An Affair to Remember!

Happy New Year, evereeebody!!!

Just collapsed sideways into the chair and promised my belly a two-size drop in girth before spring hits us. That gives me about (using my fingers)... nine weeks of borderline, starvation dieting. Will I make it? Nope. Same as last year – the road to hell, etcetera. Nevertheless, cokes, crisps and cakes are, from now on, banned in our house. At least for a month – or a couple of days, whichever comes first...

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Another piece of, An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa:

  

‘You can look, but no touching though, not without your shilling.’

So I looked but didn’t touch. I looked so hard it made my eyes water; a bit like looking for marbles on the bottom of a swimming pool – all blurry and fuzzy – still not really sure of what I was looking for.

‘Do you want to kiss again?’ I was bored. Gloria dropped the front of her frock and smoothed it down.

‘Okay, but not for too long and don’t bump me with your teeth.’

 So we kissed and did the flapping fish in the sink again with our tongues. Only banged against her teeth once and said I was sorry.

The light, when I first saw it, floated between the mango trees like a coloured match on bonfire night. The closer it came, the redder it flared – sometimes sparks came off of it. Gloria saw it and hurriedly undocked her mouth from mine.

‘What is it?’

‘Dunno,’ I croaked, but then, from between the trees and armoured with silver moonlight, the wraith from hell floated towards us, spirit-like. Those next ten seconds fell upon us as some screeching banshee. Okay, perhaps not quite so bad, but pretty well up there with the biggies on my Richter scale of scary experiences.

Gloria legged it. I toyed with the idea of following her, but my feet refused to move; roots of abject terror had woven in with my shoelaces.

Veiled in juniper fumes and fag smoke, my vengeful mother swooped upon our little nest of first amour like a helicopter gunship – hands outstretched for Gloria’s throat, eyes bulging from that final twenty yard sprint to save her son from supposed ‘deflowerment’.

‘Bloody little strumpet!’ she shrilled and thundered past like a protective mother rhino, crashing through shrubs, mangos and almost demolishing the greenkeeper’s shed before skidding to a standstill. Still alight, her cigarette just sort of hung there, decapitated – right-angled by a branch. She broke off the damaged end and shoved the burning bit to what was left of her Matinee. She sucked in the smoke and calmed herself.

I just stood there, a becalmed lover bathed in fear and moonlight. Gloria had disappeared. Her smell was still on my shirt and my tongue was sore, but I never saw her again. So I looked at things from the bright side, I’d had my first, brief taste of Eden’s apple and still had my shilling, as well as my flower...

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