A Long Way Back!

Hi. Nostalgia pie for lunch today. Happens more and more these days, guess the years are ticking by. Drifted on back to when I was sixteen; working as barman at the Birchenough Bridge Hotel, in the then, Southern Rhodesia. Small, sort of sad-looking colonial stopover, built from tin and bricks on the west bank of the River Sabi.

From the manager down, by ten in the morning, we were all drunk, but we blamed the heat. Gin and tonics and beer were our salvation, and boy oh boy by ten o’clock it sure was hot. We were, all of us, somewhat weird I guess – the stuff off old books and shaky, Humphrey Bogart films; rooms with slow-turning, ineffectual ceiling fans, mahogany dining room chairs that creaked but never broke, white waiters’ suits and though always starched and shiny, worn to bare cotton bones around the collars and cuffs. Like white sharks the waiters cruised amongst the tables, ready to lunge for empty plates and whisk them away to the kitchen wash house...

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Ps: one more week of editing headaches. The story’s starting to shine – good punctuation is, without any doubt, the key to that final door.

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