Category Archives: Holiday

May 13 2015
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Airport, Hangover, Holiday, Macedonia, Wedding

How I became Marilyn: Matrimony, Macedonian-style, with black drinks, and your phone in the river as you want to puke on a Ukrainian

And so we now go whirling back in time to May 2008. And quite a week, it was. A relocation with Sarah the First (some years were still to pass before SWK swung so delightfully into view – let’s call her STF, as I love a good acronym) across country from cosy West Norfolk to Scary Sheffield was waiting in the wings. Before we departed on the trip I shall describe further down, I was hauled one sunny morning to a place called Go Ape! Based in Thetford, this place. In a forest – you can see where I am going with this, right? Essentially a whole lot of ropes, nets, ladders and zip wires, onto which, following a period of instruction and the usual embarrassing fitting of equipment, one would attach oneself in a variety of ways and then sort of move through the greenery, like a rather unconvincing, breathless and careworn ‘ape’.

Actually, it was quite good fun, even for someone given to a little light curmudgeoning, now and again. I’d dropped a few hundredweight in the first half of the year, and felt rather fitter and stronger and nippier than normal. Therefore I sort of did ‘alright’, even though, as I say, it was a hot day and I’m not and will never exactly be Tarzan. Still, for all that, I have fond memories of the first zip wire, where I managed to maintain proper balance and could see directly ahead all the way down. The longer they get, the more chance there is that your balance will be disturbed and you will start to rotate as the whole contraption heads downhill – frankly if you so much as fart or raise a quizzical eyebrow, it’s a case of round and round you go. All this makes for a rather dizzying point of re-introduction to the terra firma, of course. I only really blotted my copybook as a calm, determined and entirely adult ‘ape’ at the point when, at the conclusion of the whole shebang, I thudded to earth for the last time really very uncomfortably, and scrabbled to my feet, rubbing myself, exclaiming “aaaargh, my BACK, my FUCKING BACK!” Inevitably, as is the way with these things, a young family full of goggle-eyed and adorable toddlers was having a nicely behaved lunch, on a blanket in the sunshine, about six feet downstage. So, my soaring into this scene and oathing my way out of it must have been a real treat for them. I mumbled something apologetic and lumbered away, studded with bark chippings, and trailing clips, crampons, cords, crash helmets and the like from my bruised person.

Home we sped, to pack, and set sail for the delights of the Balkans.

If I recall correctly, and more than a few years have passed, we managed to get into the country with little or no incident. Via, I think, Vienna, when it was a place as yet unknown to me. Vienna would have its rather surly and humourless revenge on us on the way back, to the tune of a bottle of DF vodka purchased by STF for 70p or something in Skopje airport. It was convincingly-enough bubble-wrapped and sealed and so forth, but was plucked from our property by a rather hatchet-faced mädchen, who declared it to be illegal in some way or another, as she cast it into an enormous Bin Of De Trop Booze. I was feeling rather off-colour, and remarked “Welcome to Vienna” rather too loudly, and got shot rather a look.

Anyway, yes, so, Macedonia. Stone the crows it was hot. Various bags put in an appearance, and we sweltered with them into a cab driven by heavily moustachioed fellow intent on giving us the history of the country since Tito, and a short lecture on what he termed the Balkan Mentality. We whizzed this way and that, everywhere and anywhere, and finally were put down at an indistinct crossroads, as our boy, whilst dynamite on domestic history and sociology, wasn’t exactly white hot on the final location of our hotel. There followed a slightly ill-tempered period of disappearing off in several different directions (Cyrillic not being a speciality of mine, and only partially registering with STF). Rather more by luck than judgement, we finally fell upon our hotel, immediately recognised both a swimming pool and a bar that sold cold, cheap beer, and generally unwound for a bit.

I should that explain that we were in town for a wedding. An old school friend of many years – let’s call him Benj, for his name is Benj – residing at that time in Budapest, was marrying his partner, a native of Macedonia. So, a couple of days playing by ourselves, a split stag-hen do that came to form a joined event later on, and, ultimately, the wedding, with our flight due to take off at slightly alarming o’clock the following morning. Nice mixture, interesting and perhaps unlikely location for a (at that stage) less-travelled pair, good weather. All pointed upwards.

One or two chums dropped in. Family members unseen for some time. A little beer was taken and, at some stage or another, STF and I noodled off to a couple of unusual bars (one festooned with hookahs and pillows, making seating an unusual business), and a spot of inexpensive dinner. Night came down, another bar was showing one of the Eurovision semi-final heats, our shorts were on and we generally kicked back and watched the night gradually cool from the heat of the day. Skopje was a real proper mixture. Old and new, battered and pristine, ancient and modern. Lovely waterfront, and a glorious Fortress (Kale) staring down on the city, up to which we scampered on the second morning, to learn about earthquakes and to mock the dreadful appearance of the football stadium, which appeared to be sort of melting on one side, and thus threatening to tilt into the river.

Clambering back to the hotel, as was often our wont on holiday, we got the sniff of an entirely unnecessary nightcap. And, but ten doors down from our quarters, there stood a small cube of a building. Scarcely identifiable as a bar, but just about such. A scattering of plastic garden furniture and the low thrum of revelry and music inside. Bravery and boozery got the better of us and we stepped down from the highway a few steps and into the throng.

The place was doing a high old trade, the jukebox skipping merrily, and, on something like a Wednesday night, the floor was peppered with cheery locals dancing, quaffing and ignoring the encroaching morning. So, we did too. And had our first real introduction to how good Macedonian red wine is, and how little it can cost. At some point we reeled off and away and back to HQ, topped-up nicely with something of roughly the quality of a Lebanese wine (my favourite), at about 15% the cost. Remarkable!

Off to a flier, and a couple of terrific days followed, learning more and more about our host city. Sunshine, and that enjoyable mixture of urban, semi-rural, commerce, hub-bub and catch-up all came together quite, quite beautifully. We had the most splendid time and I remember it hugely fondly, some years on. I remember lunchtime on the day of the stag and hen do, where we thought to take on board some preparatory solids over a spot of late lunch, and did a bit of digging around to find a ‘local’s hang out’, which was recommended in our guide book. Glad we did. It was not a lot more than an elongated wooden and brick shack, about a quarter inch from the thundering highway, with an open fire oven at one end. Characterful, shall we say? I have been trying to find it again on the internet to give you the name, but no dice, alas. If it ever emerges from the guidebook, I’ll pop it up on an edit here. Anyway, after a hard morning working our way ‘round ‘Ramstore’ (a mall, which sold everything, near enough) in pursuit of some jewellery, we fell upon our lunch gladly. A cold glass of beer each, with an enormous long, grilled chilli pepper, which took our heads off, and a delightful Shopska salad (I left the country full to the brim with that – still can’t make it as well at home, for all its simplicity). Followed that up with a kebab each and a litre of water and a litre of house red (again, stellar, I can almost summon the taste back now). We emerged, blinking into the sun, about £9 lighter. Wonderful.

So, on we gleefully went, and eventually, after the cavortings of the preparatory parties, it was time to get (a bit) serious, with the whole wedding shebang.

The day dawned bright, sunny and the temperature clambered on up into the middle nineties. English people gathered, sweatily, at the poolside, fingers circling the inside of dress collars, swilling down bottled water as preparation against the heat and onslaught of suspicious drinks to come. Benj appeared, and led us en masse, as his ‘supporters’ to the flat where his intended’s parents resided. First item of Macedonian tradition underway. We bundled into lifts, party by party, up to the 23579th floor, and pushed in. There began a process of bargaining for the bride’s release. Ultimately this was a release secured by the handing over a sum of money to the bride’s sister, but firstly we enjoyed Benj getting wrong (and quite badly wrong) a series of questions about the future Mrs Benj, the correct answers to which would have secured her release all the sooner and more cheaply. No matter, soon all were together, the windows flung wide, and the living room transformed into a dancefloor for that always incomprehensible tradition of forming massive circles, holding hands, walking and periodically kicking in the same direction and shouting “HEY!” whilst on a record somewhere someone gives it six-nowt on a balalaika, or similar. Roaring good fun. Bottles of suspicious-looking over-chilled Rakija (a glorious blend of what you know best of grappa, brandy and a good single malt) appeared, and were carefully sipped at. The hour was barely noon. Hmm..

Onto phase two. Get Me To The Church on Time. Our massive group of Europeans of all types (what a cool day this was – bollocks to all that suspicious-of-everyone right wing crap – people from everywhere are, frankly, ace) crammed onto coaches, and off we rolled to a Macedonian Orthodox Church, somewhere on the fringes of the city. Cracking building. Retreated to a safe distance to admire and photograph it, so as to make bolting down more water and having a cheeky gasper seem reasonable. Eventually, as the Sun really began to give it what for, we were summoned in to stand in rather arbitrary crowds and bear witness to the service.

I can’t do it justice, really. Not in meagre words, I wish you could pop into the cinema of my memory. There appeared to be at least 17 priests, and all of them bearing at least a passing resemblance to Brian Blessed. Happily one of the this throng of mighty churchmen was able to give us the headlines in English, and there followed a good 70-80 minutes of listening and repeating, bread eating, altar wine drinking, crown wearing, crown wearing and walking in a circle, and all manner of utterly wonderful marriage-related lunacy and flimflam. Quite a show. So much fun that we forgot, for a while, that we were melting. Brian #6 had to step in and give Benj a bit of a towel down at one point, I seem to recall. Possibly the best element of this was the presence of a sort of 1970’s school caretaker (tall, thin, and wearing a very long brown- buff housecoat), who hovered close to the action at all times. As and when we had got through the use of one prop or gewgaw or another, he sort of dove in and nabbed it, and popped off to his lair with it for safekeeping. Seemed a bit much, to me. Bit Gollum-y. Certainly he didn’t seem to be asking “have you finished with this, you eminence?” or something respectful of that nature. Not so much as a by your leave. Dearie me.

At some point, and it was never quite clear when, it emerged that Benj was a married man. The church disgorged our bedraggled selves, and we made for the coach. And so to the reception, and a long and thirsty afternoon and evening.

Things started well. Strawberries, local fizz (unlike the Ukrainian stuff I was to taste a year later, it was okay), chats in the shade. All good. And then the mid-afternoon meal began. Entire flasks of perfectly-chilled Rakija emerged, with more of the lovely salad. Then a course of various ‘bits and bobs’ with wine, and, ultimately, a well-need sharpening coffee and some sort of sugary dessert. One became ‘chatty’ as the sunshine and the drink seeped its way around the blood. Not offensive, just enthusiastic. Shared an anecdote or two with some unwitting Hungarians.

I’m not sure, in retrospect, that our wonderful Macedonian hosts were quite ready for the speeches aspect of the wedding day. I mused for some time afterwards that it’d all come as a bit of a surprise, and was not really part of what would normally be expected. Anyway, this being an international affair, we forged on, the giant and wonderful Goran translating this way and that. Parents made light hearted contributions of a generous nature. Benj’s brother (the Best Man) rather threatened the smoothness and equanimity of proceedings with a lengthy speech that included an alignment of commentaries on the troubled Liverpool borough of Bootle (where once Benj had very bravely resided, despite two police raids) and FYR Macedonia. I think he must have thought himself quite clever. Some of us found ourselves rather looking at our shoes, none too impressed at our brother of Albion. Ho hum. Riot, there was none.

And so to Benj, and thereby to me. We’d barely got anywhere before he was on me, the cur. Always been a challenging friend, has our Benj, bless him. Firm believer in himself. Apt to rattle the cages of his chums. Lovely chap.

He was only about 90 seconds or so in, when he chose to tell the flagging audience that, today of all days, was his Mother’s birthday. Collective round of applause, all parties charmed. Then he pointed out that I had got married to STF on my Mother’s birthday (about 18 months or so beforehand) and on that occasion had sung her Happy Birthday, in ringing tones, accompanied by our guests. As such, with that having been a great success, Benj felt it only right that I should reprise the role, and sing Happy Birthday to his Mother. ‘Course he did. Scrawny bastard. No word of warning, just a smile playing on his lips from 30 yards away as he proffered the microphone.

It’s one of those times, isn’t it? Kill or be killed. You just react. I lowered the last of my Rakija and made out for the stage, smiling all the while. Into my paw the mike it did go, and I was straight into it. I’ll confess I did not start out over the first furlong really knowing quite what form I was in or, for that matter, what approach I was going to take, but it soon became clear, on that sun-blasted later afternoon, that I was going to go for a Baritone version of Marilyn Monroe signing to the young JFK. It won’t have been note perfect, for sure, and some of the intonation would have been a bit dodgy in parts. But, sufficed to say I belted it out and it killed. I walked off to a deafening roar of approval, the smuggest man in Skopje, as the picture below indicates.

Marilyn

I spent some considerable time getting over the whole business. Coffee, water, another glass of this and that, and the night rolled on. Some fell by the wayside, others danced, and drank on. I met an American, and we stood for a couple of hours at the end of some trestle tables next to a hug tureen of ice cubes, and sampled tumblers of many different firewaters from across the great continent of Europe, and talked bullshit about them. In the distance, one of Benj’s more louche relatives danced with my wife and periodically attempted to grab her bottom. We poured something that was black, herbal, and from Belarus, that was unutterably foul, but somehow found its way into the case the following morning. I only finally jettisoned it from the cellar in late 2011. At some point, I wandered off for a stroll, my day nearly run, and found myself weaving rather across something that seemed, in the glooming, to be quite like the Swilcan Bridge at St. Andrews golf course. In retrospect, I am pretty much certain that it was there that my mobile phone and I parted company (as I discovered the following morning, whilst packing), which was to prove simply ideal on returning to the UK to deal with things like house sales and purchases. Belarus 1 Self 0.

You know you’ve had a bloody good wedding when you leave last, and so it was with STF and me that night. We were finally levered from conversation with the hotel staff by the Bridge and Groom and into a taxi for our hotel, there to collapse for what felt like mere minutes.

Another day dawned bright. Us less so. Some rather ‘ask questions later’ packing took place. After a few panicked attempts at finding it, the old ‘phone was declared a casualty of the evening, and we eventually clambered our way into a mighty wagon, bound for the airport. Drinks of the world seeped from each and every one of the pores. The head started to pound and the lady next to me (whom I had not met the day before) talked incessantly at me for every yard of the journey in the way that only someone who’d behaved sensibly the day before could. She drew very few breaths indeed, during those torturous 12 miles.

And so to the airport, and check-in. The place was rammed, I remember. Aside from the purchase of the doomed DF vodka, we got ourselves outside of a couple of cold cans of soft drink, which brought the horizon, at least temporarily, into clearer relief. But, soon, there were delays, and squatting on the stone floor as the heat built. A resignation to a long day of rather bilious travel set in. It was properly etched into stone when we took our seats on the plane. I was placed in the middle of a set of three seats (never my favourite position as a heavier-set man), and did my best to relax. Whereupon three loud and ENORMOUS members of the Ukrainian National Weightlifting Team (two male, one female) sidled into the row above, and took heavily to their seats, rather threatening the aerodynamic properties of our bird, I thought. The shortest and widest of these specimens popped his seat back ( I am against this practice, and will return to it at wearying length), landing his vein-bulged bald head into the environs of my crotch, and I quietly focussed, as best as I could, on keeping all that Shopska salad down.

Right, I must grab the nettle and do a bit more of this. Let’s have a change of tack next time, and I’ll give you a work-travel tale, in the form of:

Nearly Losing The Gown (the curses of never owning a ribbon)

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Mar 13 2015
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Holiday, Scotland

An Irritable Inheritance

Goodness, it’s been simply weeks and weeks. NINE weeks, nearly. I do apologise, dear readers.

Funny how things all come together in one rambling way or another, isn’t it? Much as my first article about fleeing the prostitutes of the great continent of Europe was prompted by a late-night, post-gig proposition, my latest little stream of consciousness here has come into being through real life circumstances as well.

I have spent those last few weeks in something of a funk. Less strictly irritable, I suppose, but more uncharacteristically dejected and angry, as my experiences at trade have been rather less than happy ones; however the detail of why is far far too dull for here, and if spelt out might only hasten a foreshortening of my career if I chose to expand upon it in this public forum. The old internet can be a bit iffy like that. So: difficult times, suffice to say.

In my defence I would like to say I have not been particularly grumpy, per se, for as we know it was one of my New Year’s Resolutions to not be grumpy. Or to try to be less grumpy? I sort forget, and not being forgetful wasn’t one of the Resolutions. That much I remember. Anyway, instances of grumpy-guilt purchasing of flowers for the redoubtable SWK have been fairly few, instead they have been purchases born exclusively of love. All together now.. aaaah. <Vomit>

So, I seem to have actually had a few days in a row of employment without any major maelstrom or dreadful decent into despond. I am, for the moment at least, non-irritable, and, as such, reminded of the need to be creative (i.e. to blog) and thus to write, as promised, about my historic instances of irritability when travelling. As you do, when you’re feeling cheerful. Oh well, I did promise.

There. That’s the first 300-odd words sorted. This is easy!

So, basically, it’s all my Dad’s fault. To look at and listen to him now, you would think he has always and forever been the genial, pink-cheeked and silver-haired old buffer we now behold, snoozing on the sofa, holding hands with the dog. Do not be fooled. This is the result of a sharp-footed segue into partial early retirement at the age of 50. Had he laboured on for a further 15 years on a full time basis, I can safely predict, as carrier of the active irritability gene, that the ulcers would barely have healed by now.

I’m certainly not picking on the old boy, here, I should point out. No indeed; I love him as much as everyone else does, and he’s going to be my Best Man when SWK and I take the plunge this Summer, which is all really rather cool. My Stag Do will be me and him going to the pub, then me and him going for dinner. Perfect.

No, what I am doing is a bit of amateur sleuthing as to where the old X and Ys made me a trifle crosspatch. Not flamingly angry or anything, and for the most part I see the humour in everything and anything, but I do have the little doomsayer “ohbollocksitsallgonewrong” voice in my head, and sometimes he likes to use my mouth to be heard by everyone else. He’s addressed the Police, in the past, and we scarcely got away with it. I wish he’d keep a lower profile, I battle quite hard to shut him up and stay even-tempered, on frankly even those most happy, sunshine, skipping and daisy-chain making of days. ‘S lovely, being me.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together would tell you that this does not come from my Mum. A well-organised, calm but determined woman with an unflappably even temperament, and successfully partnered to, well, to him for the last 57 years. No jury in the land would convict her in this case.

I can prove it’s him, and start to get ‘round to addressing a bit of actual travel. But first, I should say that part of the proof comes from the fact that whenever I am found  to be demonstrating my characteristic irritability (and this irritability can be brought on by pretty much anything – I am just a delight to be around, for example, if I am make even the tiniest misstep in the kitchen), and he is around, the first sound one will hear is the hiss of his Muttley-like laughter escaping as he gathers his breath to say “hahahahah – you sound like me!”

Bugger. Case closed. Wouldn’t it be nice if, much in the way you can have all the blood in your body changed, you could flush out a pint or three of unfortunate traits like this? Oh well – one lives and tries to learn.

So, some time before I had my first adventure in longer term relationships and marriage, the old boy and I used to have a wee Summer holiday together. All most agreeable, it was. ‘Round the Republic of Ireland one year. ‘Round the North East another year and a circular Scottish odyssey on the other such occasion. We’ve had another trip away, since, in my break between marriages, which I will tell you about another time. Rather than an exercise in grouching, that was in fact an exercise in inspired coffee making, of which I remain very proud to this day. Anyway, ‘Frying Pan Coffee’ is for another day.

We were travelling, during year three of our Summer Spectaculars, from Inverness to Edinburgh, on a warm Sunday morning. Father was at the wheel. We’d been away about a week and had had a high old time, gadding about and living high on the hog. Too high, within the previous twelve hours.

Didn’t take to Inverness, if I am honest. Bit nothingy, much as I know it has its fans. Wedged into the latest of a series of Lilliputian rooms together at a B&B the small matter of 3259612056 miles outside the town (the internet being a big fat liar there), we had an interminable walk back over the river on a scruffy black iron bridge in pursuit of the evening’s nosebag. Once again, to a flea-bitten boozer for two pints of over-fizzed Tennent’s, which had become routine, but increasingly a chore.

Still, we’d espied a curry house, and ducked in for an early Saturday evening feed. Most agreeable it was, and we waddled back pleasingly full, across the endless bridge, to get heads down before the journey South through Perthshire the following morning.

On rising, I think we were temporarily fooled into a feeling of hunger, somehow. I recall a dusty and rather overheated breakfast room in the morning sunshine, and beading with sweat as the third sausage went down. Fool’s errand. I know now, of course, that simply because food is free, one doesn’t actually have to press it down like compacting rubbish into one’s wheelie bin.

A headache set in, as I reached for the map and dropped, steatopygous, into the passenger seat. Father strained under the wheel of our little (ghastly orange) Peugeot and the little car fought its way, under a substantial burden, onto the high road. Even it seemed a bit moody.

Travel does odd things to the body. I don’t want to be indecorous here, but like many of us, one likes to feel ‘regular’. No crime to mention that, surely? Apologies for the fainter-hearted; I’ll get off the subject shortly. It’s just I have found on so many occasions that my arrival in a new place, generally by aeroplane, then heralds an unfortunate period of being, er, ‘bound up’. Bound up = irritable. Like a big baby, really. Not good.

Back in those days, one launched an assault each new morning on the unwilling lower workings with the two gifts of caffeine and nicotine. More often than not, one would feel an inner stirring of a pleasing familiarity, and all would be well. Even shit coffee could lead to a good shit! And heaven knows I could knock you out about 25,000 words any time you like on my views on coffee and hotel breakfast rooms. That’s one of my favourite subjects to get irritable about. How familiar to me has become the long, post-breakfast search through the Old Town of somewhere or other in desperate need of something, almost anything, to replace the taste of the crumbled wet mud one had been forced to endure as an accompaniment to one’s ‘Full English’, or crazy overseas equivalent. Instances of good breakfast coffee are rare indeed. I’m a real picnic, when I have failed to have a nice coffee, as you can imagine.

So there we sat, wheezing our way to points South, the structural integrity of our outer dermic and muscular layers under considerable threat from a package of food that looked less likely to prove digestible than would a stone of Ailsa Craig granite.

You know we’re both irritable when it goes quiet. Normally in shared company we witter on, amusing one another and annoying my Mother. Not that she ever shows this, being, as we have seen, a nice person. Nope, silence, near enough.

Tried, and failed , to get Test Match Special on the car radio. Too many hills (the scenery was spectacular – I can conjure it in my mind’s eye, but was insufficiently praising of it at the time, as we wandered biliously down the A9). This led to irritability. It was too warm. This led to irritability. The storm clouds gathered in our little cockpit. We bickered a little about whether or not Margate FC had a game on Monday night and how we would find out the result. The truly irritable would manage to bicker about anything.

The crashing downpour of f-ing and blinding finally came when, for about the 107th time, a car and caravan weaved, without signal, out of its lane and into our path, halting progress from a nice downhill 68mph to a snail-like 43mph, as we waited for the convoy to re-enter the slower flowing stream to our left. It may have been a car and caravan; equally it may have been one of those big ‘things’, that Americans call Winnebagos (I think) that we delight in calling ‘Commodore’, ‘Senator’  or ‘Clubman’, or ‘Pioneer’, for fuck’s sake. A strengthened cardboard box, with a barrel of chemicals and poo somewhere within its structure anyway (not that we were jealous).

The cure for the irritability came in our solidarity over the irritability. All of a sudden, we had our teeth into the subject. Casting aspersions as to the characters of the owners of this behemoths. Constructing descriptions of their fiery demise, far below us in the valley. Drawing up legislation to enforce the usage of these vehicles between 11.00pm and 5.00am only, that would, of course, skip lightly through parliament, because of course, everyone felt as we did, in that moment, didn’t they?

Whatever the case, it did the trick. With eyes of fire, we were punch-lining one another’s jokes, and giggling like children. The temperature gauge dropped, the sun went out of our eyes, and digestion recommenced. I suppose, in retrospect, one might argue that road rage is good for irritability? Hmmm. Or at least indigestion? Not sure, but it got us through that morning, anyway. And we did have a game on the Monday, and I was right.

I became fabulously irritable on two occasions, some years apart, but around roughly the same issue. Much more irritable than I was that Sunday. The cause of my eye-popping ire? The position of seat-backs. Oh for heaven’s sake that’s one that really ticks me right off. My teeth are a good 2mm shorter than they should be thanks to that. One instance was on a return from Macedonia, innumerable years ago, following a wedding and with a hangover of really quite spectacular proportions. The other was more recent; on a short shift from Croatia into Montenegro, when, though no prudes, we found ourselves with some appallingly arrogant and self-satisfied young people seemingly intent upon on international congress in our laps. I shall bring all these stories and more together next time in an upcoming dizzying epic:

How I became Marilyn: Matrimony, Macedonian-style, with black drinks, and your phone in the river as you want to puke on a Ukrainian

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Jan 09 2015
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Giving up smoking, Holiday

BEING FRIGHTENED BY HOOKERS: A TWO PARTER (THE JOYS OF BEING BRITISH AND RUNNING AWAY) PART THE SECOND

And so we go to Norway. Oslo, more precisely, at the tail end of June, 2013.

Most of the way through one of the most instructive twelve months of my life so far. I had not taken a drink for 49 weeks, had recently run a dozen miles ‘round Lisbon in the raging heat, and was, looking back, only a tantalising six weeks from meeting the tolerant and beautiful SWK. I was about five and a half stone lighter than I had been the year before, and closing in on what was a final weight loss of 102lb.

I was fit as a fiddle. Well, for me I was. Life was very good, if a bit lonely (internet dating had proved a rocky road – it might set most of the world up with their partners these days, but it just gave me a continuous headache and a feeling of unworthiness – happily all that ended in August with the biggest slice of luck of my life so far). The only other lingering issue was that I was still a smoker. Had been for more than 20 years, despite being an asthmatic. Smelly and ‘spensive and it was, I am sure, labouring my efforts to become a better and better runner. It had to go. Everything else bad had, so why not, eh?

So, off I went, intending to eat well, and drink zero (having planned to do a full year off the sauce as part of my master-plan of self-improvement), at as reasonable a cost as I could manage (ho ho ho – the only more expensive city to Oslo I have visited so far is Zurich, where you are charged at the airport €0.10 for every breath you’ve taken since clearing customs). Add to that some quality tourism (there’s loads to do in Oslo – it’s completely ace), a little running and an assiduous study of the teachings of the very famous Allen Carr book “An Easy Way To Stop Smoking”.

At times it went well, and at other times badly. It was, amongst other things, also my first attempt at any sort of travel blog, which I have just recalled in writing this. That project rather fell by the wayside, until SWK’s promptings last Summer. Unfortunately the two extant notes I have left up on Facebook don’t capture my experience of marching ill-advisedly into what turned out to be the sister HOSTEL to the HOTEL I had actually booked, on the first afternoon I was there. Truly an embarrassing experience when half of the teenaged population of Europe looks agog at you, asking to a (young) man and woman “WTF? Who brought their DAD!!??”

Anyway, we’ll gloss over that. And, I think, the experience in the curry house where I managed to plough a glossy, black and memorably viscous (well, the replacement one was) double espresso deep into the nap of the expensive white linen table cloth, no doubt writing it off. Another golden moment that I spent some time kicking myself for afterwards. The main drama came on the first evening, and yes, I’m coming to that.

There weren’t, overall, too many incidents of poor tourist etiquette, I think. I rarely do these things wilfully; it’s mostly just by dint of unfortunate accidents or not concentrating properly on what I am trying to do. I found the population of the city to be pretty friendly and accommodating, as well as quite staggeringly tall. I’d have made a fortune as a pickpocket, as everyone’s bum was at roughly the height of my shoulders.

I had a wonderful time on the Sunday morning at the Vigeland Park, which houses hundreds of Gustav’s Vigeland’s statues (the geezer that designed the Nobel Peace Medal). I was terribly fond of this one:

Vigeland

The big highlight of the Park is the Monolith. One whacking great tall cylindrical stone with 121 figures cut into it, all climbing joyously over one another towards the heavens. Quite something, and referenced beautifully in the soaring Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 song “Goodnight Oslo”, which I recommend to anyone, frankly. Here you are (3:30 in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_dTsrhIDZo

What’s got into me? I have become all serious and travelogue-y. Yeah, so it’s great, definitely go there. Oh, and it’s free, which is always nice.

And what else, before we get to my latest escape from the ice grip of avaricious and unfeasibly tall sellers of the sex?

Oh yes, I gave up smoking! Been off the dread weed for 18 months and little bit, now, and feel sparkling for it, in all honesty. There’s a surprise. I’ll concede I did take to ‘vaping’ after about six months, but of course that’s entirely without all the smoky-burny-death stuff, so I am not going to cry about that too much. Plus you can pretend it’s a pipe, with all the concomitant comedy of that particular item of smoking paraphernalia.

The book was ace. I must read it again, at some stage, just to reinforce the messages, but I know I’ll never light up a cigarette again. It doesn’t preach, it just spells out a number of sensible messages, and repeats them. And your desire to smoke crumbles away, frankly. I’d sit and puff away through the odd chapter, here and there, over the first 48 hours. Coffee, outside the hotel bar, a few more pages, puff, puff, puff.

Then to the final chapter. Your Last Cigarette. I smoked six in a row, and felt like utter and total dogshit. Crumpled up my last Gauloises packet, hoofed it in the bin and that was me. Thank goodness for that.

I’d been at a bit of a loss on my first evening as to where to go for my first Norwegian nosebag. I had scouted around quite a bit during my first recce of the city, and everything seemed terribly well-heeled and not for the likes of little-old-me, or a bit generically McDonalds-ish. I was starting to imagine there to be no happy medium, when I alighted upon a more ‘country fayre’ looking place, that advertised some more offbeat but locally-styled food with mercifully fewer zeroes on the end than had been the case so far. Whizzed back to the hotel, popped a smarter shirt and a jacket on (because, yes, I live in the 1950’s), tootled back and crossed the threshold.

What happened ran thusly (we can open with a quote from one of those notes I left up):

“Seated by a nice chap who promptly removed the other table setting WITHOUT asking if I had company, then lit me a nice romantic candle. Bastard. Removed 1% from prospective tip.

So, I, er, had reindeer and then whale for dinner. Sorry, yes, I know this is not particularly cuddly or all that but a) I still love eating weird stuff and b) when in Rome etc. and c) it’ll be me that gets Mercury poisoning, not my more sensitive readership. Anyway, assuming I am spared, I can tell you it was LUSH. Oh my it was. Whale tastes like a cow that’s lived, and lived well, underwater. Salty, beefy, and yummy.

Non-romantic Comedy Waiter returned and I sent him off to fire up the coffee pot, whilst an unlikely scene played out to the left of my nice candle. A Japanese film crew had come in for dinner. Lenses, tripods, techies, an actress, etc. The lot. They all got stuck into their ‘Taste of Norway’ seafood starters, but then broke off halfway through to rearrange the table, take a few stills, do some filming without then with the actress (eating) and generally seemed to be delighting one another an awful lot. I still have no earthly notion as to what was going on. I harbour a secret hope that there’s going to be a straight-to-DVD art house ‘hit’ out there featuring my left hand bemusedly clutching an espresso cup. Oh for such immortality.

Paid up (ouch) and left.”

Right, back to the retelling. I took more photos, then set out for the waterfront, past the Royal Palace on my way to take some dusk-lit pictures of a tall wooden sailing ship. All very wholesome and jolly digestive larks. And, as is my wont, I promptly blundered into a gaggle of four prostitutes. I had taken the wrong route to the sea, it seemed.

A double pincer movement was threatened this time. No real sense of an initial stand-off, more of an instantaneous “get him, or get his wallet – preferably just the latter” manoeuvre. However, once again, I wasn’t about to submit to any of the ‘charms’ on offer, despite being offered “hay goot time, yes?” as the encirclement continued.. these things happen so fast, particularly if you’re not quite used to being such an apparently tempting morsel of a whale-stuffed man.

Actually, for all the amusement of this re-telling of a mishap that ultimately turned out okay, I have to say it got a bit touch and go (fnaar, no, I can’t do anything seriously) for a moment. It doesn’t take much to be outnumbered and intimidated, as it turns out. Whilst I found nothing much to say, in that moment, beyond the usual “nothankyounothankyou”, I do recall thinking this might just be one of life’s hand over wallet and get away moments. One never knows what folk have in their handbags to defend themselves, or use on others. I had heard of men staying just off Las Ramblas in Barcelona taking quite effective kickings and being relieved of their valuables in not dissimilar circumstances.

But, as the wheel of life turned back to the more comic, it seemed footwear was on my side, on this occasion. My impromptu harem was all wearing heels roughly of the height of our dog. As much as that made them as intimidating as anything, it also rendered them a little unsteady on their collective plates. Add to that the cobblestoned street, in a rather well to do district of town, and I had the early sniff of an advantage.

Unashamedly, and for what we now read to be the second such occasion of my life, I broke into a virtue-saving run. Only this time it was a RUN. I was decked out in some manner of flat loafer (probably, all I can honestly remember is those bright red sirens’ spikes reverberating off flint), which carried me lightly across the ancient streets. I burst into a good lead pretty early on in the piece. I daresay had it been some manner of track-based 1,500m affair I would have had high hopes of lapping even the swiftest of them. Soon as I was a number of corners and streets away, and had no sense of any real pursuit, although I picked the route for my evening promenades rather more carefully after that night.

The effort of the escape meant my dinner hung rather heavy on me for a while, but I was soon returned to good order, and even found some light to do a little restful photography before traipsing home and turning in. Proof positive, I suppose, that exercise is good for you.

Next time, we turn to the matter of my New Years’ Resolution No. 3 (of 3) for 2015: To Try And Be Less Grumpy. So far, nine days in, this has been an enormous success, and I have only felt compelled to buy SWK one bunch of flowers to make up for any apparent darker shades of mood.

This will be a shorter piece. A little tour of my past instances of singular or joint irritability, whilst doing the thing I love. Travelling. See you soon.

Tagged , ,
Dec 01 2014
1 Comment
Engagement, Holiday, Kayaking, Misadventure

Kayaking, or ‘My Search For A Short Engagement’

Time to bring us a bit more up to date, with my take on events from September of this year.

For accuracy, Saturday 20th September, as I was reminded the other night, when SWK remarked how it was already two months and more since we got back from our delightful Summer holiday in Dubrovnik (Croatia) and Kotor (Montenegro). It was indeed delightful, despite me being there for the entire time..

As ever with me, and particularly with tales of misadventure and misbehaviour, there is something of a back-story that needs filling-in, for context.

To go a bit further back in time, SWK had moved in with me back in the late Spring/early Summer. A delightful and exciting time for both of us. Emotionally very stirring, as we went about the practical business of getting her and the dog settled into new full-time quarters. Except they were not to be full-time right away, as she had managed to arrive at five weeks’ work down in Windsor, beginning almost at the moment the last box was unpacked. All very posh and very good for her indeed.

With a couple of visitations planned, including a quick whizz down to the Kent to visit my parents and the dog (who was Summering by the Sea; he always gets the best deal), I assumed the time would pass quickly and cheerfully enough. But, if ever I assume something, it’s a pretty safe bet to assume the opposite, frankly. As was the case here. I was, within three days of solo living, reduced to the state of a morose, lovelorn 14-year-old, only with less charisma, but better clothes. I was grumpy by text message, and even worse over the telephone, as it turns out that Windsor is some manner of blackout zone for modern mobile technology. I imagine that communications were, at least at times, probably clearer between the trenches and HQs of World War I. With every staccato conversation concluding in that beep-beep-beep-beep sound that went by, I grew more miserable and determined to visit whenever I could, to make up for it.

And so it was that I came to visit a sunny and delightful Windsor on each and every weekend. Lord alone knows what SWK must have thought about the prospect of my returning presence, as my morale and self- possession gradually nosedived through the working weeks, bereft of my lover and our dog (as I have pointed out before, I am a bit of a tit when it comes to not seeing the bigger picture). Anyway, she always greeted me with open arms, so despite everything I must have been doing something right, even if it was just getting a round in for her and other assorted thespian types on a Friday night. When lacking charm, apply a little money. Hmmm.

I think I reached a whole new nadir in our time together when we decided to take to the water, one bright and lovely Sunday afternoon. A little trip out on the river, before a spot of lunch. What could be better? Almost anything, it turned out.

The first error made was to save money by not hiring a little rowing boat with an outboard motor on the back, in favour instead of the gentle breezes, panama hats, blazers and floaty-dressed romance of rowing one another gently up and down the river for a while. Pah. Needless to say the first half of the trip was carried out with beautiful, smiling serenity by my all-time-favourite oarswoman, SWK. She had studied some manner of Nautical Higher, up in the wilds of Scotland, as a girl, and took to the whole thing with a natural confidence, and a smooth rhythm, even finding time to point out pretty things and elements of the flora and fauna, which I duly snapped with the ever-present camera.

Then it was my turn. The sun popped behind the clouds. A few water-fowl eyeballed one another and took off, and in the distance a church bell chimed a single warning. Even the ever-optimistic SWK decided it would be she who would “just get us back over the other side”, neatly negotiating the oncoming traffic, clearly having seen something in my shifting gait and wary eye as I prepared to reach for the controls.

And, yes, predictable enough, I was horrible at it. And didn’t everyone get to find out? When I wasn’t carving a zig-zag path into pontoons and passing boats, I was either gouging three feet down into the Thames with my oars in a frustrated attempt to gather speed and traction, or I was grazing the water lightly like one attempting a parmesan shaving. Soon the effort made me sweaty, and then shortly afterwards, as the hour for the return of the boat grew nigh, my childish propensity to anger with myself boiled over quite horridly. From the other end of the boat came sweet messages of loving support, dotted with advice, with the most helpfully gentle  and understanding delivery, about what we might be about to hit. I heard none of this. All I could do was gather up every negative moment of personal reflection I had ever had, and channel it into an attempt to somehow get the bloody boat back.

I’m afraid to say my language became quite colourful, as my resentment of myself and our predicament bubbled over. Alas, video survives, too. Ask SWK and she might show it to you. It isn’t, in truth, one for the kids. At one point in the piece, where SWK tries to assure me that there are other folk behind me presenting an even greater threat to shipping, I respond by telling her that they are NOT. That they are all rowing PERFECTLY, and that I am sat there “in a boat, in a hat, looking like a c*nt who writes letters for a living”. Charm personified, me.

It would have been much the better thing for everyone, and no court in the land would have convicted her of any crime, if SWK had simply pushed me in and left me to drown in my own resentment, there amongst the pretty reeds. But no, as she does every day, she stuck with it until land was sighted and the anchor weighed. The walk to the restaurant afterwards was marked with ever more elaborate forms of apology from me, at recurring intervals of about 15 seconds or so.  I felt like, and had been, an utter arse.

And so, we have established I am not terribly handy when it comes to the manipulation of water-borne craft.

Back to the Dalmatian coast, then? Exactly 73 days, to the delightful evening at Restaurant Dubrovnik, the terrace of which I would recommend to anyone, anytime. It was lovely. And made more so by the fact that that was the night where I asked SWK to marry me, and she (quite inexplicably) responded in the affirmative. She’ll be a long old time regretting that one…

It really was a fabulous night, I have to say. I’d done an amount of the spadework through the good offices of Trip Advisor, where one weeded out the greater displays of restaurateur madness. E-mails had followed to my finalised choice. Fizz and a corner table were secured, and on the evening itself the staff were just super-duper kind. In fact the manager accosted me when I went for a pee (this was in the Gents, for clarity – not a hostile arresting gesture because I was piddling in a plant pot, struck by nerves) to tell me he would “stop the terrace” if I wanted to go down on one knee in the middle of the whole place. I declined, and explained that I wanted to go for something ‘partially public’ and that this was part of classic British Reserve. In truth I don’t think he was that interested in my nervous commentary, and I might have been better to just shut up, but he gave us our desserts and coffees for free and took a nice picture of us on our way out, so no complaints there!

I nearly stuffed it up, by the way (just before we get to the actual kayaking bit). I’d mentally prepared what I wanted to say, and knew where the ring was, etc. It’s just there was always something going on with wine glasses or bread, or candles being lit, or SWK would launch into some extended anecdote so it would have been impolite to interrupt. We were debating dessert and I needed a wee again by the time I made a predatory leap around the edge of the table to whip out the sparkler and gush out the various sentiments in my heart. Needless to say this was just as a party of 23405676 Dubrovnikers were being seated behind me, largely female, and to a woman they all spotted what was going on, and there was a resultant soundtrack of excited squealing to my entire proposal.

Still, job done and all that. We weaved out to a bar for a couple of rather more lowbrow pints and some more photographs (once of which I took on my phone, and will add here, if the missus allows it) and then settled down for the night, looking forward to the kayaking trip we had booked for the following morning.

SWK Sept 2014

And the following morning dawned, and blow me, we still had to go kayaking. Nerves worried at my gut. The beautiful sunshine had, naturally, evaporated to be replaced by a slate grey sky, the like of which sits outside my window just now, during a late Autumn, East Midlands style. There was rain in the air. However, we had paid our deposit, we had gone to bed at really quite sensible o’clock, really quite sober(ish) and we were going.

I affected a light-hearted confidence. I had been told it was “easy” and “only” 10k – a distance I could run (alright, perhaps not on water), and what a wonderful way to start pre-marital life, in a tandem kayak, sliding around the beautiful coast as a loving unit. Yeah, it was going to be fine.

We got there on time. Our stuff all fitted in the waterproof barrel on the back of our sturdy-looking craft. The lifejackets fitted (I was nervous about that – in my head I am still about 18 stone, despite appearances being to the contrary). I could follow the instructions, and swing the paddle about in the way you were supposed to. We boarded the thing okay, and managed to manoeuvre our way across the rocky harbour with not a little elegance, featuring some steering the right way, with my beloved at the helm.

We were to be guided and to receive explanations as to what we were gawping at, in ‘rest’ periods (every  1000m or so, I suppose?) from a nice young fellow, with another chappie following up at the rear. They appeared agreeable enough, although they did observe that the weather “is not great, but okay”. 2/3 of the way round we would be stopping in a cave for lunch, swimming and photos etc.

Off we went, and things went, very rapidly, downhill. Within the first 150 metres we were dead last, dropping into a morning-long contest with a pair of Italian girls for Crappest At Kayaking In Europe. I attempted to ape SWK’s movements, as per instructions. All appeared, mechanically, just as smooth as it had been in the harbour, but progress was just soooo sloooow. The reason for this was not just the drag factor of the leaden buffoon in the bow (although I think we all have to concede that’s got to have been part of it), but the fact that the rain had started to sheet down, and we were now on the open sea, which had started to boil, roil and roll in a manner designed to capsize anything it could. Including us. At one point I looked up through my useless glasses to see, there in the distance, Noah, flicking the Vs at me, the bastard.

In fairness, we stuck with it like the rock solid couple we are. Not a hint of a cross word, although my familiar self-doubting self was just clearing his throat in the wings. The kayaks of our fellow tourists (they paid for under-boat motors – must have) were just starting to mass in the distance around our young guide. After a time, muscles aching, we pulled in alongside, only to hear something like “.. which is a really cool story! Okay, guys, on to the next stop then? Yeah? Cool.”

And they all just fucked off again. And, after a nice rest of their bronzed and supple limbs, at a greater pace than before. Gaaah. It wasn’t so much the prospect of the effort to be expended to close the gap that bothered me, it was the fact I was not learning a bloody thing about where we were or what there was to see. I started to verbalise these concerns, as only I will do at times like this, to my beloved. Lucky her – trying to steer an underpowered piece of plastic into a nautical gale, with the most crosspatch man in the world just out of reach of the paddle-slap he so very richly deserved, all the while ruefully eyeing her engagement ring, no doubt, as the future began to slowly unfurl itself to her.

The pattern continued to repeat itself. Paddle like your life depended on it for 20 minutes, arrive in a state of near-vomiting exhaustion, listen to 15 seconds of back slapping delightedness, cast a suspicious eye at the Italian girls and the back-marker flirting with them whilst smoking and jabbering on his mobile, and then set off again back into the maelstrom.

After at least 300 hours of this, we pulled up on the edge of the cave. Which was surrounded by a wall of foaming water, at which we had to hurl ourselves at full whack to give the chaps in there the remotest chance of pulling us onto the beach. Somehow this move was pulled off. Lord alone knows how, judging by the state of us when we emerged from the bloody kayak. Not one limb worked properly. Both of us wobbled and hobbled our way further into the safety of the cave, away from the rain and the swell.  I placed the possessions barrel on the cave floor, determined to try and take some photographs and salvage something from the experience.

I rose up from the barrel, turned, and tripped over a rock directly behind my feet, and fell face first into the sand. I was, as I had been back in the earlier Summer on the rather more placid Thames, rather less than a ray of sunshine about this. I lay there with a mouthful of sand and a quartet of burning arms and legs, freshly battered from the fall. I then launched forth a volley of adjectives to lend some colour to my experiences of kayaking to date. No one within earshot  would have been in any doubt as to the overall conclusions I had reached about the place of this sport in my life.

My guardian angel came to the rescue once again. I must do something for her, some day. She pulled me to my feet, gave me a little cuddle, promised we would never go kayaking again, and went off to source a sandwich and a glass of (oddly good, I remember, despite the suspiciously-large catering-sized bottle) white wine for us, from our tour ‘guide’. She even had him recount some of the information previously lost to us on the howling winds over the open water. Like a child, after a tantrum, my mood softened again. Inside, the kernel of guilt about how I lose my self-possession at times like this hardened just a little more. It’ll be tougher than a diamond, by the time I am an old man.

The fact remained, of course, that we still had roughly one third of this little jaunt to go. The clouds had certainly not parted, and the weather remained quite awful. Two things helped, though: 1) we were, inch by inch, going back to dry land, where I could gradually spend the rest of my life un-learning what I had experienced on the water this year and 2) we swapped seats. Initially, at least, we kept pace, although things got a little tense when a German lady lost control of her paddle (are they called paddles, by the way? I have already forgotten, which is probably a sign that 1), above, is working) and almost gouged out my right eye – missing me by a whisker. I felt SWK go quiet behind me, at that moment, probably featuring some sort of dreadful diplomatic incident. The fact that I kept my quite frayed temper in check at that point is one of the few positive testimonies to myself and my character that morning that I can give.

We were soon knackered again, and back into near last. However we both found something to celebrate in that TWO couples had brief periods of being towed by some speedboat (driven by yet another young chap who was all white teeth and rippling muscles), having become rather tired. A service we outright REFUSED to countenance. I’d sooner have swum for it, frankly. A victory for our faith in one another, and sheer determination not to be bested by the appalling conditions.

We returned, battered and bruised. SWK delighted, me mortified by poverty of mental resources, but happy enough still to be engaged to be married. Conversations about kayaking have been relatively few in number, since our return. A watered-down version will be replayed with friends, as a pre-dinner anecdote, but I think we both know we don’t want to relive it. Or more precisely to relive me reliving it. It was less than pretty. I am not a water baby. The holiday taught me I have almost forgotten how to swim, as well. Still, on we go, with adventures in Austria, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey yet to be written.

For now, next time, I’d like to return to a couple of recent forays to Austria and Norway, made famous in my mind for not dissimilar turns of events..

Being Frightened By Hookers: A Two Parter (the joys of being British and Running Away)

Tagged
Nov 07 2014
1 Comment
Hangover, Holiday, Misadventure, Slept on a bench

Into Belarus, with vodka, guns, dogs and sleeping on a bench. With too much disco.

Back to 2009. My then wife and I had scoped out a four-countries-in-ten-days trip through very eastern, Eastern Europe. Fly to Kiev, train overnight into Minsk, bus to Vilnius, bus to Riga (forever more to be sung, excitedly, a la Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’). It really grabbed me as a holiday, and an exercise in map-grabbing,  as I planned to get to 40 countries visited at the point I turned 40 (actually, I got to 41 in the end – 50 by 50’s going to be a breeze – I should nab four more, next year).

Didn’t care for Kiev very much. Didn’t hate it, but didn’t take to it either. Unfriendly, difficult to navigate, expensive and it was so bloody hot that the underground was the only escape. By the way, watch yourself on the doooooowwwwwnnnnnnn escalators into the Kiev underground. They go down a long way (there were signs for Canberra, Brisbane and Auckland, honest there were) and they are very steep. Down escalators always give me the heebie jeebies. I’m so rugged.

There was a nice park, the view of the ‘tin tits’ statue (Rodina Mat) was cool, as were the catacombs and the Chernobyl Museum (just bung this lead apron and go and clear that up, will you? Oops, sorry, you’re all dead – the way the employees were treated and subsequently expired was horrific). We ate at a Georgian restaurant where I had a magnificent cheese pie.

For all that, I was not sad to leave. Sorry, Ukranians one and all, I am sure you are all lovely – oh, apart from your weightlifting team; they were a right pain in the arse on a flight out of Skopja – I shall save that sorry tale for another time, however). We scoped the massive train station, and headed for the supermarket in search of a picnic for our overnight sleeper train into Belarus.

Belarus. I was very excited about this one. Always am, when you need a VISA to get into a country. Always feels a bit James Bond, to me, in a very safe, paperworky way. As if you’ve got some sort of cover story to get you behind enemy lines, somehow? Not for the first time, it’s probably just me.

Not just the lure of bureaucracy, and form filling though. No, I was all over the notion of Minsk, Gorky Park, and all that post-Soviet MASSIVENESS. Dead excited. Even the incredibly rude and dismissive guide book to the city wouldn’t have put me off. And it really was an extraordinary document, written by a man who’d been to the place a zillion times and yet seemed, by his tone, to hate it. He had the sort of offhand and patronising delivery of the two big green aliens in The Simpsons: Kang and Kotos. He also sounded a number of warnings about crossing the borders into the country, but by then I was cross with him and blithely ignored whatever points he had to make. Which, looking back, was an error. As we shall see.

As ever, I digress. Bags went into the left luggage and we shuffled off to a supermarket. Subterranean, wholly scripted in the Cyrillic alphabet, and confusing as all get out. It’s all very well being able to recognise turnips and raw meat, but that ain’t stuff you can scoff in a sleeper cabin. It took some time to lay our hands on the immediately edible, but it was good stuff; anchovies, cured meat, olives, a bit of this, that and the other. A crucial feature in our (very reasonable) shop was a bottle of Ukrainian vodka.  Following our first anniversary trip to Tallinn, some time back, and a very memorable evening in a Russian restaurant (must write that up, one day – oh the perils of a menu where the lines between descriptions and prices don’t quite line up right), I had come to learn something from my wife’s appreciation of vodka. A night of salty snacks and local smooth-as-silk vodka had a lot of promise, as we rolled our way to the border. Most exciting.

And so, back to the station, for only my second overnight train experience. Years earlier, my old chum Nicholas and I had made the trip from Prague to Warsaw, on a sleeper. A trip made memorable by the light bulb above our bunks that could not be extinguished, at least until the obliging and luxuriantly moustachioed guard grabbed it through his handkerchief and wrenched it, with a scream, from its housing, as it burned his wrist. Bless him.

We found our ‘first class’ bunk in no time. Lockable easily enough, teensy sink, and a couple of parallel sofas/beds. Not the final word in luxury, but amongst other things it seemed a secure enough unit, so the chances of anyone pumping in knockout gas (whatever that actually is) and harvesting our organs as we slept, seemed low. Kang/Kotos seemed to be suggesting that the inadvertent donation of a kidney was pretty much obligatory.. but what did he know, eh?

We set out to explore. It wasn’t the most executive train. Every gap between carriages featured groups of folk smoking at a feverish rate. Kiev had given us the impression that smoking was pretty much compulsory. Not an issue, given we were both smokers at the time, but the stipulation that the cabins should be smokeless was rendered pretty much pointless as the whole snaking, clanking beast reeked of knock-off Gitanes.

And so to the buffet car. A Spartan affair. Amongst other deficiencies, there were no tables. On the plus side, courtesy of the extremely friendly staff, a bottle of ice-cold Baltika was about £1.50. Take it, head for the nearby gap between cabins with it, and drink alongside ciggies at £1 per packet. Repeat three times, enjoying your experience, and then reel off to your cabin. No worries.

By now it was about 10.30pm. We fell upon our food, and very lovely it was too. There was a certain amount of sipping of vodka, but, in fairness, it was at room temperature so we did not get carried away immediately. It complimented the salty food very nicely. And before we knew it, the train halted and Ukrainian border police were aboard, checking our passports and generally bidding us an agreeable farewell.

And so to the problems. Looking back, they were not unadjacent to a tipping point in the consumption of the vodka. We weren’t ingénues in the world of alcohol consumption, exactly, but these celebratory moments can and will catch up on you. If I remember right, we did take the passage through the Ukranian border rather enthusiastically. And the gap before the point of entry to Belarus was, fully, an hour. More than enough time to nip away at the supplies, and so to be less than coherent.

The train stopped. There was some manner of announcement. In Russian, alone. And then, evidently, a number of fellows boarded the train. With, as it turned out, a series of massive dogs, laptops and, to a man, big fuck off guns. At least those appeared to be the standard accoutrements, once they arrived chez nous. Rarely does one sober up so much, as the knock at the door comes and such things are exhibited.

You hope, at times like these, that the whole thing will be dealt with at the door. No such luck, our boy, his chum, their canine, firearms and all that appeared and made themselves very comfortable indeed. A period of my life I would cheerfully have back. We’d only had our visas imprinted on our passports a day before we left the UK – a real rush job. We were, it’s fair to say, a trifle Brahms, and the questions were searching. It was quite clear that our documentation was not going to pass muster. And all the questions were directed to me. Looking back it annoyed the crap out of me that my wife, a woman of far greater intellectual and general acumen than me, was never addressed during the process. She was considered little more than luggage, and luggage I should speak for. All manner of documents were re-addressed, and all of them via me. A charming experience, but it was, in the end, done.

Phew. Sort of. Final signatures were eventually gathered and the guns, dogs, and bureaucrats departed our cabin. I drank more, drew breath, congratulated herself on not having grabbed a gun and gone postal in the face of such rampant misogyny, passed into sleep.

Next thing you know? Well, yep, you guessed it. “Minsk, this is Minsk, get up you bastards this is Minsk”. 6.30am on a Sunday morning in Minsk. Ow. Never, ever, have I re-packed a bag so quickly. Oh so very quickly. We staggered onto the platform inside three minutes.

As hangovers go, it was oddly clean. That feeling of still being a bit ‘wobbly dog’, but super-aware? No hope, it turned out, of gathering local currency, but we levelled out a bit with credit-card-purchased fizzy pop and coffee. Theory went that we would head to our accommodation for 9.00am, so we hit the underground in the general direction. Found it oddly quickly, as I remember. Barely alive through exhaustion, after a few mere hours of disco sleep, but there we are, and there we were. Reached for the phone to call the guy we’d booked the apartment from and.. nothing.  Left a voicemail, thinking all would be well after a while. A stroll followed. Then, eventually, breakfast, Belarusian style.  Everywhere, people wandered around with highly elaborate cakes, which was a very Sunday thing, it turned out.

Back to the supposed chez nous. Another call, another ansaphone message from me. Another zero. And here comes my poorest admission from this little foray. There was a park behind our supposed gaff. There we went, to pause for breath. Seats surrounded a play park, and there we settled in. And there, with my little canvass bag behind my head, on the naked park bench, I inevitably succumbed to sleep, and began, as a much heavier man back then, to snore in a way I can only imagine would have reverberated quite powerfully off the walls of the surrounding apartment blocks. Two hours later, my ex-wife woke me, to tell me everyone, children included, had left. Evidently I had not, in sleep,  cut the most agreeable figure, even as a former teacher. More so, I had cut the figure of a ‘tired’ reprobate. Hair rather wild, dribble in some quantity. Charmed, I was, at my behaviour. I had entered Belarus as a blundering, vodka-addled drunk, sleeping on park benches. Terrific. All going well. On the plus side, the armed police had not reappeared to move us on, or ship us off to somewhere nasty. A narrow escape. More water with it, next time.

Another phone call, and, finally, a miracle. Our man was, at last, awake. Tired (boo hoo, poor you, I’ve had guns pointing at me and just fell asleep in a park – get up, you last bastard – were the words I did not say) but on his way, he assured us. We fought our way into a local convenience to evacuate (I had to beg, beg, being without readies). And we waited. Forever.  And yet, in the end, our man appeared and, to our surprise, whisked us away in his motor. He was quite a rough chap, but not without a certain charisma. We weren’t immediately clear what was going on, as we zig-zagged away from where we had been stationed.

We had been very clear, after so many hours, of where we were going. We’d even sussed out where we thought the apartment was within the block we sat outside. But no, we were told by our new landlord that the previous occupant of our gaff, had had “too much disco” (an expression I have quite shamelessly passed off as my own on a number of occasions since then, for I adore it), missing his flight in the process. As such we found ourselves delayed by the fact he was sleeping it off upstairs, whilst we (alright, I) slept it off in the park in such charming dereliction. Our boy behind the wheel had been making some calls, when he was awake, trying to frantically source an alternative.

As we pulled up next to a bin store, he assured us that the all new place was “very nice – much better then old apartment – you will like”.  Head rather clearer now, it seemed foolish to argue with him – he was a cheerful soul, but I rather thought, were his mood to darken, that he would be quite capable of snapping us like twigs.

And in any case he was not lying. There were innumerable locks to get through, in a sequence we were never quite to learn properly, and our front door appeared to be padded several inches thick, which I rather feared was to stop gunfire making it though. He was keen that we should lock the door at all times, irrespective of what side of it we found ourselves. Gulp.

Having had not insufficient disco ourselves, we bade him farewell and slept.

A wonderful three days followed. Minsk was ace. I’ll never forget three off-duty soldiers (what is it with me and soldiers?) whom did everything together. One about 6 foot 8, another about 6 foot, the other about 5 foot 4. All in a line, at all times. Buying an ice cream, going on the big wheel in Gorky park, they were utterly inseparable, comedy gold, and our constant shadow.

At other times, England won the Ashes back at The Oval (many a text between Mother and I), which we toasted, now feeling up to drinking again, with Belarusian champagne.. which is disgusting. We walked almost into Lithuania in pursuit of a much-recommended Chinese restaurant. Guide book, torch, utter confusion, a few embittered words.. I seem to recall getting there at about 11.00pm. Not a problem to the owners, but it’s rather foolish to fall upon the spiciest hot and sour soup you have ever tasted with quite such wolfish enthusiasm. My lips burned for two days.

And that, dear readers, is how we arrived in Minsk.

Come back next time for a shorter, but hopefully entertaining piece on my recent experience of kayaking. It did not, as you can imagine, go particularly smoothly. It speaks volumes for the calm approach to life taken by the lovely SWK, however, just as it reveals what an unstoppable git I am. Happy days!

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Oct 29 2014
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accident, choking, Holiday

My travels with Swaggers; a two parter featuring the lost tickets, Gorgeous George and getting all choked-up in Flores

Part Two

So on we go.

A week later, perhaps, we rolled up to the Isla de Flores, an island in the enormous Lago Peten Itza (an enormous lake), linked to the mainland by a long and very very thin causeway (two coaches meeting one another would have presented a bit of a challenge – we’d have had to joust for the right of way). First stop was Santa Elena, which we were assured was the last stop at which we could get hold of cash before crossing the causeway. This turned out to be utter bullshit, of course, but at least it led to some unexpected adventure.

I’d survived until that point without having to cash in a Traveller’s Cheque, but the time had come. This is another thing that makes me feel we must have gone there at least forty years ago; I have only used TC’s once, since, and very much feared, on cashing them in at Kiev Airport, that I was about to be ‘taken away’. These days I am a credit card man. They have a nice safe ubiquity, provided you don’t get coshed at the ATM.

The coach dropped us off and we had forty minutes until departure. Santa Elena itself was an unmitigated dump; one long dusty road with all of the facilities along it. The bank was halfway down on the left hand side. Big queue, no aircon, and a perfect storm of moustaches, sweat and big guns. Swaggers fled to get a sandwich; I queued, like a good Brit. 30 minutes later, sweating and weak with hunger, I emerged at the head of the queue and attempted to get my $200 transformed into Quetzals. Moustaches were rubbed in sweaty suspicion; if anything the process went on so long one could see them growing. The guns grew larger. My passport was taken away into some manner of back office – comments were exchanged. Who was the pasty-faced, corpulent thirty-something with the slightly plummy voice? Just as I thought I was going to come up dry, the staff re-appeared with a piece of paper on which I was to write my address. And so I did. All smiles, “here you are, Senor”, and there arrived in my greasy paw a substantial pile of ageing notes. I look back now and wonder what real security they must have felt they had gained by discovering I abided in a small, undefended railway cottage in North Norfolk, the teensy matter of 6,500 miles away, as the crow flew. If they were planning to send the boys ‘round, they are as yet to arrive. Much I cared – money stuffed into pockets I waddled back to the coach and away we went.

Flores was very pretty. Looking back it’s a shame I didn’t see more of it, but then again I am an idiot, something of a danger to myself, and as such it would be wrong to express too much surprise or disappointment. The resort in the middle of the island in which we were to stay was beautifully green. A sort of mini rainforest, with open cabins on two floors dotted ‘round it in an elongated oval, with an eatery, bar and pool at one end, at the bottom of a gentle incline.

We were assigned our quarters, during the briefing on arrival, and Swaggers and I hauled ourselves up the hill and up the steps to the cots in which we were to sleep. The ground floor was a shower block. The whole arrangement was really, really open. One was well-used, by then, for the need to keep taking the malaria medication and to keep applying repellent and so on. However, in all honesty an eagle could comfortably have flown in there. Therefore, it followed, any manner of scuttling, occasionally jumping nasty could make an entrance in the night watches. One’s mosquito net might come adrift, one might roll onto one’s back, mouth agape and….. AAAAHHH! I was unhappy about this, but resolved to keep quiet and have a nice afternoon and evening.

Too nice, it turned out. On went the shorts and the t-shirt, and down to the pool one went. Only to discover that the bar end had a set of stools poking out of it on which one could sit, legs in the water, and order these things called ‘cocktails’, for roughly £1.50 a throw.

For context, I have always had a healthy suspicion of cocktails. Not stuff like a gin and tonic; I mean the sort of 8-ingredient nonsense we holidaymakers get seduced into chucking down, only to then subsequently revisit them in a range of locations. They act on the brain in the way more familiar strains of alcohol don’t seem to, so much. In short, you know where you are with a glass of beer or a glass of wine; if you drink stupid cocktails in a swimming pool in 100 degree heat you are, by definition a bloody fool.

For a while, my nerves were conquered. White rum, umbrellas, crushed herbs, coloured fruit juices and sugar made me bold. Thoughts of an insect insurrection vanished. I was, as they say, happy in the haze of a drunken hour. At some stage in proceedings, the dinner gong got bonged and we traipsed off to the eatery for some sort of mighty flat fish, roasted with a lot of brown rice and other adornments. Very nice, I dimly remember, but filling. Rather went off the fresh nip of the cocktail at that point, and opted instead for the depth and the satisfying velvety buzz of red wine. Water ingestion to that point was a grand total of zero. Sense had clearly left me – and I had been so sensible since our arrival from the US.

I talked crap at people for a while. Lucky them. However the tide had turn on my ability to stay conscious and coherent. I was given the loan of a flashlight and headed off into the jet black night. First to a sort of Portaloo. That was easy enough to find. A night time tiddle was had, under nervous illumination. Off up the way I went. The wrong way. Stumbled and fell twice, lost internal compass totally. Arrived back at bar, rather than casa Suggzy. Thundered off into the dark again, rather than have folks laugh at me. Hither and thither I went, and finally crashed back up the steps of the cabin.

At which point, fearfulness and wakefulness added themselves to drunkenness. A heady mix, for the night. I hauled myself under every imaginable covering I could lay my hands on, and sweated my way through the small hours, scarcely sleeping so much as a wink. Imaginary beasties circled my cot. All was not well. No water did I drink. As was mentioned, I am an idiot.

Eventually, it was morning, and, unsurprisingly, hungover and dehydrated as I found myself to be, I was in far from good order. The heat started to enter the day and I stumbled, scarecrow-like in the direction of breakfast. I promptly drank about 2357607 pints of water and had some cereal and felt twice as bad. I declared myself unfit to go on the boat ride scheduled for the next couple of hours, and returned, biliously, to my quarters, cursing my stupidity. The resort fell silent, and I fell asleep, exhaustion conquering the fear of the tug of something nasty at my shorts or shirt.

I came to at the end of the morning with a thunderous headache. Hangover in full swing. Confirming once again that I am an idiot, I decided I could not be fagged to get some water to swallow a couple of ameliorative paracetamol (always been a bit of a pills man at the onset of a headache). I took them down dry. Except I didn’t, of course. They got stuck. And I came unstuck very, very quickly.

I choked once very badly on holiday with my family, as a boy of about 15 or so. 15 years later, the rapidly remembered rise of panic through the chest bubbled up in no time. There was no bugger there, and I could barely raise a noise, on making two or three attempts to swallow the pills. Just sort of honked a half “help”. I’m typing this another ten years on and I can remember the taste in my mouth and I feel sick all over again.

The light started to go an oddly pale blue-y, yellow. I had the notion, and I think I can say dying notion, that smacking my back on the edge of something might cause the blockage to shift. I did. To no avail. I was going to pass out of life, aged 30, by dint of cocktails and paracetamol, but rather without the glamorous showbiz gloss.

But, obviously, I didn’t. That Swaggers has his uses. Not administrative ones, as discussed. Chocolate fireguard on that front, the lad. But, those mighty ears have the sensitivity of a bat. Just as I was starting to drop to my knees at the railing looking out over the rainforest (cool view to peg it to), there was the thunder of Swaggerly hooves, and my still-foaming-from-the-shower friend and saviour, having registered my call for help a minute earlier, encircled me and did that Heimlich Thing. Which hurt, but worked instantly. The analgesic little specks flew out in arc across the greenery. Air tore back into my lungs and my heart slowed, gradually, back to a normal drumbeat.

We found little to say, as I remember – we laughed and joked quite quickly, after a spot of breathless reflection. It doesn’t take long to register that one friend has quite genuinely saved the life of the other, and it isn’t something we have felt the need to discuss that often since. A piece of bloody good luck, one has to say. Ten minutes earlier and that would have been the gig over with. No reason to declare it God’s will, or anything, either. Just part of the rich pageant of life. A weird part, spawned by misadventure on the part of the idiotic, but just a part.

I made a mental decision to decide to put a line through the whole airline tickets thing. Call it a draw. And I maintain a healthy – healthier, in fact, suspicion of cocktails.

Back soon, for: ‘Into Belarus, with vodka, guns, dogs and sleeping on a bench. With too much disco.’

By all means add any comments you have, here or on facebook – happy to take readers’ notes, as I am new to all this. Cheers!

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Oct 29 2014
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Airport, Holiday, Losing tickets

My travels with Swaggers; a two parter featuring the lost tickets, Gorgeous George and getting all choked-up in Flores

Part One

Time for some more reminiscences. This time we’re going back to the Summer of 2004. And some actual travel features; rather than simply some ghastly antics in not-so-far-off Buckinghamshire.

I had recently moved house for the third time. This was, of course, still the era in which one sat on a house and it magically accrued additional value and you made a few quid every time you moved. I had just completed this process, and siphoned off some of that money into a touring holiday with my best friend Swaggers. His ex-girlfriend (at the time) had been working at a travel agency and had cut us a good deal on a fortnight of being bussed ‘round some of the highlights of Central America. Principally Guatemala, but with some nice big sploshes of Honduras, Belize and Mexico into the bargain. One day I will tell tales of Twisted Tania’s, in Copan Ruinas, where we got drunk with the Honduran army.

We were a long, long way from all of these excitements, the day we met Gorgeous George.

We’d mustered in Harlesden the night before (in the never-ending corridor of a flat that Swaggers shared at that time – much like a lighthouse that had fallen on its side), and made our way out to Heathrow for an initial flight to Atlanta. First time in the US of A, for me, and only an overnight job before we were to fly onwards to the City of Antigua, in the West of Guatemala, to meet up with a parade of teachers, librarians, and other largely ‘right thinking’ middle class professionals (although there was a lad who looked like Prince William and behaved like a complete lunatic throughout, but he was something of an outlier – we’ll gloss over him – his shorts were filthy by the end of the holiday – oh, yes, there was also the Swedish couple who tried to get out of paying for a group meal in Cancun; we had to chase those devils down the street ‘or ‘strip’ as it’s called there).

I digress, as ever. Sorry. To Heathrow and to our plane we went, bedecked with all we would need. I had the dossier, considering Swaggers to be quite the loose cannon when it came to the preservation of significant paperwork. Ask SWK, ask my ex-wife (who’ll feature later in this re-telling of my travels past), ask my family members – hell, ask anyone, I love a good dossier when it comes to holidaymaking. That feeling of a seamless sequence of documents and maps, set out in an order to chime with the coming events, growing gradually thinner as one discards the unnecessary, before arriving at the final boarding card and so the return to Blighty. So lovely, so warming, somehow? I think it’s just me, but I don’t really care. I’m not getting on a plane again until January 2015, and I already have a couple of pieces of paperwork squirreled away for when I can legitimately start work on a plastic folder for the trip.

Wine and beer was served on the flight. Freely, and in seemingly bottomless vessels; you can see how these celeb types finish up being led away down the steps in irons, can’t you? And so we took our first missteps. Films were watched. Curious plastic trays of food were eaten. Time passed, as the libations went down. Eventually the Georgian tarmac was reached, but not before I had passed Swaggers his folder of tickets, so as to make use of the stub from the outward leg, to complete his Green Card (even through a fug of airline Merlot, I remember licking my lips at the prospect of a spot of form-filling).

He dutifully did as he was bade, and we began to queue to enter the United States. A process that was as unfriendly, circuitous and irritating as anything I can remember. Bearing in mind I am someone who seems to find almost everything irritating, don’t please underestimate that statement. It took the small matter of three hours, in total, and was more or less continuously undertaken at gunpoint. The country was, like the UK, at WAR, and seemed to be quite prickly about the fact that anyone wanted to go there. After an aeon, I finally passed muster for entry, and may, I think, have made the sort of glib comment to the sidearm-toting woman on the desk that can tend to get me in a spot of bother, but not on this occasion, thankfully. I look back now and think of that lost afternoon, and how little fun it would have been for any poor souls who didn’t have much English and had to go through translators and be asked searching questions about their motivation for crossing the border. It would not have been a cakewalk.

Into the bowels of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport we did go. A little dusty, and very much in need of fresh air. Consultation of the dossier revealed that transit to our hotel would be a matter of simplicity; a local train/subway from under the airport. First we had to collect our bags. As I had the dossier to hand, I asked the fateful question, “Swaggers, can I have those tickets back? I’ll hold on to them with mine, shall I?” Time slowed down, fellow travellers moved at a snail’s pace across the concourse, as the words came back.. “What tickets?” God love the fellow, he’d assumed the book of tickets, all of them we would need, was just a stub, and he’d unthinkingly binned the lot, together with his beer cans, back on the plane. I told you he was a loose cannon, didn’t I? Suddenly my dossier-world looks rather more of a cosy place to be, doesn’t it?

We were on our way across interminable transit tubes to Concourse B. A nasal auto-announcer just said the word CAAAN-CORRRS again and again and again. I had visions of us being late for the carousel and losing our luggage, as well as the fucking tickets. I bit my lip. Hard. Cruelly, we arrived at a better-lit station of the airport. Outside the sunshine and vitality of the open air mocked us, and our ticketless funk. Inside, unable to oblige my best and oldest friend with an argument, for it would have been a fruitless endeavour, I silently pondered just abandoning the bastard. He’d not have had a clue where we were meant to be staying. I could forge on, free, in a private bubble of pleasant order and calm. Yes..

Nope, abandon such thoughts, I told myself. Friendship means more than that, and you never know, he might be a good match for a kidney one day. As much as airline tickets even only ten years ago appeared to be one-offs, and irreplaceable, I concluded that Delta would somehow have magic machines and records and printers and all would, in the end, be well.

Against the prevailingly tragic tide, our bags arrived without incident, and we began our next three laps of the airport in pursuit of the Delta Desk. Helpfully, its presence was marked by another enormous queue. In which I left Swaggers, very much sans dossier, mostly in case he accidentally made paper planes out of it, or used it as a sketch pad, and went off to ponder life on the porcelain.

Which was my next error. I had imagined America to be, down to every corner and crevice, a land of sparkle and pizazz. Surfaces would be white and shiny like the teeth of their film stars. No – this was the rough stateside equivalent of that scene in Trainspotting. The bog was bogging. There was no roster of signatures on the back of the cubicle door. I’ve never been in an abattoir, but I imagine the smell would not be dissimilar to that which I experienced that sorry and woe begotten afternoon. As motions go, I have only known worse on St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, where my trousers puddled in a carpet of torn-out pages of pornographic magazines and used hypodermics.

I scuttled back to Swaggers, yearning for deodorant, soap and a glass of water. He had gained access to a member of staff. To George. Gorgeous George. And, somehow, even without my dossier, Swaggers was winning. The paperless, passport-less, greenback-less, jug-eared administrative Black Hole was talking his way into a set of replacement tickets, without me. I hated him all the more for this, of course (I can be a right sour old git) but somehow had never loved him more either. All of those years of him regularly being three hours late when vising me as a student. The time he stayed in my room with an infected in-growing toenail that smelled so bad it would actually wrest one from sleep. The chaos and disorder and Olympic Class levels of mess he would poor down upon me. All of it, all of it would be forgiven forever, and certainly never blogged about once they invented blogging, if he could get replacement tickets.

Mine was a bit part, in honesty. Barely a credit at the end of the final scene. I think I probably called Gorgeous George (and he was a modern Saint, people – I recall we offered to buy him some beers that evening – he didn’t show, but he was probably pulling children out of burning buildings downtown – I bet he has a statue up somewhere by now) ‘old boy’ a couple of times, to add a bit of British Colour and Eccentricity, in the vague imagining that Americans (all 292 million of them at the time) lapped that sort of stuff up. He just smiled beatifically, made more phone calls, and called ladies on the other end of the line ‘doll’ and gradually, things were taking shape. Stuff got printed. In the final reckoning, $60 changed hands and we walked away smiling, to the train. The theme to The Great Escape formed an earworm I would be humming in the back of my mind until the end of that day.

I thanked Swaggers for his hard work and his charm in rectifying the situation, and getting us back on track. And plucked the tickets from his grotesquely hairy paw and put them back in the bloody dossier.

Come back soon, for more of the Good Deeds of Swaggers, as he saves my life in the jungle. Sort of.

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