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

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?

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

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

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

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

And the lads complain about the standards of barrack accommodation now...

Cozumel

Belize 1985

Those ex colleagues of mine reading this, I would be grateful if we could put names to faces.

Of Rats and Humans

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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!

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

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.

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

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.

F@ck my Dad says

As an avid follower of the Suburban Bushwacker, it wasn’t long before I picked up on his link to really quite an odd blog, ‘Shit My Dad Says’.

Eh?

SBW, in my experience, doesn't link to tosh so I thought I'd wander over.

Basically, it is just some young man pasting in all the crazy stuff his Dad, obviously one of the original Grumpy Old Men, has said to him. Now it looks like there is a book and a film on the way. Brilliant, and good luck to you young Justin, your Dad sounds great.

Anyway, it got me thinking about my Dad. He was lean and very mean when he wanted to be and, as an ex Sergeant Major, had the razor sharp wit that used to verbally flay even the cockiest recruit or over arrogant young officer and continued, post service, to be aimed at anyone that irritated him, especially me.

He started off in the King’s Own Rifle Brigade and then transferred over to the Ordnance Corps. He ended up as the Stores Materials Control Manager for British Gas with offices in Derby, where he built the National Strategic Stockyard (and I learnt to drive), and the Natwest Tower in London. I started in the Light Infantry, one half of the Light Division that subsumed the Rifle Brigade and was then commissioned into the Ordnance Corps so had unwittingly started in his footsteps.

When I pointed this out to him his reaction was simple. ‘So you think ending your days working for the bloody Gas Board is some kind of achievement?’

Judging by the number of people who turned up at his funeral, the lovely house and pension he left our Mum, yes Dad, I think it was.

There was a massive intellect there that never had the chance to flower. He could quote any passage of Kipling you cared to mention and once recited the Ancient Mariner while driving well over the speed limit all the way from Leicester to Newcastle. He was Captain of the British Army Trials team and could shoot the balls of a gnat.

When he was a kid, his Dad dumped him off in a pub in York where he slept under the counter before making his way back to Liverpool and ended up carrying his younger half brother on his back through the burning blitzed out streets to safety. He lied about his age and joined the Army as soon as he could. I never met his half brother, Trevor.

Oldest sons can never do right. We are expected, especially once the younger siblings arrive, to be blessed with a maturity well beyond our few years. How many of us are guilty of the same? The nagging doubt you may have bred a mutant retard; the neighbour’s kid is walking, what’s wrong with ours?

Well, speaking from experience, nothing actually. I was perfectly content to dribble porridge down my face and shit in my nappies. I wasn’t going to crawl, let alone walk to reach a bunch of coloured blocks when I knew that patience would be rewarded by these ‘big’ people eventually bringing them to me. I was too young to realise I was surrounded by dizzy aunts who spoilt me rotten. It was only when I saw something really interesting, like a scorpion, that I felt I just had to wander over and have a chew. That got me loads of attention.

My earliest recollection is sitting on my father’s lap behind the steering wheel of some car driving through Tripoli. He was dead keen that I would do well but, being a Sgt. Major, he was sometimes a bit colourful with me.

I was devastated when my father died so suddenly. I had left the Army and opened a motorcycle dealership in Germany which grew until I went international and opened another in Bratislava. I never really earned much money out of that outlet, my customers were basically the local Mafia but God, was it fun. I would run a Mercedes panel van all the way down Germany, through Austria and then be met by these hoods at the border so crossing was easy.

I’d build the ‘bikes up, usually in the car park of whatever night club the big man owned and then we’d go racing around Bratislava at quite frankly, really scary speeds, across greasy cobble stones first laid when the place was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until His Highness was satisfied that I had sold him the very absolute pinnacle of unbeatable hot snot.

The business turned out to be sort of self sustaining as each ‘boss’ realised he had just been upped by his nemesis down the road and demanded something even more crazy from me. I felt like an arms dealer selling to all sides, one of them was bound to get pissed off with me in the end.

So I invited my Dad along.

He was due to retire in six months but there was no way he was going to spend his twilight years with his feet stuffed into slippers, hunched in his wingback sipping cocoa.

'You are running empty vehicles back from Russia’ he said to me one day.

'Not Russia, Dad, Czechoslovakia’

'Commies, same thing. Bet you they’ve got loads of antiques over there'

‘Antiques?’

'I want to be an antiques dealer when I retire and if I have a son too stupid to get loads for his returning vans, I might as well cash in'

So I contacted the Boys and next trip, my Dad rode shotgun in the truck.

We got to Bratislava, met the gang, built up their bikes and then, because they really, really respect older people, especially father’s of colleagues, fell over themselves to help my Dad out. First with a selection of Italian birds that had me exploding in my Y fronts, and then with what he was really interested in, antiques.

There was no real open commerce but there were always those places were simple folk could flog the sort of stuff they didn’t need anymore. We would walk in, score what we fancied, and then let the boys do the negotiating. Once I had the temerity to ask the shop owner the price before leaving it to the minder and she told me X Squillion Dollars. The boy went in, came out, told me not to do that again and the price was 50 bucks. For a Viennese wall clock. I say boy. He was built like a brick shithouse.

When it came time to go home, all our loot was concealed in the footwells of a fleet of Ladas complete with mothers and suckling babes under the feet of whom was concealed the stock for my Dad’s fledgling Leicestershire antique shop.

In those days the length of the queues waiting to cross a communist border was measured in days, not miles. The man squished into the cab between me and my Dad directed us into the oncoming traffic and, at the head of a convoy of Ladas we hurtled at the border. Cartons of cigarettes sailed out of the window landing in the arms of border guards as easy as we sailed into Austria.

Two weeks later, my dad was found dead in his workshop having died of a massive heart attack while carving a garden bench he had made.

Even now I dream about him sometimes. For seventeen years I have only thought of him fleetingly. I miss him like hell and obviously it hurts if I think about him too hard. But while reading the shit that young Justin’s Dad says, I started to remember all the grief my dad gave me. I loved doing things with him and he obviously liked to have me along because he took me with him everywhere, into his office, down the armoury letting me pick up pistols and SMG's, helping him work on his cars but God help me if I did anything dumb. Actually, I think everything I did was dumb because my ears always seemed to be ringing from some flash remark of his.

So, here are just a few:

I asked you for a fucking ring spanner not an open ended you dozy bastard, don’t you know the difference?

No dad.

Well stick your finger up your arse. That's a ring. Then stick it in your ear. That, in your case Son, is open ended.


What the Fuck are you doing?

I’m sorry, Dad, my dick itches like hell, I was just scratching it.

Well try washing it more often… By the way, I hate men who lie. You’re a wanker so just admit it.


C'mon Dad, tell me about the scars on your arms

OK Son, I was riding a motorcycle across the desert when an Arab shot me

Christ Dad! What did you do!!!

I fell off


OK, Son, indicate right and just ease up to the junction... Is it all clear, Son?

Yes Dad

Ok, Go!... That's it, now I know my son is a genius!

Why Dad?

Only you could stall a fucking automatic!


Look, Son, it's dead simple. Look through your windscreen. Tarmac, blue sky? Good, accelerator. Big fucking mountain of earth and trees? Bad, brake. Can you grasp that? Maybe I didn't explain enough about what that bloody great round thing you're holding does...


Dad! I qualified as a Marksman!

I can hit a running Arab at two hundred paces, your Mum says you can’t even hit the toilet bowl so don’t give me that shit.


How long did it take for you to make Corporal, Dad?

First or third time son?


What did he call me?

I didn’t hear Dad.

Look, I’m the deaf sod around here, what did he say?

He called you a Wanker, Dad

Right, that’s it

I don’t know Dad, he looks pretty big to me.

That’s alright Son, if he takes a swing at me, you stand in the way and I’ll get him while you’re going down.


Don’t worry Son, you look like a fit, young bastard so he’ll go for you first and then while he’s kicking your teeth in, I’ll get him with this.

Christ, Dad, that’s a starting handle!

Yeah! Beats the shit out of a Karate chop.


Fuck! Shit! Bastard Fucking Hell Christ Almighty!

Bash your head on the chassis of the car again, Dad?

It’s your fault, you little shit!

By bringing you a cup of tea?

You should have brought it five minutes ago.


So you’re an Officer now Son?

Yes Dad

Well you know what Officers are, don’t you?

Leaders of Men?

I didn’t ask you what officers are supposed to be you stupid sod, I asked you what they are!

Don’t know, Dad

Lighthouses in the desert, Son. Very bright but fuck all use.


Don’t give me that one about officers and maps, Dad, I am brilliant at map reading

Well, keep that one quiet, Son, or you’ll get the map, fuck up one day and prove me right.


So you're going to be a motorcycle dealer, Son?

Yes dad

What do you know about motorcycles?

Everything you taught me

Don't blame me, Son, there's a hell of difference between everything I tried to teach you and what you actually fucking learnt.


Why aren't you coming to see me Son?

I got the auditors coming around, Dad.

Fuck 'em. Auditors are the bastards who get an all expenses paid trip to the battlefield in order to bayonet the survivors.


Of course I am doing OK, Dad, I just got a brand new convertible for my wife

You selfish bastard, you never thought of getting me a good deal like that too?


What the fuck is that?!!!

It's an SL Mercedes Dad.

A GERMAN car?!!

Yeah Dad, I like them.

OK. Give us the keys, you can drive my VW Passat.


Stop! STOP! You've gone too far, GO GO GO! Around the block. NOW! FOR FUCK’S SAKE! Who taught you to drive?

What the F… hang on Dad…alright, we’re coming around again

THAT’S IT! Slow down, SLOW DOWN! Christ you’re such a dick.

Click

Hang on a sec Dad, you just got me to break every fucking traffic law in a communist country just so you could take a photo of some tart in a short skirt?

Believe me Son, when you get to my age you’ll realise it was worth it.


Why are you such a grumpy old bastard, Dad?

‘Cos it beats the shit out of being nice to idiots.

Does that have to include me, Dad?

Like I said. Idiots.


God I love my Dad so much. Pity Dominic and Alexander will never get to meet him in this life.