Category Archives: Misadventure

Nov 25 2017
1 Comment
heat, Kayaking, Misadventure, Qatar, shopping, Uncategorized

Cox of Arabia: From the Shield to the Souq

Cox of Arabia: From the Shield to the Souq

Part One

Hello!

I’m in my fifth week here, now, and loving it.

There’s a lot to reflect on, and my opening period here saw some particularly memorable moments. Some of which I’ll lead you through in the coming post or two. I haven’t fallen foul of the authorities, but I have, amongst other things been shouted at, had a man hold my hand, lost the plot in a kayak (yes, again but of course I waited for SWK to visit before doing that), run about 50 miles, bought a £10 pint of lager, bashed some dunes, flipped the bird at Saudi Arabia and fallen down a hole, so it’s not been uneventful.

However, as I said last time, it’s been a long road travelled, before getting this random but fascinating opportunity. The two years since I left my last full-time job in Dec ’15 were quite the trial, as it was, of course, an unexpected appearance at the Jobcentre for yours truly the following month. I’d argue that at times I was simply unlucky not to land something new, and at other times I met with such self-regarding and unfriendly interview panels as to make the whole thing even more dispiriting than usual.

However, what with me being unavoidably me, I have conspired to shoot myself in the foot now and again. And never more so than at the University of Kent, which is a place I have had three no-results at, now. I regard it now quite unfavourably, even though it did well by my Sister when she was an undergraduate there. I simply cannot get work there – and here’s why:

It’s an institution that has a very specific and largely unvarying procedure for interview days. And it’s an eyeballs-out, thoroughly hardworking affair. You’d have much quieter and less tiring days in an actual job. It combines that, in my experience, with a predilection for a decent handful of internal candidates, each time. And tends to rather glad-hand such folk whilst leaving the rest of you rather feeling like ‘meat in the room’; there, simply, to make up the numbers.

Still, one must make the best of one’s opportunities, eh? Such was my intention on my first trip there, just under a year ago – my how time flies. Dropped the hound off with Ma and Pa and made for the University in the early morning. Found where I needed to be, parked up, and sourced a bracing coffee to up the heart rate for battle.

Arrived at the final location, to be met by a crowd of other interviewees. Yippee. There’s nothing like having to stare down the opposition all day, being polite whilst wondering if you could poison their coffee or push them, accidentally and tragically, down some stairs. But I persevered, shook hands and settled in for the day. A panel of about 2456 staff appeared and talked us through the plan for the day. An innocent-enough-sounding ‘individual task’, to be followed by chairing discussions on important matters with fellow panellists, and then on to an ‘inbox’ exercise, before a 10 minute presentation and then, if one was afforded one, a final interview. Told you, didn’t I? Bonkers.

It was the task that set the tone, and I’d shot the gun directly downwards within 20 minutes of the process getting underway.

We were stationed at intervals around a large square of desks, and our mistress of ceremonies for the day promptly pulled out a wodge of large pieces of paper and a number of thick, coloured markers.

“If you’ll turn your papers over” she said, “you’ll see we want you to design and complete a Personal Leadership Shield.”

There was a long silence. A group of experienced, middle-aged adults, we met one another’s eyes with a uniform expression that said, “did you hear what I just heard?” However, it was all true. The piece of paper had a list of different criteria that we were to set out on the paper in the form of a shield.

“Oh, and please put your name on your work” our lady said, as she tapped start on the clock.

It was quite the flurry of a 20 minutes. My main challenge was to hand draw a shield shape that roughly filled the page, giving enough space to write in, and that was roughly a uniform shape. That took some time.

My combatants were taking a range of approaches. Chap to my right seemed to be filling his with some random hieroglyphs, and the young woman opposite wrote stuff non-stop in tiny script, at a hundred miles an hour, all over hers, her tongue poking out in concentration. I went for a bit of a middle-ground approach, and marked out some prompts, to which I would be able to talk if needed.

The time having flown by, I reminded myself that it was time for the artist to sign his work. I was oddly put in mind of the Gallery section of the late Tony Hart’s ‘Take Hart’ programme, from my 80’s childhood. Absent-mindedly, I wrote in a sort of freehand Comic Sans in the top left-hand corner:

Christopher Cox: Aged 42 ⅔

A bit of piss-taking that rebounded on me later in the day, when in the interview I was met with my handiwork sat on an easel when I entered the room to sit down.

“We wondered why you put your age on the shield?” came pretty much the first question. My fate was sealed. Drummed out for not being Serious enough, I went home and started filling out my expenses form. That fact that this University is 240 miles from our present home does, at least, mean I turn a small profit every time I go down there.

So yeah, my fault, I get it, but it’s an institution not without its other sins. Each and every time I have been there I have had to complete the same, 2-hour, in-tray exercise. And I am here to tell you it cannot be done in the time available. I’ve had three goes, and I’m getting better at it, but you cannot do it. On another occasion I was taken out halfway through the exercise to go and give a presentation in a distant lecture hall. The woman in the front row was bloody knitting. Never looked up once. I was furious! And no one came back to fetch me, so I got hopelessly lost trying to find the room we were in and had to ask a couple of students where the building was.

They are not on my Christmas card list, let’s be assured of that. Still, the last miserable visit there was the one before I flew out here and got this job, so yah, boo and sucks to them. They’re sat there at home freezing to death, and I’m looking out from the 23rd floor at the pure blue of the Persian Gulf.

But none of that matters, ridiculous though it was. I’m here now, and enjoying life. Let’s have a look over that first week, shall we?

30 days ago, I bumbled up to London on the train with my case. The night before, my Mother (I was staying at the brink of departure with the parentals, as they were looking after the hound whilst SWK cracked the boards in Eastbourne) set about the task of packing said case for me, as I made the necessary selections of items going and items staying. Qatar Airways offers a thoroughly decent 32Kg of luggage, and I am now bewildered as to how anyone manages to pack a case with that weight of stuff that they actually need. Primed with a few shirts, some toothpaste and a couple of improving volumes, my bag was suddenly a dense 28Kg and as manoeuvrable as an offcut of Dark Matter. When the time comes to leave this place, I’m going to invest in something larger, stronger and lighter. Mostly so I can bring back a ten-year supply of aftershave, which is tremendously cheap out here.

Anyway, I hauled said item up to Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport, and left it in the hands of the baggage handlers. The striptease that is airport security followed, and I was soon installed with my last couple of pints for a while, before making for the skies.

The journey was uneventful, all in all. I missed a chunk of a film thanks to falling asleep from the beer, and the queue to get into the country (armed with my precious visa, which had cost me more than £1,000 and counting) was tremendously long, but once I was in the hands of the driver hired to take me to my quarters, all was well. We whizzed up the highway (driving is undertaken in this country either sat still in queues, or jousting with others at 70 mph, and pretty much nothing in between those states), past all the pretty lights and soon enough Casa Suggzy loomed up above us. Some admin, general fawning over the new, sweaty guest, and hauling of the case into the lift followed, and before I knew it I was exhaustedly making myself a cup of tea to wash down my complimentary digestive biscuits, whilst failing to get the Wi-Fi to work.

I’d been gifted a couple of days to start to establish myself here and find a bit of a routine. Unpack, get some shopping in, that sort of thing. I didn’t stray far, but my major mission was to find the City Center Mall (Qataris love a good mall – there’s one every 60 feet or so, air-conditioned down to roughly the temperature of the UK right now) and the Carrefour supermarket. I set out the following afternoon. It was still pretty warm here at that point – 36 degrees or so. I found the place well enough, and espied a number of discarded trolleys between my apartment that gave credence to the theory that one could wheel larger shops back to one’s quarters. Which will be welcome next Sumer when it’s a gentle 50 degrees of Mercury or thereabouts.

I inhaled the contents of a Bento Box in a Japanese place on the second floor, and immediately felt rather more myself again, having been initially a smidgen bewildered by the sight of an ice rink on the ground floor. Where else, but the Desert, I ask you? I braced myself for Friday afternoon shopping, and then spent the better part of 90 minutes finding the ingredients, condiments and fluids necessary to sustain life for my first week. It did not take long to discover that one trick at the supermarket is to ignore the British, American or similar brand name presented to you as the first option, and seek out, instead, a rough Middle-Eastern equivalent. Spending £6 for 250g of Seriously Strong Cheddar would likely make this whole affair a bit less of a money-spinner, I soon decided. Plus, the Russian Roulette of buying the unfamiliar makes life entertaining, I reckon.

I got to the checkouts with my spoils, and was soon approached by a tiny Indonesian member of staff, who told me there was a better queue for me to join. Fair enough, I thought, and was about to propel my cart in her direction, when I realised she had taken the other end of it and had set off at a remarkable rate of knots for one of her dimensions and the weight of the nosebag, I broke into a trot and caught up with her about 40 yards up the store.

Cue the unveiling of my first error. I dutifully placed everything on the conveyer belt, and stationed myself the other side, having asked, to some bewilderment, for some plastic bags.

“They’re over there” said the cashier, pointing at a pile of 564658 of them.

One does not pay for plastic bags, in Qatar, I learned.

I merrily began stuffing my loot into the bags, until I heard a sound of consternation from the till.

“These have no barcode!” she said, swinging two limes at me, housed in their cellophane bag, much like a little pair of lonely green bollocks.

“Ah, now, well I did wonder about that but I..” I started out..

“NONE of these have a barcode!” she came back, wielding a range of zucchini, broccoli florets and onions in similarly open bags, without codification.

I met her questioning gaze with a furrowed brow, and started to babble.

“WEIGH THESE” she shouted, to an elderly retainer in a yellow set of overalls, whereupon the little fellow took my small farm’s worth of veg right back to the beginning of the store to do so. It transpired, and this is a mistake that lots of wet-behind-the ears fellow like me make, that there are always two members of staff on a desk, where their job is to whirl the bags out of your hand and tie them in a single knot, bash in the code (from memory, seemingly) for the contents and barcode them at the sort of speed that would delight an F1 pit crew. It’s quite something to witness.

After a time, the old boy returned with it all, and commerce concluded for the day. The interregnum had been about five minutes or so, and I had rather feared that my error would have met with the sort of howls of derision and huff that I had come to know from the UK. But not a bit of it – point of fact was that the local pace of life is such that no one really cares about this stuff. The lads behind me, with their purchase of about 25 sacks of coffee, simply chatted-up the cashier whilst we all waited.

I wheeled things away, and down an escalator, thinking to rattle back to the gaff and leave the trolley in an appropriate spot. I made for the doors, back out into the heat, and proceeded to sweatily spend ten minutes in the near-darkness of the underground car-park, drawing honks and parps from a number of 4×4 owners as they tried their best to turn me into jam.

Going nowhere fast, I gave up and made my way back to the doors and the blissful air-conditioning. I arrived to the surprised stares of quite a lot of Doha-residents, looking out from under their cool robes at the pink man who’d evidently decided he wanted his week’s shopping fully refunded.

I found another door – looking back a fire exit, I think, and crashed it open, making down a side alley and into the thrum of the street. My spirits soared, but then died, as I realised there appeared no way to drop my trolley down to street level. Actually, there was, but with night having fallen, I could not make it out for love nor money. When it gets dark here, it does so quickly, and absolutely.

“How difficult can it be”, I asked myself aloud, “to gather up these four heavy bags and my man-bag full of non-alcoholic beers, and stagger back two blocks with it by hand?”

Within about 50 yards, I realised that it was tremendously difficult. I was soon heaving for my breath, and had the brow and the back and the armpits of a man who’s been left in a sauna for a good fortnight. I took a wrong turn, and soon managed to completely misplace my 25-storey apartment block. I staggered around manfully for about 20 minutes, and eventually found a stray trolley. Dumped my stuff in it, got Google Maps running (yep, I know), and realised my building was directly behind me. Genius.

Back at Reception, many staff hurried to me aid, and helped me into the lift, as the perspiration of my Herculean endeavour cooled against my skin. After two trips, I found myself on my knees on the floor of my apartment, aircon turned up to full, bemoaning a lost baguette, and hoping to Allah that this would, in future, prove a little easier.

Of course, easier it has indeed become. But not without the odd pitfall – one literal one, in fact.

More of that soon. I’ll be back in another week or so to tell you how I finally got my residency permit, my deafness cured, and my tongue burned by a salad.

 

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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