Definitely Monday...

Here comes the second episode of ‘An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa’. Tried to keep it light and quick moving; nothing worse than unnecessary BS. To all of you who made it this far – thank you – never done this blog stuff before so things can only get better. Will post this then hit the sack. Been working on ‘Sons of Africa’ since five this morning; eyes like crushed radishes, but don’t care, the book’s so bloody good. All you Africa addicts are going to love it. Might well post something different next blog; something from a little book I’m finishing off for all you Kindle-ites out there in the ‘Amazon’. One of ten, two-minute-stories. Just for the record, I think Kindles are great. Why? We’ll talk about it soon. Gotta sleep now...’night.

...Three months later and I was losing my lunch to the Bay of Biscay. Waves the size of fifty-ton Bedford lorries banged off the side of France and thumped our boat up and down; side to side like a plastic duck in its north Atlantic bathtub. The dining rooms were almost empty. Stewards lifted up bits of wood at the edge of our table to stop knives and forks and soup from flying all over the place. Sometimes the ship shuddered. I mean, really shuddered; sort of death throes. One old lady screamed. Someone said the propellers were coming up out of the water. Everywhere reeked of sick; the toilet floors were awash. People wanted to die. I think someone did. Mother stayed in her bunk and my dad brought dry toast and tea for her from the dining room.

‘You’ll feel better after eating something,’ he promised, but she didn’t and chucked the lot up.

Sometimes I went on my own; to the dining room. The waiters were really friendly. Think they were frightened of my dad, though – he was sort of rough looking; hands like coal scuttles. He’d been in the war and down coal mines. On Friday nights he always went out and got drunk. Shouted a lot and sometimes fell over the front step when he came home, but we loved him; worshipped him – even when I got the buckle-end of his belt and couldn’t sit down for a week. Anyway the rough seas didn’t last and we sailed from muddy brown to azure waters. The sun came out and so did a hundred wan and weary passengers; off the pointed end of our ship the dumpling shape of Madeira Island rose up from the ocean. Some kids pointed and shouted, “Africa!” – knob-heads.

*

When we docked, locals in dodgy, overloaded boats paddled alongside our ship. More like canoes than boats. Some locals came on board or lined the key selling their gaudy brass fiddly-things, sombreros and other catch-penny crap. Those who stayed on their boats waved their arms; ‘Sheeeling!’ they shouted up to us. ‘You throw a sheeeling inawater!’ Us kids flattened bottle tops and threw them instead. We got the ‘bastard’ word when the divers surfaced and what were no doubt, other foreign obscenities; so we gave them the good old, Brit two-fingers with a thumb poked between them. One kid peed through the railings. Happy days. I still missed England but not as much as the day before. I was learning new tricks....