Cats, Batatas Fritas, Chips and Crisps

Nota Bene is star struck.  How he managed to type his latest post while breathlessly and excitedly bouncing on his toes flapping his hands either side of his shoulders while gasping, ‘My Cat is a Superstar!’ is beyond me.  Still, it made for interesting reading and I was dead keen to view the video clip of the trailer of the film in which his daughter was starring, one which he with all due humility embedded in his post.  I don’t know any movie stars so I supposed the closest I would get would be as an avid reader of Nota Bene’s blog.  In future, when the Cat is world famous, I’d be able to say, ‘I knew her father.  The mad sod blew his heart up riding a bicycle somewhere down the bottom end of Oxford Street. It was the weight of the takeaway curry that did for him apparently.  That and the Mercedes G Wagen that parked on top of him and the two Para-Medics attending him outside that Gentlemen's establishment in Soho’. 

The embedded video was High Definition.  Sr. Nota Bene had helpfully indicated to us hopeful groupies that his daughter, the one we would all be stalking, was the girl in the foreground of the scene in which two lasses conversed around 50 seconds into the clip.  I live in deepest and, when I succeed dodging snakes to switch the generator off at night, darkest Africa so to download fifty seconds of HD video takes a shade over an hour if the connection doesn’t drop.  This is why I normally do not bother watching videos embedded into the blogs I follow.  But this was the Cat.  Nota Bene has written, by my last calculation, three million, nine hundred and fifty four thousand, six hundred and twenty seven posts, and in only five of them has he failed to mention his ski instructor son or the Cat.  Naturally, faced with such devotion, the very least I could do was to shut down Angola’s communication links to the outside world by hogging their bandwidth to down load the video of his daughter.

Most of my long term readers will have by now been discovered by distressed relatives petrified with boredom behind their computer keyboards but the few still breathing will remember Ju who came to me as a very frightened little five year old after her parents died.  I will never forget when this very introverted, traumatized child finally let loose her emotions and sobbed her heart out in my arms.  Perhaps, as an alcoholic, I knew more about inner demons than any psychologist.  Any temporary foster parent will know how hard it is to give up a child they have loved and cared for as their own, however briefly.  Ju was with us for over two years but has now turned into a fine, happy young lady and, as part of this enormous family I seem to have built up, visits her ‘Tio Tom’ regularly and she is staying with us now.  She asked me if she could stay here for Christmas.  Of course she can!  I want the house full.

L-R.  Marta, six years old. Alex, five and not-so-little Ju, thirteen.
Ju has shot up but I am pleased that Marta is now catching up with Alex.

 I found it pretty dull watching an immobile download progress bar for Nota Bene’s blasted video so when the kids asked me if they could have Batatas Fritas, I thought, ‘What the Hell! I’ve got  bugger all else to do for the next hour or so’.  The kids cleared off into the garden and were playing nicely for a change so I peeled the potatoes, sliced them up into Belgian sized chips and set a pan of oil to heat up.  Just before the oil reached temperature, I checked the video.  Still twenty seconds to go before I reached the fifty second mark so about another half hour of downloading to go.  I laid out the plates, readied the salt and mayonnaise and withdrew from the fridge a pot of, for me, highly illegal tomato ketchup.  Marcia says I am fat.  I tossed the chips into the hot oil and within minutes they were golden and crispy.  I called the kids to the table.

‘No Daddy!’ wailed Alex, ‘we wanted Batatas Fritas!’

‘But these are Batatas Fritas!’ I exclaimed, somewhat crestfallen.

‘No, we wanted Chips!’ he said resorting to English.

‘These look like bloody chips to me, Son!’ I said stabbing one with a fork.

Ju stepped in.  ‘Tio Tom, we want the chips that come in packets like the ones you sell in the shop.’

Oh.  Crisps.

I blame the Americans.  They were the ones who started to call crisps, a Golden Wonder British invention, Potato Chips.  Didn’t NASA manage to fuck up a whole Mars mission a few years ago because they were working in pounds, feet and gallons while the rest of the world supplying the components were using SI units?  They could have saved themselves a fortune and maybe even hit Mars if they had called Potato Chips, crisps and chips, chips.

Ah well, I like chips.  So while I munched my way through another heart attack on a plate and the kids ate their crisps, I watched the video.

I watched it.  And then I watched it again.  Wallander sprang to mind.  It was bleak, moody, desperate, an expression of all my emotions at sleepless four-in-the-mornings that are barely suppressed during daylight hours.  The Cat delivered her lines perfectly.  Damn right it changes you if you kill someone.  I don’t know what the film is about but I would say to the clearly preoccupied character the Cat was playing so well that some people just deserve to die and someone has to do it.  On the other hand, the film could be about some flaming maniac who should have been drowned at birth.  Or it could have been all about forest flower pickers.  The trailer is really too short but, like most of the women I have known in my life, an irresistible tease.

‘It would change you though, wouldn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Killing someone’

Somehow I think this film is darker than plucking Primroses.  I am dead keen to see it and clearly the producers, with presumably hours of film to choose from, decided that the Cat’s lines were best to promote the film.  She certainly hooked me.

Before I could consider this further, the kids interrupted me again and asked this time for pancakes.   I was only about half way through four pounds of unwanted crispy chips indecently laced with mayo and ketchup and now they wanted pancakes?

Seriously, with a houseful of kids, you will never, ever get to see what you want.  I do love pancakes but I will try hard to see this film.  Just not in HD if I have to download the bastard thing.

 

Flattery

I love bouncing through blogger's sites.  If I like a blog I find, I stick it on my sidebar.  Working on the assumption that the author of a blog I like might have blog tastes similar to my own, I click on their recommendations as well.  I also click on the links of those commenting on my posts.  Sadly, many of them do not have their own blogs but occasionally I come across a real gem.

A good example is one I discovered very recently.  Michael Silvius was born and brought up in Venezuela (so speaks fluent Spanish I guess) but now, by his own admission, lives in La La Land.  That can only be Maine, in the United States.  Not only does he appear to be a proficient carpenter and joiner, he's also a damn good cook and photographer (and aviator, writer, family man, good at his job, everyone likes him etc. I'm really jealous of these multi-tasking types who with their Midas touch turn everything they turn their hands to to gold).  His blog, Nails and Sawdust, is well worth a read. It isn't all about chipping wood, although it is fascinating to see and read how he transforms raw timber into something useful and beautiful, it's much more varied than that and both the writing and photography are excellent. 

His recipes, however, are outstanding.  They are simple, easy to follow and accompanied by clear, step-by-step photographs.

You can imagine how flattered I was then, when he took a recipe of mine for Muamba da Galinha, an Angolan peasant dish which I love, and not only tried it, he improved it and then gave me full credit!  Nonsense, Sr. Silvius.  You have taken a raw diamond and polished it.  I tip my hat to you.

Sadly, in today's straightened economic environment we are forced to tighten our belts and all too often this means restricting our diet to the boring.  I would urge you to try Michael's vast improvement on my recipe for a cheap, yet delightful dish and, while you are waiting for it to cook, read his blog and see all the other wonderful recipes he has posted.  As I have already said, if you are a chippy or a pilot, you'll find it interesting as well.

Which do you think looks more appetizing, mine...

... or Sr. Michael's?
(I just love his work surfaces! Yet another reason for me to hate the smug git)

http://isserfiq.blogspot.com/2013/12/angolan-chicken-in-penut-gravy.html

This is an extract, not a post as such.

We were sitting in Major Kemp’s office, a dozen or so Officer Cadets who knew that very shortly they would receive their Commissions having, all but the shouting, passed the Standard Military Course at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.  Major Kemp held a staff appointment with Personnel Branch 9 at the Ministry of Defence and held our immediate futures in his hand.  Today we were going to find out where we would all be posted.

Just over a year before, I had been a Corporal, now I was to be a Second Lieutenant.  I had done well at Sandhurst.  I had been promoted to Cadet Government, won a Director of Studies Prize and, until confounded by injury, been in the last eight in the running for the Sword of Honour.  I had been offered one of only two Commissions the Army Air Corps had on the table for my entry and had turned it down in order to rejoin the Corps which I had served as a soldier and junior noncommissioned officer, the Corps who had recognized my undoubted talent and had sponsored me to Sandhurst.  Such performance and outstanding loyalty could only be rewarded.

Naturally we had all already filled out our posting preference forms and submitted them to PB9.  I had asked for Germany.  I was supremely confident.  I knew there was a vacancy for a regimental officer at 3 Base Ammunition Depot.  This was the unit nestled within splendid countryside on the border between Germany and Holland just south of Venlo in which I had served three years as an Ammunition Technician prior to Sandhurst.  I spoke fluent German, a smattering of Portuguese (half the labourers who had been working for me were part of the Mobile Civilian Labour Group and all from Portugal or those who had fled Angola and Mozambique after independence) and I held a candle for the Colonel’s daughter who, while I had been stationed there, was very nice allowing me to take her out a few times but, since I was only a Corporal at the time, treated me more as a diversion.  If I returned with a commission, she would be bound to take me seriously.  Failing 3 BAD, I wanted Berlin.  I was mature enough to understand the potential folly of sending a young officer back to command men that had only so recently been his drinking buddies.  Berlin, though, would be an excellent second best.  I was born there, I had family there and a nice house on Heiligen See.

Major Kemp consulted his notes and then started doling out postings.

None of us wanted Donnington.  Don’t get me wrong, Shropshire is one of the nicest counties in England but a posting to a Central Ordnance Depot as a newly commissioned young officer would be like a jail sentence so all but one of us breathed a huge sigh of relief when this posting was dispatched with first. We all felt sorry for the poor bugger selected.  Hong Kong came up next.  I could have coped with Hong Kong but I knew where I was going.  The guy that got the posting was a really nice guy so I was pleased for him.  Canada came up next.  Blimey, that’s a hell of good posting.  Ever since I was a kid growing up in Southern Germany, I loved the Canadians.  But I was happy with Germany.  Gibraltar.  Yeah, go and feed the monkeys, I thought.  Central Vehicle Depot Ashchurch.  Christ!  That’s as bad as Donnington!  Blackdowne came up next, the Training Battalion and Depot.  I knew all about THAT bloody place.  Poor sod, posted from one khaki brained training establishment to another.  Well, at least he didn’t have far to lug his kit.  Sandhurst and Blackdowne were so close together, even a 2^nd Lieutenant could afford the taxi fare.  Finally, the Germany postings came up.  First, 3 BAD, I did not get it.  I congratulated my colleague assuring him that he would enjoy his posting.  Then Berlin.  By now I was sitting on the edge of my comfortable armchair.  Major Kemp glanced in my direction.  I wanted his babies I loved the man so much.  ‘Mr. Leece,’ he said.

It was like something out of the Great Escape.  Everyone was looking at me.  Steve Leece, who was and still is a great friend, looked devastated.  I had nearly been thrown out of Sandhurst for striking a fellow cadet who had been bullying Steve.  They all knew how badly I wanted Germany and how protective I had always been of Leecy who couldn’t have been more than a 120lbs sopping wet.  What an unlikely pair we were.  He went to a very good school.  He got into Sandhurst using his brains.  It couldn’t have been muscle, he didn’t have any.  He came from a very comfortable Jewish background and yet he ended up best mates with a half German uncouth thug.  I am convinced he had still been a virgin when I got him laid at that party in London.  My grandfather had been on the wrong side during the war but he had still been an Army Officer of the Wehrmacht and was of the old school.  I wanted to be able to pull on best bib and tucker and drive down to Baden Baden and show him where his guidance and support had led me.  I was devastated.  The atmosphere in Major Kemp’s office was electric, I had to say something so, in my best German accent I looked at Leece and said:

‘It looks, after all, you vill see Berlin before I do’

That just left me.  All the plum postings I knew were up for grabs had been taken.  Now it looked as though I was going to have to take whatever I was given.

Major Kemp looked very uncomfortable.  I tried hard to look like the enthusiastic, loyal young officer I had been trained to be but I was fucking pissed off and must have been shooting daggers at him from just above my forced smile.

‘Belize,’ he said.

‘Belize?’ I said, ‘That’s in the Caribbean, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

‘Golden beaches, palm trees, tequila clear waters, daiquiris and great fishing, Hemmingway territory?’

‘More or less,’ he lied.

I was chuffed to hell.  After all, you don’t join the army to hang around in barracks or depots; you want to get your knees brown.  I was being paid to go to the Caribbean!

All this and a pension too!

The flight from Brize Norton left very early so I was excited as hell as I checked into a B&B close by the evening before.  This was all very unusual for me.  As a soldier, you moved entirely under the Army movements system.  You got your orders along with your train and flight tickets or whatever, were given a destination to report to whereupon you were given a barracks to bunk down in and a mess hall in which to eat.  All the time NCO’s in pristine uniforms were shouting at you and ordering you to spread your kit out for inspection.  As an officer, you just pitched up in the morning knowing you could claim expenses in the form of the Nightly Rate of Subsistence Allowance, NRSA, and travel costs.  It was all terribly civilized.

I was excited to see Brize Norton.  Blimey it was a well-run airport.  Everything was immaculate.  The RAF staff would knock any commercial airline employee into a cocked hat they were so efficient and friendly.  Granted they had the advantage of quite a few Snowdrops, the RAF Police on standby to quickly deal with difficult ‘customers’ but overall, passing through Brize Norton as a passenger was not only a painless experience, it was enjoyable.  After all, we were going somewhere exciting.  The RAF, as the most junior service, has always been rather more relaxed and civilized.  I guess it’s bloody hard to concentrate on flying a plane with a poker shoved up your arse but us Brown Jobs were used to such a shafting.  Wasn’t I happily about to travel thousands of miles East instead of a few hundred miles West to Germany?

The first thing I noticed boarding the VC-10 was that all the seats were facing the wrong way round.  The Vickers Armstrong VC-10 was a high performance passenger aircraft which entered service in 1962, enjoyed 16 civilian operators and was finally retired by the Royal Air Force only two months ago on the 20^th September 2013.  It was ideal for hot and high performance from shorter runways and still, to this day, holds the record for the fastest London to New York crossing for a sub-sonic airliner.  In all its 51 years of service, only 140 passengers and crew have died on VC-10’s and those aircraft were being operated and flown by Africans who are almost guaranteed to fuck up.  If you don’t believe me, give any one of them a 10mm Chrome Vanadium, guaranteed for life spanner, ask them to undo a bolt and see how long it lasts.  We are only talking about the spanner here, not the expensive equipment you hope will be serviced with it.

The Nigerian operator did a good job of killing all their clients and employees the pilots having fucked up a landing at Lagos due to the incompetence one would expect from pilots who had eschewed training in favour of bribing a member of a CAA recognized authority for their licence,  But 43 of the passengers of the East African Airways flight that crashed on take-off in Addis walked away, no doubt because of rearward facing seats.  The cause of that accident was due to the operator operating the aircraft outside its high altitude load limits.  Addis Ababa is quite high on top of a plateau.  The aircraft was just too heavy to take off in such a hot, thin atmosphere.

Considering that the last time a VC-10 had crashed was twelve years before in 1972 and the one I was climbing onto was maintained by the RAF, I had no fear of flying.  Besides, you can always trust people in uniform especially the delightful WRAF girl showing me to my seat.  Women’s Royal Army Corps girls (WRAC’s) were generally hairy beasts of burden by comparison apart from that gorgeous blonde I bumped into years later when I had to give a lecture at Blackdowne but, as an officer with his fingers already once burnt, was not allowed to tuck into.

I was excited as we flew over the Irish Sea and then Ireland.  My lasting recollection of Northern Ireland, apart from being blown up and spending time in the Military wing of Musgrave Park Hospital recovering was when an RUC patrol had been ambushed by a command detonated IED and we had been called in to clear the scene before the bodies could be retrieved.  These things take time and there was this little RUC copper on duty next to our bomb wagon which was fully equipped with the latest technology.  If we were on the move and transmitting, our flexible antennas could strip the red paint off a bus. We were using all that power to brew tea in what Americans would call a War Zone and we would call a bit of a misunderstanding.

She was gorgeous in her tight fitting green cotton uniform.  I was wearing a flak jacket and armed to the teeth.  She had just lost two of her colleagues, possibly friends, blown to bits in a terrorist attack.  Her hair was ginger, ill-concealed beneath her bonnet.  Of course her skin would be pale, she was in shock but I could not help notice her heaving breasts and flashing green eyes.

As opening lines under such circumstances go, especially with a red haired Celt and no matter how innocent it sounds, I would urge you to avoid, ‘Fancy a cup of tea love?’

Only in Africa!

Yesterday, I was delighted to receive a visit from my old boss, Andy, and a former work colleague, Jaco who is an emaciated South African Boer.

 

Life in Africa is a case of Kill or be Killed, survival of the fittest so Boer females give birth on the move and Boer children are expected to keep up with the herd or perish in the bush having been scavenged by Rooinek predators (an animal whose habits are somewhat similar to jackals and Hyenas but not as well tolerated).  When Boer children start teething, generally at three weeks of age, they are not given teething rings or salves from Boot's the Chemist, they are given strips of cured and dried Rinder Fleisch to gnaw on.  This intense amount of protein at such an early age makes them as big and strong as the Buffalo they farm.  Clearly Jaco, at only a shade over 250lbs was the runt of the litter so I am pleased that Andy saw fit to keep him on by employing him on light duties hauling sixteen tonne generators into position before connecting them up.

 

Naturally I was happy to show them what I had been doing since I left them after the heart attack.  To be honest, since the snake bite I had done absolutely nothing save issue vague orders so now ambulant again, this was the ideal opportunity to see how my instructions had been executed.

 

Marcia and I are fencing the next plot but one down from us.  I was keen to see how they were doing.  Andy has bought several plots of land so I wanted to show him the fencing I was using.  To me it was the right balance between economy and quality, miles better than a simple chain link fence and only a fraction more costly, an extra expense easily recovered through lower labour costs.  Over the past two days I knew the labourers were installing a rolling gate across what will be the driveway and entrance to the site so I suggested we walked that far so I could see how they were getting on before jumping into his car and continuing down the road to visit the restaurant site.

 



I have known Andy for a number of years, he was my boss for two of them.  I knew exactly the burning question he wanted to ask.  'Why build a gate behind a tree?'  He was too polite to do so but we have known each other long enough so I answered it for him.  'I have no idea why they put the gate here,' I said.  It was a nice gate.  Strong, well constructed, but about as much use as a chocolate fucking fire guard.  Chopping trees down is easy, although I hate doing so if it can possibly be avoided, the hard work is digging out the stumps.  All this extra effort and the death of a tree through sheer stupidity.

Fortunately, the Chinese labourers had arrived in a bloody great front loader with a back hoe so I asked them just to knock the one tree down and rip out the stumps.

Andy, Jaco and I leapt into the car and carried on down to the restaurant site.

The land is getting a bit overgrown but the cottages are going up nicely, rising out of the bush.  Three of them have their roofs on.

Boyet, the Filipino carpenter on top of the job.  The dark stains on the walls are the waste oil we are applying to the inside before cladding.  We will sand the outside and apply a lighter oil based wood preservative.  It pays to read Big Don Kev Alviti's blog 'Sawdust in my Socks'

I think I have mentioned it before but every bit of timber is rough and has to be planed and shaped on site.

A very skinny Boer making his way through the site.  He is wearing a typical South African dual colour Egyptian cotton safari shirt.  They are available very reasonably priced per square metre from Rent-a-Tent in South Africa.  He has combined this with a pair of genuine American button fly Levi 501's available in his smaller size from Wal-Mart's 'Junior Texas Ranger' clothing collection in Houston and all other good North American outlets catering to the undersized.

On Sunday I am hoping that the bull dozer will turn up to clean up and level the rest of the land so we can continue the construction.  I have to do this now because we need to start laying electricity cables and other utilities.

Clearly my Chinese is not what it used to be.  As we passed the site being fenced on the way home, the front loader back hoe was gone and the tree and stump were still there.  Another case of Communists working to rule rather than doing a chap a favour.  Now I am going to have to pay to get the machine on site again. 

Bastards.

This post is Piss!

God, I wish I could do that!

When I was a young kid, I peed the bed.  I used to get beaten for that.  The more I was beaten, the more I peed the bed.  I was so terrified I used to take my pillow and sleep on the floor and would then swamp the carpet.  I didn’t mean to, I just couldn’t help it.

Marcia and I toilet trained little Alex very quickly but, being only a toddler fresh out of nappies he swamped the bed occasionally too.  Fortunately we had a large palm tree right outside our door.  I made it a nightly Man ritual for the two of us to stand there in the dark and piss on the palm tree before retiring to bed.  Alex thought this was amazing fun.  Marcia thought it was disgusting and complained which made it amazing fun for me too.

Pretty soon Alex stopped peeing the bed and would even wake me and in a sleepy voice say, ‘Daddy, I need the palm tree.’  It will be a lovely little code between us bemusing all within earshot in the future.  So many people are coy when it comes to the loo.  Americans even go so far as to call them rest rooms.  This confused me as a kid growing up in Southern Germany where lots of very hospitable Americans and Canadians were stationed.  We'd get invited onto the base and the first thing we would be asked was whether we needed the 'Rest Room'.  We would always thank our hosts politely and tell them we weren't tired.  In future, we will be able to ask our guests if they need a palm tree.

When Alex gets his first serious girlfriend, I’ll remind him of that.  Every young suitor could only be impressed with his Dad having introduced to him his burning heart’s desire and the father opens the engagement with, ‘Do you remember how you used to swamp your mattress…?’

Mauro, who is ten and is staying with us for a while has swamped his bed a few times now.  He is dreadfully embarrassed about it and when Marcia made a few jokes, with the best intention of letting the boy know she did not see it as an unforgiveable crime, I checked her fearing public discussion of the boy’s nocturnal toilet habits would only increase his shame and worsen the problem.  The thing is that when a kid gets tired, it goes to bed and can’t be bothered to visit the loo first.  Make peeing fun, though, and it will look upon the act as an amusing ritual.

There are loads of palm trees in our new garden but I have recently developed a slight aversion to wandering around the garden at night so I had to think of another fun place to pee.  If it wasn’t to be anywhere in the garden, that left only one other alternative, pee off the veranda!   Naturally, to make it even more interesting, we can see who can pee the furthest, or who can hit that coconut husk.  I reckon that in no time at all I will have cured Mauro of his bedwetting without having to delve into any psychological reasons for a ten year old boy to be bedwetting.  I am in no way qualified for that and feel so long as he is treated with love and affection along with the opportunity to piss himself with laughter at Marcia’s reaction (heartily encouraged by his lunatic ‘Uncle’), he’ll cure himself.

I can’t make this post a long one, I’m busting for a slash.  Marcia has just arrived home and we've been saving it all day!

WARNING! Unpleasant Photos



Seriously, this is nothing to do with my toe; some of these photos ARE distressing and show graphic pictures of war in Angola.

My toe is healing at an almost miraculous rate.  I have finished the lengthy course of antibiotics I was on and last night fell asleep in bed before I had read even a single page of my book.  At four in the morning I ran out of ammunition.  The guy to one side of me was dead, to the other side the young lad whose name I kept forgetting was staring at me with impossibly wide open eyes, a huge red stain spreading across his shirt and his mouth opening and closing like a fish ashore as he drowned in his own blood.  Then they were on top of me, teeth bared, bayonets fixed, insane with blood lust.  I screamed. 

Marcia shook me awake.  Little Alex was sitting up in his bed looking terrified, Marcia also looked very concerned.  I was bathed in sweat.  The sheets of the bed were all in a tangle and soaking wet.

'Have I been talking in my sleep again?' I asked Marcia.

Jean Charles Gutner was everything I expected a war photo journalist to be.  Tall, slim, indecently good looking as only blonde long haired Frenchman could be and very, very fit.  He dressed, looked and acted the part.  While everyone else was either keeping their heads down or at the very least keeping low and moving fast, he had his head up and was taking photographs.  I had been billeted in what was supposed to be only temporary accommodation for me in the same guest house as a number of international journalists and stringers.  That’s where I first met Jean Charles along with the BBC stringer, Chris Simpson and the Reuter’s correspondent, Nicholas Shaxson.  We are all friends to this day.  Chris and Nick had laid bets that I would not survive three months.  If I was up against long odds, I couldn’t imagine what Jean Charles’ were.

It wasn’t my job to take photographs and the few that I did have not survived.  Jean Charles was, however, kind enough to give me a few hard copies of his photos taken while we were together which I fortuitously concealed in a large book (on Swedish Architecture actually) so they wouldn’t get bent and I dug them out this morning to take a look.  Maybe by looking at them again, I could once again come to terms with what I had witnessed and put those memories to bed in the hope they would lay dormant for at least another decade.  Since they cover the subject of my nightmare last night, I reproduce them here along with a little explanation of each.

A moment of peace, Cubal, Angola

Captured enemy weapons, Huambo 1995

Independence Day celebrations.  Angola gained independence in 1975. 
The civil war carried on for another 27 years.
Russians, Cubans, South Africans and mercenaries of every nationality fought on Angolan soil.

The rich in the capital, Luanda, largely unaffected by the war, played on the beautiful beaches of Mussulo Island.

While civilians in the rest of the country buried their dead in the soil that they thought,
after a long struggle for independence, belonged to them.

Children of war.  Caimbando, Angola.
Boys as young as fourteen were pressed into service.
Girls of fourteen were raped.

Civilian casualties being buried in a communal grave after a night artillery bombardment
during the battle for Gabela.

Civilian killing his cow, they had to eat.

Civilians executed by UNITA rebels, Balombo.
The photograph has been cropped so you cannot see the children.
They were forced into a large water tank, petrol was poured onto them and then they were set alight.
Atrocities like this occurred all too frequently.

Most African soldiers had their Fetishes, their Ju Ju dolls to protect them.
I'd have been happier if they had just kept their fucking rifles clean.

The artillery bombardment of Gabela begins.
The rebels had already withdrawn, any men left in the town had melted into the bush. 
All that was left in the town were terrified women and children.
Many medals for bravery were won.

A moment to relax.  Mabubas Dam.

A lost child, Benguela.
Government held cities were flooded with orphaned street kids.
Many sought refuge in the drains at night and begged during the day.

More fresh graves being dug

 

Civilians, desperate to flee, trying to storm an aircraft during the UN evacuation of Huambo.
Huambo was fucking hammered afterwards.

An assault group moving into position through the bush prior to an attack near Ganda.
Logistics were woeful and it was impossible to stop the men stealing anything they could eat from civilians.
All men of fighting age who were not involved in the conflict would do a runner leaving the women and children defenceless.
You can imagine that by then, my opinion of the bravery of the average African man was somewhat tarnished, a view shared by no less than Che Guevara in his Congo diaries.
As a soldier, the average African is a complete waste of fucking rations yet capable of the most unspeakable brutality against his own people.

The UN tried very, very hard but it was impossible to evacuate whole populations.
I forget the name of the tall UN official, the guy with the sunglasses sticking his finger up to say he could only take one more passenger but he was brilliant.
As you can see, he stood head and shoulders above all of us.
I bet he got no recognition whatsoever for his sterling efforts.
Just think how his heart bled having to turn people, especially kids away.

Some mother's son, 
Sadly for him, he was on the wrong side and met a good man behind a bayonet.

Landmines and booby traps were a constant threat for citizens moving around Angola,
as they are in Afghanistan and the countless other conflict zones engineered by
venal politicians and the lobbyists who support them.
Twenty people died in this refugee transport, most of them women and children.
Lucapa. 1995.  One of the few photographs of mine that survived.

 

And here I am whining like a wussie about a piddly little nightmare. 

Look at this young Orphan of War.


Who is going to stroke his poor little head when he wakes up screaming?

You Silly Goose!

I have to service the generator every 200 hours of running time.  In practice, I just do it every two weeks.  Besides an oil filter, two fuel filters and an air filter, I need eight litres of oil. 

It also means that every month, I have to dispose of sixteen litres of waste oil.  Here, most people just dig a hole and tip the waste oil into it.  After a few years of that you do not need to be an environmental scientist to appreciate what the ground looks like or how unproductive it has become.

Fortunately, I still have a use for it.  I soak the bottom few feet of the wood piles that support the new cottages I am building in it to stop them rotting and to keep the termites away.  I drain the oil from the generator into a bucket and then I carefully transfer it into a 200 litre drum.  This time, however, I was distracted so left the oil in the bucket.

I was sitting on the sofa watching the news when the kids ran in shouting excitedly that Goosie had 'painted' himself.  We have no paint here.  How the hell had Goosie managed to paint himself?

Place three children together with an easy going adult who hardly ever raises his voice and never offers corporal punishment and you have the ideal environment for budding pranksters and practical jokers.  Some of their pranks are really quite good.  I smoke SL cigarettes, a local brand.  They are white their entire length.  One day they carefully extracted all the cigarettes from a nearly full packet and replaced them the other way around.  An experienced smoker can remove a cigarette from the packet and light it without taking his eyes of whatever task he is engaged in.  I know I can.  It is highly unusual to have the kids sitting in a row, being perfectly still and well behaved, while watching me type.  Being a heavy smoker, however, they knew their patience would not be overly tested.  I finished the paragraph I was typing and then, as I was proof reading it I reached for my cigarettes.  They all stifled sniggers.

'What?' I asked turning to look at them as I placed the cigarette between my lips.

'Nothing, Daddy!' squealed Alex.  Mauro and Marta were squirming, their faces twisting as they tried hard not to laugh. Well something has obviously tickled them, I thought as I lit up and dragged in a lungful of the poisonous fumes produced by the burning filter.  As I hacked up my sphincter the kids shrieked with delight and rolled about in paroxysm of mirth.

'Very funny!,' I told them, but I meant it; it really was clever and I told them so while lighting up another cigarette.  A DOUBLE whammy!'  The kids howled, they couldn't believe their luck!

With that kind of track record, I wasn't just going to take their word that Goosie had somehow managed to paint himself without first considering what practical joke I might be walking into.  Ever more insistent, they persuaded me out into the garden.  Goosie had indeed painted himself.

Can Geese look sheepish?

For some inexplicable reason, Goosie had stuck his head into the bucket of waste oil.

One unusually well behaved oily goose

Nothing else for it but to get out the detergent and give him a good but gentle sponging followed by a bath in fresh water.

My God!  I am going bald!
Wash Day at Uncle Tom's Cabin

Normally, Goosie is, as our American cousins would say, an 'Ornery Critter'.  He must have known I was trying to help because he stood there between my legs and let me get on with it. For a goose whose favourite pastime is to hide under the house next to the steps and then burst out suddenly surprising the hell out of anyone descending before chasing the unfortunate individual across the garden, wings outstretched administering painful pecks on bare calves, he was very well behaved.

Afterwards I went to decant the oil into the drum.  As I got to the bucket, I realised that under the sun, the still surface of the oil made a surprisingly good mirror.  I resolved to redouble my efforts to find anyone round here with a couple of female geese for sale.  If poor old Goosie tried to mount his own reflection, clearly he is in desperate need of a leg over.

Taking a Hint

My first Father-in-law (a sad reflection on my character to have to admit to more than one) had a dairy farm in Leicestershire.  In addition to his herd of milkers, he had a duck pond and was raising ducks, selling their eggs and culling excess birds.  I remember helping him when I was on leave from the Army.  We’d string ‘em up by the feet and stab ‘em through the eyeballs, straight through the brain.  I was just an amateur when I first started so often had to chase back up the line to finish a ‘flapper’ off.  Bryan used to get very angry with me if I ballsed one up and made it suffer.  He could do it clean and had no tolerance for inept morons like me.

It was a nice little earner for him until a fox recognised an easy source of food.

I had just returned from Central America with my trusty old Remington 700 BDL in 30 odd Six calibre.  That wouldn't just kill a fox; with soft point core locked ammunition, it would spread it across the countryside. 

This persistent fox was going to screw his business up so I rashly volunteered to kill it.

I selected an ideal firing point on the landing of the wooden stair case leading to the second floor of one of his barns overlooking his yard, separated from the duck pond by a four foot high dry stone boundary wall.

It was a cold November night and the fog settled in.  Pretty soon I could not see the pond well enough to guarantee a clear shot.  Since it was only a hundred yards and night, I had taken the scope off and was going to shoot using the iron sights but, don't forget, I had done all my hunting in the tropics so I was unused to freezing fog.  I needed another firing position.

Rather than wander around with a loaded hunting rifle, I left the rifle where it was on the landing, crossed the yard and hopped over the wall close to the pond to find a better position.  As I sat there thinking that the position behind the wall I had found, in the shadow cast by the yard lights was ideal, the fox trotted past me, bold as brass, crossed the little bridge to duck island and entered the coop.

My Father in Law, a sensible God fearing farmer had always been sceptical of his wild son-in-law so had laughed when I suggested I could shoot his fox for him by staying up all night.  In his critical eyes, I was a pastiche of a Great White Hunter.  Well fuck him, I thought.  Welshmen are nothing more than Irishmen who couldn’t swim.  I could not only swim, I could shoot straight.  I’ll bring him his damn fox, I thought.  But it was jolly cold.

Now I found myself with the fox in my field of vision but not within the sights of my rifle which lay a hundred yards beyond my grasp.  In the Army we were always taught that our rifles were our wives and we must keep them close, sleep with them.  I had committed a cardinal sin by laying the rifle down and abandoning it.  If my Father-in-Law lost a duck this night, I was doomed to incessant ridicule.

So I went after the fox.  They are bloody fast.  As I came over the bridge, this one was out of the coop in an instant and dived into the back end of the frozen pond.  It was the ice that did for her.  She could neither swim nor scrabble over the ice which just collapsed under her weight.  I dived on top of her with the most enormous splash and she bit the shit out of me.  I held her under the ice cold water until she stopped struggling and the jaws clamped onto my hand relaxed.

Pretty bloodied, I struggled up the muddy bank and deposited her body onto the frost crispy grass.  Amazingly, she was still alive but exhausted.  I was bloody exhausted as well and freezing my nuts off.  But I hadn’t given up.  This animal lying next to me had though.  It had accepted it was going to die by my hands so just lay there waiting for the inevitable.  I had it by the throat and my leg over its body so it wasn’t going anywhere as we each caught our breath.

What a beautiful creature.  She was a hunter like me.  No.  She was a real hunter.  If I came home empty handed, I could go to a supermarket and stock up feed for the family.  If she failed to kill, she and her offspring would die.  The stakes in our game were vastly different.  She started to struggle and bit me again so I strangled her a bit more and sank my teeth hard into her ear.  What she didn’t realize was that it was very important for me that I present her to my Father-in-Law.  Having thus bonded but not trusting each other in the least, with a firm grip around her snout and body, I carried her into the farmhouse while she did her best to scrabble the shit out of my ribs.

I think they had all been expecting my abject failure or, in the unlikely event I had been successful, the corpse of a fox.  What they weren’t expecting was me walking in, soaking wet and freezing, with a live one under my arm.  I could see that they were all ready for bed and evidently quite prepared to leave me outside in sub-zero temperatures.  My Father-in-Law very decently offered me a warming scotch but with me having only two arms, both of which were fully occupied taming the untameable, I could only stare at the glass.  My Mother-in-Law was worried about fleas.  My young wife, to her credit, seemed more concerned about the blood I was oozing.

Naturally, the question arose, what were we to do with it?  I guess my Father-in-Law would have been happier had I just shot it (and I wasn’t about to explain to him why I hadn’t managed to do that).  Faced with an infestation of fleas now that I had introduced a wild animal into her lounge, I think my Mother-in-Law would have been more comfortable with supporting her daughter during the funeral of a husband who had been mauled to death by a wild animal in a lonely field, anything but beasties in the house.

‘I can hold her down and you can shoot her if you want,’ I suggested to Bryan, ‘after all, she seems pretty calm with me’.  Having been expelled from the house the two of us were now sitting in one of the stalls of his barn, the fox cowering in the corner, my hand still on its neck.

‘Alright, you hold her and I will shoot her’, I suggested when he said nothing, ‘I just need to go and get the rifle’

We sat there a while longer in silence.  Bryan was never really talkative.  Not with me anyway.

I hauled out my hip flask from the inside of my Barbour jacket with my left hand and we each took a few slugs of whisky.  Despite my heavy winter clothing the sleeves of my jacket had been torn to shreds and I was bleeding from my face and hands.

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ I said, only to break the silence while I lit up a cigarette.

This Vixen had destroyed Bryan’s duck business.  He had every right to be angry.  Foxes, like rats, are vermin and should be shot on sight.

Bryan got up and came back with a shovel.  In the right hands, a shovel is a pretty effective way of dispatching a wild animal but it is bloody horrible to watch, especially if you are the one holding the unfortunate beastie down.

Bryan looked at me.  He was a tough Welshman who made his living off the land.  As far as he was concerned, I was just another soft city kid. Not only that, I was an Englishman who had shagged his wife and consumed his daughter’s cherry.  He hated me.  I could tell by the way he gripped the shovel.

‘How about we just let her go?’ I said, ‘She’ll never come back’.   

He stood over me for a while, long enough for ash to drop off the end of my cigarette.

‘See that she doesn’t,’ he said before leaving me alone with the fox in his barn.

And do you know what?  Having had the fright of our lives, neither of us ever set foot or paw on the farm again.