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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To 400 kph then, the speed Piech wanted?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pretence?


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

Potential Peacekeeping Recruit

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

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

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



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

White Sands and a Lonely Shore

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

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

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

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







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

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






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

Not really a post…

...just an aside.

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

WTF?

So I had to follow the link.

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

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

Very laudable, on all counts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours faithfully

Tom Gowans

Ban the Burka?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or at least their kneecaps.

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


But that is the subject of another post...

Home Alone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As one, the passengers jumped into the bus.

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

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

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

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

Christmas in Angola

Bah! Humbug?

No, not really...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flowers Can't talk, But They Say So Much

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driven to Distraction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘BMW… Drives round the Benz’

Don’t tempt Fate, drive a BMW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When motor racing drivers were Real Men

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, 8th November

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A kindred spirit then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.