|
A big cock |
The
internet is more down than up. Things
keep breaking (the well pump has just burnt out so I am busy stripping it and
an old pump to try and get one good pump going) and my blasted swollen leg will
not give up annoying me. I used to find
the time to write my posts in the wee small hours, usually tanked up to the
eyeballs. Now I am generally busy during
the day and go to bed knackered and early.
This, I am informed on good authority, is a healthy lifestyle.
Early this
morning Marcia asked me why African football teams never did so well in international
competition. I was just being handed the
keys to my fully restored Triumph Stag, on the hand stitched leather passenger
seat of which Kylie Minogue was working out how best to arrange her legs for
maximum effect, and now suddenly I was being dragged back to reality. It was a bastard of a way to wake up.
Since my
return I have been ever so slightly, just a teensy weeny bit guilty of
reminding Marcia what a shithole this place is, how useless everyone who lives
here is and how bloody corrupt everything is so thought, just for a change, I
might try a softer approach to filling this awful gap in her knowledge and lie.
‘African
countries do not have the population or infrastructure to support the large
number of well-populated leagues they have in Europe,’ I said. ‘African teams really do not have the local competition
or get the practice they need to compete at an international level,’ I
continued, ‘the only quality players they have are those who play in European
or South American club football.’ This
utter codswallop seemed to satisfy Marcia so I sloped off to the kitchen to
satisfy myself with a cup of tea.
Political interference and corruption along with a huge dose of selfish
arrogance rather than team spirit, I thought, that’s why African football teams
are crap. Mind you, the selfish arrogance bit applies just as well to England.
We turned on
BBC news in time to hear a breathless reporter quote a Cameroon Football
Association representative: "Recent
allegations of fraud around Cameroon 2014 Fifa World Cup three preliminary
games, especially Cameroon vs. Croatia, as well of the existence of seven bad
apples in our national team do not reflect the values and principles promoted
by our administration.”
It begs the
question, what’s left that does? But I
did not say anything to Marcia.
Last night I
briefed the new building crew chief. I
have kept my original Filipino carpenter but I have now sacked all of the old
crew bar him. I know I had their issues
sorted the day I arrived after hurrying back from UK but I lied to them as
well. I thought it best to get them back
to work and not stick them full of leaky holes but I could not allow them to
get away with trying it on with Marcia while I was away. It has taken me only a few weeks to find
another crew and this time I was not lying to the original team members at all
when I told them if they were still on my land by nightfall I would stick them
full of leaky holes.
Marcia’s
car was overheating more than when I left so it is not purely down to the
engine running lean. I still cannot
forgive Marcia for the artisan repair she allowed the Pork and Cheese mechanic
to effect, though, as the problem is a leaky radiator. It will cost me 400 bucks for a new one
(quite reasonable for Angola) so while I am at it, I might as well cut the old
fan off and replace all the bits damaged by the ‘repair’. My life would be much easier if I could find
a wrecked Jeep and pillage the parts from that.
It is a hell of sight easier to swap out an assembly rather than strip
and fix one. In UK (or anywhere else
civilized for that matter), you’d just by an exchange reconditioned part.
My one
week’s freedom in UK has spoiled me rather.
In Milton Keynes I was in a Sainsbury’s store bigger than the largest
(and only) shopping centre in Angola. It
didn’t just sell food, it sold everything.
I had gone in there not to buy food, oddly enough, but to buy an Amazon
gift voucher because that’s where Amazon.com said I could buy some. Since the Visa debit card on my Angolan Bank
was being laughed at in UK, Amazon gift vouchers were the only way, apart from
asking a friend to use his card and me refunding him in cash, I could make on
line purchases. The shop was so large
and I was so precarious on my pins, I asked an assistant for help locating them
to save unnecessary walking. In other
words, like all good explorers I procured for myself the services of a native
guide. On the way we passed a rank of
fantastically futuristic looking devices lined up on display. I gave up trying to work out what they were (I
considered water filtration devices or pumps but remained unconvinced) so asked
my guide.
‘They’re
vacuum cleaners,’ he said, his voice as flat as his expression.
In Angola,
the fastest I travel is about 80 Kph.
That’s a maximum. Usually it is
about walking pace in traffic. Any
faster than that and I start to get very nervous. Now this might surprise some people,
especially those who tried to keep up with me in Germany when I was stuffing
sports cars or motorcycles through the scenery as fast as I could. If I were the only person on an autobahn, I
could still make it a race; I would have to beat my fastest time between two
locations and if I had never been there before, I would still want to set a
benchmark. I can still remember some of
those benchmarks today: Three hours and
fourteen minutes from Venlo to Baden-Baden; fourteen hours and twenty minutes
from Split in Yugoslavia to Bielefeld in Germany (both in Golf GTI’s if you are
interested, proving that nippiness beats brute power). The fastest I have travelled while still in
contact, however tenuous, with the Earth’s surface was not on a race track, but
on the A33 from Bielefeld to Paderborn riding a motorcycle, 170 mph. What at normal speeds were virtually unnoticeable
curves, now required me to lean the ‘bike over far enough to get my knee down. Being passed by a large capacity motorcycle
at full chat doing a hundred miles an hour faster than you were must have been
heart stopping for a dear old lady in a VW Polo.
When I left
hospital, I did not have far to walk.
Trains to Milton Keynes leave London from Euston and the hospital was
only across the road. Walking was bad
enough but standing still was misery so when I saw the queue to buy tickets
from the counters, I decided to use a Virgin Train as they had half the station
devoted to machines from which passengers could buy tickets without having to
queue. Sadly, of the fifty or so
identical machines, not one took good old cash so I had to ask a rather hyped
individual dressed in red trousers and waistcoat who I correctly assumed was a
Virgin employee. It says everything
about a modern cashless society (and rubs in the difficulties I was
experiencing sans plastic) that there were only three, dusty and forlorn
looking machines tucked away in a corner that accepted cash.
My old
friend Paul was waiting for me when I arrived at MK Central. Paul had tried hard to convince me that he
should pick me up from the hospital. I
supposed he imagined me being wheeled out in a chair and deposited at the road
side. This, as I explained to him, was
madness. It would take him hours to
fight his way into Central London, would cost in petrol and congestion charges
and, since I would not know exactly when I would be released, would involve one
of us hanging around waiting for the other.
Much better for me to walk a few hundred yards, pay fourteen quid, and
be in MK thirty minutes later. Besides,
he had a wedding to arrange, his, so hardly had the time.
I must
pause here to consider his fiancée Karen who I had not yet had the pleasure of meeting. As far as she was concerned, I was just some
oik who her husband-to-be had met years ago (I was his armed bodyguard in
Angola back in the mid Nineties), I had been rushed into an infectious diseases
ward of a London hospital after arriving suddenly from darkest, Ebola infested
Africa where, despite best efforts, the beasty causing this awful flesh eating
affliction had not been identified and now, just two weeks before their wedding,
Paul wanted to put me up in their house.
The fact that she obviously allowed this is testament to the true love I
hope they enjoy for the rest of their lives for I wouldn’t have gone within a
mile of myself had I the choice. Karen,
as I expected, was completely laid back, allowed me to use my e cig in the
house and fed me everything my heart and stomach craved which really came down
to anything with salad and horseradish sauce.
Paul seemed a bit tired of salad (the fridge was full of it) but I
couldn’t get enough, salad is a luxury in Angola.
Paul had
come to collect me in his toy. I have
been so long in Angola I had never seen a Porsche Boxster in its tin
flesh. It looks miles better in real
life. Paul is a geologist and does
mathematics as a hobby. His brain is
about the size of a small planet but he is by no means a geeky intellectual. For a start, he is a big bloke and I often
wondered who would be protecting whom if the shit had hit the fan in
Angola. I suppose he felt comfortable
knowing I had a gun and was licenced to use it.
One of the most interesting walks I had was with him along a Cape Town
beach listening him explain just when and how all the rock formations surrounding
us were formed. He is also mad keen on
motor sport, especially Formula One. I
am sure it is no coincidence that his lovely house is set in the North
Buckinghamshire countryside within sight of Silverstone Circuit.
After
admiring the Porsche from the outside, I then had to get into it. This was easier said than done for me as one has
to slot oneself down into it, not an easy feat with a gammy leg but worth the
effort, the Germans do make exceedingly good cars and when Paul started it, it
was an aural delight as well, especially as the hood was down.
We purred
menacingly out of the station car park and I was just wriggling myself into a
comfortable position in the soft leather upholstery when all hell broke
loose. One second I was feeling all soft
and fuzzy, next something punched me hard in the kidneys and I was wondering
why I was staring at the sky with my head welded to the headrest. My stomach, I suspected, was lying as
surprised as its ex owner in a moist and slithery heap in the car park. Bloody hell the car was fast. Did you know that a cricket ball making its
rapid progress down the wicket actually gains weight? It’s something to do with relativity. I too felt as if I had gained weight, a lot
of weight but I think that had more to do with inertia as, when we arrived
suddenly at a junction I lost all sensation of weight before regaining it again
when I hit the limit of the seatbelt.
The car must have brake disks the size of dustbin lids.
If someone
had driven me that fast in Angola, I would have ordered them to stop the car before
shooting them by the roadside. It was
different with Paul, though. Not only is
he a very competent driver, he knew both his car and the road we were
travelling along like the back of his hand so I was really enjoying myself,
terrified but having fun as people do, for example, on maniac roller coaster
rides. As he slotted the car through
another roundabout, expertly hitting every apex I marvelled at the car’s grip.
‘This car
has a hell of a lot of grip,’ I said but then stopped myself from concluding
with, ‘I haven’t heard the tyres squeal once.’
That really would have been a bit of an invitation. Well, maybe not, Paul is very sensible but I
didn’t feel like putting his maturity to the test, there’s an eighteen year old
lurking dangerously in all of us. I was
in a spinning mid-engined sports car once, it was a Ferrari and I had just lost
control of it. Let me tell you,
mid-engined sports cars spin like a top and once they’re spinning, there’s
bugger all you can do about it until they either stop of their own accord or,
more usually in such a circumstance, wrap themselves and their
about-to-be-deceased passengers around something unforgiving.
It wasn’t
for that reason, however, that I was relieved to be travelling to Wales in
Paul’s Saab. Going there in the Porsche
would have been miles more fun but there was no way I would have been able to
cope with my legs stretched out horizontally in a cramped cockpit unless Paul
took along an engine hoist to get me out again.
Besides, I like Saabs. I know
that towards the end they lost some of their quirkiness and have now finally
gone bust but their cars were always interesting and driven by a ‘certain’ type
of person. You were more likely to see
one driven by an architect (or a geologist) than a rep. Naturally Paul’s Saab had the bigger engine
with twin turbos so it was no slouch either.
I have never, ever been in an estate car that could corner so fast and
was so comfortable. They are rare cars,
I only saw one other on the journey which, by amazing coincidence, was the same
model and colour as Paul’s and parked in the car park of the same restaurant at
which we had stopped to have breakfast.
The affinity amongst dying breeds, such as Saab owners, must be strong
for Paul and the owner of the other Saab exchanged waves to acknowledge their
shared automotive and gastronomic taste.
The fact
that I was travelling to Wales at all was by pure happy chance. I had been fortunate enough to meet two
fellow bloggers while I was in hospital.
Both Pete, better known as the Idiot Gardener and Sten, aka the Suburban
Bushwacker had come to see me on several occasions cheering me up immensely and
both of them couldn’t have been more helpful.
I was disappointed I could not take them up on their offers for get
togethers once I was out but I really was in no position to be doing any travelling
more involved than climbing onto a train at Euston and getting off again half
an hour later. I was hoping to meet JayGray
in London on my way out but it transpired that I would be flying the day before
he arrived in the city. Paul had
obviously picked up on this for he asked me whereabouts in Wales John Gray
lived. Paul was to travel to Wales to
meet up with his son in Llandudno. After
checking on the map, we realized he would pass within a couple of miles of the
Ukrainian Village and its small suburb, Trelawnyd. I would get to visit John and Paul would have
company on the journey.
Paul wanted
an early start. As I was still on
hospital time (for over four weeks I had been woken at five every morning by
the temperature and pressures nurse) this was no problem so even though Paul
intended to stop for breakfast on the way, I had plenty of time for a cup of
tea and a few slices of toast. Coming
into the village of Stony Stratford soon after setting off, Paul drew in on the
High Street saying he needed the cash point.
Almost as an aside he told me that the hotel opposite us, the Cock, was
one half of the Cock and Bull legend. The
other half, the Bull was only a few yards further along. I was fascinated. I had never given the origin of a ‘Cock and
Bull’ story much thought. I thought it
meant a load of rubbish. Now that Paul
was explaining it to me, I realised it didn’t necessarily mean that. It was really a case of how stories got better
in the telling; which did you believe, the story you heard in the Cock while
sinking a pint or the Bull version you heard over another pint only a few
paces down the road? Staring at the Cock
and Bull set in this typically English town made me aware of England’s rich
heritage. Even the place names have
meaning, revealing their ancient Briton, Roman, Saxon, Viking and Norman roots. I attended school in Ashby-de-la-Zouch and
had a girlfriend living in Thorpe Constantine.
Americans
love this sort of thing, direct links all the way back to their ancestral
origins. That’s why once a year on the
17th of March a good proportion of Americans paint everything
including themselves green and drink so much green stout that the resultant
sewage turns the Chicago River the same colour.
Or that in late January every year grown American men of pale complexion
and red hair pull on skirts and spend the evening getting rip roaring drunk on
whisky, head butting each other and the ground eventually throwing up the
frankly awful substitute for Haggis they have there. Bizarrely, imports of Haggis to the United
States were banned in 1971 as one of its principal ingredients is sheep’s lung,
which evidently posed a severe threat to the health of citizens. Such concern (even though ludicrous) could, I
suppose, be considered heart-warming until you note that America only got round
to banning the use of lead in paint 44 years after the Europeans did and
American canners were still using lead solder in the manufacture of food
containers until as recently as 1993. No
wonder their Generals are all crazy, they’ve gone mad on a diet of tinned army
rations.
Once on the
M1, I saw my first wind turbine. God
they’re a shocking eyesore, a real blot on the landscape. I told Paul this. He told me to wait a while, I hadn’t seen
anything yet apparently. With his cruise
control set to just a tadge under 100mph, a while was not long at all. The national speed limit on the UK’s
motorways is seventy miles per hour (112 Kph) by the way but it is speeds of or
above 100 that really cause the Federales to lose their composure. Quite a few years ago I hired a hot snot
Mercedes at the airport because I was in a hurry to get to the Midlands and was
dismayed to find it had been limited to 100mph.
I might as well have rented a weedy compact.
Occupying
the whole of the vista in front of us were bloody great white windmills,
hundreds of them. That was bad enough
but I realized just how ludicrous all this was when Paul pointed out that only
a third were actually running. Wind
turbines, another Millennium bug style scam.
They are only economically viable to their owners because of tax payer
subsidies. You can’t get away from
them. As soon as one lot faded into the
distance, another lot hove into view.
What I was witnessing was the tip of the ice berg.
There were
none of the problems I expected crossing the border from England into Wales,
not even the sight of a startled farmer caught with the hind legs of a sheep
stuffed into his wellies. The sun was
shining, something I thought hardly ever happened that side of the rain shadow,
and Liverpool could be observed from the safety of the Flintshire side of the
Mersey. My finger was now tracing our
course across the one inch to four mile road map accurately at a speed
commensurate with our progress (it had lagged behind til now, so deceptively
fast was the smooth riding Saab) and I knew we would be at John’s in less than
fifteen or so minutes. We were running
late, I had said to John that we would arrive mid-morning, it was now
lunchtime. Where we had lost time I
wasn’t sure. Traffic had been reasonably
light, I suppose we had dawdled over breakfast but I was sure John wouldn’t
mind. I had a clear image of John in my
mind, an image developed over several years of reading his blog and our
occasional email exchange. What if he
was nothing like this image? What did I
really know of him? He was a nurse who
lived with his partner in Wales. He kept
animals, liked scotch eggs and zombie films and was very community
spirited. Whilst I would risk asking him
to care for one of my animals, I would never entrust him with the care of my
car.
First
cottage after the Church he had told me.
We couldn’t miss it, not because it was a huge country pile, but because
it was exactly as I imagined, only nicer.
The lane was narrow, bounded by high stone wall capped verges. Just down the hill the road curved to the
right in front of a gate towards which was walking the unmistakable figure of
John. Through my open window I called
out in my best BBC voice,
‘I say, old
boy, I’m looking for a rather affable gay Welsh raconteur!’
And so,
twixt cottage and field in the middle of Flintshire, the Hippo met Mr. Gently.
|
A load of Bull |