Mugged in charge of a trolley
Saturday morning, we arrived later than usual for the supermarket rumble, sloe-eyed from having seen off one of our progeny on the cut-price dawn flight.
It was almost afternoon before the beach buggy’s cow-catcher was able to insinuate itself through the cross-traffic of shoppers in the parking area, inflicting minor wounds on the more lethargic.
My wife and I had discussed a game plan on the way. I was to grab a trolley while she hied off to get our lunch in Cold Meats, that being the area of most likely delay. Attendants in Cold Meats, we’ve found, habitually have slower responses than the others. Perhaps it’s the proximity of the fridges.
The trolley I selected seemed sound enough after a perfunctory road test, so I made for the margarine. Then to milk and eggs with a stop betwixt for chicken breasts for an aged bitch. That’s all our Charlie will eat. My wife insists she – Charlie – is allergic to red meat. I maintain the dog is just a lead- swinger with a fowl fetish.
There were only two chicken breasts left so I grabbed them both and moved on to Softwave, toilet and otherwise. Having dumped these items, and a few more wrestled from Soaps and Cleansers, I left the trolley at a previously designated point (Hardware) and made for Frozen Foods.
We don’t normally have much truck with Frozen Foods but it’s a favourite browsing area of mine. I spend minutes admiring the pretty pictures in the vegetarian section, constantly surprised at the myriad and ingenious ways marketers can dress up the lowly soya bean to appear as something else. Thus engaged, I was suddenly aware of my wife, laden with cold meats, salads, cheeses and the Sunday roast.
“Hey!” she said. ‘What’s happened to our trolley?”
I glanced at my watch. It was twelve-fifty, demanding a sprint back to Hardware. The trolley was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, well,” said my wife. “We’ll just have to start again.”
‘But what about Charlie’s breasts?” I shouted, as I took off down the store.
The question hung unfortunately loud on the air. I could sense strange glances in its wake.
Once more into the melee, with a light shoulder charge on a battalion of women in curlers. It is my conviction that these peak-day shoppers wear curlers like scrum-caps, to protect their ears in the tight-loose and render them more streamlined to boot.
No familiar trolley in Cereals and Coffee, so I decided to work backwards from the check-out counters. Nothing in the queues, Jams and Jellies, Bread and Pastries. But on the edge of a ruck that had formed around a loss leader in Vegetables, I found it: clearly identifiable by the chicken breasts and the margarine.
Since nobody seemed in attendance, and since the ruck was spreading my way, I made both the trolley and myself scarce in Condiments and Sauces. There I started offloading what plainly was not ours – a 10kg bag of potatoes, five packets of salt-and-vinegar chips, enough bully-beef to outlast a siege and a number of articles of a distinctly feminine nature.
I began to feel somewhat like a voyeur, not having considered before how personal supermarket carts can be – and that thought led me to a frantic attempt to disguise the trolley with more bulk chutney than our family could consume in a year.
The next task was to find my wife. En route, I encountered a large lady in a Fair Isle cardigan, loaded down with cut-price vegetables, just as she was announcing to one of the managers that someone had stolen her bloody trolley. It was in my mind to tell her it had been our bloody trolley in the first place, but she was rather heavier and tall with indignation.
When eventually I located my wife, she had another full trolley in tow. Bar the chicken breasts, the chutney and a few other items to which she hadn’t got around, she seemed to have duplicated everything on our list. We made a quick transfer to the new trolley, left the other one and headed for the tills.
I was busy unpacking the last items when my wife said, “Hello! Where are our cold meats and salads?”
They were, of course, where we had forgotten them, somewhere in the bowels of the other trolley. I was half-way in pursuit when it came around the corner, in a company of a large figure wearing a Fair Isle cardigan and the smug look of one who has seen justice done.
I didn’t have the heart to mug the lady a second time. Nor was there any point in going back to Cold Meats. The attendants would already be gone, defrosting somewhere in the sun.
We lunched – with long teeth, to use that marvellous Afrikaans expression – on a tin of bully beef and a packet of diet crackers, both of which I had neglected to ditch the first time.
If there is anything worse than a scratch meal, it is somebody else’s scratch meal.
From John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heels column
Speaking at this moment in time . . .
Travelling steerage on an Airbus some days ago, I was puzzled to encounter an object with a label proclaiming it to be a “motionary discomfort receptacle”.
Puzzled I was, for a while, because the thing looked just like an airsick bag and unquestionably would have been able to serve the same purpose.
It was even in the pocket behind the seat where one expects to find airsick bags, along with the last encumbent’s toffee wrappers and the airline literature, always so graphically illustrated, that shows passengers where to store their dentures before the moment of impact and how to conduct themselves in a lifebelt once the aircraft is to the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
What has happened, of course, is that obfuscation simply has taken to the air. And, indeed, why not? What better place for jet-age jargon than in a jetliner?
Not that obfuscation is a modern phenomenon. Far from it. But it certainly has never had so many apostles.
Obfuscation, as if you didn’t know, is the art – or science, since it generally seems to be employed in scientific directions – of saying what you have to say at as great a length as possible, using the most obscure terms available. (To obfuscate means to darken the mind.)
Obfuscationists come in many categories of competence. Down around the lowest rung is the person who talks about “parameters” and refers to “this moment in time”, when he means “now”. But then, as you might imagine, it’s an exacting science or art, since a person’s natural inclination is to be as direct as possible in thought and speech.
Who is to say how much midnight oil is burnt along the corridors of science, commerce and industry as departmental scribes strive to bring the highest degree of obscurity to their memoranda and reports? Or how many person-hours went into that single instruction that came with your new lawnmower telling you how to “reverse the transit screw adjuster bolt at the rear of the baseplate co-ordinating catch before depressing the upper support stay”?
As if to confirm my belief that obfuscation has gone into the air travel business, a Government notice landed on my desk yesterday about “conditions relating to the disposal or use of aviation fuel”.
In it the author outlines various regulations that apply to “power-driven, heavier than air machines deriving their lift in flight, chiefly from aerodynamic reactions on surfaces which remain fixed under given conditions of flight”.
He means aeroplanes.
These regulations, it seems, are different from others that have to do with “heavier-than-air machines supported in flight by the reactions of the air on one or more power-driven rotors on substantially vertical axles”.
He means helicopters.
The author almost lost me with one reference to “an air transport service in connection with which flights are undertaken with such a degree of frequency that they cannot reasonable be regarded as merely casual or isolated but are undertaken between points which do not vary . . .”
Of course, he’s talking about regular flights. But how clever to put it that way?
Obfuscationists get around. There is at least one in our company, witness a memo that reached me recently about a sister newspaper with “approximately four per cent more manpower than was estimated as being adequate”.
This state of affairs, the memo concluded, was “mainly due to the under-utilisation of the Leave provision”. Or, to put it another way, because some people weren’t taking their holidays.
Another example of obfuscation at its best comes from a brochure seeking applicants for the Boston Consulting Group, wherever that might be. It says: “Financial compensation for successful performance . . . is certainly likely to be sufficient to remove it as a constraint upon any reasonable standard of living.”
Which means the pay’s okay if you’re good enough
Or how about this, from a house magazine, advertising an in-company health scheme? The ad says, “The only applicants likely to be refused entry are those with multiple pre-existing medical episodes.“
Or people who get ill a lot.
Curiously, one of the great crusaders against obfuscation is the Old Thunderer, The Times of London. The newspaper frequently runs angry letters in its readers’ columns about obfuscation – like one this month from a professor at Queen’s College, Oxford.
“Sir,” it read, “would someone please inform our politicians and political writers that ‘parameter’ does not mean ‘rule’ or ‘convention’ or ‘limit’?
“Yesterday, parameters were being observed. No doubt we shall soon be having them loosened up, thinned out and boiled down.”
Excellent advice, I’m sure, if you happen to have any dealings with parameters. Personally, I wouldn’t presume to touch them with a barge-pole.
If, that is, they are capable of not being touched with a barge-pole.
John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heals column
Clearing up after the festivities
Dear Mrs Robinson,
First of all, my family and I would like to thank your good self and everyone concerned with your Establishment for a most enjoyable holiday. We are being entirely sincere when we say, in that phrase often over-worked, that “we had the time of our lives”.
If there should be a better private hotel on the Cape South Coast, we will battle to find it next season. (That statement is intended as a joke, ha! ha!, and has nothing to do – I hope – with the rather precipitate manner by which we eventually came to leave “Seatide” , for as you know we had planned to stay until after New Year.)
About that first small and, in my view, unfortunate altercation: Let me state at once that neither my wife nor I was apprised in advance of the fact that our “offspring” had invited friends to make use of their bedroom floor.
Believe me, it is not in our nature to have “squatters” or “big city hooligans”, as I think you described them on our departure, take advantage of anyone’s hospitality. Especially on a gratuitous basis.
This leads me to the hole in the bedroom ceiling, although here I would hesitate to apportion blame to any faction or individual.
But I am sure, with your experience in the catering business, you will agree that youngsters are the same wherever they may hail from (“big city” or otherwise) and if one offers a youngster a good set of bed springs (such as, I would like to add by way of compliment, we encountered almost without exception at “Seatide”) he or she inevitably will be tempted to jump on them.
Boys will be boys and girls, girls.
One suggestion I can offer in this regard is that you consider retreading the swimming pool as a pit for one or more trampolines. That could constitute a further fine amenity at “Seatide” for guests young and old, throughout the year, and particularly now that your pool filter happens to be malfunctioning.
By the way, while on the subject, we have spoken at length to our youngest and he remains adamant that he has absolutely no knowledge of the process whereby his flippers became lodged in the “in” duct.
My son has also expressed doubt that an accident like that should have discoloured the water in the pool to an extent where he was unable to see the bottom through his Jacques Cousteau “Barrier Reef” goggles.
I would tend to believe him since both flippers and goggles were a Christmas present he had hardly used until then. Indeed, he seems to be most distraught about the whole affair.
Another of our offspring has suggested the presence of the flippers in the filter probably was extraneous to its non-working anyway: that the original blockage was the result of the “mock battle” around the pool on Christmas Eve, initiated by the boy from the caravan park – the “large bloody lout” as you referred to him in your parting statements.
On that score, our children deny they invited the youth over. They say they were under the impression he was the son of somebody in your Management, so authoritatively did he direct the encounter between the “Ninja Turtles” and the “Sewer Rats” gangs. And so, when he began throwing mud around the pool area, they naturally thought this to be permissible under the rules of the hotel.
I humbly advise that a large gate, with a suitably high fence between hotel and caravan park, would be the best barrier against this sort of unwanted element.
The other events of our holiday, if I may deal with them in the order in which you mentioned them upon our departure, may be quite easily explained.
Firstly, our second born (please be assured) is unused to strong drink, though we do allow him the odd glass of white wine on festive occasions. After all, the family on his mother’s side is French, in the most responsible and civilised way.
But where he came by that bottle of Irish Mist still is a mystery to us. We can only think the boy from the caravan park must have brought it along with him, although we have no evidence to support that claim.
Our son’s recollection of the whole afternoon is vague, as you may well imagine. However, he has asked me to offer his apologies to you and your husband for the remarks he made in his state of impairment. Of course, he doesn’t remember exactly what he said but, as he points out, in our family “Fatso” and “Old Bag” often are used as terms of endearment.
The fire must be seen as my responsibility entirely. I should have double-checked that my portable soldering iron was switched off before I put it down on the bedside table after using it to repair the electric kettle you so thoughtfully placed in our suite. (Who tried to boil the kettle without water in it I cannot say. Incidentally, is it working now? If not, please mail it along and I’ll have another go.)
On the matter of the “mistaken bathroom”: our youngest, who collects these things, maintains that Mr Robinson over-reacted in the situation. He says the snake he happened to leave in the wrong tub was of a completely harmless water variety.
Also, my wife – who used to be a nursing sister and viewed your husband’s lacerations – says they were not nearly as bad as he made them out to be. It was quite a small window, after all.
Well, Mrs Robinson, I trust this e-mail letter has cleared up any remaining misunderstandings on your part. Assuring you of our continued custom and support in the future, I am etc.
Time Wounds All Heels column
Dominoes is no game for girls
Christmas just a few days off, and a problem re-emerges I thought had gone away forty years ago: What present to give a female child that is not a doll or something else related to dolls? Clothes, cradles, prams, wardrobes, houses?
And, in the modern world, doesn’t cost one or two limbs because it happens to contain a microchip?
Toys have always been easy for boys. There are all manner of things that run or fly, can be hit or kicked, that come with parts they can put together and so improve their mechanical skills. Or blocks for would-be architects or developers.
Or just a penknife can make a highly acceptable gift for a boy. And it is one you may upgrade every year, starting with a basic blade and moving through the whole range of Swiss Army knives with additional gadgets like nail-scissors, toothpicks, screw-drivers, saws and bottle-openers.
For years, in my pre-teen age, I envied Richmal Crompton’s William Brown character because he had a pocket knife that was able to remove stones from horses’ hooves.
As parent to four daughters, I have long deplored the restriction our society places on toys for little girls. It is highly discriminatory and I’m surprised the Women’s Libbers haven’t taken it up before now.
Instead, I notice a lame attempt by toy manufacturers to broaden the range of options by introducing an older Barbie, one with worry lines and cellulose thighs. A fat lot of use that will be, in all senses.
The problem of presents for little girls re-occurs because those four daughters have produced offspring. Of our nine grandchildren, no fewer than seven are female. I fear women are conspiring to take over the world.
My wife and I often tried to wean our daughters away from what was on offer for female children, to introduce them to a broader canvas of Life. Me particularly.
Birthdays and Christmases, we showered them with all manner of boy-type toys: Meccano sets, electric trains, Action Men, Frisbees, model aeroplane kits, fishing rods.
To little avail. Their interest was fleeting, if any; mainly, I imagine, because they didn’t want to appear non-conformist or foolish in the eyes of their peers.
So usually I ended up having to play with the darn things myself. Just to offset the expenditure.
When our eldest daughter took up Girl Guiding, I went out and bought her a scout knife. It wasn’t quite Swiss Army but handsome enough. And, yes, it did have the stone-from-hoof amenity.
But, alas, the Guide phase didn’t last and soon the knife was mislaid.
One gift that was successful for a while with our children was a set of dominoes, inlaid, quasi-ivory. So I was encouraged the other evening to find that one grand-daughter had come across these pieces in some dark recess and was idly shuffling them about on the carpet.
Now I am a domino player of international experience. I learned in a hard school during one summer I spent in Spain. We would go down to this little village on the island of Formentera and engage the locals.
The arrangement was that, if they beat us, we would buy the beer. If we beat them, we would buy the beer. Some Spanish traditions are rather strange for foreigners to understand.
Still, the beer was cheap, the company genial and we soon got to know the finer tactics of the game. It wasn’t too long before we were winning and buying all the time.
So when my grand-daughter produced the dominoes the other evening, and asked me how to play, I passed on some of those tactics. Not too many. No grandfather is a complete idiot.
Nevertheless, I explained how to keep count of the different cards, how important it was to play to one’s strength and when to withhold doubles and when not. That sort of thing.
She won the third game. The fourth, fifth and sixth.
Of course, it was beginner’s luck. But it doesn’t seem to have run out, night after night. Nor has her enthusiasm. My only consolation is that we aren’t playing for beer.
This weekend, I intend finding that scout knife with the hoof thingummy. It would be nice to have it handy – just to give the child a gentle nudge on the wrist as she prepares to put down her final card.
A holiday not to be forgotten
Dear Mr McGregor,
First let me say how much the family enjoyed those few days at your hotel. We are only sorry that you will not be able to accommodate us next season but unfortunately, according to your receptionist, you are fully booked for some time hence.
That is a great disappointment, considering the marvellous stay we had at “Bluewaves”. However, it must be an encouraging situation for your good selves. You seemed to have a number of vacant rooms when we were there. Perhaps the economy really is set to pick up, as some predict.
My wife mentioned on the telephone that we are returning your snooker balls plus table tennis set by courier. How they came to land up in our boot remains a mystery. The children deny all knowledge and I must accept their word, although I do appreciate that Mrs McGregor will be suspicious after the incident involving the shoes.
Believe me. That was no more than an ill-conceived prank, collecting them from the corridors and mixing them up like that on the stairs and in the foyer. Yet, while the thought might be admirable, inviting guests to put their shoes out for cleaning is an old-fashioned practice I think you would do well to review.
In our experience, this no longer happens at most holiday hotels (and, I assure you, we have stayed at a good few). The trend seems to be towards a small cleaning set, lodged in the cupboard where one keeps the spare blankets. It’s merely a suggestion.
Of course, the matter might have come to nothing had the housekeeper not done herself an injury by falling down like that (How is she, by the way? We sent her flowers) and if the youngest – with the best motives in the world, I might add, which is why my wife was a bit sharpish with your good woman – had not undertaken the job of polishing them before her brothers threw them down the stairwell.
Being a parent yourself, I imagine you will appreciate that four-year-olds are too immature to know that one should not apply boot polish to suede leather, but that is Melissa’s nature. She will make someone an excellent wife some day, she has this absolute fetish about polishing things.
And colouring things, for that matter. That, of course, would explain the rather unfortunate development on the Thursday afternoon when you were showing the “Creatures of the Lost Lagoon” DVD which, incidentally, we did not think suitable for young children and we were not surprised when Melissa left.
Even so, we misunderstood her completely when she announced that she was going off to “paint the porch”.
Both my wife and myself interpreted that to mean that Melissa was intent on altering the colours on the front of the doll’s house she was given last Christmas, perhaps using her paint-by-numbers set.
We certainly were not apprised of the fact that the gentleman in Bungalow 3 owned a car of such manufacture, or we might have immediately been suspicious.
Nor did we realise that our daughter would have ready access to the materials with which (if I may say so) you maintain the “Bluewaves” pool in such exceptional condition.
It may be of some consolation to the person involved to consider that he must now the most waterproof vehicle in the country, but I would urge that you get your staff to put a lock on that shed.
On the subject of presents, our eldest assures us that he acted entirely without malice when he went to practise his new trumpet that night behind the ladies’ powder-room. He says when he blew down the overflow duct, it was merely as an experiment in resonance and he had no idea anybody was “ensconced”.
Still, I imagine Mrs Clifford sees the funny side of it by now.
My son also asks me to apologise on his behalf for his language to you in the affair over the pedal-boat. Normally, he never uses those terms. Indeed, we were not aware that words like those were part of his vocabulary.
Gary says it was a reaction to having been called a “bloody Vaalie” but I myself believe his response was out of genuine fear, considering how far out to sea he was when he decided to “abandon ship” , as he puts it. The redeeming aspect of it all is that he is a reasonable swimmer.
My son also says – and I think he has a point – that if it is the rule of the hotel that those craft should not be employed beyond the mouth of the lagoon, you should have a large notice up somewhere to that effect.
Did you manage to get it back, by the way? Although, of course, you are bound to be insured against that sort of thing.
I trust your electricity will have been restored by this time, and the other repairs done. I am not an expert in these matters, and it is probably none of my business, but if I were you I would get somebody to have a look at the wiring.
It seems ridiculous to me that an entire hotel should lose its power because a small metal spaceship becomes jammed in a light socket. And my friends tell me the fire would never have happened if you had installed an adequate “earth leakage” system.
Once again, sir, let me express our sincere regret that you will not have room for us next year.
Yours etc.
P. S. We will certainly try again closer to the time, in case there should be any cancellations. The prospect of another holiday at “Bluewater” is too good to be missed.
From John Ryan’s Time wounds all heels column
A holiday not to be forgotten
Dear Mr McGregor,
First let me say how much the family enjoyed those few days at your hotel. We are only sorry that you will not be able to accommodate us next season but unfortunately, according to your receptionist, you are fully booked for some time hence.
That is a great disappointment, considering the marvellous stay we had at “Bluewaves”. However, it must be an encouraging situation for your good selves. You seemed to have a number of vacant rooms when we were there. Perhaps the economy really is set to pick up, as some predict.
My wife mentioned on the telephone that we are returning your snooker balls plus table tennis set by courier. How they came to land up in our boot remains a mystery. The children deny all knowledge and I must accept their word, although I do appreciate that Mrs McGregor will be suspicious after the incident involving the shoes.
Believe me. That was no more than an ill-conceived prank, collecting them from the corridors and mixing them up like that on the stairs and in the foyer. Yet, while the thought might be admirable, inviting guests to put their shoes out for cleaning is an old-fashioned practice I think you would do well to review.
In our experience, this no longer happens at most holiday hotels (and, I assure you, we have stayed at a good few). The trend seems to be towards a small cleaning set, lodged in the cupboard where one keeps the spare blankets. It’s merely a suggestion.
Of course, the matter might have come to nothing had the housekeeper not done herself an injury by falling down like that (How is she, by the way? We sent her flowers) and if the youngest – with the best motives in the world, I might add, which is why my wife was a bit sharpish with your good woman – had not undertaken the job of polishing them before her brothers threw them down the stairwell.
Being a parent yourself, I imagine you will appreciate that four-year-olds are too immature to know that one should not apply boot polish to suede leather, but that is Melissa’s nature. She will make someone an excellent wife some day, she has this absolute fetish about polishing things.
And colouring things, for that matter. That, of course, would explain the rather unfortunate development on the Thursday afternoon when you were showing the “Creatures of the Lost Lagoon” DVD which, incidentally, we did not think suitable for young children and we were not surprised when Melissa left.
Even so, we misunderstood her completely when she announced that she was going off to “paint the porch”.
Both my wife and myself interpreted that to mean that Melissa was intent on altering the colours on the front of the doll’s house she was given last Christmas, perhaps using her paint-by-numbers set.
We certainly were not apprised of the fact that the gentleman in Bungalow 3 owned a car of such manufacture, or we might have immediately been suspicious.
Nor did we realise that our daughter would have ready access to the materials with which (if I may say so) you maintain the “Bluewaves” pool in such exceptional condition.
It may be of some consolation to the person involved to consider that he must now the most waterproof vehicle in the country, but I would urge that you get your staff to put a lock on that shed.
On the subject of presents, our eldest assures us that he acted entirely without malice when he went to practise his new trumpet that night behind the ladies’ powder-room. He says when he blew down the overflow duct, it was merely as an experiment in resonance and he had no idea anybody was “ensconced”.
Still, I imagine Mrs Clifford sees the funny side of it by now.
My son also asks me to apologise on his behalf for his language to you in the affair over the pedal-boat. Normally, he never uses those terms. Indeed, we were not aware that words like those were part of his vocabulary.
Gary says it was a reaction to having been called a “bloody Vaalie” but I myself believe his response was out of genuine fear, considering how far out to sea he was when he decided to “abandon ship” , as he puts it. The redeeming aspect of it all is that he is a reasonable swimmer.
My son also says – and I think he has a point – that if it is the rule of the hotel that those craft should not be employed beyond the mouth of the lagoon, you should have a large notice up somewhere to that effect.
Did you manage to get it back, by the way? Although, of course, you are bound to be insured against that sort of thing.
I trust your electricity will have been restored by this time, and the other repairs done. I am not an expert in these matters, and it is probably none of my business, but if I were you I would get somebody to have a look at the wiring.
It seems ridiculous to me that an entire hotel should lose its power because a small metal spaceship becomes jammed in a light socket. And my friends tell me the fire would never have happened if you had installed an adequate “earth leakage” system.
Once again, sir, let me express our sincere regret that you will not have room for us next year.
Yours etc.
P. S. We will certainly try again closer to the time, in case there should be any cancellations. The prospect of another holiday at “Bluewater” is too good to be missed.
A drongo behind the Black Stump
Because of the huge response to its immigration programme, the Australian government has decided that future applicants for citizenship must be fluent in English. – News report
At last his name was called, though he would have been pleased for any reason to stay out of the rain.
Sydney Harbour Bridge, glimpsed through broken slats in the venetian blinds, appeared two-dimensional behind the deluge. The weather on that day was rather different from what he had expected. Travel brochures, he reflected, were the same the world over.
“Jew-Anne Carlow Pine-toe?” called the bald-headed officer. He was a large man in baggy white shorts and a short-sleeved shirt.
“That is I,” said Juan Carlos Pinto.
“Up here, mate,” the officer said, indicating a moulded chair. There was a delay in which the immigration man found a file, wet his thumb and began paging through it. His mouth worked as he did so.
“Pine-toe,” the bald-headed officer said at length. “What kind of Julia is that?”
“Pardon?” said Juan Carlos.
‘Your bloody handle, jack,” said the officer. “Whassit? Eye-tie? You a bloody ding?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Juan Carlos. “I do not understand.”
‘Don’t bung it on me, mate,” said the officer. “Where d’ya hail from? What’s ya bloody nationality?”
“I am Spanish,” said Juan Carlos. “From Andalusia.”
“Ah, well,” said the officer. “Seen one dago, seen the lot. Got enough of you jokers already, ask me. Pizzas and bloody pay-ellas coming out of our ears. Bunch of ratbags, mostly. No offence.”
He turned and addressed another officer who was busy at a tea urn across the room. “Hey, Alf!’ he said. “Drop that bloody billy and get yer hump over here!”
Alf strolled over, plastic cup in hand.
“You parly a bit of Spic, donya?” said the bald-headed officer. “Come and yabber to this galah. He’s one of them dago drongos.”
Alf studied Juan Carlos, taking in the immaculate suit and cravat, the calf-length boots.
“Done up like a bloody pox-doctor’s clerk, ain’t he?” said the bald-headed officer. “Laired like a bloody pom. No shortage of Oscar, that’s plain. Bag of fruit musta cost a bit of bloody scratch.”
“Hablo Inglais?” Alf asked.
Juan Carlos nodded. “I am bilingual,” he said. “I have studied at the academy in Madrid. For many years.”
“Pig’s butt!” said the bald-headed officer. “Don’t come the raw prawn with us, mate. Accent like that!”
He returned his attention to the file in front of him. “Means of Entry,” he read aloud. “How’d ya shoot through, blue?”
“He means how did you get here?” said Alf.
“I have come by ship,” said Juan Carlos.
“Thought so,” said the bald-headed officer. “Wet-bloody-backed it through the islands, dinya? One of those Polynesian bangers. Backhander to the skipper, no questions asked. Right?”
“It was the Oceana,” said Juan Carlos. “P and O line. Very nice ship. Very reposeful.”
“Huh!” said the bald-headed officer. He picked up Juan Carlos’s passport, flipped through it, then put it down. “Right, mate,” he said. “So what’s yer bloody lurk?”
“Lurk?”
“Yeah. You a bloody hash artist, or what? Setting up to run the hard stuff from Colombia, are yer? We’re on to that game, mate, tell you now.”
Juan Carlos looked at Alf. “He’s asking why you want to immigrate to Aussie,” said Alf. “What you plan to do here.”
“Ah,” said Juan Carlos, nodding. “It is simple,” he said. “I have read much about the Black Stump, such places. Now I wish to go there, to start a ranch. Somewhere into your interior. With my Spanish bulls.”
“Bloody oath!” said the bald-headed officer. “You got bulls?”
“Many,” said Juan Carlos. “Numerous herds. Always my family has them.”
“Strewth!” said the bald-headed officer. He looked at Juan Carlos as though seeing him for the first time, noticing a cheroot in a manicured hand. “Hey, can I bite ya for a smoke, mate?”
“He wants a cigar,” said Alf.
Juan Carlos handed one over, offering one to Alf, who declined.
“Right,” said the bald-headed officer, lighting up. “One more question, then she’s right. You ever done bird?”
“Bird?”
“Yeah, bird-lime. Y’know. Time.”
“Time?”
“The officer is asking,” said Alf, “do you have a prison record. Have you ever been in jail?”
Juan Carlos looked puzzled. “I thought that was no longer necessary,” he said, “for one to come to Australia.”
If you can’t stand the heat
It was in my early years of bachelorhood that I discovered a feeling for the culinary arts.
Some men resist kitchens as they might the main computer room at Cape Kennedy, but I have never been one of those. My attitude to that traditional female preserve is: If you can’t beat them, scramble them.
In this mood last weekend, my family in town at a matinee, I decided to whip up a Quiche Lorraine for us for supper. Now a Quiche Lorraine, as any gourmet cook knows, is a tricky little dish in that one has to achieve just the right blend of bacon, cheese and seasoning, being in the process extremely canny with the salt. A pinch too much will spoil everything.
I had just finished this delicate preparation, had just popped the flan into a preheated oven, when the doorbell rang.
It was a young man from a commune down the road, though I hardly recognised him at first behind a flour-mask that extended from chin to eye-level. He seemed equally taken aback to find me in my ruffled apron but recovered to ask if I could let him have a bouquet garni, mispronouncing a name I could see was as foreign to him as colloquial Kurdish. He also asked if I knew anything about pastry-making.
Is the Pope a Catholic, I said to myself, but aloud I told him, “I think you’d better take me to your recipe.” We picked up the bouquet garni on the way out.
The kitchen in the commune was enviably large but in a state of devastation. Unwashed utensils lay about as though distributed by a hurricane.
At the centre of things was a pastry board containing a very solid lump of dough and surrounded by ingredients that indicated a production line for a steak and tomato pie. The recipe was there to prove it, though half hidden under a jumble of plates and pans.
It seemed my new friend George (for the sake of anonymity) had drawn the short straw in the cook-of-the-day stakes. His commune mates were all down at the beach.
Thus far, George had followed the recipe in good faith, taking care to prepare everything before the actual baking process. But the tomato looked as if it had been garrotted, the onion chopped by the simply process of throwing it under a bus. The garlic had been butchered skin and all.
I set all this aside, suggesting it might be saved for some future soup, and called for a new lot. I began by showing George how to skin tomatoes by immersing them in boiling water, then in cold.
Next I demonstrated the best method of slicing onions, halving them first to stop them rolling around. Then I tapped the garlic to loosen the skin.
“Now the way to crush a clove of garlic,” I told George, “is to place it in salt. After that, it comes apart at the point of a knife. Like so.“
Having adjusted the oven, I trimmed and floured the meat and placed it all in a pie dish with salt, pepper and the bouquet garni. I rolled the dough to the thickness of a five-rand piece, set it with a hole at centre, decorated the top with pastry leaves and brushed on the beaten egg. I considered breaking the egg with one hand, as I am able to do, but rejected the idea as possibly too ostentatious. Then I put the pie in the fridge for ten minutes to relax.
“That’s a good tip to remember,” I said to George. “A lot of cook books don’t tell you to do that.”
While waiting for the pie to settle, I put on the kettle with George’s permission and made us some tea, pouring the tea into the milk to scald it. Somehow tea never tastes the same the other way about.
George had seemed most impressed at all these goings-on and said as much. “Look,” I told him, “cooking’s just a matter of knowing a few basics, then being able to read the recipe.
“Women deliberately load the whole thing with mystique. It’s a defence mechanism. They’re afraid we’ll think less of them. If too many men came to realise how easy it was to cook, the stature of the woman slaving over the hot stove just wouldn’t be the same.”
George said he saw.
After ten minutes, I took the pie from the fridge, baked it for 30 minutes at 220C until the pastry was well risen and golden brown, then lowered the heat and left the rest to George. I told him the meat should be done in about two hours and suggested one or two accompaniments. Perhaps just cauliflower and peas, if George could manage those.
George could hardly thank me enough and rushed out ahead of me to buy the frozen vegetables.
Outside, a light rain was falling but the world seemed an exceptionally good place. I got to thinking how right that axiom is, about it being better to give than to receive.
In these spirits did I whistle my way home, back through the front door and up the stairs. Back to the acrid and highly distinctive smell of burning Quiche Lorraine that emanated from the kitchen.
Still, the tinned spaghetti we eventually had for supper was opened to a nicety.
High Noon in torrid Luanda
November in Luanda is a knock-down and drag-out month for heat. Which, like Bermuda’s sandflies and Daytona Beach’s mosquitoes, is not a fact you will see bandied about in travel guides.
By eleven o’clock, even the black Angolans – whom one would expect to be reasonably immune to the situation – are scurrying off to find some respite among the palm groves.
They dart from one pool of shade to the next, criss-crossing streets and alleys as they go, like a terrorised crowd fleeing before some hidden sniper.
One o’clock is the meridian. Now the siesta is fully into its stride, the pavements downtown deserted.
Except for me, trudging along on a pair of fried eggs. Intermittently massaging a neck gone stiff to no avail, from turning to look out for taxis.
And a solitary policeman. Grey of face and uniform, he keeps measured pace on the other side of the street, plainly suspicious of the stranger who chooses to venture out in this sauna weather.
With sidelong glances, we watch each other through the haze that rises from the tarmac. Clomp. Clomp. The sound of our feet is an infraction upon the gentle snoring of the city.
I think this could make a good movie scenario. Then remember that it did. ‘High Noon’, of course. Gary Cooper, the late Princess Grace, and the most convincing bunch of renegades that ever appeared on celluloid.
The vision of Deadwood Gulch (or was it Dodge) grows as we turn a corner, still faultlessly in step, and head towards the old town hall. It’s the heat, naturally, and the silence, the shuttered buildings and the minute hand up in the clock tower, moving fatefully onward.
In my mind, it becomes a game. The cop, gun strapped low, can be Cooper. A little darker and rounder, perhaps, but pure granite underneath.
Me? I’m Tonto, Festus or Pancho. Some such sidekick. Not quite a Cooper but the next best thing. A veteran of shoot-outs and bar brawls.
Striding out to our next showdown, I smile conspiratorially across at my partner. He responds with a frown. Deadwood Gulch fades into reality.
My hotel still being a long way off, I start whistling to lighten the load. The policeman’s frown darkens so I stop. Maybe it’s a jailable offence to whistle during the siesta.
At once, an alarm bell begins to ring somewhere ahead of us.
Cooper, that was, acts commendably in character. The large gun is palmed, quick as a flash. He turns towards me but is persuaded by my idiot expression that I can have nothing to do with this new development.
Together we move towards the sound. The source turns out to be a jeweller’s shop, which fact causes us to exchange meaningful glances.
Peering through the glass frontage, we see the alarm on an inside wall. Its little hammer is beating in agitation. There is no other sign of movement.
The policeman and I confer by way of jumbled sign-language. The front door, we agree – after furious pulling and pushing at the knob – is impenetrable.
But running down both sides of the shop are service lanes. My companion signals that I should tackle one while he investigates the other.
Stumbling past dustbins, I find a small window near the back of the building. It is open but stoutly burglar-proofed.
I chin myself up on the ledge, long enough to gain an impression of a dark room, full of packing cases and broken timepieces. Also to glimpse an indefinable shape – possibly someone’s cap – edging forward above the level of a work-bench.
I drop down, charged with adrenalin, and sprint back to the street, clearing the dustbins like a steeple-chaser.
Taking the bend at full speed, I run straight into the chest of a grey uniform, which clutches me eagerly. Surprised, I stare into the face and, suddenly, the heat of the day gives way to a clammy chill.
It is not my policeman!
Stuttered explanations fall on foreign ears. I point wildly at the interior of the shop and the new cop grunts knowingly. Though he is shorter than my friend, his grip is ferocious.
I consider the circumstantial evidence. A burgled shop, a stranger in obvious flight from the scene. My fingerprints on the windowsill.
Of course, everything will be sweet when Cooper shows up. If he shows up. What if he had taken off after the real burglar? Never to be encountered again? Or not by me, at any rate.
But even as I stand there, with the policeman’s arm around my throat, Cooper emerges from the other lane.
He is carrying a large ginger cat. He drops it as he takes in the scene, stands poised for a moment, then moves to the attack.
A barrage of slaps to the other policeman’s neck secures my immediate release. The invective that accompanies this threatens to curl the paving stones.
The second cop retreats, spectacularly abashed. My friend takes my arm. And together, Cooper and Festus (or Tonto or Pancho) go forward in search of new pursuits.
A cold beer, I feel, would be an adventure in itself.
From One Man’s Africa
John Ryan 