of One

2011-12-10T02:56:00.041+01:00

I am the skinnny bastard in red

It occurred to me this morning that we spend an appreciable part of our lives sleeping. Teenagers need loads of sleep, much to the irritation of parents who assume the issue of their loins are indolent. But the wee tykes do benefit from hours of slumber. After all, their bodies and brains are still growing while ours, OK, mine at least, are shrinking.

I woke up at ten this morning.

Can’t say I felt any better for it. Someone is playing a piano in my head. Fortissimo. No, it is Guns and Roses at full volume and my skull is the base drum, the smacked-out-of-his-head adolescent on the end of the sticks thrashing the skins of my cerebral cortex singing lyrics along the lines of, ‘now you know what it feels like to be alive you old bastard’. Undoubtedly witty but not what I needed with a headful of swallowed pillow while I tried to peel sweaty sheets off me and head urgently to the bathroom to decide which end of me required the most immediate attention. I’ve had a bit of a thrashing again.

Dominic would make an excellent paramedic. He is bright so with a bit of further training I am sure he has the aptitude to be a skilful surgeon but it isn’t normally the remit of a twelve year old to admit to having stitched his Dad’s wounds on so many occasions or to having witnessed his Dad collecting his duelling scars against invariably impossible odds. In other words, getting a good kicking.

Dominic has a safe in his bedroom. I could bust into it with a paper clip but to him it is Fort Knox, the repository of anything that is precious. In it he has his special books, lenses for his microscope, the silver coins he collected in Germany, various photographs and other stuff to ask about which would be an intrusion into his privacy. He also has my military medals (awarded for being first in the dinner queue every day for a week), as well as my boxing, shooting and skiing medals. I know he likes to hold the medals but it is the photographs that get him going.

“Look, look, Daddy! Look at the gorilla you are fighting there. The last time he was a middleweight he was in Kindergarten!”, repeating almost verbatim some remark I must have made the first time we went through the albums together and reminding me of when I climbed through the ropes, catching sight of a muscular inverted pyramid in the opposite corner and saying to my coach and seconds that the only way that bastard could have scaled in was with one foot on the ground. Bearing in mind I just made light middleweight if I drank shitloads of water so a good punch in the guts would really hurt, these fuckers fought me two classes above my weight. It was amateur boxing so just three rounds a bout which always pissed me off. I was never a slugger but I had both stamina and the legs so could have gone further, wearing the bastards down. They could punch the shit out of me but I would stay on my feet. Sure, I took a few counts when I walked onto the end of some big bugger's fist but they were standing counts and when the referee held up a bunch of digits in front of my face and asked me how many fingers he was holding up I would spit,“Pffflooor!” and hold my gloves up high and punch the air, after all, it is hard to articulate with a gob full of gumshield while sniffling blood. They always let me box on, bless them, and those valuable seconds of interrogation were all I needed. You don’t need a knock out every time. It is scoring hits that count. In boxing there are rules. That’s what differentiates it between a mere pub brawl and the honourable sport during which a swift and invariably decisive kick in the balls, the sort of quick reposte to percieved insult usually delivered in the agreeable and pleasantly seedy surroundings of somewhere with a name like the 'Crown and Anchor' or better still, 'The Queen's Head', is deemed illegal.

Marcia has a brother in his forties. He is a geologist or geoscientist or something brainy like that and works for the Angolan State owned oil company Sonangol. For the last decade or so he has served his time in Canada, has his residency and, not surprisingly, seems reluctant to come back to Angola. He had to fight for basic education, fight to get to university, fight to get the results that would make him stand out from the crowd, fight to get a job, fight to get on and, ultimately, fight to get out of Angola. I had everything, education, opportunity and I came to Angola by choice with a record of only winning on points while this guy won with one knock out after another. Which of us two is the prat, I ask you?

At the same age Dominic is now my parents must have had some sort of bust up because I found myself standing alone in Stuttgart airport in front of an immaculately dressed German immigration officer.

’Kannnst Du noch Berlinerer sprechen?‘ He said, noticing from my passport that I was born in Berlin.

“Naklaar Mensch, Ich war mit Spree wasser getaucht.“ I heard myself say.

My mother is one thing. If I had snapped back at her like that she would have hauled out her bamboo cane and given me one of the countless thrashings I had endured so far. I was used to these and as part of my camouflage, would squeal gustily while wriggling away from the worst of the blows but, unlike my Mother in her damp pinny, this was an enormous Southern German in a terribly smart uniform and even at the tender age of twelve I knew that Schwabs and Bavarians hated Berliners and my passport and snappy response marked me as part of this evil brood. Ask a Boer about the English and you’ll get the idea. Thinking about it, you can ask the Irish, Welsh and Scots as well.

Rather than a bit of bamboo, this monster, this walking advert for everything good about southern Germany, the food, the wine, the hiking up and down mountains in all that fresh air singing about hats with three corners which had nurtured him to the peak of physical fitness as well as the biblical size that delighted his tailor, it was his Macht that was now about to be unleashed on me and since my Mother had discovered God, I knew all about His Mighty Will and not so mysterious ways. As far as I was concerned, those that accepted God into their hearts spent most of their time beating the shit out of offspring who innocently asked which of the two boys, Cain or Abel, impregnated their mother in order to continue the race and if it was OK to bang your sister, wherever she suddenly sprang from, since women were so bloody thin on the ground. It was all good training. In the ring you could close my eye but I was still good for another couple of rounds and in amateur boxing, that was all you needed.

I had just flown British European Airways, a now worthily defunct airline, from UK to Germany on an aircraft which, had it been painted the colour of cow turds, would have borne a striking resemblance to those which frantically bombed the city of my birth to oblivion. I was deaf from the screaming of engines, some of the passengers and all of the crew, my ears were still popping, I was dying to go to the loo and now I had some big bastard in a fancy uniform taking the piss out of a four and a half foot Prussian. My mother, with that unshakeable respect for authority that all Germans have would have killed me on the spot for such insolence and, let’s face it, I was standing there in front of Hermann the German because I had in some way transgressed so probably deserved a good beating anyway, my Mother’s arm being all thrashed out . Instead, I couldn’t give a shit and was ready to take him on. My soon to be blackened eyes didn’t even come up to the level of the counter on which my passport now rested so I looked down and prepared myself for the inevitable thump that would allow me another first, this time for crossing a national border unconscious. I had pissed myself aged seven and my Mother had thrashed me for that too so this time I wasn’t so much bracing my head for impact as the very bored flight attendant had so recently taught me to do in an emergency, instead I was hanging desperately on to my willie, begging it not to perform what at that age I still believed was its only function.

The monster roared. It started below the belt on which his pistol was suspended, gurgled up to his chest and then exploded. With an almighty thump, he stamped my passport. Everyone who had been within earshot grinned from ear to ear. Someone clopped me across the back and said, ‘Mensch ker, du bist ‘ne witziger kerl’

‘Wilkommen in Ihre Heimatsland’ said Goliath to David as he handed me back my passport.

‘I need to piss’, I said to my Opa when I met him outside, ‘I really need to piss’.

I had just been welcomed to my home country and I thanked the gorilla who let me in without a hiding by pouring a long stream of English urine over the wheel of a Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart International Airport’s car park. Sometimes you just feel invincible.

Marcia brokered a land sale about a year ago for which she received a commission. Nothing wrong with that. So unremarkable, in fact, that I had no recollection of it so was bloody surprised when Dominic burst into the sitting room and said, ‘Daddy, there are some men outside trying to kidnap Marcia’.

Now I defy any of you, under similar circumstances, to comprehend what the boy was saying or connect it with a year old land deal. Besides, Dominic seems to be pretty Prussian too and delivered his report in almost bored monotones so it took a few seconds for the full import of his message to register. Clearly impatient with me he politely suggested that I might like to hurry and that he would go and collect my sword.

My generator is pretty old and knackered. A couple of the doors have fallen off and the exhaust is blowing so it makes a hell of a racket. Nevertheless, as I burst out of the back door, above the mechanical cacophony, I could hear Marcia cursing beyond the fence. I hurtled through the back gate closely followed by Dominic and saw only her legs frantically kicking at the door of a 4x4 as some oik was trying to close it on her. 'No, Daddy!' Dominic called out, 'One punch in the heart and you will die!' This delivered with urgency and a conviction that accurately reflected the appalling state of the major arteries serving one of my most vital organs. I hoped these blokes didn't speak English.

I only remember four guys but Dominic swears there were six or seven. Anyway, I clocked the guy at the door and got Marcia out and then Dominic shouted ‘Gun Daddy’ so I had to move a bit faster and clocked the other three I remember before getting the family back into the garden. Dominic handed me the sword and I went back out.

I could see the guy with the pistol was young and real nervous and I was scared as shit but I was pleased to see that the first guy I had hit was still on the dirt. The others were hanging around out of range. I walked up to the fatter, older guy and pointed the sword at him.

‘What the fuck is this all about?’ I am barefoot, clad only in khaki shorts and very, very pissed off. One of them must have got a lucky one in with something heavy because I was bleeding bad from the head.

Turns out that they had left it a year before applying for planning permission on the land Marcia had brokered during which time the authorities banned any further development. Hardly Marcia’s fault and given they had just been manhandling my missus I was deeply unsympathetic to their view that Marcia should force the original owner to buy back the land. The kid with the pistol, an old Makarov, a Russian copy of James Bond's famous Walther PPK but firing 9mm short was holding it sideways like all Gangstas do on TV and yelling over his shoulder at the others how he was going to 'Matar esta branco' so I took it off him in order to avoid a really nasty incident. After all, I STILL do not have my residency and now that I am divorced, my legal status here is a bit tenuous so the last thing I wanted was to stab one of these bastards and then have to explain why to partisan police looking for any excuse to bang me up in Bentiaba prison or at least see my sorry arse on the next British Airways flight out of here. Now tooled up better than they were, I had a chat with the fat man.

‘Pay them back the commission’, I told Marcia when I came back inside. She went nuts.

The courts do work here but they take ages so sometimes people try to sort things out themselves. As I pointed out to Marcia, these bastards were quite happy to try and kidnap her and were only thwarted by a lunatic white man backed up by a twelve year old kid so what would they do next time? Run Alex over in the street? For fuck’s sake, Darling, you win some and you lose some.

Dominic got the first aid kit out and started to patch me up.

‘Jesus Daddy that was seven guys’

‘I only remember four Son, but thanks for calling the gun, you did good but next time I tell you to get in the fucking garden, get in the fucking garden. Thanks for fetching the sword’

‘But how did you do it Daddy?’

How do you explain the Power of One to a kid?

Canada, as far as I am concerned is the very best country in the world. On one side of the Great Lakes they are stabbing and shooting each other to death but on the other side they say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’ and have mounted police. Royal ones. Dominic could play that game which seems to consist of a massive punch up during which an occasional bit of ice hockey breaks out. He could go camping and shooting and skiing in the winter. Instead of talking ‘about’ something he would refer to ‘A Boot’. He may even add French to his already fluent Portuguese and English. I am mad as hell with Marcia for the thumping I got but if Dominic could be sponsored by Marcia’s brother in Canada I’d accept a nightly beating. At least I would get a bloody good lie in.

But if Dominic is to end up in a boarding school a quarter of the way around the world with a bunch of Canucks all built like brick shithouses, he will need to know the secret of the Power of One.

So I told him in the only way I knew how.

When I was on my Ammunition Technical Officer's course at Kineton, we used to go to RAF Upper Heyford for a drink at weekends. It was an RAF station in name only, I think it had a token Flight Lieutenant but it was a Base, not a Station. The whole place might as well have been lifted out of the American Midwest and dropped into its rural English setting. It had Starred Generals, shitloads of Full Bird Colonels, Malls, burger bars, monster cars and trucks with steering wheels on the wrong side, even a bowling alley and the bars and discos were outstanding.

I was standing in the lobby of one nightclub waiting to be signed in when this really cool dude walked in followed by a bevvie of beauties one of which took my breath away. He was swapping skin with the other dudes and was clearly very popular but all I could see was this girl. She was gorgeous and the closest I had ever been to a black girl in all my life. So I stepped up to her and the place went deadly quiet, my mates trying to look all small and insignificant.

In my plummiest English voice I said, 'There is a very good chance that tomorrow morning I may be found face down in a ditch with a load of American bayonets in my back but at least I will have died knowing that I have told you that you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen'.

The place was still real quiet and I think my mates were now half way out the toilet window. The girl was stunned and not being one to settle for a boring death, I lifted her hand, kissed it and said, 'I shall now go out to the carpark and die'.

Sadly, I did not get the girl, she was with the Dude but I never paid for a single drink that evening and they even all clapped politely when I did my version of Springstein's 'Hey little girl is your Daddy home, or did he go away and leave you all alone' accompanied by the club's live band. I may not have been on fire but I was pretty fucking hot.

The first rule of The Power Of One is to believe in yourself. Especially if you want to get laid but since Dominic is only twelve I left that bit out and went on to fighting.

‘If you have to fight, boy’, I told him, ‘I mean if you really can’t avoid it, first you use your brain and make a plan. Then you use your heart to win. Remember, the brain makes the plan, the heart pushes it through’

I guess that holds for pretty much everything in life.

Dominic said, ‘Oh I get it, it’s like the Glasgow kiss you taught me?’

I suppose that is one way you can use your brain, especially if you put your heart into it but not quite what I meant.

'But what about the rules, Daddy?' He is a persistent bugger, I'll give him that.

I stretched out on the sofa and prepared myself for a much needed kip.

'Sometimes, Son, you have to make them up as you go along'

I can’t wait to see him on an ice hockey rink.

Got you with the left, big guy, now its beddie byes with the right.

Uninvited Guests

2011-11-23T15:27:00.026+01:00

It’s getting bloody hot again in Angola. I am actually perspiring. How distasteful.

John Gray over at Going Gently recently posted a link to a blog called The Idiot Gardener. I repeat it here because I have not enjoyed such a good laugh in ages. I read IG’s post on the difference between men and women and sniggered all the way through. Then I read his post about Lloyds TSB and had to stop. I have not had my stents put in yet so there was a distinct possibility I would die laughing and since I had not yet enjoyed my supper, this would have been a shame and probably annoyed Marcia who hates seeing food go to waste.

John, the St Francis of Assisi in Wales, also posted earlier about a house guest he was expecting who preceded his visit with an explicit set of instructions regarding the standards of hygiene expected, an email which commenced with, ‘the house had better be fucking clean when I get there’, and went on to list all the proscribed items he did not want to see such as dead rodents in the kitchen.

I can imagine that if you were the owner of a cottage in the Welsh countryside as well as a menagerie mostly housed in the garden but occasionally found on a sofa or under a kitchen table, it would be bloody hard to expect you to guarantee the absence of everything zoological right down to the tiniest beasty and this reminded me of my brother’s first visit to my house in Angola.

If the generally benign setting of John’s cottage can throw up a sometimes overwhelming variety of unwanted visitors, just think what the African bush can offer. Only the other day I was summoned by a frantic phone call from the young lady, my new neighbour, to find that the cause of her not inconsiderable angst (OK, dribbling hysteria) was a five foot snake wrapped comfortably around one of her veranda plant pots and gently hissing at anyone within range. Her six foot six, 220lb guard was also dribbling so I told him to go and change out of his uniform trousers and back into civvies and I would take it from there. I don’t know much about snake wrangling but I have seen enough Discovery Channel to know that trying to piss on a snake may not be a good idea for any number of reasons and I certainly was not going to suck out the poison. I rather fancy my neighbour so would rather see a man writhe in horrible agony than give her the wrong idea about the bloke she has just moved next door to.

One definition of Bravery could be, ‘The extraordinarily stupid things men have the capacity to do when suffused with Lust’, the definition of lust being, ‘a condition that makes men stupider than they normally are by diverting blood flow away from the brain’. Alcohol, of course, exacerbates both conditions.

This was a mean looking snake and I had no idea what it was. I thought I could recognise the vipers we get around here as well as the harmless African House Snakes and, more importantly, make the distinction but this was something else. It most definitely wasn’t a baby python or any other kind of constrictor. This was lean and mean and, scariest of all, didn’t seem inclined to slither off with the sudden attention it had aroused. All this went through my mind in a split second along with idle speculation of just how far it could fling its jaws from the plant pot.

I could, of course, have wimped out, gone back to my house and returned with my sword and slashed the bastard to death but that would hardly be the heroic, Steve Irwin like lasting image I wanted to leave the delightful Nela to ponder as she snuggled safely between her sheets later that evening. But, we mustn’t forget, Irwin was an expert and he still got killed, poor sod. Imagine if I ended up in heaven having arrived with a system overloaded with neurotoxins and had to spend the rest of eternity being followed around by a motor mouth telling me where I went wrong. Was the very slim chance of a shag worth such a risk?

So, with the definitions of bravery and lust, and one cause of their stimuli already explained, I grabbed the snake’s tail and gave it a tug.

For the first few seconds, this was a good thing as the snake appeared keener to hang on to the pot than sink its jaws into my groin, which would not have been the way I would have chosen as a test for any blossoming affection my neighbour may have held for me. A man’s last words should not be, ‘So you don’t love me after all?’

Now I know we have all seen Real Blokes, usually in shorts and stupidly battered bush hats, grabbing snakes by the tail and the Real Blokes waving them around while giving a spellbound audience a narrative of just how deadly the reptile is but I have decided that all those snakes must have spent the night in the fridge or be doped up on something because I have never, I mean never, seen anything on earth move as fast as this bastard did. All of us blink, even with eyes like bloody saucers and veins full of adrenalin we still have to blink. So I blinked and when my eyes opened again the snake was no longer around the pot, its jaws were planted firmly through the bottom of my trouser leg and into my boot. And it wasn’t as if it was just hanging on (I told you it was mean), it was actually gnawing away. Now I really understand the expression, ‘Madder than a sack full of cut snakes’. I was only hanging on to one, and then only by its tail but by heck was it angry.

Perhaps I have been a bit flippant in my references to the late, great and hugely entertaining Mr Irwin and perhaps he was more worried about spending eternity with me (my first two wives never managed a decade between them) than I was spending a similar amount of time listening to him calling me a pommie poufter because without thinking, I reached down and grabbed the snake behind its head and was able to unwind it and display it, jaws gaping and hissing horribly at a terrified audience.

And then I was stupid again. I let go of the tail, and the snake wrapped itself around my arm. I wasn’t bothered. Much as it evidently wanted to, it could not bite me and shit, I must have looked so cool. So cool in fact, that I decided I wanted to show Marcia, my soon to be wife, which is pretty shabby really when you consider that I hoped that Nela’s knickers were moist for reasons different to her guard’s and now mine. I actually took her parting comment, ‘Now that’s one crazy white man’ as a compliment.

So I trotted off back to my house and strode into the sitting room.

‘What the Fuck! Are you mad?’, exploded Marcia as fast as she grabbed Alex and leapt over the back of the sofa.

Now Angolans, which is surprising to me since they live amongst all these beasties, are scared of anything. Even the kids, as soon as they can walk, learn to stamp on or throw rocks at anything that moves so I was rather enjoying myself.

‘That’s a Surucucu’, she said. By then she had reached the other side of the dining room table with an equally wide eyed Alexander..

‘A what?’

‘A Surucucu. It will kill you faster than we can reach the clinic’

The clinic is a recent addition to our neighbourhood established by a soon to retire Doctor who spent most of her professional life working for international oil companies so she is clearly competent and would know what to do. The salient point, though, is that her clinic is only two streets away. You could walk there faster than it would take to back the car out of the garden and drive round the block. So, the rather fetching bracelet wrapped around my arm, its reptilian blood warming up nicely as were, presumably, its reactions, came from the ‘Death in Sixty Seconds’ collection.

And that got me thinking. Reptiles can survive months between a feed. Clearly God blessed them with enormous reserves of patience and only God knows how long they can hold a grudge but most likely far longer than I could stay awake keeping my fist clenched around this one’s neck, especially considering that such a game of 'blink first and you lose' would be spent in the garden banished from the house as in Marcia’s eyes, a future husband with a Surucuco wrapped around his arm and an affinity for his new neighbour are justifiable grounds for instant expulsion. In other words, the snake was hardly likely to get bored, unwrap itself from my arm and slither off without exacting some form of terrible revenge on my exhausted and comatose form, whether that be a lethal bite or an equally terminal beating from Marcia. How the hell was I going to get it off my arm and preferably a mile away in less time than the sod could react?

A willing volunteer would have been a bit of assistance. Maybe someone who would grab the tail and help me unwind it but I think we can all imagine the scenario. I’m hanging onto the head, my brave saviour is hanging onto the tail and we are saying to each other, ‘So is it, one, two, three, throw? Or is it throw on three?’ Neither of us would want to be left hanging on to a single end of the beast and given my own reluctance to trust anyone nearby, I can hardly feel too hard done by when they, in turn, told me I was on my own with this one.

I suppose I could have asked someone to dig the garden shears out of my store and sever its head from its body but then I really would have been in for some shit when I inevitably ran into Mr Irwin, especially considering I have spent all my fatherhood teaching sons not to stamp on or stone things but to study them leading to a listing for Number One Son on the Natural History Museum of London’s website as the ONLY person to photograph an incredibly rare Phasmid, aged ten.

On the other side of my property to the delectable Nela’s, the land is undeveloped (and possibly the source of her unwelcome visitor) so even though I wasn’t entirely sure how I could persuade it to release its embrace, I knew where I at least, would prefer it to be.

I do not suppose that many of you have experienced such an unusual situation but I ask you to think about the simple physics. In your left hand, you have hold of the neck of a venomous snake the body of which is wrapped around your left arm. By reaching somewhere behind your neck you can, with your right hand, grab its tail. Unwinding it requires you to lower your left hand so that your right, clutching its tail, can pass over the left and so on with to me at least the unexpected, but to anyone of the meanest intelligence, the bleeding obvious consequence of putting a twist in the snake’s body. For a five foot snake, that’s quite a few twists to the spine and by the time I had the bugger unwrapped, it was as stiff as Moses’ staff.

Even pissed as rats, most of us are blessed with the coordination required to open both left and right hands simultaneously. This would be an action as simple as grasping a short length of garden hose by both ends, raising one’s arms over one’s head flipping the hose over one’s back as if preparing to skip, and then letting it fly. I was so scared though I actually sent mental test signals down each arm to my hands to check they weren’t paralysed with fright. I raised my arms over my head and felt the thump of the snake’s body on my back. Now I had the sudden image of me throwing my arms forward and letting go only to find the bracelet had become a necklace as the body of the snake hung up round my throat. I used to box, light middleweight, but was a tosser when it came to skipping and regularly used to tangle myself up in my own rope. While I stood there, arms outstretched, head bent forward, a snake dangling across my back considering my ineptitude, I must have looked like a Jesuit performing some bizarre penance.

‘I know’. I thought, ‘just as I throw it, I will duck my head down’

So I went for it.

When I came to my senses, I realised I was lying flat on my back on the poolside decking.

There was no sign of the snake but it did have its revenge. I had head butted the garden wall so hard I had knocked myself out.

Which brings me back to my brother, Micky.

He is a construction Engineer and works for a prestigious German company. As a result his standards are extremely high.

‘So this is the place you designed and built, is it?’

‘Yes, what do you think?’

I never knew it was possible to say ‘Hmn’ and sniff at the same time.

‘What’s that brown trail up the wall?’

‘Termites. Bastards are eating the place up and they make themselves little tunnels out of chewed dirt to get from one bit of the house to the next. Shit, with all the chemicals I use, HSE would condemn this place as a health hazard’

‘What the fuck was that noise?’

‘Oh that? That’s cats in the roof’

‘You have cats living in the roof?’

‘Feral cats, mean as fuck if you corner one. Even the dogs leave well alone but they do keep the mice down. I only wish they would go outside to piss. You see that dark patch on the ceiling above your head? I think that’s where they do their business 'cos it drips sometimes’

Micky moved from one armchair to another.

‘Are there lots of mice?’

‘Shitloads. Especially during the rainy season. You try sitting here late at night, they’re running over your feet and rattling the dishes in the rack. We use a kind of glued paper to catch them. You can hear them squeaking all night long as they struggle. I used to try and peel them off and throw them over the wall but now I just roll the paper up and beat it a couple of times with a rolling pin. That usually does the job. By the way, don’t be surprised if you open a draw and a gecko pops out. They crawl in there to catch the cockroaches’

‘Marcia has knocked you up a fish curry’, I continued since Micky was strangley mute, ‘you’ll love it. I’ll just get you a plate’

‘But there’s a clean plate here on the table’

‘That was the remains of Alex’s food, I think the dogs licked the plate clean. What do you want to drink?’

‘Anything that comes in a sealed can’

Coprolalia - a compulsion to talk shit

2011-11-14T17:10:00.023+01:00

I am now officially divorced from Dominic's mother. It only took eight years.

Before Balbina Maria Mendes Goncalves Gowans and I entered court (she breathtakingly elegant and composed, me still sweating and shocked to realise there was no glass in the window frames and that I had left the Nitrolingual at home, a couple of squirts of which I desperately needed), the clerk warned us that we would not be allowed to address each other directly, no doubt tired as they were of uncontrolled acrimonious outbursts between estranged partners, so we could only communicate with each other through the judge. Bearing in mind I had instinctively avoided all but the most essential contact with my wife for nearly a decade and that this is pretty much a male dominated society, I started to relax. Even if she had a finely honed Sabatier knife in her Hermes Birkin handbag, with such close supervision Bina was unlikely to get close enough to me to stick it through my worthless heart.

I tend to cross my legs like a girl, especially when I am nervous, so proceedings having barely started, were briefly halted again while the court clerk reminded me I had to sit to attention, crossed legs either being a sign of guilt, in which case he was doing me a favour by making me open my legs to show I had nothing worth hiding, or a sign of apparent disrespect in which case he was behaving like a typical officious git invested with the briefest moment of power leaving me suffused with the barely controlled impulse to hurl him through the glassless window to see if his Halloween black cloak would, like a swig of Red Bull, give him wings. The reason for my sudden discomfort was the awful realisation that the Judge was a woman.

This wasn't the first time I have been in court in Angola and I shan't bore you with all the details save to say that both times were scary.

The first time I faced ten years in an Angolan jail if convicted. Clearly I wasn’t found guilty as I am writing this although I suppose with good behaviour, I could have been out by now. This, the second time, I faced financial ruin so was unable to sleep the night before my scheduled appearance, succumbing instead to my well documented weakness for distilled grain and adding a hideous argument with Marcia to my woes. By the time I had covered the three hours into town early in the morning having left hollow eyed at some indecent hour after a sleepless night to make an eight o'clock appearance, jumped out of the car when stuck in immobile traffic two miles from my destination, accosted a young lad on a motorcycle begging him for assistance in extremis to help me cut through the congestion, then climbing ten floors to the family court with a heart ready to burst out of my chest and sweating like a Sowetan bricklayer knowing that the recent loss of email and telephone access due to the burglary meant I had unwittingly failed to respond to two summons and this was the third and final chance before inevitable incarceration for contempt, I wasn’t so much a lamb to slaughter as an old bull that, for pity’s sake, should be put down.

Had the Court's judgement been to throw me dehydrated out of the window saving me the effort of returning down those ten flights of stairs humiliated and ruined, I would have been grateful for the brief relief the sudden rush of cooling air would have provided as I descended by the express route.

After that I wouldn't have cared less. I do not think I would have had time to consider the effect of impact on the nice suit I was wearing, though that would have been a cause for some regret had I by some miracle remained conscious on the pavement below long enough to consider my threads and, after all, handmade shoes are handmade shoes. If there is an after life, I would have been pissed to see the Langa that tore them off the feet of the broken Branco that providence had dashed on the pavement in front of him (before the bewildered copper arrived to secure the remains of an ageing white bloke foolish enough to try and escape Angolan justice by jumping out of a tenth floor window) clomping around in them embittered because the finest English suede doesn't take a good shine.

Sitting there legs decently uncrossed in a sweaty suit that could now definitely benefit by pressing, even if only suddenly on a sun baked concrete slab by the weight of its occupant, surveying a judge who like her clerk was clad as if she had been interrupted half way through tricking or treating her way through an ungenerous neighbourhood and bore the sour expression to match, I was a tadge nervous.

By Angolan law, the judge is obliged to make one last attempt at reconciliation, even quoting the relevant parts of those laws.

Considering that I was there to divorce, it was hardly the moment to appraise the woman in black who would shortly decide if not my ultimate fate, then certainly how miserable a future I could expect on my way towards it but I couldn't help noticing that she was a remarkably fine looking lady. She must have been knocking on sixty but Naomi Campbell would pay a fortune for whatever skin cream she was using and if ever the Judge became tired of dispensing justice, she could earn a fortune dispensing dietary advice instead to ageing Hollywood starlets. This was one good looking girl and intelligent to boot. If only I had met her five minutes before meeting the estranged wife sitting so close to me.

The judge, having illuminated us with the relevant extracts of legislation, asked us if we were determined to proceed. Both of us responding simultaneously and so positively with unsurpassable conviction must have had some bearing on her decision to end this one as quickly as possible, after all, she had a waiting room full of similar cases to hear.

The issues of maintenance and access were quickly dealt with, Bina and I having agreed all this before hand and when it came to the division of spoils, I rather like my shirt so didn't feel too hard done by when I was allowed to keep it.

Recognising that Portuguese was only my third language and that Bina and I had shown little inclination thus far to rip each other’s eyes out, the rule precluding direct communication between Bina and I was steadily, if informally relaxed until Bina was acting as my interpreter. I even crossed my legs, but this time as a means to relax rather than out of discomfort or unwitting flagrant contempt.

So, the divorce was granted. Rather than the harrowing experience that, with my guts tied in knots in awful anticipation had left me sleepless the night before, it was one of the more pleasant of the frequent brushes I have had with the forces of law and order and, in this case, justice.

It may take a long time to get a case to court in Angola but once it is there, the amount of preparation that preceded the hearing is evident. The Judge was clearly familiar with every deposition and statement either Bina or I had made so knew all about our personal situation, the children involved (Bina had confessed to two more with her new boyfriend and I one with Marcia since our separation not forgetting, of course, our mutual offspring, Dominic).

In granting our petition for divorce, the Judge warned us that it was only provisional, a Decree Nisi, rather than Decree Absolute but that, if neither of us rescinded within the next ninety days, it would be final without further intervention and that after that date, we would be legally free to remarry.

While the court recorder battered out the ruling and printed it out so that we could sign, the Judge, now as relaxed as we all were, expressed her regret that she had never had children.

Now I have no idea from whence it came or why I said it. Bearing in mind even crossing my legs was a sin and I was so close to leaving the court to all intents and purposes a free and solvent man, I must have been mad or suffering from Coprolalia.

Addressing the Judge directly, I said, ‘Well, Madam, it appears that in only ninety days, I will be legally free to help you out there’.

The court recorder stopped typing. Bina’s jaw slopped open. The court clerk looked at me with the sort of vicious hatred that only triumph provokes knowing, as he did, it was me that was going to be flung through an open window and not him. All eyes swiveled inexorably towards the Judge.

Now even though my breakfast had consisted only of whisky and started around midnight the evening before, I suddenly realized that the spectre of a Langa in my shoes wasn’t so far fetched after all.

Her shoulders started to jerk. Then she sniggered, and then burst out laughing. She was far too elegant and refined to let a real belly ripping laugh go but her eyes were moist.

Turning to Bina, presumably in one last dutiful attempt to secure reconciliation she said, ‘How can you divorce such a nice man?’

To which Bina, now my ex wife dryly replied,

‘Try living with him’.

Englishness

2011-11-12T02:06:00.002+01:00

I evidently have Outlook Express installed on my computer. I didn’t install it, it must have come with one of these software bundles no sensible person wants and presumably why they are given away for free. I also have Microsoft Office Professional which was bloody expensive and use Outlook as my default email programme. Why then, every time I start my computer do I get a window pop up offering to speed up Outlook Express by compacting my messages when there are no messages to compact?

Sometimes, I do not want my computer to make all those binging and bonging noises familiar to the owner of every American made car (to remind their no doubt dozy owners that they are in a car to encourage them to please try and concentrate), so I disconnect my speakers and another window pops up to say, ‘You have just disconnected a device’. If I decide I will listen to a bit of music as I tap away, the family now bored with soaps and cartoons and all in bed so I can kill the TV and connect my speakers again, I get another pop up telling me that I have just connected a device.

Are Microsoft engineers so firmly convinced that all but themselves suffer from advanced Alzheimer’s? Maybe this boils down to intimidated Microsoft staff who, every time they open an office door are brusquely told by a startled geeky boss and his embarrassed secretary, ‘You just opened my door!’

Clearly, this is something foreign and undeniably American. We English know when we are in a vehicle. We can recognise an open car door because velocity provides an accompanying blast of, if we are in England, invariably cold and damp air that demands more attention the faster we drive and even the dimmest of us can recognise, through the rear view mirror, a back seat denuded first of our briefcase and then the son that gamely tried to catch it without the benefit of another bleeding binging noise and all of us, honestly, know when we have opened an office door or connected or disconnected a pair of bloody laptop speakers.

Japanese cars are the same.

I live in Angola, where American and Japanese cars and recently Chinese ones too, are the market leaders. They all bing and bong and yet no-one seems to mind. Why?

I stand out a bit in my neighbourhood. Not just because I am slightly eccentric, it is far more obvious than that. If someone wants to find my house they ask for the ‘Old White Guy’s Place’. I have a man who delivers fuel for the generator. He refers to perhaps his best client as the ‘Velhoto Branco’. I can hear him shouting across the Bairro, ‘No, I can’t stop now, I am delivering fuel to the old snowflake’. Even the kids call me Mr Whitey. I am not offended in the slightest. The fact that they precede ‘Snowflake’ or ‘Whitey’ with Senhor is a sign of respect and the casual enquirer will always get accurate directions to my humble abode if they describe me as I am, an old white guy, rather than try to be politically correct and then die a lonely death lost in the bush as a result of inaccurate directions

'Do you think he meant the old white guy?'

'Well, he didn't say so did he?'

'Yeah but you sent him out to the old race track, he'll die out there'

'So?'

But I differ in one far more fundamental respect. I remain resolutely English, which is rather ironic for a man born and brought up in Germany.

Having a cheap plastic dashboard remind me that my seatbelt is not fastened, that the keys are still in the ignition, the lights are on or my dick is hanging out of my trousers is an affront. I once spent a day, a whole day, trawling through the wiring of a brand new company car, a Toyota Landcruiser, snipping every wire that led to a bonger or a beeper just so I could sit there with the door open, keys in the ignition and listen to the CD player without that incessant ‘Bing, Bing, Bing’.

Angolans don’t seem to be bothered, they just turn the stereo up to full volume whereas I, perhaps being English, find it all a desperate intrusion into my privacy, my right to decide for myself and an impertinent slur on my ability to drive a car.

As I said, I was brought up in Germany and when I went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, I was in for a social shock. For a start, when an Englishman greets you with what to all intents and purposes sounds like a genuine enquiry as to your health and general wellbeing with a ‘How do you do?’, the natural response (assuming you are feeling pretty perky) is, ‘Fine, thank you’. Wrong. Amongst polite society in England, etiquette dictates you answer a question with a question, in this case, parrot like, repeating the question with another ‘how do you do’ delivered with much gravitas.

All well and good, I got the hang of that in no time. It was the next bit that seemed tricky for everyone, old hands and new boys (social climbers) alike. If it is considered bad form to march up to someone, anyone, shove your hand out and say, ‘Hi. My name is Tom’, how the hell do the English actually get to know one another? Clearly they do, and quite successfully as the Government is now considering ways to hold the population under 70 million a total which, for a tiny island, is admittedly rather a lot but they did not get into that situation relying on potential breeding pairs staring each other fixedly in the eye repeating, ‘How do you do’ (without the interrogative inflection because, as we have already established, it is not really a question) ad infinitum.

It is perfectly possible for a young, single chap, however keen to make friends, to go through a whole dinner party not having been introduced to anyone (etiquette precluding him introducing himself) and leave, exhausted, having discussed only the variable English weather with a succession of women he would dearly loved to have bedded amongst whom there was probably at least one who would have welcomed a decent bit of sex instead of meteorological speculation and the fruit of the host’s dubious wine cellar.

The English are sometimes appalled by the Americans. George Bush actually touched the Queen! Being English HRH had the good grace to appreciate that the man was merely demented, no doubt woeful that he wasn’t one of her subjects so she elected not to have him beheaded on the spot but then the English are like that, rightfully disdainful, yet simultaneously compassionate to those less able than themselves.

Magnanimous as we English are, it is still a shock to discover that foreigners can afford tickets on British Rail and also insist on conducting that most vile practice of testing their execrable English on anyone within earshot. Despite ruffling our Times newspapers and responding to impertinent attempts at interlocution merely with a ‘Hmmn’, we have to endure the life history of our temporary travelling companion all the way to Luton (no-one to my knowledge has, under such intolerable duress, made it further than Leicester before hanging themselves with their own tie).

The rest of the world calls our natural, well bred reticence arrogance but it isn’t. Just look at us in a social environment. The English display a degree of social ineptitude that educated foreigners find bewildering but this is due to our love of privacy and an inherent shyness.

For many it would seem that when a number of strangers gather together, an obvious ice breaker would be to ask, ‘What do you do for a living?’ But this would be to commit a faux pas guaranteed to exclude anyone from every future dinner party invitation. Far better, therefore, to discuss the weather. If the English are so reluctant to reveal their own occupation, imagine how they react to the American telling them over a plate of delightful Amuse-Bouche about his wife’s recent hysterectomy?

I keep banging on about the English, ignoring that the United Kingdom, a realm under one monarch, consists of not only the English, but also the Welsh, the Scots and a still occupied portion of Ireland, regions the populations of which still have a recognisably individual identity. But with typical sang froid, the English (some of whose proud families trace themselves all the way back to the Norman French) can easily dismiss the victims of their ancestors. The Welsh are generally all ex miners or sheep farmers who burn holiday cottages in their spare time (only those owned by the English foolish enough to buy the wrong side of the Long Mynd) and are all descended from Irishmen who could not swim. Scotland is a northern province of England inhabited by a population who refuse to wear knickers under their skirts (I am talking about the male population, if you want to find females of a similar inclination you should return south to the English county of Essex where, it is alleged, the only difference between the girls and shopping trolleys is that the trolleys have minds of their own. Get fresh with a Scottish lass on the other hand, and she’ll split your lip with an infamous Glasgow kiss). The Scots are only tolerated as part of the Union because they, irritatingly like the Welsh, occupy the same small island, albeit the rougher, less fertile extremes but unlike the Welsh, invented whisky and have a decent bit of oil and gas. The Welsh did give England the coal and more than a few men to fuel her territorial ambitions. We should not overlook that.

Even the Germans, and I know because I grew up there, can distinguish between the English and the Welsh, the Scottish and the Irish (with whom they have much sympathy) so those Northern and Western tribes can consider themselves excluded when I say that the Germans, not generally noted for a refined sense of humour and considered by the English at least, as even more stiff and arrogant call us Brits ‘Insel Affen’. Island Apes.

Now that’s bloody funny and a damn sight wittier and imaginative than our calling them ‘Square Heads’ and demonstrates that they too have the disdain, almost a contempt surpassing our own for all things foreign. Yes, I agree that Wogs begin at Calais but just compare a BMW, a Mercedes, a VW, Audi, Skoda, Rolls Royce, Bentley Aston Martin, even, dare I say it, the sublime French Citroen C6 with the equivalent English product and you might just start to appreciate whatever vague, meandering point I am trying to make.

Like any old man whose only intention was to stroll down to the corner shop and buy a paper but was then easily distracted by that rich soup of acquaintances and memories so spent his time discussing, as we English do, the weather instead (such dawdling being inconsequential if you had the foresight to bring an umbrella), I digress.

The point I am making is that one, clearly identifiable trait of Englishness is our reluctance to wear our hearts on our sleeves as well as a revulsion for personal disclosure. Combine this with an abhorrence for those being earnest rather than sincere and it is evident why Baptist preachers never made it big in England (we threw the last lot out on the Mayflower and banished the rest to Wales and Scotland leaving Ireland to the Pope) and we cannot make our minds up whether Presidential speeches are risible or an emetic.

Angolans are completely different.

Recently, a frustrated neighbour and wife stood in the middle of the street and speculated, at the top of her voice ,how a man with such a small dick and so useless in bed (evidently her husband) could possibly service the young lady down the road with any degree of satisfaction. Even I could see that she was bloody angry.

We all like to gossip and men do it as much as women, about two thirds of our conversation is gossip of one form or another but men and women do it in different ways. Especially in England.

Men will never admit they gossip but they do. They will stand there at the bar supping their pints and one will, in a dour voice say, ‘Old Jonesy has fucked himself’

Another will draw deeply at his beer and venture, ‘How so?’

‘His Missus caught him fucking the Au Pair’

‘Shit’

Now notice the brevity of the conversation and the liberal dose of macho expletives yet it imparted everything one needed to know in a male bonding way. Let’s look at how the women handle it.

First of all, the girl about to impart the information must be breathless and excited and, according to English etiquette, her companions must respond accordingly, willing fish rising to the bait.

‘You’ll never guess what!’

‘What?’ All her audience with the ‘Please tell us, we are dying to know’ expression.

‘Sarah threw Alan out on the street!’

‘Oh my God! Why?’

‘She caught him bed with the Au Pair!!!’ (much intake of breath and patting of palpitating bosoms)

‘I told Sarah right at the beginning that the bitch was a slut’ etcetera.

Now fortunately for pub landlords, this is good for another hour or so of sophisticated social interaction and countless dry sherries but if a man pitches up, the conversation will stop dead.

In England, privacy is sacrosanct and by gossiping, we stray into the excitement that only being ever so slightly naughty provides. Between a man and his wife we may have a male, female gossipy interaction, but under no other circumstances can males and females gossip. To do so would mean breaking a rule of etiquette and the English, whether they know it or not, live by rules. The same ingrained rules I live by.

I was banging out a few emails on the laptop when a neighbour came by, looking pretty miserable. I said ‘Hello’ and then went back to my work leaving her to settle down in the lounge with Marcia.

I don’t, ever, listen to other people’s conversations but there were certain key words that pierced my consciousness. Like ‘Sex’. There were other words of the same ilk but you get the idea. I may not have turned my head from the keyboard but my ears had swivelled like a horse’s in the direction of the two chattering girls sat behind me.

You know that ‘Fight or Flight’ response that is ingrained in all of us? Well I was mentally pulling on my running shoes when Marcia suddenly turned to me stopping me in the starting blocks by saying, ‘What do you think?’

Bearing in mind I am now hard wired to only reluctantly hand over my name and restrict conversation to the weather with strangers, it was with some trepidation that I ventured a rather weak, ‘Think about what?’

‘Her husband!’ Marcia said with some irritation and then, recognising the usual blank incomprehension went on, in horribly graphic detail to explain that the husband of our poor dear neighbour had arranged a girlfriend as his wife, the forlorn figure now in our company, was useless in bed.

Now I am a bloke and I know that many will rise up in frothing indignation when I say this but even if a girl is comatose, she isn’t entirely useless in bed. Clearly there was more to this than I dared to know.

I knew this undoubtedly attractive lady on nodding terms. If I saw her on the street I would pay her a compliment and wish her ‘Good Day’ but now she was sitting in one of my armchairs with an unforgivable Earnest expression no less, asking me for advice on how to encourage her wayward husband back to her bed. I am supposed to be English. I am English so I am not supposed to be thinking, ‘Bugger yer husband, get yer kit off and let’s talk about the weather’, especially with Marcia within reach of the kitchen knives.

With two pairs of eyes staring at me (earnestly and possibly sincerely) this was no time for flippancy so my default reaction of, ‘Well let’s go and beat him up’, would have been, perhaps inappropriate.

Inspiration came from an unlikely source and confessing its origin means an admission that not only do I read the Daily Telegraph on line, I also read the Daily Mail. Coverage of the recent Victoria Secrets Lingerie show was far better in the Daily Mail and it was those images, transposed across the morose young lady now before me that gave me the answer.

I have been able to finish my emails and write all this while Marcia and our neighbour are out shopping for sexy lingerie. I did offer to go along with them so I could venture the impassionate but considered opinion of a man but it was Marcia, I noticed, who turned that offer down with alacrity. Maybe there is some English reserve in her after all.

Oops!

2011-11-10T16:34:00.009+01:00

For Bambi Basher (especially for Bambi Basher), as well as the Suburban Bushwacker and the inimitable Rasch. Sorry John, the St Francis of Assisi in rainy Wales.

A bit early I know but who knows when some bastard will nick my laptop again leaving me incomunicado?

OK,Bambi Basher, I know that the type of weapon used was unlikely to hold more than four rounds. I know that the hunter fired five rounds yet dropped six animals while ejecting only one spent case but, overlook the continuity errors and all of you accept my best wishes for the forthcoming festive season.

Oh, to be young again...

2011-11-09T23:42:00.004+01:00

You were fed, given a bed and there was always someone to tell you what to do.

Whisky is the Answer

2011-11-06T15:59:00.018+01:00

Or the culprit.

I can't even remember what I wanted to write about. Oh yes, more a comment, really.

If Steve Williams at the annual caddy awards had merely said that he would like to stick his trophy up Tiger Wood's arse, a man who treated the caddy who helped him to 13 majors so abominably despite his own conduct being reprehensible, everyone would have laughed and hurriedly booked seats for the event.

Instead he said 'Black' arse and now even the new owner of the bag Williams carries, Adam Scott, recent beneficiary of his experienced new employee's undoubted skill, is under fire for accepting an apology rather than bowing to frothing media and sacking him. I guess he's got balls too. Not the kind you whack with clubs but the fleshier kind attached to a decent chunk of manliness and a brain to control them.

Please. Are our coloured cousins still really so desperately insecure that they cannot tell the difference between racism, something decent people abhor, and an accurate description of the proposed destination of a bit of bling?

Of course not. In the old days if someone pissed me off I could walk up the road, knock on his door and then smack him in the mouth when he opened it and, regardless of who evenutally beat the crap out of whom it was solved, usually over a pint and under the stern gaze of a landlord keen to ensure we didn't get up to any more mischief. Nowadays such minor spats cause the antagonists to either pull concealed knives or lawyers. Whatever happened to honest fisticuffs?

Tiger Woods appeared on TV stating that Williams' comments were 'regrettable', and that Williams had apologised. Woodie's interview would have been all the more convincing had it been filmed in the casualty department as his lip was being stitched up.

Personally, had I been Woods' missus, I would have used his own golf clubs to whip his arse, oblivious of its colour and, if I remember correctly and to her great credit she did. Given the number of concubines Woods entertained and in some cases cruelly treated with disdain, I think Mr Williams would have to join a lengthy queue to stuff something uncomfortable where the sun doesn't shine.

Since when did a frank, humorous and usefully descriptive confesssion of one's intentions become racism?

And besides, Williams is an Antipodean. They stick their tongues out at you before beating you half to death on a rugby field and call a spade a spade.

Mr Williams, a straight up bloke and a bloody good caddy. Not sure if he drinks whisky but I bet he doesn't drink Foster's...

My Girlfriend is a Sorceress

2011-11-03T16:36:00.019+01:00

Marcia had to travel up north again, this time to attend a sick relative.

Two days after her departure I was sitting in front of the TV. It was about ten at night and the doors to the veranda were open allowing a cool evening breeze to circulate around the lounge when I had to answer a call of nature.

Sadly, there are a lot of people who would recognise the symptoms of waking up frequently during the night, gagging with thirst and having to make frequent trips to the bathroom only for the issue to be disappointing. I am so jealous of young Dominic who can, in the course of an average day, consume pints of milk and litres of fruit juice and then hold it all in while sleeping the whole night through in the tender embrace of his guardian angel before releasing it all the following morning in one long and satisfying stream. When I have to go the urge is irresistible and one which, to avoid inevitable and crushing embarrassment, must be attended to immediately.

So I trotted off to the bathroom.

Unlike Dominic, whose bladder must be the size of a reservoir of sufficient capacity to serve a medium sized town, mine measures no more than the volume occupied by a peanut in space, so I wasn’t gone very long.

As I returned to the dimly lit lounge (we were running on town power, a voltage insufficient to elicit more than a weak glow from bulb filaments but just enough to keep the TV going) I saw a figure turning from my desk. Now all he had was four yards to cover to the open veranda doors while I had twelve yards from one end of the lounge to the other. Since the last robbery, I had a sword by my desk, clearly not an option now as Fagin was between it and me and I really hoped he wouldn’t notice the gleaming hilt so near to his grasp, and another by my bed which, if it came to sword play, was well out of the reach of this indignant homeowner. Despite my precautions it was happening again and instead of a keen blade with which to run the bastard through, I had my dick in my hand and believe me, that wouldn’t scare even a virgin. The brief moment I was rooted to the spot in mute astonishment was all he needed to nip out and with the agility of a gazelle, vault the garden wall leaving me seething at the intrusion and then frothing with incandescent rage when I realised he had nicked both my laptop and mobile phone. I had not only been humiliated, I was effectively incommunicado and before any Techie gleefully tries to instruct me on the value of ‘backing up’ let me remind him that I do so religiously once a week on Saturday nights so, by the most appalling coincidence, the thief struck while my back up drive was connected to the laptop and not locked safely away in the bottom drawer of my recently denuded desk so that had gone too. Angry? I was madder than a sack full of cut snakes and beat the dogs up and refused to feed them for not barking, the indolent bastards.

As the dogs gave up their vain attempt to scrabble frantically over a boundary wall so recently and elegantly scaled by an athletic bandit, instead skulking fearfully in the furthest and darkest corners of the garden, it occurred to me. Why hadn’t they barked their lungs out?

My house isn’t vast so the thief, no doubt lurking in the garden had, apart from the open windows, a calculated window of opportunity measured only in seconds and obviously knew exactly what he wanted and where it was. Clearly this was a local job.

Without lashing out on another computer and all the vastly more expensive software needed, I was effectively off line but I could at least exchange the dinner and beer money Marcia had left me for another mobile phone and chip.

The reason that Microsoft Outlook has an address book, and mobile phones allow us to store telephone numbers, is a recognition of the fact that the average person can just about remember a couple of pin numbers. I had no idea what Marcia’s number was, especially her temporary Congo number or any of those of my friends so even though I had a pristine mobile phone and was now uncommonly sober and dieting to boot, I would sit in splendid isolation until the first of the mildly interested pitched up to see why I had suddenly plunged off their radar screens. Since I did not owe anyone any money, I felt I could be in for a long and hungry wait.

Marcia had travelled to the laughably named ‘Democratic’ Republic of Congo. A vast country, bigger than the largest Australian state which, if you believe Beardy Bryson and any atlas you care to buy, are undeniably enormous but, unlike Australia (a generally placid country the greatest threats of which are natural if you exclude the occasional mutilated backpacker), Congo is plagued by murderous insurrection. Yet Congo hospitals are apparently staffed by French and Belgium trained doctors, paradoxically very experienced, who the Angolans at least, a contention supported by the considerable cross border traffic, consider superior to the Portuguese and Cuban trained Doctors we have here.

Dominic’s mother once told me the harrowing tale of her younger brother who, having fallen out of a tree and broken his arm, concealed his injury for three days, three days, lest Cuban doctors amputated it. Most people who come to Angola assume that the limbless hobbling at every intersection and roundabout were so afflicted as a result of landmines. Not at all. The majority were due to ordinary accidents, the sort that occur if you hang suicidally around busy intersections or roundabouts and duel with the unyielding 4x4’s of the rich in the hope of the few casually discarded pennies which may mean the difference between slow starvation and, well, slower starvation. Couple this with the fact that so many pouring into the city to escape the bush war hadn’t the slightest idea how to cross a busy road safely simply because they had never seen one before and it becomes obvious why there were ten times as many road accident victims as there were from landmines. It was the lack of reconstructive surgery skills and a belief that a swiftly wielded scalpel was a measure of clinical adeptness that left so many hobbling on crutches along with a coincident boom in the sale of bull bars for 4x4’s.

That last contention is desperately flippant and could be construed as cynicism. Let me put it this way. You are a hard pressed, under funded and badly equipped surgeon overwhelmed with casualties and before you lays an individual, a child with a crushed limb say, and you know that with the skills you possess followed by proper post operative care in clean and hygienic surroundings, both the little lad’s life and his leg could be saved. But those conditions do not exist and without them, the prognosis is a foregone conclusion, the wound will infect and the child will die. So you amputate the kid’s leg knowing that it’s his best chance but he will never bend it like Beckham or, if you follow that line, have the chance to even try. And it is even worse for the girls. Put your hand up if you would marry a ‘Mutilada’. Or even employ one. Be honest.

I was a bomb disposal officer and then went into humanitarian mine clearance so I am not suggesting that mine clearance is a waste of money, far from it. My lads worked in appalling conditions risking their lives every inch of the lanes they cleared but as much as I was convinced that such indiscriminate weapons should be banned and dragged out from the face of the Earth, I did wonder sometimes whether the funding would have been better dispersed merely marking off the danger areas and sinking the rest into recuperative healthcare and clean water. Free mosquito nets would have saved more lives than I ever did demining and, remembering the shattered remnants of colleagues I cradled in my arms waiting for the casevac flight, that is a sobering thought.

It really is a chicken and egg situation. If there were no landmines, there would be fewer injuries. Most people in Angola though, one of the most mine polluted countries in the world, suffer traumatic amputations through causes other than by mines. Those causes are, however, less emotive than images of Princess Diana clutching some poor child who, having attempted to collect the scraps of wood her mother would need to light a fire and cook a meagre evening meal lost not only her leg, but her future and self respect in one searing detonation. Long lists of road traffic accident statistics just cannot compete for international funding. So, as for so many poor doctors, what choice for the aid agencies competing for limited funds from donors motivated more by politics and emotion than common sense? Would that the world could grant licence to the venal, ambulance chasing lawyers to sue the manufacturers of such devices to compensate non combatants who suffer as a result of their products performing according to specification.

Pity really, because if the arms manufacturers had to pay for the treatment of and compensate every civilian, as opposed to congratulating themselves on the number of soldiers their products took out, dismissing the rest of the indiscriminate carnage as collateral damage, there would be a little more money available to treat the little kid dying of malaria or dysentery, or rebuild the leg of one run over by a 4x4 as well as a dramatic disinclination of major corporations to get into the currently highly lucrative killing business.

The border between Congo DRC and Angola is as efficient and well staffed as a first world country. I was going to say as slick as Heathrow or any US port of entry but that would give you entirely the wrong impression. This place is organised and populated by those who not only understand, but exhibit patience, respect and, in many cases, sympathy and on the Congo side are rewarded with a salary of just $30 per month for all their commendable effort. Exhausted, hollow eyed yet still dedicated Congolese doctors get a whole $50 a month. Bear that in mind next time you are stuck in a very long queue and one of them tries to sting you for a ‘fee’ to help you jump it. Personally, I have never seen the need for extraordinary payments having anticipated the crush, and I rather enjoy chatting to new acquaintances and allow myself the time to do so. For our collective amusement, there will always be at least one expatriate who loses it and rants and raves to be instantly selected for the more personal and hopefully intimate attention of the authorities. The immigration services at Miami International are famous for that.

It was this economic disparity that left me with Marcia a country away securing the most affordable medical attention for her cousin while I unwittingly provided some thieving shit a shop till you drop, all you can carry is free opportunity.

If the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of UK disappeared for more than five minutes or longer than it took to do something with a cigar and an intern, there would be a furore (if it were the Italian President, there would only be that respectful silence and uncomfortable wait as his loyal security services, ridiculous feathers in their bonnets, discreetly stuffed all the girls into their respective taxis as they stumbled one by one bleary eyed, exhausted and presumably enriched into the pre dawn light).

As a non entity, therefore, I was impressed when after only three days, a man appeared at my door and thrust a phone into my face on the other end of which was an agitated Marcia.

‘Don’t worry Honey’ she said, ‘The thief will bring the things back’.

There are lots of things I like about America. Vast protected natural reserves, hunting and shooting, the best sport fishing boats in the world, Remington rifles, breathtaking architecture, wonderful authors and, believe it or not, the friendliest policemen I have ever had the pleasure to hand over on the spot fines to but there are other things I hate. Like freezing cold and so very, very tired, having been tasked with driving a low boy from the panhandle down through Mexico and on to Belize with a D6 and ripper on the back and, pulling into a Texas Dairy Maid roadside café to be told, no, they don’t have fresh milk just dairy substitute (and we all know that Americans are expert at taking that wonderful natural product, coffee, and turning it into anaemic piss). You try standing there at six in the morning, the place full of ‘real’ truckers gorging on supersize plates of grits and corned beef hash swamped in eggs and beans, the bacon covered in sickly sweet maple syrup and hear some dolly bird dressed in a poncy uniform shouting out, ‘Hey, this guy wants to drink milk! I think he’s from England!’

No, darling, I am from Turkmenistan, bend over your hot plate and I’ll prove it.

What I really hate is the unquestionably American endearment, ‘Honey’.

I am not a sweetie. I am the sort of bloke who, if you accused of being violent, would smash your face in with a half brick or that very honest tool of an English thug, a length of 4x2 and I bear the scars of those times I tried and was painfully overwhelmed. Honey? Where the hell did Marcia dig that one up?

Now couple being called ‘Honey’ with the knowledge that while having a leak I let some dick head rob my house. My spit was running back at a rate too fast to swallow.

Marcia, recognising that there was no point wasting her Congolese telephone credit trying to quench the super heated steam from a boiling pot, assured me that within five days of her return, all our goods would be returned.

Bearing in mind that earlier in the year we had been robbed and Marcia, with the skills of a bloodhound and Sherlock Holmes combined had not only identified the thief but recovered the goods within two hours, I settled down to await her return.

On her advice I had not called the phone company to cancel the mobile but against her advice, after a week, I called my old number and it was answered. I hung up hurriedly knowing that my new number was not recorded on my old phone and, to be honest, I was scared shitless that Marcia would find out and beat me stupid. She may be tall and skinny but she is from Uige and has a vicious right hook and the only way I would be able to stop her beating me senseless would be to kill her but I am, after all, rather fond of her so if I have the opportunity to avoid a confrontation, I will snap it up even if that means joining the dogs in the darkest corners of the garden.

A week later, Marcia pitched up and was quickly in contact with the new owner of my old phone. In what to me initially seemed little more than an inconsequential exchange, Marcia determined that this person was deeply religious so went on to remind her listener that lying now would condemn her soul to an eternity of hellfire. Quickly absolving herself of her earthly sins, Marcia’s victim confessed that the phone had been left with her to charge by a neighbour and that she not only knew who this person was but where she lived.

Now in possession of the phone, Marcia urged her Centurions to whip her Legion into line and descended upon this new address, the resident of which capitulated immediately and (rather sensibly, I thought) freely revealed that the phone had been offered to her son by a fellow passenger during a Taxi ride from Benfica (where we live) to Samba. Armed with a description, Marcia wheeled her troops and in good order advanced from Samba to Benfica and descended on the taxi rank, not three hundred yards from our house.

Angolan taxi drivers are a tough breed. Their existence is miserable. Long hours and an income dependant on the reliability of aged Toyota Corollas imported from Belgium. An English copper foolish enough to pull a warrant card and try and intimidate them in the course of his enquiries would be murdered on the spot yet within five minutes, Marcia had a description that more or less matched two known bandits in our neighbourhood.

Exhausted and so close to home, I staggered back. It had been three weeks since the laptop was lifted. By now it had been sold on Roque Santeiro Market and its disgusted new owner would have realised that the battery was crap and it would only work with the adapter still by the side of my desk. My family photos and everything else dear to me were by now probably in the bottom of a bin. Marcia had recovered the phone, which was a commendable effort, but the laptop surely was history. What I needed now was a cold beer and a cigarette.

I had no sooner slumped down into my chair when the door burst open and Marcia, accompanied by a posse, marched in two forlorn looking guys.

OK the mob, their contorted features vaguely recognisable as my neighbours, weren’t brandishing flaming brands and pitchforks but they looked pretty mean nevertheless. I thought the two lads they had in tow were going to spew on my carpet at any moment.

‘Which one was it?’, Marcia demanded as the crowd edged forward ready to slaughter either or both of the two sweating youths while their mothers wailed in the background. Brutal retribution was now my gift.

Of all the youths in the neighbourhood that matched the description I had given Marcia on the basis of the briefest glimpse in poor lighting conditions subsequently reinforced by the taxi driver, these two, I have to admit, were a pretty good match. All I had to do was point to one of them and I would have the right to beat the crap out of him, to vent my rage, to wreak my vengeance.

‘Which one?’ demanded Marcia.

I looked at her helplessly, aware that all the neighbours were looking at me as well. I am not into this. It’s only a fucking laptop. If I had caught the bastard fair and square, maybe with a sword in my hand, I’d have cut him to ribbons but don’t ask me now, after the event, when I can’t be sure, to condemn either of these sweating lads to a beating.

‘I’m not sure, Marcia’

‘What do you mean, you are not sure? It is one of these boys!’

‘You are probably right, Marcia, but I cannot say which one’

Clearly, the crowd thought I was a wimp as I did too I suppose. I would dearly have loved to thrash the bastard that nicked my laptop, the one who had the audacity to watch me through my lounge windows and than dart in when I nipped off for a piss. One of them was guilty, of that I had no doubt so I suppose thrashing them both would mean the guilty bastard got his due and the innocent one would learn the salutary lesson of growing up looking like the local thief and then compounding the error by hanging around with him.

I am not shy of throwing a fist when I have to and sometimes I come off worst but I have never punched a man that could not defend himself much less one whose guilt was in doubt. Both of them were strapping lads and in a fair fight I would have been hard pressed but I wasn’t going to see either of them kicked half to death in a most unfair contest. No matter how much, deep down, I thought they probably deserved it.

I turned to the lads and asked them straight out, ‘Which of you two stole my computer?’

Both of them avoided my gaze and said nothing. They were guilty as fucking hell but I had only seen one that night and could not now, in all honesty, identify him.

Recognising that I wasn’t going to play ball, Marcia took over.

Rolling her eyes back into her head she announced that unless the laptop was returned, the thief’s eyeballs would explode in his head. Furthermore, and as bizarre to me as it was to her slack jawed audience, she went on to intone, back arched, arms splayed, unseeing eyes peircing the ceiling and on to wherever her particular Gods resided, that on the laptop was lots of music and this would play incessantly in the stomach of the thief so denying him sustenance and rest. My lounge cleared faster than a formula one grid.

The next day we opened the veranda windows to discover the laptop placed neatly by the door.

It was exactly five days since Marcia’s return.

Snake Food

2011-10-04T03:39:00.002+01:00

When I say I have ‘finally’ determined the breed of the two dogs that unexpectedly joined my household I should really say that I have finally got around to do a little investigating.

I have had a few dogs in Angola, two of them Alsatians and both easy to train, loyal and very protective, the qualities one would expect in an Alsatian. The first I raised from a pup while I was still in the security industry and the dog went with me everywhere. He could be meek as a lamb or ferocious as a lion according to my whim.

A South African, a Boer naturally, suggested that I had my local guard or better still, he said, one of his mates beat him with a chicote on a regular basis so that he gained a lethal dislike for Blacks, or ‘Blicks’ as he pronounced the word. I was rather tempted to bash the dog with Boerwors, Biltong and a Bible so he learnt to hate, and hopefully savage, hypocrites stemming from south of the Green and Greasy Limpopo but I had no cause to do either, the dog just instinctively knew who was bad and who was OK.

I have seen many an otherwise brave man pee his pants when, having tried to be arrogant at a security checkpoint I let the dog mount the bonnet of his car and savage his windscreen wipers, our ‘reasonable’ response but one giving us all a good giggle in the process as well as saving us a round or two of ammunition and acres of paperwork.

I called the first dog ‘Sabre’. Not a very imaginative name I’ll admit and it does get worse but Sabre, as a name, was perfect. It just seemed to fit. In the correct hands, he could do the doggie equivalent of stabbing someone in the heart or nipping the cork off a bottle of champagne and suffered the abuse of toddlers with a stoicism that would put most parents to shame.

I smuggled him out of Angola on a tramp steamer bound for Cape Town when I moved down south and eventually left him with neighbours who had truly fallen in love with him when I had to move north again.

The second Alsatian, Sabre (No 2) was even better. In addition to everything Sabre No 1 managed, this one could, to the dismay of at least one fleeing armed robber, climb trees and, since we now had a swimming pool, would launch himself into it and offer his collar to any child struggling in the water and tow them to the shallow end. The potential for enjoyable diversion of such heroic effort on demand did not escape the attention of the many kids who enjoyed my pool and Sabre No 2 ended up fitter than Mark Spitz.

Sabre No 2 was given me as a puppy by one of my most loyal staff (and now enduring friend). At the time I was living on site in a converted container so the dog and I spent our every waking moment together. At night I would strip off my sweaty clothes and make a bed for him out of them next to mine until he got big and bored enough with that and I would wake in the morning to find him comfortably snuggled into my bed clothes, my gentle snoring a signal to him to hop in and join me.

But then I finished building my house and moved him from the site and the family from rented accommodation to the new home.

Within a couple of weeks he disappeared. I was down south at the time and when Marcia first mentioned he was gone, I assumed he was out in his new neighbourhood sowing his oats but several weeks later when I got back, he was still missing and never turned up again.

You could never compare the loss of a mere dog to that of a child but there is a tug at the heart when something, albeit an animal that has been a part of the family is lost. It was hard enough for me to walk away from the people with whom I had left Sabre No 1 and hear him howling the moment he realised I was not there but at least I could console myself with the thought that with them, unlike with me, he had a stable environment to look forward to. God only knows what happened to Sabre No 2 and this uncertainty upset me.

So it was a while before I took another dog on.

I do not get to see Dominic anywhere near as often as I would like and walks through the bush without him are bloody lonely affairs so it was inevitable that on just such a walk, I would befriend, or be befriended by, a raggedy, flea and tick bitten stray. Here they throw stones at dogs so it was only natural that he would keep his distance but, perhaps encouraged both by my demeanour and his empty belly, he kept pace with me throughout my walk unknowingly advancing ever closer to my house. Skinny and weak as he was, he had an almost aristocratic pride about him. This was no ordinary mongrel.

‘If he walks through the gate’, I thought, ‘he’s mine’

And he did.

Four weeks later, a couple of visits by the vet and a daily diet consisting of beef and chicken, he looked the bee’s knees. And then he disappeared.

This was frustrating. I have an eight foot high wall around my house and the gates should always be locked and only opened under the supervision of the guard so how the hell could a dog get out? Perhaps well fed and recovered, his wilder instincts took over and he bunked.

Rodrigues, the supplier of Sabre number two appeared a few moths later with two beautiful Alsatian puppies. These dogs were gorgeous and I knew that fully grown they would be magnificent.

Again I got the vet in to give them all their jabs and deworm them. Again I fed them better than I fed myself and they grew quickly showing every hint of the intelligent and superb specimens of their race they would be. They were so obedient that when I took them for walks they would jostle to be able to stroke up to my right leg so closely did they walk to heel.

I had just fed them one night and ushered them out into the garden when I decided I would go outside for a smoke and see the gates front and rear were locked.

I noticed the back gate was wide open and there was no sign of the dogs, still unnamed as this was something I wanted to do with Dominic.

I got to the back gate just in time to see a pick up drive off.

‘Where are the dogs?’ I said to the guard who was standing there.

If I had plugged him into the mains he could not have sprinted off quicker. He had no difficulty outrunning a middle aged chain smoker and I have never seen him since but I am now reasonably convinced I know how my dogs and half the tools in my outhouse managed to walk off my property. Had I caught up with him I would have had no hesitation modifying my South African friend’s advice by whipping the guard senseless rather than the dog.

I gave a dinner party, all thoughts of lost canines long since consigned to memory and one of the guests brought along a timorous beastie, a tiny, frightened black bundle which spent most of its time peeing on my carpet every time anyone moved near it and the rest staring about itself with wild eyes and trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.

As the guests all started piling into their cars on the driveway, I was still sitting at the table feeling pretty mellow when I noticed the bloody puppy was still sitting there paralysed by the shakes so I grabbed it and ran out.

‘OI! You’ve forgotten yer rat!’ I shouted.

‘Oh no Mate, she’s a present for you!’

She? I checked. It was a bitch. Bugger.

It took a while. Once again I made a bed out of the clothes I had been wearing during the day next to my scratcher (much to Marcia’s annoyance) and to avoid yet more grief from the same source I got up early each morning and cleaned away the pooh and mopped up the pee. Slowly the dog stopped trembling at the sight of a human being and started to respond in a manner more sanitary than dumping the contents of its bowel and bladder wherever the encounter happened to take place.

I had no idea what kind of dog it was. It certainly did not look like any kind of working dog I would have bought but I was stuck with it so really could not care less how many of Heinz’s 57 varieties it possessed. All I knew, and as Marcia kept reminding me, pound for pound it was eating ten times as much as a human and laws leaving very smelly evidence of its biological throughput invariably on the most difficult to clean surfaces.

Although I was annoyed with the cynical way the dog had been dumped on me and felt no attachment to it whatsoever, I was going to look after it but as to a name? It certainly was no Sabre. My Sabres were bloody great Alsatians that struck terror into hearts, not this skinny black thing that resembled an emaciated whippet. Sure, it was a living breathing creature and I was, albeit grudgingly, beginning to notice a sense of loyalty in it but I’m no Mafia boss so I am not going to get off with stroking a bloody Chihuahua.

I decided that I would leave the naming to Dominic.

In the meantime, I had to call it something. It is all very well bonding with an animal but left to its own devices, unable to recognise its own name when called with sharp rebuke, it will quickly learn how to open the fridge by itself and clean it out with as much gay abandon as it has just mopped the residue off the plates left on the dining table.

So I referred to it as ‘Dog’.

My estranged wife is as impossible as most wives are who run off and then repent and she now uses every legal device to impede access to my son so it was three months before Dominic came face to face with Dog, by now sleek, lithe and fiercely protective of little Alexander.

I have forgotten what the expression ‘to lie with dogs’ means exactly, or at least its implication, but within a weekend, Dog sleeping alongside Dominic and Alexander (who will only sleep in the arms of his half brother when Dominic is in the house), I quickly realised that if I ever had cause to beat either of the boys, I would have to kill Dog first and as much as I have never laid a hand on either of my boys I realised, seeing them lying together and hearing Dog’s protective snarl quickly transformed into paroxysms of delight as she recognised me when I checked on them, that I loved Doggie too.

Being young, Dominic is not nearly as predisposed to the almost libidinous desire for alcohol and its inevitable consequences that I feel so he tends to get up rather earlier than me.

My rather lunatic neighbour, commander of the Presidential Guard no less, had acquired an African Python, its girth at the very least equal to the thickest portion of my thigh and also an ostrich, drumsticks shod with claws which, as a child I was led to believe could rip a man’s stomach out. I vaguely recalled mentioning these more or less related facts to Dominic along with a suggestion that he might like to pop over for a squint but was nevertheless surprised to be woken at some indecent hour by a young lad, frothing with indignation, screaming that Colonel Henriques was feeding puppies to his snake.

Well, I don’t know about you but with a tongue as rough as a bear’s arse every morning, I am pretty useless without at least a cup of tea so Dominic, exhibiting the disgust I am sure I deserved, did not hang around long enough for me to at least pull on a pair of pants and shot back over to Colonel Henriques’ place and dived into the cage enclosing a bloody great snake and the tiny puppy it had its coils around.

By the time I stumbled bleary eyed into the street Dominic was already on his way back clutching a tiny bundle of fur followed by a bunch of AK toting soldiers who, with eyes as wide as saucers told me how Dominic had dived into the cage and wrestled the puppy free from a very hungry snake. Not only that, he’d apparently punched and kicked the guard who, by trying to grab the lad who had just dodged by him and jumped in with a man eater, was presumably only trying to prevent his employer’s neighbour’s son from certain death.

Henrique’s brother accosted me and accused my son of trying to kill his brother’s snake.

I like Angola. I would not be here if I didn’t. A lot of countries were very badly treated, not just by the once greatest colonial power in the world but by all sorts of other opportunists and it’s still happening. It is a bizarre standard, I know, but if a society still values the life of a snake over that if a dog, is it really civilised?

Dominic made his own mind up when he leapt into the enclosure and rescued the puppy but now I have two strays to look after.

I could not come up with a name for the first one. Reluctant to get attached to an animal that some bastard would probably nick I called it ‘Dog’. A name that has stuck.

Dominic pushed off back to his Mum leaving me with a flea bitten rag with a bunch of broken ribs, a reminder of the less than amorous embrace Henriques’ snake gave it until Dominic dived in, a puppy so young it tried to suckle Dog until I nicked one of Alex’s bottles and fed the poor sod.

Dominic agrees that Dog , as names go, isn’t bad and Dog, more importantly, answers to it. So I have decided to call the new addition, Dinge, which is German for ‘Thing’. Dominic thinks that is cool as well and Dinge already responds to his name so I guess he is happy with it too.

Having gone for walks with Dog through the bush I know that she is a demon for flushing game. Now that Dinge is part of the pack I can see that there is an instinctive bond and the pair pf them work together,

So, two intelligent, remarkably similar dogs from wildly separate sources instinctively working together under the control of a human?

Turns out they are not dogs, they are primitive hounds. Portuguese Podengos.

They were carried all over the world by Portuguese explorers in the 14th and 15th centuries and two of their descendants are now resident with me. Purely by chance, I have two dogs that are only content if they are flushing game when we are walking, sleeping on my chest if I am tired, playful as puppies with children or savaging anyone who goes near my kids.

One was dumped on me, the other was snake food, but I am rather fond of both of them.

My name is Alexander...

2011-09-03T00:49:00.000+01:00

...and I am Three today

At last, an honest car salesman (ohne absicht, I suspect)

2011-08-31T16:02:00.023+01:00

Morris Minor 1000. If you have the time, 0-100 kph is possible...

When I was a kid playing Top Trumps, 0-100 kph under six seconds was a sure fire winner. In those days anything under ten was good. The handbook of my first car, a 1957 Morris 1000 in which I passed my test in 1978, listed the same, er, dash, at 32.5 seconds.

It was the accuracy of that confident prediction consigned proudly to print and presented in the form of an 'Operator's Manual' to no doubt chuffed owners for whom petrol was no longer rationed, which amused me. And I had plenty of time to giggle about it as I trundled between traffic lights as fast as 48 hp could propel me at a rate, if I remember the equations of motion my old physics teacher taught me, I calculate at 0.087 G. Hardly enough to cause a rush of anything, let alone blood to the head but stamping on the brakes to kill off downhill speed induced more by gravity than Morris engineering did provide the occasional sobering rush of adrenalin.

Nowadays, sub six seconds is the norm, even for portly ever more luxuriously appointed saloons. Only less than four seconds will get you into the super car club. So irrelevant has the 0-100kph measure become that now the benchmark is how fast a car can go from 0-160 to rest again. This is good, because it means manufacturers are considering that other essential component of a car, the panic pedal immediately to the left of the accelerator.

Volkswagen amazed those interested by producing the World’s fastest production car, the Bugatti Veyron. Ferdinand Piech gave his design team a simple brief. It must have 1000 hp and do 400 kph. I like clear, concise orders, especially when backed by the resources necessary and, evidently, so did Piech’s team because they did it. But it still failed to be the fastest around Top Gear's circuit, a lesson to car designers to maintain at least a toe in the real world.

Now another German team want to raise the bar. Not by a teeny nibbly little bit, a few extra kilometres per hour here or seconds shaved off acceleration times there, but by a lot. Teutonic balls are evidently the size of planets.

Forget 1000 hp. Try 2800 hp and an acceleration time of seven seconds.

Clearly not seven seconds to 100 kph. As a yardstick this has already been debunked and with the average attention span, as measured by Fox News' bulletins, seven seconds from zero to still less than the national speed limit is soporific.

To 400 kph then, the speed Piech wanted?

No. Try nought to 600 kph in less time than it would take to recite the first verse of the ‘Hail Mary’ in a desperate hurry, never mind having time to confess all one’s earthly sins, the traditional way Catholics babble their way into the next world. Not that Catholics would even think of stamping on that accelerator with any kind of determination of course, suicide being a mortal sin and all that.

No doubt piqued by Piech’s not too shabby benchmark, the guys at Rotary Supercars Germany, are determined to give us the means to go through the pearly gates at such a velocity not even St Peter would have time to check a licence plate, let alone individual ID cards.

Dredging my brain for any last seeds sown by Mr Dawes, I know that starting from scratch and accelerating uniformly to 600 kph, my body pressed back into its seat by seven seconds of sustained 2.38 G, I will have covered just shy of 1200 metres before I could even catch my breath and start thinking about slowing down, covering a High Street a second while my shattered senses mulled over the options, always assuming, of course, that my tyres had not shredded explosively in the first nano second converting me instantly to something useful like a bio degradable sludge in the field across which I had suddenly spread myself. The nought to 100 kph dash will be covered in only 0.9 seconds, that’s over 3G.

And let’s say after a split second I bottled out? With the Dignitas Launch Control button pressed, the clutch released and a leg suddenly weighing 200 kgs, could I even move it and press usefully far forward enough on the brake pedal having bleated as far as, ‘Mother of… Christ All Fucking Mighty!!!?

It was a German and his team who put a man on the moon and if it hadn’t been for the Germans, a defunct Bugatti would have remained merely a name on some dusty document in a drawer and Rolls Royce and Bentley would be remembered only by rheumy eyed old blokes supping pints so we mustn’t under estimate them.

I would dearly love to see the terrifying machine these guys propose to create. If only as an exercise in engineering that may mean my normal road tyres are now indestructible and my car, with only 5% of the power, could do 100 miles per gallon while clicking down the autobahn at 250 clicks.

The scariest thing about this car, however, is not the concept, verdant creativity frothing within the minds of lunatics has so often benefited mankind and should be given expression occasionally, it is the company website.

RSC Germany will need to make a huge investment to realise such a car. It is worrying, therefore, that they appear too strapped to afford a decent translation service for their web site.

The most amusing bit for me was their invitation to the reader to become an owner of one of the first RSC Raptors or Predators. They go on to state in execrable English:

“Maximally 12 units per year shall leave the manufacturing plant to fulfill our highest pretence to exclusiveness”

Pretence?

Rotary Super Cars Germany: Pretenders to Piech's Throne... Heaven is just seven seconds away.

Potential Peacekeeping Recruit

2011-08-28T20:05:00.007+01:00

I am not sure about the older boys but the young bandy legged kid in the furry jump suit looks pretty useful.

Is Boris Johnson still looking for a new Metropolitan Police Commissioner?

If so, any lad that can clear a street as fast as this is worthy of consideration. Not only would a life time's supply of bananas be far cheaper to the tax payer than a gold plated civil service pension, the incumbant would instinctively be able to relate to tabloid journalists as well as those guilty of riotous assembly (and their parents) at the same intellectual level.

You could imagine him at Thieves and Hawkes getting measured up for his uniform, '38 inch chest but long in the sleeves please, very long...'

White Sands and a Lonely Shore

2011-08-27T19:54:00.033+01:00

I have always been fond of Erik Satie’s piano pieces and usually dismissive of those who attempt to reinterpret them, bereft as the authors invariably were of the prescient passion that provoked him to splash ink across manuscripts, many of which would only be found by disinterested strangers clearing out his lodgings post mortem. Musical gems, well chewed, reduced to bedding for the rats living behind his piano.

Satie drank himself to death in 1925 having described the loss of the only person he loved as leaving him with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness".

Attempting to improve on a Satie original is rather like trying to rewrite Romeo and Juliet or scrubbing a delicate creation by Lalique with window polish.

But I now stand back from the breach, the magazine of the blunt weapon of self righteous indignation I sometimes weild uncharged, offering you instead a truly worthy reinterpretation of Satie’s piece for piano, Gnossienne, performed on clarinet accompanied by strings.

This video, sadly, only provides the very briefest glimpse of Danish born Lone Madsen’s debut album, 'White Sands', but considering that my girlfreind is, as I write, watching Antonio Banderas singing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version of ‘Evita’, it is, played on my laptop and through my headphones, not just a welcome but an evocative alternative.

As a child, my breath was taken away hearing this piece on piano. Now, hearing it on woodwind, well, the wind has been taken out of my sails somewhat. Satie's broken heart willed both his creativity and his ultimate demise, and Miss Madsen has captured every nuance of his lonely torment in her haunting rendition.

This is Satie's original piano version, not bad for a man with a broken heart and a fatal gutful of whisky. Or perhaps they were merely fuel for creativity and tragic self immolation on the lonely sands of his wasting soul.

Not really a post…

2011-08-18T19:57:00.008+01:00

...just an aside.

I discovered the statistics page for Blogger which, among other things, shows the sites that have referred visitors to my Blog. One was ARRSE.

WTF?

So I had to follow the link.

Turns out that ARRSE is a loose acronym for the British Army Rumour Service who claim,

“The aim of ARRSE (in so far that it has one) is to provide a useful(ish), informative and amusing site for people with an interest in the British Army. Contrary to duty rumour we are not promoting the overthrow of HMG, nor do we exist to toe the party line.”

Very laudable, on all counts.

Hippo on the lawn was cited, sadly inaccurately, as a good place to go for those interested in living in Namibia. Missed me by a whole country but I am glad I found ARRSE, some of the posts are hilarious. How about the way a certain ‘Jim30’ signs off:

“If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?”

Why not indeed? I am still giggling like a school girl hours after reading it.

Naturally, UNESCO should schedule this event the week after the Sharia Law festival of chopping off the hands of thieves, the stoning of wives guilty of infidelity (those who haven't already had acid poured into their faces since, as a marinade, it leaves a lot to be desired) and the honour killing of various victims, usually of the tastier, I mean tenderer, female variety, to save costs for the free snacks for visiting dignitaries. If all of us economised so sensibly, perhaps the US would not have lost its triple A rating and now be having to consider how many Police Actions abroad it can afford.

But at least Saudi Arabia could legitimately guarantee the food as ‘Free Range’ thereby keeping the Yoghurt Knitters happy.

Gosh. This is my 100th post. Note to self, 'Get a Proper Job'.

The 70 Dollar Pizza, a basic one at that...

2011-08-12T22:21:00.017+01:00

I live in the most expensive place in the world. An Irish newspaper has confirmed it.

The really most expensive pizza in the world. An 'edible' gold flaked creation by chef Domenico Crolla which, sold to a Sr. Maurizio Morelli (a man who clearly spares no expense when it comes to gilding his toilet paper) for a whopping US$4,200, gratifyingly knocked a lesser white truffle creation by that noxious, foul mouthed school boy bully and inept footballer, Gordon Ramsey, into a distant second place. Some things are worth paying for.

A friend of mine sent me this link, an article in the Irish Independant about the cost of living in Angola which you really should read before going any further.

Apparently Luanda, where I live, is now regarded as the most expensive city in the world. So while I was considering economising by moving to a far cheaper city, Monaco perhaps (Hong Kong would be no good, I would fall in love with the maids leaving Miss M with no other option but to kill me), I flashed off the following to the Editor of the Irish Independant:

Sir,

As a UK expatriate living in Angola, I read Mr Nolan’s article on the cost of living in Luanda with great interest.

I was left with a nagging doubt that Mr Nolan had missed the real point, not how expensive things can be in Luanda, but how the more generous a salary, the less likely its recipients are to spend it wisely.

Angolan businessmen, like successful entrepreneurs in any country, will charge what the market can stand. I am sure that Sir Alan would have been less than sweet with me had he discovered I had only charged 200 bucks a night when there were punters, to use his vernacular, willing to pay twice that for a bed.

I agree with Mr Nolan that the high prices one can pay here are fuelled by an apparently insatiable demand from the undeniably large expatriate community some of whom, a few, enjoy better salaries than they could command in their countries of origin, a situation exacerbated by an apparent lack of infrastructure to supply that demand. I remain bemused, however, that having no intention to settle down here so many expatriates, not all by any means but enough, waste a large proportion of their remuneration. Instead of saving it and taking it home, they can be found frequenting every bar, disco, restaurant and shop, the existence of which depend on separating expats from their pay cheques, a part of the economy refuting to a degree, the contention that oil revenues do not filter down to the population. The owner of the restaurant may be part of an emergent middle class, but his staff are working class and they all benefit from the prices some are willing to pay, not the prices they are forced to pay.

Accommodation is in short supply and can be eye-wateringly expensive, there is no question of that and a situation that will take several years to resolve until all the new hotels, those under construction and those planned are finally completed, gradually tipping the balance of supply and demand in favour of the itinerant traveller looking for a scratcher to lie upon but $400 per night? There is only one place in town that charges that much. They say London is expensive but I can get a comfortable room there within walking distance of Marble Arch for forty quid complete with A La Carte restaurant and a bar serving London Pride on tap. I cannot promise a foaming pint of heavy, but as far as decent, reasonably priced accommodation is concerned, it’s here in Luanda as well.

Rental accommodation is also expensive but as more and more residential accommodation is restored now that the country enjoys its post war reconstruction, prices are coming down. In addition, as the perception grows that Luanda is not as dangerous as some would have us believe, new suburbs of the city, now linked by smart, newly built dual carriageways, open up additional rental opportunities increasing supply and depressing prices.

I can understand that faced with a bottom line of tens, even hundreds of millions, twenty grand a month to rent a house for a senior manager would be dismissed as trivia looking at the ‘Big Picture’ and prioritizing as directors so often have to do. I can also accept that the comparative studies by companies such as Mercer only consider the costs to multi national employers of deploying expatriate employees to developing countries with the contractual guarantee to hand feed them the conditions they demand before they would even climb on the plane. Let’s face it, these companies busting into or exploiting the opportunities of a developing market want the best but propose to send them to a country in Africa, one synonymous with biblical doses of war, pestilence and poverty to do a job and provide shareholder value, not to bond with the natives (although so many do find the time) so they need to offer some attractive conditions and are willing to write an awful lot down to local conditions.

The last house I rented here had three bedrooms and its own stretch of beach in an exclusive suburb and cost the company $6,000 per month yet the article suggests 20K is the norm. If someone pitched up at your three bed semi and offered you twenty grand a month when you knew that your neighbour down the road was willing to take three fifty a week, what would you do? So I cannot blame the ‘Intermediarios’, the agents who find suitable properties for multi nationals, for pushing the prices as high as they can, after all, the system here is that for every six months of signed up contract, the newly enriched landlord must pay one month to the agent. Clearly the agent, who the house hunter assumes is doing him a favour by finding him a good deal, is instead negotiating the most outrageous rent and longest contract he can bleed from his client.

I did hear about one expat who paid $100 for a pineapple. I think that trumps Mr Nolan’s ten dollar cucumber.

The best supermarket in town is one run by a South African group who must have dozens of them all around town but their flagship shop is in the Belas Shopping centre in the southern suburbs where I live. Belas is the only shopping centre, as expats would understand the term, and its shops and boutiques charge a premium. Despite its convenience, the only thing I buy there are the hard to get imported spices, herbs, the little luxuries. Everything else, I buy on the local market.

Imported beer costs me $12 for a case of 24. I pay about $8 for twenty kilos of potatoes and the same for imported Thai rice. I can find imported cheeses for a few dollars a kilo and never pay more than about ten dollars a bottle for a very palatable imported Cabernet Sauvignon. Eggs, tomatoes, onions, fresh coriander leaves and parsley are pennies and I can get a sublime version of Parma ham and buy cured bacon in chunks the size that would moisten Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s eyes, especially if I offered him local cider as well.

I pay ten dollars for two hundred cigarettes and less than that for a bottle of imported Scotch whisky. Real whiskey is a little dearer. Guinness is cheap at eighty cents a can but it is made in Nigeria so is sickly sweet rather than bitter and reminds me why I need to go home now and then.

I can buy 25 kgs of chicken legs for $20, the same for beef filet and silverside and for the same price can even get forest buffalo and freshly culled venison and to make it all taste even better on a Sunday lunchtime, I grow my own Horseradish and other herbs and vegetables in the garden of mine that surrounds the house I built and paid for with those allowances of mine I didn’t drain into a pub urinal.

Although it is not my intention to make anyone back home emotional, I cannot resist pointing out that car insurance here for a young first timer is $300 per annum and fuel is 40 cents a litre and the fishing and shooting are excellent. Expats pay about $750 for a day trip on a sport fisher, locals about half that, even less if they climb on board with a container of fuel (no questions asked). The official green fee for the golf course is $25. Pitch up quietly during the week and let the caddies have a swing and you pay nothing. Income tax works out at 8% and we will not be asked to bail out Greece, Italy and Spain or jack in our belts as tight as the Irish.

I realise that having settled down in Angola, I perhaps know the local market better than some stressed out executive sent here to do a job that has nothing to do with sorting his own life out here, rather everything to do with figures. But I did make the effort to get further than the bounds of the traditional expat stamping ground and it has paid off but I am by no means unique. I and so many others quickly learnt, for example, that a local maid could be hired for as little a couple of hundred dollars a month and she would know exactly where to buy everything needed without access to an expense account. Tomatoes are in season and, combined with cheese and Italian herbs over toasted local bread accompanied by a decent book make a most welcome alternative, as a nightcap, to lying alone in a $400 bed in a Formica and chrome hotel room.

I do feel Mr Nolan missed the point. What he should have reported is how much some companies are willing to pay against what it really costs to live here.

Perhaps that is why there is this constant effort to describe Angola as a ‘hardship’ location, a place at the extreme of a map annotated with, ‘Here be Demons’. No wonder auditors readily sign off extraordinary expense accounts rather than come here and see for themselves.

The difference is a charge on the bottom line that shareholders ought to be aware of.

Whilst they profit from their presence, Angolans look on expats in the same light the English did US servicemen during WWII, ‘overpaid, oversexed and over here’ and, just like the English back then, they are taking them for every penny but, unlike their marks, they know where to spend them wisely.

Oh, and the best place to get a Pizza in town is down on the Marginal, just opposite the Sonangol Petrol station. It is run by Angolans of Italian extract and they do great home made ice cream as well. Fifteen bucks might not get you a smoked salmon and caviar topping but it’ll get you an excellent Siciliana with extra chillies and a smile from a friendly waitress to die for.

Yours faithfully

Tom Gowans

Ban the Burka?

2011-08-10T17:08:00.019+01:00

Marcia startled me by suddenly coming to life on the sofa along which she had extended herself to watch her morning soap by declaring, with attention grabbing vehemence, that she hated Brazilians.

Considering we were both very fond of our new neighbour, a Brazilian businesswoman with whom we had spent until the early hours of this morning enjoying one of our other neighbour’s hospitality at a noisy and well catered party (in honour of his son’s fifth birthday), this came not only as quite a shock but also as one of those irritating domestic buzzes that impinges an honest citizen’s basic human right to a cup of tea before he is obliged to engage his brain.

‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, Marcia,’ I said, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable knowing that Miss M was unlikely to let it go at that, ‘Perhaps if you said, ‘you didn’t like a particular type of Brazilian’, or their culture or something like that, but not all Brazilians, surely?’

I would be the first to admit that I am guilty of occasional xenophobic outbursts, usually after having been frustrated by some petty bureaucrat, queuing for hours to no avail without even the relief provided by a hastily choked down cigarette or a swig from a hip flask lest I am tossed to the back of the crowd again, stumbling out of the edifice cursing all Angolans to hell and back but such sentiments are fleeting, without real foundation or conviction.

I live in a country which I know is widely regarded as corrupt and dictatorial. I can’t help liking it though. Maybe I have inherited the same rose tinted spectacles that Ernest Hemingway wore when he hung around with Castro and Guevara. Both those two as well as the Angolan leadership, in the early days at least, weren’t shy of standing their political opponents up against a pock marked wall and gunning them down. Hardly democratic, but bloody effective if you need to quell riotous assembly.

It appears the Angolan government is concerned with the content of some of the Brazilian soaps and would like to ban a few. Anyone who has seen the film 'City of God', based on incontrovertible truth and one even I was disturbed to watch portraying as it did not just teenage gang culture, but pre pubescent indoctrination into hopeless violence, would agree that sometimes Brazilian films, and many of those emanating from the US and UK as well, can have a disturbing influence on a developing mind.

The director of City of God, Fernando Meirelles, was making a very valid if shocking point, a comment on the alarming descent of society into degradation and anarchy portrayed so effectively it gave me sleepless nights. One has to question, however, the validity of such graphic portrayals of mindless aggression on day to day TV programmes the motive of the directors of which I suspect are not so much to make serious comment as to chase ratings.

Meirelles wanted to appal and thereby alert his audience not only to weakening social structures but also to venal, self serving and ultimately ineffectual governance.

He certainly convinced me. I cried when the older boy told the younger one who had unwittingly transgressed an unwritten code he was too young to comprehend, a wee lad about the age of my son when I watched the film, that he would have to shoot him in the foot as a matter of ‘honour’ and the little lad stood there, as brave as he could under the circumstances but wet his pants in terror before his toes were blasted away.

Too many directors of the mass produced detritus they call a window to true society are really capitalising on a sickening, primarily urban culture and are driving our descent to anarchy by glamorising and elevating the now evidently laudable, or at least ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ qualities of ruthlessness and pitiless lack of compassion that are justified by a perceived lack of opportunity. Brains and honest hard work won’t get you to the top, muscle and a concealed switchblade will. Our daughters are being sexualised and our boys are being taught how to be Men. Not ‘Men’ in the way we understood it, but GangstaMen. The authors of their anthems unable to even spell ‘Gentleman’ let alone comprehend what it means to be a real man. Even the BBC grace mindless hoodlums by referring to rioting anarchists as 'protestors'.

Yet such freedom of expression is enshrined in the very democracy we stand for so if the Angolan government seek to ban the bits of some reality soap opera they don’t like, then surely that is dictatorial?

Still not having had time to resolve the conflicting emotions that Marcia’s comment had aroused, Sr. Decal arrived and accepted the offer of a cup of tea.

Sr. Decal is diminutive but his intellect more than makes up for that. Sipping his cuppa, he asked me for my opinion of recent events in London. Angolans often quiz British nationals on events in UK, especially events as dramatic as citizens smashing and burning a neighbourhood, just as they quiz French nationals about farmers blocking motorways and spilling Spanish fruit out onto the road. For an Angolan, such unopposed riotous assembly is inconceivable. Just like the rest of the world lump Africa, a region of so many diverse nations into one hopeless amalgam of despair, so Africans consider Europeans the seed of former colonialists, the ancient masters for whom nothing goes wrong and when it does, only confounds and confuses.

Sr. Decal and a now very alert Marcia wanted to know what would happen to the authors of such mayhem, after all, the capital city of Britain was burning under the astonished gaze of the rest of the world.

Quite simply, and to condense a very long and for me weary conversation (weary in that I had insufficient wit or energy left to refute their arguments, my tea long cold and untouched) they wanted to know why the police did not open fire.

When my mentioning due process and human rights was treated with derision by descendents of a formerly enslaved society I thought it best not to add to my grief and the inevitable incredulous onslaught by confessing that in UK immigrants convicted of crimes were routinely not deported back to countries of origin because their right to a family life was enshrined in the European constitution. Instead I thought I had best try what to me was a tougher, but to my audience perhaps a more conciliatory tack. I pointed out that a recent poll in UK suggested that the majority in UK felt the death penalty should be reinstated.

I may be wrong, but to the best of my knowledge the last to be formally tried and executed in Angola, by firing squad as it happened, were some British mercenaries and an American who, until his death remained bewildered by the incredibly short time frame between 'Arrivals' and 'Last Requests' so I was as surprised, when I noted their reaction, as Marcia and Sr. Decal were when they realised that institutionally sanctioned death was no longer the ultimate penalty in UK, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter.

‘You don’t shoot bandits in UK?’ they asked in awe.

What could I say? If I was a Norfolk farmer banged up in jail and watching my livelihood wither simply because I blew some thug away who was assaulting my property, potentially threatening my family, I might think twice. If I were a Copper, I would just close my eyes and let the bastards beat the shit out of me. Let’s face it, a stay in a hospital, even one as inhospitable as those provided by the NHS would be infinitely preferable to acres of paperwork and the unwelcome attention of the IPCC and screaming tabloids if I had been Blackberried burying a truncheon followed by the edge of my riot shield in the bastard’s head instead.

I freely confess that faced with an immediate threat to my family I would, if able, subject the perpetrator to a more than horribly unnecessarily painful death at my own hands and yet I disagree with the death penalty. As I explained to my by now slack jawed companions, I would rather see all allegedly guilty men incarcerated for life than see one innocent man, his heart heavier than any of us should ever endure, bid a really final farewell to his family before having his neck expertly snapped on the gallows. Only those who are absolutely confident in the judiciary should dare to advocate the death penalty, I was quite firm on that.

The TV was tuned to the Chinese news channel and at that moment impartial coverage of the London riots came on again. I had already been subjected to their opinion of the right of police to shoot a known (alleged as I futilely pointed out) bandit who opened fire (allegedly) on the police trying to arrest him, the spark that ignited this round of violence.

As far as they were concerned, the guy was a known thug and should have been drilled into the back of his taxi seat and his body set on fire and then hung on a lamppost as a warning to others, the way it works here, but instead I was a lone voice trying to argue a case for democracy and human rights.

The Chinese program director, presumably for darker emphasis, froze a frame that captured a masked hoodlum, flaming Molotov cocktail in hand, about to launch it into a building, no doubt some honest citizen’s about to be destroyed livelihood. An image captured not in Libya, Iran or Iraq, not even Syria or Afghanistan, but in London, England.

To Sr. Decal and a horrified Marcia, this single image represented all those stupid laws I was unable to adequately explain, laws elaborated with the best of intention in Europe but now routinely exploited to protect not only chancers, but also the violently disaffected minority who are, let’s face it, screwing up our society and giving yet more excuses for weak and ineffective governance to monitor and restrict the freedom and basic civil rights of the rest of us, providing yet more fuel for the racist conflagration extremists seek to propagate.

‘Why’, repeated Sr. Decal, ‘Why didn’t the Police just shoot him?’

A good question and one for which I did not have a ready answer. Try to torch a building in Angola and there would be a very short and very one sided exchange of gunfire. Show violent disrespect to a policeman here and, I suspect much to the envy of many a routinely abused English Bobby, your legs would be shot from beneath you, no IPCC enquiry necessary. If you are a known gangster and the police catch up with you, they don’t even have to arrange the delivery of your body to your relatives. All they have to do is tack a message on the corpse saying it was lawfully killed, and leave it in the street or wherever its late owner was assisted to shuffle off this mortal coil until a relative collects it. Naturally it, in its former life having been a criminal, there is no such thing as compensation for its surviving relatives and they know better than to shout about it or they'd get a kicking too for having spawned such evil.

Now I know there will be those who say the lack of riots in this country, the speed with which the authorities repatriate illegal immigrants (those having committed crimes here spending a few miserable years in the notorious Bentiaba prison first before getting their one way tickets home), and the relative inhibition with which police would open fire at any of those intent on criminal violence, are examples of state sanctioned repression but, as Sr. Decal pointed out, crushing any remaining arguments I may have had, I can safely stroll through my neighbourhood at night to catch a breath of fresh air and the chances of my son being knifed in a school yard are negligible. The thought of me having to defend my restaurant and its clients armed only with a rolling pin instead of allowing my guards to, here at least, legally open up with their AKs was to them utterly incomprehensible.

There is crime here, just as there is anywhere in the world but the right of a citizen to use any means to protect what is his is enshrined in the law. A few months ago, I disturbed two burglars in my house, both of them armed with my own kitchen knives. They had already relieved me of my laptop, the TV, the decoder and stereo and were on a return journey for my tools. Rather than plunge the sword I had in my hand into their worthless torsos, I just threatened them and they left. At first light Marcia, with skills that would put a bloodhound to shame, tracked them down and we recovered all our property.

As the property was being returned, one of the lad’s parents thanked me for not killing their son. I’d like to think I didn’t do so through an innate sense of fair play, a recognition of my assailants’ right to life, a fair trial followed by rehabilitating incarceration but, the real reason I did not slash the bastards into sushi was because I was scared of what would happen to me, a foreigner killing locals, even though they were armed and cleaning out my house. All the neighbours, and even the attending police when I asked them, told me that I could have legitimately run them through. Would that the British Police were graced with similar impunity.

There are plenty of police on the streets here. Do I get annoyed when they pull me over to check my documents? Occasionally. Do I argue with them or give them abuse? Never. Am I likely to see a shopping centre burnt down by a load of balaclava clad mindless thugs? I think not. Say what you like, Marcia and Decal have a point. They weren’t taking the piss out of UK. Like me, they were shocked. What they could not understand is how it could have happened in a country so apparently civilised and why the Police and security services could do so little to stop it.

Thoroughly subdued now, I poured myself a stiff scotch and lit a cigarette. It had been readily accepted that flaws in any legal system meant that a death sentence based on the result of a lengthy and expensive investigation and subsequent trial was not only wasteful, but possibly unsound and, therefore, unpalatable so I thought I had scored a victory for democracy. Difficult, though, to refute their notion that it would have been better just to kill those caught in the act of violence or, as the Angolan police are trained to do, shoot them in the kneecaps and sort them out later in the calm and peaceful environment of their increasingly efficient hospitals.

In a rare moment of sanity, the UK Crown Prosecution Service recently declined to prosecute a householder who stabbed an assailant, a thug who in company with his mates, had smashed a way in through the back of the man’s house clearly with evil intent. The wounded assailant died and was left by his fleeing accomplices on a nearby street. Surely the same fate is appropriate for the hooded thug who stands on a high street intent on throwing a Molotov Cocktail, or those that trash and loot neighbourhoods or overturn cars before setting them alight? Even the dead man's father stated, despite his obvious grief but with a comprehension and sense of responsibility not normally given column space in tabloid fuelled indignation, that by setting out to rob another citizen of his property, his son had left his Human Rights at home.

Unable to rely on a legally and politically castrated and demoralised police force, we now see the citizens of London, Birmingham and other cities, once the industrial root and foundation of an empire, protecting their own properties with kitchen implements and broom handles and even being murdered in the attempt. Turks, Bangladeshis, Hindis and, let’s be honest, ordinary and traditionally ever so slightly racist white blokes standing shoulder to shoulder facing a baying, hooded mob in defence of everything an Englishman holds dear, their castles, all they have worked so hard for.

Unlike in UK or many other civilised and democratic countries, the Angolan security services, be they police, intervention forces or the Army, have more of a choice than the hard pressed Police or vacillating Home Secretary of UK enjoy. Not only that, they have the support of a strong government, the judiciary and above all, public opinion.

This all started with a discussion on the right of the Angolan Government to censor Brazilian programmes showing gratuitous violence.

I have now decided that not only do I agree with Marcia that it is OK to hate Brazilians (but only those who through their ‘art’ encourage my two year old son to point a make believe gun at me, cradling it and making use of available cover in a manner that would make any small arms instructor proud, and without any remorse, blow his Dad away), I also feel that, in order to allow the rest of us to enjoy our lives, it is perfectly OK to let the police have a bit more litigation free latitude and if that means shooting looters, so be it. It would save a lot of time and money. Instead of fielding 15,000 coppers to give a load of missile hurling yobbos some target practice, you would only need a few well trained marksmen and, if there were still a need to keep the trendy leftie yoghurt knitting tree huggers happy, yes, we could just shoot rioters and looters in the legs, a concession to Human Rights that I, and the manufacturers of wheel chairs and crutches, could probably live with.

Mr Cameron and the Mayor of London both baulked at the suggestion that one of the most successful coppers in the business should replace the two top Bobbies in UK (who were forced to resign under the most shameful political and tabloid fuelled pressure), just because he is a Yank. Who gives a damn what nationality he is? If he managed to halve gang crime in LA and the Big Apple, probably two of the toughest cities in the world, I think we need him in London now and stuff the stuffed shirts. Get him down to Thieves and Hawke’s, kit him out with a smart uniform, pat him on the bum and push him out into the streets. Maybe not pat him on the bum, thinking about it. In UK’s warped system, that would land you in jail for a far longer term than torching Debenham’s.

In the meantime, rather than follow the example set by the French, the Belgians and other countries by banning the Burka (did any of you see an ambulant tent hurling petrol bombs during Sky News’ extensive coverage of the riots?), we should simply declare open season on Hoodies.

Or at least their kneecaps.

'Now remember chaps, targets will fall when hit. In your own time... Fire!'

But that is the subject of another post...

Home Alone

2011-06-21T15:27:00.068+01:00

Marcia has gone to Uige. It’s a province north of here, about a day’s drive away. She’ll be gone for a few days or as long as it takes to sell a property we have up there that someone is suddenly, and rather conveniently I must confess, mad keen to buy.

As a result, I am stuck in the Southern Suburbs without transport. Alexander has been dropped off at his aunt's place and, surrounded by all his cousins, is no doubt having a whale of a time. I am looking forward to a break from CBeeBies and interminable Brazilian soaps, the prospect of retiring early to read a book while scoffing a nice sandwich washed down with beer and all the Seventies music Marcia hates oozing from the laptop's speakers being quite agreeable.

Before Marcia left she went to the bank, drew out what she assumed would be enough road money for her trip and enough for me while she was away. When she returned home to disburse these funds, grab her bags and leave, I begged to disagree.

Sure, if the trip went according to plan, she had more than enough but this is Angola. Being the sort of pessimistic soul I am, I insisted she should have a reserve, just in case. There was the briefest of arguments but I assured her that I really did not need much and it would be better if she took the rest. The generator was full of fuel, I had water, a fridge full of beer, all the cigarettes I could choke down and feeding myself had never been a problem; all the groceries I needed could be bought locally and I would still have enough for that. I could survive quite happily on the amount I proposed I should be left with.

This morning, and quite unexpectedly, the carpenter turned up.

His continued employment with us has, I will admit, been the source of a bit of friction between Marcia and I. Marcia is quite fond of him and calls him ‘Uncle’. I think he is a shit, both in character and the quality of work he provides. Rather than having him crudely nailing bits of poorly crafted, very expensive unseasoned wood to my house and watching it warp in the sun, I would prefer to expertly nail his head to the gate post and watch him rot but then Marcia wouldn’t be the first to accuse me of being occasionally intolerant of those less able than myself. Please, this isn’t arrogance on my part, well, I suppose it is but I am so often confounded by Marcia’s tendency to call in a tradesman to perform a task I was never even aware of let alone understood the need for and one, since its execution was evidently so important to her, I could have done myself had she brought it to my attention first rather than that of the sullen oik now standing before me.

Nevertheless, he was here at the God awful time associated with chilly pre dawn light, a nervously grinning assistant in tow and clutching an encouragingly large bag of tools ready, he said, to finish off the job he’d started some three months ago.

Fine. I didn’t even ask, I just unlocked the gate and let him in. He knew where all the half cut and unplaned timber was stored in the yard and I needed to brush the taste of last night’s whisky from my mouth and have a cup of tea.

Thirty minutes later, steaming mug in hand I switched on the TV hoping to catch up with the news and, glancing through windows the size of which gave me the vista needed to be the bane of idle employees, saw the two of them stretched out by the pool, the bag the contents of which I had hoped would be put to artisan use now merely a pillow for the ‘Master’ carpenter, his mate having to settle for resting himself as comfortably as he could against the veranda doors leading to my bedroom.

‘So what’s the problem, then?’ I demanded having burst out of the lounge.

‘We need thinners for the varnish’, says Boss Chippie. Never mind respectfully dragging himself to his feet, the bugger didn't even open his eyes. I was never any good at team sports but have played enough rugby to be confident that I could have comfortably drop kicked his head into the neighbour's garden.

Typical. They had pitched up for work without the materials necessary and were now happy to collect a day’s pay doing nothing. I coughed the money for the thinners. Then it was sandpaper. I brought to his attention the sacks of cement I had bought, the initial lack of which had apparently been the impediment to the completion of his last round of work and without batting an eye he asked me about sand. OK. I had to pay for sand as well. And give them money for transport.

Bearing in mind I was on short change here and had been confident that the few Kwanzas in my pocket were more than adequate for the next few days, I was now faced with either lashing the last of them out on a taxi to take me to the bank and back or giving this venal sod what he needed and reconciling myself to econo-cuisine until Marcia returned.

Anyone who has endured Luanda traffic only to stand for a few more hours in a bank queue would quickly opt for, as a most welcome alternative, surviving three days on a well prepared but very cheap Chilli con Carne and that’s exactly the choice I made. I handed over the majority of my dosh and off they went to buy what was needed.

Six hours later there was still no sign of them. I was hungry and increasingly irritated. No doubt they had converted my dinner money to beer by then and would only put in an appearance when they knew I wasn’t around. That way they could spin Marcia a tale of mitigation and point out that they still needed cash for thinners, sandpaper and sand.

Recognising there was the faintest possibility that these two might just turn up again while I was out, I left the gate unlocked and headed off to what we here call the ‘Cantina do Terceira Rua’.

The Third Street Canteen, our village’s humble answer to Sainsbury’s, is run by Sr Cesar, a very affable man about the same age as me. Having expended his life’s savings to acquire a plot here, he lacked the funds to build a house. Undeterred, he erected a block and wriggly tin shack on the street front of his property and stocked it with all the things he thought his more affluent neighbours might need, everything from toilet paper to soap, diary products in coolers powered by a little petrol generator, booze, fags, beer, every type of canned goods, sweets for the kids, fresh vegetables. Even cotton buds and sticking plasters decorated with Mickey Mouse cartoon characters, the latter also a hit with the younger and more accident prone generation. His bread, delivered to him twice a day from I know not where, is crispy and delicious and even though it must have been handled by dozens of people, those that made it and those that delivered it, he presents it in a beautiful hand made wicker basket covered with a crisp, clean lace cloth and serves it with hands encased in plastic bags. Every week, he divides his takings into that which is required to restock his shop and that which will be used to buy a few more bricks, some sand and cement and slowly, but given Sr Cesar’s determination, inexorably, his house is rising from its foundations and I am happy to be one of his patrons.

It has become a daily routine for me to take the roundabout route necessary to reach his shop, carrying Alexander on my shoulders, the dog gambolling alongside. Much to my embarrassment, and to Marcia’s annoyance fearing as she does for Alex’s teeth, Sr Cesar always slips a few free lollipops or chocolate éclairs into the shopping bag for the boy.

With only the dog for company this time, I would nip round to Sr Cesar’s and buy all I needed to make a monster chilli.

I always go back a different way. Covering the same ground is boring and going back the way I usually do takes me past the house of Sr Joao, a man who by dint of hard work and sacrifice managed not only to complete his house, but install a swimming pool as well before an uncompensated industrial accident ended his working career. He makes ends meet by renting his place out for wedding functions to those who cannot afford the ridiculous prices charged by the hotels here, and by brokering the sale of building plots. A veteran of the Angolan civil war, as so many Angolan men of his age are, he is a bloody interesting bloke to talk to and since his place is blessed with a nice tree shaded porch, I often stop there to crack open and with Alex share with him the freshly boiled eggs supplied by Sr Cesar in three little plastic bags, one for the eggs, one for salt and the last for the fiery hot pepper sauce they call Gindungo, while swapping a few war stories as old soldiers, to the intense boredom of those who have never served, often do.

Penniless now but armed with all the sustenance I would need for the next few days carried in two plastic carrier bags, I headed off with renewed spirit from Sr Cesar’s towards Sr Joao's place. At the bottom of the road is a bit of a valley, a depression down which all the surface water of the last rainy season has, all the building work leaving it no other place to drain, eroded a gully that effectively cuts one side of the suburb off from the other to motor traffic.

Today I came across the sight of a mini bus, its over ambitious driver no doubt having sought to avoid extra kilometres, beached across the divide.

Its passengers sat disconsolately under the shade of a nearby tree, offering no assistance to the unfortunate and in their eyes, culpable driver who, drenched in sweat and armed with a hub cap, was trying to dig the opposite bank down enough to afford an exit for his vehicle. My faith in humanity having been restored by my visit to Sr Cesar’s and the imminent prospect of a visit to Sr Joao, this time undisturbed by the need to prevent Alex the Bandit from throwing rocks into his pool, I decided to lend a hand.

I felt for this guy in the same way I respect Sr Cesar and Sr Joao. Here was a man trying to make an honest living. Running a taxi is a marginal and thankless task by any standard. Every hour he struggled in that ditch was costing him money and I well understood how the loss of even a bit of income could bust a man's cash flow and pitch him into the far deeper chasm of unremitting poverty. Just like me, and my Dad before me, I bet he was willing to do anything to avoid watching his kids starve, even if that meant clawing at sunbaked soil with his bare hands.

His passengers, rather than lend a hand, had clearly decided that the payment of their ten cent taxi fare absolved them of any obligation to get dirty in extremis. There were enough of them to lift the mini bus shoulder high and carry it up the bank yet they were content to spend the rest of the day in the shade of a tree watching one man labour mightily on their behalf.

I dug a bit with him and then helped him collect some rocks to give traction to the driving wheels. Several times he tried, engine revving, tyres smoking while I pushed and after each failed attempt we dug some more, collected and positioned more rocks before finally, with a stinking clutch, the vehicle popped over the ridge and was free.

As one, the passengers jumped into the bus.

'Keep going! Don't stop!' I yelled as the wheels scrabbled for grip.

The driver looked back at me and mouthed ‘Obrigado’ as I waved him on.

I was caked in dirt, really sweaty but I felt good.

Then, as the dust settled around me, I realised that some bastard had nicked my shopping.

Christmas in Angola

2010-12-25T18:11:00.029+01:00

Bah! Humbug?

No, not really...

We are following the weather in Europe on the satellite news channels. I know that for the denizens of the North it must be a real inconvenience, but I rather wish I was there to experience it. I am sure the novelty of sub-zero temperatures would wear off quite quickly as digits unaccustomed to anything cooler than dessicating heat suddenly seize up and refuse to soldier, but warming them up afterwards in front of a roaring fire in some local public house clutching a pint of the landlord’s best bitter would make near fatal hypothermia worth it. Thinking about it, I would gladly sacrifice a frostbitten toe or two for a firkin of real ale.

Most of Europe seems to be grinding to a halt, but in Angola we are similarly paralysed. North of the Equator, the culprit is snow, ice and in the UK, a lack of grit, both the crunchy and the John Wayne kind.

Here it is incessant rain. This is by far the wettest rainy season I have seen in a decade. The roads now resemble long, straight archipeligos; vast pothole-concealing muddy brown lakes dotted with the occasional small island on which forlorn pedestrians cluster, wondering which way to step next. Perhaps over the bonnet and roof of that half submerged car? Maybe by clinging to the perimeter walls of adjacent properties they might advance a few yards closer to home? Or, as most do with typical stoicism, strip off shoes and with dresses and trousers hoiked up as high as they will go, just wade through, possessions wrapped in bundles balanced precariously on heads, feet scrabbling for grip on eroding substrate.

Fort Gowans is to the right of the road, I mean lakes. And we are on the high ground...

It is a great equaliser. The owner of the grand 4x4 is as stuck as the driver of the aged compact saloon and all must join the car-less masses trudging through the same sticky goo. Gardens flood and turn to slurry. Despite best efforts, floors are impossible to keep clean. None, regardless of status, dress in more than shorts and T-shirts and no-one has clean shoes anymore. Neither fuel nor water tankers can reach the neighbourhood so we all muck in together and trade when necessary. Eggs for bread, water for diesel, meat for vegetables. Within the community, we have all we need. For the time being, anyway.

Marcia could not complete the Christmas food shopping and was nearly stranded; a friend with a more rugged vehicle had to go and rescue her. Our truck fell into a particularly nasty pothole and damaged its suspension or, as I suspect and since we are on the subject of holes, that Shithole of a driver of mine crashed it into a water filled ravine at high velocity and trashed its undercarriage. I won't get it back until after Christmas, always assuming the roads get a chance to dry out.

Water tanks, all set into the ground here, are flooded with run off and the water that does cough and splutter its way out of taps resembles well brewed English Breakfast tea, though clearly not as appetising. Especially first thing in the morning when, after yet another sticky night with no power, having traded sleep for the resignation of being little more than a packed lunch for voracious mosquitoes, all you want is a cool, cleansing shower.

At Fort Gowans, we still have a reserve of clean water and the freezer in the pantry is full of buckets of frozen water which the neighbours collect, both for something cold to drink and to help keep food fresh in cool boxes. Last night and this morning, Marcia made loads of cakes to give to the neighbours so they at least had a little festive fare as they too could not complete their shopping. I will be making trays full of ginger, chocolate and spicy biscuits as well as gingerbread men, assisted by two able bodied volunteers, Dominic and Alex. We may not have managed to find a turkey, but we do have plenty of butter, flour, wild honey from the forest (so wild, it still has bees floating in it and I guess they were pretty angry when they fell in), brown sugar, fresh fruit from local trees, vegetables and eggs from the chucks in the garden, along with a cupboard full of spices. Dinner may not perhaps be one usually associated with Christmas (I will do a Beef Wellington with roast sweet potatoes dug out of the field nearby accompanied with rain washed vegetables and a rich onion gravy), but the munchies will definitely be festive. And who could object to a Ginger and Mango steam pudding with fresh cream? Oddly enough, beer and fags seem to make it through the deepest of quagmires.

By now those in the Northern Hemisphere will have tired of the picture postcard, chocolate box wintry environment they are enduring rather than enjoying, but how many in the past have wished fervently for that romantic White Christmas, chestnuts roasting over an open fire, miraculous transformations of cynical souls and the perfect harmony of erstwhile strangers standing in snow, crisp and even, singing 'Good King Wenceslas Looked Out' while dispensing mulled Christmas cheer (the kind I like) and mince pies?

All we want for Christmas here is the sun and today that's just what we got. As the icing on the cake (although I hesitate to type these words in case Fate considers it unreasonable temptation and kicks me in the teeth), the power has just come on after nearly a week's absence so even my gasping generator, supplied by R Cratchit and Son, might enjoy a festive break.

So, in spite of everything, and likely as not it is the same in an Arctic Northern Hemisphere, we are not only making the best of it, we are enjoying ourselves.

Naturally, excluding waterlogged access, poisoned water supplies, mosquitoes, termites eating my wooden floors and erratic power, not everything could remain perfect for Christmas at Fort Gowans.

Marcia has just rushed in to say a snake, presumably its usual residence outside being flooded, has just slithered into the pantry and is now hiding in amongst the sacks of rice and pulses destined for our table. From her description, I expect to see a writhing monster fluffing up hundredweight sacks of flour to use as pillows having shoved the freezer out of the way to give itself more room. Knowing Marcia, it is more likely to be the size of a boot lace and, probably half drowned, just as animated. Nevertheless, if I am to get at the ingredients and realise the munchies, I guess I am off on a snake hunt. Actually, I can’t be bothered so Dominic and his mate have just volunteered. Personally, I would like to leave it to settle in and stand guard over my cereals against the constant onslaught of mice. Thinking about it, I will go and find it. If it is a constrictor, I will convince Marcia to allow it remain as a new addition to the household and enjoy all the rodents it wants as trite revenge for the fact she would never let me have a cat.

The thought of a snake in the house is bound to give Marcia kittens so by this time next week, I am certain she’ll have found a neighbour with a spare one for me to raise as a rat catcher supreme. Yet another festive blessing!

To all of you, best wishes for a very enjoyable Christmas and a prosperous and healthy 2011.

And may your God go with you… but best take your Wellies, just in case.

Flowers Can't talk, But They Say So Much

2010-12-04T22:00:00.017+01:00

Who has time to feel for the single bud that out of a whole garden, lost its chance to bloom?

Jenni's Story. Created by Steve & Fiona on 03/12/2010
"From the window of the maternity room where Jenni was born you could see the sun shining on the nearby lighthouse, and her Dad thought at the time, what a perfect start to a life.

We often think that something of that sunshine stayed with Jenni throughout her life, as there was something about her smile that could always light up the day.

Jenni had Rett Syndrome, and although it is usual today to say of people like Jennifer that they have special needs, and that is quite true, we prefer to think of her as just special, and we know that she touched the lives of everyone who met her. Friends, teachers, nurses, everyone seemed to feel that special something about Jenni, that indefinable quality that just made you feel better. Nothing was quite so good as a cuddle with her, and at the end of a grim day 5 minutes sitting with her put it all back in perspective. Jenni could not walk or talk, or hold out her arms for a cuddle, but she definitely knew more than she was letting on, and you always knew how she felt about something...."

I am not asking you to share the grief of my lifelong friends, Jenni's parents, I am asking you to join them in celebration and gratitude for the short time that Jenni graced this earth bringing, in her own special way, joy and happiness to those who had the privilege of being with her.

Please see Jenni’s story at http://jenni.harpum.muchloved.com/ and leave a little message.

Our Earthly garden has lost a lovely little flower and I am so very sad. But who knows in what comfortable bed, and under which warming sun, caressing rain and tender hand she blooms now?

Driven to Distraction

2010-11-17T16:29:00.004+01:00

There is something exquisite about playing a cold shower of water over mosquito bitten ankles. Relief from the incessant irritation is fleeting, but welcome nonetheless. Sadly, there is no salve for the regular-as-clockwork power outage at precisely 7pm each weekday evening and its unwelcome consequence.

I have one of the few houses in this still developing neighbourhood with both a generator and an unlocked gate. I also keep my satellite TV subscription up to date. The Seven O’clock outage is coincident with two things, one dear to my heart and the other a severe test of my patience. I cannot comment on Crossroads, East Enders, Coronation Street, Dallas, Dynasty or any of the truly awful programmes that led to generations of ‘soap opera orphans’, feral children depending for their sustenance on whatever their malnourished statures allowed them to root out of fridge or pantry because, I can honestly say, I have never watched a single episode.

My artificial Gotterdammerung coincides with me starting to prepare dinner for the family, an agreeable duty, and the evening soap on TPA, the very cash strapped Angola Popular Television channel, which I detest.

We were only recently connected to town power and until last month, supplies were erratic. Clearly, the state distribution company has finally figured out that in the evening, the city wide load soars and they cannot possibly produce and distribute enough energy to go round, and that by cutting some neighbourhoods off, can maintain the Haut Metropolis. We are not in the main city but at least the outage is now predictable and, therefore, manageable. During the day, I can check oil and water, fill up the tank and make sure the generator is good to go. Unfortunately, the brief experience of the evening electricity that fired up their new TV’s gave my neighbours a taste for soaps surpassed only by the evidently abject sense of loss the 7 pm curfew brings.

I did not mind at first; it is quite nice to have the house suddenly full of unexpected visitors, they are our neighbours after all and, seeing the kids tired and hungry after a day in school, I could easily stretch the food to cover a few more plates while their mothers gorged themselves on kitsch and there were always enough ripe Papayas on the tree to give them a healthy dessert. It would be grossly unfair to describe the situation in which I now find myself as an opened Pandora’s Box or can of worms but there is no doubt that I have latched onto the thin edge of a very thick wedge. Every evening, as regular as the power cut, I have the house full. Still, it is all good practice for when the restaurant opens.

Tonight’s episode, and I am ashamed to be sufficiently well informed to be able to relate the plot but with an open plan lounge, kitchen and dining room, it’s unavoidable, seems to revolve around a young lady who was impregnated and then dumped by a cruel and arrogant rich bloke and so, to exact a very peculiar and to me bewildering form of revenge, she has decided to name the fruit of their illicit liaison after him. Naturally, her husband is less than keen on the idea. Surprisingly, he seemed more concerned over his wife’s choice of name for the child rather than the fact she’d clearly been shagging his nemesis, but then again, that’s probably good for another ten episodes. Given that this soap was originally filmed in Spanish and crudely dubbed into Portuguese, it can only add to the excruciating torture I must endure every evening when night descends over the borough.

It is the adverts, however, that provide me the light entertainment I feel I deserve while flipping countless burgers to satisfy those fleeing darkness in favour of Latin histrionics and a good feed. Risqué they are not, sadly, just jaw droopingly cheesy. I shan’t bore you with the details, save to say they all concern products which, once in possession of, guarantee unbridled sex if you are a Man, or accolades from the Women’s Institute for being the ‘Perfect Wife’ if you are female.

It may not be the latest (in Darkest Africa we are often a touch behind the curve), but the Mercedes advert is worthy of mention. I only picked it up halfway through but Dominic tells me it concerns a lone motorist who suddenly realises he has a passenger and that this passenger is Death incarnate. Death looks across at the understandably shocked driver and, given his gruesome duty quite affably says, ‘Sorry’. The driver, having been so distracted now looks to the road ahead and sees an overturned articulated lorry and its discarded load of logs into which he is about to crash and give the soul collector his due. Its brakes slammed on, the car in an impossibly short distance, comes to a controlled halt and it is now the driver’s turn to apologise to a frustrated Death.

God, Death, the Devil and the promise of an Afterlife. All abstract notions for so many of us nowadays but as a betting man, with no chance of collecting if I was right after all, I tend to think twice before openly wagering against the existence of a higher force, and I am not talking about the superior retardation offered by the latest in ceramic brake discs.

Pride is a deadly sin and I think Mercedes have it as finely tuned as their motors. Would you climb into, let alone buy a car the manufacturer of which has just slapped Death in the face and said, ‘I Dare You’? And that begs an interesting philosophical question. If you believe in God, you might be concerned at antagonising the Black Angel. But then again, you wouldn’t care as the afterlife is so much better. If you think all religion is humbug then you could also care less so perhaps we can conclude that Mercedes’ target market in this case are Atheists, or those stoic Christians keen to join their maker as fast and as stylishly as possible… if only those damn brakes didn’t work so well. An interesting test of faith: if you Believe, don’t in extremis stamp on the middle pedal and scream into a rapidly inflating airbag like us normal folk would.

I should end there but given I am being driven round a bend of my own making, the guests still not fully sated (there are so many of them here there is no room left for me at my own dining table, hopefully I’ll get to gnaw on a leftover chicken leg later), I shall relate to you the true story of the Mercedes that spilled off a curve on a notorious stretch of road in Cape Town. Having tumbled down a mountainside the occupants all survived and Mercedes turned that thankful and well reported outcome into an advert trumpeting the effectiveness of their passenger safety cells. Their main rivals, until the South African Advertising Standards Authority reined both parties in thereby ending what promised to be an entertaining exchange, coolly responded with:

‘BMW… Drives round the Benz’

Don’t tempt Fate, drive a BMW

In days of old, When knights were bold, and paper had not yet been invented...

2010-11-08T17:04:00.056+01:00

Amongst the small, but I like to think very select group of bloggers to which I belong, there is a tendency to compile what seem to be called Saturday Blog Rodeos. Started, correct me if I am wrong by Albert Rasch, they are collections of various blogs stumbled across in the ether and worthy of mention. Not only do the recommended blogs generally provide excellent reading, they save a hell of a lot of surfing.

But today is Sunday and, besides, I hate being accused of a lack of imagination so I shall call mine the ‘Sunday Afternoon and I Have Washed All the Lunch Dishes and I Still Have Time To Kill Before the Brazilian Grand Prix Starts Blog Round Up’. Catchy.

I am, I have to confess, very keen on Formula One. As enthusiastic as any portly, middle aged bloke who in his youth just knew he could have thrashed anyone around Monaco and now blows regularly hot and cold about the diminutive multi-billionaire ex-used-car-salesman who has turned the sport into the money spinning business it is, and how dull it has all become.

OK, Tom, you stuffed it off a perfectly decent bit of road and into a ditch. So what's your excuse?

Over the last few years, I admit, it has become a bit tedious. Out of a starting field that usually numbers no more than a shade over twenty cars, seven of the drivers are German, a nationality that stunned us all into stupor with over a decade of dominance, and not one has been caught with his hand up a promo girl’s skirt. It would, however, be unfair to single out the Germans. Apart from a few tantrums, no driver seems to have more character than a windows laptop and if they crash, have as many excuses as Bill Gates.

I had hopes for Mark Webber. Chiselled jaw, uncompromising attitude and a knowledge that this might be his last season. His spat during practice in Brazil held out a promise that he might have told the marketing and image boys to stuff off and snotted someone, Vettel for instance. Webber’s a real bloke. After all, there’s no poofters in Oz, except maybe those two woosie coppers that nicked Hamilton for not only being an Abo at the wheel of a Mercedes (internationally recognised valid grounds for a stop and search) but proving he could handle the car as well, but no, Webber has let us all down. Instead of a haymaker, the only thing he swings is the corporate line. Bet he drinks Fosters.

It was a damn sight more interesting in the old days. Graham Hill, Stirling Moss et al, gentleman sportsmen one and all. They weren’t worried about taking the strain off a young blonde during a post race party by lending a hand to support her bared 36 C cup in front of the press. Boys and girls, they were all good eggs up for a jolly good laugh in those days.

When motor racing drivers were Real Men

(pic from Jeremy Walton's book "Only Here for the Beer - Gerry Marshall." Buy it.)

If you have not been following the series this year, however, you have missed a treat and the closer we get to the last race, the more exciting it becomes. I am not talking about the fact that there are still five drivers technically in the running for World Champion, it is the delicious scandal.

Team mates have alternately vowed, and tried, to kill each other rather than cede position in accordance with team orders that of course, don’t exist, or professed undying loyalty, even when tipping their colleagues into the kitty litter. Alonso may win this year’s championship because Massa infamously let him through at Hockenheim, the poor Brazilian lad now threatened with a jail sentence in his home country if he does the same again today. No-one should be surprised, therefore, that Massa, having to choose between the vindictiveness of Ferrari or a death sentence, failed to make the cut for the last qualifying session and will start from a relatively safe eleventh on the grid and suddenly there’s another Deutscher with bum fluff on his jowls in pole position. Nico Hulkenberg, who is he? Williams, strapped for cash will be delighted, as I am too but will he be yet another Top Gear Stig Robot? He is young; at least once he should be caught halfway down the Chinese Ambassador’s flag pole having scrawled ‘Free Tibet!’ across the flag.

The Prize. There can be only one… The First Ladies of Motor-sport. Inhuman automatons programmed to ruthlessly annihilate their competitors. Actually, that was Microsoft but equally valid in this context.

There’s a contract out on Massa but it was Jenson Button, on his way back to the Hilton Hotel (Hilton? I thought these guys were millionaires and could afford to stay somewhere decent) who was nearly taken out by half a dozen Brazilian machine-gun toting bandits, afterwards having the decency to praise the skill of his driver who, bashing six or seven other cars out of the way, got his ‘principal’ out of the firing line. By the way, all praise to the McLaren boss who insisted his team members should travel in armoured vehicles but, having been accommodated in such a shitty hotel, surely a disgusted young Button could have treated us all to a widely publicised photo of him leaving the hotel in his underpants via a sixth floor balcony and into the swimming pool below without getting a drop of chlorinated water into the open bottle of champagne and two glasses he happened to be holding?

Before the conspiracy theorists fire themselves up, nobbling Button was largely pointless and although Alonso attracts a lot of hatred in the non Latino world, a small portion of it unjustified, no self respecting Brazilian mobster would do anything to help him. After all, Ferrari team orders deprived a fellow countryman of a win, and besides, soon after, the Sauber team were rumbled as well and lost all their laptops. Clearly they didn’t subscribe to the same risk management company as Martin Whitmarsh but this isn’t Ferrari software dropping into McLaren’s hands, this is Sauber’s. Who would want it? All you can say is that this is nothing more than ‘Welcome to Sao Paulo, hi-jack and kidnap capital of the world’, but it still makes delicious reading and a good omen for an exciting race.

Monday, 8th November

Clearly, I was more interested in the race than my Sunday Blog Rodeo and, having rambled on a bit without even getting as far as reviewing a single blog before the warm up lap started, gave it up in favour of the sofa and the TV.

Those of us that are interested will know the outcome and that the five have now become four. A tabloid journalist today described the race as prosaic but he writes for the Daily Mail so his views are largely irrelevant. Perhaps I am being unkind. After washing dishes, anything would be interesting.

Red Bull won their first Manufacturer’s Championship and, mathematically, either of their drivers could beat Alonso to the Driver’s Championship. Hamilton, who could be heard complaining on the team radio throughout the race, is the fourth and final contender. The very ambitious Vettel is now in a perfect position to help his team mate Webber in Abu Dhabi but, during the post race interview in Interlagos, ducked a direct question posed to him about whether he would, or not, by revealing that his parents had always teased him by sometimes failing to answer his direct questions (presumably about where babies come from) so now it was his turn to tease the press. The little tyke.

I have no problems with orders designed to help a team win a manufacturer’s championship, it means big bucks for the team and the drivers are, after all, employees. Any enterprise would take a dim view of an individual who, in his attempt to become Employee of the Year cost his company a big contract. Will Red Bull just let their drivers race or, given that Webber says he is going to retire, is Dietrich Mateschitz as I write, promising Vettel the earth to do ‘the right thing’ and come in second behind his team mate thereby relegating Alonso to third and a title chance lost to Webber? By next Sunday afternoon, we may have an answer.

Whatever happens, for the first time in years, it is all down to the last race and it is bound to be exciting.

There are only a few blogs out there about Angola most of which, I find rather dull. My interpretation of them could of course be coloured by my familiarity with the place so comments by the authors on how awkward things can be here (when they cannot find their favourite and to us obscure staple in Belas shopping), or how awful is ‘funge’ the local staple, I will likely find soporific. I am with the denizens of any country who, faced with visitors with nothing positive to say will invite them to go home and if they take the piss as well, give them a good kicking.

Jeremy Johnson, author of ‘Globe Trotting Geologist’, subtitles his blog with a quote from Mark Twain:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

A kindred spirit then.

Rather than denigrate a country and the people who live there; with a wry, self deprecating humour he describes the pitfalls and difficulties all of us face with a perceptiveness unusual in such a recent arrival.

His latest post, ‘Mother, Your Son is a Filthy Crim’, opens with:

‘A sinking feeling struck me as our car hurtled south on the dual carriage highway out of Luanda. Without hesitation I started rifling through my bag, as my stomach began to turn at the embarrassing prospect of what I had to say. “I’ve forgotten my documents…” ’

Classic! And it is a sinking feeling. No matter how many checkpoints you have managed to negotiate for weeks and months not having to show your documents, the one time without them, you will be stopped, and by the Angolan immigration official equivalent to the head of the Gestapo for whom the sight of pain and suffering is more rewarding than frantic offers of paper portraits of Benjamin Franklin.

I am frequently without legal documents (well, once a year at least) when, having over run my visa yet again, I have to hide while a solution to an issue created by a lethargic immigration visa renewal department is negotiated. I am now very familiar with the cross country route from my house to the golf course so that during such times I can avoid the main road and its checkpoints and get a round in.

Jeremy is a Geologist, not a Geophysicist, by the way. I was never sure of the difference either until I first worked in the oil industry but suffice to say, it can be summed up by this old joke:

The daughter of a staunch Irish Catholic geologist walks into her father's study and announces her intention to marry a Protestant Geophysicist. ‘A GEOPHYSICIST!’ he thunders.

This joke can be modified to reflect any strong prejudice, the stronger the better in fact but if you have read some of my posts, I can hardly be called politically correct so have no wish to add yet more coals to an already raging furnace. At my age I have heard them all anyway and am now quite fond of the notion, ‘a quiet life’, so think it best to avoid provoking a Jihad.

It seems that Jeremy is also acutely aware of just how easy it is to inadvertently commit a faux pas in a foreign country. In another post he states:

‘It seemed fitting to inflate the bagpipes once more, leading to an impromptu attempt at a philistinic highland dance exhibition by myself and two French friends. The inaccurate flailing of arms was soon cut short however when we learnt from an irate elder that a funeral procession had just passed and the village was in mourning…’

A seismic survey in progress. Note simultaneous deployment of the sophisticated 'Clouseau' apparatus (a world famous French Detector) in close proximity to the Shockwave Generator. High Tech and environmentally friendly...except to dogs and beneficiaries of deceased estates who fear the dead may wake.

I rather suspect, with acute powers of deduction, that young Jeremy hails from somewhere north of Hadrian’s Wall so, given that 90% of Scotsmen live abroad having been encouraged to do so by venal English landlords, perhaps he should modify Twain’s quote thus: ‘Explore. Dream. Discover. Survive…’

Before any ginger haired bearded Celt clad in tartan trews ('cos the English banned men in skirts) and wielding an effing great Claymore, or at least adept at the art of Glasgow Snogging takes offence, I really am trying to be as PC as I can. My name is Scottish too and if you are familiar with all the verses of Auld Land Syne, specifically the third, you would know that my name translates as ‘Tom Daisy’, a fact I discovered in obligatory music classes as a young lad. No wonder I ended up on the school boxing team. Those were the good old days of healthy competition, of tormenting the weak, a solid grounding for life; teachers enjoyed thrashing us and we were allowed to bash each other, whether in a ring, on a rugby field or, round the back of the chemistry lab in which case punishment was only meted out if you failed to satisfactorily answer the House Master’s apparently oh so casual enquiry as to who won. Fighting a boy in your own house outside a boxing ring was definitely not done but a lot of scores were settled with flailing studs in a ruck.

Jeremy’s blog is well worth a read and a link to it is under my ‘Interesting Blogs’ list.

I wonder if he does weddings? That'll piss the neighbours off.

My second and for now final review (Marcia is getting irritated with me interpreting as she does, time behind a keyboard on any activity that offers no financial return as a peculiar sort of European indolence) is a truly excellent source of information on the restaurants and other nightlife attractions available to the roving Gastronaut in Luanda.

Naturally, the authors are French. What other nationality would come to Angola and rather than write about piles of rubbish, impossible bureaucracy and poverty (endemic so hardly newsworthy) would, with Gallic shrugs of indifference, instead concentrate on the positive and entirely selfish side of a cosmopolitan society?

They do not pull any punches either and based on the restaurants that I am familiar with and they have reviewed, give a very fair assessment of what the diner can expect.

Perhaps the Globe Trotting Geologist would be intrigued to note that the Shanghai Baia Restaurant on the Ilha serves a somewhat amibigous "deep fride garlic Hong Kong Abderdeen style". That solves the mystery of the missing geophysicists then.

The Portofino Restaurant, owned by the President's wife and described by Luanda Nightlife as, '...completely empty. It is brand new, very neat and very chic...'
I told you they pull no punches. Personally, I prefer a quiet restuarant, the service is usually marginally quicker so I will try it.

I doff my beret to the Luanda Nightlife team. I have been here sixteen years yet still discovered reviews for places I had never heard of, opening to me a whole new vista of entertainment. To distant observers, this place might seem exciting but, believe me, it is all too easy to suffer from a routine induced boredom so this site will do much to reduce the numbers of expatriates returning home with pencils up their noses and their underpants on their heads having successfully convinced a human resources department that a transfer might be in order.

I imagine the Nightlife team use that last point as an excuse to justify their no doubt extraordinary expense claims to an outraged finance manager. Let’s hope their epicurean activities are not curtailed before my own restaurant opens.

Anyway, well worth a look whether you live here or not. They have completed 116 reviews so far not counting the nightclubs. I shall be sending them a separate correspondence explaining my understanding of ‘Quid pro Quo’. They are clearly knowledgeable in matters bacchanalian, so I would rather prefer it if they could be gentle with me in their first review of Floridita.

Is the apology you make to someone who has already apologised to you worth anything?

2010-10-28T00:01:00.042+01:00

I am a keen follower of the Suburban Bushwacker and as a result, so is my eleven year old son, Dominic. In case you are unfamiliar with SBW’s blog, he talks all about the things boys love and are now, sadly, being deprived of as the nanny state increasingly wraps our offspring in cotton wool turning blind eyes to those who get up to the sometimes lethal mischief no longer restrained by a policeman’s friendly slap round hitherto unresponsive ears.

Having just mentioned the rot in our society one might be surprised that I encourage Dominic to read a blog all about guns, knives and killing fluffy little creatures. But SBW’s blog is so much more than that. In his casually eloquent and self effacing way, SBW enthuses about the sustainable exploitation of nature’s resources, engendering a respect for the countryside and its denizens and, by example, teaching us all how to behave responsibly.

I was appalled, then, when Dominic having downloaded a video SBW had posted, came to me with an ever more alarming set of questions, the reasons for which I could only fathom by watching the video, together with him and accompanied by an increasingly acute sense of discomfort.

Now most of us know that the man lampooned in the video happens to be a complete fop, one of these television survivalists with even less military experience than George Bush, who manages to cope with the deadly environments in which he and his couple of hundred strong support crew find themselves when they step out of their comfortable hotel in the morning. Observed in that light, the video has merit, even if, as one of SBW’s readers commented, it provokes an involuntary gagging response. If you are Bulemic, this video is so much more refined, in the most relative of senses, than a tonsil tickling index finger.

Considering that this had been posted by the Lord Baden-Powell of bloggers, the author of the modern Boy’s Own Journal; healthy and stimulating, nay, essential reading for all men, young and old, this was for any of us from the old school, just as shocking as Julie Andrews flashing her boobs in that awful film.

I had to dash off a comment.

On his blog, SBW encourages his readers to respond, going so far as to reassure them that they are welcome to disagree and that life would be too boring if we all agreed with each other. I never expected my comment to get past his moderation let alone receive a reply from him in return expressing regret for apparently having let me down. He did no such thing of course, it is his blog after all. He also made a fair admission that he had never considered anyone under thirty reading his blog and, by implication, be exposed to the sight of a man in congress with a fallen log (those of you reading this who have still not swung over to SBW’s post should do so at your earliest convenience or this article will make no sense whatsoever).

Dominic is an avid fan of SBW’s blog, and Rasch’s too, and I know he prints off some of the articles to show his friends, so there are rather more readers under thirty keen on SBW’s blog than he imagines, and I think that's a good thing.

Because of SBW, I had to get Dominic a Smith and Wesson hunting knife The knives SBW reviewed were not available here but Dominic doesn’t mind. The one I got him holds a good edge, easily slicing his biltong and it has S&W engraved on it, which is close enough, so I have convinced him it is an SBW Special.

Because of Rasch, I have had to promise Dominic that next year we will do a Spiral Horns Safari in South Africa. Not cheap at the best of times. Bleeding extortionate when you factor in the cost of a trip for Marcia to Canada to visit her brother, which was the only deal I could cut to ensure the Safari was boys only (c’mon guys, who takes cake to a party?).

Because of Amish Tom, and through his rather overwhelming generosity, a Genesis Reflex bow and broadheads are on the way to Angola so very soon Dominic will be able to slot the feral truffle hunters destroying my gardens.

All thanks to chance encounters in the ether.

The blog world is more influential than people might imagine. By the time I was Dominic’s age, I had lived in several different countries throughout Europe and even Libya where my brother happened to be born. US Immigration gave him so much of that 'Good 'ol 'Merican hospitality' every time he visited that he voluntarily transferred regions to, yes, you guessed it, the Middle East.

Granted, Dominic and now Alexander can watch National Geographic and the Travel channels but the musings of the disparate blog community give a much more personal insight to other cultures; the thoughts, feelings and motivations of people who, quite frankly, sound so affable in the written word Dominic would like to meet a select few. That latter point is to me, the mark of all good blogs. If the authors can engender enough empathy that the reader really would like to meet them, they can only be good. Besides, it improves the boy’s English and is a damn sight cheaper than using DHL to ship books out to Angola from Amazon UK.

Drifting away from this very veiled apology, I have to refer to yet another comment on SBW’s infamous video post, this one made by Albert Rasch.

Rasch, the archetype mountain man and a damn sight more convincing than Bear Grylls, expressed gratitude in his comment for being safely tucked away in Afghanistan. I am assuming he was referring to the video and not my somewhat intemperate remarks but just in case he had risen in defence of SBW, he probably is safer in Afghanistan after all and I might join him to enjoy similar levels of security. Marcia caught the maid stealing (I had long suspected as much but, as the reader will learn, it does not pay to argue with Marcia). Not unreasonably, she chased the maid off.

This morning the ex maid reappeared and with an audacity so brazen it left the crew wide eyed and slack jawed, demanded the rest of her remaining month’s salary. Now the maid is a big woman, easily able to straight lift a 25 litre water container from the ground and onto her head with one pull. I tried that once and was only able to struggle the bucket up to my midriff giving boots and trousers a good soaking in the process. As well as successfully lifting large quantities of water, the maid was also probably guilty of lifting the equivalent of several month's salary if the evidence of my frequently denuded wallet and Marcia’s hopelessly unsecret envelope were anything to go by. Worse still, she had cleverly engineered resultant enquiries so that suspicion fell alternately on Christina or Dominic, something I could never accept and I developed a healthy loathing for the woman as a result. I couldn’t argue with Marcia’s contention that she was good with Alex, though, so the summary execution I favoured was repeatedly stayed. 'Auntie' Madu would never steal and that was that.

Now blessed with irrefutable evidence to the contrary (despite what many of you irreverent bastards say and until this morning I included myself, there is a God), Marcia told the maid, by now howling like a fishwife, to eff off. In Portuguese, naturally.

It sounded so much more satisfying in Portuguese. The F word has been so abused that even vulgar, failed footballers reduced to failing celebrity chefs get their own prime time slot, slap in the middle of children’s viewing hours, just for its over use.

‘Vai-ti Fuder’, (Go Fuck Yourself). Miles better. It allows two opportunities rather than just the one afforded by ‘fuck off’ to spit your bottom lip out from under your upper teeth for extra menacing emphasis. Try it in front of a mirror at home, which one sprays more venom?

It obviously plugged the maid into the mains because in a flash she was swinging a meaty fist backed by a hundred or so Kilos of muscle toned by years of hard labour towards a face supported by a slender fraction of that weight. Both I and the driver, little more than amused observers ‘til then, launched forward, if only to catch Marcia on her way down and restrain the maid when, in the blink of an eye, Marcia ducked the assault and returned with an uppercut that snapped the maid’s screaming gob shut with a sickening clatter of teeth, a blow so unexpected and vicious the awe it inspired was only surpassed by its effectiveness. I couldn’t have been more surprised if I had just witnessed Amir Khan drop Wladimir Klitschko with the first punch of the bout.

Marcia was always terribly upset with me if I got into a fight so I was amused, no cackling with glee when she tried all the same excuses on me that I had used on her. By the time she got to the term, ‘unforgivable lack of respect’, I was roaring with laughter. Those of us who are not psychopaths have all suffered from post pugilistic remorse as the red mist clears, especially when cleaning someone else’s blood off a favorite shirt, so I could easily recognize the same emotion when I saw it.

Driver Jorge and I helped a very subdued maid to her feet and suggested it might be best if she left. I could not understand exactly what she was trying to say, lockjaw evidently having set in but I think she means to come back with her husband in the morning.

Having seen Marcia in action, I don’t rate his chances but, sadly in a way, I don’t think things will pan out like that. Jorge is very loyal, especially to Marcia so I wasn’t all that surprised to catch him taking the heavy jack handle out from under the seat of the truck this evening and position it within easy reach on the veranda.

All this does beg the question though, which is worse for an impressionable young lad? SBW’s video, or the sight of his Dad’s girlfriend decking the thief who framed him…

Having considered this carefully, I think the latter will leave the most indelible and, let's face it, comforting impression.

Is Your Swimming Pool Half Empty... Or Half Full?

2010-10-25T19:18:00.061+01:00

It is half past five and I have just lost a whole day of hard work.

John over on ‘Going Gently’ posted a few days ago complaining of rain. As I read it I wondered if it was a bad omen.

I am busy rendering the pool walls and floor. I and my trusty foreman, Samuel, had managed three of the four walls and today we finished the fourth so we were game on to do the base tomorrow when suddenly, the heavens opened.

Are they as patient as vultures or did the geese know it was about to be filled with water?

I don’t think it was John who jinxed me, he seems far too nice a guy. I suspect I was hoisted by my own petard.

We were only recently connected to a very irregular town supply of electricity and are still waiting for the water main the council are laying to reach us so until then, this most necessary element has to be tankered in at great expense. When I drained the pool of the rainwater that had accumulated during the time work on it had been suspended, I pumped as much as I could into the plastic tank I had borrowed from a neighbour. The rest, mainly sludge, I pumped and then scraped into buckets and dumped onto my new herb beds.

Having used the tank of water to render the walls we had managed so far, I was just remarking to Samuel where we could get more, after all, ordering a 30 tonne tanker for a mere cubic metre of water would hardly be economic, when Nature provided the answer.

Apart from the wasted effort, there is something depressing about watching an amalgam of sacks of the imported special cement required for rendering swimming pools and the requisite ratio of the finest sand slough off the face of a reinforced concrete wall like flesh from a vampire exposed to sunlight. I couldn’t even send the truck out for more as the roads, compacted dirt around here, quickly turn to slurry under such an onslaught and are impassable to anything other than slithering amphibians and water buffalo within minutes. To be honest, it was my driver who pointed this out to me and none too politely either, muttering something along the lines of if I were to insist, I had better go with him armed with a shovel as he wasn’t going to effing well dig the truck out when it inevitably bogged in. Loyal to a fault my crew.

This is actually the Mark II version of the swimming pool, the first having failed spectacularly while unsuccessfully weathering its first rainy season. I underestimated the sheer quantity of water that could be collected by the roof of the house and dumped overboard into my garden during an Angolan El Niño so the ground works were overwhelmed, the pool flooded with the dust, quickly transformed to mud, and other accumulated rubbish the erosive power of which left the structure of the pool so fatally compromised even the house foundations were threatened. I was left with no alternative but to dig the whole lot out and start again and quickly too lest the master bedroom changed its address in favour of the sink hole that was once the deep end of the pool.

The Mark II version is miles better. All the hard and expensive lessons learned from the Mark I disaster were incorporated into its design. The walls and base are RPG proof solid reinforced concrete. The ground around it was left to settle through an entire rainy season and back filled and compacted as required. The ground was then covered in more reinforced concrete, its surface gently sloping away from the house and on to a new drain. Unlike the first one, the walls of this pool are now slightly higher than ground level and the wooden decking, once installed, will float over the ground allowing easy drainage.

The massive downpour today may have trashed a day’s hard graft but at least it proved that the design works and little Ju and I were also able to scoop up enough water in buckets to refill the water container, solving that problem as well.

It isn't Bloody Rain, it's Free Water...

Faced with little else to do, the day was now a write off, I went dripping inside and made a huge pot of tea while the family and crew dried off.

Not so long ago, a calamity like this, and I would have considered it as such, would really have stressed me out. I would probably have vented my frustration on anyone within range and become thoroughly unpopular, consigning myself to a self imposed and miserably lonely evening, selfishly ignoring the fact that this is only a swimming pool. I intend to float around in a hundred cubic metres of sparklingly clear water drinking ice cold Caipirinhas when the only running water many in this country will see is the seasonal deluge we had just experienced, a stinking diseased river of trash depositing its detritus over the few remaining belongings they have that weren't swept away along with their collapsed shacks.

In Europe, divorced as one could be from the harsh reality of life in a developing country, I suppose it is excusable to be more concerned with how one might pay for the latest plasma TV or which restaurant to visit that night while giving passing thought to the increased burden of taxes required to prosecute incomprehensible war but for me, right in the middle of a humanity struggling in a cruel sea like so many passengers left bewildered as their stricken vessel founders beneath their feet leaving little prospect of salvation in this world, such self centeredness is inexcusable.

So instead of bartering recriminations, we all sat around my dining table and while the rain did its damnable work outside, talked about our families, our hopes and aspirations. And drank tea.

Tomorrow the sun will shine and we will all pitch in to help those of the community who suffered. If I am still impatient to bob about drinking cocktails, there's always the bathtub.

Rather than lose a day, I became part of a reinforced community spirit.

Now that’s got to be worth a few lost sacks of cement.

A Great Escape

2010-10-15T01:52:00.030+01:00

I was enjoying a whisky in the bar at Belas Shopping this morning when an American strolled in.

He looked a bit lost so I helped him buy what he wanted from the bar. Not to say that Yanks are stupid but if you don’t speak Portuguese here, you’re stuffed. Turned out his ancestors came from this neck of the woods and he just wanted to get a feel for the ‘Old Country’.

When he said his ancestors came from this neck of the woods what he meant, and I understood, was that they were dragged kicking and screaming off their farms, linked together in chains and marched to the coast before being shipped to the New World and an uncertain future.

His ancestors at least, had obviously been blessed with both good fortune and dogged determination for the man now happily dividing a bottle of scotch with me presented a fine figure. Obviously highly intelligent and clad in expensive looking Chinos, a shirt the make of which I could not ascertain but doubt I could afford and I bet his loafers were genuine Gucci, this was the kind of guy you really did not want to introduce to your girlfriend. Even if he and she had behaved honourably, you’d know she’d never be satisfied in your company again. Compared to my artisan cotton, he was the silkiest of silks.

Apparently the security advice for the company to which he was providing consultancy services, a job he only took on because he wanted to see Angola, suggested that venturing further south than the southern suburbs and the only decent shopping centre in Luanda was to court horrible death.

He would hardly get a feel for the root of his existence standing in the plastic veneer and chrome plated pastiche of a Portuguese run bar in Luanda's only half decent shopping centre, so I jumped into his car and told his driver to head south to the Barra de Kwanza.

On the way we had a really good chat. It became clear that he had relocated to Texas and had bought a small place, about 5 million acres if I heard right. I confessed a love of sport fishing which, I pointed out, was excellent here. Animated now, after all, we were well below the label of the bottle of scotch I had liberated on his behalf from the bar, he explained that with his place being so close to the coast, he had been unable to resist a sportfisher. All fifty five, twin caterpillar powered brand new feet of it.

I am not easily abashed but I was pretty bloody subdued by the time we got to the Barro de Kwanza and my paltry 5 acres.

He was one of the nicest guys I have ever met. He said all the right things, could hold his booze and charmed the pants off everyone we met down at the village. He got his trip into the bush to see his real roots and wasn’t too proud to sink his expensively attired arse into the dirt when we sat in front of the Soba’s (village elder’s) house to pay our respects.

It is an old joke but I could not resist it. I showed him my humble slice of this earth and then said, ‘I bet it would take you a bit longer to show me around your place?’

‘Jeez.’ He replied, ‘It takes me all day to drive round it'

‘I had a car like that once’ I said.

So now that we had drifted onto the subject of cars and my love of them, especially classics, the Cool Dude said next time I went back to UK I should rent, instead of an overpriced modern from a Heathrow outlet, a real classic.

I, as an expatriate Englishman living in Africa, had shown an African American his roots in Angola and in return, he had pointed out where I could rent an English automotive classic.

I felt obliged to invite him home for dinner. Obliged is the wrong word. He was such an interesting guy I was willing to risk Marcia meeting him.

I can never fully appreciate what went through his mind when I showed him the slave museum, likely the place from which his ancestors caught their last glimpse of Africa, as desiccated a scene now as it must have been then. Or how he felt when he saw kids happily running around the village, an image of what life could have been like for him had Europeans not intervened.

Instead of thinly veiled prejudice, he rewarded me with the most refined company. His almost childlike curiosity and evident interest in his surroundings was infectious.

He flies tomorrow and had to get back to town meaning dinner was out of the question. So he didn't get to meet Marcia after all. Perhaps just as well.

I looked up the classic car hire company he suggested and was impressed. It may seem trite to finish like this but, if the coolest man in the world says this is where you should hire stylish wheels in UK, then next time I am there, I will definitely give them a try.

http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/

Belize, 12th May 1984

2010-10-05T13:38:00.004+01:00

Curacol Ruins Expedition, Cooma Cairn, Mayan Mountains

Dressed in combats, it's hardly surprising that soldiers in the bush are sometimes hard to spot so I took to wearing a Panama hat. That way if shot by one of my own blokes, I would die at least with the knowledge the act was deliberate.

Citroën Survolt

2010-09-30T03:23:00.046+01:00

I think a lot of us are bemused by the slavish adherence of the UK to the international agreements that every other signatory routinely ignores.

We happily sacrifice a wildly disproportionate portion of the Met’s annual budget to track down and repatriate some well settled and productive poor sod just because in his country of origin, the police have suddenly realised that ten years ago he was given a suspended sentence for not paying off a two hundred Zloty bank loan quick enough and therefore should not have travelled. The EU has even dished out an official warning to UK that we are not to deny illegal immigrants access to state benefits most of whom arrive via France, a country busy rounding up all its Gipsies and sending them back to Romania as an encouragement to the rest of them of every nationality who escape the cursory dragnet to hurry up and sneak through the Channel Tunnel to UK and certain security. The United States have made it abundantly clear that the Extradition Treaty is purely one way. We are, by the admission of our own leaders, the junior partner in world affairs.

You have to hand it to the French. Like cheeky children, they are constantly caught out. They are about to try their ex president for corruption but having shoulders like greased Champagne bottles, will shrug it all off with ease leaving the rest of the world charmed by their inherent style and above all, bare faced sang froid.

Unlike the English, and it was an Englishman who coined the phrase, they realise that rules, in this case those of the EU and pretty much the rest of the world, are for the guidance of wise men and the adherence of fools. The French have decided that they are nobody’s fool. They will happily sign any accord but if, in the end, it turns out not to be to the benefit of La Belle France, they’ll ignore it and refuse to be intimidated.

Bentley are recalling cars due to concerns in the US that the iconic Flying B's on their bonnets may fail to retract automatically in the event of a collision, potentially causing injury to pedestrians. Let's ignore for a moment that if hit by a Bentley the Flying B atop the radiator would only be the first of the last, much heavier and ultimately lethally destructive automotive components to pass through one's intimate orbit, and consider instead that in the face of the litigious environment the 'no win, no fee' lawyers created, Citroën, no doubt reassured by Gallic shrugs half obscured in the smoky environment of their legal department, have had the courage to produce a 160 mph, 300 BHP, £1.5 million ankle slicer.

Powered by an all but silent electric motor on each wheel, you wouldn't even hear it arriving faster than the speed of sound as you were still halfway across the road to the pub and unexpectedly footloose, chipped through a very crisp 21st Century grill. The remaining parts of your suddenly denuded torso might, as they bounce off the windscreen before being propelled into oblivion, catch a glimpse of a supremely stylish and well appointed interior enclosing a svelte Frenchman who couldn't really give a damn because unlike in UK, he enjoys affordable insurance.

Good old Citroën. I love French cars, especially now that they are pushing the design envelope again and I have to confess a sneaking admiration for the French in general.

In UK, if you trip over an electric flex at work, you sue for compensation and HSE will spend millions of taxpayer's money trying to prove the architect put the socket in the wrong place, bankrupting him in the process and putting a hundred or so people out of work.

In France they’ll give you a Gauloise cigarette to suck on to ease the immediate pain before sacking you for being evidently too visually impaired to perform the function for which you once drew your salary.

The odds, or volts it would appear, are charged heavily in favour of the French.

Airport Camp Accommodation

2010-09-28T16:59:00.002+01:00

And the lads complain about the standards of barrack accommodation now...

Cozumel

2010-09-28T16:39:00.001+01:00

Belize 1985

2010-09-28T16:14:00.003+01:00

Those ex colleagues of mine reading this, I would be grateful if we could put names to faces.

Of Rats and Humans

2010-09-27T20:42:00.042+01:00

So termites are cockroaches after all?

Both give me a headache. If it isn't termites constructing red muddy tunnels up my lounge walls made with the mastigated paste of my ever depleted wooden floors it is cockroaches running across my desk and scurrying hither and thither in every drawer. I'll warrant I use a case of Shelltox every week holding the bastards at bay.

And then there are the African Field Mice which, I recently learnt, carry a much more lethal cargo than Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus (I haven't a clue what that is but it sounds awful) but also Arenaviruses which cause haemorrhagic fever. I know what that is and it is definitely awful but although messy for relatives who have to clean up afterwards, is mercifully quick for the victims.

The house isn't exactly infested with these little bleeders but it isn't uncommon for me to see one or two flit across the lounge floor while I am watching TV late at night and yesterday, when I dug into the rarely accessed drawer containing what silver cutlery I have left, I was dismayed to discover a nest they had made of the felt pockets containing my best eating irons.

A woman not too far from here fell sick with flu like symptoms and deteriorated so rapidly that an air ambulance from South Africa was ordered (clearly she had more money than our average neighbour). Sadly she died but tragically so did the attending ambulance paramedic and the nurse who accompanied her. All down to mice which are apparently being smuggled into UK as 'pocket pets'.

While scouring what is left of the countryside around my house for interesting beasties and seeds to send to the Natural History Museum in London, Dominic discovered four emaciated and dehydrated feral kittens and brought them home.

Marcia caught us feeding them with syringes full of milk and went mad.

Cats, apparently, kill every under five year old here because of the lethal allergies they provoke. These deaths clearly having nothing at all to do with flea and virus ridden mice, polluted water, cockroaches, flies bloated on rotting rubbish and effluent, termites, mosquitoes and every other evil beastie that infest every household and liberally dispense often lethal ailments with every multi footfall, defecation or bite.

I made the very serious mistake of presenting to Marcia my contention that Englishmen, ardent lovers of dogs and cats, a race of human beings not only allowing the animals they domesticated and trained into their close orbit but the intimacy of their beds as well, succeeded in demolishing the rest of the world, enslaving and exploiting notably Marcia's ailing ancestors, as conclusive evidence of the efficacy of something as simple as a decent mouse catcher in the house. As a result, it is me that is now occupying the vacant cattery while Marcia reclines luxuriously, and in splendid solitude, under a German manufactured eiderdown.

I love Marcia dearly but every now and then I am reminded that she is Angolan and I am English so we are occasionally about four thousand miles and a century or so apart. Rather than argue with her, and since I am kipping in the yard (at best the sofa), I will feed our chickens and geese and resist the temptation to talk to her about Avian Flu.

Buffer Hole Resort, Belize 1984

2010-09-27T17:32:00.003+01:00

A high class resort then.

As soldiers, we weren't too bothered about the ban on litter and guns, it was the ban on coolboxes of booze and indecent behaviour that put us off... They are the BIG No's evidently so you may have to click and enlarge the photo.

78 Force Ordnance Company Belize 1984

2010-09-27T16:18:00.003+01:00

I am front row, fifth from the right, smirking because Captain Allan Inions to my right has just suggested, not so sotto voce, that the man behind the camera on this very hot day might like to effing well get on with it.

Somewhere in that lineup must be Cpl Callahan. When we all played cricket, I would be put into bat first. Callahan would bowl me out, every time, with a full toss and then I would score for the rest of the match.

Perceptions of Angola

2010-09-16T23:45:00.015+01:00

We are all aware that web browsers seem to know where our computers are in the world (or at least the IP address of our internet service providers), and can then feed irritating region specific adverts onto our screens.

Anywhere else in the world, typically, we would be offered a selection of beauties just gagging to meet us (we have all seen these adverts: Angola Babe aged 21, apparently living next door, who is invariably Caucasian and if she walked the streets of Angola dressed the way she appears in her photo would have no need to resort to an internet dating site to attract mates but rather hire bodyguards to beat them off), and other adverts rather conveniently informing us that free romantic weekends away for two in some Michelin starred hotel are only a few mouse clicks away, or those from anonymous institutions suggesting that handing over our life’s savings would guarantee instant financial security.

So what does the Big Brother lucky dip offer us in Angola?

Ads by Google

Bulletproof Vehicles
Learn about our superior protection
Get an armored car in Angola today.
www.armormax.com

I have never had any problems spending my own money so can't see the point in paying someone else to help me. I have a girlfriend and she seems to manage on that score without charging me extra. So I definitely prefer the free romantic weekend and am happy to take my chances getting there.

Sadly, I think it is teenagers on their way to London schools who need Armormax's services more than I do. Or perhaps that is just my perception of UK.

Floridita Provisional Menu

2010-09-15T23:31:00.014+01:00

The opening day for Floridita is still over the horizon but I am busy, with the help of a friend of mine in Australia, putting together the Floridita website. I want to include the menu and links to recipes. When I light the burners for the first time, I want to simultaneously go on line.

The menu relies heavily on locally available produce, both out of necessity and a desire of mine to become a local food hero. If you come all this way, do you really want a burger and chips or would you prefer the fresh produce you know was hauled out of the sea by artisan fisherman, was dispatched at dawn by the discharge from an ancient Baikal or dug out of the ground and rinsed clean the day you eat it?

I will flip you a burger if you insist but shan't be particularly impressed.

Entrées:

 Prawns and Mabanga (local clams), poached in a fresh coriander, garlic and gindungo (local hot pepper) spiced coconut cream sauce (mild), on a bed of fresh watercress with sliced sweet fruit of the season. Apart from the fruit garnish, a warm dish.

 Prawns on a bed of sliced avocado, shredded salad leaves, baby tomatoes with a rich cocktail dressing. A cold dish.

 Spring rolls with sweet & sour and spicy dips

 Liver paté, toast, butter

 Sliced Presunto (cured smoked ham) served with sliced honey melon

 Lagosta (Steamed or grilled Lobster)

 Carangueijo de Namibe (Steamed Namibe Crab; small, sweet and full of flavour)

Soups

 Spicy Fish with sliced spring onion, lemon grass, tomato and cayenne.

 Cream of Butternut.

 Sopa de Feijao (bean soup, very popular here)

Main Courses

 Chicken Curry, steamed rice, sliced Mango or Pineapple, Minted Yoghurt on the side.

 Chicken Satay, steamed rice, mixed salad

 Fried Chicken drumsticks and thighs served with chips and mixed salad.

 Charcoal grilled Steak with herb butter, black bean sauce, fried egg, steamed rice, chips, mixed salad (they call it Bife a Portuguesa here).

 Chilli con Carne with steamed rice and mixed salad.

 Lasagne with a mixed salad.

 Guinea Fowl in a rich red wine sauce, with späetzle, red cabbage and cucumber dill salad.

 Forest Buffalo filet medallions served with a cream mushroom sauce, spaetzle and red cabbage.

 Tagliatelli Carbonara, fresh green salad

 Poached fish of the day with butter, steamed potatoes, green beans/steamed asparagus with sauce hollandaise

 Fish of the day poached in fresh coriander flavoured Coconut milk sauce, steamed rice, mixed salad.

 Garouper Grelhado (grilled Grouper filets), lemon butter sauce, chips or boiled potatoes, mixed green salad.

 Fried fish filet, steamed baby potatoes, watercress salad with natural yoghurt sauce.

 Choco Grelhada (grilled squid), steamed potatoes, green salad, onion and parsley flavoured olive oil and vinegar dressing.

 Bacalhao com natas (salted, dried cod that has been soaked for 24 hours before being shredded and braised in cream and other select ingredients, a huge favourite in Angola and I love it too).

 Chicken and mushroom pie, green beans, mashed potatoes and a rich gravy.

Desserts

 Flambeéd Fruits of the season with vanilla ice cream and cream

 Fruit salad made with fresh fruits of the season, with or without vanilla ice cream

 Pudim flan (Crème Caramel)

 Ananas (pineapple) fried in brown sugar and butter with a dash of dark rum, coconut cream sauce and ice cream.

 Crepes suzette, flavoured with mountain honey and lemon

 Barbas de Camelo (a dessert made of layered, powdered Marie biscuits, a custard type sauce made with eggs and condensed milk and cream. The literal translation is Camel Spit. Tastes delicious though).

 Bananas fritas with hot cinnamon flavoured buttered mountain honey.

I realise that I should have posted this on my other blog, 'Cooking in the Front Line' but having ignored it for so long, no-one is reading it anymore. What I will do now is cook everything on this menu and, apart from the boring chicken or steak and chips dishes, photograph the meals under preparation and post the menus over at the other blog.

Feedback, no pun intended, gratefully received.

Addendum

It would appear that an 'All Day Breakfast' is in demand. I shall have to call it the 'Fisherman's Breakfast' to remain in keeping with the theme of Floridita but it will consist of any, or all of the following:

Bacon, Eggs fried or scrambled, baked beans, South African Boerwors (best sausages in the world), black pudding, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, devilled kidneys, onion gravy, roasted sliced normal and sweet potatoes, honey roasted carrots and parsnips, sweet and spicy chutney, English mustard, fresh bread, fried bread, ordinary toast, mountain honey (Americans pour honey on their bacon not just their toast, a taste I too have acquired, witness my expanding girth), various other jams, natural home made yoghurt, coffee, tea, fruit juice, a selection of cereals, fresh milk and anything else you want that I might have in my fridges or behind the bar. Like a beer to wash that lot down.

My father, and he should know because that's what he died of, used to call such a feast a heart attack on a plate. But you ask the golfing crew that pile round my house most weekends for a post Golfista 'snack', what they think of the brunch I knock up.

Angolan Common or Garden Beasties...

2010-09-07T13:24:00.023+01:00

Over on the Suburban Bushwacker, SBW has been teasing us with his 'identify the beasty' quiz, awarding solid gold bushwacker stars to the first to come up with a positive ID.

I was the first, not by much I admit, to get his latest one correct and because, as he then realised, it was pretty damn easy (it being a common garden spider, Araneus diadematus), the miserable sod awarded me and the other fine blogger who got it right, Murphyfish (who quite correctly described the roughy toughy Suburban Bushwacker as 'A big girl's blouse) a measly two stars each. Tight bastard.

Still, it got me thinking about the beasties we encounter in my garden every now and then so I trawled through the photo album to find any my son may have photographed and having given it a full five minutes of effort, have come up with three.

This spider made its home amongst the rebar of the new pool. They are very common and have a good six inch span. Only two Hippo points for this one.

Common in all Angolan gardens...

A couple of points for this one too. We all know it is a viper, but which kind?

The dog savaged it so I finished it off with a rock.

I can't sympathise with all you yoghurt knitting tree huggers out there. It was in my yard which, in common with the neighbourhood, is usually full of kids. I would sooner stamp on a thousand poisonous snakes than see one child suffer a limb amputation or death because of one of these beasties. It is reported that sharks are an endangered species now. Only endangered? I shall have to go out and gaff a few more. Sharks do have their uses, though. Like crocodile skulls, their jaws make impressive ornaments. And in case the fluffy bunny lovers reading this don't hate me enough already, yes, I used to shoot foxes on my ex Father-in-law's farm... with a model 586 Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum pistol or my 30-06 Remington 700BDL rifle. Overkill I know, but after all, we can't have the poor little verminous swine suffering now, can we?

I realise that after being pounded like this, a positive ID is more likely to come from a Forensic Pathologist than a Naturalist...

And now, a full five stars for identifying this one, an insect with dragon's wings. When threatened, it made a noise like a badly maintained chainsaw flinging out these black apppendages. Unlike the woosie SBW, I have given you an idea of scale. Assuming, that is, you all appreciate the average size of a human head...

I have no idea what this is so we will need some references to support any identification...

Addendum:

I have just been contacted by the world’s leading authority on Phasmids (clue) regarding the last of the beasties in the above post.

He has informed me that the beastie in question is a good match for one recorded in 1889 described from a single female collected from Golungo Alto in 1856. Apart from brief details of that record, nothing has been published since and the archive containing these records in Lisbon was destroyed by fire.

It is a pity that the only photograph the world now has of one of these incredibly rare and undocumented specimens has my ugly face as a backdrop.

Dominic will be thrilled to learn he has discovered something so rare and every penny I spent on bringing in his microscope and other paraphernalia to encourage his naturalist instincts was well worth it.

I shall now task us with the self imposed duty of acquiring more specimens and get them back to the good Professor of Beasties back in UK. Not that easy, I suspect as I have been here sixteen years and this is the only one I have seen. Still, instead of walking aimlessly around the countryside together in the pursuit of fresh air, now at least Dominic and I will have a motive for our perambulations.

Given its astonishing rarity, I think I need to award at least ten gold stars and a genuine Angolan carving of the ‘Pensador’, sent to the address of choice to anyone who can positively ID this one.

The professor was kind enough to be discreet and not spoil our fun but he has earned his five gold stars which he may cash in for a free stay at Floridita and an entomological field trip of Quissama National park. That place is crawling with beasties and I am terribly keen to find out how many are undocumented.

In UK, a recent lengthy experiment established that preventing children from raising their hands in class and rewarding good performance with days out at a funfair encouraged children to learn twice as fast. Imagine the concentration on the task in hand of a young lad aware that he might have a hitherto unknown beastie named after him?

Hopefully in the future he may be able to retort to an enquiry from a University entrance board as to his poorish A level results by saying, 'Granted, but at least I did spend weeks in the bush, discovered and together with the Professor, described and categorised 'Beastialis Dominicus Australis'.

Kitchens. Best place for kids...

2010-09-03T23:09:00.028+01:00

I realise they should be wearing flourescent jackets, flame proof overalls, safety goggles, bone domes and chain mail gloves...

Keeping my extended family busy does require a little ingenuity so right now they are all making chicken and mushroom pies.

Dead easy. I just throw out a couple of cutting boards, give the kids some very sharp knives and various piles of things to chop. Onions, garlic, sweet peppers, mushrooms and a pre boiled chicken from which they must strip the flesh. Each ingredient, minus severed finger tips, must go into individual bowls prior to assembling the dish and everything else must be washed, wiped, cleaned or bound with bandages as necessary.

Fry the ingredients off, add a tablespoonful of flour and then the stock from the boiling of the chicken before spooning the mixture into ramekins. Then the fun really starts. Roll out the pastry, cut the lids and naturally, I want every dish to have a design personal to the family member to whom it is destined, only then into the oven. Keeps 'em busy for hours!

Anyway, from left to right in the photo: Dominic (11), Christina (13) and Ju (10) Not in the photo are Alex (2), Mauro (7) and of course Marcia (29). I (51) am behind the camera lens.

Mauro was a bit of a hard case to crack when he arrived. He would only eat a tiny portion of boiled rice. The kid was so skinny he had to run around in the shower to get wet and, as a precautionary measure, I would put the plug in the bath in case I lost him down the drain. A year after his arrival at Fort Gowans he is now making his own pies and has just scoffed a whole one.

Ju was the little girl who lost her Mum and arrived a very traumatised little kid scared out of her wits. Now I think she is Marcia's Second-in-Command, bossy little minx!

Christina is calm and sensible beyond her years and I am not sure how I would cope without her. The neighbours think I have a capacity to mete out real violence if provoked, an impression I do little to dilute now that an unhealthy interest in her has been aroused in the local lads.

Alexander loves the girls who in turn dote on him, and fights constantly with Mauro so I guess it is situation normal.

Dominic is sitting next to me as I write having swiped Marcia's pie, his second, which he is chucking down his neck as fast as he can choke it down. He felt guilty about nicking her dinner but since she wasn't that hungry and, as I pointed out, we have plenty of puff pastry left so can make her another tomorrow, he is going for it. Nice to see the boy eat so well. If you can interest children in preparing and cooking food, they will invariably devour the fruit of their own labour without the dissent normally associated with half a dozen highly individual and picky eaters.

One of the last of Dominic's baby teeth, a molar, has just fallen out. He decided it should be sterilised so dropped it into my whisky glass. He loves his little tricks. He is fond of doctoring my cigarettes with match heads tightly wrapped in tin foil so that they explode when I smoke them.

Having complained that the hole in his gum once housing the tooth now soaking in my whisky was hurting like hell, I suggested he rubbed neat salt into it.

'Honestly Dad?'

'Yes Son'

Vengeance is sweet.

Deep Fried Beer - Only in Texas!

2010-09-01T09:17:00.006+01:00

Patent Pending...

Get a gutful of this

Texan inventor Mark Zable has, after three year's work, apparently come up with a recipe for deep frying beer while maintaining its alcoholic content.

First we couldn't Drink and Drive, now we can't Eat and Drive.

Picture the Metropolitan Police canteen:

Detective Chief Superintendant: 'I smell beer. Is anyone drinking on duty?'

Coppers: 'No Sir, we're just having a spot of breakfast...'

I mustn't be mean to the Met, they are the best Police Force money can buy.

Dominic's Grand Day Out

2010-08-24T17:15:00.019+01:00

No father can spend enough time with his son and it is even harder for a bloke estranged from the lad's mother so any day out with The Boy is A Grand Day Out.

Add to the mix a sportfisher and the pretty, fertile waters of the Atlantic and such a day becomes truly memorable.

Put your back into it, Son

We headed straight out to the blue rigged for Billfish but youthful impatience prevailed and after an hour or so we headed back in and trolled across the mouth of the estuary. It wasn't long before Dominic was in.

A wee tiddly Dorado. It went back over the side but at least it was a start

Pretty soon, Dominic was busy.

This one we couldn't resist having a few slices off, drenched with lemon juice. Don't tell me you don't take a lemon with you when you go fishing...

Nothing big this trip but that wasn't the point. It was a boy and his father messing about on the water together. There was just enough action to make his arms ache a bit and remind him where his Dad was heading.

Coming back in to the Barra de Kwanza

My land is the neighbouring property. It's a building site at the moment but pretty soon it will look as good as this.

Something to aspire to

The other boat stayed out in the deep and by mid afternoon, their patience had been rewarded.

That's a few kilos...

...Dominic just had to check them out

Being his father's son, Dominic is pretty competitive so he couldn't resist inspecting the catch of the other boat. I really hoped that his wonderful day out hadn't been tarnished by the thought of his haul being insignificant by comparison. I needn't have worried. 'Dourado, all of them', he announced, 'why do people kill things they aren't going to eat?'

Bloody good point. Once I have a couple of decent Dourado the rest go back over the side or, if they are hell bent on committing suicide, I move somewhere else. If anyone out there has a killer recipe for a fish that to me tastes like cotton wool soaked in mud, I would love to hear from you.

Good. Dominic looks pleased with himself

Dominic's haul though, was ideal. A decent variety. Just clean and fillet, braise in coconut milk, fresh coriander, lemon grass, a hint of hot peppers, a pinch of ground turmeric, coriander and cardamon, a thinly sliced tomato for garnish and serve over boiled rice. With good, fresh ingredients, simple stupid is always the best.

Dominic can not only catch fish, he can prepare and serve them beautifully. Good job too because pretty soon he and his lttle brother Alex are going to have a place like this:

Soon, Son. Very soon...

Charity Begins at Home...So Does Discipline.

2010-08-10T16:30:00.073+01:00

I taught my son Dominic to ride a motorcycle when he was four and tried, as much as possible, to give him as long a leash as I dared in the hope he would develop at an early age a sense of responsibility which, largely, he has.

Like all growing boys, though, he has on occasion muddied the distinction between what strictly speaking is right, and that which to us in the know is definitely wrong; youthful curiosity and sheer mischief backing him up on the sticky wicket of feeble excuses and inevitable retribution.

Like the time he was pinched by the local police driving my Range Rover, aged nine.

Or the time, wishing to prove that eggs can bounce, he raided the neighbour's hen coop and stole all her eggs to augment those he and his friend had already emptied from my fridge in a continuing and ultimately futile attempt to get eggs to ricochet off sun baked African soil.

He doesn't ricochet too well off hard sunbaked soil either but he'll learn not to go nuts on his 'bike. He does look sorry for himself, though, doesn't he?

As a kid if I stepped out of line, or merely into the sights of unbridled frustration, I would get a thrashing with the length of bamboo my mother used to stuff the laundry down into her top loading washing machine. With the pain and, moreover, the indelible impression of fear, humiliation and sense of betrayal this branded on my soul (and sore bum), I swore I would never lay a hand on any of my children. And I never have.

This does give me a problem, though. Sometimes, all kids, especially boys, get up to things which push even the most reasonable adult over the edge; beating the little beggar a welcome salve, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’, that sort of thing. Crude retribution eliciting only hatred and deceit rather than the respect the thrashing demanded.

I live in Angola, a country half the size of Europe but with a population only half the size of London so the chances of him hitting anything were fairly remote but, nevertheless, the car incident did warrant a stern talking to, an explanation of the folly of his actions, my disappointment that he would try something like that without asking me first. Deep down I knew he could drive but what if something unexpected had happened? An out-of-control water tanker hurtling down the hill or, God forbid, a toddler running across the road after a ball. He was only going around the block, his first solo so to speak. He now realises the awful anguish and grief he could have caused if his inexperience had allowed him to lose control of two tonnes of V8 powered Solihull steel. He accepts, if he wants to drive, I can take him somewhere safe so he can practice. By the time he is legal, he should be a lot more mature than the average first timer.

See? He knows what he is doing.

The ‘Eggscapade’ was a little trickier. This time he had caused loss to another citizen, a now extremely irate citizen. When kids hide behind you and cling to your legs, you know they have been up to something.

The eggs smeared along the road represented future broilers, the sale of which provided income for the plaintiff, a dear old lady. She was also our neighbour, part of a community to which we all belonged. Naturally, once she had confirmed that the bandits responsible were my son and his friend, she had every right to call the police. Instead, she accepted a heartfelt apology from Dominic. Dominic's friend, I noticed with dismay, was too chicken to admit his role in the crime.

Now this was to me a heinous offence. I replaced the lost eggs with all the fowl from my own stock, depriving us of eggs for the forseeable future, but Dominic could not possibly get off with something as light as an albeit honourable confession and apology. After I smoothed ruffled feathers, I went back inside to discover the boys calmly watching Disney Channel as if nothing had happened. A sort of 'Let Dad sort it out' attitude. A beating was surely the only option.

And this is where a tight community identity comes in. Instead of whipping the delinquent within an inch of his life, I went to see another of my neighbours, the Commander of the Presidential Guard, and explained the situation to him. He was as one of the leaders of our community, all for a quick solution. Justice had to be seen to be done without invoking the blunt instrument of the law. The Community would sort its own problems out.

I went home and told the boys that despite my best efforts, the Egg Lady was going to call the police. That would mean they would be arrested and taken to the local police station and would probably have to spend at least a night there until their case was heard by a magistrate the next day. I would try to provide them some clean drinking water, maybe even a bit of food but God knows what the punishment handed down would be as, I couldn’t help pointing out, everyone hates thieves here.

Well familiar with the local gaol, a Dickensian horror they passed every day on the way to school, both boys had involuntary bowel movements and went pale as sheets.

Looking suitably ashen, as a concerned father should under such circumstances, I told the boys to take their last bath in freedom and dress in clean clothes. In the meantime, I said, I would try to work something out.

While they were trembling in the shower, I nipped back to Colonel Henriques' place where he gave me a tumbler of scotch and introduced me to the 'Military Police' (some of his men dressed up for the part) so we could brief them.

By the time I got home the boys were spruced up and perched on the edge of the sofa clutching school bags stuffed with a pathetic selection of essential belongings looking as if they were about to faint. After all, with less than an hour's notice of being banged up for life, what comforts would you pack? As far as they were concerned, this was far more pertinent and frighteningly more immediate than idle supposition on Desert Island Disks.

I asked Dominic if his friend wanted to call his father.

'He hasn't got one' Dominic said simply.

Turns out the boy is the illegitimate offspring of a long since absent expatriate. His Mother then? No good either. He was too scared to admit to his mother he'd been up to mischief so had instead resigned himself to his fate. How awful that a little lad would rather face certain incarceration in preference to calling on his own mother for help, trusting instead a friend’s father, a man now guilty of cruel deception. Again I was ready to wilt; the frantic looks of hope, the utter faith in me, that I would sort this one out and make it all go away. It was heartrending. And all because of a bunch of eggs.

'OK boys', I told them, 'this neighbourhood being under military jurisdiction, I have managed to persuade the Egg Lady to allow you to be dealt with by the Military Police, not the Civil Police so you boys sit tight, they are on their way. At least this way, if you do have to spend a night in jail, Col H can ensure you don’t get beaten and I can bring you food. When they come, please don't lie, you are just going to have to accept what's coming'

In due course, the 'Military Police' arrived. Goodness, they deserved Oscars, they were brilliant. They waved handcuffs at the boys, sat them down at my dining table and took full statements. Col H put in another Academy Award winning performance speaking up on their behalf and stating that although I was a foreigner, I was a solid member of the community (how I managed to keep a straight face I have no idea).

The boys were told they could stay under house arrest in my charge but would have to attend a Military Court Martial the following day, a tribunal populated by the community and held at Col H's place. Released from the threat of a mosquito ridden cell, I told them to go to bed.

They never slept a wink. Dominic's friend did a lot of crying and I could tell that Dominic was scared because his voice was trembling while he comforted him. I know all this because I couldn't sleep either, instead standing outside their room all night wondering if I was taking things too far. Both boys were essentially decent. I liked Dominic’s friend and now understood why he was so desperately insecure. With no Dad and a mother he was too scared to call, he must have died a thousand deaths.

I firmly believe that it is terribly hard for just one parent to bring up a well adjusted child so am immensely impressed by those who succeed and can understand, though not condone, the remainder who perhaps overwhelmed, allow frustration, even desperation to overcome good judgement. Children need both parents. Death is occasionally a tragic check to this and abuse invokes essential institutional separation but under normal circumstances, fathers and mothers are essential.

Imagine, though, growing up knowing your father couldn’t even be bothered. As far as this little lad, Dominic's friend, the poor little Tike sweating in a strange bed in a strange house was concerned, in his father's eyes he didn't exist. And now he was going to jail. Aged ten.

Sometimes, the reasons for abandoning a child are economic and I have embraced two young children into my family for that very reason. You would have to have a heart colder and harder than Dartmoor granite in winter to turn a child in such need away from the warmth of your hearth, the bounty of your table or, more importantly, the sense of belonging a family environment brings in preference to any material desire you may have entertained. Parents who divorce yet cannot reconcile their often acrimonious differences in favour of harmony when it comes to decisions regarding their children are just as selfish.

I felt very sorry for Dominic’s friend but realised that no purpose would be served if I let Dominic off scot free just because his friend, through no fault of his own, lacked the parental guidance all young kids need from an early age. The theft of a bunch of eggs may seem chicken feed to those accustomed to knife wielding teenage Hoodies terrorising old pensioners and stabbing each other to death outside Tesco’s but it is a worrying start. If they get away with minor offences now, who knows what they will be up to in five year’s time? Swift retribution for the theft of something as minor as eggs, right now, while they are still young and impressionable, could just be the opportunity to instil a respect for fellow citizens and their property.

Once, as a very young man, I went skiing in the southern Bavarian Alps. Apré Ski, walking through forests glittering under their burden of snow bathed in the light of a full moon and with a gutful of locally brewed beer, I was really impressed with the cleared pathways and routes well posted with hand carved wooden signs screwed to the trees. I just had to have one as a souvenir.

When I got back to my Grandparent’s place in the Black Forest, my Grandfather noticed the trophy as I unpacked and asked me how I had acquired it. I could see he wasn’t impressed.

He explained to me how the local community funded such improvements by themselves, not relying on government funds but doing it solely to improve their own lot. How each citizen, blessed with his own particular skills, gave freely his labour for the benefit of the community as a whole. A sort of ‘Cameron style Big Community’ but executed with Teutonic efficiency. He didn’t shout at me, or give me the belting I deserved. That wasn’t his style. He had painted a picture in my mind, a utopia that ungrateful Oiks like me destroyed. The man was possessed with a vast intellect. He did not need to resort to something as vulgar as violence.

Once, I admit, he gave me a boot in the pants, launching me out of his office and into the corridor because I couldn’t keep my loud gob shut while he was receiving a phone call but that was about it when it came to battering kids as far as he was concerned. There was the time he shouted at Granny in front of us, an event so exclusive, it had us kids glued wide eyed to the sofa, all because I had eaten all the marzipan balls from Granny’s not-so-secret hiding place and then been sick as a result. But he cooled down immediately when she calmly explained that in England, they did not have anything as civilised or decadent as Lübecker confectionary and I had merely been showing good taste. So long as Germany won at something, he was happy and I continued to be awed by my Grandmother’s sange froid and eloquence under fire.

Realising that the frosty paradise I had so recently enjoyed was the fruit of altruism, a community spirit sadly now alien to us in UK, I felt terrible. Even worse was knowing I had disappointed my grandfather.

When the war started, he was studying to be an architect in Berlin, following in the footsteps of a father who had designed many of the great buildings in that magnificent city. At nineteen, instead of calculating loads and stresses, he did his part to squeeze the British out of Dunkirk (he once showed us the mile marker in France behind which, gut shot, he had crawled for cover), before being posted to the Eastern front. His war ended not in that desperate spring of 1945, when the German high command thankfully threw in the towel ending a decade of tyranny, but in 1947 when after two year’s of evading capture by the Soviets, he led what was left of his unit south through the Balkans and then north back through Austria and onwards towards his beloved Berlin. The indescribable horrors he witnessed left him with a polarised view of right and wrong and a clear sense of the futility of unbridled violence as a solution. He was highly decorated but his medals, including an Iron Cross, remained ignored except by me, in the bottom drawer of his desk.

He went on to design the Mercedes factory in Sindelfingen near Stuttgart (or ‘Daimler Werks’ as the old hands who’d been bombed to stupefaction during the war insisted on calling it). As a kid, I and my brothers had free reign and used to run through the factory and had loads of lifts in the brand new cars leaving the production line to the railway sidings from which the very best of German automotive engineering departed to their new owners all over the world. We had the authority of our grandfather but we still addressed the labourers as ‘Sir’ and did as we were told.

Crawling with shame, I offered to send the sign back but, as he pointed out, it now bore the scars of having been brutally torn from the tree that had supported it. Once a faithful indicator of safe passage home for travellers lost in an unforgiving winter landscape, now rendered useless by my vandalism. How many innocent people had died a cold, lonely death on my account? I would willingly have perished on the spot but youthful vigour let me down, my lungs refused to stop breathing and my heart continued to beat inexorably. Instead of blessed oblivion, I was justly rewarded with a forehead dripping with perspiration under the cool gaze of a dispassionate observer upon whom, at the same age I was then, had been forced the privations and stark discipline of a Prussian military academy. No sympathy there then.

He reached for the phone on his desk and asked to be connected to Sonthofen Police Station. A few minutes later he handed me two addresses, one for the police chief and another for the Mayor of Sonthofen, the village I had so recently violated. He suggested, as he placed paper and pen on his desk, I might like to write them a letter. It took me all night. How many ways can you say Sorry? The next day, both letters went into the same envelope along with a cheque from my grandfather.

A few weeks later my grandfather called me into his study and gave me an unopened envelope. It was a reply from the Mayor of Sonthofen. In it the Mayor expressed his admiration for the courage needed to confess to such a misdemeanour, how pleased he was that I had enjoyed the beauty and hospitality of his town, and how fortunate I was to have a grandfather like Ernst Günther Diepenbrock von Borken.

I was still too young and stupid to work out whether the good fortune His Excellency the Mayor referred to was the family connection that may have just helped me avoid a custodial sentence or a genuine respect for the guidance given by a wise old sage to an adolescent moron. Sadly, my grandfather died before I could tell him that the penny had finally dropped.

It was only a stupid wooden sign. But the Mayor knew that it was the crime that was stupid, and that the subsequent apology and compensation was a family matter. My grandfather had made amends as well as making me bleed. I would never let him down again. I am sure that my grandfather, ‘Opa’ as I called him, suffered the same then as I was suffering now at the thought of the mental trauma I was inflicting on these boys but if, without beating me stupid, he gave me a lesson I would never forget, then these lads surely deserved a punishment no less refined.

The tribunal convened, the Egg Lady was allowed to explain to the court how her livelihood had been ruined by the two boys standing before her and how insulted and disappointed she felt by the invasion of her property, compounded with the knowledge that the culprits were members of the same community. She laid it on thicker than an omelette. The lads had their turn and expressed, with total humility, their guilt and resultant shame. From their demeanour, all that was missing were the executioner's blindfolds.

The decision of the court, delivered in the presence of the community, was that the boys would collect all the litter from the streets of the neighbourhood and clean all the weeds from the Egg Lady's property and that I, as the father of one of the boys and temporary guardian of the other, responsible, therefore, for their actions, would work alongside them and provide the transport to dispose of the rubbish.

It took us a whole weekend.

Dominic and his young brother Alexander. Eleven year's old and already Court-Martialed, surely a record?

Look at it this way. Dominic wasn't beaten. He had the wits scared out of him in such a way as to give him ample time to ponder the consequences of his actions. He had time to reflect on how badly he had damaged a poor old lady's ability to earn her living. He realised, as I worked alongside him in the hot sun under the eyes of indignant neighbours, the shame he had brought both upon himself and his family, notably his own father. When it was all over, the streets were clean, the Egg lady had a smart yard, and she had a new flock of good egg layers. And hopefully, there are two less bandits in the community.

Dominic has never stepped out of line since and recognises that I, as his father, am equally liable to censure for anything bad he gets up to. It may have been a bit of a cruel trick but I think it was worth it. If more parents accepted joint responsibility for the actions of their offspring and could, most importantly, call on the support of their communities to help nip such anti-social behaviour in the bud, then maybe all of us could enjoy a better society without the need for ASBO's, youth detention centres and no-go areas in our neighbourhoods. And Fathers would not have to thrash their sons.

Dominic’s friend seems to enjoy his visits here, in spite of his scare, and is turning into a pretty mean fisherman. His mother, who really loves him dearly I am sure, still cuts his food up for him. Imagine how she would react if she knew I was giving him a razor sharp fillet knife to cut up bait fish.

I think it would spoil the effect if I confessed my deception to the boys. Dominic is convinced that only my amazing influence, the powers that every real Dad has, saved them from jail. His friend thought it was so cool that Dom's dad would slave alongside them in the sun for the sake of family honour which included him, a case of while you are with me, you are part of the family too.

So now that I have a well behaved son, with the help of Amish Tom and the unwitting encouragement of Raschman and SBW, I am going to get Dominic a hunting bow so that together, father and son, and the young lad without a Dad, we can track down, kill and eat the feral pigs that have rooted up the garden around my restaurant. A sport allowing me to both further instil in the boys a sense of responsibility (and piss their respective mothers off), as well as letting me settle a personal score with the evil little truffle hunters reducing my herb gardens to ploughed mud.

Dominic and his Dad. It's a Man thing.

By the way, which of us as boys never got up to any mischief? As a youth, I was a pyromaniac and in my day, every school chemistry lab shelf was groaning under the weight of everything we needed to wreak havoc. Iodine crystals, 0.88 molar solution of Ammonia, Flowers of Sulphur, Salt Petre, Pure Carbon, Nitric acid and in the groundsman's shed, sacks of fertilizer. My Dad would have burst a blood vessel if he had discovered the amount of home made explosives being brewed under the roof of his own house.

Which is why I found this reminiscence, the link kindly provided by Amish Tom, so bloody funny…

Something-they-wont-learn-in-school

He's cool. Obviously he didn't get that from me.

Last of the Summer Logs

2010-07-28T23:38:00.041+01:00

Mummy, am I a Polar Bear?

Of course you are, darling, look at your fluffy white fur, just like me and Daddy!

But are you sure I am a Polar Bear?

I keep telling you, of course you are. Just look at your little black nose and sharp claws in your paws. Why do you keep asking?

Well, Mum, if I’m a Polar bear, why am I so fucking cold?

Most might imagine tropical Africa as a place with no seasons; cooling rain showers washing into fertile earth providing regular relief from a baking sun. Lightweight safari suits the norm for those in business, the rest happy with shorts and T-Shirts. Sundowners on the verandah every evening.

Maybe I have been here too long and my blood, now well diluted by alcohol and malaria is too thin to perform as successfully as it did in Europe: efficiently cooling or centrally heating my system according to need, albeit aided by a seasonal wardrobe and Pimm’s or Glühwein as required.

Here in Angola, we are in the middle of what they call the ‘Tempo de Frio’, or ‘Caximbo’, the literal translation of the latter being ‘pipe’ (the one you stuff tobacco in and smoke, not the fluid or gas type). Either way, the Cold Season.

Before I came to this continent, I had heard of dry and rainy seasons but never imagined a cold one. Indeed, during my first few years here I never noticed and was one of those startlingly pale individuals (obviously foreign and hailing from genuinely colder climes) that splashed about in the sea enjoying empty beaches while all the locals were huddled around charcoal braziers and wrapped in shawls. The kids used to chant ‘Russo, Russo’ at me, so rare the sight of anyone in Speedos at that time of year and a reflection of just how many Russian advisors, also presumably clad in Speedos and whiter than the sand they lay on, there were in Angola back then.

I was born in Berlin, where winter brought an arctic wind hurling itself westwards across the Steppes from the foothills of the Urals sawing everything in its path in half and summer, parched forests that would spontaneously combust, village ponds evaporating before one’s eyes. Only in spring and autumn would we feel we weren’t in an all out war with Nature.

I am still a little surprised, therefore, having once been accustomed to the extremes of a continental climate, I should now suffer under such a relatively insignificant seasonal temperature variation. I do not have a thermometer to hand but at four o’clock in the morning I can assure you, the pool is not covered in ice and there is no frost killing the garden plants, yet I wake up with teeth chattering in spite of all the blankets.

The onset of the cold season is heralded by a warning evening chill which encourages one to dig out the old pullover brought over from Europe ten year’s ago, the state of which when found brings the awful realisation that while we were lying on the beach, mice have been nesting in the wardrobe all summer. And then there is the thought that having buried myself in every duvet and blanket I can find, Marcia will get up during the night to heat Alexander’s milk and then defrost her feet on me.

When I designed my house, I had a particular feature in mind. The lounge and open plan kitchen (they call them ‘American' kitchens here, no doubt because the only exposure they get to the inside of an American home is a TV soap opera studio) were laid out so that this feature would be the focal point of a cosy family bolthole. Marcia back then thought I was mad and since I was away in Uganda at the time the house went up, told the builders not to bother.

I rather suspect she regrets that decision.

I have had to wait three years but I am going to install, where it should have been in the first place, a bloody great open fireplace.

I am too old to be motivated by the prospect of frolics in front of blazing logs so will be quite happy to lie on the preserved fur of some dead animal by myself, glass of scotch gently warmed by radiated heat and Caravanserai playing on the stereo but, I bet I won’t be alone for long.

Which reminds me, I must buy flea powder for the dogs.